Who knew that home-made bagels would be so easy and tasty. Honestly I doubted my own bagels would be as good as those from a specialized bagel store. And I figured, with the double rising and the boiling and the baking, it’d be pretty had, or at least a lot of work.
Boy, was I wrong!
First off, making the dough, Anne-Sophie did all the work quickly and easily. Just put the dry ingredients in, started her, and added the liquids. Leave her on for a couple of minutes and voila, dough!
I seriously believe the rolling of the bagels was the hardest part. You obviously don’t want them to get loose and turn into a long bagel-snake, so it needs to be firm. It’s kinda tricky to get that right. I’ll need to practice that a little more. But other than than, easy-peasy.
I used this recipe, with only one minor substitution, I used substituted about a third of the plain flour for whole wheat. And for topping I made a mix of poppy seeds, dried garlic, sea salt, onion powder and rosemary. Not quite the traditional ‘everything’ topping, but very tasty nonetheless.
There are many, many variations of this classic Italian dessert. The base is always the same though; mascarpone, powdered sugar, eggs, coffee and lady fingers. I’ve heard of variations with different cookies, though in my opinion that’s too big a difference to still call it tiramisu.
L and I were invited to an Easter-Monday-dinner. I volunteered to bring dessert and offered some options. Tiramisu was the quick winner and so I found myself making a mess of my kitchen once again. It is virtually impossible for me to cook without making a mess, but tiramisu might just be one of the messiest things I make. Especially when you realize that it needs no cooking and all ends up in 1 dish. No problem though, the taste totally makes up for it!
My version of tiramisu is an adaptation of the classic that’s in the Silver Spoon. Though I don’t alter much, I do think my few ‘tweaks’ make it mine, and very tasty!
Tiramisu (big dish, would easily serve 8, adapted from the Silver Spoon)
- 150 grams of powdered sugar
- 4 eggs, divided
- 400 grams mascarpone
- 150 ml strong coffee
- 25 ml amaretto
- 150 grams dark chocolate, grated
- about 200 grams lady fingers
!! Note: In my dish I can make 2 layers. That’s how I explain this recipe. If you have a different size dish, you might want to make 3 layers and thus divide the ingredients differently!!
Divide the eggs, beat the egg whites very, very stiff. Cream the egg yolks and powdered sugar, when smooth and a pale yellow, add the mascarpone and beat a little more, make sure there aren’t any lumps left.
Carefully fold the beaten egg whites into the mascarpone mixture.
In a large bowl or casserole dish (rectangular/square is easiest) line half of the lady fingers sugar dide down and pour about half of the coffee and amaretto over. Spread a little less than half of the mascarpone mixture over the lady fingers. Sprinkle almost 2/3 of the grated chocolate over the mascarpone layer.
Line the other half of the lady fingers over the chocolate. Pour the remaining coffee and amaretto evenly over the lady fingers. Sprinkle a little more chocolate over the lady fingers and Finish with all the remaining mascarpone mixture.Even the mascarpone mixture out, push it down a little where you can, so it gets in between the lady fingers. Sprinkle the remaining chocolate over the tiramisu as a finishing touch.
Place the tiramisu in the fridge for at least 3 hours. Longer is better, as the tastes will infuse more. I try to make it the day before I need it.
Ok, I know this sounds like heresy, but Julia Child’s quiche dough recipe kinda sucks. I’ll have to explain this, I’m sure, as everyone will go “whaaat??? you say something of Julia Child’s isn’t awesome, that’s insane!!!” So first off, it’s really easy to make. In her book she suggests using an easier dough if you can’t figure out how to mix this, but really, if you’ve ever cooked anything at all, this should be possible. That’s not the problem. The problem is the taste and the consistency. First the taste. It’s bland! Very very bland. I’m wondering if she meant for you to use salted butter and forgot to write that down.
I am a low-sodium cook, I rarely add salt to anything, and if I do, I use it very sparingly. But this needed more salt for a savory dough, or the same amount of salt and way more sugar for a sweet dough. This was in-between nothingness. I’m sorry Julia, I really am. I’m still a big fan, but this dough wasn’t anything special!
