Cotswolds

Hey, so I went to the Cotswolds last weekend with my parents. It was cold but I heated it up so good.

Visited the church my parents got married in (aw so cute), got run down by some cheeky sheep, and ate some good food.

Actually to be fair I cheaped out on the food, nothing gourmet, just a burger and chips. But you can't be having fancy caviar all day otherwise you'll get sick of it, and pretending to down in instead of putting it in your napkin won't be as easy.

Cottage, not made for a 6 ft plus family, so good choice M & D

Church

Cheeky sheep

More cheeky sheep

Butternut squash burger & skin on chips

 YES woo. It's my last week at Leith's so I'm preparing to get emotional. But good things must end :)

Speak and see you all soon, love Steffi.

Pheasant day!

This is me with a pheasant. It's not alive:

Hattie

Cool!

Speak soon, love Steffi.

Weekend and Prac. exam

Good weekend, parents came to town :) spent the two days walking around London, hearing stories of when I was growing up. Screamed my way through my christening apparently, which I'm told is a good thing as it signifies the devil leaving the body (a process which mum said didn't fully complete itself..clever Mum).

Mum and Dad strolling

St. Columba's Church - where I was christened

My street

Agatha Christie's house

Also, today we had a mock practical exam to get us ready for 2 weeks from now :) We cooked Italian bread, Vichyssoise (Potato and Leek soup) and Chicken with saffron and lemon served with couscous.  Went well, relatively pain free, bread slightly under-salted, vichyssoise was more like a puree (not enough milk added) but the chicken was cooked well, sauce good, couscous slightly under-seasoned but good, and all done in 2.5 hrs. WOOO!

Chicken, vichyssoise and Italian bread

Winner winner chicken lunch!

Hope you're all good and happy.

Speak soon, love Steffi.

Coq au Vin and Picture dayyyy

So basically today was Coq au Vin and since it was 'Fun Fridays' I took a few sneaky kitchen shots!! WOOO cheeky.

So here you are:
 

This weeks work bench

Kitchen 1 - more work benches, SO CLEAN!!

The grill where we grill things

Ready to cook with LaLa

And MTV, that was my crib.

Today we cooked Coq au Vin, basically chicken, in a red wine reduction with bacon, mushrooms and button onions. Mmm hmm:

Look at that presentation, clean plate, strategic piling. Winning dish!

Finally mastered jointing a chicken but overcooked the broccoli, disaster.

Also, I had a baked bean sandwich, and was told to hollow it out THEN add the beans!

Having a good time with my sandwich

My life has now transformed and I can't wait to try all different things in a hollowed out sandwich! Imagine where that's going to take me!

OH and also ALSO, my friend Jackie cut her finger pretty badly yesterday and had to get stitches so I signed her finger cast so that all the kids at school knew she meant business:

OUCH!

 

 

WINNER week. I love you Leith's.

Hope everyone is happy, doing fine.

Speak soon, love Steffi.

Pav.

Today I made a Pav. It looked like this:

Pavlova with mixed fruits

Yeah :D

Hope you're all good :)

Speak soon, love Steffi.

Week 7 already :(

Week 7, woo! This is really going way too quickly it's insane! So today we made Smoked haddock gougeres which are basically pots of savory choux (like puff) cheesy pastry with a fish, tomato, spinich and white sauce filling. Mm hmm. No picture but just imagine a pot with a nemo swimming amongst some seaweed (the spinach) and some coral (the tomatoes), in a sandy sea (the white sauce), and that's what it looked like!

We then plated up the Orange and passionfruit jelly and the Caramel oranges we made yesterday:

Plate 1

Plate 2

Tart but not too much so, just enough to tie in with the sweetness of the caramel oranges. Great success.

I then came home and cooked for the family. I did Chicken Ramen, which basically just involved pan-frying some chicken (seasoned lightly with olive oil, salt & pepper), boiling 2L of water and adding 4 chicken stock pots to it, chopping up some pak choy (bok choy would work also), leek and beansprouts and cooking some rice noodles. To plate I put the noodles in the bowl first, put the pak choy, beansprouts and leek on top of the noodles, poured over the (hot) stock and added the chicken (rested for 5 min and sliced on a diagonal), bamboo shoots (just drained, from a tin), half a hard-boiled egg, and some chilli to garnish. WOO!

