Strawberry-Rhubarb Compote

I'm getting the jump on things, it's not quite Strawberry-Rhubarb season. Not quite, but good enough to get started. I've been homesick lately and this is something my mom taught me to make. You can do it in any quantity, just grab some rhubarb and a box of strawberries and get going! Don't forget to buy greek yogurt or ricotta to eat with it. 

Start by cleaning of your rhubarb. Isn't it funny looking? Like giant red celery! Slice the ends of with a sharp serrated knife, then start cutting the stalks on the diagonal into small chunks about an inch long. Try to make them even, and don't use the very end if it is completely green. Dump the rhubarb chunks in a pot and cover with some sugar. Toss them around a little to get them coated, and set them aside. Clean the strawberries and slice them, adding them to the pot. Once everything is sliced and in the pot, toss it around a bit to get it all coated. A note: if you're making the compote with strawberries you don't need that much sugar. In fact a variation on this recipe would be to squeeze and orange over the fruit instead.
Let the fruit sit for a half an hour, until the chunks have released some moisture in the pot.

Once there is a a bit of liquid in the bottom of the pot, place it on the burner and heat it up. You want to get the liquid bubbling but pay very close attention that it doesn't burn! Stir it frequently. Once the liquid has bubbled a bit, turn it down to medium low, stirring often and making sure it doesn't get too hot. In a half an hour or less, all the fruit should be melted down into a delightful looking compote. Taste it to see if it needs more sugar. When you're satisfied, take it off the stove and pour it into another bowl. Enjoy with yogurt, ice cream or by itself!

Red Velvet Cake in France

Finally I get around to telling you about the red velvet cake I made for my sister's birthday. Here's a picture:

As you can see it was made in the shape of a giant cupcake. I hate baking in this pan, you can never get the cake perfect. It's always a little overcooked. But you'll probably bake in a normal pan, right? Good plan. My sister loves cupcakes and cute pans, and she loves red velvet cake. The recipe was beautiful, as I said before we made a couple substitutions, as you can see below. Try it out, it's a fabulous and tasty recipe that will most likely turn out beautifully!

Red Velvet Cake with Fluffy White Frosting and Toasted Coconut

     Adapted from Joy the baker, from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook

     makes 2 8-inch or 9-inch round cakes

8 Tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 1/2 cup sugar

2 egg

5 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

4 Tablespoons of liquid, either half coffee and half water, or half food coloring and half water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or one package of vanilla sugar)

1 cup buttermilk (or 3/4 cup plain yogurt and 1/4 cup milk)

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda (or one package of leavening)

3 teaspoons distilled white vinegar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 C).  Grease and flour two 8-inch or 9-inch round cake pans.  Set aside.  

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about three minutes.  Turn mixer to high and add the eggs. Mix very well

In a separate bowl mix together cocoa, vanilla and red food coloring (or coffee & water) to make a thick paste. Add it to the butter/sugar and mix it very thoroughly (this is especially important if you're using the food coloring - get all the batter red!

Turn mixer to low and slowly add half of the buttermilk.  Add half of the flour and salt and mix until combined.  Scrape the bowl and repeat the process with the remaining milk and flour.  Beat on high until smooth.

Turn mixer to low and add baking soda and white vinegar (we weren't sure if we should add them in the same place at the same time, so we put the baking soda on one side of the bowl and the vinegar on the other. It probably makes no difference whatsoever).  Turn to high and beat a few more minutes.

Spoon batter into prepared cake pans and bake for 25-35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center cupcake comes out clean. It took our cake a looooong time to bake (over an hour) because of the mold it was in. I don't recommend it, the giant cupcake tends to overcook on the outside (although the inside was perfect).

Let rest in the pan for 20 minutes, then invert onto a cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

We didn't have cream cheese, so we used weird French cheese spread. I didn't know what proportions to use but it basically goes like this: Butter, cream cheese and powdered sugar. Mix it until you get the right consistency... Better yet, go to Joy's website and get one of her recipes!

Tips for frosting your cake: this is not easy. I'm not good at it...that being said, here are some tips that I've heard. Make sure the frosting isn't too cold, or it will be harder to spread. The cake should be at room-temperature or cooler at this point. Don't do it when it's right out of the oven! If you need to make a layer cake, make sure the tops of the layers are fairly even so they will sit flat when stacked. Start by putting a layer of frosting on the first cake layer, then placing the second layer upside down on top. Lightly press it down if it's uneven in certain areas. Now you're going to put the "crumb layer" of frosting on top. This is a thin layer of frosting that will be harder to spread and not look as nice. Frost the top first, then the sides. Put the cake in the fridge for a while and let the frosting set. After an hour or so, take the cake back out and put a much thicker layer of frosting on it, top first, then the sides. Let that set in the fridge for a while. Then you're ready to serve it!

