Christmas in Ireland celebrated with Pixies

In deed here we are back to the jolly season of christmas where all the beggars look cute and overweight baby Jesus will come to visit us.

I must confess I've been naughty but I still hope on my luck to get some candy in my sock.

To celebrate the holy holiday once again we're holding a little dinner/tea to the lonely souls of Dublin emigrants (3 in total). Of course there are other reasons involved, mostly the satisfaction of our stomachs with an unreasonable sized meal. I don't know how can I still consider having a feast, after being in Portugal for 10 days eating like a true swine, but I guess it's in my culture.

The preparations started quite ahead of the happening and for a change we're on schedule this time.

For this years menu we have Presunto with Melon (Yes, we found a melon in December! Go Carbon Footprint!) and a selection of filled (enchidos) and cheese. For the main meal we are having a pheasant stew with roasted potatoes and veggies. Aire is also intending to eat Sauerkraut, but not me! Blerg! (go and see in wikipedia).

Appetiser: chourico (sem cedilha), melon, presunto,cheese

Sauerkraut

Main meal: wild pheasant, roasted potatoes and veggies, sauerkraut

For dessert we're counting on an industrial tiramisu, which tastes much better than it sounds.

Industrial tiramisu, but still very good judging by the leftovers...

A selection of Portuguese pastries is still available for the strongest stomachs.

Pasteis de nata and Brendeiras de Natal

All this will go side by side with good wine brought all the way from home inside the ultra protective surfing booties!

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With the christmas lights on, some candles here and there and a nice smell of cooking in the house, Merry Christmas everyone! Um Feliz Natal para todos! Häid jõule kõigile!

Enjoy yourselves, wherever and whoever you are...

Roasted veggie dinner

5 star dinner

Its winter here and we need to get our vitamins and minerals from somewhere, so I shuffled some veggies like baby potatoes, turnip, carrots, beetroots and green beans on the pan and in the oven they went with some olive oil and mixed herbs for 40 min or so. For a final touch I served it with some feta cheese cubes to give it a kick.

Cacamoons ( Macaroons )

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

Ingredients

Confectioners’ (Icing) sugar: 2 ¼ cups (225 g, 8 oz.)

Almond flour: 2 cups (190 g, 6.7 oz.)

Granulated sugar: 2 tablespoons (25 g , .88 oz.)

Egg whites: 5 (Have at room temperature)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°F (93°C). Combine the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour in a medium bowl. If grinding your own nuts, combine nuts and a cup of confectioners’ sugar in the bowl of a food processor and grind until nuts are very fine and powdery.

2. Beat the egg whites in the clean dry bowl of a stand mixer until they hold soft peaks. Slowly add the granulated sugar and beat until the mixture holds stiff peaks.

3. Sift a third of the almond flour mixture into the meringue and fold gently to combine. If you are planning on adding zest or other flavorings to the batter, now is the time. Sift in the remaining almond flour in two batches. Be gentle! Don’t overfold, but fully incorporate your ingredients.

4. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a plain half-inch tip (Ateco #806). You can also use a Ziploc bag with a corner cut off. It’s easiest to fill your bag if you stand it up in a tall glass and fold the top down before spooning in the batter.

5. Pipe one-inch-sized (2.5 cm) mounds of batter onto baking sheets lined with nonstick liners (or parchment paper).

6. Bake the macaroon for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and raise the temperature to 375°F (190°C). Once the oven is up to temperature, put the pans back in the oven and bake for an additional 7 to 8 minutes, or lightly colored.

7. Cool on a rack before filling.

Excited I was to see the recipe for October challenge, Macaroons! I started to bake it and colored the dough lovely baby pink. Piped the biscuits on a try and off to the oven they went for 5 minutes. Took them out to heat the oven to 190 C degrees and no feet grew for my biscuits. Disappointed I was indeed. I wonder if the dough was too thick, although I did use the exact measurements. Also, the biscuits started to gain some color on top but later I discovered that the inside was completely uncooked and moist. Being disappointed with a result and all I didnt bother with fancy filling, just melted some milk chocolate with little bit of cream.

Daring Bakers Vols-au-Vent

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

What a lovely challange! Well chosen! I couldnt see myself even on craziest baking times baking Vols-au-Vent. I must say that it was a second time for me to make puff pastry and I stayed 50-50 satisfied. Something was not right. I imagined that the dough would rise a bit more. I seemed as if it collapsed a bit as I took them out of the oven. Perhaps the industrial one has baking powder in it for staying so well structured. Oh well..

