LEMON MERINGUE PIE

This cake has been a mystery to me. However, I have found myself drawn by its elegance and lemon flavour – not really a popular taste in Poland. It suits wintertime as well – there are not too many fruits, except for apples, oranges and lemons. I finally plucked up my courage and made this enigmatic beautiful cake. It tastes great and has instantly become one of my favourite pies.

I have one dilemma, though. Why add eggs to the lemon cream? I prepared both a version with eggs and one without them. It turns out that, at least in my opinion, the eggs are not necessary. They do not change a lot as far as taste is concerned, maybe it gets slightly more lemon, but the sweetness of the meringue balances it perfectly. I offered the eggless, unclassic version to my English colleague and she was not insulted. In fact, she even praised it! So, we could just as easily prepare the cream without eggs. There is one problem here – once we use the yolks to prepare the cream, the whites go for the meringue. Otherwise we are left with yolks and have to put them to some purpose… Nevertheless, both version work and are recommended. I just personally am not a big fan of eggs, period.

I did make the pie a couple of times and now consider it a slammer – effective, not too well known (original in Poland at least) and really tasty! The mix of slightly sour lemon cream, meringue and short-crust is a bull’s-eye-hit.

The first version of the recipe is taken from the blog “Moje wypieki,” but – as I already mentioned – I altered the way lemon cream is prepared. I make short-crust otherwise, too, stealing this time from my brother’s wife, because she makes the world’s best short-crust!

One great advantage of this pie is that it can be prepared in advance – you can even freeze the short-crust. The lemon cream can be stored up to a week, so they say. It is the meringue itself that needs to be done at the end. You have to put it in the oven earlier, so that the pie can cool down. I read somewhere that it is recommended to eat the pie on the same day it was made, but I am usually left with some little bit for the next day and trust me – it tastes good.

*recipe*

crust:

175 g coarse-grained wheat flour (an ordinary wheat would do as well, but the coarse-grained one is better for that purpose)

100 g of butter, chopped into little pieces

yolk – save the whites for the mreingue

a pinch of salt

a bit of sugar, to your own taste (optionally)

lemon cream:

125 ml of lemon juice (from ca. 3 lemons)

lemon zest (from 2 lemons)

85 g of butter

100 g of sugar

juice from 1 orange

2 flat tablespoons of potato flour

3 yolks and 1 egg

(though, as I was mentioned earlier, the cream without eggs is good, too)

meringue:

4 whites (normal temperature)

200 g fine-grained sugar

2 flat tablespoons of potato flour

***

Prepare the crust of the tart by kneading the flour with butter and egg. You can cool it down, wrapped in foil or aluminium, in the fridge for some 15 minutes. Fill the bottom of the baking tin (ca. 21 cm in diameter), which should be greased with butter. Pierce the dough with a fork so that no bubbles emerge during baking. Cover it up with baking paper and put some beans or peas so that the pie does not fall during baking.

Bake for 15-20 minutes in 180° C. You can remove the paper then and bake some more but be careful not to overdo it!

***

In order to prepare the lemon cream, take a small pot and mix sugar, lemon peels, flour and lemon juice. Mix the orange juice with water so as to obtain 200 ml of it and pour into the pot. Stir and cook until the mixture thickens. Take it off the heat, add pieces of butter and stir until smooth.

If you wish to add the eggs, put the cream off the heat, add the yolks and the egg, stir and rehear. However, makes sure not to boil it! The cream has to be smooth and you have to watch out so that it does not come off in the form of scrambled eggs!

Pour the cream over the cold crust. Cool everything before putting on top.

***

To prepare the meringue whip the egg whites (they should be in normal temperature) to obtain a thick froth. Add sugar slowly, spoon after spoon, constantly stirring. Finally, add the potato flour and mix everything until the cream is smooth.

***

Put the meringue over the cold cream. Bake in 180° C for ca. 20 minutes.

The meringue can be formed into various shapes but be careful not to burn it, especially when it has longer, frayed ends. The meringue should be crispy on top and frothy inside, which makes it very nice.

Cool the pie before serving.

EGGPLANTS FROM THE OVEN

Eggplants from the oven is the least demanding appetizer ever. I have not found any such recipe online (though did not care to search too hard, as something would definitely crop up) so I decide to experiment on my own, which turned out to be a simple and plain one. I goes like this: put the eggplants in the oven and wait till it is done. Can it get any easier? Still, the final result is good! 

I think that you could also take out the pulp and mix it with garlic, olive oil, salt and perhaps some yoghurt, the final effect being a certain dip.

