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 ...

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 ...

All the Sweet Things

Of what use is it to have a food blog? ... eh ... I mean, of what a use is it to have a food blog, cooking and writing lovely recipes and no-one is going to try them (at least not that you know of)?
Are the things just nice to look at or are they really delicious and easy to reproduce or at least made to satisfaction?
It's time to find out ...

Christine & Christian - Episode 5: Caramelised Bananas with Incredible Caramel Sauce

Things are still going on. I have been quite busy. After 9 days of cooking from Tasting India by Christine Manfield, I managed 16 recipes so far. Just this week, until now, I used up ... hm ... about 16 chillies: green ones, dried small ones, dried long ones, but so far no fresh red ones. Whatsoever, my supply is going down.
However, this week I also tried two recipes, where I didn't need any chillies at all. One of it were the carrot dosas I tried just this morning after leaving the batter at room temperature the whole night. The result was ... edible.
The other recipe is called in the book Sanjay's Caramel Bananas. Have a look ...

Well, um, eh ... it doesn't look so incredible now, but ... to me, in the end the TASTE counts.
The bananas are just rolled in sugar and then fries in butter.
What's important about the whole dessert is the caramel sauce. How to do caramel, you should know. Yes, you know ... sugar with a bit of water in a pan at high heat, no stirring, changing colour to brown and things like that. Whatever happens, don't be tempted to use a spoon to stir things up ... by no means.
As the colour changed to brown, add some cinnamon and also some chopped up ginger. Toss it in (don't stir), add cream and a few splashes of brown rum. Mix it, but don't stir.
Pour the sauce over the fried banana in the other pan and coat the banana with the incredible caramel sauce.
Whatever happens now ... just make sure you eat the bananas soon.
For sure I will make this again ... before I try all the other recipes from Tasting India. Even if I would stop cooking through Tasting India now (which I don't), that bananas with this caramel sauce was worth it. I have also been thinking about a version including chocolate. Hm, I will have to see about that.

What else did I cook. Here some further impressions:

That is curry-leaf chicken, which tastes great as well. The brownish bits are the fried curry-leaves. Sorry, I didn't have fresh curry leaves, but so far, I don't  have an idea were to get them. I would go for planting or sowing in my garden, if I get the chance. Ah, do you notice the long dried red chilli in the background as well?

A white dal, enjoyable, but not as good as the other dal I tried. There is a cinnamon stick to be seen here and ... have a guess ... there are three dried red chillies in it. For this dal it was necessary to prepare an onion paste. So far I have found out, that it is quite important to have these pastes, although I still need to find out, why exactly. I still have leftover dal and so I might end up using them to stuff some samosas, but I might eat it just as it is as well.

Here comes another lovely potato dish: sesame potatoes. Apart from the sesame and some ginger paste, there was the need for some ... yes, green chillies. It was also the first time ever, I used fenugreek seeds.
I guess, there are a lot more adventures to come. After all, next I have a whole weekend for that. Who knows!?!

If you want more pictures, just check out my Facebook page here.

Revenge of the Food Blogger - Sea Salt Caramel Chocolate ... #%$?&

Some food bloggers really have the guts to write about lovely, gorgeous, amazing, delicious, mouthwatering, craving-producing food and then you don't have the chance to taste from it. How is that?
Really! How do you feel about this? I'm not longer going to bear this. I have a plan ... REVENGE!!!
For example, just yesterday, I read a post about brownies. Even without linking, the person responsible, would notice right away.
Once more there is no chance to taste those well described brownies. Now, the only thing left to do is ... go and make my own. How hard can it be, if you are a brownie expert ... not!?

I go for it anyway. Where would my revenge be otherwise.
But how do we go about? A list of ingredients would be helpful ...

Ingredients:
150 g butter
200 g chocolate (100 g dark and 100 g daim chocolate)
100 g caramel
50 g cocoa powder
100 150 g flour
1 tsp baking powder
200 g sugar
4 eggs
2 1 tsp sea salt

The way of the revenge:
As you see from the list, there have been some adjustments. I came up with those afterwards. So I went with the original figures.
Melt the butter and chocolate together with the caramel in a bowl above boiling water.
While this is happening, sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder in a different bowl, add the sugar and the sea salt and mix well.
Again separately whisk together the four eggs.
Once the butter and chocolate have melted take them away from the heat and add the eggs. Then add the chocolate-butter-caramel-egg mixture to the flour-baking powder-cocoa powder- sea salt mixture and combine thoroughly.
Said and done! Transfer the darkish brown gooey substance to an appropriate tin lined with baking paper. That's were I lacked sensitivity. I chose the wrong one ... too small.
Anyway, bake it at 180°C for 30 minutes. That should be enough. Not as in my case, I thought afterwards ... 'well, they could go for another 10 minutes'.
Afterwards allow sufficient time for the brownies to cool down and set and if that is not going to help, put them in the fridge for several hours or overnight.
Mine were quite gooey, partly also to the fact of the wrong container for baking in the oven. Apart from that, they were a bit salty as well. So I would advice to use less. Not that I would say, they taste horrible. They still taste good. I can manage with the gooeyness as well.

