Firstly, I made puff pastry. Tragically this means that I now know how much butter goes into such pastry. (Answer: the same amount as flour.) My motivation in making it was my beloved promising some workmates that he would make them Beef Wellington. This dish is basically his signature dish, and he's working on fine-tuning it. I made a fairly large amount of pastry because he wanted to trial the Wellington on just the two of us before unleashing it on people he actually wanted to impress - and who was I to complain?? I froze the rest of the pastry, and thawed it out in the frig overnight before the Real Thing, and it worked a treat. It was so short! I was very pleased with myself, and didn't require nearly as much effort as I had expected.
The other thing I have made is ravioli, using a trusty recipe from the Women's Weekly Italian Cooking Class recipe book. I did however halve the recipe, which may have been the start of where things went a little pear-shaped. I used a different filling too - theirs was just too fiddly; I went for fetta and spinach instead. Anyway, making the pastry for the ravioli was ok, and again not as fiddly as I had expected; but I don't think I divided it into two equal halves, and I know I didn't roll them out as well as I might have. As a consequence I struggled a bit to make 'proper'-looking parcels, and in fact had to apply emergency bits of pastry so that they wouldn't disintegrate in the water while cooking. I was fairly disappointed in their appearance - oh, and I made them too big, too, which didn't help. They actually tasted all right, though, which was a relief. I think I will probably make them again, and this time I'll just make the correct-sized recipe; they can be frozen, I'm sure, after cooking.
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