While I'm still trying to recover from the exhaustion caused by making 15 kg of gnocchi and a crème patissière with 60 egg yolks, all I can think of blogging is something simple, for a quick bite or a “light” snack…
Mix some ricotta and some grated parmesan and beat them until you obtain a creamy mousse. Salt and pepper if needed. Spread it over a Wasa crisp bread and cover it with 2 slices of Parma ham.
The best!
First of all, sorry for the poor quality of the picture, but I took it with my cell phone in the undergroung of Milan, so it couldn’t be better…
Second: translation (kind of); the upper line: vegetable become dish, the lower line: recipe n.4, wild rice in peas purèe.
So, my point is: is someone even the slightest appealed by this […] ad???
I mean, who would like to eat from a plate made of peas??? And there are even others with plates made of mushrooms or barley…
I do not know: those ads really stroked me and I began to think that maybe people in the advertisement world are really running out of ideas… Or brains… Or aesthetic sense… Or all of them…
What do you think?
To celebrate the first blog anniversary of a friend from Veneto living in Spain, I came out of the lethargy imposed by a big event I catered, and make those Venetian cookies. Happy blog birthday Cannella!!!
I know: they are not rounded, so they are not strictly cookies, but neither are biscotti, because they are not cooked twice. So, what should we call them? Bakery goodies???
Anyway, let alone the rambling of a tired mind and body…
This recipe is an adaptation from Nigella’s Feast, but, sorry to tell you dear Nigella, with all my love, but if you call them Polenta biscuits in Italy NOBODY would buy them… Better cornmeal biscuits…
50 g of raisins
30 ml of rum
75 g of butter
150 g of semolina
75 g of flour
50 g of sugar
1 egg
Zest of 1 lemon
Soak the raisin in the rum overnight, or for a few days if you forget them on the sink as I did… They were still good!
Cut the butter in little dice and mix it with semolina and flour, add sugar, egg, lemon zest and the rum from the raisins. Mix until it is all well combined. By hand, add the raisins and make a bowl. Cover a baking sheet with greaseproof paper, place the bowl in the middle, cover it with film and push it to obtain a disc 1 cm high. Let it rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.
Preheat the oven at 180° C.
Take out the dough from the fridge and divide it in 16 (or so) part, roll the out in little cigars, place them on the baking sheet and cook for 20 minutes or until golden.
Serve warm or cold the morning after, with a good cup of coffee.
Enjoy!
I had some pears in the fridge and, honestly, they had been there for some time. I didn't know what to do with them. I didn't even know what kind of pears they were, but they surely looked like William…
Anyway, I needed a recipe for one of those days when you would like to cook, but you are not in the mood for something too complicated or fancy, but for something simple, quick, few ingredients needed, possibly all already at home, so you don't even have to go to the supermarket to fetch something.
And instantly appeared in my mind a recipe from an old cutout from one of the Italian women 's magazine, Grazia: 4 ingredients (I had them all), simple procedure, quick preparation (but long cooking, but I don't mind that as long as is oven cooking)! The perfect recipe!
So, here it is, with some adjustments…
500 g of pears
150 ml of dry white wine (I used a Müller Thurgau from the north of Italy)
150 g of sugar
3 eggs at room temperature
Melt 50 g of sugar with 2 tablespoons of water in a little saucepan. As soon as it is melted, transfer it in to 4 individual moulds that can go in the oven. Let it cool.
Peel the pears, halve them, discard the seeds, and thinly slice them. Put them in a saucepan with the wine and the remaining sugar (100 g). Bring to the boil and let it simmer for 20-25 minutes, until the pears are soft but still in shape. Let it cool a bit.
Beat the eggs in a separate bowl, add them to the pears and combine all the ingredients. Pour the mixture into the moulds. Place them in a large and shallow ovenproof dish. Pour enough water in the dish to fill half of its capacity, paying attention not to drop any water in the moulds. Bake in a preheated oven, 150° C, for 1 hour.
Roast beef is one of my mother’s all time favourite (and, honestly, one of the few thing she can cook... to perfection!). She normally makes it in summer, cutting the meat very thinly, and serving it cold, but in winter I prefer it hot, thick and BLOOOOODY!!!
