Sicilian egg gratin and my trip to Versailles

It was a sunny day that started with a little drizzle my last day in Paris.
I was stationed in a little town close to the ville lumieres at arm lengths from Versailles. In the past I have told myself many times to just take the train and visit the old kings but I was never strong enough to disentangle myself from the parisian hug. This time I didn't have any excuse; I set my alarm clock, bought my train ticket and there I was, Versailles.

Buckweat-Quinoa veggie muffins with lime-vanilla cream-cheese frosting

August is here and so is the middle of summer, not only that actually; August usually brings my whole family to Bonn for a little summer vacation.
My family has been visiting me regularly since I moved to Germany; a subtle way to keep an eye on my doing as well as experimencing new places, people and realities. The days of their visit are though punctuated by visits to some of our canonical restaurants of different extractions and traditions, often joined with some of my friends, but these days ar essentially a continous shopping-spree for the ladies of the family. By now, after more than 7 years, they are rather used to Bonn and so they do not need much attending from my side so I can continue my work as usual.

Goat cheese verrines with spiced apple-jelly

The beginning of each month is highlighted by the Secret Recipe Club so there is always something good to look for around the corner.
For the month of May I was assigned Megan's blog "Megan's Cookin". From her blog it is evident that she loves to cook and eat a bit of everything, so much so that she end up being a polygamous! But can you blame her to love both citrus and chocolate? Nah we can't, can we?

Meatloaf o the Rant

Time passes by faster than we realize and it is July already.

Half year has slipped through my fingers with probably nothing concrete to show that I have made the most of it. The past days have been pretty gloomy in this side of the world. Weather has turned itself into November mood as did I.
Closed as a clam shell, surrounded by a silent and quiet sea of apathy I find myself cornered in dark places. It is hard to escape reaching for the surface. No baits or fisherman plunging his hands into these waters to bring me to a different future and I can't swim.
In these days of senseless sadness I just wish to retire under the blankets and sleep, hoping for dreams depicting a better reality, a more meaningful one perhaps.
Eventually the sun comes lurking out of the clouds warming up our bodies and hearts.
Today the sun is out.

Milky sweetness for a healthy dessert

"At last we meet!" told he to the bowl in front of him. Filled with a creamy syrup, it hosted little white sponges. What were they made from? "Cheese", somebody said.
The history of me and this sweet, rich Indian dessert dates back to at least two years ago when exploring the meanders of a virtual video gallery, I stumbled upon this video from "Show Me The Curry":

Light and sweet as a feather

Few weeks ago wondering around the web, I guess through StumbleUpon, I stumbled on Priya’s blog “Now Serving...". The landing page couldn’t have been more fit for the days I was going through.
Since few weeks I am trying to spend some of my working time designing cakes so to build up a portfolio for the Cake Designing part of my future consulting business. I have to say that these have been lovely hours spent with some good designing book and with the pencil back in my hand. It has been ages since I last draw something for fun. Going into the digital world has meant that all the space on the table was taken by the laptop.
I was missing those creative times when you just need an eraser to clear up a mistake; a ruler and a compass are sufficient to frame and regulate your thoughts.

The ultimate Cheesecake and August PaperChef

The past July I was honored to win the monthly PaperChef challenge with my Seared salmon fillet glazed with a raspberry sauce and served with a zucchini and rice timbale and black-eyed peas cooked with mint and garlic. Karen of Prospect the Pantry was so surprised by my raspberry and cumin sauce that she passed me the honor of co-hosting this creative challenge for the month of August. My duties will be to choose the 4 new ingredients and the monthly winner to whom to pass the palm for September's challenge. How do these ingredients get chosen? The hosts of this challenge Ilva of Lucullian Delights and Mikey of Spikey Mikey’s will post a list of ingredients over at PaperChef to which everybody can add their owns simply by commenting.
Back to August challenge, I decided to sort alphabetically the final ingredients that Mikey emailed me this morning allowing me to eliminate a few doubles, Random.org was then appointed with the hard job of drawing the four random numbers out of the 56 ingredients. And the winning ingredients for PaperChef's 55th round are:

The Four Velveteers go cheesy nutting

Here we go again! It is Velveteers time!! Actually, to be honest, it was almost one week ago and I finally managed to cook up the dish I planned, photo shoot it and now write about it.

 What did I do in these days? I catered a birthday dinner party. It was great fun; it is always great fun to be able to make people happy. The suddenly super hot and humid weather made me feel 10 years older though, aching bones, legs and so on. Yeah, I missed only (extra) gray hairs.
For this round of the Four Velveteers; Aparna, Asha, Pam and me decided to prepare a dessert that would feature nuts.
From the first moment I wanted to include cheese in my dish; the idea was a new catch on the classic Greek dessert based on yogurt, honey and nuts. On the way thinking about how to realize it, I was more interested in using Camembert.
The idea was now to hollow a little Camembert wheel keeping the shell as container for the dish, the scooped out cheese would be turned into a nice fondue sauce.
The other ingredients for the dish would be seasonal and refreshing; that means rhubarb and strawberries!
During this season I can consider myself as blessed; this region of Germany (North Rhine Westphalia) produces some of the best strawberries I have ever eaten. They are not what we would recognize as perfectly ripe, inviting looking strawberries; they have more of an orange pinkish hue than the bright purplish red we are used to. But their scent, oh my...
If the look isn't enough to drive you closer, their intoxicating sweet, aromatic, honey like aroma is just fantastic.
I am not very familiar with rhubarb, but few trials with it and you easily get why it goes so well with strawberries and oranges; its taste actually reminds a lot of these fruits.
As nuts I decided to use hazelnuts. I finally converged on the perfect way to roast them so nothing is stopping me to enjoy them, So here you are my:

Strawberry and rhubarb jelly salad served with a sweet fondue sauce and a licorice candy disk

This ain't a Lasagna

I am just back from my trip to Sicily visiting my family; trying to get used again to Germany with its gloomy and cold weather, I got in a terrible lousy mood. Totally lacking energy, sprint, inspiration. Thankfully it was that time of the month when the Daring Cooks challenge comes to its deadline, so the dinner was fixed. And what a yummy dinner!

