MTChallenge: Terrine!

Another month, another challenge. Welcome back to the monthly appointment with the MTChallenge. The last challenge was won by Giuliana, our vintage hen which is quite passionate with terrines.I must confess. Terrines scare me, they always did. I don’t like them. Blame it on the gelatin, which remind me of culinary horrors of the 70s which can be found on many pages of my mum’s culinary scrap books. I always considered terrines a too playful and poor of substance dish (forgive me Giuliana!). But MTC is MTC, one simply can’t escape from it. As a matter of fact, the more a subject is far from what I like the most, the more stress it generates and the more excited I feel. More or less. The roughest British sides of me started saying “No cold jellies… can’t you see you finally have the chance to try and bake your own pork pie? You don’t want to lose this opportunity do you?”. HI must come out of the pie closet and my beloved Van Pelt will be shocked, she will… I’ve never ever baked a pork pie in my whole life. I needed MTC to finally bake one! I have to be honest. I had many ideas mainly involving apples, oranges, beetroot and liquorice. Then I had a fennel, lying on its own in my fridge, and decided to flavour the broth with spices and the pig with herbs. No overthinking and simply following my gut.

Oops I did it again! Almond, Candied Orange Peel and Aniseed Sweet Rice Cakes! / Oops I did it again! Tortine di riso alle mandorle, arancia candita e anice

Oops I did it again (didn’t I say I would no longer post sweet recipes?)! Well this is an old recipe, part of a menu I made up a few months ago for a project that never came to life. I kept those recipes aside for any emergency, a Plan B to keep the blog post flow constant. It was a smart choice.

Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook: Aniseed, White Chocolate and Lime Zest Grissini / Il Ricettario del Mulino di Maroggia: Grissini all’anice, cioccolato bianco e scorza di lime

It’s already the third appointment with the Mill’s Cookbook, time does fly quick doesn’t it? This recipe is one that has been lying around for a long time, just as an idea, on my recipe notebook. No better chance to put it to practice and see whether the flavour combination would work or not, and hell it works!

Aniseed, candied peel and almond meal all-flours-in bread / Pane mille farine con anice, arancia candita e farina di mandorle

Sometimes you just feel too lazy to check in the pantry or to go groceries…but not for baking. In these occasions it often occurs you are short on ingredients, especially those you keep seeing hanging around but never use. This is what happened to me last week, I was craving to bake a bread with licorice in the dough and remembered a small tin box that my mum keeps in a cupboard in the kitchen (I’m at my parent’s place garden sitting). She always did, since I was a child. Well…probably something changed because there was no trace of licorice candies in any corner of the kitchen, let alone in the other rooms of the house.

Twelve Loaves: an indian midsummer dream / Twelve Loaves: sogno di una notte indiana di mezz’estate

Shortly after my blog came to life I started looking around for contests to get me going and push my boundaries. If I do not set myself goals I can be quite lazy, so this was a very wise idea. I’d already stumbled into Rossella’s blog previously so I started following her blog, which has very interesting recipes, and I came across the bread baking challenge “Twelve Loaves”.