Sunday 15 June 2014

Switzerland - Engadine Nut Pie V2.0

There is a calendar on the wall in the office. It has one large and several small pictures on it for every month. It's Switzerland. What do we see on the pictures? Mountains, trains and cows ... they come to my mind.
Now, what comes to your mind, when thinking about Switzerland. Chocolate? Oh, yes, that's a good one. Swiss bank account? Nah, I don't have sufficient funds to think about that. Neutrality? Well, that doesn't sound to bad. So I try to keep that in mind.
A lot of people, when they travel to Switzerland to the Graubünden area, take the Engadine Nut Pie back home as a 'souvenir'. So far I only have been to the other side of lake Constance, so I could at least have a look at Switzerland from across the lake ... kind of.
Nevertheless, I like to have a take on the Engadine Nut Pie and bring you my version, that is the Engadine Nut Pie V2.0. Not that this is essentially an improved version, but it has some modifications to fit my image of Switzerland in my mind.


I had a look at the basic recipe on the tourist website for Graubünden. Then I went on to modify ...
You know, it's quite easy when you have bits of walnuts from a bag ready for use, but when you have to work yourself through closed nuts and crack them all open to get 250 g of chopped nuts ... eh ... well I stopped 100 g short. I checked also some other recipes. One stated 400 g of walnuts and another one had also some plum jam in it. I looked further and looked, but I couldn't find a version with chocolate in it, but ... come on, Switzerland ... I wanted chocolate in it.
Accordingly, here we go ...

Ingredients:
300 g whole wheat flour (somehow most of the other flour was gone in my pantry)
150 g sugar
150 g butter
2 small eggs
1 pinch of salt

300 g sugar
A few tbsp. of water
150 g walnuts
50 ml cream
100 g plum jam
100 g chocolate, into pieces

Method:
Take the flour, the 150 g sugar, the butter, the eggs and a pinch of salt, throw them into a bowl and have some pastry from it. You work it out. Looks like shortcrust pastry anyway. Nicely bring all the ingredients together.
Have your cake tin ready and put a bit more than half of the dough on the bottom of your oiled cake tin, having the dough going slightly upwards at the side. Spread the plum jam onto the bottom.
Give the remaining 300 g of sugar with the water into a pan at full heat and have some caramel going. Make sure not to stir. When the sugar goes brown and the caramel is coming, toss in the nuts and add the cream. Now you are allowed to stir.
Pour the nut caramel over the plum jam. Afterwards throw the chocolate over it, too.
Finally you have to manage to put the remaining pastry over as a lid. I wasn't very good at it.


Yes, it looked like this after baking. So, put the cake tin into the cold oven and turn up the heat to maximum. After ten minutes reduce the heat to 180 °C and let the pie in the oven for another 35 minutes.
As you see on my photos, the Engadine Nut Pie, I made didn't look that lovely, but ... oh, did it taste delicious. You just have to imagine that touch of plum, the nut caramel and the chocolate. I loved it.


Fine, after the Engadine Nut Pie comes from the oven, you have somehow remove it from the tin and also allow time for cooling down. Then you can enjoy it, too.

What now? I reckon, you had sufficient time to think about what comes to your mind when thinking about Switzerland ...



Look out for more World Cup countries cooking ...

2 comments:

  1. I love your way of thinking: the chocolate gets my vote too. It looks lush, and my mouth is watering when I read the recipe

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So, come and get some ... :-) I can't possibly eat it all alone.

      Delete

Why not leave a comment!? I love to receive messages.