Barbara of Barbara Bakes has chosen for us Mexican Enchiladas. First time I try my hand at Mexican food, though I always wanted to start fiddling with this cuisine. The bold flavors, spiciness and freshness always attracted me, probably reminded me of Southern Italian cuisine.
Tonight then I was more than happy to jump on the Daring train and start fixing my dinner.
The recipe we have been asked to follow was taken from finecooking and here it is.

Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchiladas

Fresh, zingy richness in a clear glass

The four Velveteers are back! After our Red-Velvet cakes we come back to you with a new adventure into our fridges, grocery stores and creative minds.
This time it took us quite a few emails before we could agree on what to propose you. At the end we settled for a Verrine.
What is that?? You might say; that is simply a layered dish prepared into a transparent glass so to admire the alternation of its colors and textures and entice our tasting experience. To make the challenge more interesting we decided to propose each an ingredient to keep secret till the day when they were disclosed all together to the others. Aparna required us to include a cheese of any kind, Asha went for zucchini or squash, Pam chose salmon and I threw in chocolate (yeah I know, I like to make things difficult).

So, let’s see what we have on hands. Zucchini have two major qualities to them: they have a lovely crunchy bite when raw and they get sweet when cooked long enough. To make the things even, I decided to use them two ways: creamy and crunchy.
As salmon I chose to use the smoked one and it is mainly salty, rich and meaty.
The flavors did work for me from the starting; the tricky part was in choosing a proper cheese that will stand out balancing the saltiness of the salmon and the sweetness of the zucchini. At the end, I chose to use Gorgonzola with its saltiness and slight bitterness.
Chocolate was naturally to be dark for me but… when pondering on the juxtaposition of the different layers, the possibility to use milk chocolate came around.

To link the various components I had my spice rack on hand.
All this thinking and pondering brought to life my:

Smoked salmon verrine with zucchini-duo, a Gorgonzola mornay sauce and peppery chocolate shards.

Daring Bakers at travel

Challenges, the life of a foodie are full of them; even more if you are a blogger. We apostrophize ourselves as Daring and caring. Being it savory or sweet, we meet up each month in two occasions to share the results on a chosen challenge.
The sweet challenge that us, Daring Bakers (DBs), have been presented with this month was Tiramisu. Thanks to this choice, we were able to make an ideal travel starting from India, reaching USA with a little touch of Italy.
The hostesses for the monthly DBs’ challenge were the lovely Aparna and Deeba from the colorful India. They chose the recipe for Tiramisu proposed by pastry chef Carminantonio Iannaccone. Major part of the challenge was the making of mascarpone and ladyfingers biscuits from scratch. Frankly speaking, this was not the hardest part of the challenge; the recipe itself was quite long to finish. The entire process took a whole of 3 days with 2 days dedicated strictly on the tiramisu cake.
Have you ever tried to make this Italian dessert? I am sure though that you have tasted it: soft, spongy biscuits soaked in strong coffee and layered with a fluffy and delicate mascarpone and egg cream; a dusting of cocoa powder crowns it all.
It is not a really difficult cake to make and it is always a great success with guests.
Here there is the recipe we were asked to follow.

Candida voluptate for your wakeup

I suppose you have already encountered in your path this Italian cheese confection. A sort of rich cream-cheese is often used in Italian cuisine to create luscious dishes, from pasta to desserts. For instance quite popular are the tagliatelle with mascarpone and walnuts or radicchio; it can also be used in place of cream to enrich sauces or stuffing featuring ricotta cheese.
Though pretty versatile and luxurious, this creamy white cheese may be a bit expensive to buy outside Italy; thankfully for us, doing it at home is pretty easy. Here you have how to.

Mascarpone
(Source: Vera’s Recipe for Homemade Mascarpone Cheese )
This recipe makes 140gm of mascarpone cheese (the yield is roughly 50%).
Ingredients:

• 250ml whipping pasteurized (not ultra-pasteurized), preferably organic cream (between 25% to 36% fat cream will do);
• 1/2 tablespoon fresh lemon juice.

Method:
Bring 1 inch of water to a boil in a saucepan. Reduce the heat to medium-low so the water is barely simmering. Pour the cream into a medium heat-resistant bowl that will fit snugly on top of the saucepan but will not touch the water. Place the bowl with the cream on the saucepan to create a double boiler. Heat the cream, stirring often, to 190 F/88 See; the cream will almost be boiling at that point.
It will take about 10-15 minutes of heating. Add the lemon juice and continue heating the mixture, stirring gently, until the cream will start looking greenish sign that the whey is starting to separate.
The cream ill just be slightly thicker at this point and you may think to have screwed up the recipe. The mascarpone will firm up and present itself to you after overnight refrigeration. Place then a fine sieve, lined with various layers of cheesecloth or a wet cotton handkerchief, over a bowl and poor the cream into the sieve letting the whey drain into the bowl. Let he cream come to room temperature before putting it in the fridge overnight to drain and set.
Keep refrigerated and use within 3 to 4 days.

Now that you know how to do it, you are free to choose the kind of cream you want to use, both as source as well as fat content. Give it a try, you will love this cheese if only simply with some chocolate/nougat spread on a toast for an elegant breakfast.