Sun-dried Tomato & Olive Tapenade| Reflecting Back

Every New Year, rather than making resolutions, I take a moment to reflect on what I’ve done in the past year, and I was flipping through my agenda. In the summer before freshman year, I bought this agenda that I’d intended to use for the school year. It was a fairly plain one, about the size of a novel and covered in camel colored canvas with a little pocket on the front. Little did I know that I would end up using this agenda for the next three years, and how attached to it I would become.Three years later, the pages are covered in my hand writing and random little scribbles, the spine is no longer a spine but rather a mass of tape, and I had doodled on the cover so much that it looked like I had attempted to color the entire thing with my pen. Looking at the ratty old thing I still managed to call an agenda, it amazed me how far I had come in the past three years and how fast that time had passed. I remember as freshman I thought I wouldn’t make the next four years. I’m now a junior in high school, taking my SATs and ACTs and getting ready for college.

Moving along to the food portion of this post, these are sun-dried tomato and Kalamata olive tapenade crostinis. Sun-dried tomatoes are one of my favorite things, and they play a huge part in this tapenade. They’re slightly salty and mostly sour accented with a tinge of sweetness, the olives add a deeper flavor to the mix, and the brie complements it all by adding an earthy but creamy undertone. I really love the complex mix of flavors in this, and this has definitely become one of my favorite snacks to come home to after school. Plus, it’s really quite a simple recipe, and great for parties (you can definitely make this ahead of time, and just make sure you have a loaf of bread nearby!).

Sun-dried Tomato & Kalamata Olive Tapenade

adapted from this blog

NOTE: I actually feel like this tastes the best a day after it’s made, because the garlic’s flavor is absorbed much more into the tapenade.

Ingredients

• 1 loaf bread (I used ciabatta, french bread is great too!)
• Brie Cheese (typically comes in whole wheels, I reccommend one 5 inches or more in diameter)
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 4 oz. Kalamata Olives coarsely chopped
• 7 oz jar of sundried tomatos (note: if you have tomato halves it will be approximately 21 tomato halves, and  be sure to julienne them!)  (Note: if your tomatos are preserved with oil, drain the oil out of them as best you can, and don’t worry about the tapenade being greasy, it will be fine!)

Instructions

1. Slice your bread into 1.5 cm slices.
2. Toasting the bread: preheat the oven to 400 degrees, and toast the bread until the edges start becoming golden, approx. 5-8 minutes.
3. Put the sun-dried tomatoes, olives, and garlic cloves into the food processor. Pulse until coarsely chopped. Be careful not to over pulse the mixture or you might end up with a sort of a paste.
4. To serve place a slice of brie on the bread( the slices of brie should be able to cover the entire piece of bread), add 1/2 tablespoon of tapenade on top, and serve :)

Enjoy!
~Deepshikha

Summer ’12 | Cookies & Cream Italian Ice

The past few months have passed in a whirl of SAT prep work, sweet sixteens, summer assignments, taking long runs and reading books. It sounds so typically teenager-ish but it was amazingly relaxing and great break from all the stress, work, and deadlines of school. And in this time, I also learned many things:

1. It’s hard to stop procrastinating. Really. I thought my procrastinating habit was because I was stressed during school, and that without any stress during the summer, I wouldn’t procrastinate on my summer assignments. That  is the worst lie I ever told myself.

2. Photographing anything frozen and prone to quick melting is hard.  Really. Originally I’d intended to do an entire ice cream series for you guys, but after spending about five minutes trying to scoop a perfect ball of ice cream, only to have it melt and slide all around the bowl… I know the trick to photographing frozen things is to work fast, but its pretty hard.

3. Italian ice is great. Its super easy and quick to make + it really cools you down on summer days. They’re also easier to photograph than ice cream, because you don’t have make it look perfect, just serve with whipped cream garnish, and that is the end of it :)

Anyways, here’s the recipe to an ice recipe that I’ve made several times over the summer :) It’s very simple, but it tastes great, and is easy to make so here you go…

note: I’m not quite sure that this dessert should be categorized as an italian ice because it does contain milk & ice cream, however, it does resemble italian ice more than anything to me, and has a similar texture…

Cookies & Cream Ice

Serves two

1 big scoop of vanilla ice cream

4 oreos cookies

1 cup of milk (whole is preferable, but 2 % is great as well) & two table spoons (keep separated)

