Food and Liquor

I have a friend called Bryony who writes a fantastic blog called This Is Uni Food, with recipes and photos of all her delicious kitchen exploits. Taking a leaf out of her cookery book, this blog post will be full of recipes and photos of the things I have been making for Claudia and Giovanni's Christmas present, and I shall add a final photo when I've put it all together into a lovely presentation box (which I have yet to make....)

So, here we go

Chocolate Truffles

Unfortunately, I only decided to take a photo of these when I'd finished them, but I think they look great for a first time! They're pretty easy to make too; melt 4oz (about 114g) of dark chocolate in a bain-marie (I like to use fancy words - put it in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water, making sure the water does not touch the bowl) until smooth, then stir in 3oz (about 85g) of butter, 3oz of icing sugar and 3oz of ground almonds (I had to use finely chopped ones, but it didn't seem to be a bad thing). Allow the mixture to cool slightly, then scoop out teaspoonfuls and roll them into balls, before rolling them again in either cocoa powder (or chocolate vermicelli, which I did). Then leave them to chill and harden in the fridge on a tray covered in greaseproof paper. Once chilled, store them between layers of greaseproof paper in an airtight container - the tiny paper cases are optional - and they will keep for up to two months. 

White Chocolate, Cranberry and Pistachio Fudge

To make this lush fudge, you need: 3oz (85g) of dry-roasted, unsalted (seriously, make sure they are unsalted!!!), chopped pistachios,

4oz (114g) of dried cranberries,

14oz (about 400g) of white chocolate, broken into pieces, and 14oz of condensed milk. Place the chocolate and condensed milk in your makeshift bain-marie, unless you have a real one, and melt them together, whisking occasionally (and yes, I am aware that I am not using a heatproof bowl in this photo, but I could not find one ANYWHERE and my tiny saucepan seemed to suffice). 

When the mixture is smooth, take it off the heat!

Now stir in 2/3 of the pistachios and cranberries, making sure they're all nicely mixed in  (a bit of elbow grease is required here; as the mixture cools, it will become harder to stir)

Pour the mixture onto a tray lined with greaseproof paper, and spread it out so it's about 1/2-3/4 of an inch thick. Sprinkle and remaining cranberries and pistachios on top, and press them down with your fingertips. Put in the fridge for at least two hours to chill.

Once the fudge has chilled, cut it into squares and seal them in a airtight container. The fudge will keep in the fridge for about two weeks, but it's very moreish so it probably won't last that long!

Next up are the Peppermint Creams. Again, I did not take photos throughout the entire process of making these as I was kind of in the zone and oblivious to any distractions, but I took a couple while I was cutting out shapes from the rolled-out dough. 

Mix together about 11oz (320g) of icing

sugar, 4 1/2 oz (130g) of condensed milk, and two teaspoons of peppermint extract. You may need to work it a little bit, and when it starts to clump together, get stuck in with your hands and draw it into a ball of sugary dough. Lightly dust a clean flat surface with icing sugar, and roll the dough out until it's about half a centimetre thick.

 Cut out shapes - the most common one is circles, but I used a star-shaped cutter to make them a bit more festive - and lay them on a tray covered in greaseproof paper or cling film. Chill in the fridge for at least at hour, until firm. You can leave them like that, but another option is to melt some chocolate of your choice (dark chocolate works well and stops them from being too sweet) and dip one half of each Cream into it before laying them back on the tray and chilling again. You can also cover them completely in chocolate, and decorate them too - they're quite versatile!

Last up is my lovely Arancello. I've already given you the recipe for this, but today was the day that I strained the liquid and bottled it up. It's not quite finished yet; I need to buy ribbon to tie around the bottle, and decorate it with extra orange peel and cinnamon sticks inside, but I thought I would show you what happens when you let orange rind soak in vodka for two weeks: 

I love the colour! And I had a sneaky taste, it has a lovely warm orange flavour with a kick of cinnamon as you swallow. I will definitely be making this again!

