Summer wrapped in ravioli

Triumph
Mint, peas and marscapone; the gorgeous taste of summer wrapped up in ravioli
Summer wrapped in ravioli

I've been subscribing to delicious. - probably Australia's best foodie magazine - for a few years now. I've kept the subscription up while I've been living in Switzerland and get it delivered here. I still love ripping open the plastic it comes wrapped in and spending a lazy morning, usually on a Sunday over a cup of tea, idly flicking through the colourful, glossy pages, and turning down the corners of the pages with the recipes I want to save for later. 
 
There's just one problem with getting an Australian magazine delivered in Switzerland; the recipes in them are 6 months out of sync with the season I'm living in. Being summer at home and winter here in Switzerland, it means that, at the moment, issues are arriving bursting with recipes for ice cream, salads and desserts full of summer berries. Meanwhile, I'm still stuck in hearty comfort food mode.

Gorgeous pea and mascarpone ravioli

But there was one summer recipe which - despite the weather outside - I couldn't resist giving a try. Pea and mascarpone ravioliwith sage burnt butter allowed me to give Betty a whirl with the pasta machine attachments I had bought a year or so ago and had only used once or twice. I was given extra incentive with the pasta making accessories my mum had given me for Christmas, including ravioli cutters.
Pasta is easy enough to make, but ravioli is all about the filling.

In this case, creamy mascarpone combined with fresh peas and vibrant mint made for light, refreshing ravioli which screamed summer. The sage-infused burnt butter provided the perfect, yet delicate savoury counter balance to the sweet pea filling.

I’ve always had this thing with seasonal food – don’t eat winter food in summer and vice versa.  But sometimes, when something is this good, it would be criminal to wait six months to try it.

Betty now makes pasta

Tragedy
While the pasta was great, nothing could save the bland, soggy lasagne

Betty now makes pasta

I've had my Betty for awhile now. She's great at making cakes, slices, even pizza. But I thought it was time Betty expanded her range of tricks a little, so being a pasta fanatic, I recently invested in a Kitchenaid pasta attachment for her.

Feeding pasta through the attachment

I've made pasta by hand before. It's actually pretty easy and there's something satisfying about eating pasta that you've made yourself. Before I bought the attachment, I used to borrow my mother-in-law's hand cranked pasta machine. Those pasta machines are fine, but there's a little bit more fiddling around - you need to clamp them to a table top, then hand crank the pasta through the machine while feeding it through with one hand, and then needing a third hand at the same time to catch it.

Having a pasta attachment on Betty though is so much easier. The pasta is fed through the rollers automatically using the stand mixer's motor. Without having to hand crank the machine, it allows me the free use of both hands to feed the pasta into the rollers and catch it on the other side at the same time. Good thing too, as rolling some of these pasta sheets out, they were getting pretty long - a couple of metres in length at least.

Loooong pasta sheets rolled out

The recipe for the pasta itself is pretty simple - flour (I used Tipo 00, found in my local Italian grocer), eggs, a splash of water and some salt. Allowing me to be virtually hands off, Betty mixed the ingredients together in a bowl to form dough, briefly kneaded it with the dough hook and I then left it to rest.

Next was the question of what to do with the pasta. The attachment set I bought included tagliatelle and spaghetti cutters, so I had planned to make tagliatelle with a basic chilli, garlic and tomato sauce. But the day before, I spotted some butternut pumpkin, and - it being scarcely ever available - picked some up, decided I could make a vegetarian lasagne with it, especially since Emperor D has been asking me to make one for awhile. I also picked up some sweet potato, another of Emperor D's favourites. So after some research with what I could make with the pumpkin and the sweet potato, I decided to make Lorraine Pascale's Butternut and Sweet Potato Lasagne.

I didn't follow the recipe exactly to plan - I didn't have any sage leaves and didn't use the breadcrumb topping, plus I'm not a fan of ricotta, so used my own much more simple béchamel sauce - but it shouldn't made so much of a difference to turn out to be so bland as it was.

Pumpkin and sweet potato lasagne

The other problem was the lasagne sheets. I'd made fresh lasagne once before, but swore never to do so again. They're of course easy to make, but when I made them the first time, I thought I had to pre boil them, and did so. They became extremely difficult to handle, becoming stuck together, and tore once cooked - it ended up being so hard that I decided I wouldn't do it again. That was a few years ago, and making lasagne this time around I quickly remembered why I said back then I would never do so again. I had the same issues again this time and it turned into a disaster. This time I swear I definitely won't make fresh lasagne again.

The end result was a lasagne that was soggy from too much water, and rather flavourless. I was lucky to eat half a piece. Utter tragedy.

