Friday dinner

Menu for tonight: lemongrass skewered, marinated grilled shrimp, sake-teriyaki marinated lamb chops served over grilled garlic toasts, corn and zucchini fritters on the side with a duo of dipping sauces (herb mayo and sweet chili cucumber relish) and for dessert, zabaglione with berries and orange. Finger still messed up :( Recipes as soon as I can :(

Almonds failure and picking up the pieces: Amarettinis

Usually, us savvy cooks, we only post on our blogs our success histories but with the failures, we do as somebody said: If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence than you tried. But sometimes, we listen to Beckett:

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail Better"

This is my latest failure with a nice recovery. I found this delicious and simple recipe for Amaretto cookies, nice and fat little round almond balls. The original recipe called for blanched almonds, bitter almond sugar, white sugar, egg whites and confectioner's sugar. Fool proof, eh? Well, no. I had to get creative. Instead of 4 drops of bitter almond oil, I tempted fate with olive oil and Di Saronno Amaretto. I was able to roll the little balls, but once on the baking sheet, they deflated like balloons running out of helium and I got a hellish, flat, single layer of dough. Nothing has been written about cowards, so I decided to go ahead and bake it at 250 F.

The result was like a thin sheet of a chewy almond cookie, actually edible! I cut it in little pieces, sprinkled confectioners sugars and baptized it as Amarettinis :D Very nice as a snack or with cookies.

The ingredients for the cookies are as follows:

For 45 cookies
* 1/2 pound blanched almonds
* 4 drops bitter almond oil
* 3/4 white cup sugar
* 2 egg whites
* 1 tablespoon confectioners sugar, to sprinkle the cookies once baked

Preheat the oven at 250 F. Grind  finely the almonds when you are ready to make the cookies, to keep the flavor. Mix the almonds with almond oil, white sugar and lightly beaten egg whites. Knead the mixture until it gets a firm consistency. Moisten your hands and roll the dough into small balls, 1" in diameter. Place the balls on a baking sheet, covered with parchment paper or a non stick baking mat. Loosely cover the balls with tin foil, to prevent aliens reading their little minds (and over browning). Place the sheet on the bottom rack and bake for about an hour. Dust the cookies with confectioner's sugar using a sieve.

Now, if you want to go the Actor's Studio route and mimic my mess, replace the bitter almond oil with a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and 2 tablespoons of Di Saronno, make a mess, don't even bother to roll the balls, lay a layer of the dough on the baking sheet and there you go, Amarettinis! :D Once baked, cut it in pieces and dust it with confectioner's sugar.

Tiramisu: an Italian delight

Tiramisu is one of my favorite desserts; cocoa, wine, coffee... some of my favorites together, you cannot go wrong. Tiramisu is a quite new dish, its origin goes back to the 80's. There are several theories about who and when invented this heavenly dessert, but the most common is that it was created in Treviso, at Le Beccherie by the goddaughter and apprentice of the owner, Francesca Valori, whose maiden name was Tiramisu. 

For the longest time I had been hunting a good recipe for Tiramisu: please don't talk to me about instant coffee, ricotta cheese, Kahlua and other atrocious variations. I found a page dedicated to Tiramisu (I will mercifully omit the name, there were really horrible recipes there). I am not against variations, one of the pleasures of cooking is to experiment, but some recipes there were garish (one included Philadelphia cheese, sour cream, dream whip, coffeemate and coffee syrup, you catch my drift). I decided to look for recipes from Italy and I found one simple and classic enough. And delicious! . The recipe call for something called savoiardi. Those are the equivalent of ladyfingers. Here is the translation of the recipe.

Ingredients (for 6 people):

* 14 ounces of savoiardi (ladyfingers)

* 5 eggs at room temperature

* 1 cup of white sugar

* 2 cups of Mascarpone cheese

* 1/4 to 1/2 cup of Marsala wine, depending on how much you want to spice it up

* 2 cups of good espresso coffee

* Unsweetened cocoa powder

Make as many coffee pots as necessary to get 2 cups. I would strongly recommend to make a good espresso coffee, not a watery mix. Let the coffee cool off.

Separate the whites from the yolks. Beat the yolks with the sugar in  the electric mixer for at least 5 minutes, until you get a smooth and thick cream. Add the Mascarpone cheese, a spoonful at a time and fold with a wooden spoon, carefully. If necessary, towards the end, put it back in the electric mixer and mix slowly for a few seconds only, to homogenize the mixture. Add then the Marsala wine. 

Separately, beat the egg whites until you get stiff peaks. Carefully fold them into the mixture you already prepared.

Take a rectangular or square pan and start lining up ladyfingers, until you cover the bottom. You can soak them first in coffee, or you can pour the coffee carefully on top of them, soaking them while they are in the pan.

Put a thick layer of cream on the ladyfingers and cover it with a second layer of ladyfingers. Cover with another thick layer of cream, sprinkle cocoa thoroughly on top and put it in the fridge for a few hours. 

Because it is made with raw eggs, make sure you keep it in the fridge and make sure your kitchen is spotless before you start cooking. Wash the eggs before cracking them and discard the shells immediately. The risk is not that high, but better be safe than sorry.

Preparation time: 1 hour

Pumpkin Spice Flan

Flan is a custard dessert very popular in Spain. I added a little bit of pumpkin spice to the mix for a holiday twist. The secret is what we call "baño de María" or bain-marie . Basically you fill a container with boiling water and you immerse halfway in it another container with the food you are going to cook. It works wonders melting chocolate or like in this case with custard, to prevent curdling. Some recipes call for evaporated or condensed milk but I went with a very simple (yet tasty) recipe.


Ingredients: (makes 4 flans)
* 2 eggs
* 4 egg yolks
* 2 cups of whole milk
* 1 lemon rind
* 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
* 1 teaspoon of pumpkin spice
* 6 tablespoons of white sugar
* 8 tablespoons of white sugar (to make the caramel)


Heat the oven to 350 F. Burn the sugar in a metallic flan mold. Once liquified, move the mold around, to deposit some caramel on the sides of the same. 
In a saucepan pour half of the milk with 3 tablespoons of sugar and the lemon rind. Bring it to a boil over  low heat, 25-30 minutes, stirring from time to time. In the meantime, beat the eggs and the yolks, add the other 3 tablespoons of sugar, the pumpkin spice, vanilla extract and the rest of the milk. Take the milk off the heat, remove the rind and slowly add the beaten mixture, stirring. Pour the mixture in the molds with the caramel.
Fill a deep pan with hot water, immerse the molds halfway in it and put it in the oven. Cook until the flan has set. You can check if it is cooked inside with a toothpick, it needs to come out dry. Take the flans out of the oven, cover them and let them cool off out of the fridge. Once cold, keep them in the fridge until ready to serve. Loosen the flans from the molds by running a knife around the edges and invert onto a serving plate. It can be served topped with whipped cream. 


Preparation time: about 1 hour

Florida calling - Key lime pie

To fight the winter blues, here is one of my baking experiments, key lime pie. I got the recipe from the book  "Greatest-ever pastry cookbook" by Catherine Atkinson . I was very pleased with the results. It looks like something regurgitated by a dragon, but my focus was on the taste of the crust and the quality of the filling. It worked well! Eventually I will get to decorations, but for now I am still working on my crusts :D