Tag Archives: milk

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!

Special Edition: World Nutella Day – Nutella Crêpes

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Crêpe with Nutella

Last 2nd February in France was Chandeleur, a holiday once religious, known now days as the Crêpes Day! It’s basically a day dedicated to crêpes, during which all French eat crêpes.

As it was in the middle of the week, and despite the fact that making a single crêpe is fairly quick, but making them for 3 people is a job, we decided to post pone the celebrations to this Saturday, uniting them with the celebrations for World Nutella Day hosted by Sara and Michelle!

And, apart the usual savoury crêpes, with ham, mushrooms and Ementhal, we decided to end our crêpes meal with simple Nutella crêpes!

Ingredients

For the crêpes (make the mix the night before)

125 g flour 00

125 g buckwheat flour

250 ml milk

250 g beer

3 eggs

1 pinch of salt

1 tablespoon of seed oil

For the filling

Nutella, as much as you like

For 10-12 crêpes

  1. The night before: in a large bowl mix flour, eggs, salt and oil. Slowly add milk and beer, stirring constantly, even with a whisk. You have to obtain a smooth, airy and velvety mix. Cover it with a tea towel and let it rest for the night.
  2. The day of the crêpes, whisk the mix vigorously.
  3. Heat a large heavy non stick pan (24 centimetres). Add a little knob of butter (or a few drops of oil) and let it melt. Wipe it away with a piece of kitchen paper.
  4. Add a ladle of crêpes mix and spread it all around your pan, moving it all around with the handle of the pan. If the first crêpe don’t come out nicely, do not worry: it always happen! Eat it right away and adjust the amount of mix you put in the pan.
  5. Continue to make crêpes until you finish you mix.

Now you have three styling choice:

  • Classic triangle (as in the picture above): spread your nutella all around a crêpe, fold it in half, and then in half again to form a triangle. Eat it.
  • Classic roll: spread your nutella all around a crêpe, roll it. Eat it.
  • Stack: spread your nutella all around each crêpes and stack them one over the other, to form a round cake. Sprinkle with nuts brittle and serve.

If you dare, mix nutella with mascarpone (the quantity you like) and use the cream for the filling of the crêpes. Then, after eating them, slowly sink in you sofa and sleep, heavenly in peace with the world!

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

Ragù di carne

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Il sugo

Bolognaise sauce, sauce bolognaise, ragù alla bolognese. Call it as you please, but please please please, make it in the right way! No strange stuff, like cilantro, cream, spring onions…

Keep it simple and plain!

The only difficult part, if you can call it so, it’s the long cooking hours, but you can cut them down making it in a pressure cooker.

Lets’ start from the basics.

Ingredients

500 g premium choice minced beef

100 g diced pancetta (or diced bacon)

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 onion

1 garlic clove

1 carrot

1 celery stalk

1/2 glass of dry red wine

1/2 glass of milk

800 g canned tomatoes, better whole, using even the sauce inside the cans

1 tablespoon triple tomato purée

Salt and pepper

2 pinches of sugar

For 6 people as pasta sauce or for a 4 people lasagna

  1. Finely chop the onion.
  2. Peel and finely chop the garlic and the carrot.
  3. Clean and finely chop the celery stalk.
  4. In a large sauce pan, possibly with high-sided, heat the olive oil. Add the pancetta and the onion and mildly brown them.
  5. Add the carrot and the garlic, and finally the celery.
  6. Add the minced beef and turn it with a wooden fork, crumble it. Let it cook, stirring, until brown. Salt and pepper.
  7. Turn up the heat and add the wine. Let it evaporate.
  8. Add the milk, and always keeping you fire up, cook the sauce and let the milk to be absorbed by the meat.
  9. Add the caned tomatoes, tomato purée and sugar, stir, lower the fire to the minimum, cover and let it cook for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally.

Note

You can add, if you really really want it, some basil leaves, but they are superfluous.

In season, you can substitute the canned tomatoes with fresh skinned ones. Bring to the boil a big pan of water. Cook the whole tomatoes until the skin begin to pop off. Drain them, pell, chop and add them to the sauce like the canned tomatoes.

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

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