I realised I have never posted any of my culinary creations and concoctions...
Last night I made a filo topped fish pie:
Poach some haddock and salmon in some milk, with half a chopped onion, pepercorns, bayleaf and season according to taste.
Remove once the fish is starting to flake, but still a little firm and put in an oven proof dish.
Reserve the milk/sauce from the pan.
Melt some butter, and add some flour, and some single cream to make a thick bechamel type of sauce. Slowly and bit by bit add the reserved poaching milk until you get the consistency that you're after. Add some grated gruyere (or emmental if you can't find gruyere), a spoon of dijon mustard and chopped up a bunch of watercress. Once the sauce is at a suitable consistency you can then pour over the fish in the dish.
Then, grab some filo (I didn't make it - too much hard work
![RedFace :o :o](/styles/default/xenforo/vbSmilies/Normal/redface.gif)
) paint with melted butter, and crumple and place ontop of the fish, repeat until it's completely covered. Then bake in the oven until golden brown!
Et voila!:
Then for pud I made some pasteis de nata - custard tarts.
Start by making puff pastry - or buy it. I bought it, but it's bloody hard work and a PITA. Worth it for taste, but if you get a good quality butter puff from a reputable store I'm sure they'll turn out just as good.
Roll the puff pastry out thinly, then cut in half, then place the 2 halves ontop of one another and roll uptightly like a Swiss roll. Then cut into discs, and then roll them out to flatten them and put into a buttered tartlette dish. When rolling and preparing the pastry use a mixture of icing sugar and flour to stop things sticking.
For the custard, put some corn flour and milk in a pan with some caster sugar, add a vanilla pod and a stick of cinnamon, and stir until it thickens. Have 6 egg yolks in a bowl ready, and pour half the mixture into the eggs whisking slowly but making sure it's all mixed in well.
Add the egg/milk mixture back into the pan, whisking constantly and slowly (on a relatively low heat, you don't want it to split or start scrambling the eggs) until it thickens. Then when ready, remove cinnamon stick and vanilla pod.
Dust with cinnamon and icing sugar et voila:
and
They went down well - put a little too much sugar into the custard, but once cooked it didn't taste too bad, actually, without wanting to sound big headed, I thought they were bloody delicious! A lot of work though, but the reward is worth it.