Day Seven Food from around the World: England again

As Sunday quickly came around again we decided we just had to make another English roast. We wanted to do lamb but it was too expensive and settled for beef instead. It was nice but as we had never cooked it before we went of internet cooking times which turned out to be pretty crap - we wanted medium rare and ended up with medium. It was a shame but now we know how to cook it for next time!

We also did sauteed potatoes with our roast and they actually turned out really well, success!

Our lovely meal with red wine and salad with my own homemade vinaigrette.

The roast looking lovely and browned

For dessert we made a self saucing chocolate pudding, we had run out of vanilla so we made cinnamon custard which was actually delicious!

Day Six Food from around the World: India

Indian food unfortunately never looks pretty...but it does taste good! We made a chicken kourma and it was delicious! I had to add extra yogurt to combat the spice and our rice did a wonderful impression of sushi rice (so very sticky) but overall it was excellent!

We even attempted our own naan bread!

I also took a few more photos of buildings from nearby towns, unfortunately they were from a moving car so didn't turn out the best.

Day Five food from around the World: Greece

After more relaxing days and trying the local pub (which was rather nice, warm and cosy) we continued with our food adventures.

Using a Jamie Oliver recipe we attempted a dish called souvlaki with pork.

We fried flatbreads and made our own tzatziki (so good!) and then assembled it with feta and roasted capsicum and other salads.

In my opinion it was a great success, lovely and fresh.

For dessert we challenged ourselves and attempted Baklava, which surprisingly worked! Although its rather nice, its extremely sweet and never been my favorite dessert. It was fun to make though!

Day Four Food from around the World: Japan

Feeling more confident with our recent successes, we decided to try our hand at home-made sushi. I've always wanted to try, but been much too daunted by it. Turns out the trick is simply to have the correct type of rice and cook it in the right way, and have a sushi-rolling bamboo mat (all of a pound at the supermarket and well worth it). We started off making teriyaki chicken which was surprisingly simple and rather nice. 

We bought special sushi rice which once cooked had to sit for half an hour with the lid on to slowly steam - this made it super sticky! Then came the rolling part, which was difficult but not actually as complicated as I expected! The bamboo mat was the important part as it made rolling so much easier. Interesting the seaweed easily stuck to itself.

Once rolled the ends were a little messy as rice was smooshing out of it, but we simply cut each end off and it looked perfect!

Ta-da! Looks just like shop-bought ones! We had chicken, carrot, cucumber and capsicum ones as well as salmon ones (which I did not eat!).

Newcastle Under Lyme

The local town wasn't much to see, but it was very cute in the center with its open square and pedestrian-only roads. First we passed this sweet shop which was filled with jars and jars of sweets-none of which I knew the names of. It definitely reminded me of something out of a book!

Next was the central square with the church and a little market. 

And lastly some beautiful architecture on the houses making this look like a very quaint little town. 

Day Three Food from around the World: England

On Sunday we decided to go with a traditional English roast, and made roast potatoes and kumera, a roast pork, and Yorkshire puddings and gravy. 

I got to try crackling and decided I loved it! We also decided to change up the recipe last minute. I was thinking of how to keep the roast from drying out, then I thought about apples and how well apples go with pork, so logically my next thought was 'what if we dump a bottle of cider into the pork roast dish and cook it in cider?' and it worked beautifully! Not to mention the resulting gravy tasted delicious! 

Joy made Yorkshire puddings as well, which was also a first for me. The process is so interesting! You pop oil into muffin tins and then stick it in the oven until the oil is smoking, then dump the dough in and chuck it back in the oven, and then out pop these hollow monsters that you then fill with gravy! All very interesting. 

It was a day of firsts for me, Joy also made Rice pudding which I tried for the first time. I really couldn't get my head around eating custardy rice, the texture was so bizarre but weirdly enough the flavor was actually nice!

Day Two: Food from around the world: Mexico

Ours second dinner challenge we decided on Mexico, which was fun as some of the flavors (such as the dessert) were similar from Spain where I had just come from. We decided to go all out, with main, dessert and a traditional drink - we made our own mojitos! They took a bit of tweaking (lots more lime and mint than the recipe called for) but ended up deliciously cold and refreshing, we also left out the sugar that the recipe asked for, so they were nice and tart.

We decided to go for soft tacos, and had a plethora of lovely fresh ingredients. We cooked our chicken in spice for a kick, then layered on tomato, capsicum, cucumber and salad. Joy had made her own guacamole (which I'm sure was very nice but I wouldn't touch with a barge pole) and also a delicious salsa which was lovely and lemony and had a bit of a hit to it also so my mouth was burning! However we also had feta and sour cream to combat the spice, and it made a delicious combination.

Soft taco all made up and ready to go!

Our dessert decision was rather daring in my opinion, we decided to do homemade churros. These are something that are very popular in Spain, so I had them a few times which was an advantage as I knew what they were meant to be like. A savory batter which is then piped in small strips into boiling oil and deep fried (Like donuts I suppose) until brown and crispy, then chucked on a tray of cinnamon and sugar until coated, and then dipped into homemade chocolate sauce comprising of dark chocolate, honey and cream. The terrifying part is piping them not too long, then cutting them over the oil but not too high above otherwise the boiling oil would splash. I was sure it would be a disaster, but with two people (I was the scissor wielder) it worked quite well! Of course cleaning the dough out of the piping back afterwards was another story...