For the filling I chose something salty. Joao had his say here this time. He suggested mushroom, spinach and cheese filling. I added garlic from my side. I fried the mushrooms on the pan with garlic, added spinach, gave it a little toss. Sprinkled some flour on it for thickener, then some milk, to form nice sauce. When it all became nice and saucy then grated some mild cheddar in it. Came out pretty yummy.

So this is how these babies looked when coming straight from the oven. Bon Appetit!

Infamous Milan Cookies

After considering to renounce this months challenge, due to a very busy schedule, the portuguese little helper offered himself to bake it. As usual his initiave was rather... errr... compromised by all the external distractions offered by a day off. So in the end I was still very involved in the baking process.

I don't feel very possessive about the daring baking's chalenges, however I still feel responsible for their outcome and I just couldn't leave it to an overconfident and easily distracted Portuguese baker.

To make things easy we decided to bake only the milan cookies, since the timeframe was rather small. However it turns out that they dind't come out exactly like on the reference pictures. The dough was to liquidy and in the end it was quite complicated to give some thickness to the cookies. After the first attempt becoming a whole tray cookie, the following were kept to a minimum size in other to maintain their... individuallity??

Anyway, it was a challenge alright but in the end we made something similar to what was intended.

Here follow the intructions:

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

Milan Cookies
Recipe courtesy Gale Gand, from Food Network website

Prep Time: 20 min
Inactive Prep Time: 0 min
Cook Time: 1 hr 0 min
Serves: about 3 dozen cookies

• 12 tablespoons (170grams/ 6 oz) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 1/2 cups (312.5 grams/ 11.02 oz) powdered sugar
• 7/8 cup egg whites (from about 6 eggs)
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons lemon extract
• 1 1/2 cups (187.5grams/ 6.61 oz) all purpose flour
• Cookie filling, recipe follows

Cookie filling:
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 1 orange, zested

1. In a mixer with paddle attachment cream the butter and the sugar.
2. Add the egg whites gradually and then mix in the vanilla and lemon extracts.
3. Add the flour and mix until just well mixed.
4. With a small (1/4-inch) plain tip, pipe 1-inch sections of batter onto a parchment-lined sheet pan, spacing them 2 inches apart as they spread.
5. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 10 minutes or until light golden brown around the edges. Let cool on the pan.
6. While waiting for the cookies to cool, in a small saucepan over medium flame, scald cream.
7. Pour hot cream over chocolate in a bowl, whisk to melt chocolate, add zest and blend well.
8. Set aside to cool (the mixture will thicken as it cools).
9. Spread a thin amount of the filling onto the flat side of a cookie while the filling is still soft and press the flat side of a second cookie on top.
10. Repeat with the remainder of the cookies.

The best picture from the best possible angle from the Milan Cookies.

Bakewell Tart…er…pudding

Lemon curd bakewell tart

The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er... pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England.

I left the jam out and decided put lemon curd into my tart. I'm glad that I did it, because the result came out quite satisfing. This time I was happy enough, because all the cake was eaten on the first day. I managed to give it away to friends and even Joao gave thums up to this cake, so this recipe is a keeper.

Sweet shortcrust pastry

225g (8oz) all purpose flour
30g (1oz) sugar
2.5ml (½ tsp) salt
110g (4oz) unsalted butter, cold (frozen is better)
2 (2) egg yolks
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract (optional)
15-30ml (1-2 Tbsp) cold water

Sift together flour, sugar and salt. Grate butter into the flour mixture, using the large hole-side of a box grater. Using your finger tips only, and working very quickly, rub the fat into the flour until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Set aside.

Lightly beat the egg yolks with the almond extract (if using) and quickly mix into the flour mixture. Keep mixing while dribbling in the water, only adding enough to form a cohesive and slightly sticky dough.

Form the dough into a disc, wrap in cling and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes

Frangipane

125g unsalted butter, softened
125g icing sugar
3 eggs ½ tsp almond extract
125g ground almonds
30g all purpose flour

Cream butter and sugar together for about a minute or until the mixture is primrose in colour and very fluffy. Scrape down the side of the bowl and add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. The batter may appear to curdle. After all three are in, pour in the almond extract and mix for about another 30 seconds and scrape down the sides again. With the beaters on, spoon in the ground nuts and the flour. Mix well. The mixture will be soft, keep its slightly curdled look (mostly from the almonds) and retain its pallid yellow colour.

