PRETTY LITTLE THINGS

Oh, and by the way - it was tasty, too! I wish I could live in a gingerbread house, waking up in the morning and taking a bite out of wall fro breakfast :) But I think it would make me homeless sopn ....

Just wanted to share .... She's Areta, our "Sleeping Beauty" Maremma Sheepdog

One more week has passed and it's time again for the "Hot or Not" list. So, what's been happening here in Morsasco all week long?




Hot

- New chicken coop finally built and happy chickens moved into their new home, far away from the bedroom window to not to hear the rooster crowing at odd times. Aren't they supposed to have an inner clock or something? Ours apparently doesn't have one, as he starts whenever he feels like it.

- A picture published on Craftgawker!

- New (for me) blog discovered today - loads of gorgeous stuff for printing, like the Carnivorous Plants Calendar

- Christmas presents problem solved, thanks also to Luana's helpful link

- Ordering books from Amazon, inlcuding Julia Child's "French Cooking" - it was too much talked about to be ignored

- Making lists

- Ticking things off lists - very satisfying :)


Not

- Loosing a baby chick to an unknown beast just one day before moving into the new coop - very sad :(

- Bad hair days ....

This month is my first Daring Cooks Challenge, and it's been quite a challenge, really. I've completely forgotten about the deadline until, well .... until this morning. Fortunately this month's recipe, brought to us by Simone from Junglefrog Cooking, is quite last-minute friendly. Shopping, cooking, taking pictures and eating - it all took no more than 2 hours. I cheated on the pastry, using store-bought puff pastry, and had to chop the spinach instead of pureeing it given the lack of the necessary equipment. The spinach-arugula-cream cheese-mix got some dill and lemon to spice it up and made great leftovers, too, baked in individual ramekins. (I love dill and suffer tremendously the fact that it rarely can be found in Italy and doesn't grow well here, too...so every time I go back home I bring a huge bunch of dill, freeze it and use on very special occasions only :))



The salmon en croute turned out to be quite delicious, and rather photogenic, too. You can get the the recipe here.

This weekend was dedicated to pre-Christmas baking. Gingerbread-baking, to be exact. Coming from Germany, I am completely spoiled when it comes to gingerbread, as in Germany (like in most Nordic countries) gingerbread for Christmas is really a BIG hit, and there are thousands of different styles. Virtually each city has got its own recipe, and the supermarkets offer further temptations, like chocolate-covered jam-filled gingerbread hearts. I decided to try a recipe for soft molded gingerbread that I've cut out of a magazine years ago, wanting to use once again my new shortbread pan.

Like most gingerbreads, also this one calls for baking soda and for an overnight refrigeration before baking, so plan ahead accordingly. The results are well worth waiting - the resulting gingerbread is soft and kind of fudgy in the middle, with a nice spiciness from ginger, nutmeg and cloves, but not overly so. The glaze gives it a nice touch, but according to me is more of a visual addition than a taste-wise one.

All in all, definitively a keeper. And a beautiful one, too.




Soft Molded Gingerbread Recipe

1 cup butter
3/4 cup + 2 tbs sugar
1 gg
1/2 cup molasses
2 tbs honey

3 3/4 cup AP flour
1 tbs cocoa
4 tsp ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp cinnamon
a dash a freshly ground pepper
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp soda

Cream butter with sugar, add the egg, the molasses and the honey, beat well until fully incorporated.

Mix together the dry ingredients, add to the egg mixture, mix well first with a spoon, then with hands until a dough pulls together.

Wrap dough in clingfilm, refigirate overnight.

Take out of the fridge and let sit at room temp for 15 min. Preheat oven to 160°C. Grease the gingerbread pan, put the dough into pan and pat with your fingers until distributed evenly. Bake for about 20-25 minutes, until the top appears dry (not overbake it! It should be still soft inside!)

Let rest in the pan for 5 - 10 min, in the meanwhie mix 1/4 cup of confectioner's sugar with about 2 tbs of water to make a glaze. Take the ready gingerbread out of the pan, brush with glaze, cut into slices and let cool. Enjoy!

You can roll the dough and cut cookies out of it, as well. Adjust the baking time accordingly to about 10-15 min.

The good thing about living in the country is that beautiful things are just around the corner. This time, I found this particular "flower" in the stack of fire wood in our backyard.

Another week, another hot or not list following Loobylu's thread.

