Pearspotting :)

 

Pears, pears and more pears. These last few days I've been hooked on pears, you might have noticed :) I know, it's so not their season this time a year but..It started when I was making oven baked root vegetables. I thought that it wouldn't hurt mixing pears with carrots, parsnips, potatoes and red onions. And yesterday. Avocado&pear kidney bean salsa for lunch. Today I was searching for a pear dessert recipe and found loads of them that I plan to try. The first one makes itself in the oven, just what I need when I'm preparing for an exam.

Baked pear with cinnamon&ginger butter

Ingredients: (2 servings)

1 pear (I used Conference)
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ginger spice
1 tbsp muscovado sugar
 tin foil
 hasselnuts (or almonds, walnuts, pecans..)

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
2. Cut the pear diagonally and remove the core, leaving a scoop in the middle.
3. Mix together butter, sugar and spices. Spoon the mixture in the scoop.
4. Place each pear half on a separate square of tin foil, scooped side up, and wrap so that it does not leave any opening.
5. Bake for about 45 minutes.

Spiced butter together with sugar and pear juice make a wonderful syrup. Serve with toasted nuts and creme fraiche or vanilla ice cream.

Catchin' up..

Gosh, it's been a busy week and went by fast like hell! I didn't have a spare moment to spend with my blog so now I'm catching up. Amazing things have happened in the food blogger world this week. The best Slovak food bloggers I'm following have made some seriously wonderful stuff in their kitchens that made me wanna Cook, eat and photograph :), they made me wanna enjoy!

I'm having a day off which means that the kitchen is full of me! Why should I bother making plans for cooking when my first (or second?) thought after waking up is that I'd fancy a fruity "sponge cake" (bublanina). Having thoughts like this is not unusual for me but they usually attack my brain when I'm fully awake.
Bublanina is a very easy made and very common Slovak dessert. When I'm thinking "bublanina" I recall a hot summer day at my grandad's garden with an odour of fresh rape fruits like apricots or peaches in the air. I made just a couple of bublaninas over the last few years so maybe that's why my craving for making one today was so intense..

Bublanina with pears and raspberries

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 cup caster sugar
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
lemon zest of a half lemon
0, 75 dl milk
0,75 dl canola oil
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
2 tbsp baking powder
1 pear and a half a cup raspberries (frozen or fresh)

Method:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
Beat the eggs and sugar until fluffy. Add milk, oil and lemon zest. Stir in flour and baking powder, pour it in a medium oven ware dish. Clean the pear and cut into pieces. Powder the fruit with a little bit of flour in case you don't want it to sink on the bottom of the cake while baking (I didn't do this and look what happened :)). Place the fruit randomly on the cake dough and bake until the top is golden brown, for about 25-30 minutes. Check after 20 minutes, the baking time very much depends on the oven type, dish depth, dough etc..

 

Lunching for me is almost always a spontanious thing. All I knew today was that I'd make something of avocado. I had my favorite avocado soup earlier this week so I was gonna let my imagination go a bit further this time. The result was decent and took only 5 minutes to accomplish. Having a spare pear that I didn't use when baking, I'd decided that I'd put these two lovely fruits together. Tada, they totally match! Kidney beans made the "avocado-pear marriage" a legitimate lunch material :)

Avocado&pear kidney bean salsa

Cut the fruit of avocado and pear, mix in a bowl, add lime juice, a little bit of sea salt and kidney beans of a good quality.  

Enjoy!

White chocolate and vanilla bean panna cotta with mashed raspberries

After what seems like ages, it's panna cotta time! I couldn't resist the temptation of making one as I was salivating through the latest Daring Bakers' challenge on Tastespotting.
This panna cotta is my favorite for two reasons: 1. No added sugar and 2. (rasp)Berries!
I'm stuck in the heavenly combination of white chocolate dissolved in heavy cream and topped with the freshness of juicy raspberries.

I only dare to make this dessert either on special occassions or when i know that there is a chance for hours of sweating at the gym! And never more often than once-twice a year :)) It's highly addictive!

White chocolate and vanilla bean panna cotta with mashed raspberries

Ingredients: (2 servings)
2,5 dl heavy cream
50 g white chocolate
2 gelatine sheets
a pinch of vanilla bean powder
about 100-150 g raspberries
(sugar)

Method:
1. Put the gelatine sheets in a cold water and let them soak for about 10 minutes.
2. Heat up the heavy cream and remove from the heat when it starts simmering (do not cook).
3. Squeeze water out of the sheets of gelatine and stir so that it dissolves in the heavy cream.
4. Add the chopped white chocolate and stir until melted and smooth. Add vanilla bean powder (and some sugar if you like).
5. Pour into a serving bowles and refrigirate for about 4 hours.
6. Before serving, mash the raspberries and spoon them on the top of the panna cotta.

Sheep cheese crostini

Small, tasteful toasts. No wonder that there are a zillion recipes on crostinis, they simply have the potential.
I can never find the Slovak product of sheep cheese called "bryndza" here but I shouldn't complain, a Greek sheep cheese is always available. I'm so longing for a plate of bryndzove halusky, Slovak traditional dish, but I know I can forget about it until I'm reunited with my family in Slovakia. Or, I can make friends with the Greek sheep cheese instead :)

 Sheep cheese&cherry tomatoes crostini

Ingredients:
baguette
olive oil
(crushed garlic)
cherry tomatoes
dried basil or oregano
sheep cheese

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Choose the same program you use for making pizza.
2. Slice the baguette. Place on a baking sheet.
3. Brush the crostinis with olive oil and a little bit of chrushed garlic.
4. Cut the cherry tomatoes and place on the bread. Sprinkle some basil or oregano on the tomatoes.
5. Top with the sheep cheese and bake for about 6 minutes, until the crostinis are lightly brown. Cool before serving.

