To You

Old Soup Revisited - Hot Potato Soup With Saffron and Cheese

Christmas is closing in and my life has a certain frenzied touch to it, all that snow that forced us to remain where we were, i.e. here, have complicated these last days before the D-day. But I got the new oven and I am catching up on the baking side. It seems to be a nice and docile one because so far I haven't burnt anything, normally it takes some time and some burnt cakes before me and a new oven adjust to some kind of understanding but so far we seem to be on the same wavelength. And when it is raining like it does now, it is nice to stay in and cook and bake. It's even almost nice to clean up and put things in order but then I have to stare really hard on all that rain, can't say that it's that high up on a my fun list exactly. On the other hand, I am grateful for every occasion that force me to really clean up and get rid of things that we don't need. 

Anyway, I obviously shouldn't be sitting here, doing the usual rambling about uninteresting things but I should be out there on the floor doing something! Off I go...

Some dishes I have made here on Lucullian remains with me and some just disappears and this soup with potatoes, peperoncino and saffron is one of those that have remained. I really like the combination of potatoes, saffron and that hot touch of peperoncino and when it is cold and you both need comfort food and hot soups, this a good one to make. But it is quite nice cold too actually so why not try it when it is warm outside, I always loved a cold soup on a hot summer's day.

HOT POTATO SOUP WITH SAFFRON AND CHEESE


600 g/ 1,3 lb peeled potatoes
0,5 g/0,01 oz (a pinch) saffron
1-2 dried peperoncino or the equivalent in powder or fresh. Tread carefully.
100 g/ 3,5 oz leek
1000 ml/4,2 cups light stock. I suggest you to use a nice chicken or vegetable stock here to get more body.
grated cheese, I used crumbled feta
chopped parsley
salt
extra-virgin olive oil

 Slice the potatoes and the leek and cook slowly with the crumbled peperoncino in some olive oil for 3-4 minutes. Add stock and saffron and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

Blend the soup until smooth, check salt and add some chopped parsley.

Serve it in soup bowls topped with grated cheese or crumbled feta like I did. Or eat it cold as it is.

The Oven is here-cakes and cookies a go go (links)

Yesterday I got the oven and man am I feeling better, to stay without baking bread and cooking with an oven was tough but I am making up for it now, at least three baking projects on the go for today because I need to study how this oven works, don't I? Understand the heat and such... And to share my baking joy and to celebrate the new oven, I though that I would share some links to some cakes and cookies I have made here on Lucullian:

PEAR AND PINE NUT POLENTA CAKE (GLUTEN-FREE)
 SMALL RASPBERRY AND CHOCOLATE CAKES
CASSATA ALLA SICILIANA (from Gina De Palma's Dolce Italiano)

RICH CHOCOLATE AND FARRO CAKE WITH CHOCOLATE FROSTING
PEAR AND GINGER COOKIES or BISCOTTI CON PERA E ZENZERO

RICOTTA AND HAZELNUT COOKIES (GLUTEN-FREE)

PUFF PASTRY COOKIES WITH ROSE AND ALMOND PASTE FILLING
CHESTNUT COOKIES WITH CANDIES ORANGE PEEL - GLUTEN-FREE

Happy baking!

Fresh and Healthy - Raw Cauliflower and Carrot Salad With Mustard Dressing

Lately I have been eating a lot of this salad, healthy and incredibly quick to make, I even eat it as a snack in the afternoon, you know when that hour strikes around 4 when you just know that you won't survive until dinner unless you eat something. Raw cauliflower is fantastic I think, crunchy, fresh and good for you, cooked cauliflower is equally nice but maybe it easier for non vegetable lovers to approach the dreaded cauliflower in raw form because it doesn't taste cabbage and it isn't soggy. Well, you try it and tell me. Years ago I posted another raw cauliflower salad that is quite nice too, maybe you will like them both.

RAW CAULIFLOWER AND CARROT SALAD WITH MUSTARD DRESSING

cauliflower
carrots
yellow mustard seeds, 50/50 toasted and non toasted
Dijon mustard
honey
salt
apple-cider vinegar or some other mild vinegar
extra-virgin olive oil

 Peel the carrots and either continue to peel them like I did here or grate them. Slice the cauliflower thinly, if the slices are too big, break them into smaller pieces and put cauliflower and carrots in a bowl.

 Make the dressing,  dilute 1 tsp Dijon mustard and 1 tsp honey in 2 tblsp apple-cider vinegar, add salt and when it all has dissolved, you add 6-7 tblsp extra-virgin olive oil and the mustard seeds and shake.

 Pour dressing over the salad and mix carefully before serving.

Snow and I don't like it!

