Tag Archives: egg

Greek cake with spinach and feta

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Torta salata con feta e spinaci

I love Greece and every year, when summer comes, I think about it and how much I would love to go back!

So I try to sunken myself in Greek recipes! This combination, feta cheese and spinach, just scream Greece, and the fillo pastry, with its crunchiness is perfect!

Ingredients

1 pack frozen fillo pastry, thawed following the manufactures instructions

1 shallots or 1 little onion

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 kg fresh spinach

1 handful raisins

1 handful pine nuts

200 g of feta cheese

2 eggs

50 ml milk

50 g butter

For 6 people as starter, 2 as main dish

  1. Pre-heat the oven at 180° C.
  2. Finely chop shallot or onion.
  3. In a big pan fry the chopped shallot or onion, then add all the spinach: it will look like too much, but believe me, they will fit once cooked. Cover with a lid.
  4. After a few minutes, when spinach are reduce, add raisins and cook for few more minutes. Remove from the eat and add pine nuts.
  5. In a bowl mix spinach, crumbled feta and 2 eggs.
  6. In a sauce pan, melt the butter with the milk. Let it cool.
  7. Brush the bottom and the sides of a cake tin with some butter and milk.
  8. Open the fillo pastry, take 4 sheets and let the rest under a damp tea towel.
  9. With your 4 sheets, cover the bottom and the sides of the cake tin.
  10. Add half of your spinach, cover with more sheets of fillo pastry, add the rest of the spinach.
  11. Fold all the over layer of fillo pastry inside your cake tin, add two more sheets and fold them to fit the size of the cake tin.
  12. Brush with loads of milk and butter.
  13. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden.
  14. Serve still warm.

Finnish buns

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Buns with jam

This buns are just perfect! There is nothing more to say about this velvety dough and sensational French brioche texture!

The original recipe is from Falling Cloudberries: A World of Family Recipes, by Tessa Kiros: I recommend this book to anyone interested in real, down to hearth, simple and satisfying recipes! I’ve tried many and none was a disappointment, from a potato salad to the ultimate roasted chicken.

And those buns! Even the making of them is so satisfying I could make them everyday!

Ingredients

250 ml tiepid milk

100 g sugar

25 g fresh yeast (I made them even with 7 g of dry yeast: perfect!)

1 egg, slightly beaten

125 softened butter

2 teaspoons of ground cardamom

1 teaspoon of salt

650 g flour 0 (you can make them even with normal 00 flour, but flour 0 helps to develop a better texture)

For the filling

Jam (I’ve used my father in law figs and honey jam: whole figs cooked in sugar and honey. The original recipe calls for cinnamon butter, but I do pefer them with jam). I think next time I try to add fresh fruits, like berries or sliced apples, to the filling.

I normally make the dough in my Kenwood Chef: easier, faster, no fuss. But you can make it by hand (brave!).

Makes about 20 big buns

  1. Crumble the yeast in the milk with the sugar and let it bubble.
  2. Add the egg, butter, cardamom and salt. Mix.
  3. Add the flour, mixing with a fork, then by hand.
  4. Knead by hand until the dough is silky and smooth.
  5. Cover with a clean dump cloth and let it rise in a warm place for at least 2 hours on until it doubled the size.
  6. On a floured surface, roll out the dough 2-3 millimetres thick.
  7. Spread the jam and beginning for the larger side, roll it up to make a big sausage.
  8. Cut the sausage in 3 centimetres thick slices. Lay them, cut side up, on a tray covered with oven-proof paper, 2-3 centimetres far from one another. Let it rise.
  9. Preheat the oven at 180° C.
  10. When the oven is hot, bake the buns for 15 minutes or until golden.
  11. Let them cool, if you can resist!

Pumpkin Muffin with Chocolate Chip

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Chocolate chip pumpkin muffins

One of the last pumpkin of the season, I know… Soon there will be asparagus and other spring vegetables…

So, what better use than pumpkin muffins? Of course the best use of all is pumpkin risotto! But even the muffin are quite satisfying!

Inspiration from Le Cordon Bleu – home Collection – Muffins.

Ingredients

250 g pumpkin, peeled and diced

180 g flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

60 g chocolate chip

55 g cane sugar

1 egg

60 ml vegetable oil

60 ml milk

For 12 muffins (6 king size)

  1. Preheat the oven at 180°C.
  2. Cook the diced pumpkin in the oven or in the microwave until tender. Blend it.
  3. In a large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, sugar and chocolate chip. Make a wheel in the middle.
  4. Inside the wheel add egg, oil, milk and the puréed pumpkin.
  5. Mix roughly, leaving lumps.
  6. Divide the mixture in 12 muffin moulds, covered with paper pastry cases.
  7. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a chopstick come out clean form the middle of one of the muffin.
  8. Let it cool on a rack.
  9. Store in airtight container for up to 3 days (you’ll finish them before!).

