Been cursing the bloody Virus again. Was looking forward to a nice family get together for this Christmas and it all fell apart.
The new Omicron variant is raging through London and soon will be everywhere in Europe etc…it is said to be mild but it crushes ours hopes for any get together with the grandparents or even parties of more than a few people.
Everybody is trying to protect their own families.
Jules got tested positive just before Xmas. Thankfully, his girlfriend was able to travel to her parents before and my parents had already decided not to come to the house anyway. So it was just a major bother for Jules really…
As we always do as a family, we made the most of it and had a lot of fun. Manu made sure that there were presents under the tree even if we could not go shopping. And she even. found a HAZMAT suit to make sure that Jules would be able to join us for the Xmas evening. There were a few tears here and there but more laughs about it all.
Obviously, there was a lot of cooking involved as well…with my dry-cured ham slowly getting ready. It has been a month and still only 50% of the way ready. It has nice white mould growing on it, but also a bit of Blue/green mould so I cleaned them up a bit and removed the muslin to help with the drying process.
It has been raining a lot this past 2 weeks and the humidity in the garage is a bit too high.
But the taste is very nice and it smells good as well.
Made some nice tempura of Asparagus and Onions. I cooked in Avocado oil on the new induction cooker using the frying function which is excellent to keep the oil hot but not burning…a really nice purchase. Keeps the temperature of the oil around 180-200 which for the avocado oil is OK.
The tempura pastry was very nice :
1 egg yolk
125g of Tapioca Flour/Starch (from the Chinese market)
125g of cold sparkling water
1/2 teaspoon of Salt
1/2 teaspoon of Baking powder
and some Plain flour to adjust the consistency until the batter is very runny but still sticks to the vegetables.
Cook in the pan with at least a couple of centimetres of oil in pan.
