Cinnamon Challenge: Accepted.

I'm starting to think that working weeks look much more promising when I can start them off with a slice of something sweet - which makes me dread the thought of tomorrow morning, as I baked no cake this weekend.
So much for my colleagues always wondering where I find the time to cook: the truth is that if you don't make time yourself for the things you love, no one will make it for you - and when you'll realise that you have slowly, inexplicably lost something precious, it'll be too late to take it back. 

All this, to introduce today's recipe: both a great start to the past week, and the final fulfilment of a challenge I had avoided for more than one year after a first series of indisputable failures.
Apparently, brewer's yeast was no friend of mine until one week ago, as I had tried to use it many times before, and never seemed to figure out quite how it worked. Instead of soft and fluffy doughs, I got flat and despairingly hard focaccias, deformed rolls, unfulfilling breads...until I decided not to use dried yeast ever again, since even following recipes to the tiniest detail seemed not to be enough to guarantee success.
And then I discovered cinnamon rolls.
I had never seen one back in Italy, but here they're just everywhere. A temptation that's hard to resist, screaming "Eat me, please!" from every café counter...but also radiating Butter, so much Butter that I never really dared to treat myself to one.
It was quite surprising to find that the recipe doesn't involve as much Evil Butter as I feared, and it was with much less guilt feeling that I finally resolved to try them at home. But Problem Number Two lied in ambush, meaning that I had to choose between resuming my battle with brewer's yeast and risking another defeat, or giving up on the Cinnamon Challenge: you'll see for yourself what I went for (unsurprising, how could I resist?), and yes, I have won, so why are you not erecting a monument to Queen Baker NOW?

Cinnamon Rolls

 Ingredients for the dough (about 10-12 rolls):

- 125ml skimmed milk;
- 25g butter or spread;
- 260g flour;
- 50g plain sugar;
- 1/2 tablespoon cinnamon;
- 1 egg;
- 1 sachet dried yeast;
- 1/2 teaspoon salt.

Ingredients for the filling:

- 90g brown sugar;
- 1 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon;
- 30 g butter, softened.

Recipe:

- Start preparing the dough: melt the butter in a saucepan, together with the milk, taking care of not bringing to the boil. Pour the mixture in a bowl, and add all the sugar, cinnamon, egg, yeast and salt, and 70g flour.
- Knead thoroughly for about 3-5 minutes, then add the remaining 190g, and continue kneading until you have used up all the flour. Of course, feel free to add more of it if the batter is too sticky.
- Knead for 10 more minutes on a clean surface (on which you will have previously spread a little flour), until the dough is smooth and elastic. Finally, put it in a bowl greased with a little oil, cover it with cling film and a cloth, and leave aside to raise for about 2 hours, or until it becomes twice its size.
- Prepare the filling, mixing brown sugar with cinnamon, and softening the butter until it is creamy enough to be spreadable  - but not completely melted.
- Two hours later...get back to the dough: spread it evenly on the floured kitchen top, in a rectangular shape, about 14x19cm big. Spread the butter on the surface, leaving 1cm "empty" border on each side, and then pour the cinnamon and sugar mixture evenly on the buttery area.
- Roll up the dough, starting from its long side, and pressing gently with your hands to keep it tight.
- Keeping the sealed side down, cut the roll in 10-12 slices of the same size, about 1.5-2cm thick. Put them in an oven dish, greased with butter or lined with baking paper.
- Once again, cover the oven dish with cling film and a cloth, and leave aside for about 45 minutes, until the rolls have become twice their size.
- Last but not least...pre-heat the oven to 190°, and bake for 20 minutes. Remove the rolls from the oven dish as soon as they're ready, and put them on a grill, leaving aside to cool for about 10 minutes.

To my experience, you can store them for about 3 days in a hermetic box; to be honest, I would have tasted one immediately - and I suspect that they would have tasted much better when still warm -, hadn't it been Saturday evening and almost dinner time. They were excellent the morning after, though, and still delicious on Monday and Tuesday,  when I brought them to work for breakfast.
In your face, brewer's yeast! I'm so excited about this success, that I'm making homemade pizza tonight...so please, don't let me down, will you?

(On air: Belle and Sebastian - The blues are still blue.)

