Beware of the Dark Side ... Raspberry Chocolate Tart

"Is the dark side stronger?" "No! No ... no. Quicker. Easier. More seductive."

A long long time ago in a kitchen far far away ...

In fact, it wasn't so long ago and not far far away. Well, the kitchen might be just around the corner, but still ... you have to beware of the dark side, for it is very seductive ... eh ... this raspberry chocolate cake is very seductive and if you don't beware and have more pieces of it than you reasonably should, you can imagine what can happen.

Well, I show you anyway ...

This Raspberry chocolate tart is based on a recipe from Jamie Oliver's Cook with Jamie.

Ingredients:

For the pastry:

150 g butter

100 g sugar

A pinch of salt

250 g flour

1 egg

30 g cocoa powder

For the filling:

100 ml full fat milk

400 ml cream

250 g dark chocolate

2 eggs

... and raspberries

Method:

First of all, we go for the pastry, naturally, for it has to rest in the fridge for at least an hour. So, cream together the butter and the sugar. Then add the pinch of salt, flour, egg and cocoa powder. Carefully bring all the ingredients together to form the dough.

After the hour, get the pastry into a greased loose-bottomed tart tin (you knew that would be coming one day again). Blind bake the pastry for 12 minutes at 180 ºC.

Now you can already prepare the filling. Add the milk, cream and sugar to a suitable sized pot and carefully bring to the boil. Stir once in a while. Then take the pot from the heat and add the chocolate. Stir it until the chocolate has melted away and you have a smooth mixture. Then whisk in the eggs one by one.

Pour the filling onto the blind baked pastry case and get it back into the oven at 170 ºC for 15 minutes. After that leave the raspberry chocolate tart some time to cool. Wait? Why raspberry chocolate tart? Fine, after a while, place the raspberries on top of the tart, pushing them into the chocolate filling. Use as many raspberries as you wish. Are you satisfied now?

When you go for it, you can even add a dollop of whipped cream, crème fraîche or vanilla ice cream., but ... beware of the dark side ... and May the 4th be with you ...

Now I have added this post also to Bake of the Week at Casa Costello.

While we still have time for thing, it's good as well to add this to May's Calendar Cakes, which is being hosted by Rachel at Dolly Bakes.

Ready for challenges? Floating Islands

Have you ever thought about applying for The Great British Bake Off or for MasterChef or any other cooking contest? Have I? Ha ha ha ha ... oh ... would I really be able to pass any of those challenges? Would I be ready for the challenge?
Well, I reckon I would never apply, but ... there would be no harm in checking, whether I can do certain things they have done on these shows. Let's pick something they did on The Great British Bake Off: Floating Islands or as you would say in French îles flottante ...

Roast leg of lamb with aubergines and onions

Sometimes I get the idea I want a leg of lamb. Well, that happens not that often, maybe not even a hand full of times during the year. What do I do then? I go through all my cookbooks and see what I can do . The last time I did some French version with beans and something. That was very delicious.
Now I wanted to try something else. I ended up with a classic Italian way of cooking lamb with aubergines. Therefore I had to trust Jamie Oliver again to have a fantastic meal: Roast leg of lamb with aubergines and onions. You find the recipe in his book Cook with Jamie.

Apart from the lamb, the aubergines and onions, there were a lot of herbs involved, such as rosemary, oregano and parsley.
First of all the leg of lamb goes into the oven just rubbed with olive oil and salt and pepper.
After that the rosemary, aubergines and onions join.
In the meantime you have to prepare a tomato sauce with the usual suspects, garlic, chopped parsley stalks, anchovy fillets, tinned tomatoes, dried red chillies, vinegar, salt and pepper.
When the lamb is cooked, it gets removed from the roasting tray to sit around for some minutes.

While that is happening and having some room in the roasting tray, the tomato sauce is going to assimilate all the flavours and vegetables in it. So you pour the tomato sauce to the aubergines and the onions and cook it for a couple of minutes on a gently heat.
Afterwards it's time to eat. Get your usual lovely bread to it and dig in. If you fancy a salad together with it, fell free to do so.

For one person or for even two persons, you have quite some food here, the chance to eat a few times from it. It would be perfect, delicious and fantastic as it is, but you could have it as a pasta dish, too.

All in all I can say, Jamie hasn't disappointed me. Once more, it worked out totally perfectly.
Do you like to have a leg of lamb at times? What is your favourite way of having it?

