Nutty Swedish Meatballs

This month you are lucky! Two post in just a few days, must be a record for me, I hope that isn't too much inspiration for your belly to bare.

I am very happy to announce that my Pomegranate shot won February DMBLGiT challenge in the Originality category; my first win in this challenge! Many thanks to the judges for choosing my entry. 

If you want to enter the March edition of the challenge, check the details on Wendy's post.

Another month has passed since the last Secret Recipe Club and at this round I was assigned the inspiring Delishhh Blog from Ewa. She usually posts homey kind of recipes with interesting flavor or presentation twists. I saw her Cinnamon sugar pull apart bread back when she originally posted the recipe and found it a very fun and yummy idea, I will have to try soon (I hope).

Kaffir-lime risotto with saffron mussels and roasted hazelnuts

It slipped almost unnoticed but our little baby just turned 3.
It doesn't look like right? Still so small and full of promises, rough around the edges but with a softy heart.

It came to life amongst the street of Paris between a narghile pipe and a chai, between wild chemistry talks and calm heart-pouring sessions between friends.

In 3 years it found many friends and supporters to make its parents proud of its stumbling through the virtual life. Still uncertain of where to go, a fall every now and then, a seldom cry for help or out of frustration.

It is not always black or white

You probably have noticed already that this month I was pleased to host among this creative walls one of the most interesting challenge out there in the blogosphere: Paper Chef.
Strangely from the usual chaotic recipe development process, the first idea to come out and to be scribbled over one of my notebooks was the winner. Do not get me wrong, I wrote down short of a tenth of candidate dishes but either sleepiness or the recognition of a sparkle of efficiency made me concentrate on the first pasta dish.
The perfect Teutonic efficiency stops here because it was only when I had almost completed the dish that I realized one of the four PaperChef’s ingredients in my head was wron. Peaches went in instead of candied orange peel. No big drama, the two fit quite well with each other so, more fun for our papillae!
What I propose you today is a sweet and earthy savory dish, a really lovely and elegant one that I really won’t mind having in a tete-a-tete dinner by the candle light even if with a mirror.
Cutting it short, here I present you my

Middle Eastern raviolo served with cranberry-sage butter sauce, fresh peach crescents and thyme leaves

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:

PaperChef 54 with a magic quartet

Zucchini, raspberries, beans and cereals; these are the actors of today' show.
As every first weekend of each month, it is PaperChef time! If you remember I have already taken part to this creative challenge, quite a few months back. Voids of memory and travels have impeded me to rejoin the happy crew for the monthly ride.
Miraculously this month I remembered of it and checked the dedicated blog  even before the host and ingredients were disclosed; I told you it had something of a miracle, no?
This month host is Karen of Prospect the Pantry and she is the responsible for the weird combination of toys I had in front of me. To be honest, fate is the responsible but, have you read of the power of thoughts on stochastic event? if not, it is a pretty cool scientific/philosophical topic to delve into. Anyhow, the whole ingredients list (Zucchini, raspberries, beans and cereals) didn't look so strange if it wasn't for the raspberries.

Dark Tones of Flavors

Yesterday night I thought of pushing my sauce experimentations using some Zinfandel from California. During my last catered dinner, I came in touch with Shiitake mushrooms for the first time and I thought that their decisive taste could compliment well the red wine. So here we go:

Zinfandel-Shiitake cream sauce

Ingredients:
- 1cup Zinfandel wine;
- Few pieces of sliced cooked ham;
- 1 three fingers pinch of sugar;
- 6 dried Shiitake mushrooms;
- Ca 1tbsp heavy cream;
- Few drops of Worcestershire sauce;
- Salt and pepper.

Procedure:
To start with, soak the mushrooms in 1 cup of warm water, cover and let them aside. In the meantime, start reducing the wine with the ham and the sugar. When the wine would have reached 1/3 of a cup in volume, discard the ham from the saucepan, add the cream and let reduce slightly. By now the mushrooms should be ready, chop them in quarters. Add the mushrooms and the sifted soaking water to the saucepan and reduce back to roughly 1/3 cup of liquid; season with the Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper (and a splash of fresh wine).

What's for dinner? Same old, same old??

Have you always been looking for a good source to improve your Culinary Art know-how? Then stop your search! Chef Jacob is developing just what we need:
The Free Culinary School Podcast .

In his periodical podcast episodes, Chef Jacob Burton shares with us his knowledge about culinary arts. In his clear, concise, friendly and honest style he gives us a way to feel more secure of ourselves when concocting our creations and brings our cooking style to the next level. Added to this, the bits of food science he throws in are like gilding the lily.
From Knives Skills (Ep1) to Stocks (Ep2), from how to treat the main staple grains (Ep4) to the main techniques for cooking proteins (Ep5, Ep6, Ep7) he brings us through the basic part of the course that will allow us to level our knowledge preparing ourselves for the more advanced part of the course.
Particularly worthy are the episodes on the five mother sauces (Hollandaise, Velouté, Béchamel, Tomate and Espagnole ) where he explains us the how and whys of these foundations of classical French cuisine, indispensable to every cook repertoire.

The advanced part of the course opens with a four episodes on Garde Manger or Cold Cuisine where we learn how to deal with salad greens and vinaigrettes, the basic of the classical salads and of creamy dressings and the main constituents of composed salads and canapés. Every now and then we can even find him in his kitchen explaining us how to plate with sauces and set up salads.

Moreover the interaction among the members of the community is quite intense and valuable. The forum connected to the website is quite active and Chef Jacob himself answers the questions and problems of the different members (each podcast has also a questions segment).

So what are you waiting for?? Wear your apron, the lesson is starting!