I deeply wish to improve my cooking. I want to properly cook stuff rather than just throwing stuff together, maybe a thread will inspire me, who knows?

Anyway, last week my mum gave me some blackberries and cooking apples from her garden. Today, in my free magazine from Sainsburys there was some bumpf about free delivery, but on the back of it was a recipe for blackberry clafoutis. So I'm trying it!

No flan dish to cook it in, so I've split it between 2 small casserole dishes instead, gonna go poke them in 15 minutes Hopefully it's gonna be nice! I shall eat one now and have the other for my breakfast if they are :D

I hope this thread is going to have pictures of things burning!

ilu jelly. <3

P.S. What is blackberry clafoutis! I could google it but maybe explaining it to me will help your cooking points go up too? :)

I've heard of the word.. "clafoutis" that is, but I'm also intrigued to find out what it actually is.

Clafoutis are a Greek thing I think, it's basically fruit baked in batter. Juru first told me about it, she made a cherry one and wasn't hugely impressed with it

Pictures, lol. My food never looks pretty, these certainly don't look like any pics that I've seen of clafoutis Though maybe mine might have if I'd dredged it in icing sugar, and caught it at that right moment between it being puffed up too much, and collapsing xD. Turned out ok though, probably could have done with a couple more minutes, or I just didn't quite use enough flour, I don't think it turned out as firm as it should have been. Stupid quanities! 40g of flour, 30g of sugar...I do not have digital scales >.>

Because it's a batter/custardy thing it deflated once it was out of the oven, but I think I'll make this again, it's a nice easy way to use up any soft fruit. Bet it would be nice in a biscuit/cheesecake base

Ah, now the picture is familiar! Yay picture <-> name linkage going on in my brain now.

I need to try this out now! I usually run out of ideas with fruit like that so this is definitely a good way~ 8D

Yeah, it's not large quantities of anything, either. Biggest amount in the recipe I used was 2 eggs and 200ml of milk. I was surprised at it being made from milk to be honest, I was expecting it to be cream.

But then again, this might be a traditional dish, and those tend to not use expensive ingredients.

blackberry clafoutis?! I've made the peach and blueberry version. So good. Unburnt and so good. ;)

I had the peach and blueberry one too, but didn't know that was the proper name. My mom just called it. "Eh I think I might have made a peach and blueberry cobbler, maybe? At least I didn't make a brick"

Hee, Long :)

Sounds tasty, though! The berries here pale in comparison to what I'm used to so I've been being a snob and not getting any.

I ate the other clafoutis last night, too, greedy girl! xD With a big dollop of Greek yoghurt on top. I think mine might even have looked the way it should have if I'd had a shallow dish to cook it in. It was certainly the right texture, having firmed up nicely as it cooled.

Oh my, you mean I have a valid excuse for buying kitchenware

What grows well in the desert apart from citrus and avocado then, Belleh?

Melons, mango, erm.. We've been getting all sorts of plums lately.

just call your foods 'cajun', jelly!
hummy loves crispie foods

Haha, I don't burn stuff really, I'm just a very slapdash cook. I haven't got any "signature dishes" and all that. I'm just lazy

i think my best dish is lasagna
i also make a mexican lasagna

Lasagne is one of the things I'm working on perfecting I enjoy putting various things into it, though a huge favourite of mine is spinach and mushroom

i lean toward the meats side
my Godmother puts veggies in hers

I made some pretty dinner :D I bought this frozen puff pastry on a whim. Can't make pastry to save my life, and I've never bought it before. But this is all-butter, and it was half price, so why not?

So I cut a strip of it off, sliced up some German salami, yellow pepper and baby plum tomatoes, and topped with some grated mozzarella and baked it for 10 minutes, nomming that with a salad of some baby spinach, black olives, avocado and some spouting beans, peas and lentils. "Dressed" it by squirting some lime juice on it, a drizzle of oil and some balsamic vinegar.

And I found some new batteries for my camera :D



I shall finish eating this now =3

---------- Post added 09-14-2013 at 10:17 PM ----------

Hmm, because I only had a light dinner, I'm hungry again now. My mum gave me some cooking apples, I'm baking one of those

I filled the hole from the core with ground almonds, because I haven't got anything else suitable >< some frozen cherries and raspberries round the edge, and a bunch of dark brown sugar. 20-30 minutes and if the apple hasn't exploded, we'll see how this turns out

Will probably need a ton more sweetening, but if I put a big blob of Greek yoghurt on top, and drizzle in it honey, should be nice =3

That looks gooood.

I like your pretty placemat thinger in the first pic, too. :3

My nice vintage tray cloth =3 I have a few that were in a collection of lovely old linen, in an equally suitcase, that I brought home from work. Actually the plate and dish in that pic are also vintage stuff that I brought home from work xD We had 14 of those plates come in, 8 that size, and 6 larger dinner plates. I so wanted 6 of the smaller dinner plates, but there was only 2 that weren't chipped, so 2 was all I had.

I think I'm going to lookout for some more decent frozen pastry now. When I've looked at it before, it's always been nasty stuff made from oil, this was the first "proper" stuff that I've seen.

I didn't take a pic of the apple once it was cooked, it did explode Very messy looking, but tasted good -pats tummy-

I dunno... some of my best meals have been made by throwing things together...

...and some of my worst... but shhh

Some of my tastiest stuff is the same.

I guess what I'm really wanting is a little catalogue of dishes that I know what goes in them xD But because I tend to just throw things together, when something turns out really well, I can't remember what I put in it

I plan to do that through making a cook book one day :)

But as you say... I gotta actually measure them to do that...

MEASURE STUFF!!! PFFT!

Maybe I should just write it like "Just throw half the can or so into the dish and stir well"...

Originally Posted by jellysundae

MEASURE STUFF!!! PFFT!

thats what she said