A year has come and gone again - tell me about yours!

I feel a bit reluctant about doing a review of my year 2011 in this life here on Lucullian, I have my doubts about how interested you really are and apart from that, if you read Lucullian regularly you already know what I have been doing, at least as much as I am willing to talk about in a public space like this blog. So I am only putting down a few points about the things I am proud and/or happy of:

- I still have a healthy and happy family - I am proud of having the husband I have and the three children I have produced with him. They have all four showed me the importance of love and loving. Thank You!

- I have been working well this year, many fun commercial jobs and I am now a monthly collaborator of two Italian food magazines. And strewn in between these, there have been many other interesting assignments for me to do. I still have a dream and that is to shoot the photos for a cookbook.

- I am very proud of the success that the Plate To Page Workshops have had and to work together with Jamie, Jeanne and Meeta, three quite fantastic women really! And so very happy to have met all the P2P participants too, incredible persons each and every one of them!

- I'm quite proud of Saveur.com's making Lucullian a finalist  in Saveur's Best Food Blog Awards, category Best Regional Cuisine Blog, and for including my blog in Saveur's Worldwide Feast: 55 Great Global Food Blogs. Thank You Saveur, much appreciated!

I think I am done here but why don't YOU, dear reader, tell me what you did in 2011, in my opinion that's far more interesting to hear so please tell me in a comment what happened to you, good or bad, whatever you feel like sharing with me. And Thank You for yet another year here-I wish you all a pleasant end to the year and the best of years in 2012!

Just what I need, colour and vitamins - Orange and Apricot Salad With Hazelnuts and Maple Syrup

 So this was Christmas to paraphrase John Lennon and although I have enjoyed it all, it feels good it is  all over and I can get going again with my normal life. Well we have that New Year's stuff to do but is far less labour intense so I can take that. We had a nice quiet Christmas with my Italian family, lots of nice food and happy faces and what else can you ask for?

 But now I crave healthier food, colours and vitamins are high on my list and the choice was easy when I was pondering what recipe to post here on Lucullian,  with an overload of oranges and clementines, the choice was ever so easy - I was going to make a fruit salad with oranges. Oranges and the most wonderful dried apricots I ever tried, ecological and therefore brown and ugly to look at but oh so sweet and tasty in your mouth. But to make the orange salad even more orangey, I have added finely chopped candied orange peel and then some chopped hazelnuts and to top it off I added a little of my precious maple syrup that sweet Elizabeth gave me at the Plate To Page Workshop in October (btw, there is still a space free for you at the Plate To Page UK Workshop in May 2012, hurry up and register here). A simple and incredibly easy to make dessert but fresh and healthy because you need so very little of sweetener that you could actually skip it if you want.

ORANGE AND APRICOT SALAD WITH HAZELNUTS AND MAPLE SYRUP
2 servings

4 small or 2 huge oranges
4 dried apricots, preferably ecological
1 tbsp finely chopped candied orange peel
2 tbsp chopped hazelnuts
2 tbsp maple syrup, optional

   Peel the oranges with a small and sharp knife, then cut them into thin slices that you put in a bowl. Slice the dried apricots thinly and add them, the chopped candied orange pell and the hazelnuts to the oranges.

   Add the maple syrup and mix carefully before serving.

For You

It's time for DHSPC - Sage and prosciutto corn cakes

After having participated in the first Donna Hay Styling and Photography Challenge my dear photographer friend Simone has come up with, I haven't had the time to do any more but as it is a really interesting kind of challenge I absolutely wanted to do it this time. I like this challenge for various reasons, one is that it is always good to do something different from what you usually do, another is that I learn by doing here, in order to shoot a photo similar to the proposed one, I have to study light, colours, textures, props, food styling well a lot of different aspects before I can get going on my own photo. Another reason, maybe not that nice, is that I learn from my failures because although I was happy with my first entry (which incidentally won) I am not that happy with my photo this time. But the recipe is nice, one of my daughters didn't give us much chance to eat them, they somehow were gone before we really got going.

