In Love With Paris . . .

In Love With Paris| Li Ming by Ben Morris for Numéro China December 2011!

Napoleon Cake

Ingredients:

• For pastry:
• ==========
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sour cream (regular or light)
• 2 sticks unsalted butter
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/3 tsp baking soda
• 1 tbsp white vinegar
• all-purpose flour enough to make soft dough
• For cream:
• ==========
• 1 1/2 quarts of whole milk
• 1 cup of milk
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 4 egg yolks
• 4 very full tbsp flour
• Pinch of salt
• Pinch of nutmeg
• 1 lemon (zest only)
• vanilla essence or vanilla powder to taste
• 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
  

• Directions:

  • Pastry:
  • -------
  • Mix eggs, soft butter and sour cream together till they blend well.
  • Add salt.
  • In a table spoon, dissolve baking soda in vinegar - you will see "bubbles". When bubbling stops, add soda+vinegar to your mixture. Stir well.
  • Start adding flour, cup-by-cup, make soft smooth dough. Don't knead it too much, just enough to make it smooth and "un-sticky".
  • Split dough into 16 pieces, form little balls.
  • Cover the dough with plastic, and put in the fridge to chill.
  • While it's chilling, prepare cream.
  • • Custard Cream:
    • --------------
    • Pour 1 1/2 quarts of milk into thick bottom pot and bring it to boil. Don't use aluminum pots - it will burn !
    • While the milk is warming up, prepare the cream mix:
    • Separate egg yolks and stir them very well with sugar and a pinch of salt - until mix turns very light yellow.
    • Add flour, mix well.
    • Add 1 cup cold milk, mix very well. Avoid lumps.
    • When your milk starts to boil, reduce the heat immediately to low.
    • Pour the cream mixture into boiling milk very slowly, using a whisk to stir the cream.
    • Bring the mixture to boil again, constantly stirring it. When it starts boiling, you will see it become thicker. Let it simmer for 2-3 minutes, don't forget to stir at all times.
    • Remove from the stove, add lemon zest, vanilla, nutmeg
    • When you are able to touch the pot, add butter and mix it in as it melts. Set aside.
    • Now back to pastry:
    • • Preheat oven to 420 degrees F.
      • a. Get 1 piece of dough from the fridge, roll it into a very thin crust on well floured surface - as thin as you can, forming a round or a square crust.
      • b. Roll the crust onto rolling pin, and unroll it onto UNGREASED baking sheet.
      • c .Pierce crust with the fork all over.
      • d. Bake in the oven for 2 minutes or until lightly golden. Don't over bake. It is better when it is not dark.
      • • e. Remove the crust from the oven and put aside.
        • Repeat steps a-e for all the rest of the dough.
        • Never leave the kitchen while the crust is in the oven - check it all the time - it bakes very quickly.
        • Bake the last crust a little longer than others, letting it turn brown.
        • Put one crust on the cake dish.
        • Pour a ladle full of cream onto it.
        • Use skimmer to spread the cream evenly on the crust. Repeat for all crusts, except for the brown one.
        • Crush the brown crust on the board, using the rolling pin - just roll it over the crust several times - it will make great fine crumbs.
        • Pour the crumbs over the top layer of the cake.
        • Let the cake soak for 2-3 hours. Cut out the uneven edges, forming your favorite cake shape - square or round, or oval. 
        • via grouprecipes.com

Challenging Behaviour

Before the impetus of a new year ebbs away I am setting myself a few personal challenges for 2012. I don't do resolutions since the inevitable disappointments of deciding to give up smoking on previous New Years Days. Waking up with too little sleep and probably alcohol still coursing through my veins was not a recipe for success. I invariably congratulated myself on lasting out a few hours, once it was a whole day, before succumbing again to the evil weed. Resolutions eventually went out of the window but the very word 'challenge' has a different ring about it. So here's what I would like to do :