***recipe***

eggplants

oven

salt

olive oil

***

Pierce the eggplant with a fork but do not be too hard on it, two pierces will suffice. Put it in the oven, which should be preheated to ca. 240° C, and keep it there for at least an hour or an hour and a half, depending on the size of the eggplant. When its skin begins to burn it is a definite sign to take it out. This might be our chief guideline.

Take the eggplant out and cut its skin lenghtways. Pour some olive oil on it and sprinkle a bit of salt. There it is, the appetizer is ready!

TATIN TART FROM PUFF PASTRY

It might just be the simplest tart in the whole world, but the final effect is incredible, especially when you compare it to the amount of time and effort you need to put into the preparation of this dessert. I prepare this tart quite often these day exactly because I do not have a lot of time on my hands but do have a yearning for something sweet. Moreover, chocolate is now out of the picture because Mr Owl is on a diet. There is not need to prepare the pastry on one’s own as it is possible to buy ready-made puff pastry. It saves a lot of time. Due to the fact that puff pastry and apple desserts are something that I prepare regularly, I was able to try out various versions, but I have to admit that the Tatin Tart is my strong personal favourite. This dessert is especially recommended when we are having unexpected guests and want to prepare something quickly. All you really need is puff pastry and some apples.

 

[caption] small tatin tarts

*recipe*

puff pastry

6 apples

100 g of sugar

50 g of butter

cinnamon (optional)

***

Peel the apples and cut them into quarters, or even smaller slices, taking out the core of course. Melt some butter and sugar on a frying pan and add the apples. What I often do is stew it in a covered pan, especially if the sugar, after turning into caramel, forms larger pieces which are not eager to melt again. Stir from time to time so that the whole apples are covered in caramel. Optionally, add cinnamon, or – as I sometimes do – use vanilla sugar.  Grease the tin with butter and put the apples with caramel inside, covering them in puff pastry and rolling its sides towards the middle. Pierce the pastry with a fork.

 a large tatin tart

Bake in the oven, heated to 200° C, for about 20 minutes. Flip the tart after cooking (using a plate or chopping board).

Bon appétit!

SALMON BAKED IN PUFF PASTRY

This is yet another version of salmon, this time in puff pastry. I recommend it because this dish is both simple and elegant. Besides, salmon always tastes good. The recipe comes from the blog “Kwestia Smaku.”

 

***recipe for six people***

6 salmon fillets, skinned, each ca. 200 g
salt and peper
450 g of puff pastry
2 spoons of semolina
15 g of butter
juice from a half of lemon
1 spoon each of olives, parsley leaves and tarragon
glaze: 1 egg yolk mixed with 1 spoon of milk

I prepared a version for two, i.e. ca. 400 g of salmon and less than one pack of puff pastry, which nevertheless was enough, as we saved some for later.

***

Place the fillets on baking paper, spinkle some salt, pepper and lemon juice. Put them int the fridge. Cut the pastry into two parts, one much larger than the other. Form the smaller one into a rectangle that is just slightly bigger than the fillets. Put the cold pastry on a moistened baking tin and pierce with a fork. Bake in 220° C for 10 minutes, then sprinkle with semolina. Place the fillets, add some butter on top and sprinkle with olives, parslay and tarragon. Form the rest of the pastry into a rectangle and cover the fillets with it, folding the edges under. Grease the pastry with the glaze ingredients and bake for 15 minutes. Lower the heat to 160° C and bake for another 15 minutes. Cover it with foil once it browns too much.

Bon appétit!

GOLDEN NUT AND CARAMEL TART

This one of my all-time favourites: it looks good, takes 20 minutes to make and provides heavenly pleasures for the palate, if you like very sweet stuff, of course. I found the original recipe in “gazeta kuchnia,” but already tried out many version with different types of nuts and dried fruit. Once I soaked nuts, raisins and apricots in vodka and that version has become legendary with my family…

***recipe for the golden tart***

tart:

200 g of flour
10 dag of butter
3 spoons of water
1/2 spoon of salt
1 egg (optional)

The pastry is more crumbly if you do not add the egg, but I usually throw one in.nut and caramel filling:

15 dag of sugar
14 dag of double cream (30% or 36%, both work well)
10 dag of shelled wallnuts
golden flakes

These flakes are made from real gold and are available from art supply shops (in Warsaw you will find one in Mazowiecka Street). There are some fake alternatives, but they are not edible, in contrast to the real gold which you freely eat. I got the poisonous version so far and have not yet decided to buy the real stuff.

You can prepare the dough from condensed sweetened milk that comes in cans. All you need to do is boil it for 3 hours. It tastes quite good, actually.

