"Pasta-Hütchen"

Fresh water prawn with aubergine-ricotta ravioli and zucchini-dandelion leaf pesto

The recent days here in Switzerland have been stormy...very, very windy and rainy. So, a perfect weather to stay indoors and do "handicrafts" in the kitchen. Last Saturday Mauro showed me a nice way of making raviolis and I thought to give it a try. I acctually don't know if this shape of pasta is called ravioli in Italy or if it has an own name...knowing the Italians, probably. They have got a name for every possible pasta form and shape. Well, my mother-in-law called it a "Pasta-Hütchen" = a little pasta hat and I find that a great name :D

Pasta dough

200 g wheat flour

50 g Hartweizendunst (Knöpflimehl)

1 medium egg

25 ml olive oil

water as needed 

I have already once wrote about ravioli making. You can find the post here: nettle-ricotta ravioli

 

Some of the ingredients needed: The dandelion leaves are from my garden.

For the zucchini-dandelion leaf pesto I used the common dandelion from my own garden. It's best to use very young leaves because the older ones will have too bitter taste. I also soked the leaves in cold water for about 20 minutes. I read once somewhere that this should reduce the bitterness. If it's true or not, I don't know. I grated the zucchini semi-fine and salted it. There is lot of water in zucchini so after letting it stand salted for about 20 minutes I squished the extra water away. After that I just threw all the ingredients into the mixer and mixed it all into a smooth paste. Tastecheck and ready.

Zucchini-dandelion leaf pesto

1 zucchini

handful of common dandelion leaves

100 g roasted pine nuts

salt

pepper

olive oil

1 clove of garlic

(sugar)

 

Zucchini-dandelion pesto coming up...

...this is how it looks ready.

Grilling the aubergines for the filling

Aubergine-ricotta filling

 

For the ravioli filling I used the recipe of the Aubergine dip which you can find here. I did the dip with two small aubergines and after it was ready I mixed it with 250 grams of ricotta. I also added some breadcrumbs to get a thicker consistence. Easiest way to divide the filling is to use a piping bag.

 

The aubergines contain lots of water, so one should place them on sieve after grilling and let them stand about 20 minutes to get rid of the extra water.

Funny was having a bad day. She wanted to go out to the field but it was too windy and rainy.

 So now when all the needed components are ready it's time to get to work. Making these little hats is quite time consuming but I think it's worth it. The result will be a tasty and beautiful dish. We served our little hats with a one big fresh water prawn per person. We could buy them at the reduced price so why not ;D

Rollling the dough. The easiest way is to use the pasta machine.

The fastest way to divide the filling is to use a piping bag.

Brush the top of the dough with eggwash and then press all four corners together on top. After that press the sides together and ready is the "Pasta-Hütchen"/little pasta hat.

Top view

It's some what time consuming to produce all this.

Xhosa was also irritated of the weather.

We had our pasta with fresh water prawn.

Huge, isn't it?

And ready to enjoy. It looks a bit like a dragon or some kind of a fish, doesn't it?

Close up

The pesto is underneath and prawn on top. The raviolis are around. I also cooked some zucchini balls for the dish and decorated it with dandelion and sellery leaves. I think that this dish looks like spring or early summer...really love the colours.

Orecchiette

Selfmade orecchiette with bear's garlic pesto and tomatos

My Italian colleagues at work are sometimes my inspiration ;) So thanks to our Italian chef Mauro I decided to give the orecchiette a try. Orecchiette means something like a small ear and it's a traditional pasta from Puglia (Apulien). Mauro comes from this region so quite often at work he is doing some orecchiette. 

I found some interesting facts about the orecchiette in the Internet. According the German Wikipedia the orecchiette were first made in France in the middle ages. Because of the form it was easy to dry and thus they were produced in big amounts and sold. At some point they landed on board some ships to Puglia and nowadays orecchiette is considered a national dish of the city of Bari and the rest of Puglia. Apparently in China there is a similar pasta form which is called cat ears.

Orecchiette are very easy but somewhat time consuming to do. You don't need a pasta machine for this.

You just have to roll the dough into long thin bars and cut it in small pieces with a knife.

Press the knife down in the middle of the dough ball and while pressing pull the knife towards you.

Finish the form with your thumb.

And ready it is...

As said, it is time consuming

to produce all this.

Tomatos for my dish. Just sautéed them in olive oil with some thyme and salt

After cooking the orecchiette in water for couple of minutes I tossed them on the pan with some self made bear's garlic pesto.

Super tasty vegetarian dinner for us.

Almond biscotti

Toasted almonds and anise seeds for the biscotti

Almond biscotti

130 g eggs

130 g sugar

pinch of salt

240 g flour

5 g baking soda

18 g anise seeds

100 g almonds

Toast the almonds and anise seeds slightly. Combine baking soda and flour. Whip eggs, sugar and salt with the whip attachment into a thick white foam. Add the flour mixture. Add the almonds and anise seeds and mix until fully combined.

Form the dough into a log and place it on a baking sheet.