So the photo above is the challenge photo and the one below is mine. I didn't have a plate of the right size and that really makes a difference in my opinion. Well I can't blame it all on the plate, it's my fault if the photo doesn't work. Anyway, I got the main light from the right where there is a window and then I bounced that light on the left. Numbers for the photo nerds: 1/25 sec at f/2,8 w, 50 mm with a EF50 mm f/1.4 USM lens, 500 ISO with a Canon 5D mark II.
If you want to know more about the DHSPC, click over to Junglefrog Cooking and check out the rules etc.




SAGE AND PROSCIUTTO CORN CAKES
from Donna Hay Magazine, issue 48
Makes 12

170g instant polenta
75g all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons sage leaves (chopped) sea salt black pepper
360g sour cream
2 eggs
12 sage leaves (extra)
12 slices prosciutto

   Preaheat oven to 180. Place the polenta, flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda (baking soda), sage, salt, pepper, cream and eggs in a bowl and mix well to combine.

   Place extra sage in the bases of 12 lightly greased 1/2 cup capacity (125 ml) muffin tins. Line each tin with prosciutto and fill with polenta mixture.

   Bake for 15-20 minutes or until cooked. Turn out to serve.

Same shape, same taste but smaller - Cinnamon Roll Cookies

It is truly good to be back here blogging regularly again but it has the terrible side effect that I eat too much and especially now before Christmas when I want to share some nice baking with you. The "Someone is shrinking my trousers during the night" syndrome has popped up again so I just want to prepare you for a more frugal January. I will most probably post a little less as well as I have two jobs in Milan lined up in the second half of the month but I'm happy because that will make it pass quicker. January is the cruelest month, not April, and I dread it every year; if I every get mad, I'm sure it will happen in January. 

But December it is and if you are like my mother was, you bake seven kinds of cookies for Christmas so I thought that you might appreciate a new type to try out. I really like cinnamon rolls, they have an almost archetypal status in Sweden - the ideal mother is one who serves you freshly baked cinnamon rolls (or kanelbullar as they are called in Sweden) when you come back from school. I have serious doubts that any mothers have the time to do that any more but I am convinced that cinnamon rolls are found at the top of many Best of lists in Sweden. Everyone loves a kanelbulle. Or two. So I wanted to make a cinnamon roll cookie instead, much quicker to make when the craving is too strong and you can't resist the urge. These are simple to make, the dough don't need any rest and they are ready to eat with the hour if not earlier. 

CINNAMON ROLL COOKIES

100 g/3,5 oz soft butter

200 ml/0,85 cup sugar

2 egg yolks 

200 ml/1,25 cup wholewheat flour

300 ml/0,85 cup cake flour

1 tsp baking powder

3-4 tbsp fresh cream, if needed

cinnamon and cardamon
sugar to sprinkle

   Stir butter and sugar in a bowl until creamy, add one egg yolk at a time, always stirring.

   Sift the flours and baking powder into the bowl and quickly work the dough into a ball. While you work it, add the fresh cream if the dough feels too dry.

   Dust the working surface with a flour and roll out the dough into a rectangle about 25 cm x 40 cm ( 9,4 in x 15,7 in) but as I forget to measure it properly, go for what seems sensible.

  Sprinkle the dough with sugar first and then cinnamon and finish with a little cardamon. Roll up the dough as tightly as you can and cut 1 cm/ 0,4 in thick slices.

   Put the cookies on a baking sheet and bake in a pre-heated oven (175°C/350°F) for 10-12 minutes but as usual you need to keep an eye on what is happening in there as every oven is different.

A few Links of Sunday to click on with seasonal images to look at

It surprised me how the greenery closed in on you in the summer part, it felt somewhat claustrophobic, how much more space you feel without the leaves and grass and it gave me a, at the moment, much needed positive aspect on late fall/winter.

I find this a bit scary, what about you?

But I like this idea!

And this too though I don't particularly agree with the last line as it is a bit too much to ask, I mean-every minute?

This is beautiful, do check out the Tychonian view as well

Good warm, even better cold - Fennel and Pear Soup

I am sure this soup already exists and that there are numerous versions of it too but to me it is new. Or at least it feels like that but then my memory isn't what it once was. Anyway, I was standing with a fennel bulb in my hand when I saw a very ripe pear on the table and somehow my mind connected with the two and there was one - the vision of a fennel and pear soup. I'm not a big fan of fruit in savoury food but this is a great combination in my opinion, the fennel has a sweetness to it and that is enriched and deepened by the pear. 

