Liquorice and Beetroot Babka / Babka alla barbabietola e liquirizia

For those who know me well this recipe does not come as a surprise… you know ho much I love beetroot and licorice don’t you? I tried this babka for breakfast and it is simply delicious, pillowy soft and just slightly sweet, want a slice? Well, roll up your sleeves and get started baking!

MTChallenge nr 60: Marchesa Casati’s tapas / MTChallenge nr 60: Infiniti auguri alla nomade! O anche le tapas della Marchesa

Another month, another MTChallenge! Mai‘s challenge is a tough one. Tapas! This month our MTC judges were really tough on us and we were asked to develop three recipes.

Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook: Parmesan and Chive Polenta Muffins / Il Ricettario del Mulino di Maroggia: Muffins alla polenta, parmigiano e erba cipollina

Polenta. For centuries it has been the staple of our grandparents and great-grandparents diet, accompanied by meat, cheese, or more commonly by milk (even though I’m aware it is a quite childish on it’s my favourite combination). Corn is a tenacious plant with a very good yield, two features which make of this plant the most commonly cultivated and the staple of many peoples diet all around the world. It can also be toasted and reduced to a fine powder to produce farina bona, a special flour which is typical of the Valle Onsernone, a Valley in Ticino. Corn flour can be used in many different ways, as coating meat or bread sticks instead of using breadcrumbs, and can also be used in sweet preparations such as cakes (like amor polenta) and biscuits.

Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook: Kanelbullar / Il Ricettario del Mulino di Maroggia: Kanelbullar

I simply love breakfast. Sweet or savoury it makes no difference at all, it’s just one of my favourite meals by virtue of its versatility. I discovered kanelbullar while “bakery hunting” for my morning breakfasts in Copenhagen. Not that i didn’t know well it’s british-american counterpart, the cinnamon bun, but what intrigued me the most was its shape. Braided breads of all sorts have always an effect on me, it must be my aesthetic and artistic inclinations playing a big part in this fascination.

Protetto: Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook: Planetary Buns / Il Ricettario del Mulino di Maroggia: Panini planetari

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Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook: Ada’s sultana buns / Il Ricettario del Mulino di Maroggia: I panini alle uvette di Ada

Sultanas, either you love them or you hate them. Usually when offering a cake containing raisins or even panettone (which strictly requires raisins in its dough) I hear choruses of protest rising: “Noooo pleaseeee, not sultanas.” So just imagine the joy and amazement when asking my three years old niece Ada what she liked to eat the most she answered: “”Sultanaaaaassss!”. Not to mention when I noticed she was surgically dissecting the buns to remove the sultanas, but not to eat the soft inside of the bread…no sir, that he just ignored it at large and focused her attention on the berries. And what about you? Are you a sultanas lover us or hater? Well in any case the basic recipe for these buns is spot-on if you need something easy to bake for your children’s afternoon snack. The size of the buns is ideal for children my niece’s age who cannot manage to get through large bread rolls or buns, the dough is extremely soft and light and 100% vegan! If sultanas are just too hard to swallow you can replace them with chocolate chips, nuts, or other ingredients according to your taste.

MTChallenge June: Horse Meat Hamburger with Eggplant, Beetroot crisps, pepper ketchup in a liquorice bun / MTChallenge Giugno: Hamburger di cavallo con melanzana, barbabietola e ketchup di peperoni in panino alla liquirizia

Here I am a little sleepy and with half closed eyes as I sit here, typing at my computer. What an adventure for this month’s MTChallenge! Diabolical Arianna saparunda.blogspot.ch, who won the contest last month, launched a pretty complex challenge inviting us to cook our own version of the world famous American Hamburger. I can’t deny it, as all the staff of the challenge is very understanding when allergies and special diets ar involved I first contemplated the option of participating with a macrobiotic hamburger. That thought lasted about thirty seconds, then I realized that it had no sense at all, at least from my personl point of view on this dish. Let’s face it hamburgers must be rich, fat and rewarding. It didn’t feel quite right to stick a vegetable burger into a wholemeal bun with a tahini and umeboshi sauce. Hey, hold on a second…now that I came up with this I must admit it does sound quite appealing. Maybe I’ll give it a try soon. But anyway back to my burger. Blame it on the diet restrictions or just my own view on burgers (burger = meat), but I decided to focus on a juicy and tasty version of the American fast food par excellence. And I don’t regret it.

Macro dumplings for MTC Challenge / Canederli macro per l’MTC Challenge

New year, new challenges. It seems only yesterday that Francesca challenged us with a her literary inspired muffin, but it has been two months now. Enough to relax and forget how the MTC Challenge can put my brain and creativity under enormous pressure. Couple this with my macro lifestyle adventure and you can just imagine how difficult it will be for me from now on…but stubborn as I am the goal this year will be to be able to participate to all of MTC’s challenges by inventing all sorts of macro alternatives to the recipes and ingredients we will be given. Honestly these dumplings were a walk in the park if I consider the risk of running into a dessert recipe, or worse a brioche dough rich in eggs, butter and sugar. But challenges are vital in my life and for my blog(s) too and I am ready to face any recipe, even though I fear many tears will be shed being failure and disappointment just around the corner with macro cooking!

Persian Bread: Lavash / Pane persiano: Lavash

Of my great love for Persian cuisine and its language (which unfortunately I do not understand but never fails to move my heart, like a sweet melody, every time I hear my aunt talking in farsi) I already wrote in this post about Persian sweets. There I mentioned Mandana, a longtime friend of my aunt with whom a nice relationship of complicity and confidence was born after I met her at my cousin’s wedding. We often write to each other on facebook and often share some recipes too. She usually asks me for bread and pizza recipes, my requests are mainly for Persian recipes. On one of these occasions I asked her if she had a recipe for lavash, since it has been quite a while that with a friend who is in a relationship with and Iranian boy we are thinking about having an all Persian dinner and I do not want to show up at their place empty handed.

Of Iranian sweets and friends / Di dolci e amiche iraniane

A mug of hot black tea, held tightly in both hands. A musical chatter, a lullaby from far. Love, friendship and pride. The language I am speaking of is farsi, and the women sitting on the floor in a tight circle, a cup of tea always filled in their hands, are my aunt’s friends.