In My Kitchen: August 2021

Oh July. Sydney was in lockdown for all of July, and as a result I was separated from my dad, my friends and my string quartet. It has made me so grateful for my Newcastle friends, for the nice weather and the fact that we are still able to go to the beach in the middle of winter. 

I haven't done heaps of cooking and baking this month, but I did stick to The Apple Project, where I bake something with apple every week... 

This was a French-style sweet shortcrust with a frangipane filling and drizzled with salted caramel (I did not know I love salted caramel, but I know now!) 

An apple, caramelised onion and gruyere stromboli. Kind of like a pizza dough. I added beetroot puree to the dough and it was pink while I was forming the pastry, but it completely baked out to a neutral colour!

Bavarian apple torte from Hetty McKinnon's book Community. Most of my friends know I'm doing my apple project now, and one of them sent me the recipe. It has a cream cheese filling that sets like a custard. Delicious! 

This was my birthday cake this year. I was feeling quite sad and looking for a one bowl recipe. The crust was kind of cookie like but the inside was luscious. My birthday ended up being better than I thought - I shared the cake with my work friends and had an early mark to go to the beach. 

Other things in my kitchen...

I tried out a 50% rye recipe just to do some pretty scoring. A higher rye percentage makes the dough quite firm and easier to score, I think it worked out pretty well! 

I've been kind of obsessed with beetroot puree and here I made them into Chinese style dumplings. The colour stayed pink after cooking! 

The first baguettes of this winter. 

My friend visited me just before lockdown and brought me these little single-serve wines, from a winery on the mid north coast. I used some of it in making a mushroom risotto (the ultimate winter comfort food for me) and drank the rest with my dinner. 

Onto the Food and Music series... 

This was an apple strudel (also part of the apple project) I made for a dinner with my piano duet friend. We had a traditional German dinner with sauerbraten, braised red cabbage, dumplings, some of my sourdough and finished it off with strudel. After strudel we played Mozart's D major violin concerto and then the Glinka viola sonata (played on the violin, because my viola is in lockdown in Sydney). I haven't been playing much music these days, mostly preferring to drink tea and write... but I am getting back to it!

And the curveball for this month.. 

An amazing bouquet of flowers I received for my birthday from S. I haven't written much about it, but the long and the short of it is - I met S on a music trip to Paris in October 2019 where we played music together. He is an ex professional violinist turned mathematics professor. We made plans to meet up again in early 2020, but a curveball called Covid was thrown our way and we have been in limbo since. Our romance has been both tumultuous and extraordinary. I am not sure how many times in my professional career I have said to patients and families that we can only "take it one day at a time". I am learning the difficulties of this every day, yet somehow the sun still manages to rise and set anyway. 

Thanks for visiting my kitchen this month, and thanks to Sherry for hosting the In My Kitchen series. I really relish the opportunity to revisit my food photos!