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!

TIMOC #2: Salzburger Bierfleisch

Got myself my own acronym, ha!
For the second instalment of Traveling In My Own Cookbooks we make a trip to Austria.
If you have read me before it will not sound new.
Yes, I bought the book during my recent trip to Salzburg, and I don't know exactly why I put it up there on the top shelf, so that it became the second book to be examined.
If you consider that during last week I was reading a biography of Mozart's, you will see how Austria is not letting me go.
Think of it as making the best of my trip, it's like it lasted a little more.

Anyway, Salzburger Bierfliesch is meat cooked in a beer sauce.

Main ingredient of course is meat, of tender beef, 600gr, about 1lb 5oz.

Then starting from the top, clockwise:

100gr/3oz onion
150gr/5oz smoked pancetta
1 slice rye bread
40gr/2tbsp flour
250ml/1cup dark beer
2 slices speck
20gr/1tbsp tomato paste
4tbsp pickled onions
80gr/3oz strutto
750ml/3cups beef broth (not portrayed)

Now, as for strutto: I find that the English word is "lard", only it's not the same as solid lard, the one you can slice.
You put that solid lard in a pan, heat it and you will see that it releases fat. That liquid fat, taken, filtered and cooled is strutto. Most of the time it's substituted with butter, but of course it's not exactly the same.
I must say that the concept of strutto makes me and my arteries a little uncomfortable and that this was the first time I talked myself into using it, for the sake of discovery and of some kind of return to the roots.
I understand the sense it makes in a recipe, yet it's really a concentrate of pure fat, they're making sure not a single molecule of water, not a single fiber is left in.

Dice the meat, cherish it with salt and pepper and put it into the pan where you will have melted your fat (at least, it will be yours soon!)

Cook it one every side, then set the meat apart and in the same pan fry onion and pancetta, both finely diced



Let them take some color, thicken with flour then dilute with beer



Pour the beef broth in, adjust with salt, pepper, and thyme and marjoram if you like, add the meat, cover and let it cook completely (about 15 minutes)

To garnish, stir fry in a little oil the diced bread with shredded speck and pickled onions



You will put this mix on the finished plate.

Talking of "finished plate", I wasn't completely satisfied, I had to make an appropriate side, so I ended cooking two recipes from this book, too.
The choice was quite obliged, I picked the Kartoffelknodel (Potato Dumplings) I was served at Gablerbrau.

500gr/1lb 2 oz potatoes
50gr/2 oz semolina flour
150gr/5 oz flour
2 egg yolks
30gr/1oz butter
salt

Boil and mash the potatoes



Work them with all the ingredients, one at a time, then let it rest.



Form the dumplings and boil them (I'd say 6/7 minutes, the book is not clear with times of cooking).

Put your two pieces of work together, and enjoy your taste of Austria

Daring Bakers Challenge June 2009 - Bakewell tart... er... pudding

The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er... pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England.

Make sure to check their blog out for the interesting story of how this dessert was born.

In a nutshell:

1 - a shell of sweet shortcrust pastry
2 - a layer of jam
3 - a layer of frangipane

It was not something completely new for me, I remember my mother making something like this for a few years when I was a teenager, only with a sponge instead of frangipane. That was a bit dry, though.

The Shortcrust



225g (8oz) all purpose flour
30g (1oz) sugar
2.5ml (½ tsp) salt
110g (4oz) unsalted butter, cold (frozen is better)
2 (2) egg yolks
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract (optional)
15-30ml (1-2 Tbsp) cold water

Rub the (cold) butter into the flour, mix the dry ingredients, add the liquid ingredients, don't sweat it too much, make a ball, let it rest in the fridge.

The Jam

Posted already

The Frangipane



125g (4.5oz) unsalted butter, softened
125g (4.5oz) icing sugar
3 (3) eggs
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract
125g (4.5oz) ground almonds
30g (1oz) all purpose flour

Cream the butter with sugar, add the eggs (one at a time), the almond extract, then spoon the flours in.

The threesome is ready to be assembled:



Now spread:



Now pour:



Aaaand level:



Bake it at 200°C/400°F for about half an hour.







Serve with creme fraiche.