It's been snowing here and it is still very cold and I don't like it at all. This house is not made for this climate I can tell you that and right now I am even looking for the rain that has been promised for the next two weeks, who would have thought that after all my laments this long and rainy autumn? Anyway, here are some photos I took before I got completely fed up, you can still see the grass but that didn't take long to cover. Anyway, keep your fingers crossed that the snow and ice goes away so I can get out of here to do all those Christmas things I need to do and to go and get out new OVEN on Tuesday, I have severe withdrawal symptoms so I need to bake!

Bread Baking Babes in December - Taralli Pugliesi

It's time for December month's Bread Baking Babe bread and this month I had the honour of choosing what to bake. I did a lot of thinking and looking around and decided to go for something that has nothing to do with Christmas at all because a) it can get too much of that anyway and b) not everyone in this world celebrate Christmas so why impose our Christian traditions on our global blog and blog reading community? Instead I am proposing an Apulian bread that me and my family are crazy about especially when made with peperoncino! Taralli is what we are going to bake in December and I hope you will like them as much as I do. Taralli are small snack like bread rings that are baked in a way similar to bagels but the outcome is completely different as you will see if you don't already know them. Anyway, this recipe calls for fennel seeds but do try the peperoncino version where you add peperoncino/chili oil to the dough. Or you can just make them plain. I have also had taralli with rosemary so there are a lot of things to do if you feel like experimenting.

If I were you, I would take a trip around the other BBBabes blogs to see their Taralli because I have seen some beautiful examples already and I also think that they have a few tips to share with you. Just remember that some of them are not even awake yet and probably will post later on today. Here you find a list of them all!

 

If you too want to bake Taralli ( you do, don't you?) and want to be a Bread Baking Buddy, bake, blog about it and send me the link (luculliandelights AT gmail DOT com, please write Bread Baking Buddy in the subject line) and I will send you the Buddy Badge and include you in the Buddy roundup too! I have set the deadline to the 29th of December so you have the time to make the taralli in case you are too busy before Christmas but you can obviously post it any date before that.

TARALLI PUGLIESI
adapted from Anna Maria Gostti Della Salda's monumental food bible Le ricette regionali italiane

1 kg/ 2,2 lb flour, I think she intends AP flour
200 g/ 7 oz extra-virgin olive oil
tepid water
50 g/ 1,75 oz fennel seeds, optional as you already know
12,5 g/ 0,45 oz (or more if it is cold in your kitchen) fresh yeast and about 5 g/ 0,176 oz instant yeast (they say)
1 tsp salt
2 eggs or the equivalent of dry white wine

Dissolve the yeast in 2 tblsp of tepid water. Mix the yeast water with the lightly whisked eggs and the olive oil.

Mix flour, fennel seeds and salt and then add the liquid. Start working the dough and continue to add small amounts of tepid water until you have a firm but pliable dough.

Start rolling 10-12 cm/ 2-2,5 in long ropes that are as thick as your little finger and pinch the ends together to make an oval. Put the taralli on a parchment paper, cover with a towel and leave them to rest about 20 minutes.

Turn on the oven to 200°C/390°F.

While the taralli rest, bring a biggish pan with water to the boil.

Dump 3-4 taralli at a time in the simmering water and when they surface, take them up and put them to dry on a kitchen towel or a rack.

Put them on baking sheets covered with parchment paper and bake in the oven for about 20 minutes but it is best to try them so that they are properly baked, we don't want them to be soft in the middle!

Life without an oven - Crostini With Mushrooms and Gorgonzola

Still no working oven here and all the food I come to think of obviously need an oven, what else? But I managed to work around it for this post and although I'm not that inspired right now when it comes to food, I hope you will enjoy these crostini, simple to make and easy to vary in the way you feel like, change the cheese for example or put them in the oven (! I would have loved that) for a couple of minutes before serving and you have even nicer crostini. Oh how I miss my oven, I couldn't even make Lussekatter yesterday...

CROSTINI WITH MUSHROOMS AND GORGONZOLA
10-12 crostini

Gorgonzola, the harder type, piccante, in my case
bread of the baguette type, sliced and toasted
12 medium sized mushrooms
1/2 small leek or small onion
2 small carrots
black pepper
salt
extra-virgin olive oil

 Run the carrots and the leek in a food processor until quite finely chopped, then you add the mushrooms and run it all for another minute.

 Put the vegetables and mushrooms in a skillet or pan and cook slowly in some olive oil until all the liquids have evaporated and the carrot and leek are soft, it takes about 4-5 minutes. Add salt and pepper.

 Spoon the vegetable mix onto each slice of bread, top with cheese and if you are fortunate enough to have a working oven, heat them up quickly under the grill for a minute. Or two.

