A light in the dark - Apple and Cranberry Muffins

I have absolutely no idea what to write today so I think I will just not do it and leave you with a bunch of Apple and Cranberry Muffins instead of trying to make more sense than the muffins! See, sometimes I do make sense.




APPLE AND CRANBERRY MUFFINS
22-24 muffins

muffins:
5 eggs
300 g/ 10,5 oz sugar
250 g/ 8,8 oz butter, melted
250 g/ 8,8 oz wholewheat flour, optional, use normal flour instead if you want to
150 g/ 5,3 oz flour
1,5 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt

topping:
2 apples, peeled, cored and diced
3-4 tblsp dried cranberries, finely chopped
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
4 tblsp sugar
2 tblsp butter
2 tblsp rum

Start making the topping: melt the butter in a pan, add the diced apples, cranberries, cinnamon, sugar and rum and braise slowly for 3-4 minutes or until the rum has evaporated. Leave to cool down.

Whisk eggs and sugar white and fluffy in a bowl. Add the melted butter and stir well.

Mix the flours flour, salt and baking powder and then sift it all into the bowl. Stir really well.

Spoon the batter into cupcake/muffin forms, spoon the topping onto each muffin and bake in a pre-heated oven (175°C/350°F) for 8-10 minutes. Not too long though to keep them nice and soft.

Colours and Light

I avoid using the camera when I'm not working because of that friggin' elbow problem but sometimes enough is enough and yesterday I felt I had to take it with me when I went out with the dog. Apart from the woods being filled with hunters (and that irritated me no end because they have decimated everything they want to shoot years ago except the wild boar and they were not hunting those), it felt so good to be out there with my camera and look at the scenes that are generously provided by Nature. The light changed with every turn, now it was yellow, now it had a blueish tinge ut always beautiful in my eyes!

Colour and goodness, a great combination - Carrot Pie With Pancetta and Thyme

Today I feel like I would expect to feel if a truck had passed over my body and mind. Yesterday I started shooting a new job on Sicilian food and went up to Milan over the day which means that I get up at 5 and get back about 22.30 and work 8-9 hours in between. If it wasn't for the people I work with and the nice atmosphere I would hate it but now it is easy to support though I feel pretty tired the day after. This is the problem of living in Tuscany when you find my kind of job in Milan, you just have to accept to travel more and I am fortunate to have my lovely parents-in-law in Milan where I can stay when I manage several days in a row. Now my mother-in-law is a great cook too so it is doubly nice stay with them as you can imagine.

I wasn't only going to talk about that now, I wanted to post this recipe of another dish that is good for autumn cooking and that can be made when you don't have that many interesting vegetables at home but still want to eat something relatively healthy. And colourful, we need that now I think, more than ever. Carrots might not be the choice of everyone but if you cook/braise them in a skillet with thyme and pancetta/bacon, I can promise you that the flavours are as far away from those limp boiled carrots you were served at the school canteen as you can get. Truly. Now you can do this in two ways, either you do the lazy and use puff pastry or you can make a great pie with potatoes in the pie crust, the choice is yours!

CARROT PIE WITH PANCETTA  AND THYME


pie crust:
5 medium sized potatoes
100-150 g / 3,5-5.3 oz butter or olive oil
500-600 ml / 2.1-2.5 cups flour
1,5 tsp baking powder
salt
OR
bought puff pastry or any other choice of yours


filling:
1,5 kg/ 3,3 lb carrots
100 g/ 3,5 oz (or more) pancetta or bacon, diced
a couple of sprigs of thyme
salt
extra-virgin olive oil

Peel and slice the carrots thinly and cook in some olive oil slowly in a pan or a skillet with the thyme until the carrots are soft. Add the pancetta and go on cooking until the carrots are slightly golden and the pancetta a bit crispy. Check the salt now when the pancetta has been added to avoid it to get too salty.

Boil the potatoes and when they are ready you press them through a potato ricer. Do it while they are still warm because when they are cold it is really hard to press them through the little holes. Let it cool down a bit before you add butter, flour and the baking powder. Check if it is salt enough. You might have to add more flour if the potatoes are very humid, the dough has to be elastic and not too ‘hard’. Line a pie tin with the dough, leave some dough so that you can decorate it with dough strips if you want.

