savory and sweet

zucchini, potato and leek crostata
I was baking last week but not blogging. Chris and I went to a funeral on Saturday and I was feeling very introspective.

I made the tart, or crostata, pictured above, last weekend. Lovely, right? Chris kept driving me nuts by calling it a pizza. This is not a pizza. It is a savory crostata---a medley of vegetables baked inside a buttery pie crust. CROSTATA.


ricotta ice cream with caramelized pistachios
and chocoate ice cream
I finally made my favorite gelato from Rome. It came out so well because I've upgraded my ice cream machine to the Lello Musso Pola 5030 Desert Maker. It's HUGE, especially since it only churns 2 quarts of ice cream at a time.

But OH what amazing ice cream. Absolutely as smooth as the ice cream I churned at Gramercy Tavern. I tested a basic recipe of vanilla and was amazed at the difference in quality between what i used to get from my old machine and what I got from the Lello. And best of all, it churns 2 quarts in a meager 20 minutes.

So I've gone a little mad over the last two weeks.

I've made a total of eight batches of ice cream: peanut butter with dark chocolate chunks, mint julep, Vietnamese coffee, vanilla bourbon, ricotta with caramelized pistachio, five spice pumpkin, olive oil and chocolate.

As I said, a little mad.

The chocolate in the picture was a recipe that included evaporated milk. I did not like the end result. It was chocolatey, but not as deeply, soul-piercingly chocolatey as I like.

The ricotta, however, also pictured above, was amazing. The caramel on the pistachios melts in the freezer, creating ribbons of bitter, lightly salted caramel running through the ice cream. I usually don't feel satisfied by a dessert that doesn't include chocolate, but it was different with this ice cream. Totally satisfied and wishing I had made a double batch instead.

my valentine

chocolate charlotte
I think I am a pretty easy going valentine. I like red roses and a nice dinner out with Chris, my husband. Chris is pretty easy going too. He never asks for anything so I usually make him a dessert with an explosion of chocolate, his flavor of choice for sweet things.

I've been out of school now for a year and haven't gotten much of a chance to make many of the French desserts and pastries I learned there. So I decided for Valentine's day I would do something classically French---a Charlotte Russe. All chocolate of course. One of the chef's at school said it was made by a French chef for their Russian employer and was made to echo the shape of a classic Russian hat called a Ushanka.


I made chocolate lady fingers which are made by whipping the whites and yolks separately then folding them together with flour and cocoa powder. You assemble the cake in a cake ring, so I piped the batter for the lady fingers to the height of the ring. I also piped a 6 inch round with the batter to form the base of the cake. Once they cooled, I picked up the lady fingers in one long strip and pressed them inside of the cake ring to form the wall that would hold the chocolate mousse filling.

I made the mousse from a recipe in Nick Maglieri's book, Perfect Cakes. I liked this recipe mainly because it did not involve any gelatin. I HATE GELATIN and I hate what it does to the texture of a mousse. The mousses we made in school all had gelatin and it drove me nuts. At work, chef served a mousse that consisted of fruit puree, whipped cream and lime curd. It was delicious and thick enough to hold its shape without any help from my arch-nemesis, gelatin. This chocolate mousse had butter, chocolate, egg yolks, sugar and whipped cream. PERFECT.

After I poured the mousse into the center of my lady fingers, I let it set, them covered it in a chocolate glaze containing equal parts heavy cream and dark chocolate and a little bit of corn syrup.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!