Lemon Heaven

It's not much fun to write about days where nothing goes wrong, all a bit bland and boring or as we're told every day, "needs more seasoning" but I'm delighted to tell you that today was relatively wobble-free.

I was on lemonade and bread duty, which outstrips hoovering and washing up by a veritable mile so I spent some quality time with the juicer this morning and then having got the lemonade under my belt and into the fridge I moved onto the bread and to be honest this was the only small whoopsy of the morning. This was my first attempt at yeast bread and it went OK to begin with. I got all the ingredients ready and then popped the live yeast (manky smell, sort of stale beer-ish) into a jug and gave it everything it needed to be happy yeast - food in the form of a teaspoon of treacle and warmth and moisture via some warm water so I'd done my bit and it then proceeded to join the party and bubbled away and when the time came, I chucked it into the bowl with the flour and from there into the tin, covered it with a tea towel as my recipe told me to do, popped it into a warm spot above the oven and then promptly forgot about it. I was supposed to check on it after about 5 - 10 minutes and shove it into the oven when it had risen to just below the top of the loaf pan but when my brain did eventually ring alarm bells some 30 minutes later and I remembered my lovely loaf of bread, well it had certainly been busy in my absence - the distance between the top of the loaf tin and the actual bread looming above it was massive, it almost warranted a road sign with directions and distance to destination.

I could have just slipped it into the oven I suppose and mumbled ignorantly if questioned later but I knew what would happen, I'd be the token student who'd produced bread with a socking great muffin top - see, it's not just the students that are afflicted with these here, even the bread can't help itself.

So it was back to the drawing board - evidently I'm not the first person to have had an amnesiac moment in this regard because there was a helpful note at the bottom of the recipe telling me what to do in the event of a Mount Vesuvius impersonation - hurl it all back into the bowl, smoosh it down again, chuck a bit of water at it, back into the loaf tin and for God's sake, try not to forget it a second time - managed that and it all came out fine. Admittedly I did forget to add the salt but a quick out-the-box moment solved that - I presented a slice for tasting, ready buttered with extra salt slipped into the butter, quite a sparky moment for early in the morning I thought..................

From there it was onto Shepherd's Pie - I've only ever really made Cottage Pie before with beef but the Shepherd's variety with lamb is pretty damn good, seriously rich particularly topped with my knock-your-socks off, cholesterol-rocketing mashed potatoes but it was deemed "delicious" during the tasting session, butter works every time I'm afraid.

And the piece d'resistance was the hot lemon pudding - some of the students made the chocolate fudge variety, DELECTABLE, spongy top with a warm, runny chocolate centre, you'd want to eat the whole bowl in one sitting, and possibly then spend the afternoon in your bed feeling sick but even that would almost be worth it, soooo good. The lemon ones were fairly fab too - spongy top as well and then sort of lemon curd-ish at the bottom, and it came out like a dream, YAY!



My lemon puds - buy one, get one free



"Hola" to the afternoon for a largely Mexican-themed demo with Darina - quesadillas, tortillas, nachos, refried beans, guacamole, all sorts of salsas, what have you - now if the weather could just play along and be Mexico-like too I'd be thrilled, a jug of sangria would have gone down a treat as well.

We also tackled sorbets - blackcurrant, coconut and lime, raspberry - and crab apple jelly with all sorts of variations, elderflower, rosemary, clove, sloe, there was jelly all over the show.

Highlight of the afternoon for me were crunchy orange scones with orange cream - you've never tasted anything so good, the highlighter was out and working overtime on this one, stars and bright stripes of pink all over the page. I suppose they were just your regular scones but straight out of the oven with a crunchy top, hints of orange zest and the winning touch, orange cream spread across them - almost equal parts of icing sugar and butter, fresh orange juice and zest, I was in heaven, you'd have thought we'd not been fed for days rather than the sad reality of a very recent lunch, the time since which could be counted in minutes rather than hours.

I've a sneaky feeling that I'm going to be down for tortillas on Thursday - so much dough to roll I'll be halfway home before I'm done with it I think. I love the idea of making as much as you can yourself and it's completely true that homemade jams and bread knock the socks off the supermarket varieries but in the case of tortillas, I just couldn't really tell the difference and those are going to remain a store-bought special I think, no doubt to be confirmed once I've fought with them for the better half of Thursday morning.

Theory tomorrow - more wine and cheese and some cakes too I hear, morning tea is looking up!