Fat for the fat for the day of the morrow.

Yeah, so, I cooked and baked. I can't bring myself to just bake and fall under the "chick who bakes" pigeon hole.

Obviously, this is for tomorrow's meet up.

There is only one problem that I realised after this crap...


how the hell I get the tart there without completely fucking it up the arse.

Pissaladiere

Base:
175g bakers flour
60g cold butter
14g dried yeast
warm water
pinch of sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten

Topping:
4 onions, sliced
2 tomatoes
thyme
2 cloves of garlic
sugar
salt
pepper
oil

Anchovy fillets
Olives in oil, pit them yourself.

Start by making the base. Cut the butter in the flour till it resembles bread crumbs.
Mix the yeast with warm water and a pinch of sugar to activate it. When it starts to bubble, add the egg and whisk it in.
Mix with the flour mixture till it pulls together and set aside in a warm place till it doubles in size.

In that time, make the topping.

Ice bath. You will need this for the tomatoes. You're going to make a concasse. That is pronounced "con-ca-say." It is when you skin and seed the tomatoes. Cut an X on the base of the tomatoes and take out the core. Bring a pot of water to the boil and drop in the tomatoes for say...a minute.
Drain and place in the ice bath.

You can already see the skin pulling away from the pulp.

Naked?

While the tomatoes are sitting, slice the onions and dice the garlic.

So totally naked.

Seed the tomatoes by scraping out the insides with a spoon. Here, we see tomato vomit.

And dice the flesh. See, it's worth it. Trust me.

Cook the onions down with a generous glug of oil, the tomatoes, thyme to taste, a pinch of sugar until it is thick and there is no moisture. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Take out the dough and punch it down and roll it out on a well floured surface.

Arrange by placing the onion down, and latticing the anchovies and dotting in the olives.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200 degrees Celsius for around 20 minutes or till the base is crisp and brown. Hmmm, salty deliciousness.

This may or may not make your housemates hate you for not letting them eat it.

Stand back and gloat...and drink a beer before completing your next task.

Day 2

Of applications.

Bunkered down with the Christobel, DaVa and the Golden Ging so quiet you would swear he died in front of his computer.

There was a whole lot of feverent typing and finally...food.

The mission at the moment is making gluten free and dairy free food. Le sigh. I know...no cheese in sight.

Starting off with a French Onion soup. My crouton, as did Chrisobel's had cheese. Sadly, we could not bake it into the soup as the oven used is portable and cannot even fit a pan in.
Thank god for gluten free bread. Oh, did anyone else notice that Silly Yaks has been bought out and is now called Sacs?

And their bread, which tastes like cake is eight dollars a loaf. WTF?

5 onions caramelised and cooked in a beef broth with thyme and bay leaves. Nuttelex instead of butter. So sad. Though, I do prefer Nuttelex sometimes.


I made a broccoli cream from steaming three heads of broccoli, and throwing it in a blender with olive oil, salt, pepper, chili flakes and roasted walnuts.

Fried off some bacon for the bacon eaters and stirred it all together with pasta (and gluten free for the gluten free) and served with oven roasted tomatoes.

This broccoli cream lasted quite a few days and made it onto sandwiches, toasts and other things.