dulcis in fundo

Ah... something healthy finally. It's been a couple of months since I've been feeling like I've been eating quite badly, and a recent "your body fat percentage has increased by 5% in the last two years" in my health check report didn’t help in appeasing the evil spirits in my head, so I decided to stop my usual easy-access morning cereal (mainly chocolate based ones, I hate cereal so I have to make it somehow more appealing, although with the things you read on the packs, even the healthiest-looking ones have tons of sugar and salt in them) and start making my own again.

When I first arrived in London back in 2006, I remember I was making every couple of weeks my favourite muesli (I wrongly called it that, as I realise now it's baked, so the right name is granola!) but I hadn't made any in years, and it's something that I really used to love, it's healthy, has no sugar or salt, and kept me going for quite a while in the mornings.

Lately I've been feeling quite heavy and slow, it's not just food-related, but also the nasty weather (with a break of 2 weeks of sun) we've been having, which makes you want to curl up next to the radiator, and eat lots of crappy things, and the fact that my country, Greece, is getting slowly destroyed to the last bit. Depressing news always abounded about it, but now they're everywhere I look, in every newspaper cover when I go to the office kitchen to have my lunch, in every internet news site, and even in all my friends' facebook walls... So it's not that difficult to get down with all of that, and the potential doom and gloom of not having a summer at all for the next 3 months...

To give myself a boost, I decided to buy some ingredients and start making this granola again, at least this way I would feel a bit less guilty about eating rubbish for breakfast, and maybe it would help lift my spirits a bit as well. I always use Greek honey, firstly to try and support my country (we export so little...), and secondly because I love its more intense, almost treacly taste. In Greece you can get thyme honey, which is even better, if you manage to spot some in a deli in the UK, or if you travel to Greece, buy some and you'll remember me. Thyme honey aside, this granola is very simple, quick to make, and keeps very well in a sealed jar/box/tupperware – that is if you don't devour it in the first few days (and need to make more!)

Mixed nut, dried fruit, coconut and chocolate granola

Source: Inspired by a Rowse honey recipe

Serves 2

Line a big deep tray with greaseproof paper (I use a turkey baking tin). Mix all the ingredients together, apart from the dried fruit and chocolate, and place in the tray.

Bake in a preheated oven at 160°C for 20-25 minutes until golden, stirring every 5-10 minutes to make sure nothing burns and the honey doesn't all get stuck in one place.

Take out of the oven and leave to cool completely. Add the mixed dried fruit and chocolate drops, mix again, and place in a jar or plastic container with a tight lid. This will keep for about a month, in room temperature. 

Remember what I was saying in my previous post? 2011 has definitely not been a good year, and from what I gather from grumbling friends, not just for me... Thinking that the end of the year couldn't bring any more disasters, we had arranged for my mom and aunt to come and stay with us for the holidays (beautiful visions of endless food, shopping together, visiting Christmas markets and favourite exhibitions + throw a show or two in the mix, arise in my imagination...), however a last-minute old relative being hospitalised in critical condition meant that the trip had to be cancelled, one day before they were meant to arrive.

Hence, depression ensues = time to make sweets descends upon me. I am a quite strong proponent of the Como agua para chocolate theory (if you're sad, you'll make sad food, if you're happy your food will taste amazing and bring happiness to those who eat it), so I'd rather just cheer up and make sweets, than have my feelings ruin a good bowl of dough. And since I've never made mince pies before in my life, and I was planning to anyway (I had found a "alternative" inspiring recipe in delicious magazine and had already made the mincemeat a month ago in anticipation), I quickly set to make these. Having never tried it, I was a bit sceptical, but they were a resounding success, and people told me that they were even the best ones they've had (my answer was "it must be the alcohol"). Since they are not covered with the typical pastry on top, but with a frangipane-like almond mix, I decided I shall call them "frangiminci pies"!

