What I ate last weekend ~ Tartine

I met up with my friend last Saturday morning and we ate brunch at Tartine, a cafe in Tooting Broadway. The weather on Saturday morning was miserable, a combination of rain and really strong wind, so when I reached the cafe I really needed something to eat to warm myself up.

I am really indecisive when it comes to choosing what to eat, I mean, there are always so many options to choose from, where do I start?! My friend and I took a while to look over the menu and in the end were deciding between ordering a really yummy sounding vegetarian breakfast or a vegetarian burger (which came with chips and sauce). In the end we both went with the vegetarian burger (I ordered it with cheese), chips and the sauce which we kept referring to as samurai sauce (the name of the sauce honestly sounded like samurai! I think it was a spicy mayonnaise.) Everything was freshly made and the burger buns were really soft, although the burger itself was a little oily. Despite this it was an enjoyable meal and the service was great. There was relaxing music playing in the background and by the end of the meal I had recovered from getting soaked and having my hair blown everywhere earlier in the morning.

Post by Nabs.

Atmosphere- 9/10

Service- 9/10

Food- 7/10

Chocolate Sushi Rating- 8/10

Making Minny's Chocolate Pie from the movie 'The Help'

The Help is one of my all time favourite movies. I watched it again recently and it made me laugh and cry. If you haven't seen it definitely watch it! Anyway, one of my favourite things about the movie is Minny's Chocolate Pie! Honestly, everytime the pie comes on screen I drool and want to reach through the screen to take it and eat it! Near the beginning of the movie Aibleen's character says that Minny is the best cook in Mississippi and her chocolate pie is almost like a character in the movie, it is central to the plot.

Ever since I first saw the movie I've wanted to make the chocolate pie. This weekend I was in the mood to do some baking so I bought the ingredients that I needed yesterday and made the pie this morning. 

Ingredients I used:

 Pastry Sheets (which I found in Tesco), Granulated Sugar, Cocoa Powder, Unsalted Butter, Evaporated Milk, Eggs, Salt and Vanilla Essence.

I used the following two sources when making the pie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjdCleGL0pw and http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/minnys-chocolate-pie. For details on measurements of ingredients click on either of these links. I used a combination of both.

Method:

Line a tin (I only had a sandwich tin to hand so used that) with the pastry sheet. Cook for 15 minutes (Gas Mark 4).

Whisk the sugar and cocoa powder together. Add the melted butter and evaporated milk. Whisk together and add in the eggs, salt and vanilla essence. Pour the mixture into the sandwich tin and bake for 45 minutes.

How the pie looked before it went into the oven for 45 minutes.

As the pie was cooking the smell of chocolate was filling the air. I couldn't wait to try a slice!

This was my first attempt at making a pie so my pastry/pie skills aren't very good yet. I don't think the pastry cooked as well as it was supposed to but practice makes perfect. Next time I'll use a deeper tin as I don't think the tin I used was deep enough. It was the only one I had though so had to make do today.

Post written by Nabs.