Morning.

Sunday mornings simply need to begin with a good cup of coffee, for me at least.  I haven’t been able to find a nice small maker so I journeyed out to buy a cup and brought it back to the flat to sip on while I made a huge breakfast.  Scrambled eggs, sliced tomato, soda bread and dinner rolls filled with sun-dried tomatoes and cheese.  I made the Soda Bread and rolls in yesterday’s Boulangerie introduction.  They turned out pretty nice.  As usual my eyes were bigger than my stomach and I could only eat  about 1/3 of what was on the plate, but it was really good and nice to be able to use stove top (the Hob) and oven.

We started the week with Puff Pastry – from scratch.  Lots of dough rolling and lots of butter.  Heavens.  But it turned out pretty nice and I did have a piece of the “Bande feuilletee aux fruits de salson”  (mixed seasonal fruits in puff pastry slice) for dinner that evening.    I took home some extra dough to make some Palmiers at home but still hadn’t figured out how to power up the oven so it went to waste.

Talked to my sister, Ariana, and she advised to look in every nook and cranny of the flat for a power switch and she was right.  on the very bottom of the left cupboard (floor level) in the back was a switch which probably got pushed off accidentally  while putting some pots away.  Switch on and bam!  Oven now works.

We had a day off on Wednesday and weather was absolutely beautiful.  Joyce and I went I went to Dominique Ansel’s bakery for lunch and pastry of course.   Beautiful display of pastry’s.  I had “after the rain” mousse.  It was a jasmine mousse with a pear filling.  So creamy.  We also walked around enough we put on over 9 miles that day.  Need to after all the deserts!

Lunch at Dominique Ansel’s. Me and Joyce in St. James Park.  Beautiful weather!

The one in front: “After the Rain” Mousse Cake (Jasmine mousse, pear and ginger melee and a crisp praline feuilletine base).  Lovely.

Thursday we learned Choux pastry and created coffee eclairs with it.  I only have a pic of the Chef’s because I forgot to take a picture of the ones I made.  His obviously looked better but mine weren’t that far off.  Lol.  The fondant on top was tricky.  You don’t dip the eclair into it, you hold some melted fondant on a large spoon up about shoulder level in one hand and in the other hand you have your already filled eclair.  As the fondant begins to fall from the spoon, you lay it up and against the eclair. Hopefully I’ve explained that so you can picture it.  Anyway, tough to get the timing right on this one.  But if you do 12 times as we did, you eventually get it.

Then we finished the week with bread on Saturday.  I love bread so I was very happy.  Warm bread directly out of the oven is a wonderful thing. And a chef who holds aside some butter for you is also wonderful.

Its Sunday morning, breakfast is over and I’m off to a hair appointment.  Another gorgeous day today and then the weather turns chilly (50’s) and more like spring again next week.   That’s fine, I’m in the kitchen a lot these days anyway.

Talk later.

Mel