It is so simple to make it good!
Serves 4
1 kg of beef, ask your butcher about the best cut to use
Salt
Pepper
Bay leaves
Rosemary
Take out the meat form the fridge at least one hour before to cook it.
Preheat the oven at 220° C.
Roll the meat in salt and pepper: you need to coat it evenly.
Lay many bay leaves and few rosemary branches on the bottom of a ovenproof dish. Lay the meat over the herbs bed.
Cook it for 45 minutes if you wanted rare, for more if you like your beef medium rare or well done (honestly, what’s the point if you don’t get it rare???).
Let it stand for 10 minutes before to cut it.
P.S. I would like to point out our magnificent Laguiole set! It cuts perfectly, as all Laguiole!
Before to publish the last recipe for sunday roast, the piece de resistance, I give you the schedule I followed to make everything...
To make Sunday roast you won’t need more than two hours, but really intense!
First make the horse radish sauce and let it stand in the fridge, but remember to take it off at least 30 minutes before serving.
Then take the beef out of the fridge: you need it at room temperature.
Preheat the oven at 220° C.
Begin with the potatoes: peel and cut them, then parboil them.
While they are parboiling, prepare the meat and lay it in the ovenproof dish.
Hot the fat for the potatoes.
Drain the potatoes, put them in the hot fat and then in the oven.
After 10 minutes put the beef in the oven.
Prepare the Yorkshire pudding batter.
When it lack 25 minutes to the end of the cooking, eat in the oven the oil for the Yorkshire pudding for 5 minutes.
After 5 minutes, add the batter and cook the puddings.
When your time is up, begin serving the potatoes, then cut the meat, then serve the puddings.
And after this little marathon, enjoy your meal with your family!!!
I’ve tried to make Yorkshire pudding twice. The first attempt was following a recipe form Traditional British Cooking, a book we bought many many years ago, using duck fat for the tins. They were good, but not what I except it: they were a bit heavy, not too fluffy and too “eggy”… and the duck fat didn't work well: they almost all sticked in the bottom...
The second attempt was the one pictured above, form Nigella Lawson’s Feast: perfect! Right consistency, right fluffiness, perfect taste!
I am no chemist neither physicist (always had low grades in those subjects in high school…), so I don’t know how the tiniest different proportion between egg, milk and flour can make such a difference, but Nigella’s were much much much better!!!
Makes 8
245 ml of milk
3 eggs
Salt to taste
190 g of flour
Olive oil for the tin
Preheat the oven at 220° C.
Beat together milk, eggs and salt and let it stand for 15 minutes. Add the flour, give a good whisk and let it stand for at least half an hour.
In a 12 muffin tin, heat the oil in 8 of the holes in the oven. When the oil is sizzling, add the Yorkshire pudding mixture in each tin, filling it for about two third. Return it to the oven and let it cook for 20 minutes or “until they have puffed up gloriously” and they are golden.
Serve immediately!
As you maybe understood, I am a big fan of some English tv chefs, as Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson and the often forgotten Nigel Slater. Nigel had a BBC program (among others), Real Food (even a book), in which he underlined in each episode a single type of food: potatoes, garlic, chicken…
I am a well known potatoes eater, so much that my father, when I was little, nicknamed me potato (in Italian doesn't exist the neuter gender, so for us potato is a female noun)! I love potatoes in any shape or form: roasted, fried, boiled, steamed, jacked… Give me a potato and I will be an happy woman!
My search for the perfect roasted potatoes is going on since my first attempt of cooking. I read many recipes that were suggesting to shortly boil the potato chunks before to roast them in the oven, but it always sounded like too much fuss for something so simple… But it is not! It is the ONLY way to get a perfect crispy crust and a smooth, tender inside. They were so good! And they were wonderful even reheated in the oven the day after: still crispy!!!
Serves 4
8 potatoes
Duck fat (but you can use olive oil… Sure the taste of duck fat is unique…)
Maldon salt
Preheat the oven at 200° C.
Peel the potatoes and cut them in big chunks. Putt all the chunks in a saucepan full of cold salted water and bring to the boil. Cook for 5 minutes. Drain the potatoes.
