“Cuochi d’artificio”: Brunch time!

                                                 English Muffins

I simply love brunch. If and when I have the occasion of indulging into some proper brunching I never miss out to eat both savoury and sweet dishes, even if it often means I will leave the table with a bloating stomach. It’s simply irresistible. With this premise you can well imagine my reaction when I was asked to think up two recipes for a brunch themed episode of “Cuochi d’artificio”. I was over the moon and of course my main concern was to present two recipes that would incarnate well the whole concept of brunch. At first I obsessed quite a while around crumpets, which I still have to nail, then resigned to downshifting to the most easy pikelets (since I doubt anyone in Ticino would buy crumpet rings just for the thrill of attempting to cook crumpets when it is really difficult to pull out a proper result). Of course crumpets and pikelets are best eaten with salted butter and honey or jam but I had to add another recipe in order to fill up the many minutes I was given to illustrate both recipes so I thought they would be definitely scrumptious if paired with a velvety lemon curd. As for the savoury part of the brunch what is more suitable than proper crispy english muffins topped with an avocado cream and a well poached egg? I can’t tell you how many eggs I have poached (luckily my aunt’s hens have started producing an incredible amount of egg and there is nothing better than a fresh egg to achieve the perfect poaching) but in the end, through internet surfing and tips studying and many trials I finally made it! So here you will find the video illustrating all steps to cook english muffins and pikelets, make a heavenly lemon curd and poach perfectly eggs. Here you will find all the quantities and instructions you can google translate (hopefully something intelligible will turn out) and print. And don’t forget to call your friends over for a Sunday brunch!

P.S.: The blog is on holiday until January the 8th!

Tigelle

Street food is now everywhere on the streets of our cities and at every special event around Ticino. A few years ago when I attended Food Immersion Festival I was impressed by Tigella Bella‘s stand but there was so much to say and eat that I realized I had completely forgot to mention them! The thought of these soft flat breads didn’t leave me but only now I had the idea to reinterpret the original recipe. The result? Spectacular! Try them as soon as baked. Warm, soft and fragrant they lend themselves beautifully for a brunch in your backyard!

Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook: Rye Flour Tigelle / Il Ricettario del Mulino di Maroggia: Tigelle con farina di segale

 

Street food is now everywhere on the streets of our cities and at every special event around Ticino. A few years ago when I attended Food Immersion Festival I was impressed by Tigella Bella‘s stand but there was so much to say and eat that I realized I had completely forgot to mention them! The thought of these soft flat breads didn’t leave me but only now I had the idea to reinterpret the original recipe for Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook. The result? Spectacular! Try them as soon as baked. Warm, soft and fragrant they lend themselves beautifully for a brunch in your backyard!

Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook: Wholemeal and Cinnamon Rusks / Il Ricettario del Mulino di Maroggia: Zwieback integrali alla cannella

The first meal of the day is the most important, needless for me to say it for the nth time. May it be breakfast on working days or a rich Sunday brunch spent in the company of family and friends it doesn’t really matter, it’s carbohydrates that make the difference. A proper source of energy, carbohydrates are better to be consumed during the first part of the day mainly because by approaching the night hours our capacity to burn down calories is reduced and this may lead, if carbs are consumed in excess, to an important weight gain. Today’s recipe for Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook is a twist on zwieback, a great classic of Swiss breakfasts. I admit I do prefer them much to their Italian cousins, rusks, which always seem to be inconsistent and unwilling to be properly dunk in tea. For while dunking a rusk in tea it is important not to exceed those five seconds soaking time separating a properly soaked slice from an impalpable slurry which irredeemably splashes in the cup resulting in Pollock splatters all around, staining clothing, tablecloth and newspaper. Zwieback on the other hand are more compact and can be dunk twice. Italy 0 – Switzerland 1. And why not…lets be dragged by a little national pride, roll up our sleeves and accomplices our faithful and reliable Maroggia’s Mill flours let’s bake together these crispy delights! I added whole wheat flour and a pinch of cinnamon to the mixture to differentiate our zwieback from those available on the market, but you can try to make the classic version using only white wheat flour or pick any other combinations of sweet and savoury ingredients to flavour them. For the record this recipe has been subjected to a brunch tests and got top marks from all of my five enthusiastic guinea pigs. What are you waiting for? Ready, steady, bake!

Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook: Savoury Semolina Flour Pancakes / Il Ricettario del Mulino di Maroggia: Pancakes salati con farina per pasta e pizza

Breakfast, you already know how much I love this moment of the day and I won’t go on stressing how important it is for me to start the day with a rich meal. I have already experimented with a bread recipe using Maroggia’s Mill pasta and pizza flour (which is a mixture of wheat flour and very finely ground semolina flour) and I was pleasantly surprised. The result was very good, with an aromatic flavour and a good texture regarding the crumb.

MTChallenge: Chestnut Honey and Feta Pizza / MTChallenge: Pizza al miele di castagno e feta

Here comes another month, here another MTChallenge. This time Eleonora and Michael, the two minds behind the blog Burro e Miele, threw their gauntlet not with a recipe but with an ingredient instead, and honey it is. Panic. This exact month is filled with work and new ideas, meetings, recipe testing and I won’t deny that such a great freedom within the challenge scares me a bit. In order not to exhaust myself I decided to keep a low profile, a very low one…but always with the desire to test new recipes and enjoy something different. Feta and honey have been a staple of Sunday brunches for a long time now and I’ve been crumbling feta on almost all of my white pizzas in the past years. It seemed to me like a perfect combination. A sweet and salty pizza, bring it on! The idea of putting honey directly into the dough is a winning one. Chestnut honey has a very distinctive taste and the result is pretty good…I already have been thinking of other recipes and I think I will be experimenting next Autumn. For the umpteenth time I want to thank MTC for being such a source of inspiration.

Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook: Rye Flour Focaccia / Il Ricettario del Mulino di Maroggia: Focaccine con farina di segale rotta

Focaccia mon amour. Once you’ve been to Genova and gained two solid kilos by feeding yourself daily with focaccia there is no possible way out, as this crispy and soft flatbread leads to severe addiction. Along the years I baked many focacce, the first one published in the blog was a gorgeous artichoke and red cabbage focaccia for Sourdough Surprises, then I ventured into potato focaccia and developed a recipe for semolina focaccia too. But up until now I had never baked a rustic version of focaccia. This is the reason why I decided it was about time to experiment a little with whole flours too, for Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook. Maroggia’s Mill special pizza flour helps the dough to develop and proof in the best possible way, providing with a soft crumb and a crunchy crust, while the rye flour gives this focaccia a rustic flavour and texture. Long fermentation, needless to say, helps obtain a more digestible bread, with an aromatic and soft crumb reason why I will never stress enough about the fact it is so much worth the wait of a day. With the sunny and warm weather finally setting in you can bake a batch to share with friends for a Sunday picnic brunch. This focaccia is simply heavenly with soft goat cheese and fresh salad. Are you ready to roll up your sleeves and bake?

Sourdough Braided Butter Bread / Treccine al lievito madre

About my family’s traditional Sunday breakfast with braided butter bread I already wrote in this post. That recipe, however, required instant yeast, and finally I decided to elaborate a sourdough friendly version of this swiss bread, and my expectations have not been disappointed. Soft, fragrant, a bread to be eaten sliced or slowly “unravelled” (yes, my usual habit of “unraveling” food!) these braids are perfect for people who, like me, live alone.

Braided Butter Bread / Treccia al burro

Braided Butter Bread, Sunday breakfast’s favourite. As a child this rich and soft bread would appear on our table only on the seventh day of the week and was to be enjoyed with a thin layer of butter and a sweet homemade jam.

MTC American Breakfast Challenge: An Autumn Delight / MTC Challenge e la colazione all’americana: Una delizia autunnale

Few weeks ago, in one of my usual daily stroll into the blog universe I stumbled into Cranberry’s blog, drawn in by a very nice biscuit recipe. And as it happens more and more often I got lost into this “dark forest” of recipes (did I ever mention my love for Dante?). What a delight! I discovered raviole del plin and ended my journey onto MTC challenge’s. Nothing like a nice good old challenge to push me into a new recipe! I immediately wrote a mail to Alessandra who kindly accepted my enrollment into the MTC crew.