The ocassion couldn’t have been better: my close friend Evita invited me to Becerril de la Sierra, a beautiful place outside Madrid, for lunch with her husband and her two beautiful daughters. And if you want to win the children and conquer the adults, I think no-one does that job better than chocolate. On the bus ride, everyone looking at me, or well, the dessert, because to be honest (you can judge by the picture!) it turned out perfectly beautiful and delicious!!

The recipe has a really nice spice touch, that goes so nicely with the chocolate: the crêpes have some Cointreau, clove and cinnamon and the chocolate mousse is made with a fresh ginger-infusioned milk and orange zest. Exquisit. The inspiration came from FOOD52.

It requires time and organization, but if you have an afternoon off and guests or you are a guest for next day, believe me when I say you’ll have everyone in love with you by the first bite. The crêpes with the mousse make and elegant and fun dessert.

Ok!! Let’s go to the step by step recipe.

Delicious!!!!

Thanks to Evita and Fer for a lovely day!!! I leave you with some pictures from  their daughters!

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T. spelta is part of the wheat family  (Triticum). This grain started to be grown in southern Germany since the year 4000 bc, but there is evidence that it started to be grown in Asia from 7000 bc. Today, it is popular in northern Europe, specially Germany, Switzerland and France.

Spelt is characterized by having high amounts of protein (17%), a moderatelly strong gluten quality but not so elastic. It is usually recommende to mix the spelt flour with normal wheat (T. aestivus) or other wheats that give a strong gluten if you’d like to have as a result a bread with a non-compact structure.

Comparing it to common wheat, spelt has a higher carbohydrate, protein, fibre, vitamin B1 and B2, plus a higher amount of minerals and aminoacid content. It provides a sweet and nutty taste to bread. It is highly soluble in water and easy to digest.

A special property is that the grain has a very strong skin, dificult to eliminate providing a high resistance to plagues and diseases, making it an ideal cereal for ecological growth, due to its natural resistance without the need to use transgenic seeds or pesticides.

Spelt is therefore the most ancient wheat grain, with no genetic modifications since its use, a high resistance to plagues, perfect for ecological growth, with excellent nutritional properties and which also provides a unique taste to bread.

So, what are you waiting for? Go buy it and bake this delicious bread. It goes really well with strong cheeses with umami taste and honey and sweet marmalades. This bread has to sourdoughs, common wheat flour (95), rye flour (9%) and 82% spelt flour. This flour I bought in August in Copenhague. It comes from an ecological growth and the grain comes from the recovery of ancient grains since 1994 that have returned from Switzerland to the biodynamic and organic farmers in Denmark. A bread whose taste makes us travel in time.

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A tart was my first thought. So, I went on and started to read Julia Child and research a bit on what I could do with the plums. And I adventured myself (I’m more of a salty cook than sweet), and went on into complicating myself more and more… because from a tart, I changed into plum compote, crème pâtissèrie and ended up with a crêpe gâteau with plum-crême pâtisserie and almonds. Flambeed on the top with sugar and orange juice. I must say, it was sooo much worth it. Amazingly french, amazingly tasty. Now it is my duty to tell you how to make it.

1. We start with the Plum ‘Cardinal’ (Compote of fresh plums)

Curious fact: plums are really good season fruits because they mature very slowly once they are taken out of the tree, and when they start to mature they generate a lot of taste and aroma. So, before thinking they are not good because they’ve been for a while in your kitchen, you must know they are really tasty and ready for you to make an amazing dessert with them.

Just to let you know, If you eat them like this with some ice-cream they are amazing!

Delicious!!!

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My roomate loves to make them home-made, so after a few movie-hamburguer nights here in Berlin, I decided that the next one was going to be an Oscar Winner! I prepared this bread, these special potatoes from Teresita and a classical cole-slaw salad. Believe me when I say that there’s nothing more delicious that eating a hamburguer with everything natural.

I leave you some more pictures of our latest hamburguer night in Berlin with my roomates. Clovis prepared hamburguers with soya sauce, some really nice cocktails and then we watched a horror movie with some beer. Great evening!!!

The post Hamburguer breads first appeared on Monitouille.

So… the method I used with a traditional ice-mold was a little complicated when taking the Bon Bons out of the mold. Some of the couverture chocolate brok :$ . However, I later saw that either with a silicone ice-mol or dipping the ice-cream into the chocolat you will get a less “rustic” result. You can try either method. My friend Sandra, for example, told me she liked them best in a less “perfect state”.

