Childrens birthday party

I have been asked to organise a cooking birthday party for a 9 year old girl.

I must admit to being a little nervous, it is years since I have done any teaching and I really want to make it fun for her.

My idea is to do a little menu with the recipes for each child, with the front cover having the date of the party and who it is for.

Next what to cook….well, I had some rather elegant long twisted cheese straws in a restaurant the other day and they are really easy but effective,  so that is idea no: 1

Next are chinese spring rolls, again not difficult but boy are they delicious and the children will be very impressed with their ability to cook chinese food!

There is a request for pudding, I think jam tarts have been mentioned but as I am sitting here I am thinking about profitteroles with lashings of chocolate, I would think that was every childs dream.

I will let you know at the weekend what I have chosen to do!

Julie and Julia

Julie and Julia the movie, if you have not yet seen this, go and rent it now!

If I hadn’t been on a plane at the time I would have written pages and pages on my Blog….I suppose that I have saved everyone from my constant drivel.

Anyway, Julia Childs is me….what can I say, I taught myself to cook.  Not something that I usually advertise, but I was modelling in London and I came home at the weekend feeling as if I wasn’t achieving anything.  I would walk into the kitchen and start to cook.  It took about a year before I persuaded myself to go to the well known ‘Prue Leiths Cookery School’ .  One year later I had set up my own catering company and was cooking in london for some wonderful and interesting people….Nicky Haslam being one of them. (Nicky if you read this I hope you don’t mind me mentioning it, it was so long ago!!)

Now, as you know I have ‘Ella’s Kitchen Company’ .   I have always fantasised about writing a book and I know that one day I will.   I suppose that I am using my Blog as a forum for ideas and to see where they take me on a daily basis, although sometimes my thoughts are so disparate they seem like a spiders web rather than a sedate walk through time.

Anyway, back to Julia, I was inspired by the idea of wading one’s way through an entire Cookery book,  one recipe a day.  I really don’t have time for that at the moment, but the way she blogged about the experience was just fantastic.  I sometimes wonder as I write, if anyone actually reads my blog and in the film Julie has the same thoughts, that if nothing else has given me the encouragement to keep writing.  Funny where inspiration comes from isn’t it!

 

Bathing in Wine

Yes, I have actually had this incredible experience.  I felt like Cleopatra, except I was bathing in Malbec not milk!

It was in Argentina at the Cavas Wine Lodge in Medoza.  We arrived in the early afternoon and were met on the steps of this wonderful lodge, by a charming lady holding 2 huge glasses of deep, velvety Malbec wine.   It got better than that, we had a yummy albeit light lunch and tasted another wine, white this time and made with the Torrontes grape.  Having never tasted this wine before, I am a convert.  It is light, fruity and suited our lunchtime mood perfectly.  A quick ‘cortado’ (expresso with a dash of milk) and a very little chocolate and I was whisked off for my hour and a half in the spa.

The whole experience was magical, a girl with incredibly soft hands gave me a brilliant massage, I was then exfoliated with grape seeds within an inch of my life and then after much showering I was presented with this wine bath….a little freaky to start with but I think bathing in wine is the way to go!!

I left with fabulously soft skin, slightly blue feet and palms of my hands, but who cares I had a great story to tell the boys at dinner that night!

Police Checking exchange student families

As you may know, I have been teaching children to cook at my children’s  school.

I love doing it and I think the children do too.

Great so far, however,  suddenly I have been given masses of forms to fill in and I am to be police checked.

I have been at the same school for 7 years and the whole idea does not make sense.  It has been in the papers recently about the parents who,  out of the kindness of their hearts take children to matches, swimming etc and are now not to be allowed to do so unless they have been police checked.

These are the same parents who take children other than their own on play dates and do school runs.  …..are the government completely mad?  This  is just more interference by the state that does more harm than good. Is the Government trying to kill any kind of social concience or desire to help our children?

I know there is danger out there, but I sincerely doubt it comes from the parents who offer their unpaid time and help to organise extra curriclar activities.

This brings me to my Twitter comment about Exchange students…has there ever been a case of a child going to stay with another family in a foreign country who has had a terrible experience apart from the obvious of feeling homesick or hating the food?  I doubt it…Police checking of these families is idiotic, time consuming and is leading me to believe that the next step in the Government plan is to make us all be police checked prior to giving birth…I seriously wonder whether the good souls who make these rules actually live a normal family life?

Faithful customers

I just got this message from a lovely customer who purchased a cabinet a while ago and was waiting for the lids:

Dear Katerina,
Thank you for the bottle delivery,they are gorgeous!The cabinet is of great use and has a lot of admirers…
Regards,
A

Wow, people are just so nice, I am really lucky that they are my customers!

New products

Am designing a new coat hook. No hearts in this one and painted stone colour, very chic for the hallway.
Will be online beginning of November, just in time for your Winter coats!

Bottles have arrived

At last, after 9 months and several factories, my spice bottles have arrived.

I was down in the warehouse on Tuesday with the little darlings.  Like my sisters said, they should be gold plated the amount of time and energy they have taken!

One thing did slightly surprise me however and that was the lack of packaging.

200 bottles per layer, no inter-packaging and even more surprisingly hardly any breakages.  However I am personally going through 5,500 bottles, because I want to know that every one of them passes my own Quality Control!

New Recipe for Apples

We have got tons of apples here.  Everyone of ours and our neighbours trees are heaving with them, so a few new recipes are due.

As you may know, I teach cookery at my children’s school every Thursday.  Last week we did a new take on Lemon meringue pie…..Apple Meringue pie!

I can see you thinking….’No, It couldn’t be as good’ but it really is and as you know, children are the first to tell you they don’t like something.

Anyway, back to the recipe.  I am not going to write out the recipe for pastry and meringue, however as always I have a few tips.

Pastry - Half fat to flour with a bit of water to bind it together

Baking Blind – put the flour in the flan dish, cover with greaseproof paper and pour ceramic beads (or I use rice) onto the paper.  Put in oven and cook. The point of baking blind with a weight on the pastry is so that the base does not bubble while cooking.

Making meringue mix. A good guide is 1 egg white to 1 TBSP caster Sugar and make sure you really do whisk well before you add any sugar and then between each TBSP of sugar you add.

So now for the Recipe.

Prepare a Pie Crust.

Peel, core and cut up fresh apples.  Put a little water in the base of a pan and cook the apples, stirring occasionally.  Cool

Make the meringue mixture.

Assemble the Pie, finishing with the Meringue and put in the oven to bake for a few minutes.  It will go brown very quickly.

Now eat!  You can make the pie in advance,  but brown the top just before you eat it.

This recipe took my 8-12 year olds 1 hour to make from scratch and eat!

Being a man

This is great, it has absolutely never occured to me that anyone would consider me to be a man.  Yet, I had the most charming lady calling me the other day and she was rather shocked to be speaking to the owner of the Company  -  a woman!

I thought I had made it quite clear through my website and my general chit chat that I am feminine, but perhaps I should not take my gender for granted.  From now on I will have a couple of VERY GIRLIE blogs, so that noone can miscontrue them!

Spice Bottles in a box, new design

I have designed a new holder for my spice bottles.  Until now, I have restricted their placement because they needed to sit on the counter, however with this new design, you will be able to hang them on the wall or the inside of a pantry door.

The bottles will come as a set of 4 in a long, narrow, wooden painted box.  I thought I would do the first batch in Stone but would relish any comments as to the colours you might like.

Photos will be on soon.