Fill the pie with carrots and pancetta and bake the pie in a pre-heated oven (175°C / 347°F) for about 30 minutes.

A great saver when the fridge is empty - Pasta With Potatoes and Leek

Isn’t it typical that when I finally am getting back my blogging mojo, the hard disc on my Mac crashes and I have no way to get to my photos if they even could be saved. I have had a hard couple of days, worry wise, especially as I need my computer for a job up in Milan tomorrow but I know have my beloved Mac back in my care. There are a few things to say about living in provincial Pistoia but there are some positive sides to it like being able to leave your computer one day and get it back completely fixed the next and having it delivered with a smile. Those are the times I love living here where people are so kind and really tries to help you out when they can.
Anyway, before the crash I spent a lot of this weekend cooking up things for the blog, nothing really special but good things to eat now when it gets darker, colder and even more humid, well at least up here in the northern hemisphere.



So here you have a pasta dish that is the perfect solution when you have an empty fridge but a hungry lot to feed. Or maybe just yourself. It is cheap but wholesome dish, easy to make and with ingredients we usually always have at home and one of those life saver ‘recipes’ that are so good to have on your repertoire when people suddenly turn up on your doorstep and you haven’t been to the store yet. I’m talking about pasta with potatoes and leeks (or onions if that is what you have at home).





PASTA WITH POTATOES AND LEEKS
4 servings

400-500 g/ 14-17,6 oz dry pasta
4 medium potatoes
1 leek
4-5 tblsp tomato sauce
2-3 tsp parsley, finely chopped
salt
extra-virgin olive oil

Cook the pasta.

Peel and slice the potatoes. Clean and slice the leeks as well and cook them gently in a skillet or pan with some olive oil.

After 2-3 minutes, add tomato sauce and enough water to just cover the potatoes, add salt and then let it all simmer until soft and the liquid has almost evaporated.

Drain the paste very al dente and then add it to the potatoes and leeks, add the parsley, stir and let it cook until it is saucy but not too dry.

So grey here...

... so I decided to post some colourful photos for you! hm maybe mostly for myself actually...

My latest craving - Chocolate Banana Bread With Cinnamon and Walnuts

After last week's intense days of work (you can take a look at/read about it over here), I felt that I really needed to relax with some baking and my first thought was a cake. And it filled a double purpose, I relaxed while I was thinking about what and how to make it and then I relaxed while baking this cake. Then I stopped to prevent becoming too relaxed, you never know what could happen then.



It was that eternal problem, the ripe banana getting riper, that set me off on the trail and as I have made several  chocolate banana cakes here already I wanted to make one very special and this one is special for those of us who love the cinnamon and chocolate combination. It is also surprisingly light for being a banana bread I find in case you are on the look-out for that.





CHOCOLATE BANANA BREAD WITH CINNAMON AND WALNUTS

4 eggs
300 ml/ 1,25 cup sugar
150 g/ 5,3 oz butter
1 very ripe banana
100 g/ 3,5 oz sour cream
100 g/ 3,5 oz dark chocolate
4 tsp cocoa powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
400 ml/ 1,7 cup flour
100 ml/ 0,42 cup wholewheat flour, optional, you can substitute it with normal flour
1 tsp baking powder
50 g/ 1,75 oz walnut, roughly chopped
sugar to sprinkle
butter

Mash the very ripe banana carefully and then melt the butter and the dark chocolate in a small sauce pan.

Whisk eggs and sugar fluffy in a bowl, add the banana and the sour cream and go on whisking for another minute until it is smooth. Pour the butter and chocolate mix into the batter and stir well.

Mix the flours, cocoa powder, baking powder and cinnamon and then sift it all into the bowl until perfectly mixed.

Pour the cake batter into a a greased and breaded rectangular cake tin and flatten the surface with a spoon or a spatula. Sprinkle the chopped walnuts on top of the cake, then you sprinkle sugar over and finish with small pieces of butter.

Bake in a pre-heated oven (175°C/350°F) for 30-40 minutes but do check after 25 minutes so make sure it doesn't burn or over-bakes and get dry.

Blossom Flavours for Breakfast-Quince Jam

I'm not as lazy as it seems, I work, I bake and cook but all this working has lead to two things, one is that I feel like taking a break from photography when I am home and the other is that I have a bad case of photographer's/tennis elbow that prevents me from using the arm more than needed. And later this week I start with another job for the same client so I need that arm.

