Food Minia

I got to go to Bangkok for a meeting last week and went a day early so I could explore the city a bit on my own first.  Besides visiting the temples, enjoying the view and drinks at Sky Bar, shopping at Siam Paragon, and getting massages for 270 baht ($7.50!) an hour, I also took a cooking class at the Silom Thai Cooking School .  I chose a Sunday morning class because I liked the proposed menu:  tom yum soup, green papaya salad, pad thai, massaman curry, and mango sticky rice . The class was very well organized;  first we took a bus to a wet market to pick up the ingredients and then we walked to the classroom which had three different sections:  one for food prep, one for cooking, and one for eating.  Most of the ingredients that we used were already pre-measured for us, so there was only a minimum of chopping and stir frying but enough that we felt like we were actually cooking!  We also got a go at the enormous mortar and pestle to make the papaya salad and the massaman curry paste

I wonder how many of you could resist this plate of cakes? I don't think that I could. In the midddle of November, I have been asked to make cakes for a fashion show audience. I am delighted to do this as I love making cakes. I decided to look back over the cakes that I had made and photographed this summer and I fould this plate of tempting beauties. Some of the recipes for these cakes have been published earlier in the blog. The sponge drops are here: Summer in Italy and Sponge Drops The only thing that I changed for the ones on the plate, was to use apricot jam instead of blackcurrant. Couldn't find the others so the next couple of posts will be recipes for the other cakes.

Kneeding bread is a good exercise. No kneed bread is fine but a little kneeding makes better bread. IMPORTANT INFO: Using antibacterial spray on your work surfaces prior to kneeding bread will kill the yeast. It makes no difference if it's bakers yeast or sourdough. Those of you who have been following this blog over the years will know that I have been dabbling with sourdough for quite some time. I've had lots of failures as using sourdough is not as straightforward as using yeast. Now we need a drum roll as I believe that I have it sussed.  The result is a light soft bread with a crunchy crust that is all too good to eat. I just wish that I could share it with you all. I actually cooked this bread in a cast iron pan as this helps to steam the outside of the loaf and create this crust. Now, it takes time to make sourdough bread but it doesn't take much effort. A little weighing and mixing and leaving is all you have to know. It's the way that you do theses things that