WHERE'S MY SOUFFLE, I ASKED FOR A SOUFFLE, WHERE IS IT.

Turns out yelling about souffles makes people think I'm drunk, which is pretty hilarious. Press* Food&Wine had a souffle special which I passed up for a bombe alaska, and since then I've been wishing I also had the souffle. I could always make one, but I'd probably fail miserably. A strawberry vanilla souffle does sound nice if I could pull it off, though.In other news, I finally decided to test out preparing a squid. Since my visit to Peel St where they had crispy pork and squid Vietnamese style salad (which was amazing!!!), I've been craving squid. I thought it'd be difficult, but after watching a video on how to do it, it wasn't so bad. It actually happened as the video said it would and it was quick, clean and simple! Since I have previously fried squid legs, this time it was the slow cook challenge. The oven was set to less than 100°C and the squid was cooked for 30mins with salt and olive oil in a bag. The end result was very tender squid - though it could have been a little more perfect to be totally melt in the mouth, but this was a great result regardless.

I also impulse bought another terrarium... though by impulse buy, I mean that I agonised over it for a week - the one I wanted last week wasn't there anymore, but instead there was an equally pretty and cheaper one for me!

And lastly, Apothecary 1878 is the only place in Adelaide that stocks Mr Black, so I had to go try some. It really does taste like coffee!!!! I accidentally drank it too quickly because it was so tasty and am still recovering :(  I also tried their dark chocolate marquis which was very pretty and tasty! I didn't realise how heavy it was so I was dying by the end of it - but tasty nonetheless!

SOUFFLE.

Reine's cooking adventures part 2

I love mussels, so when I found some at another seafood store, I was YES PLEASE. I didn't even know how much to get, so I started with 250g. Turns out this is about 11-12 mussels, and never enough! However when I was reading up on how to cook them, I also grabbed a baguette and butter as a side.I had found a few different liquids suggested, and ended up choosing water first, with some butter. I did make one afterwards with white wine, but funnily enough I preferred the one with water.

When I stumbled across zucchini flowers, wow, I was so filled with creative inspiration that I HAD to buy them. So expensive, but so fantastic that I couldn't resist. I had eaten stuffed flowers at two restaurants, which was not only very appealing, but also very tasty. My favourite was when they were stuffed with crab meat. MMmmmmm!

So, since I didn't want to overdo anything that would kill my budget, I decided I'd make a herb and cheese stuffing instead. So, I bought some ricotta, avocado, goat curd, chives, parsley, pepitas and sunflower seeds. I chopped and toasted the seeds before mixing them in. Cleaning the flowers was tricky at first, but then I learned how to handle them and managed to clean and stuff efficiently.

I also always need protein in my meals, so I opted for salmon as my accompaniment. It was only after I plated just the flowers and the salmon that I filled in the middle with leftover salad, to make it look complete.

It was so pretty and tasty, I declared myself amazing at cooking! And presentation.