Sam's First Subway

And so it happened on the 17th of August 2013 that Sam lost his Subways virginity. I know it is difficult to believe that someone so picky that he has no shame in asking for his signature "deconstructed burger" (no salad, no mayo, no gherkins, just a lump of meat between two pieces of bread) in both low and high rent places had not yet frequented such an establishment that is famous for making bespoke sandwiches, right down to the customer's choice of six flavours of breads. Yet, here we were on a lovely day in Windsor, looking for a snack of a lunch to tide us over until our big dinner with pals Becky and Charles. 

"You always make me try new things when others are around so that I can't make a scene!" Sam exclaimed, despite the fact that it wasn't even my idea to go there. Once our friends had heard that Sam had never tried Subways before, they were even more adamant to go! 

As we stood waiting in line for our delicious sandwiches, Sam almost started hyperventilating with fear. My attempts to assuage him with a calm explanation of the wide choices available (including several chicken flavours) did not reduce his anxiety, and it was only after we got to the front of the queue and he saw me order, that he finally got the idea, and ordered something to his liking. That being a beef pattie, with lettuce, olives and barbecue sauce. 

Needless to say, when Sam finally took a bite, much to his surprise, it was a pleasurable experience. The icing on the cake was topped off with the revelation that this store had unlimited refillable drinks. And so he was hooked.

For since we've introduced him to Subways, Sam has had no less than six more of their sandwiches in the last two weeks. All with the same beef pattie combination. I worry for what will become of him while I am away on exchange in Shanghai.....I fear Sam may turn into a Subway sandwich himself!

Sam's First Pancake Flip

Welcome to the second part of our come-back double bill!
Of course Sam has had pancakes before, and loves them like everybody else. Not even a picky eater like him could resist such a tasty dish. However, this post is about Sam learning to make his own pancakes, so that he can produce them on demand! (Not sure if this was a wise thing to do)
This all started when one lazy Sunday morning, I was in the mood for making pancakes. When Sam saw how easy they were to make, he quickly made up his mind to try and learn how to make them for himself.
We used Nigella's american pancake recipe from her "Nigella Express" book:
300 g flour
1 1/2 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
40 g caster sugar
2 eggs
500 ml milk
2 tbsp melted butter
This makes enough for two hungry people like us ;)
Whisk the ingredients together, and then ladle out into a hot, greased frying pan as thick or as thin as you like!

This was a big step for Sam, since he had planned to make pancakes all on his own for his stag do morning. Due to a change of circumstances, neither of the two stags ended up staying over, but this didn't deter Sam from making pancakes for three people at home on his own! Luckily, he didn't eat all of them, and I ended up being able to try some the following day, and they were pretty good!

Sam's comments: I like pancakes, and after seeing Eva make them, I realised that this was a simple dish that was probably at the right level for me to try to achieve on my own. They were easy to make, you just have to pay attention to the frying pan, to make sure they don't burn. The end result was delicious and was very filling, just what you need to gear you up for a stag weekend away!

Sam's First Potato Croquettes

Hello everyone!

We have been very busy with the wedding organisation, but now it's all over and we're back from the honeymoon, Sam's First Times is now back by popular demand! And we start off with a special double bill!

The first is a basic recipe of the deliciously crunchy potato croquettes.

Sam first discovered these in Barceloneta, where they make a delicious bacon version. In addition, his culinary interests have been expanding, after the discovery of a certain Nadia G, who popped up on the Food Network, one night when I was watching the addictive "Amazing Wedding Cakes". Her no-nonsense punky style combined with her Italian good looks and irreverent humour in "Bitchin' Kitchen" was obviously going to be a winner with Sam. Despite her obvious attractions, her recipes actually check out, and are thoughtful and encourage people to use quality ingredients in proper home cooked meals.
So we used her recipe for croquettes:
Four large Maris Piper potatoes (or any others good for mashing)
1 tsp of oil
1 garlic clove
A handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley
A handful of grated Parmegianno or other hard cheese
Flour for rolling in
2 eggs
Seasoned breadcrumbs

So, we started off with cooking the potatoes for about 15 - 20 minutes and then peeling the skin off (with Maris Pipers, the skins just falls right off after cooking).

