Purdy Burda Coat

So I have been very quiet on the sewing front. Partly because I haven't sewed anything really in ages, also because I am trying not to build up a huge stash of fabrics, part made projects and patterns that I cut out and couldn't find any fabric to fit the bill.

The last thing that I did was precisely that. I decided to make a blouse from one of the Burda World of Fashion Magazines. I did lots of prep work, made pattern adjustments checked them with a muslin which is something that I hadn't done before, but I am very glad that I did. Then when I went to cut out the fabric I figured that the stripes on the fabric that I had weren't really right, seeing as the stripes went width ways and not length ways. The fabric was just too narrow to accommodate cutting out the pattern pieces rotated by 90degrees. So the fabric went back to the stash.

I'm sure it will get use soon enough. Just not in a blousey incarnation. Anyway, here it is, it's got quite a nice sheen to it and a fair bit of body.

I was looking through my stash, seeing what else I had that called out to be made into something. I found 3.5m of deep purple fabric. It's got a bit of stretch to it, and I can remember buying it with a jacket and skirt in mind. But I can't say that I fancy making either now.

The January 2007 Burda dropped through my door on Monday and I have spied a coat pattern which will do nicely for the spring. It's item 101, and it's got a two dot rating, so it should be well within my capabilities. For some reason Blogger didn't want me to upload a photo of the actual Coat, so here is a moderately bad photo of a line drawing!

I have the pattern mostly cut out the pattern, and I am about two thirds of the way through amendments. I am tall above the waist and somewhat larger than the standard B cup that patterns are drafted for.

The patterns in the section for slightly larger women just don't appeal, so I spent some time this evening scaling up the regular size patterns. Perhaps I should take a closer look a the patterns on offer and think less about the often bad choices of fabrics that they use. Well it's my opinion and you are very welcome to it.
I'm a bit sorry about the not very good picture, I have no scanner and no motivation to get one, I just don't have the room in my little house!

I did initially plan to also make the shift dress which is also featured in this month's Burda, but I am about 1m short for making both projects. So I will have to save that other 1.5m for another outing. I know that it's plenty enough for a skirt, but I can't see anything else that I would want to make with it. I will make this up next, probably in a fabric that will work with the jacket that I am working on now.




That is all for tonight. I have done a fair ammount of things, and now I must sleep.

My Green Curry

So, Totty made himself a very nice looking green curry, I thought that I would do the same.

I used:

A little spray oil for frying

Quarter pint of stock

About 3 tablespoons green curry

1 medium onion

3 cloves garlic

3 small green chillies

1 aubergine

1 courgette

1 can of coconut milk

Now because the curry paste was already made, and the vegetables concerned don't take a lot of time to cook. I made this in about 20 minutes.

First I gently fried off the onion, then when is was a little tender, I added the garlic and fried away until that also was soft. Now spray oil doesn't really add a lot of moisture to the pan, so you could either omit this and fry in the stock, or you could use the oil initially and them add stock tablespoon at a time to keep everything from sticking.

When the onion and garlic are a little soft, add in the green curry paste, stir so that covers everything then add other vegetables, and stir over a gentle heat about half a minute, they will absorb all the good flavours at the bottom of the pan. Then add the rest of the stock. I do it this way around because I worry about the coconut milk splitting. Also before you add the coconut milk, be sure to keep the heat under the pan low, there are lot of fragile aromatics in the curry paste, you don't want to destroy them.

Next add in the whole can of coconut milk. Keep stirring at this point, the coconut milk should get to everything in the pan.

You should now have a nice smelling green liquid barely coating the vegetables. Stir will, reduce the heat and leave well enough alone for a few minutes, be sure to put a lid on the pan. In this time the vegetables will absorb flavour.

When you come back to your pan, you should find, that the vegetables have softened, and the whole thing looks fantastic. If the sauce looks a little to thin for your liking, cook for a couple of minutes with the pan lid off. You don't need to add anything to make the sauce thicker, everything that you need is in the pan already.

I had this with some brown rice and naan bread. The curry was indeed very nice, I would in future reduce the amount of chillies and put an a fragrant herb in at the end of cooking something like basil or mint. Also, I thought that this needed something green and a little crunchy, so in the last few minutes of cooking, I would, in future add some fine green beans or some mange tout.

Green Turkey Curry

So last night Totty decided that he would make himself some Green Curry for dinner. He took some of the Curry Paste out of the freezer and away he went.

