Fiction, Food, Faith and everything in-between

Achieving Lamination! I decided to venture into the world of fussy pastry and make Almond Pastries from 'How to Bake' by the baking maestro Paul Hollywood. I call this fussy pastry because you need to make it the day before, or at least 8 hours before using it. The proper name for this pastry is Danish Pastry. Not only do you need to make the pastry in advance, you also need to laminate the pastry. (Yes that is my measuring tape) Laminated dough according to Wikipedia ..... is a culinary preparation consisting of many thin layers of dough separated by butter, produced by repeated folding and rolling. Such doughs may contain more than eighty layers'..... I don't know if my pastry contains 80 layers but the rolling, folding and chilling the pastry is really tiring.  Maestro Hollywood in his recipe recommends about four times of folding and rolling, and you need to let the pasty rest and chill in the fridge between each roll/fold. Fo...

I decided to try this recipe from Jamie Oliver. I have seen him 'make' this on the Food Network channel several times over, because they love to repeat shows on that channel.  After watching it several times I was very intrigued. The  'recipe' is here.  https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/fruit-recipes/frozen-grapes-chocolate-grappa/ I don't drink regularly.  I drink communion wine (obviously) and sometimes a bit of Ginger wine and the occasional Baileys.  I attended a wine tasting session in Australia a couple of years ago. I was there for a conference and someone thought wine tasting would be a nice group activity. Not for me, but it would have been if I drank wine. Anyway it was ok. I wasn't a party pooper but the wine was wasted on me. I normally try different mulled drinks and the occasional alcho pops during Christmas but the reason I like these is simply the sugar. I do not have a discerning palate when it comes to wine and I really don't ...