Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Bites

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Today we will be making some sweet, healthy chocolate bites without compromising yumminess.

They are so incredibly easy to prepare you won't believe how good they are. You can have one or two when you crave for something sweet, you can give them to children as an healthier sweet-snack alternative, or you can serve them in your house parties.

We need only 3 things for this recipe. Banana, peanut butter and dark chocolate. Yes, that's all really!

Let me share with you a few tips:

It is very very important to have enough ripe bananas to have the right sweetness and flavor. The bananas with some dark spots are usually ideal for this. They shouldn't be neither green nor overripe.

I am using my own homemade sugar-free oil-free peanut butter, made with 100% of peanuts. I shared the recipe with you guys some time ago. I highly recommend it.

It is possible to prepare peanut butter with raw or toasted peanuts. As raw peanuts are preferable health-wise, using toasted peanuts instead will enhance the flavor of your butter.  So, it is up to you. The peanuts in the photos of my peanut butter recipe are toasted. In my recent peanut butter instead I used very lightly, almost barely toasted peanuts. This is to explain where the difference of color between two butters comes from.

I used dark chocolate with %72 cacao.

With the given ingredients and having my bananas sliced about 0.7 cm thick, I've got 22 Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Bites.


Ingredients:
2 enough ripe bananas (I weighed mine to be precise. They came 350 g unpeeled, 225 g peeled in total)
Peanut Butter
150 g dark chocolate (70% cacao)


Preparation:

Rustic Soup with Legumes and Cereals

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Today I have a soup recipe to share with you guys. But before that let me give you some news. 

I've created a new blog.. Yep, a third one. I called it Bitkisel Cafe. If you are interested in plant-based nutrient dense meals you can visit the new blog. 

I've published my first recipe, Mixed Berry Overnight Oats, at the end of October. Soon there will be others. I will publish in 3 languages as usual, English, Turkish and Italian. I've created also a Facebook page for those who wants to know instantly what's going on in the blog.

And now let's come back to our delicious soup recipe. What is better than a warm soup in cold autumn days?

This is just an example to the cereal-legume mix soups that you can easily prepare with your Thermomix. There are many assorted blends available. Mine was sold as "Rustic Soup" here in Italy. I had tried already some other mixtures called as Spring soup, Winter soup, Four Season... etc.

In my rustic mix there are farro (spelt), rice, red lentils, split peas and green lentils as you can see in the picture.

I wrote "Rustic Soup mix" among the ingredients below but another lentil/cereal soup mix would do just fine too.
You can prepare a similar mixture yourself simply using the ingredients you have at home.

Ingredients:
130 g onion, roughly chopped
35 g extra virgin olive oil
30 g tomato paste
200 g rustic soup mix
1300 g water
Thermomix Vegetable stock concentrate (I used 20 g)
Salt (if needed)
1 tbsp dried mint

Preparation:

Halloween Cemetery Cake

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Halloween is very near.

If you are planning to make a cake but haven't decided which one yet this post could give you some idea..

I prepared Cemetery Cake like 3 years ago but for some reason I couldn't manage to share it until now! 
It is, in fact, a combination of various recipes that I had already posted in the blog.

For more Halloween ideas you can visit the blog posts under this label.

Ingredients:

- Cake dough, syrup and filling cream from Chocolate Mimosa Cake recipe.
- Chocolate sauce for the top
- Biscuits for tombstone decoration
- Melted chocolate for tombstone decoration
- Ground Oreo biscuits for soil decoration
- Chocolate shards as in Devil's Food cake recipe for the edges of our cemetery cake


Preparation:

Persimmon Marmalade, Dried Persimmon Rolls with Chocolate and other ideas...

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Hello Friends,

This is going to be a post full of pictures and ideas.

Golden, delicious persimmons are in season these days so I don't want to lose any more time to share this post with you.  

1) Our first recipe is Persimmon Marmalade.

We prepare this recipe with only 3 ingredients: Persimmons, lemon and chia seeds. It doesn't contain any added sugar on the contrary to the traditional marmalade recipes.

Persimmons, which to me look like some kind of golden tomatoes, are very sweet when they are mature. They are packed with vitamins, antioxidants and fiber.
Our marmalade has also chia seeds which are an excellent source of Omega 3, protein and fiber.

The trick here is that it is absolutely essential to have very ripe persimmons in order to obtain the taste and the texture we desire.

Under-ripe persimmon fruits are astringent and unpalatable to most of the people because of their high tannin content. As they mature the tannin gradually disappears and the fruit gets sweeter and more aromatic. 
If you have immature fruits you need to allow them to ripe before to use. When they are ready the flesh will become completely soft, almost liquid.

Ingredients:
500 g very ripe persimmons
20 g fresh lemon juice
50 g chia seeds

Preparation:

Rich Tomato Conserve

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Hello everyone.. It's been a while...

