Month: December 2016

Lemon and ricotta tart

A. proud of his cake! 
A. proud of his cake! 

A. cooks once a year and it is for making my birthday cake. I like to have it with tea, because then it all about the cake rather than having it for dessert. Every year I choose the cake I would like to eat and he makes it the way I like it. He usually searches for recipes on the internet, and from this base adjusts it to the gears and ingredients we have, and to my taste. Since he has little experience he usually gets a bit of help or some advises from who is available around. This year, since we were in Sicily, country of citrus fruits, I chose a lemon tart with meringue. But I like my cakes not too sweet, not too buttery, not too creamy, so my mum and I helped him a bit. The result was amazing. So here is what he did for a 25cm tart: first pre-heat to 180deg ghe oven.

for the dough:  a classic sablé dough with 200g of flour, 1 egg, 75g of butter. Mix all the ingredients and roll the dough to the size of your pie dish. Bake for 10min, the dough must not change color too much.

for the lemon filling: instead of preparing lemon curd we opted for something easier. The zest and the juice of 2 lemons is mixed with 2 egg yolk and 1 egg, 120g of brown sugar, and 4tbs of fresh ricotta. Mix all the ingredients to obtain a smooth creamy texture. Set in the dough. And cook in the oven at 180deg for 30min.

for the meringue: 2 egg white, 70g of icing sugar, a pinch of salt.  Beat the egg whites and the salt until firm, continue beating and add the icing sugar slowly until all is smooth, shiny white and firm. Put the mix in an icing bag and decorate the tart as you like. Bake at 180deg for 10min. Check to be sire the meringue doesn’t burn.

We finished the decoration with some very thin slices of Sicilian sweet lemon grilles on the oven for a few minutes.
We finished the decoration with some very thin slices of Sicilian sweet lemon grilles on the oven for a few minutes.

Best wishes!!! 

Tagliatelle

Being in Italy we eat fresh pasta quite often. And being with our mother we cook all together. This time it’s a recipe that our mother created. Very simple, taking advantage of the seasonal products and that can easily be prepared ahead and for large tables. This is tagliatelle with radicchio, spinach, speck and pine nuts. Served with fresh parmegiano. You need one radicchio, a few bundles of spinach, a few slices of speck, a handful of pine nuts, olive oil, fresh parmegiano. In a large pan, heat some olive oil, wash and cut in bite size the vegetables, cut in bite size the speck. Add all in the pan and stir until soft but still colorful. In a small pan, grill the pine nuts, when golden roughly crush them, add to the vegetables. Boil the tagliatelle (homemade, fresh or dry), when al dente, drain them and add them to the vegetables mix, add olive oil, stir well and serve. Top with parmegiano. 

Xmas ravioli

Celebrating Xmas with our families in Sicily I prepared an Italian x French ravioli to be served in a little herbs bouillon prepard by my mother. Cooking together we come up with mew odeas snd new tastes. The ravioli are foie-gras ravioli for everyone but me, mine are ricotta. For that it is really easy. I used my classic pasta recipe: 100g of flour, 1 egg, a pinch of salt and olive oil. I don’t have a pasta machine, so I rolled the dough manually. For the filling: fresh foie-gras made by my mother (she is very good at preparing fresh foie-gras). But you can use some foie-gras you buy. You need one dice of 1cm height for one ravioli. For my ravioli, just fresh sicilian ricotta. I bought in Catania a new ravioli rack for large ravioli and used it. For the bouillon it’s super simple. We used some greens of fresh onion, but you can use the green of a leek, some fresh parsley, a slice of orange peel, and a bit of the foie-gras fat. In a large pan, heat a little bit of the foie-gras fat, cut in thin filaments the fresh onion/leek green, add it in the pan, stir in the fat at low heat until soften, add water, add the parsley, the orange peel. Boil for 10min. Keep to serve. Boil the ravioli and serve together.

A little soup

With some yellow carots, red carrots and normal carrots, some lotus root, some potatoes, and with some Italian beans soup mix that I cooked for lunch, I made for dinner this warm and rich vegan soup. Very very simple and so quick if you have cooked the beans before (optimally leftovers). In a large pan I put the cooked beans, water, quite a lot, and then cut the veggies and add them. I like both when it’s overcooked and veggies melt in the mouth, or when they are still crunchy, in particular the carrots, so I adjust the insertion time in the pan and the cooking time depending on that. I served warm, optionally with some gratted parmegiano, a good preparation foe our stay in Sicily!!!

Experiment

I was in the mood for a little cooking experiment: something in between an okonomiyaki and a galette, with plenty of veggies. Vegan, gluten/free, delicious and colorful. I used plenty of the veggies I had in the fridge: sweet potato, sato imo, lotus root, and carrot. I peeled and cut them then grilled them in a pan. In the mean time, I mixed buckwheat flour, rice flour and water with a bit of baking powder to obtain a quite thick dough. Then in a smaller pan I layed the vegetables covered them with dough and cooked at very low heat under cover then flipped it. And served. Use bulldog sauce like for okonomiyaki if you like.

Last week…

Yes! This is the last week before we take a few holidays for the end of the year. So much to do at work before then that days will be really too short and I already expect getting back home late and having little time to cook properly. So my shopping basket at the farmers market was full of easy to prepare and versatile seasonal products. A lot if simple Japanese food ahead with the lotus roots, the carrots, the sweet potatoes and the sato imo. But before that, I prepared a spinach and tofu quiche with a whole wheat flour and wheat bran dough. I used olive oil for the dough rather than butter, and soya milk, drained moendofu and fresh spinach for the filling. With eggs it gets firmer, but they are not necessary. I didn’t steam the the spinach before using them, but steaming them would make them softer. I personally like when they’re a bit crispy. Have a very good week!

Sunday in the garden

There is quite a bit of work in the garden to get ready for spring. The plum trees are all cvered in buds and I can’t wait to see them bloom again soon! So with the beautiful weather, it was a good occasion to trim, clean again, and since days are so short now I didn’t want to stop until it got chilly. We ended up having lunch really late, so I needed something quite quick to prepare: rice with wakame, and frypan cooked vegetables: carrot, lotus root, sweet potato and salted salmon. Salted salmon is a little like salted cod, but much less salty, really delicious, probably better after a short time in water but I like it like than when while cooking the salt makes a kind of crust.

Have a good week ahead!! 

Hazelnut and spices cake

It is not often that I make vegan cakes but sometimes there is no choice. I really wanted to make a cake, start mixing flour, baking powder, sugar, and when it cake to the eggs, I realized I didn’t had any. And I didn’t feel like buying cheap eggs from the kombini (not because they are cheap, but because they come from I don’t know where, and how). But since the cake was on its way I just added a reasonable amount of hazelnut powder, and a bit of vegetal oil and soya milk to moisten the dough until I obtained a normal consistency for the dough. Then I added some anise seeds, cinnamon, cardamom in a large amount. And baked at 150 degrees for 30min. The result was a delicious fluffy cake, perfectly balanced in taste between the hazelnut and the spices. Something to try again for sure!!!!

Have a nice weekend! 

One-plate lunch

What best when it’s getting chilly outside than a bowl of hot and steamy white rice? And to complete the lunch, a plate with angelic (ashitaba-明日葉) omelette, grilled pork, grilled cherry tomatoes and turnips with miso. Very quick to prepare, tasty and warming! 

I am also very pleased to use my new Arita yaki bowls! 

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