1. In a blender blend together all of the above ingredients until smooth, then pour it into a ice cube tray, and freeze until completely solid (this should take a three hours or more depending on how cold your freezer is)

2. Remove frozen cookies&cream mixture from ice tray and place in blender and add two table spoons of milk into the blender, and then blend the mixture until smooth :)

Keep cool & enjoy :)

Deepshikha :)

Daring Bakers | Panna Cotta & Florentines

Almost every time my father comes home from a business trip, he will sit and happily tell me about all the desserts and dishes he had tried at many restaurants. It’s maddening for me, listening to the names of all these fancy, amazing desserts, which I really want to try. However, every now and then he tells me about a new dessert, which I immediately go look up. If I find it appealing enough, I book mark a recipe to make later.

A couple months ago, my father mentioned panna cotta. It sounded delicious as he described it. “It’s like flan, just as creamy, but lighter, and instead of caramel on top, there’s fruit…” I was intrigued, and so looked it up and found a recipe by Giada De Laurentiis, and left it bookmarked intending to make it soon. However I completely forgot about the recipe and it stayed there gathering dust.

This month when I logged on to the daring bakers website, to check the challenge, I was surprised: The challenge was panna cotta(and florentine cookies), and recipe for the panna cotta was exactly the same one that I had bookmarked so many months ago!

The Febuary 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen. She chose to challenge everyone to make Panna Cotta from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and Nestle Florentine Cookies.

When I first tried out the vanilla panna cotta recipe I noticed that it had a nice honey flavor, that could be balanced perfectly by something that was slightly tart. Later I re-made the panna cotta, but this time I added a little more honey, to amplify the honey taste, and paired it with some tart(not too tart though) berry compote. The flavors are wonderful: creamy, tart, fruity, and sweet. It’s quite simple, yet complex.

And as for the florentines: I tried some variations and it came way different but need a few tweaks here and there…I will share the recipe later…

Honey Panna Cotta

Adapted from Giada De Laurentiis

• 1 cup  whole milk
• 1 tablespoon  unflavored powdered gelatin
• 3 cups) whipping cream (30+% butterfat)
• 1/3 cup  honey(slightly more but not quite 2/3 a cup…)
• pinch of salt

Directions:

1. Pour the milk into a bowl or pot and sprinkle gelatin evenly and thinly over the milk (make sure the bowl/pot is cold by placing the bowl/pot in the refrigerator for a few minutes before you start making the Panna Cotta). Let stand for 5 minutes to soften the gelatin.
2. Pour the milk into the saucepan/pot and place over medium heat on the stove. Heat this mixture until it is hot, but not boiling, about five minutes. (I whisk it a few times at this stage).
3. Next, add the cream, honey, sugar, and pinch of salt. Making sure the mixture doesn’t boil, continue to heat and stir occasionally until the sugar and honey have dissolved 5-7 minutes.
4. Remove from heat, allow it to sit for a few minutes to cool slightly. Then pour into the glass or ramekin.
5. Refrigerate at least 6 hours or overnight.

Berry Compote

• 1 cup of frozen mixed berries(or any fruit that you want really)
• some sugar

Wash the frozen berries in sieve to get the ice off of it.

Put the fruit in small sauce pan and just let it simmer for a while, and let the fruit defrost. Stir it a little and you’ll see some juice gathering on the bottom. Keep stirring and if you don’t see juice add little water. Not a whole lot or you’ll end up with a very watery compote, that won’t taste very good. Taste the compote. If needed add a little bit of sugar, until it tastes right to you.  Let it simmer for some more time, until the juice around the berries, thickens a little more. Remove from heat and spoon onto panna cotta.

NOTE: Because I had frozen rasberries, and blackberries in my frozen berry mix, which fell apart easily, my compote will look much different from yours. Usually compotes look something like this, with the syrup, separate from the fruit, unlike what you see here.

Enjoy!

~Dee D

Daring Bakers | Apple Crostata

I don’t know why, but I always have the urge to make things that sound fancy, exotic and or french. Souffle? Creme Brulee? Tiramisu? Petit Fours? All of those are a result of this strange urge that I have.

And so, when I saw this month’s daring bakers I was immediately intrigued. Crostata? It sounded pretty exotic to me, and looked like a cross between pie and a tart, two things which i love. Immediately i started making the dough for thepasta frolla(the crust dough), mixing and kneading away happily. Then after I finished with that and put the dough in for a two hours, and decided to think up fillings. I started out wanting to make a creamy thick filling, so then i was thinking of a variety of pastry creams. Then I saw 3 perfect little apples sitting on the counter top, that stood out starkly due to their beautiful  golden and scarlet hues.

