Recently I became the proud owner of a pasta maker. His name is Leonardo and so far he has done good work. Homemade pasta isn´t that hard to make but it takes a while and one definetely needs patience. Sometimes it might take longer because your dough consists of a mass of crumbs. Sometimes the ravioli you carefully made yourself decide to open up while cooking and everything floads around in the pan. Or everything sticks together like crazy. But life is not always easy and every desaster helps to prevent future ones. So don´t give up! You will get there! Trust me! I´ve done everything mentioned above and more.
Panna Cotta with plums in red wine
Panna Cotta is my families favourite dessert. I made it a couple of years ago for christmas dinner and since then, all my family wants for dessert is Panna Cotta. I don´t even get a chance to try out something new, whenever there is a special occasion that calls for a good dessert, it´s Panna Cotta. I shouldn´t be complaining though, this recipe is to die for. And compared to a lot of the other fancy desserts, it´s not even that complicated. All you need is some cream, vanilla beans and sugar, and you´re good to go!
Lemon apple tarte
When I was a kid we had this huge backyard with apple-, cherry-, plum- and peartrees. And all kind of berries you can imagine. Growing up, this was the best thing. I would spend entire days in the yard, fighting off monsters and solving crime and when I got hungry, all I had to do was to pick the next best fruit. Now imagine what you could do with all these fruits during summertime. Unfortunately we moved and now all I have when I visit my parents at home are two appletress, one peartree and something that looks like cherrys. Well, when life gives you lemons…uh apples I mean…the only thing to do is an apple-lemon tarte. I actually am not the biggest fan of apple pies, but I found a recipe that taught me otherwise.
Chocolate Brioche
When it rains I always have this urge to start baking. Lazy Sundays, with nothing to do and on top of it bad weather…you will definitely find me in the kitchen, whipping up some pancakes or in this case chocolate brioche. It´s french, it sounds classy, it involves chocolate – sounds good enough to me! It´s not that I only get inspired with the typical german weather (it is supposed to be summer but it´s 16 degrees, raining and I haven´t seen the sun all day). On sunny days I invent all kind of different combinations for salads, stormy wheather is perfect for baking muffins, cupcakes, waffles and don´t even get me started on christmas season – hot chocolate, Plätzchen, Bratäpfel…I will always find a good reason to make on particular type of food. This time in Ineke´s kitchen: Chocolate Brioche!
Costa Rica 2009
Summer 2009, I just graduated and had no clue whatsoever what to do with my life. While most of my friends went off to university, I knew that before going into the grown-up world, I needed to see more of the world itself. And I wanted to improve (or better said – learn) my spanish which limited possible destinations. So I looked for volunteer work I could do, booked a flight and went to Costa Rica for 6 months.