Recipe: Bounty Bars

 

For some reason, I love coconut but I am not so fond of bounty bars. So I tried making some, without too much sugar and with dark chocolate instead. I really liked it. So did my family. These delicious treats all disappeared in the blink of an afternoon. It's not a problem though, they're easy to make. Here's how to...

The Sunday Pâtisserie: Bavarois Kiwi

Hello everyone, there's more of you checking this blog and it makes me very happy! This time I made a kind of fruity cheesecake. It was a lot of fun to make...

Bavarois Kiwi

Bavarois is a kind of cream cake, typical to French cuisine. It's made with either eggs, sugar, milk, and whipped cream or with a mixture of mashed fruits and whipped cream. Its main characteristics are its softness and delicate taste. The "bavarois cream" can be served on its own, but it's very common to use it as one of the layers in a cake. For instance there's a famouse strawberry cake in France which uses a bavarois cream made with fresh strawberries.

Mine was made with a base of génoise (sponge cake), on which stood my kiwi bavarois cream and topped by a lid of red berries.

I decided to make my bavarois with fruits (as I said earlier, it can be made without, but more of that another time), and more especially kiwis. Now I know it's not the season but I had kiwis sitting in the fridge for a good two months now (I have my brother to thank for that, he likes smoothies but not making them...) and believe it or not they were still pretty good!

But what I didn't know before, and which I'll make sure to remember from now on, is that kiwis don't go well with gelatin, a setting agent, key to the success of a bavarois cream (to make sure your cream stands solid). It worked this time but I could tell that given enough time outside the fridge, the cake would melt in a puddle of whipped kiwi cream quickly.

To make the cream, I mixed the kiwis and then added a syrup made of water, sugar and the gelatin in it.

Once the single cream (it's a thick liquid cream) whipped , I added the kiwi mixture to it and I obtained my kiwi bavarois cream.
I poured it on top of my sponge cake (I added grapefruit slices for taste). You need a cake circle for that, since at that point the cream is still pretty liquid and needs time to cool before solidifying.


Once you get the gist of it, the cake is easy to make. On the top, I added a covering of red berries. Those were frozen so I simmered them on low fire with sugar, added a bit of gelatin (red berries are full of a natural setting agent already), then dropped it on the top of my set kiwi cream. More cooling time and it was finally ready.

Have a great week! Sorry for the lack of Tuesday Spices recently but it should come back soon, I'm working on something else that takes much of my time at the moment but no worries, it definitely will come back. Also I'll post the recipes of the cakes I make as time goes by, so stay tuned!

 

Recipe: Pâte brisée- Pie Crust Pastry

One of the simplest pastries, it goes well with sweet or salty recipes since it contains no sugar. (You could use it for fruit pies, quiches, meat pie, etc.) It can be frozen then thawed in the fridge a day before use (you'll need to sprinkle flour on it since it will have surely gotten damp.)
I'll focus on the detailed steps of how to make it 100% by hand but you can use a food processor as well.

The Sunday Pâtisserie: Torta della Nonna

This weekend I made something Italian...

 Torta della Nonna

Torta della Nonna roughly translates to Nun's Pie and is a typical italian dessert. It's my first time making it so I believe I can do better. It's simple but can be tricky at times, mainly because it's not a simple pie, it's filled and has pastry all around it.

Here's what it's made of:

-Torta della Nonna is surounded by crust pastry. Which means you have to fill
 with the cream then close it with a lid of more pastry.

 -In the inside we have a special kind of cream: it's crème pâtissière mixed with ricotta, a traditional italian fresh cheese. I added nuts for more crunchiness.

-On the lid of crust pastry, you have to add pine nuts. It's a very delicate and slightly sweet nut from pine trees. With the Ricotta cream, this is what makes this pie so typical. 

You are supposed to put the pine nuts before baking, but my oven can be annoying sometimes so some of the nuts darkened. Next time, I'll try to roast them in a pan on low fire and sprinkle them on the cake after it's been baked to avoid that.


You're also supposed to sprinkle it with powdered sugar once it's cooled off. The pie was good, though a bit heavy on the stomach. Ricotta is a fresh cheese and it brought a more acidic taste to the crème patissière which was welcome actually.
It has to cool off before being served because when I got it out of the oven and tried to remove the circle, I felt like the cream inside was still very liquid.

 Here's the opened pie. I used pâte brisée  but I think you're supposed to use sweet shortcut pastry, which would have been a problem for me since I believe it could have made the dessert too sweet.

 Have a wonderful rest of the week!