The Last Two Weeks in Three Paragraphs (sorta)

Hi Everyone!

It's been a while...here's what's happened in the last two weeks:

1. Big meetings at work
2. Dad came to Switzerland
3. Dad and I went to Italy for a few days with a friend, they both got stuck for an extra four days because of a certain temperamental Icelandic volcano named Eyjafjallajokull. Yeah, you read right. 
4. My friend Jon came to visit Lugano from Paris
5. Eating. Eating. Eating. Eating. Eating. Food. Eating. 

Few! What have I baked since then? Well, for Dad a flour-less dark chocolate cake with brandied cherries and whipped cream, and after I got back, strawberry-rhubarb compote, hazelnut cake, parmeson cheese crackers and chocolate-banana muffins, and I'm working on making my own vanilla extract. Whew, I know. And I still need to post the red velvet cake! Would you forgive me if I directed you to lovely Joy's website where I found it? Then I can post a picture and tell you the substitutions I made: yogurt and milk instead of buttermilk, vanilla sugar instead of vanilla extract and a package of french leavening instead of baking powder (soda?). See? Easy...

Telling you all of what I ate will be harder...budino di riso, nutella, chestnut cake, apple tart, pasta, cheese, pasta, cheese, octopus salad, chicken liver pate (I should have made a record)...bistecca alla fiorentina (giant t-bone steak specially prepared in the florentine style), stinco (roasted forearm of a pig), fresh pasta with truffles, tiny tortellini in broth,  tortellini filling served separately, prosciutto, mozzarella di bufala, fresh pecorino, vitello tonato...the list goes on.

This is not even including the "advanced" 10-course meal I ate in Modena at a restaurant called l'Osteria Francescana, where we were served risotto flavored with (but not actually including) oysters, raw fish with (and I'm not joking) smoke, pan-roasted black cod with black tomato sauce, a soup inspired by "the flavors of the earth" including truffles and snails, beer (!), several different wines including one made of walnuts (which I skipped, of course) and a POTATO SOUFFLE, served in a potato skin, with vanilla cream. Let's not forget the roasted, square marshmallows on wooden sticks served after the dessert, and the tiny tiny cream puffs and assorted cakes served after that. As a gift after the dinner, we were given bottles of extremely aged balsamic vinegar, for which Modena is famous.

Would you believe that those to paragraphs are only a fraction of the total amount of food I ate in the last two weeks? More to come when I get my pictures off my phone.

The Longest Day

It's been a long, exhausting day which will be followed by a long, exhausting week. Things are lovely but sometimes a girl just needs a little break. Would somebody be so kind as to hit the off switch on my brain for a short while? K thanks then.

Still got two baking adventures to tell you about (actually more like three), but it'll have wait until I get back from Italy.

Catch you on the flip.

Easter in Brittany

I went on a wee vacation to France last week for Easter. It was so much fun to see my sister and brother-in-law and their rather large extended family again! Among other things we went to the weekly farmer's market, drank tasty tea, ate galettes, brioches, eclairs, tartes aux fraises, quiche and gratin dauphinois. And let's not talk about the chocolate...dear God we ate chocolate. For my sister's birthday we made sushi and I baked a red-velvet cake with (almost) cream cheese frosting. More about that recipe (courtesy Joy the Baker again) in another post.

Rennes is adorable! The center of town is still made up of rickety-looking, tudor-style buildings that tilt this way and that, and are painted bright colors. They look like they might fall down if you exhale emphatically or look at them sideways. Rennes is the capital of the greatest province in all of France (and every last department): Bretagne! Brittany is in the Western-most region of France quite near England. It's so close, in fact, that it shares many of the ancient celtic cultural traditions of the English isles such as monolithic monuments and some traditional cuisine and dress. This unique background makes Brittany different from any other region of France. The regional language, or patois, of Bretagne is closely related to Cornish and Welsh, from (can you guess?) Cornwall and Wales. There is also a strong celtic folk music movement in Brittany which revived the old tunes and instruments and reintroduced them into modern music. Go Bretons!