We had a slice a few hours after baking it, and we had different opinions in the house: while my husband thought the jam was way too tangy and predominant, I thought the exact opposite and could taste only the almonds in the frangipane. Either way, it didn't seem a good pair (the kids just gobbled it down and off they went towards new adventures).
That all went away the day after, and it was even better the third day, when the tastes melted together and rounded off, thus giving a good and well chosen combination.


Inspired by other Daring Bakers, who always try to give a savoury version of a sweet recipe and vice versa, I thought of the classic pairing between gorgonzola and walnuts.



I skipped sugar in both the shortcrust and the frangipane, and substituted walnut flour for the almond's. In the jam's place was a mix of gorgonzola and cream cheese.




Good thing I made tartelettes, because the taste is so strong it saturates all your taste buds in a sec.
I had served it with acacia honey just because I thought it was a cute add, but honey is really essential to balance and dilute the strenght of it.

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 .

A Kitchenlander day in Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Or München, that is.

It was the same weekend of our Salzburg day, the two cities are so close, that it made sense to cross another border and see.

We arrived late in the morning, found a hotel a little out of the center, where fares were prohibitive, we relied on old, good Best Western.

The day before the kids had been really good, not questioning too much the fact that we had walked all day and had been to castles and museums, so we decided to take a boyish look at the city.

That means that we only took a quick look at the city center, and by the way, little did we know that they take Whit Sunday so seriously there, so all the shops and the ViktualienMarkt were closed.



As for meals, we decided to make a minitour of local breweries. Which are local, but also very well known out of town because as you know, the Bavarians know a lot about beer and make sure that the world knows they know.

A lot of beer factories have their own little restaurant (Biergarten), with a choice of a few dishes that complement the beer they produce and serve.



Our first stop was on the way from the hotel to the center, and it was Löwenbräu. A nice garden, a beautiful day, we decided to eat outside.




They will tell you to sit at a table provided with tablecloth. I discovered later that you can also bring your own food and use a table without cloth, as long as you order your drinks.



The food is simple and typical, mainly pork meat, wieners and different kinds of sausages

And that's what we had, a "Löwenbräu Classics" for me



which is a crispy roasted pork belly with potato-cucumber salad and dark beer sauce

and some "Sausage Specialities" for my men



a platter with a variation of sausage specialities with sauerkraut, mashed potatoes and horseradish.
Goes without saying, we shared a bit of everything.

I loved the presentation of their mustard



At the end of the meal we ordered one portion of apple strudel, always because I was just done with the Strudel Challenge.



Better than the one I had in Salzburg, yet not completely satisfying. Maybe because it was drowning in that vanilla sauce.

One funny thing (at least to us, it's probably normal) is the closet where the pitches of regular customers are held



A note about the beer: it's very light indeed, and pleasant to drink; I usually feel the buzz in a short time, with this I didn't. I bet they don't want loads of drunk people walking around in the middle of the day!

We spent the afternoon at the Olympiapark, visiting the stadium and enjoying the view from the Tower:



For dinner, we headed to the Augustiner Brewery



The place was packed with people, it took a while to even ask someone if we could sit. We sat at a table with another family, and took in all the festive atmosphere that was in there. The 6yo didn't like the noise too much, but the 4yo... oh! he absolutely loved the place, the waitresses in their dirndls, the brass band playing



He could only stand up and dance! Oh, and he would also steal the notepad from every waiter's pocket he could see, thus messing the orders up.
We are not telling him about the existence of something like that, only multiplied for 10.000, just because I don't think it would be nice to bring a 4yo at the Oktoberfest!

It was a bit late to have a real dinner, though, just some cheese and snack, but very funny indeed!

The morning after we went for a visit at the BMW Welt



What wouldn't I do for my kids!



Well, they had fun.

On our way back home, we thought we would have something on the road.

But then we saw the Paulaner Brewery and well...



This was by far the best beer we had in the weekend, unfiltered, complex in taste, enjoayable, really good. We're actually buying it regularly at the supermarket, now.

I had a vegetable strudel



with broccoli, turnips, carrots, cheese in a sauce of cauliflower and chives and topped with fried arugula. I must say, this time I was really satisfied, it was tasty, filling yet light.

Hubby wasn't so light, going for a Braten G'Rosti



Pan fried meat with knodeln, onions and eggs.

As for the kids



They would live out of cold cuts, so they are easy to please.


And that was the end of it, our last Bavarian meal was indeed the best. It's always nice to close a holiday this way, we'll be back for sure!

To the next trip!