Il Forno

Valentine's day chocolate: Zotter and Ferber

Just a wee tiny post to wish you all a great St.Valentine's day. And what would be Valentine's day be without a little chocolate?

The chocolate above is just perfect for the occasion: red as passion and seducing to the taste, with its filling of nougat brittle spiced up by the tiniest scent of lavander oil.

It's one of the new creation of Austrian chocolate master Zotter, whom I mentioned before on this blog: a special creation dedicated to te Alsatian pastry chef and jam "goddess" Christine Ferber. And in a way, this is another kind of declaration of love.

Holiday cookie swap - part two

You've already read the first half of the 2005 SHF/IMBB Cookie Swap Round-Up, andhave impatiently waited for part two: here it comes! Jennifer and I divided the received entries into two parts in alphabetical order: the first half of the entries, from A to K have already been presented by Jennifer.  Today we go on: from L to Z, or better said to W. Hey, no Z-named blogs out there? Zorro's cooking blog will have to wait till next time.

If either of us has missed anyone, please let us know so we can add you. And please don't forget to vote on your favourite cookie recipe once you have read all the entries! There will be 12 copies of "Cookie Sutra" going out as soon as the votes are tabulated.

Note: As many of you have noticed, there were some issues with many of the pictures. Everything should, hopefully, be OK now. Sorry for the inconvenience and the long wait. Thanks!

SHF/IMBB Cookie Swap: Sweet Sicily, part III

It is time (Lion King anyone?).

After an almond based amuse and a meaty appetizer it is time to reveal my contribution to this month's SHF/IMBB Cookie swap event. With Sicily in my mind, I thought for a long time about baking some traditional sweet out of the region's classics and I would have had enough to choose from. Instead I opted for a little creativity; having some Sicilian ingredients at hand, I felt like playing around a bit. The result is shown above.

If you've red this blog from the beginning, those cookies might remind you of something else I had written about almost exactly two years ago (gosh, my photos were really ugly back then!). These cookies are indeed inspired by those Baci di dama I baked back then –and a few times more between then and now– yet with a twist that makes them more "Sicilian". Maybe not so much in acquiring an authentic Sicilain taste, rather inspired by the flavors and aromas of the island's pastries. I'm calling these Baci di picciotta for the time being, as a sort of pun: baci di dama means, lady's kisses, and "picciotta" is Sicilian dialect for girl. If you have a better suggestion I'm all ears.

SHF/IMBB Cookie Swap: Sweet Sicily, part II

After yesterday's little cookie-amuse start to my contribution to this month's SHF/IMBB event,  I wanted to take you today to have a look at a delicious example of culinary melting-pot recipe from Sicily: 'mpanatigghi.

'Mpanatigghi or Impanatigghi are a typical sweet from Modica, but this superficially simple fact hides a much deeper historic background. Although there is no certainty that the tale went as I'm about to tell you, it is not too risky to imagine the following ingredients were needed.  Take a few the Sicilian nuns, inventors of some of the islands most intriguing sweets. Take a couple of Spanish priests. Send them first to the Americas, where they learn about chocolate, then have them introduce the godly product to Europe, and clearly also in the Spanish domains in Southern Italy, hence in Sicily too. Take the Catholic dietary rules for Lent, forbidding meat consumption. And last, but not least, keep those Arabic influences in Sicily, especially the spices, and the Spanish Empanadas in mind. You have it all? You ready to go on then!

SHF/IMBB Cookie Swap: Sweet Sicily, part I

Though over two months have gone by since I came back from my trip to Sicily, the taste of the island have still been tickling my taste buds and mind. When looking for an idea for this joint SHF/IMBB event, I simply could not get Sicily from my mind. Also, that little stash of pastry ingredients I brought back seemed just to be calling out to be used in a special cookie recipe made up just for the event: that's exactly what I did. Yet, since this time we have three days to post our recipes, why not use the chance and present a little menu of posts on Sicilian sweets: one for each day, ending with the real recipe on Sunday. So today let's start with:

The amuse – Sicilian almond pastries

Cookie swap: a joint SHF/IMBB event

"Teilen macht spaß" (sharing is fun) is a German saying children often get to hear in these parts, and I've been trying to convince my son about, without much success. Maybe three years old cannot yet see the sense. Things are different when it comes to food: is there anything nicer than sharing the food you prepared with those you love, or your favorite recipe with a fellow-minded cook? That's the spirit of the many food blogging events that delight us every month, and to top that, there's a little surprise in store. This month we'll not only be sharing recipes, but even events! That's the idea behind this month's joint Sugar High Friday-Is My Blog Burning Cookie-swap Party.

Join me Jennifer and me for this festive cookie swap. Share a recipe or two...or more for your favourite homemade cookies with us and look for new ideas among the contributions of other bloggers, without the stress of having to look through books, magazines and webpages for your inspiration. I for one hope it will end up a yearly holiday tradition.