What is there to see in Brittany? Well, plenty. The coast of Brittany is dotted with small fishing towns which are quaint and serve unbelievable fish platters. Periwinkles, snails, tiny shrimp, big ol' crabs, coquilles st-Jacques (scallops) and raw muscles and oysters are popular, as are my personal favorites, langoustines (like small lobster/crawfish), served steamed with mayonnaise. One coastal town you may have already heard of is called Saint-Malo. It's a walled city that is hugely popular during the summer months, when it only rains 6 out of 7 days in the week. I wish I were joking...Saint-Malo has a wonderful, rich background in piracy and smuggling to nearby England. Now the city is a wonderful place to walk, sit on an old cannon overlooking the sea on a giant stone wall, go to a fancy, purified salt-water spa, or eat kouign amann. What's that? Mmmm, let's get the the food.

Besides raw shellfish (I cannot underscore enough how much raw shellfish is in Brittany, the quantity borders on obscene), the food of Bretagne is tasty and stuffed to the brim with butter. Kouign amann is one such buttery pastry typical of this region of France. To make it you take pastry dough, and you layer it with butter and sugar and fold it a few times. Then you layer it with butter and sugar and fold it a few times. Then you repeat...fifty million times. When you bake it for a while the sugar caramelizes and creates a bit of a crust on the outside. The inside is sugary, doughy and super super buttery. It's like eating a bit of crispy caramel slathered with melting butter. Yes, that's drool you just dripped on to your computer. I know, me too. But wait, there's more. Perhaps some of you who have visited France have tasted the local delicacy known as the crepe? Well if you did it anywhere but Brittany, you were fooled! The homebase, the epicenter, if you will, of the crepe, is Bretagne. Galettes, the savory kind, are made with buckwheat flour and can contain cheese, egg, ham, spinach or shellfish, or just about any other combination of vegetable, meat or seafood you can imagine. They are creative; I think I saw a hawaiian galette on the menu last weekend. They eat the galettes with cider, not like Martinelli's either. This is hard cider, weaker than beer but stronger than water. It's absolutely fantastic. Many people enjoy a kir breton as an aperitif, which is cider (or champagne or white wine) with creme de cassis, or blackcurrant liquor. It's actually originally from Burgundy, but let's just pretend, shall we? Authentic breton all the way.

Well this is a lot  more about Brittany than I was planning to write, but aren't you glad you know it now? No? Well too bad, it's my blog. Here are some pretty pictures from my trip:

Just in case you were wondering...

This is what it looked like from my apartment today.

There is a herd of goats in the foreground, a bit hidden by the trees. Goats are my favorite animals! You also might see the rear-end of a horse, since the neighbors run an small equestrian center. It's delightful!

Now I'm off to bed, completely wiped. Ponte Tresa tomorrow morning, baking and cleaning (and blogging?) tomorrow afternoon.

Look What I Found Today!!!

Teaspoon/Tablespoons and a giant, heatproof glass measuring cup with (wait for it...) CUP MEASUREMENTS!! Also with ounces, liters, ml, and grams for flour, rice and sugar. And it's big enough to mix in!

Other great finds today: a blue- and white-striped canvas shopping bag, hazelnut paste in a jar and powdered sugar. I'm so set! I have a secret baking project planned for tomorrow which I shall reveal next week. It's gonna be legen-(wait for it...)

Homemade Crackers!

Tonight I got the itch to bake something. Knowing I have to bake a tester-cake this weekend I decided I didn't need the extra sugar tonight! Besides, I'm still recovering from Easter weekend. What I decided to do instead was make crackers. A lot of bloggers have given them attention (see Joy the Baker, Joe Pastry and Mark Bittman at the Minimalist) and it looked like a fun, easy recipe to try on a Friday evening. Plus I have enough cheese to feed an army in my fridge, and nothing to eat it on.

I eye-balled this recipe simply because the principle of the cracker is so very simple. All you need is to mix flour with some liquid, then dry the liquid out at a hot temperature. Some recipes call for olive oil, some milk and butter...it's really up to you what you put in it. Poppy seeds are popular, as are sesame seeds, but you could also add herbs or spices as you like. Next time I'll probably add cheese!

Here's what I did (and what you could do as well!): pour some flour (white, whole wheat, bread or corn as you like) and salt in a medium mixing bowl. Add some butter (cold is probably a good idea but don't worry too much about it). At this point you should reach into the bowl with clean, bare hands and pinch the butter into the flour until it looks sandy.

















Now you're going to add your liquids. This could be olive oil, or milk, or, as I did, both. I poured a small amount of each in the bowl and began mixing with a fork.

This is a lot like pastry dough, however where pastry dough should be light and delicate, a cracker can be a little sturdier. That means you don't have to pussyfoot around the dough! I kneaded my dough a bit with the fork after all the ingredients were stirred in. It formed a ball that was a little sticky but didn't stick to the sides.