And obviously, those beautiful apples are what i used for this crostata, and it came out delicious, and very seasonally appropriate.

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

Oh, and happy late thanksgiving all!

I hope you had awesome thanksgivings and I hope you stuffed yourself like crazy :)

Apple Crostata

For the pasta frolla:

• 3/4 a scant cup of powdered sugar
• 1 3/4 a cup of all purpose unbleached flour
• a pinch of salt
• 1 stick(eight tablespoons) of cold grated butter(take the stick of butter out of the fridge cold and grate it using the larger holed side of a grater and then place it in the fridge again for ten minutes)
• the lemon zest of half a lemon
• 1 and 1/2 tsp of cinnamon(you can tweak this a bit, i just kept adding a little by little until i thought i would taste good, only problem was i didn’t know how much so i’d say approx. that)
• 1 large egg beaten lightly

1. Whisk together the powdered sugar, flour and salt.
2. add in the butter, and rub or cut the butter using a pastry cutter in to the flour mixture until like course bread crumbs.
3. make a little indentation in the bread crummy mixture and pour in the egg(remember to save a teaspoon to glaze the dough later when it’s being baked)
4. Add the zest into the little indentation, and mix it all together.
5. You will now have dough, that you want to knead it until it comes together in a ball. Then shape it into a circle and refrigerate wrapped in plastic wrap it for the minimum of 2 hours or over night.
6. two hours take the dough out and roll it out between two pieces of plastic wrap until it’s 5 mm thick, take off one side of the plastic and flip it over onto the dish that you’ll be baking it in. Delicately press the dough in to  fit the pan, and cut off any excess dough hanging over the edges of the dish and press it into the sides and middle.
7. Take a fork, and stab the bottom with it in several places(to let any air from air bubbles escape)
8. Make the filling(recipe below) and put the apples in however you like it. I staggered the apples in rows since my crostata was squared shaped, and there was two layers( i used an 8×8 pan).
9. Glaze whatever crust is exposed with that saved 1 teaspoon of egg.
10. bake at 375 degrees until the crust is golden.

Apple filling

• 3 small apples peeled, cut in half and then cut again into thin 2 mm slices
• 1/3 a cup of brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp of sugar (adjust this to your tastes)

Mix this all together in a bowl.

Tastes great with a scoop of vanilla ice cream :)

and one last thing:

My late thanksgiving list:

I’m thankful for

• My adorable and sweet little sister.
• My  loving parents.
• My amazing and slightly eccentric friends.
• My awesome food blogger friends, Adriana, Jeannie and Sheena.
• For living the way I’m living.

~Dee D.

Tiramisu & Love

When I saw this dessert, it was love at first sight…

I still remember the first time we had met…it was a couple years back, I was eating dinner and Tiramisu showed up upon my dinner table…he was gorgeous….a dark brown hue layered with a creamy, warm white and dusted cocoa on the top…mmm…and the taste! Absolutely amazing…a sharp espresso flavor, lightly touched by a tinge of alcohol, with small but very notable ring of chocolate , and a amazing cream blanketing the whole thing….soo crazily delicious!

Of course, the next day I spent a while digging about and finding the perfect recipe, and trying it out, and it turned out quite good, and awesomely yummy. Plus it’s real easy to make :)

Here we go:

Tiramisu Italiano

adapted from Food Network

Ingredients:

For the cream(the white part):

• 7 eggs yolks(I’m not sure if size of the egg makes a difference, but I use medium sized eggs)
• 1/2 a cup of sugar(refer down 3 ingredients, for a small modification)
• 1/3 a cup of sweet marsala(you may want to minimize this if you don’t like the taste of alcohol in desert too much)
• 8 ounces of room temperature mascarpone( you can also use the coffee mascarpone if you somehow dig that out and it’s actually cheaper than the regular kind)
• 1 cup of heavy cream(and possibly more) OR some pre-made whipped cream(in which case you should minimize the sugar, unless you, for some magical reason, have found sugarless whipped cream)– (I prefer using the pre-made whipped cream, it’s just easier :D)

For the ladyfingers(the brown part):

• 1 cup espresso coffee(brewed)
• 1 oz. dark chocolate OR about a heaped half a tbsp. of dark chocolate powder and some sugar.
• 1/4 a cup of rum(once again, if you do not like the taste of alcohol minimize this)
• 2 tablespoons of marsala
• 1 tsp of vanilla extract
• 48 lady fingers

and Lastly:

• cocoa powder for dusting!

