Saturday, May 31, 2008

died and went to heaven cake

This cake is simply wonderful.. soft, chocolatous, luscious ^^ i love the match coffee-chocolate and this is a good recipe for that

died and went to heaven cake

410ml wheat flour
230ml sugar
180ml cocoa powder
baking powder
a pinch of salt
350ml milk
230ml brown sugar
2beaten eggs
60ml olive oil
vanilla extract
230ml hot and strong coffee

Icing:
230ml icing sugar
orange blossom flavor
50ml milk

Whip together flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. Add milk, brown sugar, eggs, olive oil and vanilla extract, mix very well. ncorporate hot coffee and whisk. Pour the batter in a baking tin.
Bake in preheated oven at 180°C for 35minutes.

Prepare the icing: whisk together icing ingredients carefully. Spread on the cake when it's cooled.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

lemon cheesecake

lemon cheesecake

crust:
3tbsp sugar
3tbsp softened butter
3/4 cup flour
3tbsp ground nuts
1pinch nutmeg
1pinch cardamom

filling:
1 1/2 cup fresh cheese
3/4 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 tbps oil
3 lemon (juice and zest)

mix the crust ingredients (add milk if needed) till the mixture crumbles. spread it in the tin and bake for 5min in preheated oven at 200°C. let it cool.
beat egg whites till foaming and set aside. combine with a mixer egg yolks, sugar, fresh cheese, lemon juice and oil. stir in lemon zest. pour the cheese filling in the tin and bake at 200°C for 5 min, then reduce the heat to 150°C and bake for 1hour. let the cake cool in the oven, then chill. serve with icig sugar.



after making the cheesecake i had to finish some lemon juice so for dinner i had some sauteed zucchini and yellow pepper with basil and lemon bechamel :)


Saturday, May 24, 2008

apfelstrudel

this afternoon i made also some apple strudel. when i was a kid i despised this dessert, then lately i found myself just loving it.. apart from the fact that i still hate raisins, so i'm used to make some little "corrections" to the original recipe ^^


Apfelstrudel (serves 4-5)

lukewarm water
2 big apples
50g melted butter
200g wheat flour
2tbsp oil
1pinch of salt
3tbsp confectioner sugar
1/2tbsp cardamom
1/2tbsp cinnamon
2tbsp hazelnut flour
mix of roughly ground pine seeds, walnuts, hazelnuts

mix the flour with salt, oil and cardamom, then start pouring as much water as needed kneading energetically to make a compact and elastic dough. make a ball, oil it slightly and let it rest in a fresh place for about half an hour.
in the meanwhile, chop the apple into small pieces (i even use a mixer) and mix it well to the ground nuts, cinnamon and 2tbsp confectioner sugar. set aside. mix the melted butter with the remaining sugar and the hazelnut flour.
flatten the dough with a rolling pin in a thin rectangle and spread it with a half of the melted butter. distribute the apple and nuts filling onto the dough and make a roll. spread the remaining butter on the surface of the strudel.
bake in preheated oven at 200°C for 35-45min.

veggie pasta

as you can see, i had some zucchini in storage :D


i love to make pasta with vegetables and zucchini is surely one of my favorites.. it's a quite versatile vegetable and gets on well with many other ingredients.

so.. for yesterday's interpretation i used rice pasta (my fav italian rice brand makes that, it's very light, white in colour and it has a subtle flavor) putting some saffron in the boiling water so that's where the yellowish colour (and wondrous taste) come from. the zucchini are simply sauteed in olive oil, with a bit of seasoning mix (dried mushroom, parsley, garlic and onion).

this evening i decided to mince the zucchini with some fresh sweet green pepper, cooking such mixture with some milk, fresh basil and a mix of spices (saffron, lemon grass, chili, dill and fennel). the pasta i chose is normal rigatoni, that's one of the best shapes ever :D

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

cabbage and rice

usually i would wrap a mix of seasoned rice (maybe sauteed with bacon cubes :) but i still have my phyllo sheets to use so today i tried to make a sort of cabbage and rice roll.

first of all i cooked the cabbage, cut in thin stripes, just with some water, black pepper, salt and chopped parsley.
in the meanwhile i boiled wholemeal rice al dente and poured hot water on the phyllo sheets to soften them.
then i mixed cabbage and rice, spread it on the phyllo and fold it like i do when i meake spring rolls.
preheated oven at 200°C for 15min.. it was awesome!

Monday, May 19, 2008

ananas and peppers

here it is, today's dinner :)

i'm a huge fan of angel hair pasta (capelli d'angelo in italian) but it seems this week i couldnt find any up here, so i tried these mais this noodles. they're not bad at all, though not as good as angel hair to me.






i made them with chopped and sauteed sweet red peppers and red chili, topped with some fresh basil.. it was nice, just a bit spicy (not sure about my perception of spicy though after my misadventures with the habaneros LOL)





then i decided to have a quick and fresh dessert, so i made some ananas mousse! very easy and rough one.. just smashed ananas, cane sugar, vanilla flavor and whipped cream eheheh