In the meanwhile, put enough duck fat to cover with a thin layer the bottom of a big roasting dish. Heat it in the oven. When the fat is sizzling, add the potatoes (be careful with the hot splashes!), coat them with fat and cook in the oven, turning once, for 45 minutes or until golden.
Take them out of the oven, sprinkle with Maldon salt and serve straight away.
I am not a big fan of horseradish sauce: too bland yet too hot for such a non exciting flavour. But I religiously follow Nigella Lawson, so, if she makes horseradish sauce, I will make it too…
The taste was good, very different from the commercial one, but I couldn’t say I will eat it for ever and ever… I liked it, nonetheless I didn’t eat as much as my husband… But he is a well known big big big eater: you know, he's French, he's strange!!! ;-))
The inspiration for this recipe comes from Feast, by Nigella Lawson.
Make 250 ml
300 g of fresh horseradish
300 ml of double cream
2 teaspoons of Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar
1 apple (more id the horseradish is insanely hot)
Salt
Peel the horseradish and the apple and cut it into chunks. Blend together all ingredients in a food processor until you obtain a creamy texture. Spoon it in serving bowls and refrigerate until lunch.
Introduction
Lately we realized that in all the time we spent in England in the past we NEVER had Sunday roast, neither at home nor at the pub… We absolutely had to amend!
So, last Sunday we make the effort to make everything for the “perfect” Sunday roast, or at least for the Sunday roast of our choice…
And so, here it is, in the fall sunlight (Jesus DOESN'T want me for a sunbeam...):
Homemade horseradish sauce
Homemade Yorkshire pudding (gloriusly puffed, as Nigella suggested!)
Roast potatoes (should I underline the fact that we bought the potatoes but we cooked them?)
Roast beef (my mother’s way)
Stay tuned for the recipes!
I know, banana bread, especially this extremely reach version, is not strictly bread, but has the name bread in the name, so, is bread in some way, or at least for some cultures.
The originl recipe is from Nigella Lawson’s How to be a domestic goddess, and for once I followed it to the last pinch of salt. And the result was awesome, really…
100 g of raisins
6 tablespoons of rum
100 g of flour
2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of salt
100 g of butter, melted
100 g of sugar
2 eggs
4 large, very ripe, bananas
70 g of roughly chopped walnuts
120 g of chopped dark chocolate
Heat the rum with the raisins in a small saucepan, bring to the boil, turn off the heat, cover and let it rest for 1 hour.
In a bowl mix all the dry ingredients: flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder and soda.
In a large bowl, beat with an electric whisker butter and sugar. Add one by one the eggs, whipping. Add bananas, walnuts and chopped chocolate, mixing with a wooden spoon. Add the dry ingredients and mix well.
Cover a plumcake tin with greaseproof paper, add the mixture and bake, in a preheated oven, at 170° C, for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Let it cool before serving it.
world bread day '06
Dear fellow bloggers/ friends/ readers/ commenter,
One of the thing I was never able to make (except from macarons, but I’m still studying…) is puff pastry.
I never found a recipe that satisfy me at the point of making it instead of buying it…
Depending on the recipes, the pastry turned out to be too hard, too heavy, not so puff, too buttery, not enough buttery… I experienced everything can turn bad in a puff pastry recipe! Except the right result, off course…
Is there anyone who’s able to make (or found the recipe for) the most perfect puff pastry in the world, dummies and dumb proof (so Piperita proof), and would like to share it?
The recipe can be sent to me (peppermintpatt [at] gmail [dot] com) or just leave the link (if you had already publish it) in the comments, and it can be either in English, French or Italian…
If you didn’t yet publish it, we can make up a nice joint blogging venture and make joint posts about it… Just an idea…
I must admit I didn’t dig all the blog in my sidebar before to write this so I don’t know if someone in the rest of the world already explored the subject…
Many thanks
Or how to burn eyelashes and some air while cooking…
Home flambé is safe, don’t worry, but only if you are not French and you do not exceed with the amount of alcohol you use.