Links on Sunday

Today I am obviously on the sentimental side because I have come up with a lot of old friends links for you:

I hope you are already opening Bron's Advent Calender, if not there is always time to start now! That she is a great, great friend of mine you already know.

One of the first food blogs that I stumbled upon when I started blogging in 2005 was Barbara's Tigers & Strawberries and I have always been following her despite the fact that we blog about completely different types of food. Or maybe just because of that. And I was sad last February when she decided that she wasn't up to continue to blog because of personal reasons but I understood her fully. So when I suddenly saw her back in my rss reader last month I was happy, happy to see that she was back and happy that she was feeling so much better. She is a great food writer and cook so I can highly recommend her blog!

Another blogger who has been with me since my beginnings is Paz, she is a true friend (who I shamelessly neglect, what a bitch I am) and I love to see New York through her eyes, she manages to make me feel as if I am there somehow because she avoids the usual photo rhetoric and shows us the small details and the real people of her city! Paz's New York Minute is definitely worth keeping in your reader!

Another old blog friend is MsBrownMouse who has made this incredible pie, I am absolutely planning on making one soon, it looks incredible I have to say, all these layers and colours and the shapes....


Post Secret always makes me think. We need to think.

OK and now some other links:

Just saw this over at DIY Photography, an e-book called Your Complete Guide To Building A Photography Studio At Home that might be of interest to some of you maybe.

and why not listen to this program about food tribes? 

OK, I'm off now, need to make some cream for the Zuppa Inglese we are going to gorge on this afternoon!

Winter Vegetable and Lentil Shepherd's Pie

I'm sitting here in the photo studio in Milan waiting for things to arrive so that we can go on shooting and finish this job. And as I not having anything else do, I thought I could make a short post here because I have a dish to propose to you, a Winter Vegetable and Lentil Shepherd's Pie that you can vary as you like and according to the vegetables you have at home. I used butternut squash, Jerusalem artichoke, leek and celery and it was really tasty but I will try other vegetables next time I make it. The lentils make it more substantial so that you actually can serve this as the main course if you want.



WINTER VEGETABLE AND LENTIL SHEPHERD'S PIE
serves 4

4-5 big potatoes
1/2 butternut squash
4-5 Jerusalem artichokes
1 small leek
2 sticks of celery
200 g/7 oz cooked lentils
4-5 tblsp parmesan cheese, freshly grated
white wine
herbs like thyme, rosemary or sage
salt
extra-virgin olive oil

Peel and boil the potatoes and then make a nice mash, add parmesan cheese and mix well.

 Trim and dice the butternut squash, and the Jerusalem artichokes, slice the leek and the celery sticks and braise in wine, herbs and olive oil until soft.

 Add the cooked lentils and continue to cook for another 4-5 minutes.

 Put the vegetables into a greased oven-proof form and cover with a layer of mashed potates.

 Bake in a pre-heated oven (200°C/390°F) for about 15-20 minutes.

Simplicity on a plate - Kiwi With Candied Ginger and Maple Syrup

I always had a problem with people who claim to wake up every morning loving life, maybe they do but I don't. I can't even remember that I ever did-who thinks about life and love at 6.30 or earlier I ask? And apart from that, I never trusted excessive feelings. I neither love nor hate life, I just live it and I try to live it as well as I can. I try to live in harmony with myself and others which isn't always possible, I try to live and let live which isn't always easy either. I try to be coherent in my choices which can be hard and I try to be as honest as I can but who can always be honest? So we live and then we die, like annual flowers, only a bit longer. I wonder if they ever wake up and love life? And why would we be different for the other existences in the general scheme of nature I wonder. We are here, like all the rest of the life here on earth, to reproduce ourselves and sometimes I think we are really putting to much value to our existence by imagining that there is any other reason for our being here. But I do think we have to find our own reasons for living on so that we can wilt and die with a feeling of not having wasted our one single chance to live and my reason is the gift of love. To love is the greatest gift my life has given me, to be loved is not bad either but to really love without reservations is the best thing that ever happened to me because it makes me forget myself.

OK, I'll stop now, what actually started me off on this was a lot of thoughts about death which is also a good theme to muse upon but I'll do that another time, now I just want to give you an idea of a quick dessert or snack. I'm not a lover of kiwi fruits really but served in this way, they reach a new dimension I think.





KIWI WITH CANDIED GINGER AND MAPLE SYRUP

kiwi fruits
candied ginger, chopped
maple syrup

 Slice the kiwi fruits and put them on plates or in a bowl. Add the candied ginger and drizzle maple syrup over it all. That's it.