It has, once again, been an awfully long week. We've spent the weekend working, fussing, cleaning and doing wedding plans - yes, wedding plans - and we're trying to make the basic decisions that let everything just fall into place. Hopeful. So, while the world is rushing full-speed around us, we have to take a few moments out and have a cup of tea - and a biscuit.

I baked some of Rachel Allen's 'Mocha Kisses', but my heart-shaped cookie cutter is decidedly bigger, so I'm renaming them 'Mocha Smooches'.






















Aren't they lovely, large biscuits?

















Here's an up-close picture for you. I love the way the dough cracked around the edges; little ridges of crystallised sugar. I think this is a reaction to all the sugar used to keep the dough down on the table and off of the rolling pin: I've never worked with such sticky dough before! You have to dust your working surface with icing sugar to avoid the sticking, and, because this dough is so ridiculously clingy, you end up using about a cup of icing sugar just to stop it from bonding with the rolling pin. Hm.

















But they're rather nice when they're iced, aren't they? I iced them with a chocolate-mocha butter icing. That's a new plate for my Pretty Plate Collection, from IKEA.

Here's Rachel's recipe from the BBC website:

Our landlord had arranged to come and meet us at 10am this morning so that he could drop off our spare house keys and our post box key. By 11am, we were getting anxious. By 11.30am, we were on the phone and he reassured us that he was 'nearby'. 

So, I've been reading. In anticipation of our cross-continental book club where we'll be reading Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of The Hedgehog, I picked up Barbery's The Gourmet (her first novel) from The Last Bookstore in Oxford for £2. It's a slim little volume at only 122 pages, but it's packed with delicious prose and decadent smatterings of gourmet narrative.

It's beautifully written - or at least, I'd imagine it is. I've read the version above which is translated by Alison Anderson, and I must admit that I only stopped to consider that it was a translation when I nonchalantly read how the main character stuffed his mouth 'like a cherub'.

The book is a memoir. The main character is an elderly food critic - a Frenchman, like all good food critics should be - and it casually collects his last thoughts and memories as he tries to recall the first, most perfect taste he experienced before he became a world-famous gourmet. It's not only his thoughts which are included, but those of the people around him - geographically, emotionally - and the objects, animals, people and relationships which exist only in relation to him. His cat admit he will die when Pierre dies, 'because I've always known we'd have to die together'. The cat, his wife, his narrative, the book - it all dies with him.

Barbery's prose is perfectly suited to Pierre the Gourmet. Only a foodie could describe the simplicity of eating a tomato with lusciousness like this:

"...since the moment my teeth tore into the the flesh to splatter my tongue with the rich, warm and bountiful juice, whose essential generosity is masked by the chill of a refrigerator, or the affront of vinegar, or the false nobility of oil? Sugar, water, fruit, pulp, liquid or solid? The raw tomato, devoured in the garden when freshly picked, is a horn of abundance of simple sensations, a radiating rush in one's mouth that brings with it every pleasure. The resistance of the skin - slightly taught, just enough; the luscious yield of the tissues, their seed-filled liqueur oozing to the corners of one's lips, and that one wipes away without any fear of staining one's fingers; this plump little globe unleashing a flood of nature inside us: a tomato, an adventure." - 45

It's thick and sensuous. It might only be a few pages, but it's taken me three weeks to digest. I read it in short bits on the train to and from work but luckily yesterday our train was delayed (luckily?) and I managed to finish it to the rather impotent end. I enjoyed it immensely; Pierre is a selfish, hedonistic and gastronomically intense creature, but wholly believable and decadent. I liked him. I didn't like his Venus statue. I liked the vagrant who lives outside his home, ignored for the last ten years.

I loved his piece on bread. Here's my favourite bit:

"Where the crust meets the soft bread, on the other hand, our inner gaze encounters a mill; the dust from the wheat whirls around the millstone, the air is infested with a volatile powder; and the picture changes once again, because your palate has just taken possession of the honeycombed foam, now freed from its yoke, and the labour of the jaw can begin. It is indeed bread, and yet you can eat it like cake; but chewing bread, unlike pastry, or even sweet breakfast rolls, leads to a surprising result, to a ... sticky result. As you chew and chew upon the soft interior, a sticky mass is formed, which no air can penetrate: the bread adheres - yes, like glue. If you have never dared to take a mass of soft dough between your teeth and tongue and palate and cheeks, you have never thrilled to the feeling of jubilant ardour that viscosity can convey. It is no longer bread, nor dough, nor cake that we are masticating; it is something like our own self, what our own secret tissues must taste like, as we knead them with our expert mouths, saliva and yeast mingling in ambiguous fraternity." - 67

I like food books, gourmet books, books about food, recipe books, decadent books, delicious books - and this book is all of those. The book is Pierre's life in a short narrative, a book about food - - but more importantly about words. Words as primary, words as substantial, words as nourishment - and words as existence.

I baked.

Again.















It's very difficult to bake for someone who doesn't enjoy sweet things. Especially when that someone shares your living space and the kitchen. Especially considering that I seem to 'stress-bake' and then expect that everyone around me gobbles the delicious treats. So. I whipped up a batch of G's favourite baked goods: banana muffins. They're healthy and yummy, and these little muffin cases mean that they're neatly bite-sized.

And then I decided to tackle the oh-so difficult macaroon recipe I've been eyeing for months. It's not quite Nigella, but it'll do.

I'll let you in on a little secret. The recipe requires finely-ground almond meal, and I didn't have any - so I ground some up myself.






















It took an awfully long time, and extra man power (G was obliged to help after the banana muffins treats!) but we got it to go (mostly) through a sieve. But then - here's the secret - disaster struck! I managed to mess it up rather badly and the batter simply flopped onto the baking tray. I don't want to talk about it. Let's just say that perfectly-whipped egg whites don't stay perfectly whipped for long enough at all.

Yesterday after work I popped down to Marks & Spenser and picked up some ready-ground almond meal so I could tackle these beasts again. And guess what?






















They came out beautifully.


















Not the most flattering picture, but they're oh-so delicious! Sandwiched with decadent dark chocolate ganache, these macaroons are soft and airy on top, and stickily chewy around the fine edges. The chocolate is the perfect addition to the macaroon sandwich. After all is said and done, I'm rather pleased with myself.