But if you are French, like my husband, you won’t care: you’ll put too much Armagnac, and while your (very wise) wife is telling you that maybe (only maybe) there is too much alcohol in the pan, you begin to lower the pan toward the flames, that’s how you’ll end up: burned air and eyelashes… Not to much, but still burned…
Serves two
500 g of fresh prawns
Armagnac
Thick sour cream
In a hot frying pan cook the prawns until they turn pink. Add enough Armagnac to cover the bottom of the pan. Lover the pan towards the fire and let the Armagnac burn. When the flames are gone add the sour cream and let it heat trough.
Serve it hot and eat it with your fingers, licking them thoroughly!
So, soup time!
I’m not big fan of soups: I can just eat Chinese soups and potage (the velvety, smooth version of soup) and that's all! The only think of a minestrone makes me sick...
So, here I come with some basic and some variations of potage.
Basics: you get any vegetable that is not feeling very well in your fridge, put it in a large saucepan with some potatoes chunks, water, salt and pepper, bring it to the boil, let it cook slowly and then blend it until smooth.
Variations: add some bay leaves or other spices; add stock; add rice; add miso; add anything you feel like…
Serves 4
3 carrots
1 leek
5 medium size potatoes
1 l of water
1 tablet or 1/2 tablespoon of vegetable stock (I used some that Petula kindly gave me!)
Sea salt
Peel the carrots and cut them in chunks. Do the same with leek and potatoes. Put all the vegetables in a large saucepan and add water, stock and not too much salt. Bring to the boil and let it simmer until all the vegetable are cooked through and are tender.
Blend everything and serve with some milk or crispy pancetta (vety thin bacon), like in the picture, or by itself, with some fresh grounded pepper.
I received it! This morning! I was so exited that I felt like that Christmas my parents gave the Barbie House!!!! So exited that I had to take the picture in no time, because I wanted to blog about it… And begin to dig in it, testing everything!!!! My package was form Caryn, from Reality Bites, the woman with the most beautiful handwriting I ever seen!!! She labelled every item, with a little description and some notes! She lives in Exeter, Devon, Uk, so the pack was plenty of English goodies!!! And until this morning I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed cheddar!!! I felt like Wallace from Wallace & Gromit: “Mmmmh, Cheeeeeese!!!!”
My husband is away for business until tomorrow night, so I hope I can wait to dig in it, so I will give him a surprise English dinner (he doesn’t read my blog… And if neither my husband nor my friends read my blog, who’s reading it then???), in memories of the old times, when he lived in Bedfordshire!
So, getting there in order:
Centre: the whole package on my kitchen table. My cat wants particularly to thank you for the plastic rope that get the package together: he loves them and he’s playing with them ever since!!!
Clockwise, from up left to down left:
- Tyrells hand fried vegetable chips, natural beetroot, parsnip and carrot: WOW it’s the only word that come to my mind! You can’t imagine my effort to take my hands far from it!
- English tea: breakfast, afternoon and London tea!!!
- Homemade butternut squash muffin, spicy, plenty of raisins: just delicious!!! Ok, for those I couldn’t wait!
- South Devon Chilli Farm, Chilli chocolate: exquisite!!!
- Godminster Cheddar: THE English cheese, it’s since 1999 I do not eat a piece of it! So glad to have it my fridge!!!
- Fudges Oat Crackers: “Gromit, we have crackers but no cheese, Gromit! Not a bit in the house!” Now I’ve got both and I don’t have to go to the moon to find cheese to go with my crackers!
- Maldon Salt: I always wanted some but never got!!! So many recipes crossing my mind!!!
- The Poacher’s Relish: Smoked salmon relish with lemon zest: to use very sparingly!!! You think it possible???
- And Somerset cider Brandy Butter, in a separate, red, festive box, to include a treat I have never tried and I will sure make some pancakes as soon as possible!!!
Thanks Caryn, you made my first EBBP a wonderful experience, never to forget!
I am very fond of Middle East patisserie. There are few Arabian patisseries in Milan, quite good actually, but do it yourself is always better: you can choose the amount of honey, butter and sugar, so it is not too honey, too buttery or excessively sweet.
And you can play around with ingredients. Baklava defines a sweet treat made with phyllo pastry and chopped nuts. But why not add some chopped dried fruits, as figs and apricots? And some spices too, as cinnamon, fennel seeds, nutmeg and ground ginger?
