Memories of Italy

My vacation to Italy was in 2009, so it’s been quite a while. But since I’m going through a lot of old pictures, it doesn’t hurt to post these anyway.
Though it was over 40 degrees Celsius there half of the time, I died of boredom at some points and I was constantly dying a long agonizing death – this vacation was quite memorable. Not in the very least because of walking with the dogs in that area, which resulted in having bats in my hair! Okay, so not quite that literally, but it must’ve been close! I swear those things don’t watch where they’re going, but they make cute sounds and seeing them shoot all over the place is quite funny. Also, the roads there were deadly! The road to the house we rented was a wobbly, circling road of nothing but sand sand and sand. I remember some of the places there and what it looked like and cute cities with loads of small rounds and fancy little tourist shops or even the musea we went to. Also – which I doubt many people would – I remember supermarkets and food! You find so many things in there which you just HAVE TO try!
For instance: chocolate pasta! Way to go if you can resist this!



I’ve made quite some pictures of just ‘normal’ groceries that I couldn’t resist. It’s also where I learned of Chocolate with Salt (Lindt). Don’t have a picture of that either, although I kept the package (I have an obsession with packaging T.T). Here are some pictures I wanted to share though. Made in a very lovely teahouse/coffeshop (not by dutch standards) which had a really sweet interior and was very quiet compared to the stamped full city. I probably don’t want to know how much money we spent there, but here’s some of the treats we had:







I’m guessing one is some sort of cheesecake, the next something with berries and the last has something to do with lemon. I really wouldn’t know, I doubt I knew even if I had the menu now. Now for the panforte we had at some point as well. Damn, I love panforte! Too bad it’s so very expensive here when you have to buy it from italian specialty shops. Together with the nougat you can buy there, I bet they must be my favourite italian sweets.



Here you see one of the courses we had at a wine shop (my parents would go all over the place to taste and buy wines and oils). Aren’t these called bruchetta? I believe one has paté on it, one with sweetened unions, something with cucumber, one with tomatoes and oil and the last Im guessing was ham or bacon. Wasn’t bad, except that we all hated the paté.



Last picture from my collection: us at a restaurant. Eating pizza, cuz you can’t go to Italy and not eat pizza! You just gotta love messy full tables, with everyone eating their food, or -like we like to do- eat eachothers food too. Enjoy!



(It's a miracle I remember so much about something so long ago!)

Kitchen cleanup

When going through all the pictures I have on my computer (Details: 1,55 GB, 2.492 files, 7 folders). I noticed a few things I’ve never posted. I think I mentioned it before, and sometimes I just forget recipes, don’t have time or just hate pictures to much to dare post m. There are a few things I’ve found worth mentioning, but of which I’m really not going to post any posts with full recipes anymore (mainly because I forgot).
So here’s a quick look at things I haven’t posted yet!

Perhaps this was an attempt of mine to create a whoopie. Basically it was chocolate cookies with buttercream inside (in case it wasn’t obvious enough). I’ve completely forgotten the recipe I used for this. I can’t remember especially liking these either – I mightve burned m a bit. Plus when you try to bite, Im sure cream came out from all sides. But I did manage to make a pretty funky tower from it.





This was a pie I made for someone’s birthday I think. It was a last moment thing. I used a spongecake that I cut in four pieces and stacked with what I think is buttercream with caco between it. On top is nougatine! I remember this being really nice, but I never found the pictures nice enough to make a post.



This is one of the first attempts to a bentobox I made. I thought it was really nice to eat, and I’m still quite proud of it. It has rice, chives and smoked salmon in it for those who think it looks really nice as well!



These are one of my first attempts to making buns. There’s a butter/herb filling on top which, if I remember well (the picture is from 2009) didn’t stand out enough for me to really like it. Perhaps I should try this again with cheese buns, filled with cheese, then with this paste on top. The recipe came from Happy Home Baking.



These honey buns also came from Happy Home Baking (back from when I was completely addicted to her site and SO jealous of it). A pretty good attempt, the tecture inside was perfect. Everyone was proud of me, somehow I decided they weren’t perfect. I can’t even remember why!



