Welcome summer! Tiramisù popsicle recipe

To celebrate the coming of summer, we'll bring you a popsicle based on a very classical italian sweet: the World renown Tiramisù.

The Tiramisù is a very simple sweet dish, but it's not a classic in the sense of "old", it's a rather "new classic", since it was invented in...1962! I mean, come on! That's the day before yesterday! ;) How could people live without this marvel?

The original recipe was an idea of Mrs. Alba Campeol, in the beautiful city of Treviso, very near to Venice. She affirms that the idea came out after giving birth to her first son, when her mother and her mother-in-law used to bring her coffee and ladyfingers and tell her: "eat them all, that'll be good for you!". In Italian we say "tirare su" (rise up, come on!) when someone needs to get better, and starting with this idea, she decided together with the cook of the restaurant they owned to add some nourishing eggs with sugar and the mascarpone cheese.

Even though many (or everybody) thinks that Tiramisù has some liquor in it, it actually hasn't. Or shouldn't have, according Mrs. Campeol's original recipe, since it was precisely designed to be fit for everyone, from the childhood to the oldest one, and specially for those who needed to "tirarsi su", to recover themselves, making the liquor unfit for the recipe. The many tourist that visited the enchanting city of Treviso (we would advice you to do so!) were blown away from the simple and genial recipe, making it Worldwide famous, and this lead to the many versions of this sweet that we have nowadays.

Here you are an interview to Mrs. Campeol (in Italian) where she tells us the history and she also regrets not having patented her recipe in the Sixties! We're thankful and grateful anyway, Mrs. Campeol!

 
Ingredients:

• 4 egg yolks
• 2 egg whites
• 100 g. of sugar
• 400 g. of mascarpone cheese
• 3 or 4 Savoiardi biscuits or ladyfingers
• cocoa powder
• a cup of coffee
• a pinch of salt

Preparation:

1- Beat the egg yolks until they get foamy with an electric blender. You're looking for a pale white colour.

2- Add to the previous mix the mascarpone cheese and mix it togheter.
 
3- Beat the eggs white until they become foamy and we add this to the previous mix with round movements, from bottom to top in order to let the foam stand up straight.

4- We dip the Savoiardi or the ladyfingers in the coffee (it can be decaffeinated, instant coffee or espresso, you choose).

5- We put our mix in our popsicle or ice cream moulds, alternating with coffee-wet ladyfingers and cocoa powder and our mix again, as many times as we want, until the mould is filled and we end with some cocoa powder, then we put our wooden stick. We can also decide to put the ladyfingers at the center of the mould and the mix around them. This time I decided to do it with some little pieces of ladyfingers, that's a matter of tastes!

6- Put it into the freezer, if it's possible from a day to another, since it's a very creamy mix and it needs a lot of cold.

This time I've made it as a popsicle, but you can do it in a plum cake mould too.
Before pouring the mix, I cover the bottom with a plastic wrap, in order to avoid that our Tiramisù does not sticks to the bottom and can be removed easily. This version is to be made just like the popsicles, but with some more savoiardi biscuits and forming and alternate structure, just like the traditional Tiramisù: biscuits, mascarpone mix, cocoa powder and others biscuits, in that orden. This is what is called a "semifreddo", a sweet between a gelato and a traditional cake.

Happy start of Summer to everyone! Enjoy this ice creamy version of the Tiramisù!

Greetings,

AnGie

Puchero Canario Recipe

Feliz Día de Canarias! Happy Canary Islands' Day!

Today we bring you a typical recipe from Canary Islands, the puchero.

We can say that the Canary islands' puchero is the local version of the Spanish cocido. It is a very complete and heavy, that you can eat in a cold winter day (of course, even if there is no a freezing winter in Canary Islands, there are areas that are colder that the rest, that is, every corner has its own climate, we call it "microclima"). It is ideal when shared with the family, and it's just great with a good old mojo and a escaldon de gofio (we'll talk about it in another occasion) to have a super typical dish.

It's a recipe where we'll see lots of different kinds of meats tossed together (pork, ribs, veal or chicken), and different kinds of veggies (zucchini, chayotas, pumpkin, , cabbage, beans, etc.), chickpeas, potatoes, sweet potatoes, maize heaps and so on. In some hamlet, they add a pear to this cooking mix. Of course, you can decide whether an ingredient will go or not in the pot, according to your taste or the availability of it. I remember that when I was a child I didn't like it at all, y'know, the little ones and the veggies, but what I did expect most when was time for a puchero in our family was the soup! It was, and still is, delighful! Made with all those ingredients altogether...yum!