I guess everything can be looked at optimistically. I've had a bloody cold of some sort or other since the 19^th of November, which kind of goes away only to "dress up" as something else and come back with a vengeance, culminating in a recent fever, and a few days spent working from home. Dangerous thing this working from home. While normally you wouldn't go to the office and work with a fever, being at home kind of gives you the idea that "oh, well, yeah, maybe, it's just a little bit of work", which eventually ends up in hours spent sitting in front of the PC. However, if my mom and aunt HAD come, things could potentially be worse, I could have given them the cold, we could have all be sniffling during Xmas, plus I wouldn't have stayed to work from home, and made these mince pies. On a day that really no work from home could be done. Because the Internet and all systems in my company were down. Just for the irony of the matter, may I add that we are an "online" company. Giggles ensue + mince pies are made during working hours = that's the spirit of Christmas!

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Core the apples and bake them in a lidded dish for 1 hour. They are ready when they are soft and the peel has sort of exploded around them. Scoop out the flesh of the apples and place in a big bowl to cool. When in room temperature, add the lemon zest and juice, and then the rest of the ingredients, mixing well with each addition. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave it to rest in a cool place, stirring every few hours. It can be used on the same day, but ideally you should allow it to "develop" over a month, so after a couple of days of stirring move it into sterilized jars and seal, making sure there are as few air bubbles as possible. I allowed it to rest for 25 days, and it was yummy.

To make the pastry put in a food processor the flour, sugar, salt, butter and pulse until the mix resembles breadcrumbs. With the processor running, slowly add the eggs until a dough is just formed. Take the dough out, knead it a bit, wrap it with cling film and cool in the fridge.

To make the frangipane topping, beat the butter in a food processor or mixer until soft. With the processor/mixer running, slowly add the sugar, almonds, eggs and rum, until well incorporated. Move to a bowl and chill for at least 15 minutes.

Butter the holes of a muffin tray (I had a 12-hole tin, which I used 3 times to make all the pies). Roll out one third of the pastry on a well floured counter, until it is 3mm thick. With a fluted cookie cutter cut out 8cm rounds, and push them lightly into the muffin tin holes. Chill the whole muffin tray for 15 minutes, before filling with a big spoonful of mincemeat, and topping with a heaped teaspoonful of frangipane. Preheat the oven to 180°C, sprinkle the mince pies with the flaked almonds and bake for 20-25 minutes, until nicely browned.

Remove from the muffin tray while still hot and cool on a rack. I prefer my mince pies warm, so when you want to eat them put in an oven preheated to 160°C for 10 minutes, and then dust with icing sugar.

I know, I know. It's been a long time, no post. Oral spank spank. But I haven't given up, oh ye who worry and pester me! It's just that...well...life sometimes takes up time. Like, ALL OF IT. In the last few months a few hundred thousand distracting things happened, which took me away from blogging and pretty much from humanity, a few among which are:

So, now that things have sort of (just sort of) quietened down a bit, it's time to quickly dish out some Greek sweets for Christmas, just in case I tempt any late-Xmas-sweet-makers with these inspired, tree-shaped beauties!

I usually make these traditional sweets with my mom's recipe (passed down through generations) but this time I wanted to try something a bit more alternative, so I looked around and got inspired by Stelios Parliaros, who adds pistachios and rum to the mix, a sacrilege that probably would be met with some great ass-whooping by my elderly female relatives, but which surprisingly worked quite well. Since traditionally kourampiedes are sprinkled with orange blossom water, I thought of using Cointreau instead of rum, and I also mixed and smashed pistachios and almonds together which in the original recipe are left separated (some kourampiedes with one, some with the other), but if you can have the best of both worlds why not mix and match?

Have a great Christmas, and I hope 2012 brings a bit less panic, sorrow, hecticness and unexpected chaos in all our lives!

Preheat the oven to 180°C, place the almonds in a tray and roast for 6 minutes then add the pistachios and roast all the nuts for a further 6-7 minutes. When cooled, chop or smash into small pieces (I used a plastic bag and a rolling pin, but be careful, don’t turn them into dust, you need to have some bite there!)

