Desserts – food by sole

9th April 20249th April 2024

Hot cross buns

This is a revised version of the original recipe from Nigella.

When we made these last year, we faithfully followed the recipe to the letter, and while the result was very nice, at heart we knew that it could have been better.

So this year I decided to repeat the recipe and not go for better but for PERFECT. I printed the recipe so I wouldn’t miss a beat while cooking, but afterwards I did so many things in slightly different ways and added so many annotations that it almost is a different recipe (while still being a recipe for hot cross buns), hence I am posting it here.

Two hot cross buns, halved, toasted and with butter on top, melted in parts and showing the dates and raisins — Two hot cross buns, ready to eat

4th March 20244th March 2024

Day trip to Paris, 2nd March 2024

Bread basket at Bouillon Julien - seven thick crust slices tightly packed onto a basket

Long story short: we had a chance to spend last Saturday in Paris, and so we did!

We were there for less than 12 hours. Yes, it sounds preposterous, but we embraced the absurdness of it with efficiency and organisation: we identified a few things we could do, but left ample margin to do so, booked a restaurant for lunch, and then executed with precision.

It really helps to live close to St. Pancras, so we could walk to the station and be there less than an hour after waking up. So, we were on time, and so was our train.

St Pancras concourse in the morning, and Tracey Emin's neon in the background. Our Eurostar train is to the left, waiting for us. A person wearing a high visibility vest waits by the travelator in the distance. — St Pancras concourse in the morning, Tracey Emin’s neon “I want my time with you” and our Eurostar train waiting for us

31st October 202131st October 2021

The quest for the perfect fogassa d’Ontinyent

Four bowls with ingredients for a fogassa, before mixing

As I said in my Fogassa d’Ontinyent post, I have been trying to locate the “proper” recipe for this for a few years already.

I think I started searching for a recipe in 2018, as November approached and I desperately wanted to eat a fogassa but could not visit Spain for multiple reasons. And I thought: Well, it is “only” a sweet bun, so it can’t be that hard to find a recipe for it, right?

Well, turns out that it can!

26th September 202126th September 2021

An unexpected custodianship

I’ve been made “custodian” of my late grandmother’s recipe notebook.

Since it’s in such a frail condition (it’s probably about 80 years old) I transcribed it, to test the recipes without handling the actual booklet.

It’s been quite an interesting, enlightening, and at times truly bemusing experience.

16th May 202116th May 2021

[VERY BELATED POST] Pseudo-isolation, week 17: everything is weird (and quiet)

Note: this post was written almost a year ago, in July 2020! It had been sitting on my drafts for some reason, and it’s a pity because it has some cool stuff we did last year! So out it goes!

Feel free to imagine it is preceded by a whiff of naphtalene or something 😂

This week we went to two (!) restaurants and a pub and it was all weird and quiet. We also ran out of milk but made porridge anyway. And Devvers made Spanish sweets following a Valencian recipe again!

We still can’t walk without the persistent feeling that everyone is going to give us the virus, and many things are still closed, although at least the supermarkets around us are relatively well stocked nowadays.