Now you should press the dough out flat and thin on a lightly floured surface. It's a little sticky, but it shouldn't stick to you or the board. When you've got them as thin as you want them and they're relatively even, you can slice them into individual crackers. If this doesn't appeal, feel free to bake them in one big sheet, or find a cookie cutter. Up to you! This is also the part where you can press sea salt, sesame seeds or herbs into the tops of the crackers. Fresh ground black pepper would probably be good as well.

I baked my crackers in a fan-assist oven at 200 degrees Celcius (390 F) for 20 minutes. It was too hot, and the crackers got a little too brown. My suggestion would be to follow the common recipes and cook them at 175 C (350 F) four around 30 min. You might need to turn the sheet around halfway through so they cook evenly. Feel the recipe out and see what works best for you. You can add and subtract ingredients as you like as long as you don't add leavening or too much liquid.

I have a ton of photos from France that I haven't posted yet, but I'll try to get to it this weekend! I have to hop into bed now, I've got a busy day tomorrow.

Things I found out when I got older

1. Broccoli can be good
2. There is such a thing as too many cookies with ice cream
3. Sometimes (sometimes) wearing comfortable shoes is worth it
4. Getting up early and running will do more for you than sleeping in another hour

That last one really stings...I don't want it to be true, but the proof is in the pudding. Yesterday I couldn't get myself out of bed to go running and I spent the day fuzzy-brained and tired, unable to concentrate on anything and feeling a little depressed. Today I got myself out of bed and ran (a rather slow) 5 km and I feel energized and focused.

I hate it when the grownups turn out to be right. It's such a downer.

Zooey & Joseph, sittin' in a tree...

A State of Total Exhaustion

I had so much fun in France, and I have plenty of pictures and stories to share eventually, but today I'm too exhausted to do much of anything. I managed to stay awake when my alarm went off at 6:20 but I absolutely could not haul myself out of bed to run. This is an issue. My head is all fuzzy and tired but I absolutely refuse to feed my addiction to espresso. Worst of all, this pain in my hip has gotten worse instead of going away. I thought I would be feeling so refreshed after a week of not running but instead I feel like a bump on a log.

Well not for long! I have some errands to run tonight and I'll be damned if I don't run my regular 5.6 km tomorrow morning. I can't stand feeling sluggish; I'm gonna shake it off. Plus, it looks like Madison and I will be running a half-marathon in the fall, and my training begins now! 

And since I've just energized myself, I think I will get some work done. More about France later, but to give you a teaser: red velvet cake and sushi. Yes folks, sushi in the French countryside. Get psyched.

Joy's Chocolate Fudge Brownies

For some reason I've been dying to make something delicious and chocolately the past couple of days, so when I read Joy the Baker's latest blog post on the cooking your way into a man's heart via brownies, I decided it was time to do something about it. My dear friend Sammy is always making orgasmic faces at my cooking and telling me I'm a straight man's dream but I've never found that to be the case. Maybe I just haven't found quite the right recipe yet?

This recipe from Joy is fabulous and very, very easy. I almost wish it hadn't been so easy and inviting looking, because now I have a plateful of brownies (four in my stomach) and a flight to France tomorrow. Shall I take the brownies with and try to charm my way into the hearts of my fellow travelers? Could the man of my dreams finally be seated next to me on an airplane? Seriously, I fly so frequently how is it I've never been seated near a decent guy? The universe works in mysterious ways...

 Take note that my brownies came out almost too fudgey--the middle was barely set! They tasted pretty incredible with some Swiss chocolate broken up in them though.

Joy's Easy Fudge Brownies to win the heart of a man who will treat you right

1 2/3 cups (350 ml + one package of vanilla sugar) Sugar

3/4 cup (180 ml) Cocoa powder

3/4 cup (170 g) Butter

2 Tbsp. (30 ml) strong coffee

2 Large Eggs

1 1/3 cups (315 ml) Flour

1/2 tsp. (2.5 ml) baking powder

1/4 tsp. (just a pinch!) salt

Coarsely chopped chocolate bar (or chocolate chips if you're state-side)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (or 175 C). Grease and flour a 10 in cake pan. Combine the butter and cocoa in a bowl of simmering water to melt, add the coffee. Whisk eggs and sugar together in a bowl. When the butter/chocolate mixture is melted and mixed, mix it with the eggs and sugar. Stir in the flour, baking powder and salt, mix until combined and add the chocolate bits. Pour into a pan and cook for 18-25 min.

A little note: I may have gotten the European proportions off because my brownies were really undercooked in the middle, even after a half an hour in the oven. They were still sinfully delicious but were not perfect. My standards have clearly slipped now that I'm only cooking for myself.

France tomorrow!