On the upside, I had so much pasta that I was able to make tagliatelle and freeze it, so I'll find a sauce to go with it and make that soon. But with the attachment, I can't wait to make lots of fresh tagliatelle, spaghetti, ravioli - and blog about it.

The best brownie in the world?

Transcendent 
Sin - that would be gluttony - never tasted so good

The best brownie in the world? 

Sometime earlier this year - I don't remember when, it's been a busy year - I needed to make something for a dinner party or a birthday, and came across a recipe in my recipe volumes I hadn't made before: twice cooked chocolate brownies.

Fudgy brownie goodness

The recipe came from an old issue of delicious. - November 2009, to be exact - from chef Ben O'Donoghue (you can also find the recipe here). It looked relatively easy, so thought I'd give it a try.

They're pretty easy to make - melt chocolate and butter; beat eggs, sugar and vanilla in Betty; pour in chocolate mixture; gently fold in flour and nuts; pour batter in to tin; bake until nearly cooked.

My goodness, they were good. Everyone else thought so, too. Ever since, these brownies have become legendary. I've made them a few times now - either for dinner parties or work colleagues - and the reactions I get each time range from ecstasy-inducing mumbles, to exclamations of how good they are. I like making people happy.

I made them for my friend Katy's dinner party recently and realised I had never blogged about them, but didn't want to until I had good photos. Then, last week, Katy had a busy week at work and I was cajoled (not that I needed much convincing) into making them again to cheer her up.

The result of taking them to work

I took them into work and this time I brought the camera with me. I should've taken photos of my colleagues' reactions when they realised what I'd brought in - some grinned and did little claps, others squealed with delight. But I stuck to photos of the brownies.

And, I seriously have to admit, they must be some of the best brownies I've ever made. They're rich, fudgy, with a hint of saltiness from a pinch of salt, and crunchy from the macadamias. Oh, and chocolatey. Very chocolatey. Lots of butter, lots of sugar and lots of chocolate. No-one ever said that something this sinfully good was good for you.

They're called twice cooked for a reason. While they're perfect as they are, you can take it to the next level by steaming them for dessert. I did this for the first time last night. I probably didn't steam them long enough to make them truly warm and fudgy, but no matter - with some vanilla icecream, it goes down really well as dessert.

Steamed up with icecream for dessert

Back to sharing them at work, and most people took seconds. I made the mistake of having two, one straight after the other. They're delicious, but spacing them out is recommended. While polishing off the first one, it prompted me to ask my colleague Alex - an American, and therefore perhaps considered an authority on the subject of brownies - whether she thought these were the best brownies in the world. She considered for a moment, before replying that she's had lots of different types of brownies, so it was hard to judge, but that these were pretty damn good.

From an American, that's good enough for me.

Great cakes!

Triumph/Transcendent
Can't quite decide whether these were a triumph or transcendent - on the border, so will give both ratings!

Great cakes!

So I have been cooking this year, just not posting. With autumn and winter approaching - my favourite seasons for food - I'll try and post more. 

But I can post on a couple of recent triumphs, both cakes. Baking cakes is something I've always found cathartic, and given a rather frustrating week at work, I felt the need to bake two. 

I decided to make one for a friend's birthday party I was invited to, and then another when I realised a colleague who complains he doesn't get cake in his office would be in town just before his birthday. 

Then the hard question of what to make. I have so many cook books and recipe scrapbook volumes, that I haven't looked into even half the recipes. Then I found two I had never made before that were easy, simple to make, and - more importantly - sounded delicious. 

For my colleague-who-never-gets-cake, I settled on melt-and-mix white chocolate cake with a dark chocolate glaze from Donna Hay's Modern Classics Book 2. Ms Hay is the queen of quick, simple cakes that taste delicious and this one was no exception. 

Melt-and-mix white chocolate cake

The sweet white chocolate and vanilla cake perfectly contrasted the slightly bitter dark chocolate glaze. The cake itself was not too dry, but did take a little longer than expected to bake. 

It was definitely a hit with all of my colleagues though, with some going back for seconds afterwards and there being none left at all by lunch the following day. 

The other cake I chose for the birthday party was a lemon and raspberry loaf cake. This came out of one of my recipe volumes, and I think it's from the cooking section of an edition of Perth's Sunday Times newspaper.

Although the recipe called for frozen raspberries, fresh ones are currently in season here in Switzerland, so decided to use those instead. It was a good choice, as I think the juice from the fresh berries made it delightfully moist. 

Lemon and raspberry loaf en fete

The flavour of tart lemon and raspberry complemented each other well, with the lemon coming through in the icing on top. Interestingly, several friends had a hard guess trying to pick the fruit that was in it (I hadn't told them), which I was a little surprised by; looked fairly obvious to me! At any rate, comments of 'great cake!' were backed up by the cake having been polished off with nothing left at the end. 

