Baking Brioche

Last month I went to another class at the Essential Ingredient Cooking School. This one was a brioche class taught by Alison Thompson. Again it was fabulous! Alison was fantastic - very helpful and gave great tips - and at the end of the class I got her to sign a copy of her cookbook for me :)

I've already spent a whole day experimenting with sweet brioche and fully intend on exploring savouries soon.

Here's my experimentation in pictures...

starting out

the dough and fillings

chocolate swirl rolls

rhubarb crumble babka

the swirls inside the rhubarb crumble babka

Crochet

I think I mentioned previously that crochet was my new hobby... 

It's coming along pretty well. I've completed a scarf and a shawl for myself, two hats for baby Morgan and I'm currently part way through a blanket and another scarf for myself.

Here's the shawl. It's crocheted in a 2ply 50% silk merino blend and hand dyed. It feels amazing.

This is the scarf. It's a spiral pattern, so it's kind of a cross between a scarf and a wrap. It's crocheted in 2ply 100% merino and is so soft. 

When I first started learning to crochet, I started out making granny squares for a blanket. I got a bit sick of them, so stopped. I've gone back to them a couple of times between other projects. They just get a bit tedious - mainly because my tension was so tight when I first started, so it makes my hands sore trying to match the tension. I do really like the colours though, so I do want to finish it... one day :)

My latest project is a scarf for myself. The yarn is an 8ply alpaca silk blend and is gorgeous. A friend from work bought me a skein to say thank you for helping her out. I started out making fingerless gloves with the yarn, but I wasn't happy with the pattern and after ripping it back twice, I decided that a small scarf would be better. It's kind of evolved from there as I went and bought some more yarn and will now make a longer scarf and edge it in silver scallops.

And this last picture is for Mum.... I ordered 200g balls of machine washable wool from Bendigo Woollen Mills online shop. The first order has arrived and I'm now waiting on the second. Dad, if you're reading this - the yarn is at bargain prices, so I'm saving you money here!

A Farewell to Friends

Ali and Carter, who have featured heavily in this blog, have left us and moved back to the US. 

We knew that this day would come, but we had buried our head in the sand and hoped it was a long way off. Alas, it was sooner than expected. But they can't get rid of us that easily - we're already planning our gigantic US adventure to visit them. 

We decided that our final day with them should be as awesome as the rest of the time we'd spent with them, so Paul and I took a day off work and we all headed out to the Yarra Valley for some wine tasting.

Helen's Hill and Punt Road before lunch, then lunch at Innocent Bystander and finishing up at Madden's Rise. Three great wineries a tasty lunch and awesome company - what a fabulous way to say goodbye.

Here are some family pics to end with...

Baby Morgan

Our good friends, Ali and Carter, have a new addition to their family, Morgan Lynne Williams, who arrived on January 10th. We finally got to meet her today and catch up with the proud (and amazingly relaxed) parents. She's pretty darn cute and I was lucky enough to get some snuggles.

I got a little paparazzi on poor Morgan, so here are some of the photos...

Mum and Morgan

Dad and Morgan 

Me and Morgan

Jenson was pretty darn cute too and Paul was directing some of the poses. The kid definitely has a future in modelling!

Okay, and now back to Morgan...

2011: The year that wasn't

Around this time last year I wrote a post to summarise 2010, so I thought that a summary of 2011 would be a good way to jump back on the blogging wagon.

There's just one problem with this. It's going to be a VERY short blog. 2010 was filled with so much excitement and adventure and 2011 just hasn't quite lived up to that. I think I'll split the blog into the following subtitles and go from there: work, play, home and away...

Work

My role has changed quite significantly this year. I'm now working in a new Division, with a new boss and I have a new job title: Scientific Coordinator. I've transitioned fairly slowly between the two roles, so it doesn't really feel like a massive change, but looking back I suppose it's pretty different.

I'm working with lovely people and really enjoy what I do. I guess I feel needed, which is always nice.

Play

I've recently picked up a new hobby - crochet. No, I'm not kidding you, I've been crocheting. It's fun and relaxing and it's kinda cool to make something that I could use/wear. I've started work on a blanket, but I have a few projects lined up, so I can imagine that I'll keep switching to those as I get bored of granny squares. I've finished 10 squares so far, which is about a sixth of the way through!

I've also joined a gym recently and have been trying to get into the whole weightless, fitness, thingo. It's been good so far. I've signed up for a year, so hopefully I manage to stay motivated!

We've had a number of visitors this year... both sets of parents, my brother-in-law, my sister - all the way from London, and a number of friends. It's always nice to have visitors so that we have an excuse to get out and see more of Melbourne and head out to nice restaurants!!

I'm keeping up with my cooking and baking. I had one awesome cooking class this year - dumplings and had booked into a brioche class, but unfortunately that was cancelled, so now I have to wait for the new schedule to be released so that I can book into another class.

