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‘Egg yolks only’ Category

  1. Short pastry with salted butter and orange zest: one, no one and one hundred thousand

    March 5, 2013 by Giulietta

    Frolla al burro salato e arancia

     

    Since I completed my professional pastry class  in December, I made a lot of short pastry, mostly because I love it, but also because I think it’s an incredibly versatile recipe, something that you can easily transform in 1001 different ways, one better than the the one before.

    So, having some salted butter I bought some time ago, I decided to make a slightly salted short pastry (using some salted butter, together with unsalted one) orange-scented. I took the cue from Sara, but I used my shortpastry recipe.

    One of the great things about short pastry is that you can make a lot of delicacies with the same dough (and a quite simple one, I’d say. So, with a single dough, I propose three different recipes.

    But, first thing first, I’ll start with my basic recipe for short pastry cookies,or shortbread.

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  2. Amélie’s crème brûlée (but not just her’s)

    September 7, 2012 by Giulietta

    That’s right, now when I see a crème brûlée, I make or I eat one, I can’t help but think about Amélie Poulain from “Amélie” and her small pleasures of life, among which stands out cracking the crust of a crème brûlée with a teaspoon … well, like her, I also like dipping my hands in the grain -or flour-, but that’s another story.

    But over time Amélie’s crème brûlée (who knows what’s the recipe for HER crème brûlée?!) overlapped with other suggestions, not film ones, but very personal, small and sweet memories that make me feel like crème brûlée is also my dessert (and perhaps not only mine).

    I believe that every one of us bind dishes, savoury or sweet ones, to some moment in our lives, to some people or states of mind. And so, if I have to give a dish-definition of this particular moment in my life, I would say it’s a moment made of pizza and crème brûlée and, more generally, a moment with a lot of food, few pictures and few posts (but you know me, I come and go and, sooner or later, I’ll come back to the fold, at least a little more often). And I would say that, apart from my presence/absence on this blog, I keep the rest very tight.

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  3. Happy birthday to me – Meringue pie in a cup (sort of)

    July 9, 2012 by Giulietta

     

    A very quick post, with a very clear intention: wish a HAPPY (belated) BIRTHDAY to me (I wish it to myself, 'cause you never know)! Oh, yes, I fall into the birthday's post cliche, too, but I won't keep going (at myself, of course) stating my desperation for the advancing age (but the age advances, though) or describing everything that I prepared for the celebrations in my honour. Well, actually I didn't prepare anything, there was no special celebration, I refused to cook, at least on my birthday (what the heck!).

    But, for my non-birthday (aka birthday celebrated in advance), I prepared this meringue pie in the cup (sort of), which had some success .. why did I prepare meringue pie for my non-birthday, when I don't go crazy for meringue? This remains a mystery to solve. But that's another story, which I think has something to do with mental tares I mentioned in my previous post … look on the bright side, at least I didn't turn on the oven!

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  4. Give me the strenght! Motivational olive oil cookies

    March 17, 2012 by Giulietta

     

    For some time now, my days literally run away, in a vortex of commitments that I can hardly count: there's work, of course, but then there's the photography class, the Arabic cuisine class, tutoring, and then there's my private life, going out with friends, phone calls, e-mail and SMS. Then there's the blog, and I don't have to tell you how my presence here decreased a lot: now I have a weekly "appointment" with you, but its importance for me stays always the same.

    And yet I feel like I'm forgetting something that contributes to fill my days … ah, yes, then there are my dreams, the ones that make me sigh as a hero of some Nineteenth century novel thinking about Paris in spring, the ones that had me convinced that I have to join a singing or a professional cooking class… these dreams (and many others, but I won't make a list) are some sort of a background, and they're ready to creep into my thoughts while I wait for a green light or while I'm in line to pay in a supermarket. And they make ​​me realize that, despite my current frenzy, but I could call it chaos (and I don't know if it actually gives birth to a dancing star, like Nietzsche said), I still have so much to do, places to see and people worth knowing. We must "only" channel our forces better, chasing the right dreams, big or small ones.