I think of the two, I preferred the taste of the white chocolate cake, but found the lemon and raspberry one easier to make (all done in Betty, my Kitchenaid) and it also turned out more moist, which is something I like in a cake. Thumbs up for both, and they'll definitely go into my list of tried, tested and trusted cake recipes.

New kitchen, new beginnings

So it's been quite awhile since my last post, but without a decent kitchen (and my last post will explain why), I haven't cooked much lately. That's about to change. About a month ago, Emperor D and I moved into our new apartment. I should clarify and say brand new apartment. With a brand new apartment, comes a brand new kitchen, and with a brand new kitchen comes brand new appliances!

A brand new kitchen! Hooray!

And joy of joys, the new appliances include a dishwasher! Most people will be baffled by my excitement, until I explain that in the 30 years of my existance, I have never lived in a house with a dishwasher. Unless of course the dishwasher was me. I started washing up as a child and have been doing it ever since, so it's a real luxury for me to come home, cook dinner, and then let the dishwasher clean everything while I relax on the couch.

My boxes from Australia have also arrived, along with my cookbooks in them, but I'm yet to unpack most of them, so I still think it will be a couple of weeks before I can start properly cooking and posting again. But I hope to do so soon; unfortunately I missed cooking during winter and making all my favourite winter foods, but the produce here is amazing and summer really can throw up some great ideas for recipes.

So watch this space! Most of my Scanpan pots have made it over, along with Betty, so time to start putting them to good use.

Betty makes pizza

Trusty

On the borderline with Triumph - but the base just isn't quite there.

Betty makes pizza

Betty combines the ingredients
into a dough...

Okay, so I’ve named my glorious, bright red Kitchenaid stand mixer. In my first post, I mentioned that she should have a name like Memphis Belle, but I’ve decided she needed something simple, old fashioned, yet sassy, so I’ve named her Betty. I’ve got no idea why, but I think the name suits her.

Anyway, Emperor D and I have been getting into the habit of staying home Saturday nights. Instead grabbing some takeaway, I’ve been digging out some recipes that I just wouldn’t have the time or patience to cook during the week, especially the slow-cooked stuff. One Saturday I made a great veal osso bucco, which slowly baked away in my oven until it came out all fall-off-the-bone tender.

It’s no longer the dead of winter here, so

 ...and then she kneads it in a 
third of the time!

 instead of the hearty slow-cooked stuff, last Saturday I decided to make something that still takes a bit of patience – pizza. When it comes to pizza, I have a great mentor and someone to live up to in my dad; he’s a great pizza maker. This is probably by virtue of him having to work two jobs in the mid Eighties, when I was a kid, to make ends meet. Well, thank God for the recession back then, because the second job he took was first delivering, then making, pizzas.

I’ve made pizza before, with varying degrees of success. But one thing I did learn off dad was that after the dough is kneaded, it needs time to rise. I remember a well-oiled mixing bowl sitting for hours on the kitchen bench, with a tea towel over the top of it, underneath which the dough would be slowly rising.

Emperor D's pizza

So, not long after lunch I start making pizza dough. Actually, I shouldn’t take credit for this – Betty made the  dough. I just put the ingredients together in the bowl and gave a gentle stir to get things going. Betty is just brilliant; first she gathers all the ingredients together to form dough. Then the recipe says to knead the dough for ten minutes. Betty giggles at that – she can do it in a third of that time with her dough hook attachment. After just three minutes, the dough comes out all smooth and elastic-y. I think I love Betty. Then the dough sits on top of my washing machine in the laundry all afternoon (my kitchen faces south and is freezing in winter), while it gently rises.

After a few hours, the dough has tripled in size. Emperor D and I preheat the oven, prepare our toppings and roll out the dough into rustic-looking (read, couldn’t get a round circle) shapes. I spread some leftover home made pizza sauce (tinned tomatoes, tomato puree, fresh and dried herbs) over the bases and we stick our toppings on.

My pizza

When I was a kid, I only ever wanted bacon and cheese on my pizzas, no matter how hard my dad tried to get me to put something else on them. Sorry dad – I’m now 30 and still only want cheese and bacon on them, but I’m a bit more sophisticated these days and add herbs and chilli flakes. I find when it comes to pizzas, the simpler the toppings the better. Emperor D adds capsicum, onion, olives and some bacon and ham to his. After baking in the oven for around ten minutes, they come out sizzling and golden. The base? Not bad, but I think I might have rolled out the pizzas a little too thin. Next time, I’ll have to have more dough for the same size bases or make fewer pizzas. Homemade pizza – what a great idea for a Saturday night spent in.