Then the consistency. The problem is the butter. Now I LOVE butter. I prefer using real butter over margarine any time, but this recipe is overdoing it. The dough uses both A LOT OF butter and 3 tablespoons of crisco. That’s a lot of fat! I’m fully willing to disregard the health portion of that statement, as I don’t mind eating unhealthy once in a while. But fat melts when it gets hot, and when a third of your dough (maybe even more) is fat, this means once you move it into the oven, the dough will actually melt and fall down.
Julia Child suggests blind baking the dough, at least half, to prevent a soggy bottom, which I tried, but the dough just completely melted. The solution Julia proposes, doesn’t work very well, or at all actually, the dough just pulled apart.
Since the dough actually hadn’t cooked yet, just melted, I decided to form it back into a ball, knead it a little (things Julia won’t let you do in her instructions) and put it in the freezer for a while. I started on the quiche filling and just left the dough to cool and harden. Once my quiche filling was done, the dough was hard and cold, so I rolled it again, lined the pan with the dough – again – but decided against blind-baking and just filled the quiche. The dough still fell down a bit, part of it actually cascaded in a bit , resulting in a not-so-even shaped quiche. It worked though, the dough didn’t melt completely, it held the filling fine and the end result was an uncooked bottom, but besides that it was pretty good. In the end, it’s all about the filling right? And that was my own recipe (sorry Julia)
So while the quiche was baking (7 eggs and cream and a LOT of cheese takes quite some time to fully cook) I made the leftover dough into cookies. Very very simple, but tasty cookies.
Cinnamon sugar leftover cookies
- leftover dough (pie, quiche, whatever)
- cinnamon
- sugar
Roll out the leftover dough really thin, sprinkle it liberally with cinnamon and sugar. Fold in two and fold
that double again. Roll this out again, make it as thin as you can go without creating holes in the dough. Fold it again and roll again. You’ll see the cinnamon all through the dough now, but you’ve also created little layers, like puff pasty basically. Roll it out as thin as you can go and cut strips, circles or whatever shape you like, place them on a cookie sheet, sprinkle a little extra sugar on them and bake them in a hot oven until brown. They’re real simple, but tasty!
I actually popped the cookies in with the quiche when it was halfway done. We took the pictures and finished them all before the quiche even came out… oops!
Since the quiche filling was awesome, but the crust was so bland, I’ll only write down the filling recipe. I will definitely not make this crust again, the pre-made frozen grocery store stuff tastes better! So that’s what I’ll do next time, or try a different crust recipe. I’ll keep you posted!
Cheddar and bacon quiche (filling recipe for an 8 inch pie)
- 7 medium size eggs
- 125-150 grams grated cheddar (I used mild cheddar, sharp would’ve been better)
- 100 grams (1 small package) uncooked bacon bits
- 2 big spring onions
- heavy cream
- pepper
- herbes de provence
Grate the cheddar into a big bowl, add the eggs, mix with a fork. Slowly fry the bacon bits and let them cook a little. Cut the spring onions into small rings and add them to the bowl, add some cream, pepper and herbes de provence. Once the bacon has cooled down a little, add the cooked bacon to the bowl with a little bit of the grease. Mix everything well, with a fork, pour into pie crust and bake in a hot oven until all the egg has set (it’s not wobbly anymore when you move it) and it’s brown on top. Serve hot.
Since L and I are going to an event tonight, which will have warm and cold hors d’oeuvres we decided a full dinner would be silly. The hors d’oeuvres might be enough to sustain ourselves, but that’s a risk we didnt really want to make. So I figured a healthy, filling and tasty hot snack would be just the thing to make. Eat snack, get ready for event and go and be merry… or something like that.
A while ago I saw a post on one of my favorite food blogs about an eggplant and brie dish. It looked like a sort of crossover between a tart, a pizza and a sandwich, which the author had bought at an airport in Canada somewhere. It looked really good! When decidign what kind of snack to make for us, the eggplant-brie-tartlet sprang to mind. Okay, no brie, and no idea what exactly was in it, but I figured I could come up with something tasty.
