I am known amongst those closest to me to be a woman who loves to cook but also an extremely picky eater. It is these two things that led to this challenge.
With the help of my sister, I will cook every single one of the recipes from Allegra McEvedy's 'Around the World in 120 Recipes', aiming to do three recipes a week. Why this specific book you ask? Well, it's simple - we wanted adventurous and varying recipes and this book gets great reviews!!
Follow this blog and you will see how my tastes progress as I experiment and how we inspire our weekly menu. We're cooking each dish for a family of three adults and a toddler. Obviously some of the recipes won't necessarily be suitable for the toddler but we'll try and vary as many of them as possible so that she can enjoy the experiment too!
The whole household is looking forward to this challenge because, like many others, we have dug ourselves into a little bit of a food rut. With three working adults, all with their own favourite dishes, it becomes more and more difficult to come up with new and inventive dinners that aren't too time consuming to make.

So, challenge accepted! Lets see how this goes!

Monday, 2 June 2014

Cheese Puffs (France)

As you might be able to tell, we decided to start off quite easy!
This one in particular was never going to be a problem for me - quite frankly it sounded absolutely delicious right from the start.  Pretty easy looking recipe and not one ingredient I don't like - can't wait to try it!
The recipe calls for Gruyère cheese and, unfortunately, the store was sold out when we did our weekly shop so instead we used a different hard Austrian cheese - we figured this was close enough. 



Well, as it turns out - even though the ingredients are all delicious, the recipe itself is actually quite  complicated.  Having said that, aside from some very tough whisking in the preparation of the batter, I suppose the hardest part was figuring out when they're cooked. 

 The recipe said 15-20 minutes at 180°C and they should be done.  Soph and I, in our infinite wisdom, decided that our oven must  be amazing  because after 12 minutes they looked cooked and we took out the first tray.  Upon taste testing, we discovered that we were mistaken. So back in the oven tray 1 went for a further 5 minutes. Sadly after this time they still weren't cooked so, again, we put back in the oven! By this point, we were so convinced that they would be cooked that tray 2 was also put in the oven. The recipe was insistent that only the top shelf of the oven would properly "puff" the cheese puffs but we were getting rather impatient by this point so we put both trays in the oven  on the middle tray. 
I should mention that the recipe also states that they should be served with champagne. In our enthusiasm, we poured the champage after about 10 minutes so half an hour later - still with no cheese puffs - we were very ready for them to be cooked.  

 Finally, 30 minutes in, we lost patience and brought them out - looking very well done.
Unfortunately the result was not as delicious as we had hoped.  The dough was a little  moist for our tastes.  Although they were definitely cooked, the inside looked like a cross between an omelette and an uncooked Yorkshire pudding, and this was a little offputting.  After much deliberation, we decided that the moisture was probably a result of the type of cheese we had to use and that the recipe deserved to be attempted once more when we can buy Gruyère. 

 Having said that, Soph and I are perhaps a little harsh since my niece didn't seem to mind them and my brother-in-law tried them cold and he thought they were delicious. 
So the result of day two is that, once we acquire some Gruyère, we'll give it another go.
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