1 meduim yellow onion
300g Raw turkey Breast
2 medium carrots
1/2 can Coconut milk (about 1 1/4 cups)
1/2 pint stock (from cube)
1/3 cup green Curry paste (see recipe from 7/1/07)

All of the really complicated work was done with the curry paste, so this is a nice and easy dinner, and with rice this would serve two polite people.

Chop the onion roughly. Think chunky here. Fry that off with a little sunflower oil, don't let it get colour, you just need to start the cooking off. Throw in the peeled and chopped carrots, cook for a few minutes.

Put in the stock. Now Totty used half a pint, and later on in the cooking he said that everything was a little watery, so I would guess to use about half, and adjust for taste.

Add the Turkey and the Green Curry Paste at this point. The reason that I say to add now and not to fry it with the onion is this; the turkey that I bought was VERY lean, no bones no skin and I didn't want Totty to have dry turkey. I went out and bought some fresh turkey, you could certainly use leftovers, or a different meat for that matter.

Perhaps it would have been fine fried a little, I don't know. It's been such a long time since I have eaten meat, I've kind of lost an idea of when some things are good.

Add the Coconut milk, turn the heat down and let everything simmer for a while. Totty had a bit of a taste and said that everything was a bit mild for his taste, so he added a couple of small chilies finely chopped. By the time the rice was done, the curry was. So simmer time was about 25 minutes. Just enough time to play a little Runescape.

Verdict from Totty "Bang on". So this Curry paste is worth making.
I'm planning on making myself a vegetarian version this evening, and I am really looking forward to it.

One thing that I really liked about this was that it didn't stick to my stick to everything pans. HUZZAH!

**Bread Recipe Update**

I have made a bit of a tweak to the bread recipe that I have been using. The quantities previously have been a little unreliable. It's surprising how small tweeks can make such a big difference, and that's why accuracy in measuring is so important.

Brown Bread Machine Bread

1 1/2 cups water
2 tbsp + 2 tsp sugar
2 1/4 tsp salt
2 cups white bread flour
2 1/2 cups brown bread flour
1/3 cup rye or oats
1/4 cup + 2 tsp oil (I use plain olive oil sunflower)
1 tbsp + 1/2 tsp yeast

Put everything into the machine in the order listed (unless your bread machine tells you otherwise), so that the yeast is sitting on the top of the ingredients dry. Use the wholemeal cycle and choose dark crust if you have that setting.

As I said before my machine advertises itself as making a 1.5kg loaf.

Green Curry Paste

Now, I got a goo on to make some curry powder. Seeing as I had just gone through my cupboards and checked what spices I have, and that there was a nice bunch of coriander sitting on my counter top. It was only fitting that it turn into a green curry paste.

I have no clue if this is how green curry paste is made. And quite frankly, I don't give a hoot if this isn't the way that it should be made. Experimentation is a fantastic thing. So this curry paste is a bit of a work in progress.

I hope that this tastes OK, because the quantities seem to have got away from me a bit. That's not uncommon though. Often I will start off in the BIG pan because sooner or later I will end up using that one.

So here we go.

Ingredients
2 tbsp Coriander seed
1 tbsp Fenugreek (whole)
1 tbsp Whole Black Pepper
1 tbsp Black Mustard Seeds
1 tbsp Yellow Mustard Seeds
Ginger - Pealed amount about as big as your thumb
4 fat cloves of Garlic
1 Bunch Coriander (use everything, the leaves, the stalks and the roots if you are lucky enough to have them!)
1 Green Finger Chili
2-3 Small chillies (the ones that I have are about an inch long)
Sprig Mint
Oil

I toasted the spices in a dry frying pan, shuffling them around on the heat. I declared them done when I heard them pop. With the mustard seeds I used a splatter guard because the mustard seeds jump out of the pan.

After partially grinding this up in the pestle and mortar, my arms were aching. So, I tried adding a bit of sunflower oil to see if that would help. Which it did a little, but not enough to make much the job to hand much easier. Then I decided to use a much easier method and used my stick blender, to make everything into a pulp.

I think that I must have used about a third of a cup of sunflower oil, I didn't measure it. Instead I kept adding it until there was enough for the blades to make a nice paste.

The aroma was fantastic. My little house was smelling lovely and the nice mellow smell of the spices stuck to my pestle and mortar. Yum.

The only thing that I can't give you is a good photo of the end product. I tried, and, tried and tried. I just couldn't get a dark green paste to look appetising at all. Here it is anyway!

Seeing as me and the lovely Totty had already had dinner this went straight into two small freezer bags, all ready to pull out and use as and when.