Just a quickie.... Coke Float and Magnificent Mushrooms.

Today I made a Coke Float with caffeine-free Diet Coke and Low-sugar Icecream.

It was a compromise, but it took me back to childhood, having floats (made with Lemonade and called "Sundaes" in our house) while watching TV (most memorably Chitty Chitty Bang Bang)

Dinner tonight I had steak, for which I made an accompaniment of Mushrooms cooked with Pancetta, Cream, & Brandy.  Nom Nom.

I have a new post poised on the brink of publication, and it's a naughty one.

5 Feb - Today's the day - I shall make my masterpiece and post as soon as it's photographed and done - about another 12-14 hours (no, it won't have to cook THAT long... I just have to sleep and make it through to lunchtime...)

Buddocks to you.

No, not Buttocks.  I'm talking about tasty hot buns.  Oh, now I'm really digging myself in deeper.

OK. Start again.

Delicious meat and cabbage filled bread rolls.  There.  That sounds better, doesn't it?  :)

OK, I'm hooked. Tell me more.

Allright.  It started when I watched the video from the Aimless Chef, and decided to try them for myself.  Boy, am I glad I did.

We'll get the recipe out of the way first.  You can find Jay's recipe here.

So, I tried them.  Last week.  They were good.

So why am I blogging about them today?  Well, the recipe Jay posted makes enough dough to make 24 rolls, so I froze half of it, along with half the filling, and decided to thaw and use it tonight, seeing as I'm having a lazy day at home.

Thawing the dough went well, it took about 5 hours just sitting on the bench, and because there is now have a cool change, didn't need refrigeration.  I just rolled it out and it was good to go.

I didn't take pics of the rolling, but with two rolls left to fill, I remembered that you might like more than just a bunch of words, so here is the first pic of my last two buns, prior to folding:

Then you fold in the diagonal corners and pinch them together to seal.

Then you fold THOSE corners into the centre and twist.

Place the twisted side down on a silpat, mark a red dot on the top for authenticity, and it's ready for baking !!

The bottom left one looks a bit like a homicide victim.

Then it's just a matter of baking them, but before I get to that, I want to tell you about a slight change I made to the filling.

I can't get hold of "Sour Cabbage" but intuition (and looking at it on the video) told me that good old shredded sauerkraut would substitute nicely (I rinsed it well, as per the directions in the recipe).  It did do admirably, as far as I can tell, however I haven't tasted sour cabbage before so cannot tell you exactly how the taste differed from the original.  I think it'd be pretty close, though.

So... on to the final product.  Here it is:

Mums oven cooks a little fast at the back, so next time I'll do them for 10 mins then turn them around.

They tasted good, and the inside filling had an unusual shape:

I might try leaving them this shape next time and baking them that way:

So that was my Buddocks experiment.  Tasty (as always) and very easy to do with the frozen dough.  Try making some and tell me how you went !!

Keep Cooking !
-Rob.

PS: I LOVE this recipe for pastry - I would use this for Cornish Pasties too - maybe I will sometime in a future post.

First Post - Starting an unknown adventure

Sooo... I watched "Julie & Julia" this evening.  I guess you know what's coming now, don't you?

I want to be a writer.

In the sprit of becoming a writer, this is the obligatory wordy introduction to an otherwise light and fluffy tome that will become my magnum opus in the long run. Not that I'm not a writer (of sorts)  already - my friends and family will know about my facebook musings, my briefly lived LiveJournalling, my twatter twits and my occasionally amusing posts on various chatboards, but I think that I could eventually publish something useful out of all this, and so I thought I'd toss my hat in the ring and see what grows, to mix a delicious metaphor cocktail first up for you.

So, the thing is, I was watching Julie & Julia, and probably like thousands of other people, I got motivated to do something with my obsession - food.  Is it unhealthy to obsess over food?  Perhaps, but I'm looking at the reasons for that, and have decided that blogging about food might actually cure the obsession - or at least channel it into a manageable pastime rather than a mindless occupation.  Making sense now?  No?  Good.  It doesn't make sense to me either, but hey - maybe there will be a movie in it one day.  Maybe.   I want someone pretty to play me if they do make it into a movie.

Er, where were we?

Yes, Seeing as I like to create, research, eat and offer various culinary items (at various levels of success & tastiness), I thought I'd put it all down somewhere (besides the table).   There is also travel - Hopefully lots of it before I'm done.  Bucketloads.

Travel is one of the main inspirations for the blog.  I love travelling around the world and trying different foods & dishes (and marvelling at how different the original versions of various dishes are from what I've been presented with in Australia - like comparing Canard à l'Orange in Paris to Fanta Duck in some godforsaken country Australian town), and will be doing more travels overseas, which will kick start this blog - but that's not where I'm going with it.  Not as the long-term idea.  No, the main concept comes from the idea of travelling with a Caravan.

I want to come up with a book that tells of my travels on the road, and the food I prepare along the way.  Part storytelling, a great part recipe book, and hopefully mostly entertaining.  Something from a layman's view, that doesn't have a qualified chef or food critic/writer presenting their thoughts on various cuisines.  Just something that shows how I like to cook.

I have had a triple bypass, that's one thing that will never be a secret, and I know that a lot of the recipes that are in here are not going to be terribly healthy, but it's all about moderation, not denying yourself things (Derren Brown did an interesting experiment in telling people not to do something, and I know how that ended...), and foremost not meant to be any sort of textbook or guidebook on what to eat.  It's just a celebration of my memories-in-the-making that I (and others, hopefully) can look back on and enjoy.

If there's anything to be learnt from this blog, either by my eventual readers (if I ever get any) or my self, I hope it is that life is a short, precious commodity.  Too short and far too ephermeral.  Live it large, laugh, and appreciate every moment you have on this wonderful planet, and all the wonderful people you meet.  And eat some butter every now and then.  It tastes yummy.

-Rob.