Too much routine

I need to go outside of my comfort zone in the cuisine… but I don’t know how…

Making ravioli, pancakes, scones, quiches, breads etc… has become such a routine and is so effortless that I miss the challenge. Because, yes indeed, I am a challenger. Whether it’s at work, on the court, in the ocean, or in front of my sewing machine I like challenges. That’s how I ended up registering to a bodyboard school last year and I still enjoy learning to ride waves better and to spin on my board! That’s why I enjoy sewing (and here the challenge is massive!!!) . But recently cooking has been more functional than challenging. Even the steam buns, the bread in a pan etc… are now basically classics and I rush them between two meetings!!

Since my main source of inspiration : experience and local sourcing during our trips has dried up in the past 18months, I have decided to use my imagination and my recollections of some our trips. First stop: Firenze of course! I remembered these gigantic sandwiches they would sell in something resembling focaccia (scaccia in Florence) and I never tried because it is just too gigantic and there was too much fat left on the ham (I have always hated meat fat) and since I just bought some prosciutto it was the perfect timing. So I baked a plain focaccia, and decided that we would have a savory breakfast.

Trying a new type of breakfast: focaccia, prosciutto and fresh tomatoes and peach…

And then because I made a rather giant focaccia we went for it again for lunch, this time in a real panino version with grilled vegetables. (Top picture)…

It wasn’t much but it was a change. Not yet far away from the comfort zone, but new enough!!!

I’ll keep searching my memories!

Chocolate focaccia

Yes! You read well… I told you I was back to back to baking… When I was a first year PhD student the first international conference I attended and presented at was a huge conference held in Barcelona. At that time A. had plenty of holidays and surely plenty of time to take them, so we were always traveling together. We spent one week in Barcelona and a couple of days in Sitges. And one culinary thing that stayed for ever in our mind was the dinner, or more the dessert, we had on lovely terrace nearby the museum of contemporary art. The museum was still fairly young and the surroundings all in development. Using the base of the traditional pan con tomate it was a pan con chocolate. You can imagine with bread and chocolate in the same dish we would go for it, and this has surpassed our expectations by its simplicity and its tastiness. It was simply the same as pan con tomate replacing literally the tomatoes by dark chocolate: a toasted slice of bread with melting dark chocolate topped with fragrant olive oil and salt sprinkled. Back home I remember cooking some once in a while and always enjoying it. So this time while I was making the dough for my rosemary focaccia, I decided to keep a bit of the dough to test a chocolate focaccia. And like I though it would be, it was delicious. I’m sure you’ll see some more soon, in particular the picture doesn’t give a fair idea of how delicious it was!!

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