Tales from the Ugly Kitchen

Have I already said that I'm crap at food photography? Well, here you are: I'm crap at food photography.
I was just browsing my homepage on that Totally Useless Social Network whose name begins with F (and which I only keep updating because 99% of my friends are overseas and I have almost no time to sit down and write as many proper e-mails as I'd like to), and came across a photo album from a girl with whom I went to school; well, you should have seen her cupcakes. And her cakes. Fucking amazing. I felt like crap just because my attempts at cooking decent food sometimes are actually a success, but god forbid that I can take anything near a decent picture.

That's quite frustrating, as I'm usually not that bad at photography (aka I'd lie if I said I'm good, but saying I'm rubbish wouldn't be truthful either. The discomfort of mediocrity, huh?). I can only blame my kitchen, which is, indeed, quite squalid: it is big, it does have almost all the kitchen tools I'd dream of (apart from my baking set, which I sadly had to leave in Italy), it even has a dishwasher (and no, I still can't believe it)...but, to be frank, it looks disappointingly dreary.
Another reason, I guess, why I'm so much looking forward to having my own home: I can only imagine the feeling of bliss and self-fulfillment I'll have when (and if ever) I'll be able to live in anything different than a house with awfully coloured carpets, year-old furniture from the charity shop's bargain aisle and poor lighting at any time of the day. Dream on, right.

I still don't know where I would like this next house to be. You have to choose carefully, if your goal is to find somewhere nice enough to want to stay for more than one convenient year.
Right, it's not going to be Saint John's Wood, or Chelsea - I really wish I could. But there must be a compromise between, say, Chelsea and Wood Green, and that's what I'm determined to find.
(What do I have against Wood Green? Well, I used to live in Wood Green, for one. Sometimes creepy was just not enough to describe the scenes that unfolded before my eyes when I walked back home from class at 10pm, and I still can't forget the sense of overwhelming fear I felt during last summer's riots, when no one but myself walking back fom the library was out on the streets after 4pm, and each and every siren, at night, woke me up with a start).

This said, I'll resume the Dream Home Quest in a few months, I suppose, when I'll have actually started my search. For now, let's just move on to food: you're probably not expecting a savoury recipe, but surprise, there it is!

Ricotta and Salmon Crepes

Let's be straightforward about this: I love crepes. I especially love sweet crepes, and particularly nutella crepes (which is not surprising, because I love everything sweet, and is surprising at the same time, because I'm not even a nutella fan); to me, they are somewhat like Proust's madeleines, an echo of when I was a child and my dad used to take me out in town for a snack: a lucky coincidence made us discover the only place in town where you could sit down and get one (and I usually had two), and that must have been well after my first trip to Paris, where my 10-year-old self first ate a crepe, but well before my awkward first date, as in one of my rare flashes of genius my 15-year-old self proposed we have a chocolate crepe, but the place had finally closed for good (Um, well, alright, let's have coffee then. Oh, you don't drink it. You surely don't mind if I get one, do you?).

As I can't cook the food I grew up with, because  my heart would break if the outcome didn't meet the memories and expectations, I can't get myself to cook sweet crepes at home. So I taught myself savoury crepes; and I learnt so well that, back in Italy, my mother would often ask me to cook them for family lunches, hoping to amaze my uncle, who's usually a far better cook than the both of us together. Needless to say, he turned out to be not a crepe fan. But the other Great Cook in our family tree, my grandma, would invariably giggle and say hoooney, I can't believe you cooked these crrrrepppps on your own!, and that was well worth the effort (at least for her hilarious attempts at French diction).

First of all, however, I had to learn crepe batter. And the credit for that goes to my flatmate back when I was in France; hope I'll soon gather the courage to try her Quiche Lorraine as well (after four years - it's never too late,right?).

