Philips Fresh Cooks Party

When Philips announced their forthcoming Fresh Cooks Party, I applied at once, not holding much hope that I would be selected, as I knew they would have had thousands of applicants to choose from.
Imagine my surpise, when I received an email, saying that I was one of the chosen hosts and that I should start sending email invitations to my friends. I needed a minimum of nine people coming to my future party. Invitiations and replies started flying here and there. At last, I had enough people confirming they were going to attend my party. Yippee!
Two days before the party two huge boxes arrived from Philips.

One of them contained a Jamie Oliver HomeCooker. If you haven't heard about it yet, let me tell you, it is a versatile kitchen gadget which purpose is to make cooking easier for busy cooks.
It is like having an extra pair of hands working in the kitchen. Don't we all want that extra pair of hands helping us with the cooking? I know I do.
This unique gadget helps you to cook meals from scratch. How many times have I left something on the cooker and forgot about it, being busy with my sons, only alerted to the kitchen disaster by the smell of the burning meal. Well, the HomeCooker will make sure it won't happen. It comes with a stirrer that makes it much easier to prepare dishes like risotto or stews.

Another useful gadget that came with the HomeCooker was a Cutting Tower which chops, cuts, slices, shreds and grates.

I am going to do a separate extended report on how these two gadgets work and what I cooked using them. I have already tried several meals from the book of recipes which comes with the HomeCooker.

But today I want to tell you about my Philips Fresh Cooks party. On Saturday morning my guests started arriving at 10.30am. This was the easiest time slot to have everyone around, as the weekends are hectic in many families with kids. Most of my guests are parents from the school which our older son attends. They are all a lovely chatty crowd.

Philips have generously provided the Philips Party hosts with £50 Waitrose vouchers to buy food for the party. The day before I baked the cakes, and on Saturday morning my husband helped me to look after the boys, while I was assembling the platters.
I have baked two cakes: an Advocaat cake and a honey cake with walnuts and mascarpone.
We had endive boats with pinenuts and blue cheese as well as bresaola rocket rolls, cheese with fresh figs, quail eggs with anchovies etc. And plenty of tea and coffee.

I wish the gadgets arrived a few days earlier for me to try them in advance, to be better acquianted with the ways they work. I did try the Cutting Tower on Thursday, but Friday was too hectic with the cleaning and cooking for the party, and I hardly had any time to read the instructions or watch the demo online. I had a quick look and thought the easiest way to showcase how the HomeCooker works would be to make some chocolate fondue.
 
As I have been running to and from the kitchen, making cups of tea and coffee, I set the HomeCooker's timer and temperature, put all the ingredients inside and left it. What I forgot was that I needed to heat the cream first before adding the chocolate. As it happened, the cream separated a bit, not sure if that was because I put all the ingredients at once, or the temperature for the recipe was too high (personally I wouldn't have chosen 250C for the chocolate fondue).

As I later tested the HomeCooker, I had more questions to Jamie Oliver who produced the booklet of recipes, mostly about the choice of temperature and timing, but I will write about it in detail in my next post about the HomeCooker.
 

As you can see from the photos, Jamie Oliver was very much present at the party. One of the mandatory tasks of the party was to take lots of photos of my guests wearing the promotional aprons (which they later took home together with the little notebooks), we needed Jamie's poster in the background and the gadget on display as well. I didn't add the balloons to the room, because they were too tempting for the little hands and wouldn't have lasted long.

All in all, I believe we had a great time, it was lovely to have my friends around and have a chat.
I am grateful to Philips for giving us a good excuse to get together. Some of my guests were leaving by 1pm, some were only arriving, so our party stretched well into the afternoon.

Will I do it again? You bet! I enjoyed the experience thoroughly, and the new gadgets are a welcome addition to my kitchen.

Around the World in 80 Dishes (review)

In my childhood I treasured the novels by Jules Verne. One of the stories I particularly enjoyed was his 1873 classic Around the World in 80 Days (I just had to google the image of the Australian cartoon that my brother and I watched many moons ago).

If you loved the novel, you will relish the concept of the book "Around the World in 80 Dishes".
This book reads like a novel too, it is a mix of mouthwatering recipes and photos of food intermixed with personal comments and stories. I love the vintage feel of the photos. There are retro stamps scattered among the pages, black and white cabinet photos and old posters.

This book is not a universal world cuisine encyclopedia, it covers the countries that feature in the novel and follows the route taken by Phileas Fogg and his valet Passepartout: from London to Europe, Egypt, Middle East, India, Asia, America and back in Great Britain.

The recipes range from well known Welsh rarebit and Caesar salad to exotic Sticky Orange, Kashmiri Chilli and Vodka cake.

Yet again I must mention the exceptionally artistic photos by David Loftus. Jamie Oliver wrote an introduction to the book: "It is also a real celebration of David's temperament, personality and commitment - overly nearly 25 years - to shooting food in a really honest, quick, no-nonsense way".

David Loftus is well known as one of the most talented photographers in the world. He was recently voted the 65th most influential photographer of all time.

The photo styling is inspired: dark wooden surfaces, torn vintage papers and tags, rusty knives, scattered spices, old linen - and the colours are vibrant and electrifying. A bunch of grapes, so full of pep, it almost falls in your hand out of the page. Freshly baked breadsticks with a scattering of salt flakes and thyme, you can almost taste the salt and herbs. A visual feast.

This book has a universal appeal, whether you are an amateur or a kitchen goddess, there are recipes for all levels of cooking skills.

I have tried several recipes from the book and was going to blog about them, when my laptop crashed. Sadly all the photos were gone too.

