today i made, and ate, a lot of food.
last night i made zopf, as per usual - 3 loaves, one for us, one for bruno's parents, and one for peter and steffi. i also made some puff pastry for a bill granger tomato and ricotta tart (at least, the first step).
this morning i finished making the tart - more involved than i thought, but it was well worth the effort. so much butter! but it was really very flaky and delicious. makes you realise how much butter (or awful industrial substitute) goes into puff pastry - the recipe i used was for 200g of flour to 200g butter. the only other ingredients were 1/2 tsp salt and 1 - 2 Tb chilled water. so we basically ate a block of butter with some flour. but it was GOOD!
for the filling - ricotta, eggs, yoghurt (instead of cream - just too rich), basil, salt, pepper. mmmmm!
it was bruno's birthday today, so we had bruno's parents over for brunch (the reason for making the tart).
on the table:
zopf
tomato and ricotta tart
butter, conserves (quince jelly, peach & raspberry jam, honey)
proscuitto
cheese: gorgonzola & marscapone, gruyere, brie
yoghurts - strawberry, apricot
coffee
orange juice
mineral water
bruno's favourite birthday cake: ruebli küche (carrot cake, made with almond meal)
we ate almost everything. then after bruno's parents had gone home and the kids were in bed i ate the last of the tart with a leisurely cup of tea. while bruno was out mountain biking (literally - it was a small mountain tho) i poached some rhubarb (fresh picked from bruno's parents' garden) in fresh squeezed orange juice and made lola some apple, pear and rhubarb puree for her dinner (ever on my quest to get her to eat fruit), which she ate, nay, ENJOYED with some mashed banana and a spoonful of ricotta.
the rest of us had a fridge dinner ie. whatever we could scrounge up from the fridge - the last ends of zopf and other sundry bread products, cheese, yoghurt, a few tender shavings of proscuitto, crunchy sweet organic carrot sticks, sharp exploding cherry tomatoes, a perfectly ripe avocado, and the last crumbs of birthday cake. just now i'm soaking some oats in milk for a bircher muesli for brekky tomorrow - mmmm, with dried figs, grated apple, banana and poached rhubarb. and bruno is making a quiet, restful, end-of-weekend cup of tea - alpine herb for him, green tea for me. i'm looking forward to a quiet sit down and maybe watch a bit of telly before the onslaught of the week.
Love, love, love this. You know I was going to post the rough puff recipe - wrote the entry, then got caught in a whirlwind of stuff but I will post later today. It has half that fat and still tastes rich. I love Bill Granger's ricotta hot cakes. Yum. Please post your recipe for zopf.
Posted by: Amanda | April 26, 2004 at 01:18 AM
thanx, amanda!
one zopf recipe coming right up.
Posted by: kitschenette | April 26, 2004 at 10:25 AM
How dare you post this for me to discover just before lunch. I'm weak with hunger anyway and now I'm trembling at the knees.
Lovely, warm and welcoming design.
Congratulations.
Posted by: David | April 26, 2004 at 12:37 PM