Culinary tour to Argentina, Panqueques de Dulce de Leche

I can't believe it, it's finally here! I've decided to participate in a blogger event and I made it to the end. On top of that, it's a wonderful event! I joined Culinary Tour 2010, hosted by Joan from Foodalogue. The theme for this year is "South of the Border". This week we are in Argentina.

Argentine cuisine stems from the combination of Spanish, French, Italian and other European cuisines. Another important factor is that the Argentina is one of the world's major food producer. Who doesn't know Argentine beef? What really surprised me was that Argentineans eat a lot of pasta. Mmmm, I love pasta. But you already know that. I wanted to try something special, something I didn't know, and of course, as typical as possible. Well, I'm not sure I met these requirements when talking about crepes. However, I read that Panqueques de Dulce de Leche are very popular Argentine dessert. And, Dulce de Leche on its own is the most typical and favorite dessert.

When I tried to find a dish to recreate I liked several of them. For example Argentine locro soup was my hot favourite and I will definitely give it a go sometimes because it looked extremely delicious. My final choice - Panqueques de Dulce de Leche was influenced by the fact that I heard about Dulce de Leche couple of weeks ago, when I read David Lebovit'z post about Food Bloggers Camp in Mexico. I googled Dulce de Leche instantly, and it looked very intriguing. Oh yes, can you believe it? I'd never heard of it before that!

So what I can say? Be careful. Dulce de Leche is pretty darn addictive! :)

Panqueques de Dulce de Leche/ Crepes with Dulce de Leche

Crepes

3 eggs

2 cups milk

1 cup plain flour

pinch of salt

1 tsp sugar

1 tbsp melted butter

vegetable oil for frying

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, flour, milk, salt and sugar. Add the melted butter and whisk until fully incorporated.

2. Heat a lightly greased frying pan over a medium heat. Ladle or pour a little batter (depending on your frying pan size, just enough so it will thinly coat your pan) into the pan and tilt and rotate the pan until the batter coats the bottom evenly. Cook over medium-high heat until the edges start to brown. Flip the crepe and cook the second side for a few more seconds.

3. Remove the cooked crepe from the pan and place it on a plate.

Dulce de Leche

1000 ml whole milk

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 vanilla bean, split (optional)

1. In a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the milk, sugar and baking soda. Stir well to dissolve the sugar.

2. Bring to a boil over medium heat without stirring. Remove from the heat and skim off any scum on top.

3. Add the vanilla bean (if using) and bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat to very low and simmer gently for 1 hour, stirring frequently.

4. Remove the vanilla bean (if using) and discard it. Continue to simmer gently for another 1/2 - 1 hour over very low heat, stirring frequently, until thickened and caramelised. Remove from heat and let it cool.

5. Dulce de Leche can be stored in a refrigerator in a clean glass jar for 1-2 weeks.

Once more for lychee, Lychee Ice cream

What can I say about lychee ice cream? I love lychee. And I love ice cream. And now, I know I like lychee ice cream! But still, pistachio ice cream is my all times favourite. Nothing can beat pistachio ice cream. Not only pistachio ice cream is heavenly delicious, but it also has a gorgeous colour. Mmmmm. I so much like the green pistachio colour. Oh, I almost forgot, I wanted to write about lychee ice cream.

Well...

I don't want to bore you with a long writing. There are so many wonderful books to read. Let's just look at some pictures.

Shall we?

And besides, I've got a cold, have a runny nose and stuffy nose at the same time and my eyes keep getting itchy. I shouldn't really spent this much time with my laptop, should I? I had an urgent need to share this ice cream recipe with you though. Because I so much needed summer! And I had my bit of summer in the London winter when eating my homemade lychee ice cream.

Creme Anglaise is the base for this ice cream recipe. Since I have only made creme Anglaise once in my life, and I'd ended up with horrible scrambled egg taste, I needed some help this time. I googled for a while and I found a wonderful video about making ice cream. Finally I made some changes to David Lebovitz's recipe for pumpkin ice cream.