Sam did the mashing, while I chopped the garlic. Nadia G recommends to lightly fry the garlic in the oil and then add it altogether to the mash

Then we added the chopped parsley and seasoning:

Of course, at this point, you would also add the hard cheese of your choice, but since Sam was involved, this had to be cheese-free. So I added a hefty pinch of Vegeta instead to give it some flavour :)

Once you've flavoured all your mash, you should leave the mix in the fridge for it to cool down enough to handle. Most recipes say leave for 30 mins or so.

After thoroughly washing your hands, you're then ready for the next stage - rolling into croquette shapes! Then roll in the flour, followed by the beaten egg.

At this stage Sam asked me what it meant to beat an egg - I think he thought it meant throwing them against a hard surface or punching them! Luckily I was on hand to give a quick demonstration with a fork.

Finally, roll the eggy croquettes into the breadcrumbs. We flavoured ours with some Nando's chip spice to give it some spice. The recipe suggests "Italian seasoning" but really, you can use anything you fancy.

Then we used our usual frying pan and just did a shallow fry, which seemed to work out fine:

We got ten croquettes from this recipe, which was just enough for our hungry appetites!

Overall, these were much easier to make than I imagined, and although it's not a weekday supper accompaniment, they still turned out quite well, and next time we'll try something more adventurous like putting bacon bits into the mash!

Sam: "It was nice to get back into the culinary saddle after a long hiatus. These were so fun to make, because there were so many different stages, and I got to dip things into eggs. As a rookie chef, it was nice to be doing something with your hands and they turned out really well. They tasted much better than supermarket ones! 9/10" 

Sam's First Meringue Roulade - Christmas Style!

Merry Christmas everyone!
In light of the Christmas festivities, a classic time for cooking and baking, I wanted to do something special. Since we don't eat Christmas cake or pudding in our house, I've been looking to having a range of possible alternatives that are just as tasty and special. So I settled on a trusty favourite - meringue roulade, by who else but baking queen Mary Berry herself. Since I already knew that Sam likes meringue, I thought this was a failsafe option, which I could easily spice up into a festive style.

Instead of fresh strawberries, I added home made cranberry sauce - there are many recipes online, but I picked this one from the Ocado website, and modified it to make it suitable for a dessert by omitting the shallots and doubling the amount of sugar recommended. Also, I didn't have any red wine open, so I thought I'd just substitute it with a little bit of port!

you can also see in the background the process of how I made the blue sugar star decorations. I used a recipe from the brilliant Sugar Hero with a very funny description of how she was inspired to make this recipe (from the show Breaking Bad, nothing at all to do with the festive recipe for which I'm using it here). The details for the sugar stars are at the end.

The recipe itself is pretty simple and starts off with making a very stiff meringue!

Since I wasn't using the almond flakes in this recipe, I added extra speaks for texture before baking in the oven.

After baking and leaving to cool, it was time to add the filling. Here I tweaked the recipe again a little, and used a Christmasy champagne double cream as a filling. After laying the cranberry sauce on top of it, the roll looked like this:

The extra space at the far end is required as when you roll up the roulade, the filling has a tendency to ooze out. This is nothing to worry about, and adds to the overall messy look to this tasty dessert! The rolling part is probably the trickiest, but it works best when you take the band aid approach - just do it in one, quick, swift movement!

Then we decorated the roulade with glitter sprinkles and the blue stars, like so:

It's quite easy to get the sugar shapes, just place some metal cookie cutters into the poured sugar while it is still molten. Then carefully pop them out when they've hardened.

 

I think it turned out reasonably well, and with a few tweaks, it could be really perfect. Unfortunately, Sam didn't really take to my cranberry sauce, I think that they were a little bit tart for him! 

