The repercussions of the AFTER PARTY

World Cliff Diving Championship Finals, Dubai 2016

We had front row seats for this from our balcony.  What a spectacle Dubai can put on.  They were setting up the lighting and screens for a couple of weeks.  The actual 'cliff' was Pier 7, a 7 floor round restaurant building we look out to in the Marina.  They constructed two platforms from Pier 7.  One at 20m and one at 28metres.  

That's high.  Very high.  They hit the water at 85kms an hour.  They have some serious cajones.  Women and men compete.  Far higher than the 10metre olympic platform diving.

The evening was beautiful.  The place packed.  We enjoyed a gorgeous dinner looking out over this spectacle and felt pretty lucky to be living here.

Entree of smoked salmon mousse ravioli and tomato salad

Main of smoked salmon and angel hair pasta with caviar (pasta of course made my moi).

Pork fillet with sage, quail reduction sauce, onion puree roasted and fresh apple, braised, pressed and seared pancetta

Not the prettiest of dishes I've done but I'm making a note so that I don't forget this.  It was really rather sensational.  

The onion puree was sweated down onion slightly caramelised and simply pureed with a little whole milk.  The chewy roasted apple with the crisp fresh apple was sublime with the pork as was the gorgeous sticky quail stock reduction.   Quail bones make a beautiful subtle sweet stock that goes well as a sauce base for just about any protein.   The pancetta is my way on a different take on pork belly.  Very very easy as long as you can get a nice big square of dry cured pancetta or bacon (I bring it back from France).  Braised, pressed and cut then seared.  Unctuous and delicious with the back note of smoke/salt from the cure.  

THE AFTER PARTY

They got more and more disheveled however as the night went on......

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVE

Dave you are 10!  

Dad bought you for me for when I was in hospital and now 10 years on you remain my wee companion.  The family has grown.  After Dave along came Arthur, Jack, Charles, Bernard, Jamal the camel and big ted.  Of course there's Francine and Francois keeping tabs on things in France.  But little Dave is my special buddy.  Me and him have been through stuff.  

Happy birthday little friend!!

Hitting the bottle!

Sourdough bread

My sourdough starter is now over 3 years old.  It's still going strong.  I plan to take a little bit to France next time and see how it goes with the lovely tap water and the triple O flour I buy there.  I think it'll behave differently and I'm intrigued.  But for now it's behaving very well in Dubai.  It's very satisfying making bread by using one's own starter and no yeast.  It sort of feels like I've made every part of it including the raising agent.  The crust is always chewy crispy.  The crumb is always bouncy.   The taste has that hint of sour.  All signs of bloody good bread and difficult to buy loaves like this in Dubai (without spending a fortune).  

I didn't know until I started researching over 3 years ago how common sourdough is in so many breads and pastries.  For example most croissants in Europe (the good ones) are made using a sourdough instead of yeast.  Bread is almost always sourdough when it's good quality stuff.  Oh how I love bread.  

Chocolate tarts with raspberry, passionfruit and pistachio

These tarts are a product of left over pastry and chocolate filling from a larger tart I made.

I didn't have quite enough chocolate filling left over to completely fill these two smaller cases so I made a raspberry and passionfruit jelly (using crushed freeze dried raspberry and passionfruit powder) finished with whole freeze dried raspberries and pistachios.  

A chocolate raspberry lovers delight.  A hint of coffee in the chocolate pastry added a delightful note. I love the taste of sharp fruit with chocolate.  Passionfruit, raspberry, blackberry, plum, cherry.  They are very good friends with dark chocolate.  

Trout with cauli again

 So yeap, I did a repeat version of my trout from a few nights back.  With cauliflower (caramelised, pickled and pureed) and beurre noisette with sage.  A few little bits of basil.

Dishes that have been really yum rarely have that wow factor a second time.  But this was still as delicious.  Different but as good no doubt about it.  I don't use a recipe so it will be different every time.  A bit more of this, a little less of that.  Dunno but different.  I liked this version better than the last and I bloody loved the last.  Yum.  It's just a delicious dinner and Katya I'll cook it for you if you are eating fish when you come.  I think you'll like it. xx

Filleting fish....this time trout but for me applies to all fish

I cooked trout a few nights ago and really was annoyed I didn't take a photo of the beautiful fish so this time I did.....

I have no idea why but by god I love cutting into things and making lovely neat portions be it fish, chicken, quail, pigeon, rabbit, lamb, duck, you name it I love cutting it up from it's mainly natural (mainly as in gutted) state.  