First we need to make the tart:

Mix and knead flour, butter, salt, water and egg (if you want to add it). That is basically it, for this is one of the most basic pastries, though open for modifications. You can skip the water or egg and balance salt with sugar. Once the dough is ready and smooth, form a ball out of it, wrap in foil and put in the fridge. You can always make some more and freeze it in for some occasion like unexpected guests or an unexpected surge of laziness. Cool the ball in the fridge for 15 minutes, but if it takes longer, do not worry.

Now we need to prepare the caramel filling:

Put the sugar in the saucepan and heat until it melts. You have to stir it all the time so as not to burn it. The sugar should become brown and melt, becoming lovely liquid caramel. At this point, add cream, but do it carefully, for it will foam and fly, all kinds of bizzarre things taking place in the saucepan, but only for a short time. Nevertheless, keep stirring. It may take a while for the sugar to mix with the cream. There is no need to worry – in the end you will have a nice and tasty caramel filling. Let it cool down and add cushed nuts.

In the meanitme take out the tart, roll it out so that it is half a centimeter thick and put it in the greased baking tin. Bake for ca. 15 minutes in 180° C.

The baking time can vary and you should always check whether it is nicely browned. Yesterday it took me even 25 minutes, but maybe the temperature was a bit too low. Do not forget to pierce the tart with a fork prior to baking so as not to allow any bubbles to come out. One more thing you can do is cover it with foil and put some beans on top. In this way, the sides of the tart will not sink.

This is basically everything. If you have the golden flakes and some time on your hands you can decorate the tart with them.

PEARS BAKED WITH BLUE CHEESE AND NUTS

I tried these pears at a party over at Magda’s (my brother’s wife) and was simply enchanted with their fantastic taste. So, I make them from time to time, as an appetizer, because Mr Owl is also eager to bite in. Such pears can be served in a number of different ways: with butter, goat cheese and blue cheeses – whatever floats yout boat. You can also add walnuts, other nuts, or sprinkle some alomnds on top. It does not take more than a couple of minutes to prepare them and they are undeniably terrific!

 

***recipe***

depending on how much one can eat…

2 pears

a piece of blue cheese

one spoon of butter

a handful of walnuts

***

Grind the walnuts, add blue cheese and butter (though it is not a must) and pund it all together carefully.

Cut the pears in half, take out the seed pods and put the filling in their place.

Bake in the oven, heated to ca. 200° C, for about 15 minutes. It is a matter of individual preference whether you like the pears to be more or less baked. 15 minutes and 200° C do not soften them entirely, so if you prefer them more delicate, bake them a little longer.

Bon appétit!

PANNA COTTA

It happens so that there has been in fact no recipe for panna cotta on my blog so far. The truth is that I have not made this dessert for a long time now. Recently I wanted to prepare something tasty, but it was already 11 pm and I had no ingredients for fancy desserts at hand. However, I found some 36% cream, vanilla extract, various alcohols and gelatine – in other words, all you need to make a panna cotta! As it was running late and I was too exhausted to try out one of those complicated recipes, I did in the simplest possible way. Julcio was not asleep, which means that there is no way I can experiment freely. Panna cotta is a kind of a dessert that you cannot botch. It is simple and effective, but a lot depends on how it is served – it leaves a lot of space for unrestrained invention. I decided not to over do it and went for a straightforward, tasty, alcohol-infused panna cotta. I served it with a cherry preserve, which was made by my mother – the best preserve in the whole world, of course.

 

*recipe*

400 ml of cream (30 or 36 %)

3 spoons of sugar

2 spoons of gelatin

1 vanilla pod or ca. 3 spoons of vanilla extract

alcohol (optional)

***

This version of panna cotta is decidedly alcoholic, because instead of the vanilla pod I added some vanilla extract which is based on vodka and also mixed in some Malibu to achieve the right taste. This may not be a favourite version of mine but it turned out to be a successful experiment. Let us do it then!

Cook the cream, add sugar and vanilla. Make sure to cut the vanilla pod and remove the seeds earlier on. You can put straight in the cream and heat together. Alternatively, you could use vanilla extract – I added 3 spoons. Dissolve the gelatin in a small amount of water and add to the the boiled cream, then stir until smooth. Add alcohol (if you wish, of course) – I put some teo spoons of Malibu. If you do not choose to add alcohol, take a bit less gelatin. My version is definitely heavily gelatined.

Here you have an alcohol bomb – panna cotta malibu, served with coffee liquor and sprinkled with dark chocolate coffee grains. The tastes do not mix, because Malibu is barely discernible, but it may indeed be too much of a good thing…

Bon appétit!