Hot

- My first ever Nativity. It comes from Peru :) Love Maria and Joseph with the traditional Peruvian caps and capes and the baby Jesus in his nutshell-crib. Have discovered it at a fair-trade market in Genoa, along with other Nativities from all over the world and tasty mango fair-trade jam.

- Two more weeks till Christmas - means two more weeks till I can go to Germany to visit my parents and grandma+grandpa. Means lots and lots of cooking and baking and trying out all kind of new recipes.

- Our dogs. One (or rather three) of the most beautiful things when I come back home after 1,5 hours of commuting. How could I eve live without them before?!

- A very long weekend due to the two days of holidays yesterday ("bridge") and today (The Immaculate Conception) - lots of time to indulge in knitting by the fire, making long walks outside and finally building the new chicken coop.

Not hot

- Two more weeks till Christmas - and no idea about presents to make ...

- A nasty landslide that has blocked the (already slow) commuter train line for most of the last week. Means - 2 hours to go to work and other 2,5 to come back home .... And it's only December! I'm wondering what it's gonna be like when real winter comes?

Fortunately, only 2 Not's this week - against 4 Hot's. Definitively a good week :)

I love cooking, but I don't have a lot of cookbooks. Usually, I prefer internet as a source of inspiration instead of spending 20-30 euros for a collection of recipes, most of which I never come around recreating. With Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson it was a different story altogether. I first discovered her wonderful blog and loved virtually any recipe I tried. From there, it was only one step to buying Heidi's book that is chock-full not only with gorgeous pictures and tasty dishes, but also a ton of useful information on healthy cooking. Till then, I had only a very blurred idea about what "Healthy cooking" was about, and considered health food stores as the reign of people wearing Birkenstock sandals throughout the year (WITH socks, if the weather conditions should require it) and feeding their children sugar-free dusty muesli for breakfast. After reading Super Natural Cooking, the things have changed. I'm no more afraid of buying whole grains and flours, trying different kinds of browns sugars (and yes, they ARE all different!) and turn to the book and to the blog anytime I need inspiration or am in doubt about some "healthy" stuff.
The following recipe for Gingery Shortbread is from Heidi's book, though there are variations to it on her blog, too. I changed the original recipe a bit, using buckwheat flour instead of the amaranth one, and adjusting baking time and temperature as i was dieing to try my new shortbread pan and figured that freezing the dough inside the pan and then putting it straight into hot oven, as instructed, would do the ceramic pan no good.

Was I satisfied with the results? Well, given the fact that I've never had any shortbread before, this one was delicious, with a hot spiciness from the ginger and a tenderness from the butter that I've never met in a cookie :) I will definitively try all the variations of the recipe (rosemary and pine nuts seem so good!), hoping that a less chunky dough (due to minced candied ginger) will result in a more defined pattern.

Enjoy!



Gingery Shortbread Recipe

(adapted from "Super Natural Cooking" by Heidi Swanson - I give full dose here, though I halved the recipe to fit my pan)

1 1/2 cups white whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
3/4 tsp salt
1 tbs ground ginger
1 cup unsalted butter, room temp
2/3 cup natural cane sugar (I used Demerara sugar)
1/3 cup minced crystallized ginger


Mix flours, salt and ground ginger in a small bowl. In a larger bowl, cream butter with sugar, then add the dry ingredients and the minced ginger and mix until just combined and crumbly. Gather together and wrap tightly into cling film, refrigerate for 20 min.
Preheat oven to 160 ° C. Spay the shortbread pan with non-stick spray and pat the dough into the pan. Prick entire surface with a fork and bake for about 25-30 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes before releasing the gingerbread from the pan. Eat.

Alternatively, you can roll the dough and cut cookies out of it. In this case, I would follow Heidi's suggestion to freeze the cut cookies for 10 minutes before baking, and reduce the baking time to about 10-15 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies.

Do you remember my post on the cardigan knitting project from about 2 weeks ago? The chunky cozy gray alpaca knitting? Well, the things did go on quite slowly, mainly for the lack of time, but I'm about 1/3 through. The surprising thing is - what you see here is not the front of the cardigan, and neither the back , but - the sleeve! Yes, this one is started from the sleeve, which is quite unique in my experience. The only problem with this project - which I think is the problem of all the chunky knits - it's HEAVY! By now it weights around 300 grams, and the wool destined for it is a total of almost 1 kg ... Stay tuned for more - there are still 700 grams of top-quality knitting to be posted :)