Last week we bought some incredibly soft and sweet autumn pears, and Mom immediately came up with the idea of a Pear and Cream Cake. We used frozen puff pastry – or you might prefer to make your own at home, which means you are a very patient person :) I easily come to a compromise between the store-bought and the home-made when it comes to puff pastry. They sell some really good-quality pastry in a nearby supermarket, and it makes life so much easier! Isn’t a home-made croissant or turnover made with frozen puff pastry still better than having sandwiches for lunch again?!
Anyways, we laid those sugary-simmered pears on a sheet of pastry, topped them with whipped egg and cream, sprinkled the cake with almond shavings, put it into oven and waited for 45 minutes, enjoying the warm smells of melting cream, vanilla, and baking pastry. The cake came out tender and sweet, with a very mild citrus flavour and a dreamy touch of vanilla. We let it cool until room temperature, so it became easy to cut. You might as well try serving it warm with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream. Read the rest of this entry »
This is just a quick and simple omelette we made the other night with leftover chanterelles. Actually we’ve been frying and freezing a lot of chanterelles to be able to make some soups or those lovely Chanterelle Turnovers after the season is over. I guess I’ve already mentioned that these mushrooms are one of my favourite ingredients – I’m sure I could stay on a chanterelle diet for weeks and weeks! Another ingredient I love is lemon and lemon zest. But a lemon zest diet would be more challenging, I suppose.
You might notice that we didn’t add any spice to this omelette. In fact, I don’t support the overuse of spice at all. Yes I love the warm and mild flavour of vanilla in sweet pastry, or the exotic flavour of curry in sautéed vegetables, or those balsamic, piny notes of fresh rosemary that are so perfect for roasted salmon. But, eggs should taste like eggs and spinach should taste like spinach, to my mind. That’s why this omelette does not contain any spice.
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Everybody in our family loves risotto, which we make with or without mushrooms, adding zucchini and white wine. Aww that creamy, tender texture of risotto rice, saturated in olive oil and Parmesan cheese. And yes, we know this is not at all a Russian dish :)
But, sometimes you just don’t have all the necessary risotto components at hand. For example, this time we didn’t have any Arborio rice or Parmesan cheese. So, we decided to cook white rice with vegetables and mushroom stock instead. And it tasted good! The flavourful mushroom stock paired perfectly with eggplants. And fried carrots lent a cheerful warm colour to rice. The day was saved!
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