Keep cool

It's finally summer (thank God!). I guess I should blame my favorite season of the year for my absence around here. I apologize.
Until now my top picks to keep cool and also minimize my sweet craving are: 1- Lychee Margarita (from Sushi-Teq/Boston) 2 - Pomegranate Martini (Square Cafe/ Hingham - MA) and least but not last 3 - Lizzy's Orange Pineapple Ice Cream with Malibu...
For the last option a friend and I made some salty snacks to be posted latter.

Chears!!!!

Size Matters

It's delicious to eat strawberry short cake, flans, pies... There are so many "temptations" out there and they are so good that it is so difficult to say no. Yes, I know. I struggle with that every single day. But even though I love to eat, my life is not, only, about that.

I do want to have all the delicious sugary goodies but even if they put in front of me a huge ice cream (one of my favorite things ever), I'm just going to have so bites. Or all share it with a friend and my body will thank me latter on.

That is a fact: as time goes by you are gain more energy (fat) than you are spending. If you want to look great and still have all the pleasures that food can offer you just have to stay active and have small portions. 

Other good tip is eat a lot of fruit and salads (keep an eye on the dressing to), avoid fried dishes and you will have plenty of calories left to your dessert. It's not a matter of vanity. It's a matter of health.

I do love food, specially sweets, but I think as one of the people that found the balance between the two worlds I should make a little time to bring out the topic. 

Think about it...  

Sweet Basketball - Go Celtics

Are french fries and chicken wings the best food to watch a basketball game? Specially if you are experiening the sweet taste of victory...

 Since I don't drink beer, I made myself some fondant walnuts that were in-cre-di-ble!!! I ate the whole thing during the Celtics game. The fondant recipe is easy (sorry it's in the european measurement system but you can easily find the correspondent in the US over here on the internet, witch I didn't have time to do):

Fondant

1 kilogram of sugar

330 grams of water

- Put the water than the sugar and let it boil until 116 degrees celsious. Wet the table, put the mixture on top and let it rest for a while. Mix with a spatula nonstop until it gets white (about 15 minutes). Add the walnuts and, if you want, dip it into chocolate or caramel (more sugar - yummy ).

With Coca-Cola...

Someone once told me that a can of coke has 38 spoons of sugar! That's a lot, right? I guess! Is that why it is sooooo good?
I know it is really acid (more than a lemon - witch the ph is about 1.8), that the caffeine makes your teeth dark and so on... I even tried to stop it (did it for about 7 month back in 2001) but it is stronger than me.
And what kills me is that I loooooove to drink that delicious black soda with a huge slice of pie.
Right now the flavor is chocolate. It is not the best cake that I had but it isn't that bad. It was made by my my 2 year old nephew, with his dad's help (Unfortunately I don't have any pics).
I hope to pretty soon start new hobbies. But is there anything better than a little bit of sugar listening to a great music?

Mr. Potato Head

I read some where that the United Nation declare 2008 the year of the potato. You ask me why? I tell you it's because it's not only cheap but also really nutritious. Of course if a kid, or worse - an adult, of a developed country decides to make a diet out of that food it is gonna be really bad, not to say fat. But we are talking about the real world, about poverty and making food accessible .
I know this is not this type of blog but it is an important issue.
Just some more facts: there are more than 10.000 types of potatoes in the world. They are rich in vitamin C, calcium and phosphorous and of course carbohydrates. It also contains a smaller amount of betacarotenes. Something really important is that many of the alimentary properties of this food are in the skin.
To help with the potato campaign - here comes a sweet potato cake recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 pastry-lined pie shell
• 2 cups cooked, peeled sweet potatoes
• 4 ounces (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed
• 2 large eggs, slightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• dash salt
• 2 tablespoons brandy, bourbon, or orange juice
• 1/2 cup dark corn syrup
• 1 cup pecan halves

Preparation:

Prick bottom of pie crust with a fork; bake in preheated 425° oven for 12 minutes. Set aside.

Mash sweet potatoes with half of the butter (1/4 cup). Let cool. Add heavy cream, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, spices, and brandy, bourbon, or orange juice. Beat until fluffy; turn into pie crust. Bake at 375° for 20 minutes.