    But when your forces aren't enough, when we would like a word of comfort and there is no one who can give us that, no one who can give us his/her shoulder to lean on?

    Well, there are motivational cookies, then. These cookies can say everything we would love to hear … a simple "Good morning" (Buongiorno) when you wake up alone in the morning and you would like someone at your side, a "Come on" ("Daje", in roman dialect) to give yourself a shake (a everything that I love hate Roman), an "alegher" (something Piedmontese that means "stay happy") to remember yourself that everything will be okay, a "hold on" (Resisti) for the darkest moments.

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  5. It’s always the right time for tea… and some meliga pastries

    May 30, 2011 by Giulietta

    If you have never tasted meliga pastries, you don't know what you have missed!

    Meliga pastries, in fact, are the best cookies in the universe (IMHO) … they have Piedmontese origins (they are particularly typical in the area of Mondovi, but they are also produced in other parts of the region) and the key ingredient of these cookies is the meliga or melia, ie, in Piedmontese dialect, corn. In fact they are largely composed  of corn flour, ground more than the corn flour used to prepare polenta.

    These cookies are similar in their composition to simple shortbread, but I think they have the proverbial extra gear, 'cause of this yellow flour, which makes these pastries crunchier and with a very particular taste… you have to try them.

    They are perfect for tea time, 'cause their taste is so simple but yet different from usual cookies, 'cause they are crunchy, also when soaked, simply because they are divine. The combination of meliga pastries and a good hot tea (but the tradition suggests to serve them with wine, sweet or not, or with eggnog – but maybe is best to avoid eggnog in this hot season) is so good that I always hope in the arrival of tea time, even if it's only about 8 AM.

    So, when I found, during a trip to the Piedmontese Langhe, a package of otto file (aka eight rows) corn flour (this is an old Piedmontese type of corn, forgotten in the past, but now increasingly rediscovered by growers) finely stone-ground (perfect for my beloved pastries), I just couldn't resist, and now I'm here to describe the perfect tea time.

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  6. Hymn to Spring: mille-feuille with wild flowers cream and strawberries

    April 26, 2011 by Giulietta

    For an Easter Monday worthy of its name I wanted to make a fresh, colorful and unusual dessert, that everyone could like.

    And so, as I moved around looking for inspiration, I stumbled on the Saturday episode of Italian Ready Steady Cook, in which the pastry chef Sal De Riso showed the preparation of a mille-feuille with wild flowers cream and garnished with peaches and red fruits… I had a divine illumination and in a second I decided that THIS would be my dessert (since my friend already prepared three more dessert plus a sorbet … but sorbet, as we say in Turin, "sgura", aka "skims")!

    But I have made ​​several modifications to the recipe shown by this skilled pastry chef: my mille-feuille is not garnished by a Bavarian cream, but a chantilly cream (custard cream plus whipped cream: this is softer than Bavarian cream, because chantilly cream doesn't have fish-glue), I used only strawberries ('cause peaches are not good, yet and I didn't find berries) and I didn't put in the middle of the puff pastry a layer of sponge cake: mine is made only with puff pastry, period.

    I hope that, despite these changes, you'll like my mille-feuille!

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  7. Either Italy or Spain, as long as we can eat

    April 13, 2011 by Giulietta

    To paraphrase the well-known Italian motto "Either France or Spain, as long as we can eat", today I present to you the happy marriage of a Spanish recipe with an Italian one.

    The two recipes do not come together, but I just tried the combination and the result was quite convincing, so I present it to you! Of course you are perfectly free to prepare and eat these desserts (yes, today we talk about desserts, two of them!) separately, but at least you'll know that eating them together it's not going to hurt you … Indeed, quite the opposite!

    In addition, these two desserts are very easy to prepare (these recipes could be useful on many occasions) and, more interesting, they are perfectly complementary, since one uses only egg whites and the other uses only egg yolks… then, as for the pork, we don't throw anything away (I already showed you here that you shouldn't throw anything away, even egg whites)!

    I have at least intrigued you a little?! So come and find out what sweets I'm talking about!

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