Lychee Ice Cream

Ingredients

375 ml milk

250 ml double cream

95 g granulated sugar

1/4 tsp salt

5 large egg yolks

60 g light brow sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

450g fresh lychee, peeled ad stoned, pureed

1. Mix the milk, cream, salt and granulated sugar in a medium sauce pan. Heat the mixture over a low heat until it starts making little bubbles but do not boil. Keep stirring at all time to prevent burning. Turn off the heat.

2. Whisk the egg yolk in a medium bowl. Temper egg yolks with about half cup of hot cream mixture. The easiest way to do this is to use a spoon to ladle hot cream mixture into egg yolks while whisking rapidly. It is very important to add only a little bit of hot cream mixture at a time, otherwise you might scramble your eggs and it would not be tasty. You want to add in about half of the hot cream mixture as you constantly whisk it.

3. Return the warmed egg yolks in to the sauce pan, add the vanilla and cook over medium-low heat whisking constantly, until the mixture thickens. If you are not sure how thick the mixture is, stick a wooden spoon into the mixture to coat the back of your spoon and run your finger down to create a line. If the line holds, you know it's ready.

4. Strain the ice cream mixture through a sieve into a clean bowl set in a ice bath and chill. Add the brown sugar and stir until cool. Cover and refrigerate for at least 8 hours or overnight.

5. Stir in the lychee puree. If you don't have an ice cream maker (I don't have one) follow these instructions, otherwise freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions. Pour your ice cream mixture into a freezer safe container and place it in the freezer. As the mixture starts to freeze around the edges, remove it from the freezer and stir well. Try to break up any frozen sections. Return to freezer. Repeat the process until the mixture is smooth and frozen.

Cooking with Fennel - Leek and Fennel Soup with smoked Cod

I'm not sure if I should confess this thing. However, I want to be honest with you. I've never cooked with fennel yet! Until now. Fennel is not really common in czech cuisine, and before moving to London, I had never even tasted this wonderful green friend. Yes. I fell in love. Fennel is my new favourite vegetable now. I bought about 10 fennel bulbs at a market last week and I started looking for recipes. I was really amazed by its versatile use. I've already tried three different dishes and they all were a huge success.

I was a little worried that P. wouldn't like fennel, but he took a liking to it same as I did. I didn't use it fresh though. I would say, using fresh fennel is a "second level" for us. So, next time. This time we had braised chicken with fennel, garlic and lemon, which was absolutely delicious. Then I made baked potatoes with fennel, pear and blue cheese inspired by the La Tartine Gourmande's recipe. And lastly, I tried a fennel soup because I so much love soups, especially in the winter. I can't decide which one of those three dishes was my favourite one. Actually, it must have been the soup. That's why I want to share it with you. I looked at several recipes but I didn't want to use potatoes or any alcohol for my soup. So I combined a few different recipes. I really liked the idea of a smoked cod in Bethany's recipe from the Dirty Kitchen Secrets.

Actually one more thing had happened which influenced my soup recipe. Rule number one: never leave a double cream opened and unsecured in your fridge! I'm sometimes very impetuous which usually leads to minor catastrophes. This time I opened my fridge to quickly. Oops! You can probably imagine the situation. Yes, the opened and unsecured double cream decided to leave the fridge too quickly too, leaving huge white tracks everywhere, for example on my cloths, in the fridge, on walls and on the floor. And I think I don't need to describe that double cream is not the easiest thing to clean up. This episode, however, had left me with only less than 50ml of double cream for my soup. Next time I might use a little bit more! :)

Leek and Fennel Soup

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 tbsp butter

2 small leeks, white and light green parts only, cleaned and chopped

1 shallot, chopped

3 large fennel bulbs, sliced

4 garlic cloves, halved

650ml chicken stock

50ml double cream

salt and freshly ground pepper

olive oil, to serve

2 smoked cod fillets

1 tsp olive oil

1/4 tsp dried tarragon

1. Melt the butter in a heavy based large saucepan. Add the leeks and shallot and saute for about 5 minutes.

2. Add the fennel and garlic and fry gently for another 2 or 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. Add the chicken stock and stir well. Cover, bring to the boil and cook gently for about 20 minutes until the fennel is tender.