 And it is another white soup, I wonder why all my soups seems to be white of late, could it be the winter season that inspires me? Apart from that, isn't that bowl with the cow sweet? It is a wonderful allround bowl, I drink my huge caffelatte out it it every morning, my hands curl so nicely around its warmth,  and now and then I use it as a soup bowl. I wish I had bought more of them, I'd love to have a herd of cow bowls!





FENNEL AND PEAR SOUP
4 servings

5 cm / 2 in finely sliced leek, the white part
2 tsp fennel seeds
2 small/medium fennel bulbs
700 ml/ 3,4 cup light stock or water
2 very ripe pears
200 ml/ 0,63 cup fresh cream
salt
extra-virgin olive oil

   Slice the fennel bulbs and peel and slice the pears. Cook the sliced leek gently in a little olive oil and add the fennel seeds before adding the fennel. Keep on cooking gently for another 3-4 minutes.

   Add the stock and simmer under half-closed lid for 15 minutes when you add the cream and quickly heat it up again.

   Add the pears and blend the soup in a mixer until smooth. This soup is good warm but I liked it even more cold...

December sun - Lussekatter or Swedish Saffron Buns

I'm sorry I am here again so soon, maybe too soon, but I just have to post this recipe today as it is the right day for it - it is St Lucia after all. I have posted about it ages ago but in this version I have added some whole wheat flour and as I never liked raisins in bread or buns, I have substituted them with dried cranberries but you are obviously free to revert back to the more traditional version. There is a lot of butter in the dough but I promise you that it is worth it, not only do they taste better, they don't dry out as quickly because the saffron tends to dry out breads quickly. I only make these around Christmas, one upon a time I was more orthodox and only made them for the 13th of December but nowadays I do make them for Christmas as well because my mother-in-law loves them so much. And to be honest I'm happy that I have loosened up a bit because Lussekatter are so good to eat!
Updated: If you are interested I have just posted a few photos from the Christmas food catalogue that I have talked about here on my photography blog.

LUSSEKATTER OR SWEDISH SAFFRON BUNS

 25 g/0,9 oz fresh yeast (1 tsp instant yeast = 10 g fresh yeast)
200 g/ 7 oz butter
500 ml/2,1 cup milk
1 g/0,01 oz saffron powder
200 ml/0,85 cup sugar
1 tsp ground cardamom
½ tsp salt
around 1 500 ml/6,3 cups flour, 2/3 normal flour and 1/3 light wholewheat flour
1 egg
dried cranberries (or raisins)

    Crumble the yeast in large bowl, add the sugar, cardamom and saffron and let the yeast ‘melt’. If you stir now and then, it melts quite quickly. I know this is supposed to be bad for the yeast but I never had a problem  so you choose if you prefer to mix the yeast with a little warm milk instead before you add it all.

   Melt the butter in a pan, add the milk and warm it up to finger warm, strictly speaking it should be 37°C/98°F

   Pour the liquid on the yeast, stir well and add most of the flour and the salt. Work it really well before you put it away to rise for an hour. Now if you choose use wholewheat flour, you might have to add a little more but be careful not to add too much as it makes a stodgy Lussekatt and that is not nice.

   Put the dough on a table dusted with flour and work it until it is smooth.

   Divide the dough into balls slightly smaller than your fist and make ‘serpents’ that you form like the letter S or into other shapes.

   Put the buns on baking sheets with parchment paper on and leave rise for about 40 minutes.

   Whisk the egg and brush the buns with it before you add the cranberries in strategic places, see photo.

   Bake in a pre-heated oven (225°C/440°F) for 10 minutes. Leave them to cool on a rack before you start eating them, as we all know, eating hot buns can give you stomach pains and who wants that?

Getting into the groove - Christmas Scented Chocolate Cupcakes With Nutella and Sour Cream Frosting

I keep on doing my best over here, trying to get into that Christmas spirit and I have actually been doing some decorating with my youngest daughter who at nine obviously cares very much about Christmas. To be honest, all female beings in this family care about it (though I am lazy and prone to procrastination but I suppose that comes from being the one responsible of the Christmas department), I don't know if you ladies out there have the same feeling but male items seem so less attached to that kind of thing. I'm happy I am not a man.