Maybe they don't work too much as brownies themselves, but they still go as a quite good pudding.
But maybe you want to do things a bit different.
Back to the REVENGE then. What kind of revenge was this? Was the revenge to create something that isn't tasty or isn't looking gorgeous or mouthwatering?
Well, honestly? Forget about this whole revenge thing. I was just kidding. After all sometimes I do just the same thing as I mentioned in the outset, or at least I try. Thank you again, Choclette, for 'letting' me have a try at baking those 'brownies'.
The simple fact is, that so many food bloggers are doing such a great job, whetting our appetite so we are going to try new things, giving us inspiration and ... doing many many more good things. Just go ahead and keep doing this.
I could go on now and mention quite a few bloggers that have just done that, but I already have. So simply have a look at the blogroll, although I don't claim that list to be 99,99% complete.
Whatsoever, what food bloggers inspire you to try things in the kitchen?

Blackcurrant Caramel Brownies with Hazelnut Semifreddo

There is nothing special going on in my mind today … at least not that I know of. But, when I don’t know, who else should?!?

However, while shopping I got some chocolate and some blackcurrant jam. I thought I would need those things at some point of the month for the “We Should Cocoa” blog challenge from Chocolate Teapot and Chocolate Log Blog. And indeed I did use those things as you well see in a moment.

Already the day before the desire to produce some semifreddo bore fruit. I learned how to make it when I read The Naked Chef from Jamie Oliver. Since then it comes over me from time to time and I don’t feel sorry in any kind of way.

Depending on how you flavour it, it goes really simple. Separate four eggs. Beat the egg yolks with 50 g sugar and vanilla extract. Beat 400 ml of whipping cream. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt. Yes, you are absolutely right, there is a lot of beating involved, but that is not the reason why I love it so much.

Well then, mix together the creamed egg yolks with the cream. I added 100 g of hazelnut brittle. Finally, fold in the beaten egg whites and then freeze! No, sorry, I didn’t mean, you should stop moving, but you should transfer the bowl of not yet semifreddo to the freezer in order to let it become semifreddo (you might have guessed already, this is Italian and it means “half-cold”, but I have no problem with making it totally cold). This will take  a few hours. So relax!

 

Let us come back now to “We Should Cocoa”!

In order to make things work we are going to use the nice blackcurrant jam and the chocolate I bought. As you have read, this hasn’t happened so far. Apart from being keen on preparing semifreddo, even before I got to that point, I fancied making some chocolate brownies.

The weeks before these things kept coming up while reading foodie things. All these amassed thoughts now go into these Blackcurrant Caramel Brownies.

Ingredients:

150 g butter

200 g chocolate

150 g soft caramel toffees

150 g blackcurrant jam

80 g cocoa powder

80 g flour

One teaspoon baking powder

300 g sugar

4 eggs

Preparation:

Line a 30 x 20 cm baking tray with baking parchment.

Now you need a bowl that will hold the butter, the toffees, the chocolate, and the jam and that you can place over simmering water (somehow you will manage to solve that problem). So then, place the just mentioned ingredients to the just mentioned bowl and let it melt all together. I first of all melted the butter, toffees, and chocolate and added the jam later.

Sift the cocoa powder, the flour, and the baking powder to another bowl and add the sugar as well.

When everything has melted in the bowl above the simmering water, unite the content of both bowls in whichever of the two bowls you like or can, only making sure that everything will be mixed together thoroughly (not that you have to discover later, that some of the flour is still sticking to the base of the bowl).

Take the four eggs and beat (Yes, again! And stop that thoughts of yours) them or whisk (if you prefer that expression) them together. After that, they are ready to join the chocolaty mix. Do your best to have a nice shiny and smooth mass to make your brownies.

Did I mention, that you should have your oven ready at 180°C at this point? No, well I keep forgetting. In some recipe books they do so right at the beginning, but then the oven usually is ready before I am ready to put things into it. Now it would be better for the environment, when the oven is ready just when you need it and that it doesn’t have to wait for you unnecessarily. Good! Is it ready now. Then put your brownie mass to your baking tray and bake it for about 25 minutes, depending on your oven. We want to achieve a soft and gooey texture of the brownies on the inside. Go for it!

After cooling down, that is when the brownies are ready and have cooled down and the semifreddo has cooled down sufficiently you can serve it and eat it.

But beware! It could be quite sweet and chocolaty and it could affect your waistline. Remember, “Hips don't lie!”. Still I hope, you will be able to enjoy these Blackcurrant Caramel Brownies. Let us know, if you have a try!