Friday, May 16, 2008

chèvre passion

goat cheese has always been for me one of those flavors i dont dig completely, but for some reason i find myself eating with pleasure.. i know it sounds weird but that's it :D
it's not like milk taste or chocolate or strawberry, which i like very much and anyway.. goat cheese is a strange taste, sometimes it feels like i dislike it so much i cant help eating it ehehehe
anyway one of my fav matchings is fresh goat cheese and dark chocolate.. simply awesome :) there's something salty, something fresh, something sweet and something bitter.. i really love it, i have some sweet recipes including these two ingredients but quite often i just spread the chèvre onto a piece of choco and snap at it!


chèvre-choco brownies


300g dark chocolate
125g cane sugar
4eggs
75g wheat flour
75g white sugar
100g butter
300g fresh goat cheese
10g baking powder
75g almond flour
vanilla flavor

Melt chocolate and butter together in a bain marie. Whip 3eggs with cane sugar, add wheat and almond flour, baking powder, then add chocolate and mix well.
Whip goat cheese with white sugar, 1egg and vanilla flavor.
Pour chocolate dough in a baking tin (around 20x30cm) and pour onto it the cheese cream. With a knife blend slightly the two creams creating a pattern. Bake for 25-35minutes in preheated oven at 190°C.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

little finnish update

so well.. this is not about food but a little update about finland is needed :D


last week finally we got a bit of summer (actually it was better than last summer weather eheheh) but in these last few days it's turned to cold again.. and i mean COLD.

on the other hand finland is getting green and very beautiful, i'm having some very nice walks. i took these pics today on the shore near my area, it's such an awesome place :)


yea right after i took the pics it started to rain badly and i was like 30min walk far from home.. the result is a nice sore throat and frozen feet LOL although the view was amazing and i love the rainy sky colours ^^



about my schedule well i will be here till the first week of june then i'll be back to italy for a couple of months before moving to zurich. there will be time even for a bit of holidays, i'm craving for the seaside after the finnish winter ehehehe

i'm happy for i'm going to spend some few days with the man right before flying home.. and then i will be back to italian food yay!
i already have the topic for my next update.. this week i re discovered my passion for fresh goat cheese, specially spread on dark chocolate.. mmh mh ^^

btw yesterday, crying for the chili, i did some quick search about capsaicin.. i knew something about but i never checked out deep the scoville scale thing O_o i also knew that the habanero chile is one of the hottest but i didnt know i bought exactly the red savina kind LOL oh well, i still have 2 of them to eat tomorrow..

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

veggie sandwiches

this week i got some wondrous zucchini, so here they are my last dinner sandwiches!


yesterday i had this sauteed zucchini + sundried tomatoes and goat cheese sandwich. the bread is a mixed cereals finnish bread i like a lot.. not sure which cereals are though LOL

this evening i rather cut zucchini in stripes and sauteed them with some black pepper and fresh basil, adding some water to keep them light and soft. then i spread the zucchini on cereals bread and simply topped with chopped fresh habanero red chili (yea it was hot to tears eheheh) and minced toasted&salted cashew nuts. believe me, it comes out an awesome sandwich :)

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

risotto and sundried tomatoes


i'm really fond of sundried tomatoes.. specially if preserved without salt (i like a lot those too but sometimes there's so much of it you lose the sense of taste for a while ehehehe) i also love to make a rough red pesto with them, fresh basil and and pine seeds.. luscious :)

anyway, this evening i decided i was going to have some in my risotto. last time i visited home back in italy, i brought some (well let's say a lot of) sundried tomatoes of my fav kind.. no salt no oil just them in their delicious delight, a cheerful outburst of summery taste filled with sunlight sensations.. their look makes me think of scorched summer afternoons in deep south of italy, thing that i actually enjoy a lot ^^


so here it is.. first of all i prepared some stock with a bit of stock cube (yep i do that sometimes even if i dont like it too much, but i cant make my own beef stock just for a dish of risotto eheheh) chopped carrots and fresh tomatoes. i made a tasty soffritto with butter, strips of dried tomatoes and chopped shallot. then i toasted the rice in it and poured a little bit of white wine from sicily, when that' was evaporated i started to pour some spoons of stock and kept on stirring.
i added some minced fresh basil at the end, as well as a bit of butter. the result was amazing, specially to be just last minute culinary improvisation.. i was kinda impressed by myself LOL

Saturday, May 3, 2008

the egg matter

there you are.. i cant make eggs properly.

when i was a child i despised eggs with all my forces.. the only eggish thing i could bear (and actually loved) was fresh yolk, hand-whipped by grandma with a bit of sugar till it got very light and soft. i still love that. now i like eggs in general and i find them a wondrous ingredient for a brunch.. i'm good at making anything sweet that implies eggs, but dont ask me to make some salty recipe. i cant even make proper scrumbled eggs. the taste is usually anyway good but they just look horribly :D

so this is what i managed to make for dinner, a bunch of chicken bits, apparently scrumbled eggs and brussels sprouts.. i whipped the eggs with a bit of sugar and black pepper because i like the odd contrast between sweet and the slightly bitter taste of the sprouts :)

Friday, May 2, 2008

sort of spring roll

so.. i bought this wonderful round sheets of phyllo. i looked for them for a while, it seems here frozen phyllo is not that widespread, so i go with this version.
i was so excited that i finally could put my paws on it, that once at home i didnt use it for any of the recipes i wished to try.. i made some improvised spring rolls instead :) the filling is made with sauteed chicken bits, brussels sprouts and fresh chili, some fresh basil leaves to top.