Bagel Making

For my birthday Holly got me a bagel making class at Flour Will Fly. We did Introduction to Bagel-Making today at 4pm.

There was 3 other people - 2 girls that came together and a German lady that came on her own. Someone bought her it as a gift. 

There was 5 of us in the class and was ran by Paola.

We got a welcome drink which you could choose - white/red wine, beer, prosecco, bucks fizz, San Pellegrino orange/lemon, orange/apple juice or coffee/tea.

Paola did an introduction what was happening in the class then we got to start. We had all the ingredients already weighed out for us at our station.

High protein bread flour, high protein wholemeal flour, milk, yeast, olive oil and salt.

We mixed all the ingredients and mixed it with boiling hot water then left it to prove.

Paola prepared a dough earlier this morning for us to make blueberry bagels. We weighed the dough, shaped them and boiled them.

Holly's blueberry bagels

I ended up with 4 blueberry well only 3 had blueberries in them as the last one was just plain dough left over from the both of us as we weighed them out to about 130g.

Once they were boiled we put an egg wash on it and could put sesame seeds, poppy seeds or pumpkin seeds on them.

I left the 3 blueberry ones plain - the actual plain bagel had sesame, pumpkin and poppy seeds on it.

As these went into the oven to be baked we had a break where we got some snacks and another drink

Salami, olives, sundried tomatoes, mozzarella and some bread with olive oil

My baked blueberry bagels and plain every topping bagel. There wasn't much blueberries in the them but they were whole fresh blueberries. They tasted so good fresh out of the oven really chewy!

We got some spreads to have our bagels with - onion chutney, Nutella, pistachio cream, butter and smoked cheese.

The pistachio cream was SO good - I ate too much I was starting to feel sick. I ate most of our spread then the girls didn't eat theirs so gave my their pot and I nearly ate all of theirs too. 

Once finished eating it was time to make our own bagels that had been proving. They didn't prove as long as I expected.

We had to weigh, shape, boil, egg wash and choose our topping.

Holly's looked perfectly round and smooth

I did a just sesame. Just pumpkin. Everything and just poppy seed one. Mine weren't as neat and smooth as Holly's. A lot more artisan and rustic

Then they went in to bake

Holly's bagels

My bagels

They were so good! I ate 2 and had so much pistachio cream. They're so much better than shop bought as they were so fresh out the oven - so soft and chewy. Don't think I'm going to be able to have shop bought bagels now. They're just not going to be the same! 

We took them home and there's just seeds all over the kitchen when I brought them home as they just don't stick but the paper bag they were in smelt SO good.

Such a good class. It says on the booking it takes 3 hours but we were done by like 6pm. Think because there was only 5 of us it was a lot quicker. Would recommend and it wasn't actually that hard or bad to make. It also wasn't as messy as I thought it was going to be. She's sent us the recipe for us to make them at home and I might maybe one day brave it. I've never bothered making bread because I just don't have the patience to wait for the proving and then the boiling, it's a lot of work. But the satisfaction you get from making something from scratch yourself just can't be bought.

You can also learn to make pasta, pizza and cannoli. The bagel one is the newest one. Would definitely like to try making pasta as again not something I would make at home and probably wouldn't as I don't have a pasta machine and wouldn't buy one.

Thanks again Holly. It was super fun and really enjoyed it!

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Gaucho

 

Last night I went to Gaucho for Dave's retirement meal. He retired at the start of the month and we had a little pub gathering for it then last night he took his favourite group out for dinner - me, Rosh, Julie, Danielle and Kate.

Table was booked for 5:30pm so  we went to the pub before to have a drink then walked down. It was quiet when we got there as it was still early.

It's nice in there as it's a grade II listed building which used to be a hotel then the bank of Liverpool. I've wanted to try it as I've heard good things about it. The steak is meant to be really good but a steakhouse isn't my go to and the place isn't really my vibe either.

Before ordering the waiter came over with the different cuts of steak you could get and the recommendations of how you should each one cooked to help you decide what to get which was good as I had no idea. When we have steak at home we don't go for particular cuts.

Seared Diver Scallops 

Nduja butter, aguachile verde, lemon crumb - £22.50

The scallops were full of coriander so ended up eating one and gave the other two to Dave

Lomo Fillet 200g - £38.50

I got the fillet steak - medium rare with Béarnaise sauce which was an extra £3.50. The steak comes with chimichurri sauce, chips, mashed potato or salad. 

The steak was good, I enjoyed it and I got it with mash which was nice and smooth.

The chimichurri sauce was more like a herby oil that was full of coriander so the Béarnaise sauce was the right decision.

Sautéed Broccoli 

Confit garlic, roasted almonds, lemon zest - £6.50

Shared the broccoli with Rosh but it was very lemony as they put too much on it.

