Things have been a bit manic since the last post. A trip to Kuala Lumpur, busy at work and sporadic cooking has meant the blog has been a bit sparse despite time in the kitchen so hopefully with time off, over the next few days I can catch up and share some of the kitchen experiments and food experiences.

The Trip to Kuala Lumpur was #Epic, eating in some very good restaurants and tasting some stunning and delicious food was an experience not to be repeated, a reward for doing a great job at work it included a trip across town on the back of a Harley Davidson, with 39 others following with a 5 bike Police escort waving us through red traffic lights and keeping the traffic out of the way!Some free time enabled us to explore for ourselves and I put together a fews hours of time to visit numerous temples and markets which was great fun. Back street butchers provided an interesting insight into the daily life of Malaysians, along with the Fish Head Curry Restaurant and numerous hawkers selling an array of amazing tasty food at affordable prices.

One of the stand-out restaurants was Marini’s on 57, which surprisingly is on level 57 of one of the Petronas Towers in central Kuala Lumpur. It was an un-expected treat, I have not been on one of these trips before so was surprised to be visiting a high end ‘Italian’ restaurant in Malaysia!

The stand-out dish for me (and I was blown away), was Sous Vide Pink Prawns with Hollandaise Sauce and Sevruga Caviar Powder!I have never had such a beautiful soft, packed with flavour prawn in my life, it was stunning!

On the flip side of cuisine, equally delicious was breakfast, Roti Canai (flaky flatbreads), Curry Puffs, Fish Curry, Dhal and Sweet Tea, it was such a change from the usual ‘British’ breakfast that many of my colleagues went for, they really don’t know what they were missing.So, back to the U.K. and with a team meeting on the horizon I was looking for something to bake for the team, alongside the obligatory Moroccan Sausage Rolls which are are demanded, I wanted to do something a but different, and was inspired by a Toffee Apple Cake Recipe by Sophie Thompson, a Celebrity Masterchef Winner, you can find the original HERE  You start by making a batter as per the recipe, flour, eggs,  ground almonds etc. My additions were to make it a bit more festive and I added the zest of 1 Orange, 1 Lemon, a sprinkling of Mace and some Cardamon (remove the green outer and crush the seeds, about 2 – 3 Cardamons should do it).

The Toffee Sauce was ‘salted’ with Flour de Sea. You need to add, taste, add, taste until you get the balance right, its delicious when you hit that magic spot.I used two types of Apple, Pink Lady and Bramley, the 1st going in the centre and the 2nd on top. My other change to the original recipe was to add a Streusel topping on top of the Apple and Toffee Sauce top layer.  I used 25 grams Flour, 1/2 Tsp Cinnamon, 50 grams cold Butter and 45 grams roasted chopped Hazelnuts. The result was delicious and the team loved it as much as I enjoyed making it, I also provided some Clotted Cream to serve, well it was the Christmas meeting!

That’s it for 2017, hope you have enjoyed the blog as much as I have writing it. I will be adding the rest of the remainder of 2017 in the coming days.

…………………………………….Until next time L8ers…………………..