The Black Tart

It's been a while since my last post.

Maybe for the revamped relationship with my treadmill, that gives me less motivation to bake, maybe for the limping relationship with my new oven. Don't get me wrong, it is a perfectly fine oven, but once you get used with the timing of an inefficient gas oven, baking with a new convection one often leaves you with overcooked and mgnah stuff. We're getting there.

Anyway. I've been wanting to try a couple of things for quite a while, one being a chocolate tart dough, the other a banana jam.

The chocolate dough recipe came from the baking lessons I took last spring:

- 2 cups flour (250gr)
- 3/4 cup sugar (150gr)
- 1 stick + 6 tbsp butter (200gr)
- 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa (50gr)
- pinch of salt
- 1 egg

Process in a mixer all the dry ingredients and butter, then add the egg. Form a ball and refrigerate for at least an hour or overnight before rolling it out.



As for the banana jam I had made kind of an approach mixing it with raspberries, but as much as you could taste it in there, it was not *only banana* jam.

So I followed this recipe, from a booklet found on the remainders' shelf at the supermarket, mixing and cooking

- 6 medium size bananas
- 1/2 rennet apple
- 1 cup sugar
- juice from 2 lemons



Only recently I was aware of the notion that not everyone madly loves bananas.
The concept can't quite sink in my head, really.
How can you not love bananas?

And, as for everything I love, it just gets better if paired with chocolate.
It's to be tasted in moderation: both the dough and the jam are a concentrate of their respective tastes, one small piece and your tastebuds have quite a party!

What happened to the Blueberries

And now, here's what happened to those 5lbs of blueberries.
Let's get out of the way the classic stuff:



a handful of blueberries, a banana and 3/4 cup of milk became a much appreciated and colorful fresh smoothie.

A couple of breakfasts were cheered up by blueberry pancakes, "with the happy face!" as a long time favourite of my kids, "Curious George makes pancakes" teaches to do:



Besides, I had still some buttermilk that I had bought in Germany (can't find it here), so those pancakes were really a hit!



We didn't go without some blueberry muffins and minimuffins (with the recipe from Shirley Corriher's "Bakewise" ):



Which were also well liked.





In the "Oh Berry Day" post, I mentioned the blueberry cjarsons, a kind of savoury wraps/ravioli with a blueberry filling. That day at the fair there was a kiosk serving them, but by the time we wanted to have lunch, they were momentarily unavailable, and we didn't want to wait too much, with two hungry kids under a hot hot hot sun. So we went for something less typical, and I came home with no idea of how blueberry cjarsons were made.

Did it stop me? Nope.

Knowing a little of the local cuisine, I knew that they couldn't be ALL that exotic, so I decided to improvise and make my own filling with ingredients that made sense:

3oz/100gr blueberries
12oz/350gr mashed potatoes
7oz/200gr ricotta
1 or 2 tbsp breadcrumbs
salt
pepper
nutmeg



I first whisked blueberries alone, than mix them with the potatoes and breadcrumbs, then whisked the ricotta in the unwashed blender, so that I could take the most of blueberries, that's why you see different tones of purple.

As for the wrap, I decided for a touch of fusion, and went back to a tecnique learned through a Daring Cooks Challenge, making potstickers...



... which were served with butter and poppyseeds.



Despite of all the salt that I had put in the filling, these potstickers were really too sweet to be a savoury dish.
Beside that, I still had a lot of leftover filling, having used barely 1/6 of it, so I had to think of a way to use it.
I decided to convert it in gnocchetti (small gnocchi).

I took what was left of the filling, added two eggs, 3 tbsp of flour, put all in a pastry bag, and as they were showing in that video I had linked, cut the gnocchetti into a pot of boiling (and SALTED, that made the difference!) water, waited for them to come to the surface, and served with butter and some parmigiano.



This time the savoury-sweet balance was alright, though the color may not be.
Nobody's perfect!


And after all this, came the round of jams.

Again, I didn't want to stop at "only blueberries", so I picked these combinings:



pineapple, redcurrant and yellow kiwi.
Plus one, not portrayed, with pure frozen maracuja pulp.

Again, as with the raspberries, I made a big batch of blueberry jam and at the same time small batches of fruit jam, always keeping a sugar/fruit ratio of 0.6/0.7.




Just two handfuls of berries were saved for freezing.
Frozen blueberries is another thing you don't find easily here, so I hoped to save a little more for the hard winter, but I guess we will have to do with our jams.


And now you know what happened to the berries.

What happened to the Raspberries

This is the chronicle of what happened to those raspberries I bought at the Blueberry/Raspberry Fair.

I won't be long on how much I love raspberries, just long enough to explain that many were eaten as they were, those plumpy, tangy, fragrant, luscious rubies.

Some were used as appetizers, on a toasted little square of bread with some mildly heated lard



About 1 lb went for a raspberry mousse, which is very similar to a Bavarese, only without gelatine.

There are a lot of recipes for a raspberry mousse on the Internet. They are basically all the same, only with varied proportions of ingredients. So I went with my own doses, according to what I like and what I had at hand.

