Category Archives: Recipes

Strawberry tower- Wedding lunch dessert

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Picture from our wedding photographer

Who doesn’t like the strawberries dipped in chocolate from the Christmas market!

We wanted a light dessert for our wedding lunch as we knew a massive dinner was coming in the evening, but I still wanted some wow factor and fruits and chocolate! A chocolate fondue would not have been very practical for 20 guests, especially if I wanted to keep my dress sparkly white!

I googled my idea and found some nice examples of the strawberry tower I had in mind. I bought a cylindrical polystyrene pyramid, a silver piece of fabric to hide the polystyrene, a packet of toothpick, some big strawberries, and white and dark chocolate bars. Try to buy strawberries roughly the same size, and loads of it! I bought them the day before to make sure they were as fresh as possible. Wash and pat them dry, make sure they are completely dry before dipping them into the melted chocolate.

Tip: Practice at least once before on a few strawberries. The tempering of the chocolate is not that easy at home, the mounting of the fruits is also tricky, and decorating the bride and groom strawberry is also quite hard. Make sure you’re happy with all this so you don’t ruin your beautiful strawberries on the day.

Tempering chocolate can be done at home, you just need to be patient. I bought belgian dark chocolate and white chocolate and followed the middle ground method to temper them. I have a normal cooking thermometer and it worked fine. Once you’ve achieved tempering temperature for each chocolate, make sure the chocolate cools down before dipping the strawberries in. Better loosing some shininess than cooking your fruits.

Have baking sheets ready, along with your toothpicks. Hold the strawberry firmly by the leaves and dip it in the chocolate of your choice, shake the strawberry to remove the extra chocolate, insert the toothpick through the tip of the strawberry and lie the fruit on its leaves, upside down, for the chocolate to set. The set chocolate will seal the toothpick to the strawberry.

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For the bride and groom strawberries, choose the two best strawberries you have. Dip the fruits in the chocolate by first coasting one side, then the other one trying to create a triangular cleavage with the chocolate. These 2 strawberries should be perfect looking from all sides, so hold them down until most of the extra chocolate has dripped off and then add the toothpick. A spare piece of polystyrene could really help here to insert the toothpick while the chocolate sets. I didn’t have one so I just kept holding it until the chocolate was set. Wait for the chocolate to set completely to start drawing the pearls with a toothpick, the bow-tie and the buttons on the jacket. When the bow-tie is set, add the dot.

Secure the silver fabric around the pyramid while the chocolate sets. Create the pyramid starting by the bottom row and always try to pack the strawberries as much as you can. Add the bride and groom on top and store in a cool place, but I would not recommend to store it in the fridge otherwise the strawberries will shrink and the chocolate will break easily.

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Bergamot and Amalfi Lemon Marmalade

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My friend Katy showed me this amazing online food website called Natoora. I am sure you will hear more about it in future posts, but today it is all about citrus fruits. Natoora does what supermarkets don’t, they provide top quality, fresh but most importantly, seasonal products. So don’t try to order raspberries in March because it just won’t be there. Winter months are the best for citrus fruits and their list of Mediterranean, especially Sicilian, citrus fruits took me by surprise and I found myself with that urge again: making more marmalade!

IMG_1598A citrus, with an unique smell which you will recognise as soon as you smell it, is Bergamot. I bought two along with some Amalfi unwaxed lemons, a Cedro (the big lemon cut in half in the picture above) and some blood oranges. I decided to make a lemon marmalade infused with Bergamot. I wanted a bright yellow colour and wasn’t sure about the lemon pectin content. Amalfi have an amazing thick skin, but very little pips so I decided to use some sugar with added pectin, just in case.  This marmalade turned out beautifully and just the way I imagined it, it is my favourite so far this year!

Ingredients:

  • 1 bergamot
  • 5 Amalfi lemons (or enough to have a total of 700g of fruits)
  • 700g granulated sugar
  • 700g of jam sugar

In the evening, wash the fruits well, chop the bergamot in two and leave the lemons as whole. Place them in a pan and submerge them with water. Bring to the boil and then simmer for at least 1h, or until the fruits feel soft. Leave it overnight to cool and infuse.

The next day, remove the fruits and measure the cooking water left. You need double amount of your total fruit weight, 1.4L here. If too much liquid, reduce it a bit more by bringing it to the boil once more, or simply add some more water if you don’t have enough. Chop all the fruits in half and with a spoon remove the flesh from the skin and place the flesh and pips onto a muslin sheet. Chop the lemon in fine strips and blitz the bergamot peel to have little cubes instead of whole strips of zest. My first batch tasted amazing until I spooned a zest from the bergamot onto my bread and ate it… let’s say that the taste coming from a whole strip is a little too potent to be chewed on. Basically, keep the bergamot pieces small.

