Nottingham Bound

This weekend we took my youngest sister, a joyous amount of suitcases and a multitude of bags charmingly overfilled so that the handles were rendered ineffective, to Nottingham. The occasion? University: First Year.

On momentous occasions such as these, it is a tradition in our family that a delightful dinner is created the night before the day of leaving. With five sisters, there is a lot of room to have a variety of ‘sisterly relationships’, but as it happens I rather like this one so I thought I would give her a good send off. The food of choice to represent a ‘new era’ for my sister and also, more importantly, the real start of my blog? Salmon en croûte and chocolate pavlova.

To the fish...

This recipe, a Gordon one which you can find here http://www.redonline.co.uk/food/recipes/salmon-en-croute, is ridiculously easy. The only real pain is skinning the salmon, unless this is something you frequently do and/or actually know how to do properly, unlike myself. However, if this task does fill you with dread I would ask you to think of me when I first attempted this recipe and only remembered to skin the fish after I had buttered him up all good and proper. If you’re not covered in lemony, herby butter, you will do fine.

My hands also became sore as soon as they (figuratively) saw the raw fish, I am unsure if this is a ‘thing’. Perhaps it is something to be researched and not discussed on here.

Gordon’s recipe details some exact and some unhelpfully inexact measurements. I refer you to the ‘generous handful’ and ‘small handful’ amounts of herbs. As someone with inexplicably large hands for a female, these measurements always throw me a bit. Is this a scrunched fist hand? An open palm? How high can a pile of basil leaves go upon a steady hand? Generally when I see such instructions I just think, ‘Oh okay, quite a bit’. So that is what I did, to a delicious result thank goodness.
But to the exact measurements, most specifically that of the salmon and the pastry, I would be so bold as to say ignore them slightly. Get as much salmon as you want / can afford (it is rather pricey), I believe the amount I used was nearly 700g and that was more than enough for 5 people so I’m unsure how hungry Gordon’s guests were. I would also recommend buying a pack of ready rolled shortcrust pastry - your work is done for you.

For AGA baking, after having chilled your gift wrapped salmon, place the tray on the bottom rung of the Roasting Oven and bake for 20-25 minutes per Gordon’s instructions.

So delish

The chocolate pavlova recipe is courtesy of Nigella Lawson, as featured in her book Forever Summer. It can also be found on her website, http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/chocolate-raspberry-pavlova-200. You really can’t go wrong with Nigella when wanting some sort of indulgent chocolate dessert. However, as it was a special occasion I decided to make the pavlova slightly more interesting by adding chopped toasted hazelnuts into the mixture along with the chocolate. Plus, a chocolate and hazelnut concoction is rather befitting to the blog’s namesake — meant to be.

Shiny and stiff = all set for the additions

Upon reading the recipe I suddenly realised that, despite eating many a pavlova/meringue based dessert, I had never actually made one. So this is truly an account from an absolute pavlova beginner. My findings: it’s easy enough. Just make sure you whisk the egg whites into some good peaks before adding the sugar, a spoonful at a time, ensuring each load is incorporated before you chuck in the next one.

For conventional ovens Nigella has the answers to your baking questions, but for that eternally hot beast that sits in my kitchen I had to seek out Mary Berry’s advice. Position your pavlova on a grid shelf on the floor of the Roasting Oven for 3-4 minutes. Then transfer it to the Simmering Oven for 1¼-1½ hours.

Aside from cream and fruit, Nigella advocates coarsely grated chocolate to top her pavlova. No offence to Nigella but I decided to up the chocolate stakes and make David Lebovitz’s Salted Butter Chocolate Sauce that I had been coveting for some time now, which can be found on his website here http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2013/09/salted-butter-chocolate-sauce-recipe/.

Different but delightful

I halved his ingredients because I didn’t think I really needed 500ml of an excuse to eat liquid chocolate every time I opened the fridge for 2 weeks. Whilst my sauce was delicious it did not look like the sauce in David’s photos, so perhaps halving it buggered up the consistency slightly. Guess I shall have to try the full amount next time juuuust to check, ergh what an inconvenience!

A word on this slightly altered dessert, the hazelnuts make the entire pavlova take on a Ferrero Rocher feel. If you know someone who is a fan, I would create this but go mental and add a layer of Nutella beneath to cream to make the transformation of dessert/delightful chocolate ball complete.

My sister was suitably enamoured with the food and an extra piece of pavlova made its way up to Nottingham with us.

Welcome to Spoon in the Nutella, a blog in which I hope to share my culinary exploits great and small, successes and failures. There shall be no shame in this exploratory food space; all posts will be horrifically honest and accompanied by my less than expert photography.

I’m Beth, a recent graduate with a lot of time on my hands and a lot of love for baking. The title of this blog is not, as may first appear, an instruction in order to improve a lacklustre chocolate cake recipe. Nor is it the confession of a sneaky Nutella thief — I must admit the whole chocolate on bread thing always slightly disturbed me. It is in actual fact an event which usually causes me to bake. To explain; my mother is in possession of an incredibly sweet tooth and if there so happens to be no delicious goods in the house she can be known to, not so subtly, wander over to the jam cupboard and surreptitiously procure a spoonful of the good stuff ( I cannot confirm if double dipping takes place, the event is too speedy).
Whilst this behaviour is probably extremely normal for most people, when I bear witness to it I get an increasing feeling of sadness that this is where she is getting her sweet kicks when I know something infinitely better (no offence Nutella) could be thrown together in a couple of hours. Yes, Nutella is an instant hit of chocolatey goodness but really, is there anything better than something freshly baked?

My mother’s chocolate habit is not the only reason for my baking habit. I love to bake but that love has only been allowed to develop because of my mother. All my life, we have always had a ‘baking cupboard’ and a ‘cooking chocolate drawer’ in the kitchen. Baking never had to be planned and shopped for in my house but could be done as desired, and with a talented mum and 5 other sisters under the same roof this happened rather a lot.

My weapon of choice to help me along this blogging adventure is the big ‘ol beast of kitchens, the 4 oven AGA.

Drying washing - amongst its many talents

In its full glory

Whilst an AGA does magically make all food taste that bit better - once you’ve had AGA toast you can’t go back - it also forces you (well it does me) to research and cross compare recipes. With 4 ovens of differing temperatures the AGA does not completely adhere to the conventional gas mark/°Celsius cooking instructions; sometimes I do just shove a cake ‘somewhere’ in the baking oven and simply hope that something edible will eventually come out. Looking at a ‘normal’ recipe and then frantically trying to find out if Mary Berry - the Queen of AGA cooking - has made something similar and what rung she cooks it at has made me rather obsessive about recipes in general. I now cannot just find, for example, a shortbread recipe and go on and bake it. I have to research many other shortbread recipes and see how and why they differ and then test them all out or create a hybrid version. It is here that I would like this blog to intersect with my frankly anal attitude to baking, it shall be a space for me to explore and test a variety of recipes and document my findings. Hopefully, it will also force me to try new things, I must admit that I have rather shied away from all things pastry, bread and custard based so clearly tackling them in a very public space is the logical conclusion.

Oh, I will document savoury cooking too sometimes - can’t have cake for dinner everyday!

Where to start...