My inspiration was from Dessert des mille et une nuits, Èditions S.A.E.P., 2004, an extensive collections of Middle-East and North Africa treats, from loukums to jams.
Makes around 30 pieces
500 g of phyllo pastry, partially defrosted
200 g of butter, melted
For the filling
200 g of roughly chopped walnuts
200 g of roughly chopped hazelnut
200 g of roughly chopped almonds
10 dried figs, roughly chopped
16 dried apricots, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon of cinnamon
1 tablespoon of fennel seeds
1 teaspoon of nutmeg
1 teaspoon of ground ginger
4 tablespoons of orange flower water
For the syrup:
250 g of caster sugar
250 g of cassonade (raw brown, cane sugar)
1 lemon, freshly squeezed
400 ml of water
Prepare the filling, mixing all the ingredients. Let it to rest for a few hours.
Cover a big ovenproof rectangular dish with greaseproof paper. Roll out the phyllo pastry and butter each sheet. Cover bottom and sides with 6 buttered sheets of pastry. Spread half of the filling, cover with 2 buttered sheets of pastry, spread the rest of the filling, and cover everything with the remaining buttered phyllo pastry and the remaining melted butter.
With a sharp knife, cut along to form little squares.
Cook in a hot oven, at 180° C, for 40 minutes.
In the meanwhile, prepare the syrup, melted the sugar with all the other ingredients for 10 minutes.
As soon as baklavas are cooked, take them out of the oven, pour over it the syrup, and let it cool. Let it rest overnight in the refrigerator. Serve at room temperature.
About the picture: the tablecloth under my baklava is a gift form my husband's grandma. She lived for a good part of her life in Morocco (she came back in the middle of the 60’s), teaching French to Morrocans pupils, at the local school, and she brought back many memories and wonderful gifts, like this gorgeous tablecloth.
I was born in a city near the Italian – Swiss border, part of my relatives leave there, as one of my uncles married a Swiss lady, and all my childhood was surrounded by Swiss chocolate, Swiss food, trip to get cheaper Swiss fuel and Swiss television.
When in Italy food programs were still new and rare (and now there are too many, and not all good…), on Swiss television there was one of the program that made me the cook I am now: Cosa bolle in pentola? (what is brewing?), presented by Bigio Biaggi, one of the pillars of the channel. Bigio was speaking mainly dialect (very similar to Lombardy dialects, so I could understand with no problem) and he could not cook at all, not even a boiled egg. He invited Swiss chefs and food amateurs and gourmets and made them cook some recipes, asking clever question along with very banal ones, but all the time useful.
Thanks to him and his program now I know how perfectly whip and add egg whites, the most perfect sweet short crust pastry, how to make a delicious risotto…
It was tuned for 8 years, stopped in 2000 or around that, and with the collection of my mother cook books, those were my first steps in the art of cooking.
All this to tell you about this recipe for Swiss pigtail (braid): a wonderfull fluffy bread, slightly sweet.
I strongly recommend an electric kneader (such us my wonderful Kenwood chef), because by hand you will need to knead for something like 30 minute to obtain the right texture.
Adaptation from Pâtisserie maison, by Florence Edelmann.
12 g of fresh yeast
150 ml of milk, warm
450 g of flour
25 g of sugar
1 small bag of vanilla sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
1 egg
75 g of melted butter
For the glaze
1 egg yolk
1 spoon of milk
Melt the fresh yeast in the milk. Mix flour, sugar, vanilla sugar and salt in big bowl. Add the beaten egg and the melted butter, and begin to knead. Add the milk and yeast mixture and knead until you obtain a soft dough, not sticky, light and elastic (as said before, 30 minutes by hand, 15 minutes with Kenwood chef, beginning with the lowest speed for 5 minutes and continuing for 10 minutes at speed one). Make a ball and let it rest, cover with a tea towel, for 1 hour and half.
Punch the dough, divide it in three, roll each piece in a thick 50 cm string and begin to make the pigtail (braid), exactly like the one you would do with your hair. Florence Edelmann explain another method, but frankly, I found it absolutely incomprehensible.
