Jyothi

This is the applepie my granny always used to make when I was little. Now I make it for us or for when we are with friends. I added a bit of ginger to the original recipe. I love the combination of apples, raisins, ginger and cinnamon.

Ingredients

For the dough

240 gr flour
180 gr butter or margarine
120 gr sugar
1 tsp salt

For the filling

1 kilo apples peeled and cut in little pieces
50 grams of sugar
1 tsp of cinnamon
1 tsp of ginger
100 gr raisins
lemon juice

2 spoons of milk
2 spoons of jam (ideally apricot jam, but here i used home made plum jam)

round cake tin of about 24 cm
preheat the oven on 160 degrees Celsius

Mix all the ingredients for the dough until you have a firm ball. cover with clingfilm and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. Roll about 2/3 of the dough out until it is about half a cm thick and put in the cake tin.

Mix the apples together with the sugar, raisins, cinnamon, ginger and lemon juice.

Put the apple mixture on the dough.

Roll out the remaining 1/3 of the dough and cut it in long stripes, put the stripes over the apples like a sort of net. Brush some milk over the dough stripes.

Put the pie in the oven and bake it for about 45 minutes or until it is golden brown.

Take it out and spread some jam over the top.

Let it cool down and enjoy

Before I had kids i used to listen to loads of music, always had the radio on. Or cd’s in the cd player and my Walkman with me with tapes. Then after Joshua was born I listened to some but not as much as i used to and I started more and more to forget to put music on. Then i had a job where there was always music on the background, then at home i was not very worried that it was quiet or that Daniele put on his cd’s. The radio i could not really be asked to listen to because half the songs where not my taste and i can’t stand commercials.

So the other week Daniele invited me to come as well to http://www.last.fm a type of radio station where you can make your own play list and on the kind of music you like they make suggestions of similar kind of music.

So i subscribed and for the first time in years i am listening to the radio again. Only this time it is just with the songs I like. And also found some old dutch songs that my dad used to sing when I was little……

Living in Italy also means that when it is the right season the vegetables of that season are really cheap. So the other day I bought 10 kilo of tomatoes for 4 euro.

So I went looking online for recipes, this is one of them.

6 plum tomatoes cut in thick slices
1 package of puffpastry
about 300 grams of grated cheese ( I used a mixture of Gouda, parmesan and pecorino)
1 tablespoon of mustard
1 tablespoon of dried basil

Put the puffpastry in a low pie shape. spread the mustard on the bottom. Lay down the tomatoes in a circular way. cover it with the grated cheese and the basil.

Then put the pie in the oven for about 30 minutes on 200 degrees Celsius. Or until it looks done. Take out and let the pie cool down. Enjoy  

Tha last month and a half we have been busy with moving to our new house. So we had to strip walls, paint them and a bit of burocratics to resolve…

Now things are nearly finished, just the finishing touches.

The new house even though it has some small problems feels very good and so far i like living in this new city.

My mother told me to watch this it is very interesting. My family back in Holland is bringing it in practice and it is working for them. So will give it a go as well.

This is how I make them. I add some more vegetables then in the “original” recipe because Luca is not to keen on eating vegetables and he loves eating these. So this way he eats them anyway. For me cooking is a matter of feeling so it is hard to give the exact amounts for the ingredients.

Ingredients.

1 can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed off
1 small onion
1 carrot
1 celery stalk
60 grams of fresh parsley
salt and pepper to taste
3 eggs
dried breadcrumbs 

As I own one of these lovely food processor I add all the ingredients in there, apart from 2 eggs and the breadcrumbs. And turn it on. Normally after 5 minutes or so I have a smooth mixture.

If you do not own one of those you need the chop the onion, carrot, parsley and  celery in very small pieces. Then squash the chickpeas and mix it all together with one egg.

From the mixture that you have you should be able to make firm balls. So if it is to wet add a little of the breadcrumbs, if it is to dry add a little oil.

Once you made all the balls. Beat the 2 left over eggs in a plate and on another plate you do the breadcrumbs.

First you role the balls through the eggs and then through the breadcrumbs.