4. Turn off the heat. Using a stick blender puree the soup completely until it's very smooth. Stir in the cream and season with salt and pepper. Reheat gently if needed.

5. Meanwhile, place the fish onto a baking tray and toss with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and dried tarragon. Bake in a preheated oven at 150C for 15-20 minutes.

6. To serve, ladle the soup into plates or bowls. Divide the cod between the plates and drizzle over some olive oil.

Picture of the Day

My blog's subtitle is "Sari's food (and) photography passion", which means I do love food but I also do love photography. And, of course both together logically create a food photography. Hence, and I hope you won't mind, I will post some of my favourite photos from time to time without sharing any recipe. Let's call it my favourite pictures of the day!

I hope you enjoy it! :)

Have a nice weekend!

Enjoy Lychee Panna Cotta during a snowy winter

Hello and welcome! I'm back. I spent wonderful three weeks in Prague with my family and friends. I really looked forward to be back home though. I sometimes tell myself I'm too old for this. Ha ha, I know what you are thinking now. But three weeks of a "nomadic life" are quite tiring. I was dreaming about my own bed.

Luckily the weather was merciful to us once again and we arrived on time to London. Which was kind of a reward for a canceled flight and 10 hours delay on the way to Prague before Christmas.

I'm not a fun of New Year's resolutions. I don't think that just the fact that a new year starts will bring me more strength or will. So I don't make New Year's resolution. Full stop! However I promised myself (unofficially, psst!) I would try to become more organised in 2010. And my main aim is of course to improve my food styling and photography. So much for the New Year's resolutions. Do you make any? :)

Prague is a wonderful and beautiful city but I can say I missed London. So at the weekend P and I decided to go for a walk to say hello to London. We had been really amazed right after our arrival by the quantity of snow in London. It looked like a winter wonderland everywhere.

We headed for Greenwich. I love the Greenwich park. And it looked even prettier covered in white snow. I did not have many opportunities to take pictures in Prague so I had to take my camera with me to satisfy my photography desire. Lucky me! Snowy Greenwich was very photogenic!

As we reached the Royal Observatory a very amusing scenery revealed in front of us. People of all ages took advantage of a snow covered hill to slide down on all kinds of sledges, plastic bags or even surfboards. I was tempted to slide down myself! ;)

Then it started to snow again and it was time to go home. I had a craving for something sweet. We stopped by the market on our way home and bought about 1kg of lychees. I have been wanting to make a panna cotta for a while. I was thinking, why not to combine both. It was a very good idea. Scrumptious! White like a snow with an exotic taste of lychee and coconut. Yummy. I might just substitute a coconut milk for more double cream and a yogurt next time as P. didn't like the coconut taste that much. I did like it as it was!

While sitting calmly and enjoying the lychee panna cotta I was thinking about last days in Prague. We had been very busy, though not that much as our best friends who had welcomed their first son just 2 days before the New Year! We visited a little O. in a hospital just one day after he had been born. I can say the baby was best Christmas present for our friends. We shared their joy and happiness. Beautiful moments indeed. I want to wish all the best to a little O. and his parents!

Lychee Panna Cotta

Serves 4

Ingredients

285ml double cream

215ml coconut milk

50g sugar

1tsp fresh ginger, peeled and grated

200g fresh lychees, pureed

1tsp vanilla extract

4 leaves of gelatine

8 fresh lychees, to serve

4 fresh strawberries, to serve (optional)

pistachios nuts, to server (optional)

1. Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water to soften (about 10 minutes).

2. In a saucepan heat the double cream, coconut milk, sugar, vanilla and ginger. Leave to simmer for about 10 minutes but do not really boil.

3. Take the cream mixture of the heat and add the pureed lychees. Add the gelatine leaves and stir until dissolved.

4. Leave the cream to cool and pour into prepared cups.

5. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.

6. To server panna cotta place the cup in hot water for a while and then put it on plate. Garnish with fresh lychees, strawberry and pistachios.