For about 4 big or 6 medium crepes, you will need:

- 2 eggs;
- 1 pinch of salt;
- 100g flour;
- 1.5dl milk.
(add sugar if you want the batter to be sweet)

And the procedure is quite easy: you'll only have to beat the eggs and the salt together, in a bowl, and mix the flour and milk in another bowl. Finally, mix the contents of the two bowls together, and leave aside for 30 minutes, to rest: the batter is done!
The challenge is cooking the crepes: if you have a crepière - which I did, in Italy - and a special palette to spread the batter (it looks like this), it's fairly easy, as you'll only need to spread the batter evenly on the greased surface, wait until the crepe is solid enough for you to turn it, and cook it on the other side until it's ready.
If you don't have a crepiere and a palette, though - which is the case for me now -, you'll have to use a normal nonstick pan (always greased with some oil) and whatever kitchen tool you think will help you turn the crepes without tearing a hole in the middle (I usually do it with two forks; it took me a little practice and a lot of broken crepes and swearing, but I can assure you it works). Also, pans are usually smaller then crepieres, and without a palette it's harder to spread the batter, so it's very likely that, when you use a pan, you'll have thicker and more irregular crepes: far from 100% perfection, but still tasty.

Breathe easy, now, the hardest part is over! Let's crack on with the rest.
I tried many savoury fillings, but this is my favourite: ricotta and salmon are quite an unbeatable combination, as far as I'm concerned.

To prepare it, you'll only need to mix 150g ricotta cheese with a little skimmed milk, until you obtain a smooth cream, and then add 1 teaspoon lemon juice and 200g finely chopped salmon.
Assuming that you have already cooked the crepes, you'll then need to put each of them on a ramekin (again, greased with oil) - but not inside the ramekin yet.
Split the batter evenly, putting a few spoonfuls in the middle of each crepe, and then, very carefully, push the crepes into the ramekins, so that the borders remain out of it, like in the picture.
Last step, now: put the ramekins in the oven, which you will have pre-heated to 200°, and cook for 10 minutes, or until the borders turn into a golden brown crust. Serve very hot: the crepes are thin, and tend to cool down very quickly.

That's it, and that's a quite quick and easy idea for a main. I first tried it on a surprise lunch I had organised for my mother's birthday, and it worked almost better than the actual gift.
Should you happen to have any spare batter, and wonder what to do with it...well, I'll give you a hint: chocolate.
I don't think I need to say any more.

So this is the new year.

When does it start being too late to say happy new year?

I don' think I actually said it to anyone this time, apart perhaps from my parents, so when I got back to work (January 4th), and popped into the warehouse room to say hi to my colleagues, I felt a little puzzled to be welcomed with a joyous "happy new year!".

This new year is starting to sound too much like the old one. I'm glad I never make any resolutions, because I'd probably have failed at one or two of them already during these mere two weeks.
If I had been the resolution kind of person, I might have resolved to get rid of my fear of flying, for a start. Can you imagine how many places in the workld I would like to visit, and how many of them are too far for my 2-hour flight limited autonomy? No, you can't, because the number is too high even for myself to recall.
Well, my first flight of 2012 was an absolute nightmare. Later on, I have been told that England was undergoing a sort of tropical storm, and I have no doubts about it, if I go by the hellish turbolences that I experienced on the plane.
That reminded me of what I hate the most about flying alone: when something happens, if something happens, there's no one to hold your hand, or hug you close, or tell you that everything is going to be alright. Which is exactly what I needed that day, as I seriously thought that I would die - if not because of the storm, because of my own anxious cries, that I tried to repress all along (come on, there's people here), only managing to turn them into deep breaths and desperate, still-too-loud sighs.
I must have looked so frightened that the guy sitting beside me felt compelled to ask me if I was alright - and I, who usually reply everything's fine, thank you, even when I obviously look distressed, said something like no, and then something like I've done this so many times, and I still can't believe that these things can safely land.
You wanted to go to London, honey? Tough luck, you're doomed to fly.
In my next life, I'll choose anywhere else I can reach by train. Paris is 14 hours away from home, could be worse, huh?

No, I've got no resolutions for this year - certainly not becoming a better person (you're free to decide whether I'm implying that I'm already perfect, or that I don't give a fuck), or losing weight (who, me?), and not even, alas, learning Spanish, which I had taken up last year, and then abandoned because I had no time: now I have even less.