Life as a cook: La Semaine du Goût

Hey everyone, I hope you're doing great!

 Today, I'd like to talk about something special happening all over France:

(It roughly translates to "The week of taste" in English.)

It's a cultural event taking place each year in October in the country. Focused towards the youth and mostly in elementary schools, its goal is to develop the awareness of French children to the importance of eating well and the cultural weight of gastronomy in the country. 

To do so, professionals of the food industry (mostly chefs and even the famous ones), present their work and passion in the classes. The cooks and the teachers work hand in hand to educate the students and introduce them to the world of French gastronomy. However, this event is not limited to the country's cuisine: this year, the world's tastes are represented with Mexican, Japanese and many other different chefs. 

The activities they offer are varied:

-Workshops (about the ingredients, their origins, their uses,etc.)

-Discovery of new recipes and their applications

-The importance of eating healthily

-The tendencies in gastronomy

-Etc. 

If elementary schools are the main target of "La Semaine du Goût", the cultural event also targets a broad range of environments to share its message: college campuses, companies, cultural centers, ... there are many places in France this week where you might find expositions and shows offered by chefs and food industry professionals. The Week of Taste is 26 years old now, and it's becoming quite popular. It was actually exported to Japan, a country which shares a passion for fine eating with France.

There's much more to know about this event and if you're interested (and speak french) you can go on the dedicated website: 

http://www.legout.com/www/presentation.html 
or watch videos like this one:

 

Happy Semaine du Goût!

The Tuesday Spice: Ginger

You may have heard of this one...

Ginger

Here's to a famous one, ginger. But it doesn't necessarilly mean we all know the possibilities offered by this root from tropical countries. It is picked before its full maturation then usually dried and peeled. Actually ginger can be found fresh and raw, dried and peeled (it is stronger than its fresh version like that), minced, ground, boiled, sliced thinly and pickled, preserved in syrup, etc.

More than a versatile spice, ginger is a full ingredient, that can be eaten on its own.But this series is called Tuesday Spice for a reason, so here are the great things you can add ginger to: 

• In Europe, it is used mostly with desserts and pastries, as well as candies. Ginger and sugar are great friends. For instance, gingerbread needs no explanation. The spice adds a fruity taste, slightly lemony, and  great perfume to many preparations.

• But Asian cuisine truly mastered ginger and its benefits: When fresh, it brings its original savour to vegetables, meats, fish, chicken, chutneys, soups, rice and of course, curry. That's a lot of things; and that's why ginger is so well-known, it's because you can experiment with it freely and the chances of it growing wrong are thinner than with a spice like turmeric for example.

• Ginger may be used to infuse drinks and  teas. What about ginger ale? Oil is even extracted from the root and a kind of brandy is prepared with it (it's said to warm the stomach very well). 

From digestion to belly-aches, to nausea, to menstrual troubles, ginger is said to appease it all. As far as I'm concerned, I am satisfied with using the spice only for cooking experiments, with seafood especially, and in pastries. I sometimes try original combinations: for instance, last time I made duck breast with a ginger chutney and a lemon sauce. It was very good!

Gari is the marinated version of ginger served with sushis.

Have a wonderful week!

The Sunday Pâtisserie: Alsatian Apple Pie

We always have apples going beyond ripe at home...

Alsatian Apple Pie 

There's many ways to make an apple pie. Last week, the Tarte Tatin I showed you is one kind. This week, and since I had a lot of apples left, I made this one. 

It's much more simple, and maybe not as delicate on the tongue but it's still a very nice family dessert you can make during the week. It makes everyone happy or at least it did here. Sometimes the simplest recipes are the most adequate. 

I already mentioned Alsace in the article about cumin and its use in the Alsatian cheese, "munster."

It's a region in the East of France with great treasures in gastronomy. Alsace is not famous for its apples but its apple pie is a beauty.

It is made of: 

• A dough, I made mine with pâte brisée. (see recipe)

• Apples, thinly sliced then disposed on the dough in a nice manner.

• And the most important element, what differentiates this pie from the others, the crème prise, that is to say the mixture made of liquid cream, eggs and eggs yolk, milk and sugar, and vanilla . You pour this kind of batter on the apples, and bake it all in the oven. 

Cast sugar is often sprinkled on the cooled pie. Since I don't like pastries that are overly sweet, I didn't add sugar in my "crème prise" mixture, and I think it was for the best since the pie ended up being almost too sweet for me. In the end it all depends on the taste of the eaters. I used old granny smiths apples for this pie.