Combine remaining 1/4 cup butter with corn syrup and pecans; sprinkle evenly over top of pie. Return pie to oven and bake 25 minutes longer, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Serve with homemade whipped cream.

PS: Do your part by helping with this other type of carb http://www.freerice.com/

Crème de la Crème

Continuing with my bad experiences on the matter of food making… I created something using two packs of heavy cream that I bought for my Saint Honoré cake. I attempted to create a Saint Honore cake that uses two packs of heavy cream in the ingredients.
It’s a classic French pastry with a lot of caramel, profiteroles, whipped cream and puff pastry. When it’s well made it is delicious and beautiful. But in my case ended up really, really bad.
Before I go on, I do need to enfacise that making mistakes is actually the best way to learn.Mistakes are not onlyhelpful to learn from in the kitchen but also for life in general.
In this particular case, I did learn that when people say pastry is like studying chemistry its totally true. I will never, ever again make a dessert without the right measurements. What happened, as I’ve said here before, I was trying to switch measurements from my spanish book to my american tools.
I decided to make the same whipped cream that I was going to prepare for the cake and served it with a simple apricot pie. That, I have to confess, was purchased at a really cute and good bakery called French Memories.
Most people will say that buying the cream already whipped makes their lives a lot easier. I’m not talking about simplifying anybody’s life. I’m talking about great taste. It just takes about five minutes to mix some cream with 3 tablespoons of sugar. Another tip to impress the guests is to arrange the whipped cream nicely with a pastry bag (if you don’t have one just put the cream in a zip lock and make a little hole on the side to decorate the plates).
Something else that I love to make with cream is panna cotta – my favorite italian dessert.

Panna Cotta

I fell in love with panna cotta before I went to Italy. It’s a really simple but delicious dessert that when most people try it, really, really like it. Even for those who don’t like cream.
I’m talking about cream because that’s basically what the panna cotta is made of. If you translate that to english it would be called “cooked cream”. Believe it or not it is as good as it gets. I know there are so much more elaborate desserts all over, but when perfectly made, this is one of my favorites.
But let’s continue my story about my experience with the dessert. I tried it some years ago and quite liked it. What I didn’t know was that it wasn’t well made.
When I went to Italy to eat something differen,t I decided to have the panna cotta. Oh my God!!! I spent so much money, not to talk about the pounds I gained, trying to eat panna cotta almost everyday and sometimes more than once at a time.
It was crazy. My Italian friends had a blast. The thing about the Italians is that they all think they can cook (and most of them really can!). I left Italy with some recipes and advice about the dessert.
I did try some of them, but the best one that I found was a combination of a panna cotta, that I got from a californian chef, with the sauce that I made myself with red berries and balsamic vinegar. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Panna Cotta

Ingredients:

1 and ½ cup of heavy cream
½ a cup of milk
4 tablespoons of sugar
¼ of a teaspoon of salt
1 small envelope of gelatin
3 tablespoons of cold water

Directions:

Dissolve the gelatin with cold water in a bowl and put to the side. In a pot, put the cream, milk, salt and 3 spoons of sugar. Place on the stove in medium heat. Stir when necessary. When it starts to boil, wait a minute before turning it off. Add the last spoon of sugar and the gelatin. Wait for it to cool down a little and put small amounts in separate bowls.Then put it in the fridge for 3 hours. When it’s time to serve, just pass a knife over the sides and put it in a plate making a little bit of pressure for it to come off. Add on the topping of your preference.

Red Berries Sauce

Ingredients:

1 cup of berries
4 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons of sugar
¼ teaspoon of black pepper

Directions:

Mix all the ingredients together,put it in the fridge to marinate for one hour and serve it with the panna cotta.

*Sound track for this recipe: La Mia Storia Tra Le Dita

Why do we make mistakes...

When ever you open a magazine, a blog or watch so many tv shows dedicated to the gastronomy world there is no place for mistakes.

How many times did those people do all the recipes that they show? Do they always get right from the beginning?

 I doubt it! I'm saying that because when I was is pastry school my teachers  made sure to tell us we were going to make a lot of mistakes until we got it right.