My time for cooking (and other pleasant things) has shrunk drastically but I still have to and want to cook. More than ever I'm looking for easy and quick solutions (that are not dull). Thanks to my food blogger friends I'm never left with a dilemma about "what to cook". It's actually more about "what to cook first??" So today I chose to try this recipe. I can totally recommend, if you like surprising tastes. We do!:)

Kolasnittar - Swedish toffee shortbread

 

 As I'll be spending quite some time outside home this week, I thought I'd rather make a batch of homemade cookies than getting a chocolate bar of 1000 calories and additives from a sweetshop. Smart, ain't it? I seem to never find it difficult coming up with reasons to bake - not even on Monday morning :))
Searching for some quick and easy recipe, I remembered having kolasnittar at one of our morning breaks at work. They were just perfect with a cup of black coffee! "Kola" means caramel or toffee in Swedish which suggests the richness of taste. If done properly, the inside remains chewy.
I chose to follow Leila Lindholm's recipe because I liked her idea of using ginger in the dough.

Kolasnittar

 

Ingredients:
2 1/4 dl all-purpose flour
1 tea spoon ground ginger
1 tea spoon vanilla sugar
1/2 tea spoon bicarbonate (soda)
100 g butter at room temperature
1 dl caster sugar
2 table spoons golden syrup

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees.
2. Mix flour, ginger, vanilla sugar and bicarbonate in a bowl.
3. In another bowl, beat butter, syrup and sugar until light and fluffy.
4. Add the flour mix and work quickly into a smooth dough.
5. Split the dough into two pieces and roll out to "sausages".
6. Put the sausages on a baking sheet. Flatten them out by using hands or a rolling-pin.
7. Use a fork to make a pattern if you like.
8. Bake for about 15 minutes. Let cool a little and cut diagonally.

Store in a jar or freeze in some.

Have a great week and don't skip the coffee breaks! :)

Almost tiramisu :)

I call this dessert (almost) tiramisu even though I know it's thousands of miles far from the classical one. I bet that the Italians are pretty selective with what should and what shouldn't be called Tiramisu. There certainly are a number of "rules" to follow when making tiramisu, as using espresso for instance - not just any kind of coffee and most preferably an Italian brand like Lavazza, Illy, Cello etc. Using raw eggs is another rule and most importantly, Mascarpone.

My "tiramisu" doesn't tick a single box of these rules but let's face it, if I think of it as of "almost tiramisu", who's to be hurt? :)
For those who suffer from lactose intolerance, is Mascarpone no option. At least I haven't been able to find a lactose-free one here in Sweden. I use a lactose free variant of "kvarg" instead, cream curd (jemny tvaroh in Slovak). It's delicious, light (only about 1% fat) and as close to Mascarpone as I could come.

When not following the rules, I can just as well be consistent about it and break the rest of them too: used neither Cognac nor Brandy. Instead I chose cacao liqueur which I think corresponds well with the cocoa powder decoration. At this point I must say that the best tiramisu I've ever had was a variant made with Baileys. Heavenly good.
As they say, "there aren't two tiramisu that taste the same", so why not experiment a little and make one that you can label as "your own"? Do any of you have some special "tiramisu tricks" you are willing to share?

Almost tiramisu:

Ingredients: (makes about 6 servings)

savoiardi lady fingers (about 18-20 pieces)

500 g light cream curd  

1 cup espresso

2 shots cacao liqueur

vanilla sugar (or sugar and vanilla powder)

cocoa powder

Method:

1. Make the espresso and let cool to a room temperature. Pour it into a shallow bowl and add the cocoa liqueur. 

2. Dip the savoiardi in the espresso (both sides) and place one by one in a rectangular bowl.

3. Mix the curd with sugar and vanilla and spread a half of it on the savoiardi.

4. Make another layer of espresso savoiardi and cover with the rest of the curd.

5. Place in the fridge for a couple of hours. Sprinkle the cocoa powder on top before serving. Enjoy!

Bake easy - bake muffins :)

I'm visiting a friend this evening and even though I was told not to bring anything, I made these muffins. They make a great appetizer or a snack. I can even imagine having these instead of bread to a soup or sallad. I didn't follow any recipe this time, just used igredients that I think work well together. The muffins turned out just as I expected them which made me glad and even more keen on further experimenting in kitchen :) Yes, I know, to bake muffins is one of the easiest things to do but on the other hand, the most rewarding!

Feta&sundried tomatoes muffins with rosemary and lemon zest

Ingredients: (makes about 12 medium size muffins)
3,5 dl all purpose flour
1,5 dl spelt grain (can be replaced by same amount of oatmeal, or just use 5 dl flour)
1 tea spoon sea salt
1,5 table spoon baking powder
1 tea spoon dried rosemary
1,5 dl milk
1 dl oil (can use olive oil if you like)
2 eggs
feta cheese cubed
sundried tomatoes
lemon zest of 1 lemon

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
2. Mix flour, spelt grain, salt, baking powder and rosemary in a bowl.
3. Beat the eggs lightly in another bowl, add milk and oil.
4. Pour the egg and milk mix into the flour mix and work carefully into a dough.
5. Add the feta, sundried tomatoes cut into pieces and lemon zest.
6. Spoon the dough into a muffin baking pan and bake for about 20-25 minutes. If you are not using paper muffin containers, butter and flour the baking sheet first.

Have a great weekend everyone!