Lay the pigtail (braid) on greaseproof paper over a baking sheet and let it rest, covered with a tea towel, for 1 hour.
Glaze it with the beaten egg yolk and milk and cook in a preheated oven, 180° C, for 30 minutes.
No translation (too lazy), get the book!
Garlic bread is something that the entire world consider Italian (altogether with Penne Vodka), except by Italians: we do not even know what it is… Really, if you came to Italy you know: there is not such thing in our bakery goods, or served in restaurants! Garlic bread is just a WONDERFUL Anglo-Saxon invention, and I am very thankful for it!
When we lived in England we used to pick up a garlic bread at Sainsbury’s or Tesco, on the way to the counter: the delicious smell of the parsley/garlic mixture, combined with the fragrance of the bread where one of the most comforting thing, far from home, from the sun and the hot, in the rain and cold of English summers…
This recipe is originally from one of my cooking bibles: How to be a domestic goddess, by Nigella Lawson. I adapted it a little, add something, made it a bit more mine…
In Italy we can easily find Manitoba, an high-gluten flour that takes his name form the Canadian province of Manitoba. You can substitute it with any high-gluten flour you find at you local suppliers.
For the bread:
250 g of durum wheat flour
350 g of Manitoba flour
12 g of fresh yeast
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt
125 g of extra fresh ricotta
Milk, if needed
For the garlic topping
4 heads of garlic (yes, yes, 4 ENTIRE heads of garlic)
Flat leaf parsley
Extra virgin olive oil
Dried flakes of hot chilli pepper
Make the dough for the bread. Melt the fresh yeast in 300 ml of warm water. Let it rest for 15 minutes, then add all the ingredients, except milk. Begin to knead the dough, better with a robot or a kneader, until all the ingredients are combined. If the dough it is too hard add some milk and knead for few more minutes. The more you knead the better it will be.
Cover it with a damp tea towel and let it rise for 2 hours or until it doubled the original volume.
In the meanwhile, prepare the topping.
Pick every clove form the entire heads of garlic, leaving skin on. Place them in a big parchment of foil, close it loosely around them, but be sure it has no holes or openings. Place the bag in a preheated oven (200° C) and cook it for 45-50 minutes.
Place parsley leafs in a food processor, add the garlic cloves (squeezed from their skins) and some oil. Blend until smooth.
Once the dough has doubled its volume, punch it (yes, yes, punch it!) and let it stand for another 30 minutes.
Divide the dough in 4 balls and roll them out in rounded squares. Cover them with a damp tea towel and let it rest for another 2 hours.
Preheat the oven at 220° C.
Brush the breads with the blended garlic mixture, sprinkle with chilli pepper and cook it in the oven for 20-30 minute, or until golden.
Eat warm as a starter, with some ham or salame, or on its own.
At this point your home will wonderfully smell garlic!!! For ever!!!
In Italian, please
Tarte Tatin is one of my favourite desert: always a hit, always a save soirée! You just need apples, butter, flour, sugar and egg and the trick is done…
Tatin sisters invented it in the end of 19th century by accident, cooking some apple for too long, so the sugar did caramelize, and placing the pastry OVER them, and not under…
This upside down desert is perfect still warn on its own, but even with a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream and/or a scoop or two of crème fraîche, the French thick sour cream.
As you can imagine, it is not the lightest desert of all!!!
This recipe is from one of my favourite cook books, Pâtisserie maison, by Florence Edelmann.
Serves 8
6 to 8 cooking apples, firm and not too watery
For the pastry
130 g of butter, soft
1 egg
1 pinch of salt
230 g of flour
70 g of caster sugar, but better with confectionary sugar
For the caramel
50 g of slightly salted butter
150 g of caster sugar
Make the pastry. Place the diced soft butter in a bowl and begin to whisk it to obtain a thick paste. Beat the egg with a fork and pass it through a sieve in a glass with 30 ml of cold salted water.
Add it to the butter, whisking constantly, then add part of the flour sieved with the sugar and continue to beat. Add all the flour and sugar and make a ball. Leave it to rest in the fridge for at least one hour.
In the mean while,. Make the caramel with the sugar and 4 spoons of water.
Put the butter in a cake mould of 25 cm and pour over it the caramel.