The end result: eggplant and cheeses on puff pastry. What a treat, and so simple to make too! It literally took no effort, which is good for a snack like that. Something you can prepare, pop in the oven and then get yourself ready. Ofcourse I didn’t get ready, but looked at my creation through the oven door window. Seeing them puff up was fun. Eating them even more fun!
Eggplant and cheese snack (recipe makes 3 large pastries)
- 3 small squares of frozen puff pastry (about 12×12 cm, defrosted)
- 1 eggplant
- grated cheese (I used both parmesan and a simple Dutch cheese)
- mixed italian seasoning
- salt (for preparing the eggplant)
Prepare the eggplant by slicing it, putting it in a colander over a bowl and sprinkling a good amount of salt over the slices. Leave it to stand that way for at least 20 minutes, longer if possible. The salt will pull out the bitter eggplant juices that make it spongey. You can literally see the moisture dripping out. Each drop that leaves the eggplant, makes it tastier when served!
Wash the eggplant, to clean off the salt, then dry them off by squishing them between paper towel.
Cook the eggplant slices on a hot grill or griddle (I use a stovetop grill-pan, it leaves nice brown stripes on the vegetable.) Sprinkle some italian seasoning once you’ve turned them once, turn them once more after that.
Lay your squares of puff pastry on a cooky sheet. Lay one slice of eggplant in the middle, add a little cheese on top, add the next slice of eggplant, some more cheese and continue until you’re out of eggplant (about 3 or 4 slices of eggplant per piece of pastry.) Top with some more cheese and a sprinkle of italian seasoning.
Pop the cookie sheet in a pre-heated oven (about 200 degrees celsius) and bake them until the pastry is puffed and brown, and the cheese has melted.
You can also make smaller pieces, with less eggplant and cheese, and serve them as hors d’oeuvres at a party. They’re small elegant and a nice treat for vegetarians too!
I got some drumsticks this week. Usually when I make chicken, I use chicken breasts. Chicken has more flavor when cooked bone-in, but it’s always so messy. Once in a while I’m okay with that though.
Looking at what I still had in my fridge, earlier this week, I figured I could make chicken in cream sauce. It doesn’t sound or look spectacular, but it sure does taste awesome!!! I also had some sweet red peppers, sweet onions and a little bit of home-made, dried pasta leftover. All in all it seemed like a balanced meal to me.
I thought the peppers and onions might not be the best compliment to the chicken dish, but since I had to use them, I went with it anyway. And wow, were we lucky. Unexpectedly it turned out a perfect match!
Chicken in cream sauce (recipe for 2, adapted from the Silver Spoon)
- 4 drumsticks
- salt, pepper, plain flour
- butter
- heavy cream
- lemon juice
- cooked ham, cubed
Pat the drumsticks dry using a paper towel. Season them with salt and pepper on all sides and sprinkle/rub some flour on them. Melt a good notch of butter in a heavy pan. Brown the chicken on all sides.
Pour in the heavy cream, about 200 ml, or cover the pan with about a centimeter of cream. Cook on low heat for about half an hour, don’t let the cream go much above a simmer! Add a good squirt of lemon juice, some more pepper (and salt if you think you need that, but you shouldn’t, it’s bad for you!!!)
Add the cubed ham to the pan, cook for a couple more minutes and serve.
I plated the chicken with a little ham and sauce, the (grilled) pepper and onions. I left most of the sauce in the pan. During the time the ham was cooking in the pan, I’d cooked the pasta. Since it was dried it needed to boil slightly longer than when made fresh. I drained the pasta, then added it to the pan with the cream sauce, stirred the sauce in, plated the pasta and divided all the remaining sauce over both plates.
It wasn’t a traditional Italian dish in any way (eating pasta with the meat and veggies is a big no-no) even though most of the food/recipes were Italian. Whatever it was (Valerie-an), it was very very tasty!!!
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