Just to clarify, I did not create any of these recipes myself; I got the Truffle recipe from this book, the Fudge recipe from Elly Says Opa, the Peppermint Creams from Lorraine Pascale via Gourmet Gob,and the Arancello recipe from the BBC Good Food website.

I will probably next update this blog after Christmas, so until then 

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

Right. So.

First off, apologies for not updating for nearly a month. There have been myriad miscellaneous things keeping me busy, such as lesson plans, day trips and crises with our window shutters, but here I am now, bringing you up to speed.

The main big thing that I’ve been busying myself with lately is CHRISTMAS – I’ve done all my Christmas shopping for the family through the wondrous medium of Amazon, I’ve started putting up decorations in the flat – only paper snowflakes on the windows so far as it is impossible to hand anything from the ceiling without a ladder (and sadly no fantastically cheap tree from the local supermarket, but there will be other trees), I have pudding and cake and I have made plans to make a trifle with Claudia and Simone on the Wednesday before I fly back to England (two weeks and I will be home! I’m excited). I have also been planning lessons this week for the fortnight before the Christmas break, involving discussions about food, traditions, songs and so forth. I am even planning to break out the guitar for the younger classes. Just call me Maria Von Trapp.

I also went to Salerno last week with one of the other girls posted in this region by the British Council - we had lovely cakes and walked along the seafront, I bought a new umbrella, and we managed to arrive in the square just as they were about to switch the main Christmas tree on for the first time. It was a lovely day, and the Salerno Christmas lights are some of the coolest ones I have ever seen (most of them were made out of recycled plastic bottles too)! Photos can be found here.

Now, as everybody knows, Christmas is not only a time of joy and sparkly things and ridiculous amounts of food – traditionally, people give and receive presents, and I like to give presents. Having bought what appears to be half of the Amazon stock (if you go by my parents’ description of the pile of parcels that are currently sitting on my bed waiting to be unwrapped, delegated, wrapped up again and distributed to various people on the big day), I realised that I had nothing to give Giovanni and Claudia, and no real idea of what they would like. I already had a selection box to give Simone that Mum stuck in with the rest of the Christmas stuff, and after having a bit of a thinking sesh sprawled out on my bed with my iPod in one hand and a pen in the other, I decided that you really can’t go wrong with food. So, I came up with a plan for a lovely box of mixed goodies – all homemade – and I am going to make my first attempt at creating arancello, which is like limoncello but without the horrible lemon-ness, and it apparently tastes all Christmassy, with cinnamon and orange and warm festive spiciness.

See what you think:

ARANCELLO

5 oranges

1 cinnamon stick

2-3 cardamom pods

1 vanilla pod

1l vodka

600g caster sugar

Extra cinnamon sticks, orange peel and such to stick in the bottle and make it look fancy

Okay, so the last bit wasn’t actually written on the recipe I found. And I probably won’t make as much as it actually states, but once I’ve bought some nice glass bottles and jars and some ribbon to make it look nice, it should be an interesting challenge. I started the process on Wednesday afternoon by labouriously peeling oranges and dropping all the peel in a jar, adding cinnamon sticks and pouring on the vodka. I could not for the life of me find cardamom pods or a vanilla pod in the supermarket, so it won’t be exactly right, but I added some vanilla extract to the mix and from the smell emanating from the jar when I open it, it seems to be working. All I have to do now is keeping shaking it up every day before adding copious amounts of sugar on Wednesday, then I leave it for a week again and it should be ready to go.

My variety box of lovely sweeties will hopefully include Peppermint Creams, Spiced Shortbread, Chocolate and Vanilla Pinwheel Cookies (be quiet, I like to capitalise things, okay? It makes them seem more significant), White Chocolate, Cranberry and Pistachio Fudge and Chocolate Truffles. I say hopefully because I’ve only ever made one of those things before (the Shortbread, and it didn't turn out that well, but I know what I did wrong now!) but it can’t too difficult when only two out of five things require the use of an oven and some of them can be made and kept in the freezer until necessary.

However, I have never been one to shy away from a kitchen experiment. My cookery motto is At least you can eat your mistakes.

Unless they will give you food poisoning; in which case, don't.

Until next time, my avid(!) readers,