That’s about all I could find for now! I’m still not through all my pictures, and I keep adding more every time. So I should really keep on posting!!

Chocolate fondue feast!

I suggested to make dinner some time last week, but wasn’t into make some meat, vegetables and done! So I decided to make a chocolate fondue! Perhaps not the most responsible, healthy dinner, but for one night it was really worth it. My mom initially didn’t want to join and made some soup for herself, but when me and my sisters were gathered around the table eating and chatting, she couldn’t resist. What woman couldn’t resist chocolate anyway?



How did I make the chocolate? Before pooring it into the chocolate fountain I melted it in a pan with about 150-200 ml cream. The cream was just to make the chocolate more fluid and easier to poor and it wouldn’t damage my pretty fountain, but just keep flowing. This way, I suppose I made ganache rather than chocolate.

I went to the supermarket that same day looking for nice things to add to the chocolate. Here’s what I came up with:
- Profiteroles
- Spiced, almond cookies
- Banana
- Oranges
- Apple
- Pineapple (canned)
- Peach (canned)

I decided I shouldn’t bring too much, because I doubted we’d eat it all. I tried sticking with a lot of fruits as well, to make this a somewhat healthy dinner. I would’ve liked to add minimuffins and sprinkles to go over those, but of course I couldn’t find those when I needed ‘m!



The spiced cookies were the greatest succes - I’m glad I bought those. I hadn’t actually ever tried those, as they are a more expensive brand and they were gone in no time! People even started eating them without chocolate. One of my sisters was completely obsessed with banana and chocolate, while I ate practically all the peaches myself. I think in the end the only leftovers we had were a few pieces of apple and pineapple. The rest was all gone! I didn’t do a bad job then did I?

Lemons in olive oil with cumin twist!

Here’s something I made a while ago: a way to preserve lemon. Basically it’s just a way to give a bit of extra taste to olive oil and to make yourself delicious lemons for on fish or the likes. One thing I’d advice anyone who uses olive oil a lot is to give it an extra taste. With all the herbs we have in the garden, we tend to just throw a few in the olive oil bottle – or any cute jars to put them in. But we’ve also added a lot of garlic, or little peppers work too. Anything that can give it a bit of extra flavour! Normally you leave it for a few days to a week before it’s fully absorbed the flavours, but we’ve used it the next day as well. Works for us.
Now back to the lemons!I think I found the recipe on a site for Dille & Kamille (such a pretty shop!). I’ve made it for my mom in the hope to make her happy, but apparently it looked like I only wanted this for myself. There goes your good intentions! We’ve had it once on fish and it was delicious! And I have to admit I hate fish! Never add too much though, at some point I was eating lemon with fish, which can make your face look really odd...



Ingredients:
2-3 lemons
200 grams coarse/rough sea salt
3-5 spoons cumin seeds
olive oil

1. Cut the lemons in thin slices. Take a bowl or oven tray and cover the bottom with salt, then cover the salt with lemons, to cover those with more salt and then more lemons and even more salt. Basically you’re making sure all the lemon is covered in salt.
2. Leave the lemons to soak up the salt and the salt to soak up lemon for about a day. After a day brush the salt off the lemons. (You can wash them as well.)
3. Dry the lemons with kitchen towel and leave them a few hours to dry some more.
4. Take a pretty glass jar and sprinkle some cumin seeds on the bottom, then add a layer of lemons. Sprinkle the lemons with more cumin seeds and keep stacking layers of lemon and cumin (like with the salt before).
5. Then poor over the olive oil till everything is soaked and drowning and close the lid. Leave it for about a week or two before using it.



A little note on the washing and drying of the lemons: make sure the lemons are not wet when you add the water. Water and olive oil don’t mix, and this can have a pretty nasty effect. I have not completely understood the purpose of the salt. Perhaps it’s just to soak up most of the lemon juice, instead of giving the lemon extra taste. Who knows?
Well, hopefully you can enjoy it! Especially if you like fish, you should try this! Until next time!

Late note: The lemon taste of the oil get's really strong after a while, which actually makes it really nice as well. Also, I've been ordered to make more!