As for the quantities of the ingredients for a good puchero, much of it depends on how many and how hungry your guests are. We use to weigh a little bit of every ingredient, veggies, meat, everything, for every guest, more or less. In this case, we made a puchero for 3 or 4 people.


Ingredients:

• 1/2 kg. of veal meat
• 1/2 kg. of chicken meat
• 200 g. of pork ribs
• 1/2 morcilla
• 1/2 chorizo
• 150 g.of chickpeas
• 2 or 3 carrots
• 1 middle size onion
• 1/4 red pepper
• 300 g. aprox. of beans
• half cabbage (cut into four pieces)
• 300 g. of pumpkin
• 8 potatoes (some 2 potatoes per guest)
• 2 corncobs
• 2 or 3 garlic fingers
• saffron
• parsley
• comino 
• sweet pepper
• Salt
• 2 spoonful of olive oil

Preparation: 

1- In a pot, put the water on heat until it starts boiling, then we toss the meat inside. Put it on middle heat.

2- After some 20 minutes, toss in the pot the chickpeas and the carrots.

3- After some others 15 minutes put inside the pot the harder veggies, like for example the beans (that traditionally were tight together with a cooking string, a "package" for each guest), the cabbage, etc. and little by little we'll add the rest of the veggies.

4- In our house, we fry with oil the minced onion and the pepper, along with smashed garlic, comino, salt and saffron all mixed together, adding the pimenton in order not to let it burn and ruin its taste. That will add to our puchero a lot of flavour! If you prefer, you can jump to the next step and add it all without cooking it.

5- When the veggies are half baked, we'll add the potatoes and the sweet potato (batata), because we don't want them to break. In this phase, we'll add the morcilla and the chorizo too.

6- When all is well cooked, turn off the heat and get ready to eat!

7- If you prefer it, you can use the stock where our puchero was cooked and prepare with it a great soup with all the taste of the veggies we've used. To do so, we pass the stock to another pot, we'll toss the small pasta and there you have it! With that stock you can preare an "escaldon de gofio" too, that is an all time favourite in Canary Islands! (We'll talk about the Gofio in another occasion, a really healthy and nutritive food).

8- To serve the puchero, put in the dish a piece of everything you've cooked, of course according each one's taste, and at the end dress it with olive oil and vinegar. That's all! Si down and eat it with a traditional red wine del pais.

Enjoy it, or Que aprovechen!

A puchero dish with Escaldon de Gofio and red mojo

With the leftover puchero, we can prepare some delicious croquetas. Furthermore, this dish is perfect for every kinds of diets, choosing only the veggies and not the meat for the vegetarians or the vegans, and perfect for the coeliacs.

Greetings!

AnGie

Coconut & Walnut Bread

Today we bring you a sweet bread so easy to do, really perfect for breakfast or snacks and very simple to conserve: just cover it with a kitchen towel and it will last (if protected from direct air) for 5 or 6 days...but I guarantee you'll eat it before! It's a bread that is somewhat similar to a cake, you'll notice that the coconut will add moisture and the walnuts a very tasty rustic touch. It's one of those recipes you discover experimenting in you house and then becomes classics. You can of course add more walnuts or change them for other dried fruits, but I recommend you to try the coconut/walnut combo. And you can do others kinds of bread too, for example we've already shown you another kind of rustic and tasty bread here!



With the given quantities you will obtain two breads, so if you just want one bread...you know what to do! Half the quantities! ;)

Ingredients:

• 550 g. of flour
• 80 g. of butter
• 2 eggs
• 500 ml of milk
• 350 g. of sugar
• 15 g. of baking powder
• 80 g. of dried coconut
• 70 g. of walnuts approximately
• 2 envelopes of Vanillina or Vanilla powder

 Preparation:

1º- We add the butter in a bowl that has to be very creamy. We mix it with two eggs and sugar. We stir deeplyu the mix.

2º- Now add the flour and the milk. We will do this step twice, adding half the ingredients each time, stirring and incorporating well the ingredients before adding the rest of the ingredients.

3º- Add the coconut and the chopped walnuts. Add a little bit of flour with the walnuts, so that the flour will not go just on the bottom of our bread.

4º- Pour the dough in moulding pan we've previously covered with butter. Remember that with these quantities you will obtain two breads plum cake like. Decorate the surface with walnuts the way you like it.

5º- Bake in a preheated oven at 170°C during 30 minutes with only bottom heating, and then other 30 minutes with bottom and top heating. If we see that our bread is getting golden brown but the interior is not yet ready (go with a needle, and if the needle gets out of the bread clean the bread is ready, if you see on it traces of the dough then is not), yo can cover it with an aluminium foil, and continue baking it with no problems.

If we prefer, we can decorate the surface with sugar, or you can put a glace icing over it, you choose!

Greetings!

AnGie