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Tie the muslin bag very tightly and squeeze it into the pan as long as there is still liquid oozing out of it. This is definitely the most satisfying part. This gluppy opaque liquid is packed with pectin and will set your marmalade, so you don’t want to be in a rush and enjoy the experience fully. Your hands will be covered with the stuff and you might even have to wash them in the liquid not to waste anything. Add the sugar and the chopped fruits and turn the heat on to maximum. Mix well to start with to dissolve the sugar properly, then let it boil until it reaches 105C. From that point, keep in boiling for 15 minutes. Have a wooden spoon ready in the freezer and spoon a little of the liquid on it to test the setting point. This marmalade was done after 15 minutes. It’s fast and efficient when you add a little more pectin and it means that the marmalade won’t loose its colour too much. Leave the marmalade to rest for a few minutes while you prepare your jars.

Fill clean jars up to the top, add the lid on tightly and invert on a heatproof surface. The second best part of this is to label the jars and stack them up into the pantry!

Rye crackers with red pepper chakchouka, aubergine caviar and guacamole dips

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I am posting this for my friend Katie who bought rye flour from the Shipton Mill to be able to make these rye crackers that I told her so much about. Crisps and pita bread might sound like a good idea for aperitif but they are bad for you, so why not trying something different that doesn’t involve oil or white flour. These crackers accompanied with 3 home-made dips were a hit with our friends and my parents-in-law and also ideal for vegetarians.

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Rye crackers

Ingredients:

  • 300g rye flour
  • half a tsp of salt
  • 1 tsp of granulated sugar
  • half a tsp of baking powder

I have never worked with a 100% rye dough before, it feels very dry and very tough but it is supposed to be that way so don’t worry about it.

Heat the oven at 200C. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and add about 200ml of water, knead it all together to form a ball. Split that ball into 10 smaller bits and flatten them with a rolling pin on a floured surface as thin as you can stretch the dough. I wanted to keep my crackers rustic so I didn’t try to create any regular shapes, but you can cut out any form you want now as they will keep their shape very well during cooking. Transfer the flattened dough onto a tray covered with baking sheet and cook for 10 minutes, turn around and cook for an extra 2 minutes on the other side. Let the cracker cool down and enjoy with dips or cheese.

Red pepper chakchouka

Ingredients

  • 2 big and sweet romano peppers, washed and cut in half
  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 tbsp vegetable oil
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oven to 220C and roast your peppers after carefully removing the seeds for 15 minutes until their skin is black and the flesh is softened. Peel the skin off and cut the flesh in strips, then add all the ingredients to a pan and let it simmer for 30 minutes until you have a thick red mush with visible pepper strips. Don’t forget to stir now and then so it doesn’t burn. When I had chakchouka, it was always too greasy so I tried to reduce the amount of oil as much as possible, and cut the olive oil so it doesn’t overpower the taste of the pepper and upset sensitive stomachs.

Caviar d’aubergine

Ingredients

  • 2 washed aubergines
  • 3 garlic cloves
  • salt to taste
  • little olive oil

Cut the aubergine in half and remove the stalk. Criss cross the flesh with a knife and drizzle some olive oil on the slashes. Add some salt, just a little bit as it is better o season at the end, and insert grossly sliced garlic clove in the slashes. Cook for 30 minutes at 190C or until the flesh is soft and can be scooped. Remove the garlic and scoop the flesh in a mixer and mix it to a pulp. Taste and add some salt if necessary. Again here, this caviar should be saturated with olive oil, but I try to make it healthy and also to enjoy fully the taste of the aubergines. I love aubergines!

Guacamole

Ingredients

  • 2 ripe avocados (ripe avocado is the most important ingredient!)
  • half a red onion cut in small cubes
  • a small handful of fresh coriander leaves
  • juice of 1 lemon (or to taste)
  • 1 tsp of sweet paprika
  • salt and pepper to taste

Make your guacamole at the last minute for best results! Mash grossly the flesh of the avocados with a fork and place in a bowl, add the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper to your taste. Keep a few nice coriander leaves to decorate and chop the rest. Add all the ingredients to your avocados and mix well. I love avocado so much that I don’t like adding too much red onion. Taste your guacamole constantly and add anything you like, I like adding a tsp of paprika for the colour and slightly sweet taste.