Sam: The meringue was lovely, it was a perfect mix of crunchy on the outside, and gooey and chewy on the inside. I'm not a big fan of cranberries, but the sauce tasted relatively nice. Overall, I'd give it 7/10

Sam's First Crème Brûlée

Okay, so after a bit of a hiatus due to academic commitments, we are back, with a little taste of something we cooked up last week, before the looming deadlines were upon us.
Sam first came upon this dish when we were at the Himley hotel on a weekend away, and after a brief description, he was convinced to try it. The dish that came out was so much to Sam's liking that requests ensued to recreate it at home.
And after a bit of resistance on my account, due to a mistaken belief that it was a complicated and time-consuming dish to make, I felt I ought to give it another chance, and to my pleasant surprise, it actually turned out to be neither. I say "another chance" because, admittedly, I had once tried to make this before, but the results were a curdled mess in a pot, with a patchily charred topping - it was a less than tasty experience I quickly wanted to forget. But after having been inspired by the technical challenges the Great British Bake Off crew seemed to get through, I thought it was worth another try.
So, time to jump in to the crème brûlée! (Or as Sam says, "Burnt cream!") It's such a long-standing recipe, it was actually quite hard to find a basic one, since there's an array of variations out there. After settling on this one, things went pretty smoothly. Since the first part of the recipe is simply beating some egg yolks with sugar and heating some double cream, I've skipped to the part where we put the ramekins into the bain marie.

Having said that, prior to this point, Sam had done his fair contribution by holding the electric whisk until the mixture went pale and fluffy, and I do wish I'd taken a photo of him doing so!
After cooking, came the best part - the torching!

And the results were super tasty :)

With a good crunchy caramel topping

Sam: 9/10 I love contrast between the smooth custard and the brittle caramel topping. Deliciourific! Taste-tastic! Would definitely make this again

Sam's First Pain au Chocolat

Ok, so I know what you're thinking - surely Sam hasn't gotten this far in life without trying a pain au chocolat? The man loves croissants, and surely they're almost the same thing? Well Sam may have tried them some months ago now, but I can truly say that before me, he hadn't ever had a single one. He was so taken with croissants, he never saw any need to deviate from the predictable flaky goodness of a croissant. In fact, the bold step to even try one only came along when a few months back, our local Waitrose had run out of the premade frozen croissants we used to buy for Sam's breakfast. "Are pains au chocolat okay instead?" I asked nonchalantly, having already placed a packet in our online basket. "What are those?" came the reply. Shocked, yet excited, I ordered the bag of frozen pains and after they arrived, we popped them in the oven and they rose beautifully and turned a lovely golden brown. Sam was surprised to find that he enjoyed these other French pastries.
Sam's comments: lovely! 8/10. But why are they called "pains" of chocolate. It's not painful at all. Is this similar to that other dessert I keep hearing about "death by chocolate"?

Sam's comments: Eva sure was interested in me eating these pains of chocolate. She thinks I've never seen them before, but I have. I just didn't want to touch them. They may have had a chocolatey-looking filling, but I couldn't really be sure without trying one. And frankly, when you've got something as tasty as a croissant, what is the need to deviate? Having said that I did end up liking these and do enjoy them sometimes

Sam's First Cannoli

Recently when the continental market came to Leicester on its biennial visit, I was too busy to pop down, but since Sam had a couple of days off and was in town running a few errands, he offered to pick up a few things for me while he was there. So of course, I asked for my usual favourites - ostrich burgers and cannoli. "Right, so where do I find these canneloni?" After correcting him, he seemed to find his way to the aptly named "Italian temptations" stall, and clearly gave in to the 6 for the price of 5 offer, since there were many there in the box to greet me when I got home. But unusually, this time around Sam seemed interested in trying them out. I wasn't sure whether to be happy since last year, he didn't even want to touch them, or to be disappointed that there were fewer left for me. I decided to go with the former, since he clearly seemed to be enjoying them!

Sam's comments: They were nice. They were just like an Italian Milky Way Crispy Rolls. 7/10