On top of the bounty of recipes, Jennifer has organized a special treat for this month's participants. Yes, this time there are also prizes to be won! Go over to her forums (click on “Blog Events”), and you will see a few photos of the outside and inside of a very sweet cookie book called “The Cookie Sutra”. Jennifer has managed to secure a dozen of these naughty little cookie books for 12 lucky winners. How will we ever judge the winners, you ask?  Quoting Jennifer: "Well, I won’t…and Alberto won’t…but YOU will!". Read through the round-ups, choose your top three favorites and email us before December 8th quoting the recipe and which blog  it appeared on (please, don’t vote for yourself – someone will, we're sure!). The top twelve most selected entrants will get a copy mailed to them – just in time for the holidays.

The usual "rules" apply to this IMBB/SHF event as always. And if you're joining us for the first time, here it goes: any and all bloggers...or readers of blogs... or complete strangers without blogs (yet!) are welcome to take part, whether they regularly blog about food or not. The theme is "Cookie Swap" and the weekend for this joint SHF/IMBB is Friday November 25th – Sunday November 27th, 2005. The cookies don't have to be made on that weekend, but your entry and recipe should be posted then. Share the recipe for your cookie(s), and if you can include a picture too: we would all love to see what they look like. Once your entry is posted, please email us at our joint cookie swap email address with permlink to your recipe, your blog, your name and where you are located. We will include it in a post that lists all of the participants and their recipes the following week.

And now: hush, hush off you go, turn those ovens on and start baking!
And be sure to check out Jennifer's announcemet too!

IMBB 20: Ernest Knam's "Soufflé"

We all have our little customs when it comes to cooking or picking recipes. During the past editions of IMBB, I've grown used to turning to my cooking book collection for inspiration as soon as the theme of the next edition is announced. It's a way to visit old friends, books I like but seldom use or favorites I haven't leafed through in a while. When Kitchen Chick announced Soufflé would be this month's theme, I immediately turned to a book that has a special place in my collection, and one that is simply perfect for the chosen theme: Soufflé by Ernst Knam. Although this was not my first cooking book, it is definitely the first "food porn" book I ever read and definitely the one responsible for letting my budding gastronomic bibliophile character bloom.

Caffé Sicilia-Noto

Living abroad I have noticed that to many Italian pastry products are not particularly exiting. People might love those antipasti and pastas, devour risotto and pizza, yet when it comes to sweets many would rather turn to classics from the northern side of the Alps. For once I have to agree. Not that Italian sweets are bad, quite the contrary, but they are too simple and straightforward, lacking that fancy and fussy side desserts thrive upon.

That would be a completely honest description of Italian sweets if it wasn't for Sicily: once you land on the island you join a world of candied fruits, baroque cakes, incredible ices and even Mexican style chocolates (more about that in a few days.) It's almost dishonest to call Sicilian patisserie "Italian", it is actually more the product of centuries of Mediterranean fusion at its best. And while there are many places serving great traditional sweets, Sicily is also one of the most exiting places pastry-wise in Italy, where it only Corrado Assenza and his Caffé Sicilia in the Baroque city of Noto.

Crostata

Simple can be so complicated at times. Especially when it comes to recipes, and extremely so for recipes just like crostata.

The basic crostata is one of the simplest Italian sweets, nothing more than a shortcut pastry tart filled with jam. Sounds simple doesn't it? Yet there are enough recipes out there to give you a headache if you try to pick one. All are guaranteed to give you a good result, yet not a perfect one. Why would anyone settle for a less than excellent and keep using a recipe that you just know could be better? Why not improve that recipe if it is so straightforward? Simply because the real secret with this sweet is that it is so easy that everyone can play with it till they find their favorite.

For exactly this reason, giving a recipe does not make too much sense. I am adding one at the end nonetheless, close to what my "ideal" crostata is, but take it more as a guideline than the "winner" recipe. You'll need to find your own ideal recipe to fit your own taste buds lazy-boy! Fear not, it is not an impossible task -quite the contrary in fact- as long as you keep in mind the following considerations about crust, jam and their balance.

IMBB14. Pierre Herme's Orange Tuiles

Having too much choice can be a nightmare. As a kid I occasionally had a day-dream about me going to a toy shop with my grandparents and them telling me to pick a toy. I could choose whatever toy I wanted but only one of them. And I only had a few minutes to choose. Which one to pick? So many choices... and so little time! When Roselle aka Ladygoat announced the theme of this IMBB edition my feelings quickly turned from "what a cool idea!" to "shit! what should I pick?" Picking the color orange as a common thread for this edition of Is My Blog Burning? was an original idea, and a feasible one. Think if she had picked black: you can only do so many things with squid ink, licorice and charcoal. Orange is one of those colors that seems just to tell you "eat me!", warm and inviting without being associated with danger as orange's bigger brother, red, inevitably is.

In the end what made the decision easier was the choice of ingredients, or rather, the lack of it. No pumpkin available anymore, and still too cold for apricots and cantaloupes. The mangos and papayas on sale were hard as rocks and probably as tasty. Carrots would have been the obvious options, but, as much as I like them raw, I can't really say to be a big fan of the orange root cooked in any form. So in the end I grabbed a bag of organic oranges and decided this was finally the chance to try something from Desserts by Pierre Herme: orange tuiles. You might have come across standard tuiles, very thin "cookies" of sugary dough often used as decoration in desserts. These orange ones seemed on the other hand to be something different. Instead of the usual cookie-like look, the ones in the book's picture looked like extremely thin nets of sugary filigree. I just had to give them a try.