• Loose weight ~ yes wouldn't we all like to but I am seriously overweight - hence no photos of me on this blog. My family, friends and those  bloggers who have met me in the flesh as it were, would if they were being kind describe me as voluptuous. I would use different terminology and fully realise the risks to my health and happiness if the present state of affairs continues. I would love to have more energy for physical activities and garden and allotment would both benefit from it. What I have to loose is a secret between me in the scales. I am going to try in think of it in terms of bite sized chunks otherwise it is simply too daunting.
• As part of the above I plan to eat less meat. As a former vegetarian I should be able to manage this one. It was only the lure of the aroma of bacon butties that diverted me from the straight and narrow. I will be leafing through 'River Cottage Veg Every Day' this weekend for new recipes to experiment with.
• Take up tai chi again lessons. I started tai chi last year but sadly when my father was seriously ill last year had to put up it to one side. It's a gentle form of a physical exercise and a excellent for warming up before gardening or hitting the allotment.
• I am going to resist buying any more books until I have read those already in my possession. The bookshelves are groaning and eventually in need of a good prune.
• This year is going to be the year that I come up with a master plan for the allotment on paper before there has been too much sowing and growing. No more last minute panic as to where certain crops are going to reside or trying to remember what grew where last year.
• Finally I am going to crack successional sowing, catch cropping etc etc. I will be participating in Veg Plotting's The 52 Week Salad Challenge. Feeling full of enthusiasm I called in at Wilkos this morning whilst shopping making one or two purchases to get me focused. I resisted the urge to purchase this season's blue seed cell trays. 

I will report back next year as to how I fared with these challenges but on and around the 27th of each month as far as the last challenge is concerned.

P.S. I did give up smoking eventually starting on a National No Smoking Day (14th March this year) and never looking back. 

The Wind In The Willow

Part of what garden writers refer to as "the borrowed landscape', this willow, which is just outside the boundary of our garden took a nasty battering in yesterday's storms. It looks even worse in the flesh than on the photo and part of the larger damaged branch is dangling ominously near to our shed. It was still dark and lashing it down when I heard a dreadful ominous cracking noise. My first thought was that a tree may have come down across the main road but as I peered out I could see that the traffic was still moving so ruled this out. It was only later in the day when the wind abated that I could get out that this most sad state of affairs met my eyes. A salutary reminder of the power of nature. Now major surgery awaits and as it has proved difficult to establish just who the  the landowner is, I have a feeling that this may be an expensive start to our new year. The lovely Karen from 'An Artist's Garden' tweeted of damage to her polytunnel yesterday and I wonder whether any other UK blogger's gardens were victims of the extreme weather. I do hope that your your good selves, properties and gardens escaped unscathed. This was not our only damage of the day - the force of the wind knocked over himself's parked motorbike which seems a large beast to me. Minor damage done but I was just so mightily relieved that he was not on it as the time.

How To Draw An Elephant

A Poem For A New Year

"You think I am dead"
The apple tree said
Because I have never a leaf to show-
Because I stoop,
And my branches droop,
And the dull gray mosses over me grow!

But I'm still alive in trunk and shoot;
The buds of next May
I fold away-
But I pity the withered grass at my root."

"You think I am dead,"
The quick grass said,
"Because I have parted with stem and blade!
But under the ground,
I am safe and sound
With the snow's thick blanket over me laid.

I'm all alive, and ready to shoot,
Should the spring of the year
Come dancing here-
But I pity the flower without branch or root."

"You think I am dead,"
A soft voice said,
"Because not a branch or root I own.
I never have died, but close I hide
In a plumy seed that the wind has sown.

Patient I wait through the long winter hours;
You will see me again-
I shall laugh at you then, Out of the eyes of a hundred flowers."


~   Edith M. Thomas, 1854 - 1925

Wishing anybody who passes by a Happy and healthy New Year and hundreds of flowers!

P.S. The photos were all taken by me last year ~ one for each month but alas they did not come out in chronological order or the size I wanted. Must do more collages more often!

Quote Of The Day

Happy New Year