Now I have been buying quite a lot of nice cupcake paper forms lately and to avoid a too large stash of them, I decided to make cupcakes and as I am also trying to get into the groove of Christmas cooking and baking, I decided to make them a little reminiscent of that season by adding finely chopped candied orange peel and cranberries, not too much, just to give it that tinge of Christmas. I have already used the Nutella and sour cream topping for these gluten-free chocolate chocolate cupcakes and if you want to make a gf version, I suggest you just add the chopped fruit to that recipe!

CHRISTMAS SCENTED CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES WITH NUTELLA AND SOUR CREAM FROSTING
12-14 cupcakes


40g/ 1,4 ounce finely chopped candied peel
40 g/ 1,4 ounce finely chopped dried cranberries
3 tbsp Marsala wine (you can use dry sherry if you cannot get hold of Marsala)

3 eggs
150 ml sugar
125 g/ 4,4 ounce melted butter
200 ml normal flour
100 ml wholewheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
4 tbsp cocoa powder

frosting:
300 g/ 3,5 ounce Nutella
200 g/ 7 oz sour cream

   Put the finely chopped candied orange peel and dried cranberries in a small bowl and add the Marsala, stir and let it marinate for at least an hour, I let it soak overnight.

   Whisk eggs and sugar foamy in a bowl, add butter and the chopped fruit and mix well.

   Sift flours, cocoa powder and baking powder into the bowl and stir until it is smooth. Spoon the batter into cupcake forms and bake in a pre-heated oven (175°C/350°F) for about 10 minutes, they are better if you don't over bake them.

  While the cupcakes cool down, whisk sour cream and Nutella until smooth and shiny and then pipe the cream on top of the cupcakes.

Links on Sunday this week too (what has happened to me?)

I love this photo.

Enjoy!

The longer I live and the closer I get to the end of my life, the more interesting I find what the world actually looks like. (and there's an error of grammar there but I can't figure out how to say it correctly)

He sure had a vision.

Another one with a vision.

To end - a poem to take to heart and to look at.

And now it is soon time for MONDAY, the best day of the week!

Cooking for myself - Eggs and Tomatoes With Olives and Capers On Couscous

I am re-reading a book I reviewed here on Lucullian about four years ago, it is called Alone In the Kitchen With An Eggplant and it is a lovely collection of essays on eating alone or rather cooking for one. Like a lot of people, I cook and cook for family and friends but when it comes to feeding myself alone, I tend just to stuff whatever I find into my mouth and completely forego the preparation of a meal. And that can be OK for a meal or two but considering I eat lunch alone almost every day (my son comes home for late lunch but I never share the meal I make for him) I really should make an effort. Because I am worth it. We are all worth it. So I am trying to make up for it, hoping it will last longer than the reading of the book. 

To be honest I don't mind eating alone, nor cooking for myself only and the reason to why I don't do it often enough is that I like to feel free of that constant chore of cooking a meal but above all, the choices to be made. Oh how I dislike to make all these choices that every day of my life bring along. Some are easy and fun to make but it seems to me that most of them are just a heap of rather boring choices and having a family have only added to that. The first time I really became avare of the burden choices bring along was when me and my brother emptied our parents house, I worked on it almost daily for two months and although there were some very sad moments dealing with memories, the worst was all the choices we had to make, to take the responsibility of throwing or giving away things that we knew had meant a lot to my mother and my father but meant less to us. It felt like a continuous betrayal. After that I began to dislike having to make choices, even simple ones.

But cooking for myself has the great advantage that I can indulge in whatever I feel like that precise moment and right now I have a weak spot for tomatoes and eggs. Always had it but right now it seems irresistibly tasty so I am working on variations on this theme, the other day I made a more Mediterranean version with couscous, black olives and capers. It was good, very good.

EGGS AND TOMATOES WITH OLIVES AND CAPERS ON COUSCOUS
1 serving

6 small tomatoes or 2 big
1 egg
8-10 small black olives
1 tbsp capers in salt
finely chopped parsley
100 ml/ 0,42 cup cooked couscous
salt
extra-virgin olive oil

   Rinse the capers and put them in water to soak a little.