As we were celebrating Dave's retirement they said he could choose a dessert or a cocktail.

Braeburn Apple Crumble

With vanilla ice cream - made for sharing - £10

Dave chose the dessert. The crumble should have been with custard as it was a bit dry with ice cream.

It got busier as the night went on and there was a DJ starting as we left so we got there at the right time. There was full of early 20s as they have this deal on a Friday night with a sharing menu for £65pp. That would have been alright for us as it is pricey and Dave paid for it all!

After we went to The Three Graces which used to be Jurgens facing the actual three graces. It changed when Jurgen Klopp left Liverpool. It's now ran by one of Julie's mates. It was dead in there was just us. Julie, Rosh, Danielle and Dave got on the karaoke and it started to get a bit busier but no as busy as you would expect for a Friday night.

Danielle and Kate left and the 4 of us stayed out. Julie's husband Paul met us and we went to the slaughter house for 1 drink. Music and singer in there was better more my kind of music, then we ended the night in Be At One as Abbey Road and Scruffy Murphy's were both dead which was surprisingly considering it was pay day for most people.

Had a really good night - thanks Dave for dinner as it wasn't cheap!

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Montserrat Monastery

 On Sunday we booked to go to Montserrat. We'd booked tickets the morning before on Get Your Guide which we used last year for our trip to the Temple of Poseidon. It cost £49.47 for the coach there and back, tour guide, cog-wheel, black Madonna and 4 tasting liquors.

We left the hotel at 7:30am to go to the bus station which was a 10 minute walk away. 

We left at 8am for a 50 minute drive to Montserrat. At the start of the drive our guide Gloria gave us some information about the day, a bit about Barcelona then left us to it. When we go to Montserrat we got the cog-wheel train up the mountain which took 15 minutes.

Once we were up the mountain Gloria told us about Montserrat and the monastery, the formation of the mountain and all details about the place. 

The mountains are cool and look a bit like Mount Rushmore in America but they're carved, where as this has been formed like this.

This is sculpted by the same architect that did the passion façade in the Sagrada Família.

Gloria our tour guide left us once we queued for the black Madonna. All the reviews say the queue takes ages but think it was only about 15 minutes. Don't remember having to queue for ages. But you walk down the side of the chapel and see all these along the way

The Black Madonna and child - virgin of Montserrat. 

Legend has it they tried to move it but they couldn't so had to build the monastery around it. You can touch the orb but the rest of the statue is covered in glass protecting it. People take pilgrims to see it but as I'm not religious I didn't feel anything when I seen it. Found it quite creepy actually.

Had one of these in the Sagrada Família.

The chapel is so dark compared to the Sagrada Família which is so bright

The contrast of the two above photos taken on Holly's iPhone compared to my Samsung...

After seeing the black Madonna we had some free time before we had to go back to the coach

We asked this solo Japanese woman to take our photo who had a selfie stick and was talking so many selfies. I passed my phone to her landscape but then took all our photos in portrait. She had her own phone in the selfie stick landscape...

There's a funicular up to the top of the mountain or you can hike up but that takes a good hour and we didn't have the time for that so we got the funicular which cost €14 which turned out to be a waste of money because as soon as we got up there we had to get the next one down as we just didn't have enough time. We got up there took a few photos then had to wait for the next funicular to take us back down. The views were great and you could go on a hike as well.

When we got back down as part of our ticket there was a screening we could go to so we went that had the history of Montserrat but the audio guide they gave us didn't match to what was showing on the screen so we ended up walking out as it was crap. Then went to the shop where you could taste 4 local liquors or have a bag of cookies. Holly did the tasting and I got the cookies - they were biscotti cookies which I'm not a fan of as I find them really dry.

There was also a local market on the road back to the coach. Which had people selling local produce.

There was a lot of cheese and each stall was giving out samples

There was this cottage cheese that you have with honey that looked disgusting and was €5 but Holly said she had to try it cos it was a local thing...

It was disgusting and ended up in the bin so that was a waste of money.

We were the last to go back to the coach as we had a bit of a photoshoot here. The reviews of the guides all said you didn't get enough free time which you didn't as we didn't have time to look at the top when we got the funicular. I would have liked to have walked around the top of the mountain. You don't get the cog-wheel down the coach just drives down. Good job we did get the first early morning slot as there was so much traffic going to where we left on the way back. All coaches and cars queuing to go to the car park.

If we booked earlier we could have booked the cable car option rather than the cog-wheel which i would have loved but we left it too late as we couldn't decide which to book as we were looking at this other website that did it that was slightly different. The coach back to Barcelona which took 50 minutes.

It was a good trip and interesting, you just didn't get enough time to actually explore the place.

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