But I want to share this maybe too simple recipe to be worth posting but I do it anyway because it is soo good. I am talking about quince jam. I was given some incredibly sweet smelling quince by a friend who got them from the tree of another friend of ours, I have been opening that bag just to smell every time I passed them by but I couldn't just use them as a kind of smelling salts, I had to cook them too. I wanted to keep it simple because quince id so full of flavours in their own right that I just cooked them with a cinnamon stick, lemon juice and sugar.

So very simple but the flowery sweet flavours of the quince really don't need any more to bloom! I will give you a rough sketch of the proportions I used in case you want to make some on your own.

QUINCE JAM WITH CINNAMON

500 g/ 1,1 lb quince, peeled and cored and cut into pieces
200 ml/ 0,85 cup sugar
1 small cinnamon stick
lemon juice of 1 small lemon
enough water too cover it all,

I used quite a lot of water and let it simmer until the quince was soft and all the excess water has evaporated, it takes quite a while.

Links on Sunday-all about food

Today I will only share food links because lately I have seen so many nice dishes and recipes that I would love to make myself but also share with you:

Lovely Soma of E-Curry has these incredible Poppy Seed and Chickpea Encrusted Potatoes that the potato lover in me craves to make as soon as possible!

And then Ahn posted these Vietnamese Meatballs and now I want these as well!

And what about these fantastic Pumpkin Pancakes that Karri has made, and they are gluten-free too!

I have always loved Cookiecrumb and her way of cooking, this dish is no exception!

I have been wanting to make Madeleines now for quite some while but I can't find the madeleine forms that I want, Tammy she was lucky enought to be able to loan pans to try them out. And look how nice they look.

Bron is a guarantee for good food and inventive recipes, just check out her Wasabi Pea and Salmon Tartelette and you see what I mean!

Aren't you a bit hungry now? I am!

Fantastic Autumn

There are so many sides to the Autumn and one of them is the abundance of warm colours and beautiful morning light. After a few days of that grey and humid and dripping Autumn aspect, the glory of sun and colour made itself felt this morning.

A TOUCH OF TUSCANY - OVEN-BAKED FRITTATA WITH WHITE BEANS, TOMATOES AND SAGE

This is next year's Lucullian Delights calendar, In the Kitchen With Lucullian Delights, but you can still buy last year's one, A Year With Lucullian Delights, but now for 2011. So this year you can choose between two no actually there are two others as well , still from last year and I think I will add another one, non food, soon when I find the time. Well, you better take a look for yourself here if you are looking for a nice calendar for next year!

Having done my piece of promotion I better turn to the food. I have a weak spot for frittatas, they are so easy to make and you can make them 'foodier' as you would say in Swedish by adding vegetables or meat or fish or whatever you feel like and have in your larder. These mini frittatas are like food bombs, they are so packed with protein and nutrition that you don't need to at more than one maybe two to feel ready for action again but there is no need to do them like did here, you can just pop it al into an oven-proof form and then into the oven. I have chosen to make a frittata with a Tuscan touch, echoing the traditional dish fagioli all'ucceletto where you find cannellini beans, tomatoes and sage, one of those dishes I can eat until I drop because it is so tasty and if you add a salsiccia or two, heaven is close.

A TOUCH OF TUSCANY - OVEN-BAKED FRITTATA WITH WHITE BEANS, TOMATOES AND SAGE
2-3 servings

4 eggs
8 tblsp parmesan cheese, freshly grated
100 g/ 3,5 oz white beans, cooked
8-10 cherry tomatoes, divided in two. Or take normal tomatoes (but not that many obviously) and chop them. Drain of excess liquid if watery.
8 sage leaves, finely chopped
salt
extra-virgin olive oil

 Turn on the oven to 200°C/390°F and pop in the tomatoes that you have salted and drizzled a little oil over in an oven-proof form straight away so that they are half-baked when the oven is warm enough, in this way they get tastier.

 When the oven is warm enough, mix eggs, parmesan, sage and a pinch or two of salt, whish quickly and not too much. Add beans and tomatoes and pour into a greased oven-proof form and shove it into the oven for about 10-15 minutes but you better control it now and then so that the frittata doesn't get too dry.

 Serve hot, tepid or cold.