Winner winner chicken dinner ramen

Oh and I also burnt my finger taking the noodles out so I old wives taled it and lathered it in toothpaste to cool it down/help it heal which looks fun cos the toothpaste I have has those freshening strips in them! Only prob is now I have a toothpastey keyboard. Delicious.

And that's that for now!

Enjoy :)

Speak soon, love Steffi.

Week 6

HEY COOL. So it was assignment week at Leiths which meant 'posting on blog' came in at last priority unfortunately but basically the weeks are getting harder, longer, so less singing in the kitchen, but more crazy fun.

Two things I managed to photograph this week:

Spare ribs mm hrmm:

And pizza! The sauce we made in advance and I managed to spill it all down my front while trying to double bag it.. so yes, didn't have a ridiculous amount of sauce for the pizza, but did have a super relaxing sauce bath at 11am Tuesday morning and a non-recoverable apron!

SO yes little update, I'm having fun, I hope you're all having fun too.

Speak soon, love Steffi.

Week 4

Right so, HI. Been quite busy doing the cooking thing and everything but here's an update. Went to Belfast, Ireland last weekend to see Charlotte, Emer and Claire, 3 girls from camp. Had the nicest time, relaxing (maxin') and really just mucking around talking camp stuff and sight seeing etc. etc. Went out on the Saturday night to a club called Box and yeah you all know I don't club blah blah but it was fun, lack of talent, but it was a good time. Excellent spread for breakfast the next morning thanks to Emer ;), though i had the eggs covered :D

Titanic Museum - The titanic was built and assembled in Belfast, Ireland.

Leaning tower Clock

View from Belfast Castle

Belfast Castle garden

Belfast Castle

Loving Pimms in a can

Excellent spread

Belfast Castle, Charlotte & Claire

A cat maxin relaxin

Then, had a good week at school, cooked a few stews and a lemon meringue pie, a Christmas cake too :D

LMP

LMP

And to finish, last night, went to a friend from school, Remi's house and cooked up a storm! French beans with walnuts, watercress and caramelised onion salad, chilli and lime linguine with crab meat vichy carrots, and a baked artichoke with garlic. Nothing fancy for dessert, "just icecream"!

So yeah, that's my life in the last week, hope it keeps you all occupied for a bit. I'm having a great time, honestly just having a blast, so YAY :)

Speak soon, love Steffi.

Brownies and tart

Over the weekend I made Chilli and Chocolate Brownies (gluten free). I mixed together a basic brownie recipe but substituted the plain flour for rice flour, flour containing no gluten. Then when all the ingredients were combined, I added half a small chilli which I'd chopped finely so it wasn't seen in the brownies when cooked. Half wasn't enough to get the full kick I wanted so in future I'd probably add 1 to 1.5 chillies :) woo!

To follow the baking trend today in class we made pastry from scratch and filled it with a treacle based filling to make, well, Treacle Tart. Can't say it's something I'd want to eat all the time but my pastry got positive feedback, so yeah winner!

 

Delisch.

Speak soon, love Steffi.

Pork with quince and apple

Made dinner last night. Bought pork chops from the butcher near Leiths to make sure I was using the best stuff I could find.

Basically I just chopped the meat and fat off the bone, leaving an inch of fat on the skin side. I then scored the fat with x's and rubbed oil, salt and pepper into them. Next came the quince paste which was just evenly spread over the pink part of each chop. To follow I thinly sliced two apples and put two slices on top of the quince paste. I finished by sprinkling around six or seven fresh oregano leaves (fresh looks better, more rustic, blah blah) on top of the apple and brushed each chop, over the oregano, with melted butter for shine.

They were then roasted for around 20-25 mins at 220 c (fan forced) on a baking tray with baking paper and yum, pork, tender, melts in your mouth, deliciousness!!

Before:

After:

Depending on whether or not you like quince paste, I would say the more the merrier as a thick piece of pork will see the flavour of a thin layer of paste not come through!

Speak soon, love Steffi.