Lemon curd

2 lemons, rind and juice
2 egg yolks
55g butter
225g sugar

Grate rind of lemons and squeeze out juice. Put sugar, rind and juice, butter and beaten eggs into a large basin on top of a pan of simmering water. Stir with a wooden spoon until thick and curd coats the back of the spoon. Pour into warm sterile jars, cover, seal and label. Refrigerate.

Assembling the tart

Line the tart pan with the crust. Pour the lemon curd on the crust and spread it out evenly. Cover the curd layer with the Frangipane, spread evenly. Dont mind if it gets slightly mixed with the lemoncurd, it won't spoil the final result.

Three dinners

In past 2 weeks or so, I had some divine dinners. Nothing too complex to make, but complex enough to satify the senses.

Bacalau a bras

This is a typical dish from Portugal and very much loved in there. Bacalau is typical salted cod in Portugal. Dish is easy enough to make, but little bit time consuming as all the ingredients: cod, potatos, onion, garlic, eggs are required to boil or fry separately and then mixed all together. Its worth the effort though.

Shrimps in chilli sauce

Another easy meal. Shrimps cooked with onion, garlic, olive oli, white wine and chilli. Nice fresh salad and tomato rice on a side. I must admit that this meal was also inspired by Portugal. I remembered having shimps with piri-piri last year when on holiday in Albufeira.

Warm bread with fresh mozzarella and tomato

It was a bread baking day and since we are not big eaters then this fresh bread with some mozzarella and tomato and once again fresh salad on the side became a yummy dinner.

Apple Strudel

Rolling the strudel

Now this one was exciting for me. I love Apple strudel. I have thinking about it for a while already, so May's challenge was like Linda and Courtney reading my mind. The best strudel I ever had, goes all the way back to my childhood. She was a neighbour of ours and the strudel she made was divine. I remember my mother asking the recipe more than once, and we did it, and we did it, but it never came out the same. Maybe her oven had a little twist. I dont know.
The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.
This strudel was quite close to the my childhood one, but still missing something. I think I could have added more sugar. In my apple strudel I kept the apples, but left out raisins and replaced breadcrumbs, with ground almonds.

Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake

Raspberry cheesecake

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

As suggested by the hosts, this months challenge was about getting really creative with your cheesecake. Once again I have gone down the simple path and chose a single flavour, raspberries, for my cheesecake. Its the same old story that Joao doest like complicated sweets, so I must keep it as simple as possible to appeal him. Result was almost perfect. Cheese part was lovely, tasty and tender, but the crust stayed bit mushy. Cheesecakes that I have eaten the crust is dry and crispy, but mine stayed soaked.
I failed to keep some raspberries for garnish, so my cheesecake looks a bit boring, but taste was far from being boring, don't judge simply by the looks.

Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake

crust:
180 g graham cracker crumbs
115 g butter, melted
2 tbsp.
1 tsp. vanilla extract

cheesecake:
670 g cream cheese, room temperature
210 g sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup heavy cream
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean)
1 tbsp liqueur, optional, but choose what will work well with your cheesecake

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too - baker's choice. Set crust aside.

3. Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream, vanilla, lemon juice, and alcohol and blend until smooth and creamy.

4. Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.

5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done - this can be hard to judge, but you're looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the centre. You don't want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won't crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.

Handmade spinach egg pasta

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

I loved this months challenge. I feel that pasta is something that I would have never done myself, if there wasn't for Daring Bakers. Pasta is always there in the shelf of the supermarket or delicatessen store, if I want to go to more fancy cooking. Its very inexpensive, so there is really no need to do all that heavy duty.

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I bought the fresh spinach and rolled up my sleeves and got it started. Chopped spinach and there came my first wow and amazement and double checking of the recipe. Is it really all this amount. Next step, measuring out the flour, making the well, starting to mix in the spinach and eggs and once again, WOW, is it all that amount of spinach??? I started to knead it together and it didnt look anywhere near to be a pasta, just all this dry mixture of flour and spinach. But I didnt give up and kept manipulating it. It took some time, much more than 3 minutes suggested in recipe, close to 10 at least to get it into this.