The only thing I'll seriously try to stick to is writing. I'd love, for once, not to fail.
I resumed carrying around my notebook, for a start. That seems to work, judging from the fragments I jot down while in the tube, glad that my efforts to keep hold of my passing thoughts throughout the day are rewarded by at least a few lines every day. However, everything still looks so messed up, so work in progress, so precarious: nothing that justifies my pride, for the moment, nothing that I have never done before. Those fragments need a thread, and it'd better be a strong one. My resolution, then, would be to find it. And yes, I'm always up for an improbable challenge, if you ask.

Speaking of way less improbable challenges, instead (speaking, that is to say, of absolutely feasible, totally possible, utterly worthwhile challenges), let me show you what I baked last week.

Make-believe Victoria Sponge

(looks like the real thing, doesn't it?)

 

This comes from my Indisputable Baking Bible, that is to say a huge (and, alas, too heavy for a Ryanair checked in baggage) cookbook that had been on sale at my town's biggest library for a couple of months a few years ago. I had been ostensibly perusing it quite a few times, hoping that someone would notice my interest -  and then, the following December, I found it nicely wrapped under the christmas tree, together with an enormous box full of kitchen utensils (my mom, who had been plotting the present for weeks, joked "see, now you've got the theory and the practice!". Now isn't she lovely, when she makes an effort?).

My cookbook collection has been getting bigger and bigger over the years, but this one is still my favourite. I'm still trying to figure out how to bring it over from Italy; in the meantime, while at home for holidays, I made do with some photocopies; this was the first one on the "to bake" list.

It does look like a Victoria Sponge, but it is not - mainly because there is no butter, and because I haven't used raspberry jam, which I didn't have at home. And it does look like an Angel Food cake, as well, but there are far less eggs than in the original recipe, and the yolks need to be used as well. So, what shall we call it? Angel Sponge? Victoria Food? Whatever, who cares about the name. Isn't the taste what really matters?

Ingredients:

- 60g plain flour;
- 60g self-raising flour;
- 4 eggs;
- 160g sugar,
- 4 tablespoons jam (that is, whatever jam you feel like using - if you're unsure, go for blackcurrant, I can guarantee that's a rather good choice);
- 125ml whipped cream.

Recipe: 

- Sift all the flour for three times (I did it twice - that becomes quite complex, when you have to use a grater instead of the sift that you wish you had bought beforehand).
- Beat the egg whites until stiff; add the sugar, gradually, until it melts with the whites, forming a thick and soft cream. Add the egg yolks, and continue beating for around 20 seconds.
- Add the flour to create the batter. Split it evenly into two greased cake tins - or, for the poor and resourceful, pour it all into one tin; later, instead of laying one cake above the other, you will simply have to cut the one you made in two halves, lengthways.
- Pre-heat the oven to 180°, and bake for 20 minutes, until soft and golden brown. Leave aside for 5 minutes, then remove the cake(s) from the tin and cool down.
- Prepare the filling: spread the jam on one cake (or one cake half), then spread the whipped cream on top. Cover with the second cake (or half), and sprinkle with icing sugar before serving.

By the seventh day, God had finished the work He had been doing. Lucky him, I have not.

I hate eating alone. Absolutely, completely hate it. Sure, I got used to it - you have no choice, once you leave home and start living on your own -, but I still hate it.

I hate cooking meals for one, mostly: I usually end up screwing up the quantities, and eat either too little or too much, which is annoying, either way. And I always fall upon the same dishes, over and over again, because there's no point in trying something different when no one can share it with you.

Tuesday night was one of those nights - and, to be honest, during the whole day I have caught myself dreading the thought of the empty house I would go back to at the end of my shift.

Empty house, empty pans, empty stomach.

Food makes me much happier, when I can cook it for someone; as a matter of fact, rather than having dinner alone I prefer not to have dinner.

Screw it, I thought, at least I'll have some time to write.

There's a short story I have been thinking about for weeks, actually, and I have written only half of it, so that night should have been a good time to write further. I thought, and thought, and thought about it - on the office, on the tube - and when I finally sat down in front of the screen, pop! My mind went completely blank.

Which is usually not a problem, as my rule of thumb for writing is "if you can't remember it two hours after having thought about it, then it wasn't worth it from the start"; but damn. The alternative to writing was finding a convenient pastime that didn't consist in sitting in front of a screen, and I didn't have one, so I can safely say that I wasted a consistent part of my ever-shrinking spare time on that Terrible Tuesday.