Ravinder, Jamie and trying a few recipes

In the last few days I have been thinking again ... yes ... for a change. Since I have a few cookbooks it wouldn't be bad to try some recipes again. So I had a look through some books and made a list of what to try. Then I went shopping and after not getting everything on that list, cancelled a few projects again.
Anyway, there still remained something on the list. Let us start with Ravinder Bhogal and her book Cook in Boots. Actually, Ravinder Bhogal is the only person I have a cookbook from, which I met already. That was this year in London, when she was doing 9 course meals at a restaurant in Aldgate.
The first dish I selected from the book was pork roast with grenadine glazing.

I just had to get some pork and the remaining ingredients were already on stock. I took the grenadine from the bar and the rest was mainly spices and things.
On the side I wanted to have some potatoes and fry them, but they ended up being mashed. To have some vegetables I tossed in some carrots with the roast into the oven.
Overall I liked it very much. It was sweet and spicy for some chilli and garlic was included as well.
There was another recipe from Cook in Boots on my list, but before I tell you about this, let us move over to Jamie Oliver.
I selected something very simple from the book Cook with Jamie: chicken breast wrapped in bacon with leeks.

It goes all in one dish, is for one person and really not complicated. Well, on the picture it looks like there was a lot leeks, but it was alright. It all could have been a bit more spicy, but you don't have to use chilli on everything, although you can. After all it's good to get in some other flavours as well.
Now back to Cook in Boots. On the program now: Cappelini with garlic, chilli, lemon and olive oil. That again sounds like quite some flavour.

It doesn't look very spectacular. That's because I didn't bring out the chillies and apart from that there is no much colour in it due to it's simplicity. The whole things doesn't even take ten minutes to prepare. Of course, a little bit depends on your speed in chopping the garlic and the chilli and grating the lemon zest and the cheese, but the parmesan is just for serving. The boiling of the pasta itself takes just three minutes.
I can say, that pasta dish tasted very lovely. Since I refused to just cook the pasta for one person and didn't have anyone for dinner, there were bound to be some leftovers. No worries!
Inspired by a recipe from Jamie's Italy I went for fries pasta at another day. You just need the leftover capellini (you could use spaghetti for that as well) and added some chopped cherry tomatoes, a bit of bacon, chopped parsley, an egg, some extra salt and pepper just to make sure and then you go and fry it in a pan.

That was very lovely as well. I should go through the books again and make a new list ... but I guess I should rather go for some Caribbean dishes, since we still have our Bloggers Around The World going on this month with some Caribbean inspired dishes. Are you in for it this month?

Risotto

My mother never cooked a risotto for me. Risotto is an Italian rice dish that is kind of creamy and oozy. It tastes very nice and like with pasta, you can have it in many different ways. Maybe one or two years ago I made risotto for the first time myself. The start is always the same: you heat up some oil slightly and put a chopped onion and a few celery sticks finely chopped. After 15 minutes or so you add the risotto rice (maybe 500-600 g). It  is a special Italian rice - Arborio is one of it. This kind of rice can absorb the liquid better releases starch better, so we can get this sticky creamy thing we desire. 

Right after that you add about 250 ml of white wine or white vermouth. When most of the alcohol has evaporated you can add chicken or vegetable stock. It's best to have it heated up in a separate pot. One litre would be sufficient. You add the stock ladle by ladle, waiting in between until the rice has absorbed the liquid. You do this until all stock is gone or the rice has the right consistency. 

When this is done you can remove the risotto from the heat, add 100 g of butter a handful of grated parmesan cheese and the special ingredients you want to have in your risotto. Today I had it with 200 g Gorgonzola cheese, 80 g goat cheese, and two apples in small chunks. You can season as well with salt and pepper if you need. All went into the pan and covered with the lit it was left standing for a minute or two so that all can melt nicely - or you say sit.

Time to bring it to the plate. A few lightly toasted walnuts on it and some extra parmesan grated on top.

Well I took the recipe for this risotto from the book "Cook with Jamie" (well it would be one down, if I would try to cook through the whole book).

This was just one kind of risotto. There is much more to explore.

 Bacon and beans risotto

Tomato and basil risotto

And there are many many more options. Just have a go. You will not regret it. By the way, in Italy risotto is normally not a main course, but a first course, a primo. However, do as you please!