Chocolate chip pumpkin muffins

Bavarois au safran et miel

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Saffron Bavarese in the fridge

Bavarois is something quite simple to make, if you have patience, passion and a predisposition to make desserts.

Patience because you need to wait, to let the cream cool before to do anything else.

Passion because you need to come up with endless parings to make astonishing bavarois.

Predisposition because if you don’t know by instinct when the cream is enough whipped or the custard is thick enough, well, you fail… But anything can be learned!

For 6 people

3 egg yolks

250 ml milk

3 tablespoons honey

8 g (= 4 sheets) jelly

400 ml cream, chilled

Saffron

A bavarois is made of 3 different steps: 2 preparations and an action.

First preparation: custard

Soak jelly sheets in cold water.

Hot the milk.

Beat egg yolks and honey in a saucepan with a think bottom.

Add the hot milk and keep beating, Turn on the fire and cook on a low fire, turning with a wooden spoon.

Cook until the custard cover the back of the wooden spoon with a thin layer.

Turn off the fire, add the soaked and drained jelly. Keep turning until dissolved.

Add as much saffron as needed to turn it pale yellow. Let it cool completely.

Second preparation: whipped cream

Once the custard is cool, whip the chilled cream until it make soft peaks.

Add it to the custard, slowly turning, being careful not to unwhip everything.

The action

Divide the cream in serving glasses or bowls and refrigerate for at least 6 hours, better overnight.

Let it rest at room temperature 30 minutes before to serve.

Serve with a sweet fresh wine, like a Monbazillac or better a Recioto di Soave.

Saffron Bavarese

Chocolate biscotti

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Cantuccini al cioccolato

Those are real bis-cotti, which in Italian means cooked twice.
The inspiration comes from Cantucci, the world wide acclaimed Tuscan biscotti, made with almonds.

Those are a little different, and they probably look like a heresy to Tuscan people ;)

They are part of my hamper for Menu for Hope (read about the whole hamper here).

For around 50 biscotti

200 g flour
60 g cocoa
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon salt
100 g sugar
60 g chocolate chips
3 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
50 g pistachio
50 g pine nuts

Preheat the oven at 180° C.

Mix with a mixer, or by hand, all the ingredients, except pistachio and pine nuts.

Once the mixture is smooth, but still coarse, add, by hand, pistachio and pine nuts.

Dust your hands with flour and form 3-4 sausages 2,5 cm wide and 30 cm long.
Bake for 25 minutes.

Take them out of the oven, and let them rest for 5 minutes, or until you can touch them without burning yourself.

With a jagged knife, cut each sausage in 5 millimeters  thin diagonal slices and arrange them on the baking sheet, well apart.

Bake for another 10-15 minutes.

Let them cool on a rack.

Store in an aright container for up to three weeks.

Cantuccini al cioccolato

Recipe inspired by Hors d’Oeuvres, by Eric Treuille and Victoria Blashford-Snell

Sablée Breton

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Sablé Breton de Pierre Hermé

My dear friend Sara organized a wonderful cookies swap to celebrate Christmas!
She invited over some other girls, Italians, Americans, a French girl and we swapped all different kind of cookies.

I brought 3 different kind of cookies: simple Italian cookies in the shape of hearts, cranberries rockies and this sablée Breton.
Sablée Breton are basically made of butter, flour and sugar. But the butter is a special kind of butter: demi-sel, that means salted butter.
Bretagne is very famous for its salted butter, and for its sablée too.
the recipe I used is by the best, the unique, the one and only patissier in the entire world: Pierre Hermé!

For 30 4×4 centimeter square sablée Breton

133 g demi-sel butter, room temperature
60 g sugar
50 g butter, room temperature
1 g fleur de sel (or crashed Maldon salt)
7 g hard boiled egg yolk, room temperature
167 g flour
34 g potato starch

In a mixer bowl, with a paddle attachment, make a paste with demi-sel butter and sugar.
Add the rest of the ingredients in the order stated above and form a smooth bowl.
Let it rest for at least 1 hour in the fridge.

In the mean while, preheat the oven at 170° C.
Lay out the dough, 5 millimeters thin.
Bake for 15 minutes, then cut out 4×4 centimeters squares and bake again for 5 minutes, until golden.

To give a bit of color I added some pistachio nuts before the second bake.

Let them cool completely before serving.

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