5 Things

5 happy things from this week:

1. Chai tea
2. Berries
3. New book
4. Italian
5. Pyjamas

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Raspberry and Blueberry Friands

This weekend is moving day, and also B's birthday. This means I need to bake a cake and move flat, which is logistically rather tricky. B then told me that the done thing in his office is to take in a cake when it's your birthday. Seems a bit topsy-turvy to me to have to buy your own cake to share with your colleagues, but hey ho, that seems to be the rules in London city.

So I've started the cake baking journey a little early with some little friands for B to take in to his friends in the office to celebrate his birthday one day earlier on Friday. Now I just have to hope he doesn't mind that I've made them heart-shaped. Oops.

Katie Quinn Davies' recipe for raspberry friands, which takes pride of place on the front of her book, is perhaps what drew me in to buy 'What Katie Ate' in the first place. This was a purchase which I've never regretted, and these friands are enough of an explanation why. Super simple, almondy, light, and dotted with sweet berries. Love at first sight. Especially when covered in icing sugar and served with fresh berries on the side. (I doubt B will be doing this bit in the office). 

The recipe can be found here (and Katie's just started blogging again - wahoo!). As you can tell I switched some raspberries for blueberries, just to mix things up a bit. Maybe all the 4th July red, blue and white posts around the blogosphere recently have gone to my head.

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Grilled Vegetables, Ricotta & Basil

I am embarrassingly aware of how little 'normal' food I talk about on this blog. By 'normal' food I mean food to live on and eat daily i.e. not cake, cookies and coffee. Although thinking about it I do eat most those things daily, just not three times a day. When I saw M on a brief trip to Bristol last month she mentioned that I should write about more day-to-day food, more savoury food, more normal meals. No less cake in this little internet space, but mix up the cake with some savoury too. I need to find that perfect balance between naughty and nice which everyone craves in life.

So after that rather longer than I had planned for ramble, I'm going to tell you what we cobbled together for a late, post-tennis and a little bit too much Pimms Sunday evening supper. It's not really a recipe, lots of you carnivores would say it's not even really a meal. But it was a plate full of food that made me happy, that was simple and healthy, pretty and tasty.

At Broadway Market on Saturday we'd bought some buffalo milk ricotta. As you may have guessed I am in love with ricotta, and there was no way I was leaving that stand without some ricotta in my bag. We dropped by the Turkish shop on the way back from the tennis, picked up a few vegetables, threw them under the grill, chopped some basil into a generous amount of olive oil and bashed it together with a pestle and mortar for a while. When a slight charring smell started wafting from the oven, B flipped the veg over, and returned it to the grill for a little while longer until it was sufficiently dark and soft.

All was thrown into a bowl, the creamy and super-rich ricotta sprinkled over, and the basil oil poured on top. Tossed. Served. Yum. Very little effort, very lot of taste.

FYI veg-wise we used two courgettes, one super long red pepper, one aubergine, a couple of cloves of garlic, and a couple of handfuls of cherry tomatoes. That's as much as a recipe as you need. Promise.

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Eggs Florentine

It was normal Saturday morning, a trip to Broadway market, coffee at Climpson & Sons, lots of cake oggling, fish purchasing at Fin and Flounder, and a stroll through London Fields to E5 Bakehouse to buy the best bread around. As we selected our loaf (raisin and walnut this week for those of you who are interested), I spied some freshly baked English Muffins. As soon as I'd seen them I turned to B and exclaimed 'Eggs Florentine!'. His eyes lit up; two were added to our bread purchase.

So on Sunday morning, after a rainy Victoria Park run (I am really enjoying only doing a normal size run now that that half-marathon is over!), we set about creating a very late breakfast of Eggs Florentine.

A few nervous, fluttery butterflies in my stomach as it was the first time we had made hollandaise. All I had heard about making it was that it was really tricky and often went wrong. This was not what I wanted resounding in my head as I put my life (breakfast is life) in Felicity Cloake's hands, trusting that her trials of multiple hollandaise recipes had led her to the best solution. After many, many minutes and much whisking, it started to come together: I had a rich, creamy, silky hollandaise in my saucepan. I did a little jump for joy.

The muffins were toasted and buttered, the spinach was wilted, the eggs were poached, and the hollandaise was poured over. A sprinkling of pepper and we dove in. B declared it the best breakfast we've made. That's a compliment. 

E5 Bakehouse, Arch 395, Mentmore Terrace, London, E8 3PH.

Felicity Cloake's recipe for the perfect hollandaise can be found here.

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