 Now I complete saying that even if you got it right still there is a chance for you to make some mistake in the future... Today I tried to make choux pastry and it was a disaster. 

I think I can kind of blame it the conversion (grams to ounces and celsius to fahrenheit) and the absence of a scale. But the fact is that I came out with a watery pastry that made me want to never bake again. 

Of course that's not going to happen and as soon as I got all figure out I'll post the recipe over here.   

Just to conclude: I think we make mistakes to keep going and appreciate when it goes right. In a weird way is to make it even better when you taste your success. 

And now I'm hungry and without desert...

Fruits + Sushi

I was a vegetarian for 4 years and that gave me a lot of experience of how to take the animal protein out of most of my dishes. Sorry for who doesn't know about it but you are only supposed to eat two small portions per day.

Any way, one of the things that I learned is that one of the best things is to add fruit in everything, from salty sauces, to salads and everything else you can imagine. One of my favorites is the sushi roll that I learned how to make with a good friend of mine, the mexican chef Ricardo Lopez.

Veggie Sushi

japanese rice

japanese vinegar

nori (sea weed)

any kind of fruits that you like

cream cheese

Directions 

Make the rice as it is said in the pack and add the vinegar. Put a nori, press a thin layer of rice and than add thin slices of fruit and the cream cheese. You can put the cream cheese in a zip lock and cut a little hole on the side and that way you'll put only a little bit and make it easier to roll. 

Fruit sashimi is also delicious. I had that as a desert in a japanese restaurant and it was really beautifully made. You just have to use your imagination to cut thin layers of different fruits and arrange it together with some tiny candles and some honey. 

 

Sweet equals good?

Right now I'm watching Top Chef. I do like the show. But the reason why I'm mentioning it is because most of the time I see something in this show that keeps going on in every restaurant!

The chefs are not really specialized in pastry. That is  bad for us costumers and it totally reflects, even in good restaurants, in our meals. I'm so tired of coming from a perfectly seasoned salad or an amazing shrimp, that d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y puts me in the mood for desert, and than end up with something that in the menu sounds perfect and instead is something way less than acceptable. 

Sugary, to much chocolate and lack of imagination are some of the most common problem, but I've been facing even worst things like so called chefs making foods tasting bad!!! Fortunately there are exceptions. Just to name two good ones there are the interesting combination of the deserts in Casa Calvet* and the whole new concept of Spai Sucre - a restaurant dedicated to the sugar.   

*Both restaurants are from Barcelona - Spain. As a plus to it's great food, Casa Calvet is located inside the building that has the same name. It was designed by Antonio Gaudi. He is the famous architected of Park Guel and Sagrada Familia.

Crema Catalana

Creme Brulee I'm sure you heard about. Crema Catalana is consider the spanish version of the desert. It is simple to prepare. It's not one of those horrible deserts that are really, really sweet. I think it is worth it to try... 

Crema Catalana 

Ingredients: 

35 oz of milk

7 oz of sugar

6 oz of  yolk

1.7 0z of corn starch

cinnamon and lime skin

Directions

1 - In a bowl mix a little bit of the milk with the corn starch until it is all dissolved and than add the yolks. 

2 - Put the rest of the milk to heat in a pot  with the sticks of cinnamon and the lime skin. Wait until it starts to boil. 

3- Take the sticks and the skin of the pot and add the first mixture. It is really important to remove the hole time. It is really quick for it to become a thick cream.

4 - You just need to put it in 4 separate ceramic bowls. And wait for it to cool down. But try to serve it in the same day.

5 - When is time to serve put a consider amount of sugar on top (5 spoons) . You can use a kitchen torch or the griller of the oven to make the top crispy.  And serve right away.

 

 

The sugar and I

I don't really know where or how it all started but it wasn't a long time ago... I just know that in the last year or so I realized that I totally fell in love with all sweet flavors of life. I mean, literally.  Me - the usual defender of the sour taste. But what can I do? People do change!

The next thing I know,  I was studying with pastry Chefs in europe to find out more and more about it.  And that's what I want to be sharing here with you. Recipes, comments and places that makes our lives sweeter.  Bon Appetit, buen provecho, enjoy!