Well done, yay! As it always happens, the following day, while heading towards the train station praying god that the rings under my eyes were not that evident, all the clever things I wanted to write came to my mind again. And there was not going to be another girl's night in to catch up, because this week - hear this, guys - I was scheduled to work on a Saturday.

No, no, no. Let's be more specifical: yesterday I went to the office because I asked for it.

Yeah, right. File it under "things you are willing to do to get an extra day off and fly back home for a few days at christmas". My holiday'd better be awesome, cause I won't settle for less after such a week.

Speaking of which, here's how it went:

Day one: I try to send a parcel to Halifax, and miserably fail, because after devoting half of my lunch break to the quest for the post office (which was inside a Costcutter I hadn't even noticed - what's wrong with clear directions and signs?), I realise that the recipient's address is written in my daily planner, and my daily planner is on my desk, back at the office.

Day two: I try to go to the bank to cash a cheque, and miserably fail, because the bank is not where it's supposed to be according to the map (thank you Barclays Branch Finder, I'll surely trust you again).

Day three: I try my luck at the post again. I spend ten minutes arguing with the guy at the counter because he doesn't want to print a posting receipt for me, not even after being showed samples of receipts I got from every other single post office I have been to during the past two months. And I have to capitulate, because it's getting late, my break is almost over, and I still have to have lunch.

Day four: Dead calm, for once. Surprising, huh?

Day five: I suffer in silence every time I hear someone saying thank god it's Friday or I'm so much looking forward to the weekend!.  

And it's not actually a bad day, per se; however, I get home so tired that I'd rather shoot myself than wake up at 7 for one more day. But I still try not to complain, because I asked for it, right?

Yeah, Right.

Day six: I go to work, try to get something done at work - well, actually, I do get something done at work, but not all of it. I guess that on Tuesday I will risk being killed, as three of the four 300-page important invoices that had been left there for me to check are still untouched (ah, the perks of sharing the office with the company's Head of Finance!).
At the end of the day, heading to Soho to meet my friends is absolutely out of question for the human derelict I have turned into - so I flee back home for a much more relaxing pizza-and-football night, falling asleep 5 minutes before the end of Real Madrid vs. Barcellona.

Day seven: Despite having earned the right to stay in bed until 1pm, I'm up and dressed at 8am because my throat is [insert swear word here] aching for whatever mysterious [insert swear word here] reason it conjured up on its own, and I can't [insert swear word here] sleep. 

The plan for today is to pretend being in good shape and go meet my parents - who are here because tomorrow there is my awards ceremony, and they are still determined not to miss it, although they admittedly don't understand one word of English (guess who will have the privilege of translating?).
It's going to be...interesting, to say the least. Or it would be interesting, if it was happening to someone else. But it's happening to me, and I'd rather forget about the ceremony and the graduation and all the hype and enjoy my day off without a care.

You'll agree with me that, if I survived this week, that was only be because of what I knew I would find in my fridge at the end of the day.

Amaretti with coffee and mascarpone

(and welcome to today's guest star: my lovely* and amazing* boyfriend, who actually made these mostly by himself. Alas, how I wish I was the daughter of a former chef too.)

I'm not a big fan of mascarpone, actually. I was a little worried about how it would affect the biscuits' taste, especially since no sugar is involved in the preparation, but I changed my mind as soon as I had the first bite.

I should have known better, of course: how on earth can an otherwise reasonably smart human being have doubts about something involving amaretti?

Sorry, Lord Amaretto, I won't do it anymore. These biscuits are simply amazing, and I'm trying really hard to keep myself from rushing to the kitchen and having another one. Two. Three.

As for how to make them, there's hardly anything easier.

Just soak the amaretti biscuits with coffee (I poured the coffee in a bowl and then plunged them in - and that's all I did as far as this recipe is concerned, really), and divide them into pairs: put a teaspoon of mascarpone on the flat side of one biscuit, then attach a plain biscuit, making a sort of sandwich.

As soon as each biscuit is ready, roll it in grated coconut, and put it on a plate (we used the baking tin, and covered it with a plate to protect the biscuits). Finally, put everything in the fridge, and wait at least 4 hours before serving.