So on with the trout.  You can see, it's so fresh.  Sparkling lovely flesh, beautiful little eyes and the gills were of course red as anything.  Smelt like nothing.  As fresh fish should.

I like to get myself sorted.  I'm a rather organised individual and as long as everything is in it's place I'm happy.  The same goes with filleting fish.  If I have a lovely clean bench top.  Glad wrap to put on the bench top.  My beautiful filleting knife Andy bought me some years back and my fish tweezers.  Paper towels to make the fish stick while I fillet it and more to wipe the bones when I pin bone with plates on hand to pop my lovely fillets on I'm a happy girl.  I could doddle away with this sort of stuff for hours.  Nuts I know.  

I'm always so happy eating something I've filleted myself.  The guys in the shop do OK on the odd occasion I ask for it to be done for me (maybe once every 2 years) but never as well.  They leave flesh on the bones and just don't do the lovely fish the justice I do.  I have the time to care more.  I don't come home on a Tuesday night having to cook for a family of 5.  Hell no!  Bugger that!  I'm not delusional.  I don't gut and fillet fish all day for my job.  I do it as a pleasure.  It's quick for me now but I'm realistic.  It's not for everyone nor should it be but I do love it.

Eid Mubarak, Happy Barkid!

Eid Al-Adha is celebrated across the world this week.  Here in Dubai the public service workers get the week off and we have celebrations and fireworks every night.  Today is the special celebration day with families and friends meeting for the early morning prayers, sacrificing an animal for festivities tonight and enjoying time with their loved ones.

Tourists from neighbouring countries flood in and there is a lovely feeling of festivities in the (still extremely warm) air.  I love seeing the kids dressed up in their finest new clothes.  They wear gorgeous traditional dress and look adorable.  It's a very peaceful celebration, a far cry from the drunken parties that mark festivities in the west.

Our family is also having a little celebration.  Unfortunately Francine and Francois are in France but the Dubai boys celebrated regardless.  Eid Mubarak.

Our family celebrating Eid Al-Adha

River trout with cauliflower

I have never filleted a trout before.  It was very sparklingly fresh and a gorgeous creature to look at.  I've only eaten fresh water trout once before from memory, many years ago in France.

They are tricky things to fillet.  This weighed about 1.1kgs and I'm very comfortable filleting fish but trout was different.  Such teeny weeny bones everywhere.  But by being patient and methodical I did a good job and left nothing on the skeleton which always pleases me.  There were no bones in our fillets either which I was rather chuffed about.

I did an entree of trout with pickled beetroot and a lemon yoghurt,  horseradish dressing.  Classic for a reason.  Delicious. (no photo, forgot!).

Main was crispy skinned trout fillets served with cauliflower puree, caramelised cauliflower (little florets of cauli sprinkled with some sugar and placed under a medium grill until the sugar melts), lightly pickled cauliflower florets and a beurre noisette with sage.  Yum.  Yum yum scrum.  The sweet caramelised cauliflower with the little pickled pieces along with the beautiful creamy puree and burnt butter lemon sage sauce worked so extraordinarily well with this lovely fish.

It's a quick cooking fish.  Very delicate.  Easy to cook, skin side down, hot pan but needs absolutely the tiniest amount of time.  Ours was perfect, translucent soft sweet flesh with lovely crispy skin but I can see it could be overcooked very easily.  It's far less forgiving than, say salmon.

Seasoned to within an inch of it's life so it tasted absolutely bang on, any more salt too much, any less and it wouldn't have had the impact.  Finishing beurre noisette with lemon juice is essential.  It allows the lovely nutty butter flavours to be fully present and clean.  I wasn't sure sage and trout would be friends but indeed they are.  This was a beautiful meal.

BIRTHDAY DINNER

Bloody hell, 48 already.  Where the heck did that time go?  Anyway for dins: 

Entree of smoked duck carpaccio with a beetroot, celeriac and fennel salad, a drizzle of truffle oil and lemon.  Simple and light.

Main of little duck fillets (the wee fillet attached to a duck breast that is sold separately in good shops here, ) and little rabbit fillets (the little piece from the loin again sold separately here when you can find them) wrapped in Iberico Belloa my favourite ham, served simply with celeriac puree and broad beans, with a sauce.  

I made joy bars for dessert and they were just divine!  Was fun and my first birthday in my little French house.  What a tosser I sound like.  Thank god nobody reads this blog.  

Fiddling around with our garden after going to the garden shop.....

Yay a cool day for a change so we bought stuff for our garden.  Was fun.  They are all 'hardy' .  Any plant we have must have that word attached.  Our little house is coming together.  It really is.  It's incredible to look back on what we've done in 8 months of ownership.