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 ...
It is over when it is over. Therefore I have the honour to tell you, it isn't. I still got some plum deals for you. As I told you before, I checked some of my cookbooks for inspiration and nearly missed this one ...
It's from the book The little Paris kitchen by Rachel Khoo. I tried to do a similar setup for the picture as was in the book, but I didn't dare to take the photo outside in the garden on the lawn, because it was too cold for my taste at that time. I suppose that won't improve for a while.
Now to the recipe. I had to do a few adjustments, since I didn't have French smoked sausages and pistachios. Let's see ...
Faithfully I keep on using those plums and ... keeping you posted about what you could do. I also checked my cookbooks on what possibilities where available. Well, In fact I only have five books available. All the others are in boxes waiting for a new place to be put.
So, what cookbooks would you keep, if you only could keep five?
To be honest, I just selected four, the fifth one (Tasting India by Christine Manfield) was buried somewhere on my desk and I didn't notice.
Which four books did I choose then? Cook with Jamie by Jamie Oliver, Bills Sydney Food by Bill Granger, The Little Paris Kitchen by Rachel Khoo and Secrets of Scandinavian Cooking ... Scandilicious by Signe Johansen.
Did they have anything with plums on offer for me?
The quest for making good use of the plums I received is still going on. As you know, there are quite a lot of things you can do with them. I already did the recipes which take a great amount of plums like jam and plum butter. I even made a plum chutney.
Now, cake and jam and things like that are the logical choices for going with plums. Things you would think of right away. Therefore I try to do something else ... kind of pairing the plums with cheese, goat's cheese to be precise, in a risotto. I've heard it before you can do it also with pearl barley. Let's try it then and have a Goat Cheese and Plum Pearl Barley Risotto.
"Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." Do you remember the 1994 movie Forrest Gump with Tom Hanks?
Let me tell right away, there are no similarities between Forrest's life and mine, nor are there any parallels in personality. Nevertheless, life is really like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get. I for sure didn't expect at the beginning of the week to get this ...
I don't know how many kilograms of plums that are, but it must be about nine million plums. He, he, nine million plums in my home. Well, I'm not 100 % sure of that, but there must be at list nine million plums in Beijing I suppose. However, about that you could ask Katie next month, if you were anywhere near London then.
Anyway, I take up the challenge to use up all those plums before they turn bad. Right, "stupid is as stupid does". Really? We will see about that ...
There are still a few things to catch up with. I already planned some posts ... and that already for quite some times. For sure, I mentioned it before. In fact a few things I already cooked/baked, photographed and ... eh ... well, have also eaten up completely.
In an effort to catch up with a few things of those, I present you today the tray bake plum cake I had.
As I was checking up on my pantry what needed using up I came across this glass of plums and so things were set in motion.
Ingredients:
Cake dough:
125 g butter
125 g sugar
2 tbs vanilla sugar
4 eggs
250 g flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 large jar of plums (more wouldn't hurt)
A few splashes of plum liqueur (if you have)
Crumble to cover:
125 g butter
125 g sugar
2 tbs vanilla sugar
200 g sliced and ground almonds mixed
1 tbs milk
Method:
For the dough, cream the butter, the sugar, the vanilla sugar and the eggs.
Then add the flour and the baking powder. I used whole-wheat flour. Turn it all into a dough
Give the dough onto a lightly oiled or covered with baking parchment or both baking tray.
Place the plums on it ... without the juice. You have to get other ideas with that.
Sprinkle a bit of plum liqueur on the plums, if you like and/or if you have it.
Now, we don't want to forget the crumble.
You can already heat up your oven to 180 °C.
Melt the butter and then mix together all the ingredients for the crumble and then cover the plums on the cake with it.
Bake it for about 30 minutes, depending on the reliability of your oven.
Enjoy the cake!
Now the plums are gone and so is the whole-wheat flour. That were some of the things that needed to be used up. Well, I didn't need to buy any additional ingredients for everything was either leftover (the liqueur as well and I'm still working on using it up) or standard ingredients.
I guess that cake does well for the April Credit Crunch Munch pages on Fuss Free Flavours and Fab Food 4 All. This month Camilla from Fab Food 4 All is hosting. So, have a look.