500gr /1.1 lbs raspberries
3 egg whites
120 /4 oz sugar
500ml /2 cups heavy whipping cream



Blend the raspberries with the sugar,
whip the cream,
whip the egg whites.
Incorporate the cream and then the egg whites in the raspberry sauce.
Keep in the freezer. This does not contain gelatine, so it can (and it should) be frozen.
About 30 - 40 minutes before serving, pull it out of the freezer.

I added some shaved chocolate for a raspberry-stracciatella



It was good, and everybody loved it.
Yet, feel free to half the doses, because good as it is, I still have a lot of that in the freezer, and I would like to use that space without putting on 10lbs!




The rest (about 1kg/ 2.2 lbs) went for jams.
I can buy a plain raspberry jam every day, so when I make one, I like to match different tastes.




I chose fox grape, peaches and banana (this last just because of a silly Italian song that was very popular in the '90s).

What I did was cook the big batch of raspberry jam and small separate batches (about 1 cup, which came from 5oz of fruit and 3 oz of sugar) of other fruits' jam. Then I would take 1 cup of the raspberry jam and cook it 5 to 10 minutes together with its "mate jam".
Of course I kept some raspberyy-only jam.



And that was it.
I had some sad and crashed leftover berries, which were blended and frozen, for one or two future endeavours (looks more like one than two, I got only 7 icecubes)


Coming up - What happened to the Blueberries.

Oh, Berry Day!

In these days between the Big Holiday Trip and the beginning of school, we are enjoying sleeping till late, a lot of do-nothing and quite a few daytrips.

Today, we went to a tiny town, Avasinis, about 30 miles from where we live. Even if it is pretty near, no wonder we had never heard of it before (please note we've been living here for less than a year!): the place counts only about 350 inhabitants, and it sits in a narrow corner of a narrow valley in a group of high mountains.
The reason why we were there today is a fair they hold annually, the Fair of Raspberries and Blueberries.

(Welcome to the town of Raspberries and Blueberries)

You could taste a lot of dishes made with these gems in the kiosks spreaded on the main (and only) street: blueberry gnocchi, blueberry cjarsons (a kind of local ravioli), raspberry beer and a whole parade of desserts.



And if you are not impressed by this, just think that they are all wild!
In the week prior the fair, about 40 people climb the side of the mountains around, which is forbidden to non residents. The area is so rich of berries that the loot is enough to provide refreshment for a three days' celebration. This year they were expecting 30 thousand visitors!



Of course, you could buy the bare berries, which I did.
Being a girl with no half-measures, I am now the proud owner of 5lbs of raspberries and 5 lbs of blueberries!



Tomorrow my 3 men will be visiting grandpa and grandma the whole day, my Ipod is already charged and filled with the backlist of "This American Life" and "Stuff You Should Know" podcasts, and I'll be spending the whole day jamming, baking, freezing and cooking to try and make some of the summer taste last for a good part of the next cold season.



Oh, and tomorrow night my cooking teacher will be here for dinner, so wish me luck, and I'll keep you posted on the outcomes!

TIMOC #3: Savory Apple Crepes

(to know what TIMOC means, read here)


Third book from the right on my top shelf, is this book that Costco was giving away to every customer one Saturday morning, a couple of years ago.
It may break the pattern of International and travel books, but in a sort of way it doesn't: the nearest Costco is about a thousand miles from here, so what was once a regular place of shopping for us, sounds now quite exotic! ;-)

Of course I didn't do my shopping there for the recipe I'm about to show: Savory Apple Crepes.
It is in the Breakfast section, but we had the crepes for a light lunch.

The recipe called for ready made crepes, but it takes 20 minutes to make them, so I always prefer to cook them from scratch.



My recipe (don't ask me where I got it, can't remember at all) asks for 1.5 tbsp of butter, melted, 3 eggs, 2 cups of flour, 2 cups of milk and a pinch of salt.



As for the filling, it's
4 tbsp butter,
2 tbsp shallots (I used green onion),
4 apples (I chose Granny Smith), peeled and diced,
1/3 golden raisins
(in a)
1/4 cup white wine,
2 tsp flour,
1 tsp curry powder,
1/3 whipping cream,
some slices of manchego cheese (I used local cheese, manchego is impossible to find here).

Melt the butter in a skillet, add the ingredients one at a time in the given order (hold the cheese).
10 minutes is all you need to have the apples cooked at the right point in a creamy sauce.



Place the filling on a crepes, and put the cheese on top, it will melt deliciously once you roll the crepe.



Voilà!

Jammin' and Jellin'

Last week I jammed.
Being no musician, that merely means I took some fruit and made jam of it.

It all started a couple of weeks ago, with blackcurrant, then last week I put other four jam/gels under my belt (metaphorically and physically).

First came peaches; Fiumicello is a large municipality/territory yards away from the Italian Northeastern lagoon and is famous for its huge, succulent, peaches, with an intense yellow pulp that turns to red when fully mature.
I jammed them with blueberries.