Yesterday morning my old friend was coming to see me. I had just over an hour before my friend arrived for a morning cup of tea. I didn't have time to bake anything complicated, and thankfully, the book offered just the right recipe. I loved the sound of the Date and Coffee Loaf, and it was very easy to make. Here is the recipe (reproduced with the kind permission of Atlantic Books).

DATE AND COFFEE LOAF (recipe by Debbie Loftus)

.
serves 8-10
250g pitted dates, chopped
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
250ml strong Arabica coffee
2 tbsp softened butter
2 tbsp white sugar
1 free-range egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract 150g plain flour
1 tsp salt (optional imo, or add just a pinch)
150g pecan nuts, chopped Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4.

Grease a 20x10cm loaf tin and line the bottom with baking parchment.
Put the chopped dates into a bowl and sprinkle with the bicarbonate of soda. Bring the coffeee to the boil in a small pan and pour over the dates, then set the bowl aside.
In another bowl, vigorously mix the butter, sugar and egg until well blended -either by hand or with a hand-held electric whisk. Using a metal spoon, blend in the vanilla extract. Add the flour and salt and gently blend, then finally fold in the chopped pecan nuts and the date and coffeee mixture. Pour into the prepared loaf tin.
Place in the centre of the oven and bake for appr. 1 hour, or until the top of the loaf springs back when lightly pressed. When the cake is ready, let it stand for a few minutes before emoving from the tin, peeling off the baking parchment and leaving to cool on a wire rack.
Try serving a slice with a weak Yemeni coffee, sweetened with a little sugar and preserved ginger.

My notes: the cake is lovely, but not exactly what I expected. It is almost savoury in taste. That's why I suggested adding just a pinch of salt rather than 1 tsp. I could definitely taste the salt in the cake, and though it didn't bother me, and my friend and son enjoyed it, I think my husband would probably find it not sweet enough. So, if you have a sweet tooth, you might want to add more sugar, or serve it warm with custard.
I baked it in a round springform rather than in a loaf tin, and used walnuts instead of pecans.
It was very easy to bake and it doesn't require too many ingredients, so this recipe is perfect for a quick baking session when you're expecting visitors but don't have a chance to spend the whole day in the kitchen.

Sea salt and caramel chocolate cake

What is it about licking a bowl clean? It does not matter if you are 3, 13 or 43 years old, it is such a pleasure to lick the sticky cakey goodness from your finger.
The recipe for this lovely cake comes from a Jamie Oliver's Monster Bake Sale booklet which was produced for the Comic Relief.

You will need
225g butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing
225 g caster sugar
3 tbsp cocoa powder, plus extra for dusting
4 large eggs
220 g self-raising flour, sifted
1tsp baking powder
200g caramel sauce
1 tsp sea salt
200 ml double cream
1 vanilla pod, halved lengthways and seeds scraped out
300 ml double cream

For the peanut brittle
450 g caster sugar
200 g unsalted peanut
A knob of butter, for greasing

Now looking at the photo of my cake you might ask, where is the peanut brittle?
And the answer will be - on the floor. Yes, I did manage to drop the tray of still burning caramel on the floor, splashing my leg in the process, and now have a few burns to prove it. Don't think I will be making peanut brittle any time soon. The cake is decorated with less dangerous substances.


What you have to do?
Preheat your oven to 180C/gas 4 and line a 20cm spring form cake tin. In a clean bowl beat rhe butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the cocoa, eggs, flour and baking powder and mix well.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake in the hot oven for 40 to 45 minutes. Check on it after 40 minutes, and insert a skewer into the centre of the cake, if it comes clean, it is done. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then carefully turn out on to a wire rack to cool completely.
Meanwhile, make the brittle. Put the sugar and 200 ml water into a pan on a medium heat for about 10 minutes until the sugar dissolved. Turn the heat up and after 10 to 15 minutes the sugar will begin to caramelize. Add your peanuts. Don't touch or taste the caramel, as it can burn badly, and do not be tempted to stir the mixture, just gently swirl the pan every now and then. When it turns a beautiful caramel colour, pour it on to a greased non-stick tray and use a palette knife to push it out to about 1/2 cm thick. Allow to cool for 15 minutes, then bash it up as you like.
My note: the photo in the booklet shows a very modest amount of brittle sprinkled on top of the cake. If you use the amount of sugar and peanuts specified, it will be a big lot of brittle, way too much to decorate the cake. Or clean from the floor tiles for that matter. Lol
Once the cake is cool, run a long knife around the middle, scoring and turning as you go, until the two lines join up. Carefully turn and cut into your cake, going deeper each time until you end up with two round halves.
Or do like I do, after scoring the cake in the mid-section, take a thick thread and tie it around the scored line, then carefully pull the ends together, then the thread will cut the cake into two neat halves. Jamie Oliver, eat your heart out.
To make your filling, mix the caramel with the sea salt, then spread over the cut side of the bottom half of your cake. Whisk the cream with vanilla seeds until it forms soft peaks, then spoon on top of the salted caramel. Carefully place the top half of the cake on top then dust with cocoa powder and the crushed peanut brittle.

I am a bit confused here, as to why there are two amounts of double cream. One is mixed with vanilla, what about the other part, does it go in the caramel sauce? I left it untouched.
I decorated my cake with the melted Lindt sea salt chocolate to go with the theme of the sea salty pleasure. Then added a few coffee beans in chocolate and a sprinkle of Lindt white chocolate.

As my good friend Anne celebrated her 85th anniversary on Wednesday, this cake is baked for her visit.
Home baked blog is running a competition to bake a cake to celebrate its author's 30th birthday. This cake will be my entry.