For the cream:

Okay, so first, in bowl(check the bottom to see if it’s heat proof) over a pot of simmering water combine the egg yolks and the sugar. When they are successfully creamed together, add in the marsala, and then whisk(or use an hand mixer) the mixture until it starts to gain volume. Then set the whisk/hand mixer aside, take the bowl off stove and then add in the mascarpone and mix it in with a spoon(it’s easier with a spoon) until it’s successfully mixed in.

Now for those who are using pre-made whipped cream:

Take a gigantic spoon of the whipped cream, and using a whisk(or a hand mixer with the whisk attachment) mix the whipped cream in. Continue adding spoons of the whipped cream until the mixture appears to be capable of holding it’s shape.Note: every now and then, just pop the mixture in the freezer or refrigerator, because the cold helps the mixture to get thicker.

For those who are making whipped cream from scratch:

Grab a whisk(or hand blender or hand mixer), a bowl(make sure you pre-chill this by putting it in the freezer) and the (chilled)heavy cream.

• If you use a hand blender or mixer, simply flick a switch and in five minutes you will have a nice whipped cream.
• But how ever, if you intend to whip it by hand(which is crazily hard, and I do not recommend, but it is possible, because how did people do it back in the day?), use the whisk and whip the cream really hard, and every now and then put it in the freezer for a few minutes, then take it out and whip it up again.

Then after you have your whipped cream simply whip it into the marsala/sugar/egg/mascarpone mixture and you may need more than you already have to get it to a  state where it is able to hold it’s shape for a couple of seconds.

And voila! You have the cream part of the tiramisu!

Now just stick it in the fridge and let it chill.

Now, for the lady fingers…

Lady Fingers(the brown part) Part:

Okay…

If you are you are using solid chocolate(chips, a bar,etc…), grab a small-ish sauce pan, the chocolate, the espresso, the rum, the marsala, and the vanilla. Put all the ingredients into the small sauce pan, and heat on medium until the chocolate is fully melted. Now lets call this mixture CERMV(the initials of every ingredient).

If you are using chocolate powder grab a bowl(small-ish), the chocolate, the espresso, the rum, the marsala, and lastly the vanilla. Combine all the ingredients in the bowl and go snatch your sugar. Spoon in two teaspoons of sugar into the chocolate/espresso/rum/marsala/vanilla(lets call it CERMV) mixture. Now taste it. If it tastes worthy to be thrown down the drain, add in more sugar, and taste again. Continue doing this until it tastes semi-edible(because remember that we’re dipping the ladyfingers in this then layering them with the cream which already has sugar).

Now take the all the lady fingers, and arrange them in a dish(or dishes) that is(are) capable of holding two layers of the lady fingers, and the cream also. Make sure you do this before you start dipping the lady fingers, because if you suddenly realize that the tiramisu won’t fit in the dish you are working with, it’s not fun to re-arrange soggy lady fingers.

Okay, now we dip the lady fingers into the CERMV and form the first layer of lady fingers on the bottom of your dish.

Dipping tips: if you have the harder kind(there are soft ones that are spongy and hard ones that are…hard)of lady fingers, I reccomend holding them in the CERMV, completely submerged, for exactly five seconds(w/ the Mississippi’s).  However, if you are using the softer ones, try four or three seconds. But for both types of lady fingers you want them soft enough to sag over your fingers a bit as you are dipping them. If they are under dipped, then you will have a very dry tiramisu, without a strong enough coffee flavor, which is not good. If the lady fingers are over dipped, then they’ll break up on your fingers while they are being dipped or carried. But if you’re lucky and they don’t break at all, that’s fine.

Okay so now since you’ve formed your first layer of lady fingers, cover that layer with half of the cream, and then add another layer of lady fingers(that are dipped in CERMV) and cover that with the rest of the cream.

Let it chill in the freezer for a half hour or maybe more.

And TADA! you are done :)

Another little note: when you serve the tiramisu just dust it over with a bit of chocolate powder.

Hope you enjoy :)

~D.D.

P.S. You may not want to keep the tiramisu out for too long in heat, it tend to become a little melt-y(as you can see in my pictures :D)