See, it's really easy to make. You have no excuses not to try - so buy those [insert swear word here]** amaretti, and head to the kitchen. Now.

(on air: The Cure - Friday I'm in love)

(* = these are not my words, of course. I certainly wouldn't attribute such flattering adjectives to His Remarkable Person*, if he hadn't agreed to pay me a fee of £20 per compliment; this is business, baby, how dare you call it love?)

(** = Yes, I swear a lot, in real life. And  I can't even convince myself that it's a bad thing. But then, you can't really grow up in a country village in North-eastern Italy and talk like a lady, can you?)

Forever alone - hey, that's me!

So we are having this party, tonight: a party that we have been planning for ages, since our former flatmate informed us that he would be moving out in two weeks that later became one whole month, and that, since no one was meant to replace him, we would finally be able to access the backyard, have a living room, and use the house like it's meant to be used: three bedrooms, three people, and one lounge.

Like all potentially good things, the living room craze lasted about one week: we barely had the time to clean up and put the PS3 gloriously beside the television screen, that our other flatmate asked the landlady to swap rooms and take the one downstairs. To which the landlady said yes, but you are going to pay a higher rent, and i'm going to find someone to take the small room.
And here we are: we will soon be four again, four and unable to go outside and pet the neighbours'cat. Or to have friends round and chill out outside the kitchen, for that matter. Yeah, sad story is sad. But what's sadder is that we organised this party, tonight - conceived as house-warming, turned into Farewell Living Room and Social Life - and no one's coming.

I invited my classmates from uni and a few other friends, and my boyfriend fueled my celebrative spirit by promising that all his ex-colleagues would be there; we came up with a list of little less than twenty people, which is a lot for a couple of socially awkwards as we are, and chances are that we will actually be no more than six, because all the others didn't even bother to reply.
Goodbye to my positive disposition and hope that everyone will have fun, then: I suspect that, as always, I will end up feeling responsible for my guests, which means feeling crap because I invited them to something they disliked.

Fuck, I hate organising parties. And I hate the emo-teen-like sensation that I always get in these situation, the kind of feeling that sounds like no one gives a damn about my party, which means that no one gives a damn about me, which means that I screwed up with everyone and I don't know why.
Seriously: why do most people in the world only have to say ah to be surrounded by friends, while I'm unable even to have the people I made friends with over the past year come and have a drink at my house?
It's frustrating; I hope, at least, that the dessert I invented from scratch this afternoon will taste good, but I guess you'll find out in my next post.

For this one, since we're talking about half-failures, let me introduce you to my half-failed muffins. They were supposed to be delicious - and they are, indeed - but they were not supposed to be so small.
Why are they so small, you ask? Well, because the chef is an idiot, for a start: I guess they would have been the right size if I had made eight of them like the recipe said, and not twelve.
They should have also represented my first serious try at decent food photography, but I discovered far too rapidly that my kitchen is the worst location ever for that. I guess I'll try again when I'll have the money to have my own house and my own lifestyle-magazine-like kitchen; for the moment, I cannot even afford Ikea, fancy that.

Ricotta and Chocolate Chip Muffins

(I found the original recipe on an Italian forum, so I guess there's no point in pasting the link)

Ingredients for 8 muffins (eight, understood?):

125g flour;
60g sugar;
50g butter;
50g milk chocolate;
125g ricotta cheese;
¼ glass milk (I use skimmed milk, but you can change that if you prefer);
½ sachet baking powder;
1 egg.

Recipe:

- Melt the butter in a heatproof bowl, over simmering water; remove it from the hob and mix it with the sugar.
- Add the egg and ricotta cheese, and beat well, until the batter is even; then, add the flour and baking powder.
- Pour the milk over the batter; mix well, and add the chocolate, which you will have previously chopped into not-too-small chunks.
- Pour the batter into a greased muffin tin, and bake for 20 minutes, at a temperature of 180°.


That's it, and it's terribly easy, if you are just a little smarter than me (which everyone potentially is, trust me).
In the end, the muffins were so tiny that I could have eaten all of them in one go; I'll definitely try them again, to experience the pleasure of having them full-size.

(On air: Delain - Frozen)