   Divide the tomatoes or if they are bigger, cut them in smaller pieces. Cook them gently in a small skillet in some olive oil.

   When the tomatoes begin to caramelize and get wrinkly,make space in the middle and crack the egg into the skillet. Go on frying, on both sides if you like that.

   Add capers and olives, season to taste but remember that the capers are still quite salt.

   Put the couscous on a plate or in a small bowl, slip the eggs and tomatoes on top and sprinkle with chopped parsley before serving it to yourself!

Getting that Christmas feeling going - Chocolate Cookies With Cinnamon and Pine Nuts

Christmas has been such a big part of my life these past six months that it feels almost strange that it is actually Christmas for real soon. I am doing my best to bring back that feeling but I'm having some problems with it so I thought that if I attack it on all fronts, not only in my home but also here on Lucullian, I might get that Christmas spirit. I need to go to that big Swedish shop and get lots of candles too and as soon the Christmas Tree Man sets up his trees up in his usual corner of a street in Pistoia, I will buy a tree too (though I wont bring it into the house until the 23rd). I will not give up.

This is an old recipe that had a certain success on my Swedish food blog years ago, I have updated it with the addition of cinnamon because I am quite fond of that combination myself and it gives the cookies a Christmas feeling but it is an optional addition, you do as you want. I will be back with more Christmas friendly recipes, some because they ooze of that season feeling and some because they are fast and easy to do but have nothing to do with Christmas except being a good relief from stress.

CHOCOLATE COOKIES WITH CINNAMON AND PINE NUTS

150 g/5,3 ounces salted butter
150 g/5,3 ounces brown sugar
4 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
200 g/ 7 ounces flour
3 tbsp pine nuts

  Mix butter and sugar until smooth. Sift flour, cocoa powder and cinnamon into the butter and sugar, add pine nuts and mix it all well.

   Roll the dough into a long roll and let it rest wrapped in plastic foil for an hour in the fridge.

   Slice the roll thinly (0,5 cm/0,2 in) and put the slices on baking sheets. If you don't have the time or want to skip the fridge part, just roll the dough into little balls straight away and flatten them with a fork or your hand before putting them on a baking sheet.

  Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes in a pre-heated oven (175°C/350°F).

Colourful Links on Sunday

It is grey here but this Autumn we are surrounded by the most vivid and fantastic colours so I thought the theme of the day is colours, I am going t share some photos of mine from my own immediate surroundings and some links to colourful sites and blogs. Enjoy the

- Quilling, an old Renaissance art still alive!
- You can easily do this to bring more colour to your kitchen - so simple but what an effect!
- I cannot but admire and like Bento box artists because they do what they do. With colour.
- These photos might be in b&w but they are truly colourful in the subject matter.
- And light is colour, here it is more light than colour but just see what it can do!

When time doesn't allow - Oven-Baked Parsley and Lemon Frittatine

 Right now I am on the look out for props and I have this fantasy of finding or opening a sort of exchange forum for props where you can swop props or make exchange chains for swapping or ask for things you can't find where you live, any one who knows anything about a space like this in the blogosphere? Or anyone interested in starting one? I would be User/Member no.1! Please let me know.

Frittata is one of my savers, when I can't figure out what to make for dinner or when I need to cook up something quick I think Frittata and feel an immense relief. Usually I make potato and spinach frittata with peperoncino but this time I a) used parsley and lemon in them, b) made them small and oven-baked and c) made them small and finger food friendly. When you bake them in the oven, the frittata gets fluffier than when cooked in a skillet on the stove, I don't know why. And remember, you don't necessarily have to bake this is in the oven but you can do it the more traditional way.

OVEN-BAKED PARSLEY AND LEMON FRITTATINE
makes 8 (depends on your muffin pan of course) small frittata, 4 servings

6 eggs
6 tbsp finely chopped parsley
2 tbsp grated lemon peel
10 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
1 pinch of salt
extra-virgin olive oil

   Whisk eggs, parsley, lemon peel and Parmesan cheese with a pinch of salt. Don't whisk too much.

   Take a muffins pan and brush it with olive oil unless it is a silicone one. Spoon the egg mix into each muffin hole and bake in a pre-heated oven (200°C/390°F) for 8-12 minutes, it depends on the size of the muffin pan and your oven.