Then came lemons: peel away just the rind (no white) of a lemon, boil it for 10 minutes, wash it, then cut it in teeny tiny strips and boil them again for another 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, peel the lemons (I used three lemons, and the peel of just one) well and jam them with sugar.
I usually calculate the dose of sugar as 70% of fruit weight, more or less (less for the peaches, a little more for lemons).
Cook for about 30 minutes, then add the lemon peel and 2 tablespoons of almond flour.
Even if I used the rind of just one lemon, the jam was really strong and tangy; try more peel at your own risk!

The last jam was Pear Williams' (just one pear, I was running out of jars!) with fresh grated ginger (about 1.5 tbsp) and some poppy seeds.

Then I made a gel of the same Fiumicello peaches about which I already told and some mango pulp, with a hint of Dijon mustard.
The gel was hard enough to be cut in cubes (sorry, no individual pic available).


Now, what did I do with all these wondrous wonders??
I set a platter with cheese pairings:




Clockwise, starting from top, are blackcurrant/green tea/lime, pear/ginger/poppyseed, peach/blueberries, lemon/almond, and the cubes at the immediate left of lemon are the cubes of peach and mango.

The cheese paired to each is the one at the left of the tip of each bowl(considering the tip pointing up, of course).

Lemon jam and blackcurrant jam were paired with the same cheese, only at a different stage of aging. Here they call it "Latteria" (which literally means "Milk store") and it's a cheddar-like cheese.
Now, most of the Italians would shiver about a comparison with cheddar, but I'm positive that's because they've never tasted good artisan cheddar, some like the ones those guys at Beehive Cheese in Northern Utah make.
At least, that's what happened to me: I rolled my eyes the first time I walked into their shop and they offered me *cheddar*, but after trusting them that first time, I became a regular customer (until I could, at least!).

Blackcurrant was paired with a 6 months aged Latteria, while the 2 months was smooth enough to balance the almost aggressive lemon jam.

Pear jam was paired with a Parmigiano of 24 months of age and peaches/blueberries went with Formadi Frant, a cheese with a strong, spicy taste (there's pepper in it and you'll find more info about that here)

As for the last pair, I played with textures and to the solid fruit taste I gave a spreadable goat cheese, with a little of oil and pepper.

I was already in the mood, so I planned a jelly dessert, too. I took the recipe in a Costco book, which will be my next TIMOC instalment.

Dissolve 5tsp of gelatin powder in one cup of hot water, then 1.5 cups of sugar-

When the mix is at room temperature, add 2 cups of cold dry champagne, then pour over pitted cherries and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.

The kids and I couldn't pick a picture between the two we liked most, so I'm putting on both of them, and that's it, cherries on top!

The unexpected currant

We were at my in-laws one Sunday afternoon.
While going around in their vegetable plot, I spotted this huge blackcurrant plant.
"Go ahead!" they told me "A friend brought that plant as a present, it keeps growing and bearing fruits, but we're not making much of it, so if you're interested..."
One minute after I was already in the plot with a ziploc. I must say, I took them on their word, and I didn't leave much behind me: once cleaned, the loot was 1.5lbs of freshly picked, amazingly perfumed blackcurrant.


I let it rest overnight with 1 1/2 cup of sugar (don't like too sweet a jam), the juice of one lime and the rind of half a lime. The overnight thing is just because I didn't want to stay up in the wee hours on a stove, but I also thought it would help to let it macerate a little. Apparently it's not worth it; I thought that the currants would behave like berries and release some liquid, but they didn't. Whatever.


I added one cup of freshly brewed green tea, and cooked about 30 minutes.
Do not cook it too long: blackcurrant is rich in pectin so, especially if you're working with little liquid, its setting could be too firm. For the same reason, there's no need to add apple slices or pectin powder.


The result is a sweet and sour, tart and tangy jam, it goes well in tarts, pies, over pancakes or paired with cheese.
In my case, it was just what I needed for my Bakewell tart... er... pudding .

Strawberry and cream forever

It's hard to turn an oven on, in these days, but there are lots of desserts that can be done without baking.
Bavarese is one of them.

Fruit and cream are the main actors with just a spoonful of sugar (well, a little more than a spoonful - so many quotations, today I woke up a songbird!) and a bit of gelatine to help the structure.

My choice today is on cherries and strawberries.
Puree 1.1 lb/500gr of fresh fruit in a blender, add juice from one lemon, 3-4 oz /100-120gr of sugar and put all on a mild heat.

When it is gently boiling, add 1/2oz /12-15 gr of gelatine. The gelatine part is a bit tricky, because there are a lot of different gelatines out there. Here the most common is one that comes in small transparent sheets, in the US my first try would be Knox gelatine.

Anyway, any gelatine in a dose fit to gel 500ml of water will do.

After adding the gelatine let simmer for 1 or 2 minutes. The simmering part is important to properly dissolve the gelatine and to inactivate enzymes in fruit like pineapple, kiwi or papaya that would prevent gelatine to set.

In the meantime, whip 2 cups /500ml of heavy cream.

Add the whipped cream to the fruit mixture and place in molds. Let rest in the fridge for at least 3 hours.

Bavarese cannot be frozen: thawing would kill the gel.