Following the instructions I kept on kneading 15 minutes or so and ended up something that looked more close to being pasta.


I left it to relax at room temperature for about an hour. Rolling out didnt seem too much of a trouble. I managed to roll it out quite thin. I used fairly small baking dish to make the lasagne, sinde its only two of us eating. It took exactly half of the made pasta to fill in this dish. Other half I rolled out and cut into pieces and left to dry.

For a sauce I chose simple ground beef version with a little twist of good quality Portuguese chouriço from Joao's last trip home. I usually dont use any measures, just shuffle in about 500g ground beef, 2 small cans of chopped tomatoes and rest of it is pure fantasy, sometimes mushrooms, different types of veggies, Herbs de Provance etc. This time I also added some carrots to the sauce to cut the acidity of tomatoes and chouriço. For bechamel I used recipe given, plus added some grated parmesan cheese for a taste.


Spinach Egg Pasta (Pasta Verde)

2 jumbo eggs (2 ounces/60g or more)
10 ounces (300g) fresh spinach, rinsed dry, and finely chopped; or 6 ounces (170g) frozen chopped spinach, defrosted and squeezed dry
3 1/2 cups (14 ounces/400g) all purpose unbleached (plain) flour (organic stone ground preferred)

Mixing the dough: Mound the flour in the center of your work surface and make a well in the middle. Add the eggs and spinach. Use a wooden spoon to beat together the eggs and spinach. Then gradually start incorporating shallow scrapings of flour from the sides of the well into the liquid. As you work more and more flour into the liquid, the well’s sides may collapse. Use a pastry scraper to keep the liquids from running off and to incorporate the last bits of flour into the dough. Don’t worry if it looks like a hopelessly rough and messy lump.
Kneading: With the aid of the scraper to scoop up unruly pieces, start kneading the dough. Once it becomes a cohesive mass, use the scraper to remove any bits of hard flour on the work surface – these will make the dough lumpy. Knead the dough for about 3 minutes. Its consistency should be elastic and a little sticky. If it is too sticky to move easily, knead in a few more tablespoons of flour. Continue kneading about 10 minutes, or until the dough has become satiny, smooth, and very elastic. It will feel alive under your hands. Do not shortcut this step. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap, and let it relax at room temperature 30 minutes to 3 hours.
Stretching and Thinning: If using an extra-long rolling pin work with half the dough at a time. With a regular-length rolling pin, roll out a quarter of the dough at a time and keep the rest of the dough wrapped. Lightly sprinkle a large work surface with flour. The idea is to stretch the dough rather than press down and push it. Shape it into a ball and begin rolling out to form a circle, frequently turning the disc of dough a quarter turn. As it thins outs, start rolling the disc back on the pin a quarter of the way toward the center and stretching it gently sideways by running the palms of your hands over the rolled-up dough from the center of the pin outward. Unroll, turn the disc a quarter turn, and repeat. Do twice more. Stretch and even out the center of the disc by rolling the dough a quarter of the way back on the pin. Then gently push the rolling pin away from you with one hand while holding the sheet in place on the work surface with the other hand. Repeat three more times, turning the dough a quarter turn each time.
Repeat the two processes as the disc becomes larger and thinner. The goal is a sheet of even thickness. For lasagne, the sheet should be so thin that you can clearly see your hand through it and see colours. Cut into rectangles about 4 by 8 inches (10 x 20 cm). Note: Enza says that transparency is a crucial element of lasagne pasta and the dough should be rolled as thinly as possible. She says this is why her housekeeper has such strong arms! Dry the pasta at room temperature and store in a sealed container or bag.

Final product, straight from the oven and following day .. mmm

Camera action!

Dear fellow bloggers,

I am asking little help from you. Our Sony digital camera has died. Doesn't blink an eye, so it means that I need to get a new one and fast, because I have Daring Bakers challenge to cook and post. My question for you dear friends is: are you satisfied with a camera you use and let me know what type is it? Also perhaps leave me your blogs address as well, so I can check out the images that you have taken with it. Oh and I am talking about digital compact cameras. I wont be getting a big one, since I want it for travels as well and I won't have much patience to walk around all day with something excessive to carry. My own bum is enough already :)
So folks I'd appreciate if you drop me a line :P

Aire