Peel and clean all the apples and cut them in eighth, and dispose them over the caramel.
Roll the pastry in a round larger than the cake mould, place it over the apples and fold over the exciding pastry, to make a edge.
Cook in a preheated oven (170° C) for 40 minutes.
When the pastry is golden, take it out, let cool for few minutes, then turn upside down in a serving dish. If the apple made to much liquid, turn it in another cake mould, larger, discard the exceeding liquid and then move the cake to the serving dish.
Serve still warm with vanilla ice cream and/or crème fraîche.
In Italian, please
Orecchiette is a typical pasta from the south of Italy, very popular made with turnips tops and anchovies, but you can easily adapt it for any sauce. They are better fresh, but even dried one are not too bad. Pasta is one of the less expensive food in the world, so it’s worth to buy the most expensive you can find at your local suppliers.
Serves 2
250 g of orecchiette
1 red pepper
1 shallot
1 teaspoon of fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon of Piment d’Espelette or mild chilli pepper
2-3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
thyme
Hard salted ricotta, grated, to serve
Deseed and clean the red pepper. Cut it in small cubes. Chop the shallot and gently fry it in 1 tablespoon of olive oil, together with the fennel seed and the chilli pepper. Add the red pepper and cook gently for 10 minutes: the pepper must be cooked, but still crunchy.
Bring on boil a large pot of salted water. Once is boiling, add the orecchiette and cook accordingly to the time on the package, leave it “al dente” (still a bit hard). Drain the orecchiette e transfer them in the pan with the red pepper, and stir fry it on high fire, adding some more oil if needed.
Serve immediately, sprinkled with the ricotta.
Oh, believe me, it is SO simple to make an ugly cake! (and that’s not even the ugliest I made in my life… There was once an accident with ganache, and mini meringues and a chocolate cake risen in the wrong way… But it was many years ago, before the blog, before catering… My friends still remember that mud mess…)
First of all, you need three major factors:
- Waking up with a bad mood: we are not machines or a starred chef (not even an “unstarred” one in my case!), and a bad mood can influence a lot our “cooking skills”… At least tell me it is like this for everybody!!!
- Make the wrong pastry the last time you had a bad mood (and you do not remember how much flour you put, but sure too much for the amount of butter you used) and freeze it…
- Defrost the wrong pastry during the day with a bad mood, knowing you have a bad mood, but keeping forgetting about it…
Once you have established all those three requirements for disaster, be sure to have enough marmalade to overload your cake. And be sure that that day you absolutely want to play “the good pâtissier” game and try to established the perfect crostata (jam tart) with an innovative technique that nobody, not even Pierre Hermé, thought about.
Yesterday I was all this at once, something that happens maybe once in a lifetime, and so why not use all this hidden potential of mine and make sure to come up with a disaster???
What am I, a fool???
My original idea was a two layer cake. The layers made with sweet shortcrust pastry, and the filling with homemade jam (I have too many!).
So, why nobody in the pâtisserie world EVER came up with such an idea??? Well, maybe because it is a BAD idea, and even worst if you have the WRONG pastry!!!
My pastry was everything but not compact. To roll it for the base I had to put it on a piece of greaseproof paper, to be sure not to destroy it while transferring it in to the mould. As I had lots of leftovers form the base I decided to make a second layer. So I putted a jar of orange marmalade on the base, and my intention was to put a layer of pastry over it and then a layer of lemon and grapefruit marmalade.
First problem: my pastry, as you should have understood by now, was WRONG, so it kept crumbling and crumbling. So I thought what a nice idea it was to have a layer of crumbled pastry!!! And so I did.
Second problem: unlike the orange one, lemon and grapefruit marmalade was extremely thick, so absolutely impossible to spread over the crumbled pastry without mixing it all together.
But I am stubborn, very stubborn, so I kept going on, hoping that everything would settle in the oven…
I couldn’t be more wrong…
At the end, the finished product was really ugly, but it does taste good… Maybe too much marmalade for my taste, but my French husband (from now on The French) liked it…
And as I am slower writing my blog in English, and at the moment I do not have so many posts to publish for hard and busy times, I couldn’t let such a disaster be wasted…