Home

We've finished off bits and pieces around the house this year - landscaping, double-glazing, blinds - I guess we're really starting to settle in. 

We've tried our hand at veggie gardening with mixed results. At the moment we have zucchinis and tomatoes on the go and we are actually picking and eating these, so that's been great.

Away

I've visited Adelaide a few times this year to spend time with friends and family. It's always lovely to catch up with everyone. I also had a visit to Sydney to surprise my sister, Megs, who was visiting for work. My parents and I had arranged the whole thing in secret and the surprise went down very well. It was a great family weekend!

We spent two weeks in Coffin Bay towards the end of the year with my parents and Stef, Matt, Giorgia and Martina joined us for a week. The weather was fantastic, the fishing was awesome (as always) and we saw some amazing things - at one stage we had dolphins playing at the front of the boat, less than a metre from where I was standing, camera in hand.

We've had a couple of long weekends away around outer Melbourne - Apollo Bay and Mornington Peninsula. Both were fun and I hope we'll be able to do more of those this year.

I think I'll leave it at that. That's stretching my memory far enough and is probably just about long enough to get boring without including pictures. At some stage I'd like to write in more detail about some of the things that happened towards the end of the year and post some photos, but we'll see how I go with that.

So, looking forward... I'm not sure what I have in mind for 2012. There will be big changes at the beginning as my sister moves in and starts looking for a job and place of her own in Melbourne. I guess I just hope that I keep moving forward and enjoying life. :)

Happy New Year to my no doubt very diminished reader-base.

Making Dumplings at home

After the course I made some dumplings at home. It took forever!! The folding is so hard and so is the rolling out of the wrapper. So they weren't quite as pretty as the ones we made in the class, but I'm hoping I'll have plenty of opportunities to practice in the future.

Making dumplings is messy business!!

This is my attempt at a food blog style picture of the steps involved...

And these are some chicken dumplings that Paul helped to fold using a triangle fold which is much easier!

Cooking School!

Do you remember that for my birthday last year my friends gave me a voucher for a cooking school? In March this year when the timetable was released I ummed and ahhed over which class I should take. I narrowed the field down to two courses... dumplings or brioche. In the end, time was the decider. The dumplings course was in June, whereas the brioche course wasn't until December. How could I possible wait over a year to use my birthday present!?

So, on Saturday, I learnt how to make dumplings.

I was really nervous before the class thinking that I my skills wouldn't be good enough. That I wouldn't chop things finely enough. That I might chop my finger off. That the class would be full of Toorak Mums and I wouldn't be dressed in this season's fashion. That everyone would laugh at my cute 50s style floral apron. It was just like starting school all over again. In the end only one of these nearly happened. I had my knives sharpened the day before the class and I cut myself. It would not stop bleeding and I had to get a bandaid from the first aid kit. I felt like a bit of a loser, but surprisingly no-one pointed and laughed.

So onto the cooking. Our teacher was Anthony Ross from the Langham. He gave us a demonstration of how to make the first dumpling - Har Gow Prawn Dumplings. He made it look like a breeze. We were all thinking why do I need a class to learn this?? Oh how wrong we were! When it was our turn, we split up into groups of four. We made the filling first and it was great to get that hands on feel of how to pull the ingredients together to make them sticky enough to stick together, but still solid so the prawns crunch when you bite into the dumpling.

Then we made the wrapper. Mixing the ingredients and kneading was easy. Rolling them so they form the paper thin wrapper, not so much. But it was fun trying. Then shaping the dumpling itself was super hard. Pleating them correctly is going to take a fair bit of practice, but I'm pretty sure I have enough friends who are keen to be dumpling testers.

So after we'd made a number of the first type of dumpling, we loaded them into a bamboo steamer tray and they were popped in the fridge. We then sat down to watch Anthony demonstrate the next type of dumpling, pan-fried pork dumplings. This was a different type of wrapper that used a different technique to roll them out. They didn't have to be as thin this time and they weren't as sticky. I thought this made it a little easier to make them. I was really starting to get the hang of rolling them by the time we finished up. 

At the same time as making this dumpling, we also made the filling and pastry for a wonton, but we didn't put this one together as there wasn't enough time to let the pastry rest and apparently it was the easiest so it was better to master the others.

Our wonton filling was popped in the fridge and our pork dumplings were placed on a tray while the staff cleaned up and set the tables for our tastings.

While we had a glass of wine, Anthony demonstrated how to cook each of the dumplings using the ones that we had made and then we got to try them all. They were so delicious!! I was really impressed with how they turned out and I can't wait to make them again all by myself and experiment with different fillings.

It was such an awesome day and I was so full of ideas and inspiration by the end of it, so on the way out the door I booked myself into the brioche class. 

Har Gow Prawn Dumplings

Pan-fried Pork Dumplings

Wonton Soup