Bake at 150 celsius for about one hour. Let the log cool for some 20 minutes and cut it into about 1 cm thick slices.Place the slices on a baking try and and bake at 130 degrees for 15 minutes, turn them and bake for another 15 minutes until golden and dry. 

Enjoy with a cup of coffee :) 

Cutting the log into slices.

Before drying.

The next day. Enjoy!

Once again I bought something for our cooking book library: Bauernmarkt & Biokiste published by GU. I bought this book for ideas. This is a good one because every recipe has got a picture to it. I almost only buy cooking book with lots of pictures because they are the biggest inspiration. Some times one doesn't even need the actual recipe but rather just nice photo to build on.  This book also has got some nice recipes with wild plants but nothing too extreme or weirdo :)

The cover

Inside

Profiteroles for Sunday breakfast

Last autumn I planted some different kinds of flower onions and now the first flowers are here.

The first touch of spring has finally arrived. Jihaaa!!!! So happy to have had some sun for the last couple of days. The sun just works wonders, doesn't it? We have been enjoying a whole weekend of free time together: cooking and eating good like tapas evening on Friday and visiting a gourmet fair Schlaraffia on Saturday. I also managed to finish those profiteroles I mentioned earlier. Today we did a long, lovely walk and checked out some fancy and expensive houses and their gardens in our city. 

Today morning we could enjoy our breakfast on sunny terrace...and the time has come to use another coffe cup than the winter Moomin cup. The Moomin cups are my favourite coffee cups. They remind me of Finland and of childhood. The Moomins was our absolute favourite children's program on TV. If you like the Moomin figures you should check out the Moomin webpage: Muumi

This is my favourite winter coffee cup "talvimuumi". Now it's time to place it to summer sleep and use another one. Would love to have this one: Muumin summer 2015, but that's not possible so I have to use one of the other ones we already have.

Like this one: "Rakkausmuumi"

Or this one: "pikkumyy" I love the bright spring yellow of this cup.

 Pâte à choux

120 ml water

120 ml milk

pinch of salt

110 g butter

170 g flour

225 g eggs 

(I needed about 50 g more of egg that in the recipe)

This is a recipe in the book of The Culinary Institute of America.

1. Bring the milk, water, salt and butter to boil. Once the butter has melted, add the flour all at once and stir vigorously to combine. Continue to stir for about 3 minutes until the mass pulls away from the sides of the pan.

2. Transfer the mixture to the mixer and beat with the paddle attachment. Break the stucture of the eggs in a bowl and add the them in small parts to the dough. Keep on checking after every addition, if some more eggs are needed. Stop adding eggs when the dough slowly slides down the paddle.

3. The pâte à choux is ready to be piped and baked.

This time my pâte à choux turned into very nice looking profiteroles

For the filling I prepared some chocolate creme. I basically made pastry cream to which I added some cocoa powder and after I had cooled it down I added some whipped cream to get an airier and lighter consistancy.

I made a small whole either to the side or to the bottom.

And piped in the cream. Unfortunately I don't have a smaller head for the piping bag so I needed to make a bit too big hole for my taste, but it was hidden underneath so it didn't matter so much.

One way of serving the profiteroles: on the floor ;)

And here the are, ready to be eaten.

Nicht schlecht, oder?

So, I decided to drink my coffee from the "Lovemoomin" :)

Another flower

Small cake gallery

I was going through some old photos and realised that I have quite some photos of cakes I have done which I have never posted here...partly because some of them are made before the beginning of this blog. So I thought to put some of them together to have something to write about. At the moment I'm not baking that much at home (or I'm just too lazy to make photos and write abouth the things) so I don't have very much new material for the blog. So why not to use some of the old material I have been collecting for some years now. Some of the photos are unfortunately not that great beacause they were made with handy or with our worse camera before we bought the better one.

As of lately I am also working on some things that I hope to write about in the near future. Yesterday I did some profiteroles which turned out pretty nice so I might write something about them...no promises made though ;) We have also been cooking and eating at home much more lately since Hubby has a new job and he is more home in the evenings. So there might be some possibilities there to write about :D ...at least I should present our juicer when nothing else.

I have no I idea for what this cake was made for. Maybe for our house-grill party.

The same cake but a closer shot.

I also don't know for what was this cake for...

This cake I made once when one of my friends had posted a picture of Schwazwälder Kirschtorte in Facebook and thus I came to the idea that it would be nice to bake one. Plus my Hubby really likes cakes like this.

Close up of the same cake.

This is a banana-chocolate buttercream birthday cake for hubby.

This is strawberry cream cake made for mothersday for my mam.

I think I made this Sachertorte once for Hubby when he was ill.

Rhubarb-joghurt mousse cake

Mango-joghurt mousse cake for my sisters graduation.

The same cake cut to show the inside

Raspberry mousse cake with cassis gelee

A pie with loads of fresh berries and vanilla blanc manger

This is also a cake for an occasion which I don't remember anymore. I know I have made it back in Finland because of the lake view through the window.