Hello dear reader,
I know it’s been a while again but it has been a busy October this year. Most important of all, a dream of mine has come true: I started studying medicine in Berlin. I realized that going to school and going university are two completely different things and I do my best to enjoy as much as possible.
So my new life is really exciting and fabulous thus far, but let us with over to food.
More than a month ago, back in September, I was at my grandma’s again. I spent about 10 days in Bulgaria, where the beginning of autumn is still warm and full of life. The following pictures show you this year’s impressions of the journey.
My grandma has violet chilies growing at her balcony. They are tiny, but really hot! Beware, beware, beware…
Since nobody has cooked for me in a long time, I was very happy to get a fabulous vegetable lasagna à la Gran, with eggplant, zucchini and Bulgarian cheeeeeese.
This year, I had the wonderful opportunity to help my grandparents can some harvest for the cold season. We had plenty of tomatoes and peppers, parsley and plums.
We roasted the peppers in a special gadget for roasting peppers (my grandma owns this kind of stuff) and shredded the tomatoes through a mill.
It is wonderful to have cans with veggies that have actually ripened in the sun, so when you open them to make casserole or whatever, everything tastes like summer.
We also had plenty of plums, as it was the season back then and converted them into some yummy marmalade. (Guess what I did? Licked the spoon and the large pot, of course.)
If you have followed the blog for a longer time, you might have realized that I adore figs. Luckily, my grandparents’ fig tree had already plenty of them ready to make their way to my stomach. Honestly, I ate a huge amount of them during my stay.
I really love looking at these pictures again, because they remind me of the warm late summer days at the coast of the Black Sea and most of all, I love the light at the time. It makes all the colors look so bright and natural.
Hope you like it just as much as I do.
I hope you had a good New Year’s celebration and are not too clumsy with your resolutions for 2014 to not try out this dessert someday. A tiramisu with fruit is totally my sort of thing, as it is creamy, light and full of taste. I created this recipe for Christmas to please my relatives who were actually very happy with it. Even my cousins tried it, who have denied eating fruit in dessert so far.
I used an original Italian tiramisu recipe as a basic, but substituted the espresso and amaretto for plums with sauce (I don’t like alcohol and coffee in dessert).
I am sure you can do this as well with blueberies or peaches with the same delicious result. So.. when you have stopped dieting because of your new year’s resolutions – try this, you will not regret it.
Plum Tiramisu:
3 eggs
75 g (1/3 cup) sugar
250 g (8 oz.) ladyfingers
500 g (18 oz.) mascarpone
2 ripe plums
300 ml (1 1/6 cup) orange juice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
cocoa powder, for dusting
Cut the plums into thin clices and then the slices into smaller pieces – this will make the tiramisu easier to eat. Put the cut fruit together with orange juice and cinnamon in a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Cook for about 5 minutes, then remove from the heat.
Seperate the eggs and beat the eggwhites with half of the sugar in a bowl until stiff. In a second bowl, stir the egg yolks with the rest of the sugar and mascarpone. Now carefully integrate the beaten egg whites in the creamy mass, trying to keep as much air inside as possible.
Put a layer of ladyfingers at the bottom of a rectangular pan. Pour half of the orange sauce and half of the plums on it. Cover with half of the cream. place a new layer of ladyfingers on top and repeat.
Let the dessert cool for at least two hours, but not for more than a day, since it contains raw eggs.
I made a crumble this week. A good one.
It was so good, I did not manage taking pictures of the half-eaten object, but have just these few beauties.
I am proud of it, because it is my very own recipe and it turned out so easy and delicious. Well, if you have some spare time and a few ingredients, you should not wait but convince yourself. End of the text.
Plum and Pear Crumble
500 g plums
1 pear
75 g sugar
75 g butter
150 g flour
1/2 tbsp cinnamon
3 tbsp honey
3 tbsp oatmeal
1 tbsp orange zest
1 tbsp lemon zest
Cut the fruit into small cubes. Preheat oven to 175°C (350°F)
Combine butter, sugar and flour until they form a crumbly dough. Press it together with your hands until it forms a ball. Let chill it in the fridge until needed.
Combine the cut fruit with honey and oatmeal, then add cinnamon and zests. Now place this mixture into pans (use small or big ones) and crumble the dough on top. Bake for about 40 minutes until the dough is slightly browned.