                                     

The end result, we were a little too paranoid of them overcooking and took them out a little too early, so they weren't as crispy on the outside as we would of liked, but the color and the taste was there, and overall I thought we did a pretty good job for our first time! The chocolate sauce was pretty awesome too. 

Day One: Food from around the world challenge: France

Due to our love of baking and cooking, and the generally crappy weather of England (how can the temperature in England be lower now in Summer than now in New Zealand where it's winter!?) We decided a lazy week of food and watching My Kitchen Rules on TV (all those Australian accents!) was in order. We came up with the idea that doing food from a different country each night could be really fun and challenging, definitely lots of cuisines we have never done before! So I am afraid the next few posts will involve mainly food, and maybe a few outings! 

Our first challenge was making Crepes and Galettes Bretonnes (hoping I've spelled that correctly!) Basically, savory pancakes, which we filled with cheese and ham which turned out rather nicely, we also experimented with a mushroom and feta filling which tasted awesome.

We then had the crepes with lemon and sugar, and my favourite - homemade berry couli and whipped cream. Yum. We also had it with cider of course, but we only had a little bottle to share so finished the evening with a nice glass of red wine. Lovely!

Hello England!

On Thursday early in the morning I caught the metro (actually very easy, a ten minute walk from my house, then hop on line 3 or 5 and it takes you straight to the airport!) although there were long annoying lines of people I eventually made it on board and left Spain behind. It felt so surreal and strange to be leaving! Before I knew it the green of England was spread out below me. It was quite cool to compare the aridity of Spain from above to England.

Picked up from the airport, we made the long drive back to Stoke on Trent to relax. It was a long car drive, but it was awesome to be picked up! Joy and her boyfriend had offered to have me stay and come get me from the airport etc which was so much less stressful than finding a bus with my massive backpack on. Upon arriving we did a quick supermarket trip (everyone spoke English! It was crazy! I could actually understand passerby's conversations!) and we made a delicious pizza for dinner. Their kitchen is lovely, and since Joy and I both love baking and cooking, I think we will be doing a lot of it this week!

Relaxing with a glass of wine and  enjoying each others company after the year of not seeing each other!

Last Day

All too soon it was my last day in Valencia. Alix and I decided to see some sights and have lunch together so as to have a nice and productive last day. 

After having been recommended the Botanical Gardens by my brother and his girlfriend, we decided to stop there to have a look around. It was a beautiful day and walking was hard going in the blistering heat.

 On our way we passed some strange and interesting graffiti down an alley, I couldn't resist taking some photos.

Getting to the gardens took us through parts of Valencia I had never been before, which I very much enjoyed. One of my favourite parts was passing through this huge gate - the second one remaining from the old wall (you can see the first one in one of my earlier posts) however the gate itself wasn't the only thing cool about it. See the holes in the wall? Those are from cannon fire by Napoleon's army during Spain's War of Independence!

The actual gardens themselves were really nice, they cost 2.50 each which I thought was a bit overpriced (that's two cervezas right there!) but it was very pretty. The entrance especially was rather cool

 

It was very green and very quiet, no cars and very few people, just birdsong.

And lots of awesome cacti! 

There was also an area of fruit and vegetables, everything from rice to peanuts (with Alex's temporary disbelief that peanuts actually grew in the ground, hehe who knew!?) and also these pretty grape vines!

However my personal favourite was as we were wandering around a very old Spanish man came up to us and started excitedly leading us around to different herbs and pointing out what they were (all in Spanish of course) his favourite appeared to be some poppy plants which he repeatedly told us made opium and gesticulated a smoking pipe which he seemed to find hilarious. Good times! 

 Mercado Central was another stop I wanted to make. This huge central market is considered one of the oldest in Europe still running, although the building itself was fairly new - a modernist building from 1914. 

The huge market sold every food type you can think of, fresh fruit, vegetables, cheeses, meats, olives, fish and so on.

It was a very hot day so we also bought from the market some delicious iced and freshly made rasberry juice. Delicious. On our wanderings we also came across a garden we hadn't seen before so we decided to explore. Called the Garden of Hesperides, this set me off into a rant about Herakles although I assumed the name wasn't relevant. I was pleasantly surprised to see the statues within, which included Aphrodite (pictured below) and Herakles himself (although I couldn't get a good picture unfortunately) detailing his eleventh labour - to steal the golden apples of immortality from the Garden of Hesperides. I thought it was rather awesome, even if they did call him Hercules on the statue. I was rather happy I hadn't forgotten my Greek myths after all this time!  

 

View from the Garden of Hesperides 

We stopped for some much needed lunch, Patatas Bravas and beer, perfect on such a hot day.

Because it was my last night before my plane left early in the morning, Alix and I decided to go out one last night, even if I did have to get up at 5:45AM to catch my flight. It was a lovely night out, and even though I only ended up having an hour and a half sleep, it was worth it! I can't wait to visit Alix and Valencia again one day soon.