So, I’ve seen that another way of making them is to: once you’ve got the ice-cream, make some small balls and freeze again. Then take out and very fast dip them into the chocolate and back to the freezer again. I’ll try this next time and let you know!!

How where they? Perfect.

So, to serve I placed a quenelle of chocolate ice-cream, three Bon Bons over the top and some mint leaves for decoration. Dessert for angels…they are so beautiful!

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The post Poached egg over artichoke textures topped with crispy pancetta and Parmigiano Reggiano first appeared on Monitouille.

When I was in Lima a couple of months ago, my Mom and I got together to cook. She’s always been a great cook and I’ve learned many tricks and recipes from her. My Mom says that the passion for cooking that I have, I’ve inherited from my great-grandmother (her grandmother). That’s why that day we cooked Mamitas’ Ester great Humitas.

I promised my Mom that I wouldn’t tell the secret ingredient of this recipe, so you’ll see listed in ingredients a “secret touch“. Let me tell you though that you can play with the Humitas all the time. You can add raisins and more sugar and they’ll be more for dessert, some cilantro and chili and they’ll be more ‘criollas’, other flours, another corn, both, purple corn, plenty of ideas. Imagine the “secret ingredient” as an “imagination ingredient” where you can add whatever you like to make a different recipe.

So today this goes to my mother with love and hoping she’ll have a great Mother’s Day with my two brothers and family. I hope that next time we meet we cook again. Happy Mother’s Day!!

The post Peruvian Humitas first appeared on Monitouille.

That’s the beggining of this post, yes, I start talking about our peruvian delicious “pollo a la brasa”. Now let’s talk about the grand opening of my brother’s new apartment with a 12 kg turkey whose flavour reminded me to  our pollo a la Brasa.

Since the location was Pardo street, where the first Pardo’s chicken was created (famous restaurant of pollo a la brasa) we decided to baptize this post as Pardo’s Turkey, AND concluded that opening a Pavos (turkey) a la brasa is extremely necessary! For now though, try this recipe at home. Gourmet. Delicious. Juicy. What else can I say?

I highly recommend you to look at El Pavo es el Rey part 2 and 3, with delicious recipes to use the turkey’s leftovers in a sooup or delicious sandwich, from Teresita.

That’s how my family and me inagurated my brother’s new apartment! Memorable night!

These are some recommended side-dishes:

– Mixed lettuces, pears, gorgonzola and nuts salad.

РApple pur̩e.
– White rice cooked with some garlic, turkey sauce and the half orange left from the turkey.

All right! Let’s go to the recipe!

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I managed to get effort, dedication and wit all together and supplied myself with rye flour, a pretty old scale (decent enough) and time, organized time. My sourdough almost died on a trip to the beach but with expert help I managed to save it. That’s how I got my first sourdough 100% rye. And that’s how I got my apple-bread.

The wheat flour I used came from the supermarket, one that has not much gluten and does not provide the usual elasticity in a bread. This came along with a positive surprise: bread can be made with any flour. The flavour was special and very nice, perhaps somewhat acid for my taste. I understand this is due to the fact that my sourdough was ‘young’ and that I gave her one overnight feed only. With this I learned that sourdough has to be fed more time in order to eliminate the acidity, increasing yeast, reducing bacteria. Love this micro-world! More things, working on kneading (a looot), fermentation and shaping. Still got 999  left to do!

More pics here!

Sourdough.

Day 1. 21:00 p.m.

50 grs de rye flour  + 50grs de sink water.

Mix well and leave closed and away from wind currents at room temperature.

Day 2. 21:00 p.m.

Take 50 grs of yesterday’s mix and add 25 grs water. Mix well and add 25 grs rye flour. There should be no lumps. Leave closed and away from wind currents at room temperature.

Day 3. 21:00 p.m.

Repeat the same procedure. Don’t get scared with the smell! It will be very acid at this point because acid bacteria start working. In fact, take it as a good sign.

Day 4. 21:00 p.m.

100 grs of day’s 3 mixture + 75 gr sink water. Mix well and add 75 gr rye flour.

Once the sourdoough has finished feeding herself you’ll have 250 grs of sourdourgh ready to be used for bread. If by any chance you leave it too much time on the sun as it happened to me, don’t go carzy just feed it again and you’ll see how it survives perfectly!

Changing rye sourdough to other flour sourdoughs.

Once you have this sourdough starter you can also take 20 grs and start feeding it with other flours, for example normal white wheat flour and your sourdough will convert itself after a few feeds in a white bread sourdough.

Apple bread.

The post Yes! My sourdough and apple bread! first appeared on Monitouille.