Anna's Food Diary: Dessert

Showing posts with label Dessert. Show all posts

17 Mar 2012

Other Cook da Books dinners

Burkhard's Cook da Books dinner

Char on Sauerkraut with Herb Dumplings

Lemon Tarte

Chaja's Cook da Books dinner

Osso Bucco with creamy spinach, courgettes and carrots

- the meal that converted me back to bone marrow

Flourless chocolate cake with clotted cream and the first strawberries of the year

16 Mar 2012

Last December it was my turn to cook dinner for my book and cooking club 'Cook da Books'. We had read and were going to discuss a book called 'We have always lived in the castle' by Shirley Jackson. The story is about two sisters and an uncle living together in a big house outcast by their village. The rest of the family is dead. They were killed with arsenic mixed into the sugar on the berries that were the dessert of a big Sunday roast lunch.
I based the dinner menu on the Sunday roast lunch menu from the book. In the book it's a Spring menu. I adapted it to Christmas time.

The Menu

A Deadly Dinner

Prosecco with Cranberry

Kale Crisps

Salad with Herbs

Roast Lamb Shoulder

Crushed New Potatoes and Vegetables

Minty Mushy Peas

Eton Mess with Blackberries and a Pinch of Arsenic

Kale Chips

Kale is my new favourite winter vegetable, whether blanched and sauteed with onion, olive oil, lemon juice and salt or, like in this recipe, baked in the oven until crispy. A very simple way to create a wonderful snack. I got the recipe on a blog called Roost, which I highly recommend for healthy recipes: http://www.roostblog.com/roost/tuscan-kale-chips.html

Salad with Herbs

A simple salad with any herbs I can find and finely sliced radishes. I like flat leaf parsley, chives, coriander and chervil. For the dressing I use olive oil, salt, pepper and either lemon juice or white wine herb vinegar.

Roast Lamb Shoulder

Crusched New Potatoes and Vegetables

Minty Mushy Peas

For the lamb shoulder I used a Jamie Oliver recipe, which I will definitely cook many times in future! It is so simple and so delicious! It's easily prepared in advance and needs little attention while in the oven so it's perfect for when you have people coming round for dinner: www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/lamb-recipes/incredible-roasted-shoulder-of-lamb-with

For the vegetables I used lots of different coloured carrots - white, orange, dark red, almost purplish, some orange with a purple boarder.

Eton Mess with Blackberries and a Pinch of Arsenic

For the Eton Mess I made a Pavlova rather than smaller meringues. I love it when there's a lot of gooey meringue in the Eton Mess.

For the berries I had to use frozen ones. Along side the Eton Mess I served a bowel of sugar. With a pinch of Arsenic of course!

As I always I forget to take pictures of the finished food and the dinner itself. Here a couple of shots including the aftermath...

28 Nov 2011

Thanksgiving Pies II: Apple Cheddar Pie

The second pie I made for the big Thanksgiving Dinner was an Apple Cheddar Pie. The recipe again came from First Prize Pies.
Most important here is to keep the ingredients for the dough really cold and not to integrate them too much. This was quite hard to do - especially with the strips of dough to cover the pie. I had to roll the leftover pieces together a few times and eventually everything turned into a normal dough with no butter lumps left in it. Hence the crust wasn't quite as crunchy as I hoped.

Ice cold butter chopped into the dough so lumps remain

For the last fifteen minutes of baking I sprinkled a mild Cheddar, which I bought at The British Cheese Centre in in the Viadukt Markthalle, over the pie. The combination of the tart apples, brown sugar and salty cheese is amazing!!!

http://firstprizepies.com/

/http://markthalle.im-viadukt.ch/

/http://cheeseclub.ch/

Thanksgiving Pies I: S'mores Pie

My friend Garrett and I cooked Thanksgiving Dinner together this year. Garrett is partly American and I have family and friends that live in the US so we have both celebrated Thanksgiving many times before. Yet I'm still no expert and consulted a few friends before deciding what to cook.
I volunteered to make the pies (first time in my life) and asked my friend Allison of First Prize Pies for a couple of recipes. I made S'mores Pie and Apple Cheddar Pie and discovered that it is bloody hard to make a good pie!

The S'mores Pie was particularly difficult - it took forever to make the Graham Crackers for the crust and my chocolate filling was a strange consistency - maybe 'heavy cream' isn't quite the same thing in English and in German.

Making the Graham Crackers

Runny, bubbly chocolate filling...

After trying and failing to make the marshmallows twice - maybe because it was impossible to find corn sirup in any shop in Zurich and none of the replacements I came up with worked - I began improvising: The chocolate filling didn't taste very chocolatey so I added chocolate chunks for cakes, which I found in my cupboard:

Instead of marshmallow I decided to make meringue. I spread it onto the pie, torched it with my new blow torch (hours of fun - wow, I'm such a geek!) and baked it briefly:

I really had little luck with the S'mores Pie. I decided to add some toasted Marshmallows on top of the pie (I admit, I was looking for an excuse to use my blow torch again), only to discover that they are highly flammable.

It took me fifteen minutes to put seven toasted but unburnt marshmallows on the pie. When I was finally done I walked out of the kitchen holding the pie proudly only to trip and send the whole thing flying down the corridor and splat onto the floor!

I'm happy to say that despite all hurdles and floor dirt the pie was gobbled up with great gusto in no time!

Check out First Prize Pies! http://firstprizepies.com/

21 May 2011

My own Ottolenghi cooking

Orange polenta cake, Ottolenghi 'The Cookbook', page 195

Lemon and goat's cheese ravioli, Yotam Ottolenghi 'Plenty', page 250

Okra with tomato, lemon and coriander, Yotam Ottolenghi 'Plenty', page 179
Marinated rack of lamb with coriander and honey, Ottolenghi 'The Cookbook', page 104