MTC Challenge: Indian Style Fried Chicken / MTC Challenge: Pollo fritto all’indiana

Another month, another MTChallenge. Last challenge, the macaron, literally brought me to my knees and made me regret having a willpower which is close zero. Friendships, relationships…working hard on myself I learned the salutary principle of “Letting go” and understand that everything, EVERYTHING, in this brief life simply comes to an end. Not with the MTChallenge, I simply can’t let go. Like in the most cliché relationships which are ruled by a strong, and constant, imbalance between love and hate it’s impossible for me to desist. Kathy Bates in “Misery” you name her…MTChallenge is far worse than her smashing Paul Sheldon’s legs, I simply can’t get out of it! Last challenge’s winner was Silvia, not a surprise if you go taking a look at the recipe with which she won. It was virtually impossible for her to lose. I immediately said to myself: “She will bash us, she will”. Indeed, a massive bash arrived. Silvia’s fried chicken! So you think that frying is easy don’t you? You couldn’t be more wrong. Being quite experienced with frying (I think my closest friends have heard me billion times instructing them on double frying) I took courage and decided to use an ingredient I’ve never used for frying before. Almonds. Scared about its humidity content and surely quite fearful of burning them I never, EVER, used nuts to coat anything that needed a good old frying session. Of course it took an MTChallenge to throw myself into the boiling cauldron and overcome anxiety. The inspiration for the recipe came from India, as soon as I read Valentina’s original recipe. Blame it on the marinade (spices and spicy!), or the idea of accompanying the chicken with a sauce (firstly my mind went to a yogurt based dip and then moved on to an inevitable chutney, which I decided to mix with yogurt :D), but for certain if chicken is involved, at least where I come from, you have to venture into indian cuisine.

Cuochi d’artificio: Sweet Winter Bread, baked in a pot / Cuochi d’artificio: Pane invernale dolce cotto in pentola

Christmas is just around the corner and this month’s episode of Cuochi d’artificio I was asked to bake a recipe for bread that could be baked in a pot. There are plenty of iron cast pot bread recipes out there and I myself have already developed a few recipes. This time around I thought about using the Winter festive time as a pretext to devise a sweet bread recipe, a kind of bread that personally I have never seen on the web. For the spice blend I was inspired by two loaves of German culinary tradition, the Breslau Stollen and the Hutzelbrot. I took some ingredients from each recipe and came up with this soft loaf, which looks a little like a very primitive panettone but is enriched with cinnamon, cardamom, almonds, plums, figs and dates instead of raisins and candied fruit as in the traditional version of panettone.

Here you will find the list of ingredients and step by step description of the recipe, and here you can see the video recipe to have a more accurate visual reference.

Brown rice curry with chickpeas and oat milk / Riso al curry con ceci e latte di avena

Recently I realized that concentrating efforts on my macrobiotic diet, recipes for Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook  and MTChallenge participations a this blog features almost exclusively bread recipes. Of course it makes total sense, considering the name of the blog itself is quite exhaustive about my main passion in the kitchen, but still I do believe it would be a good thing just to post some recipes not related to bread every now and then. So I thought about going back to one of my old loves, curry. I will never grow tired of saying curry it is not a powder that one can buy in the supermarket, but a blend of spices that you can easily do at home by varying amounts and types of ingredients. Seen the limitations the macrobiotic diet imposes I came up with a recipe which does not employ coconut milk, but uses oat milk instead. The result is great. If you make oat milk yourself (here you can find the recipe you will see how the sauce thickens with no addition of ingredients such as corn starch. Great, right? This creamy curry is very tasty and not spicy at all and gets even better if allowed to stand twenty four hours. Are you ready to bring some Indian flavour in your kitchen?

Sourdough Surprises: Monkey Bread drove us bananas! / Sourdough Suprises: Monkey bread, il pane delle scimmie che ci ha fatto perdere la testa

It’s the 20th and Sourdough Surprises is back. As always I am delighted to discover a new bread kind, and what bread! I must admit this has been a great hit among my new official recipe testers: Flavia (go and take a look at her work here, she’s an amazing photographer and graphic designer) and her studio buddies Daniela, Micha and Alessandro not to mention Antonio, Flavia’s boyfriend, who devoured 3 and a half out of 4 monkey bread balls she had taken home. I must admit I was quite skeptic, not being a huge fan of overly sweet things, and was a bit scared only looking at the shape and fierce fatness of this very special bread.

A late Christmas treat, Gingersnap biscuits by The Garum Factory / Un dolcetto molto natalizio…po’ in ritardo! Biscotti allo zenzero e spezie di The Garum Factory

Last Christmas I was full of good intentions. Many challenges were thrown around the web, themed especially for the festive season and in all good faith were pinned down on my calendar, looking forward to participate. Not only I forgot to bake a bread for Twelve loaves but didn’t participate to a single contest. Blame it on the panettone obsession, on the new part time job, and well…on the festive season! The only recipe that was completed, foreseeing many happy festive baking moments was candied ginger.

Spiced Baumkuchen, a layered cake for Daring Bakers / Torta albero speziata per i Daring Bakers

The January 2014 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Francijn of “Koken in de Brouwerij“. She challenged us all to bake layered cakes in the tradition of Baumkuchen (tree cake) and Schichttorte (layered cake).

I admit it, when reading Baumkuchen on this month’s Daring Bakers pdf’s document for just a slight moment I had the illusion we had to bake the Polish version (Secakz)
of this cake common in Northern Europe regions such as Germany, Austria, Hungary and funnily quite popular in Japan too. Scrolling down to read more, excited and quite scared, I won’t deny my relief discovering that Francijn choice’s had fallen on the German version of this sweet loaf.

Smithy Loaf, or about Twelve Loaves and the pleasure of unfussy baking / Smithy Loaf, o anche di Twelve Loaves e il piacere di una semplice infornata

Keep it simple. This is this month’s Twelve Loaves theme, as beautifully explained by the talented Rossella in her blog Ma che ti sei mangiato?. Simplicity can freeze. Always in search of the elaborated techniques, which require time and effort but reward with breathtaking results and oh so many compliments we forget about the joy of a simple, quick bake. Yes baking can be rewarding with little efforts, using basic ingredients and techniques you can obtain delicious results within one hour sharp.

Maria’s Spiced Cauliflower Flan / Lo sformato al cavolfiore e spezie di Maria

Since the 4th of December, when I started working part time at a goldsmith shop, my weeks have been quite hectic. Recipes and blog post scheduling, the weekly appointment with Wing Chun training, trying to be present on my usual social networks and fitting in multiple appointments hasn’t been easy. Let’s add my Panettone Obsession and the picture is quite clear. But chaos is my element, stress has always been my cup of tea (or loaf of bread) and even though feeling a bit tired I wouldn’t change a single thing.

I bought you flours: Potato and Za’atar Bread Roses for Twelve Loaves / Rose speziate per te: Panini a forma di rosa con patate e za’atar per Twelve Loaves

As things of life unravel I find myself almost two weeks from my last blogpost. Blame it on the weather, blame it on too many failed recipes and things to do, blame it on me and my laziness. The last days I’ve been blessed with good recipes, good lightning and the urge of writing a new post. The recipe has been waiting two weeks in the “limbo” folder and after yet another good review from one my food testers I can share it with you. This recipe was inspired by this month’s Twelve Loaves theme: spices.