Mix the butter with the 110g of icing sugar in a big food processor or mixer until light and fluffy. Add one by one the flour, baking powder, vanilla extract and Cointreau and mix well until all the ingredients are evenly incorporated.

Stir in the chopped nuts, and shape into rounds, or cut out different shapes with Christmassy cookie cutters. Place on a tray lined with baking parchment, making sure there is a 6-7 cm distance between them, as they tend to spread, and bake for 30 minutes (or until browned).

Take out of the oven, and before they have a chance to cool, turn them upside down and sprinkle with icing sugar. Immediately turn them the right way up, sprinkle with sugar again, and rest until cool. After they have cooled down, you can move them to a serving plate and sprinkle them with the rest of the sugar, for that genuine Greek Christmas overdose!

This weekend was the first really summery one we've had since last year, and luckily a couple of friends of ours, who had recently bought their first house, invited us for a BBQ on Saturday. The weather was beautiful, just BBQ-perfect, and the food was in infinite supply (just the way I like it!) and very tastily marinaded by the man of the house. But, as every time that there's good weather, what I was craving most for was some ice cream. So Sunday came, same temperature, and the time was ripe for whipping out the ice cream machine (don't think for a second that I haven't made ice cream at home since last summer, I'm an all-winter-ice-cream scoffing freak, but somehow it tastes even better when it's hot outside!) and making something new.

Ever since I went to Rome for the first time in 2003, I have been dreaming of the nutella ice cream I had in gelaterias everywhere. It was my favourite flavour from the ones I tried (and trust me, I tried many!) and for some reason on follow-up visits to Rome in later years the nutella ice cream I so loved was gone. What I wanted was a stracciatela-like vanilla ice cream with little hard nutella swirls you could bite into, and which was heavenly, but it seems it had either gone out of fashion in Rome, or it had been replaced by an "all-nutella" chocolatey-hazelnutty ice cream, which although very nice, was too sweet and chocolatey for me. If presented with the choice of only vanilla or only chocolate ice cream, I'm pretty sure 70-90% of the population would go for only chocolate, but I would go for vanilla, as I find too much chocolate "too much". So stracciatela is one of my favourite gelato flavours of all time, as it combines both vanilla and chocolate in just the right proportions.

Inspired by this, and not having tried to make stracciatela at home, I tried to invent a stracciatelonutella version, using a trusted recipe for vanilla ice cream and adding warmed up nutella in swirls before the ice cream was fully set in the freezer. It came out heavenly, and brought back all those memories of Roman Spring in 2003...

However, since the other half is not a big fan of ice cream (yes I know, does that species exist in nature, especially in its male version?), I had to make something to satisfy his puppy-dog look of "and I'm not getting any dessert? Bouhou!", that would go with the nutella ice cream. I've made these brownies dozens of times before, they always come out fantastic and the extra bonus that they are flourless makes them suitable for people who are gluten intolerant, plus you can sort of pretend they're healthier (which the other half does) and feel a bit less guilty (as if the chocolate, butter and almonds are not enough to make you rounder!). Instead of baking them in a tray, I got inspired by Tartelette and baked them in individual tart tins, which made them perfect for topping with generous ice cream scoops. Getting carried away, I added 3 scoops on mine one night, and then I had to be removed by a crane from the sofa and gently placed on my bed, to avoid bursting. I have to say, that's never to be done again...I'm sure there's a moral somewhere there about too much of a good thing... but I haven't heard of it yet...

Flourless chocolate brownies with nutella swirl ice cream
Source: Adapted from Allegra McEvedy and Gourmet Worrier

Makes 8 brownies and 800ml ice cream

For the brownies

• 175g 70% dark chocolate, chopped
• 90g butter
• 2 ½ tbsp strong coffee
• 2 eggs
• 220g granulated sugar
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 125g ground almonds
• ½ tsp baking powder

For the ice cream

• 2 cups full fat milk
• 1 cup double cream
• 1 cup single cream
• 8 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract with seeds (or vanilla seeds from 1 pod), I used this one
• 2 rounded tbsp nutella