At this point i normally let them rest in the fridge for about half an hour and after that I deep fry them.

Is a variation on normal brownie recipe. Because did not have all the ingredients of the original recipe and Luca was begging me to make a cake . Also I had to use some of the chocolate from all the Easter eggs the boys got given for Easter.

Ingredients:

180 grams dark chocolate
180 grams of margarine
250 grams of sugar
2 eggs
120 grams of flour
100 grams of grated coconut

Melt the chocolate and the margarine together in a pan.
Beat the eggs and sugar together. Mix the chocolate margarine mixture through the eggs, then add the flour and the grated coconut.

Bake in a preheated oven on 180 degrees Celsius for about 35 minutes.

Let it cool down a little and cut in little pieces…

pastry

50 gr of margarine

50 gr of sugar

150 gr of flour

1 tablespoon ground almonds

Filling

50 gr of margarine

100 gr of sugar

100 gr of ground almonds

1 egg

1 large apple peeled and sliced

To make the pastry mix all the ingredients together in the foodprocesor until it is a ball, wrap up and let rest in de fridge for an hour or so.

Preheat the oven on 180 degrees Celsius. Roll out the pastry and dress a 24 cm greased baking tin with it.

Put a bit of baking paper in the tart en fill it with baking beans. Cook for about 15 minutes or until it starts to color at the sides. Remove the beans and let it cool of.

To make the filling mix all the ingredients apart from the apple until smooth. Spread this over the tart and arrange the apple slices on top of it. Bake for about 35 minutes or until golden brown.

Let is cool down and enjoy.

The village where Joshua goes to school, is a village expanding build along two busy roads and with a station. Houses where affordable or at  least 6 years ago they where. Now they are expensive. People started living there because of the busy roads and the station it is well connected to Rome.

But when people live there the things that keep them so well connected to Rome turn in something that make a lot of noise and are annoying. So they want them changed. They do not want all the cars driving through the village they do not want to see or hear the train. So they made a project to get the train underground. http://digilander.libero.it/Sotto_terra_il_treno/ . To me it looks nearly as an impossible job to do with all the houses build so close to the rail road.

I do understand from a human point of view I really do understand that it is very annoying to have cars an trucks passing your house continuously, and that twice an hour all the streets are blocked because a train has to pass…….but when they moved there that was already there. And they do not stop building they are building more and more houses with a result it get even busier………

Apart from that we can not afford to buy a house there if I could then for that amount of money i would not choose to buy a house there. But that is just my opinion.

With Easter it was also the birthday of my mother in law. And as I like to cook and am not to bad in making cakes I thought I make her a birthday cake.

First i baked 2 heart shape cakes, The recipe i used for that is

225 g flour

2 tsp baking powder

225 g sugar

225 margarine

4 eggs

Grease the baking tins

preheat oven on 200 degrees celcius

Mix all the ingredients together until smooth.

divide evenly over the 2 tins and bake in a preheated oven for about 50 minutes, or until well risen and golden.

Let cool down and add jam or cream as a filling on one layer and place then the other one on top. Lightly cover with apricot jam to make it sticky so the decoration stays better.

For the decoration i used fondant, which you can buy ready made but i choose to make it myself. There are different recipes you can find on the net on how to make it. I usually make it this way.

450 g icing sugar (zucchero a velo of poedersuiker)

1 1/2 tsp gelatin powder

2 tbsp water

1 1/2 tbsp liquid glucose

2 tsp glycerin

Dissolve the gelatin powder on low heat in the water, add the glucose and the glycerin, and mix well.

Take of the heat and start adding the icing sugar, and when you cant stir anymore with a spoon start kneading it in with you hands until you have a firm ball. Then roll it out until it is big enough to cover the cake.

The original recipes all say to cover the cake first with marzipan but we find that to heavy so i do not do it like that.

When the fondant is on i start getting creative and decorate the cake. For this one i used markers with food coloring inside. I really like the result and on how easy they where to use. I bought them here.

Or you can use the leftover fondant, or make some new and color it with with food coloring and make shapes out of it like i did for the birthday of Daniele last year.