I've been busy preparing tons of tomato conserve these days as you can see some of them in the photo ;)

Several years back, 2012 to be precise, I shared a tomato conserve recipe which was from the Italian Thermomix cookbook. In the course of time I've made a few changes to the recipe.
I don't like wasting good stuff so I abandoned removing seeds and draining the juice of the tomatoes. I use the entire tomato as it is, with peel and all.
Furthermore, I've added more vegetables to the mixture. We like it more this way.

Today I'd like to share with you my latest version.

A very important note before the recipe: If you are new into homemade conserve world I'd like to encourage you to read a more detailed article on sterilization and pasteurization methods. Even though I'll explain in the recipe how I do it, I am not an expert. Therefore reading and learning about the details, tips, food safety and health concerns would be the wise thing to do.

Here comes the recipe... 

It yields 2 jars of 500 ml.

Ingredients:
1100 g ripe tomatoes
100 g red bell pepper
70 g onion
70 g carrot
50 g celery stick
1 clove of garlic
5 basil leaves
A few sprigs of parsley
1 tsp salt
1 tsp oregano or thyme


Preparation:

Peanut Butter

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One of the easiest things you can prepare with your Thermomix is 100% pure Peanut Butter. There is no hydrogenated fat, no sugar, no salt, no additives! It is made with natural roasted peanuts.

My husband and I are recently hooked on this yummy peanut butter. We often enjoy it on our toasted bread together with banana slices. 

When I was little, my first encounter with peanut butter was Hollywood movies when the mother of the family prepared breakfast or school lunches for the kids. It wasn't something very popular in Turkey, it still is not as much as it is in USA even though you can find many products in the market today. The same goes also for Italy, where I've been living for more than 10 years. There is not much peanut butter love going on here either. The popularity level in America remains untouchable I guess.

Peanut butter is a great source of protein, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals. Even though it is high in fat and calories, still considered healthy.( Here is what Walter C. Willett, M.D. Professor of Nutrition from Harvard School of Public Health says about it.)

100 g of peanut butter is around 580 calories and contains 25 g protein, 20 g carbohydrates, 50 g fat.


Ingredients:

400 g dry roasted unsalted peanuts

Preparation:

Long Fermented Whole Wheat Bread

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4 years ago I published a delicious Mixed Seed Bread recipe. 
Since then I baked it countless times. Over time made a few modifications. Today I'd like to share with you guys its latest version.

I currently leave out the white flour. It wasn't much anyway.
I use organic whole wheat flour and whole wheat rye flour. Being stone ground, they are higher in nutrients and fiber, thus much better choices for your health.

A small note..  According to Mayo Clinic as well as many health experts, "Multi-grain" and "whole grain" are not interchangeable terms. Whole grain means that all parts of the grain kernel — the bran, germ and endosperm — are used. In contrast, multi-grain means that a food contains more than one type of grain, although none of them may necessarily be whole grains. The same goes for other variations, such as the term "seven grain". 

Another modification to the recipe is that I've increased the length of leavening time so I've reduced the amount of the yeast.

Ingredients: 
400 g water
60 g grape molasses
5 g fresh yeast
350 g stone ground whole wheat flour
200 g stone ground whole wheat rye flour
12 g salt
20 g water at room temperature
100 g sunflower seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds*
50 g sesame seeds
50 g poppy seeds
Oil

* Do not mistake cumin seeds in the recipe with ground cumin. You can replace cumin seeds with caraway seeds if you wish.


Preparation:

Borlotti Bean and Buckwheat Soup

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In my previous post I mentioned that we adopted a lifestyle change and I talked about how we achieved our healthy balanced diet.

Today, before the recipe, I would like to speak of our personal experience with the well-known second condition of a healthy life, which is reagular physical activity.

The famous phrase goes as "Rome wasn't built in a day". :) Our physical activity improved gradually with time.

We can say that everything started with our 45 minutes - 1 hour walks which we did every other day after dinner. 
However, after a while we noticed that they weren't as efficient as we needed them to be. Besides, at times we were back home as late as 10 - 11 pm. So Stefano suggested running instead of walking. Even though I, as a person who hated to run all her life and ran only maybe a few times after a ship or a bus which is about to sail/drive away, wasn't very sold to the idea at first, later I decided to give it a try at least.

We started to run around 3 km in the evenings every other day. Although 3 km was not much of a distance, I'd been huffing and puffing, often panting for breath but at the end I kept running.

After some weeks passed I noticed that I didn't need to stop anymore and the distance wasn't enough.
Since I had free time in the mornings, I decided to start running longer and earlier. (This has also other benefits as it is said that exercising in the morning also helps boost your metabolism and burn calories throughout the day). I walked 4 km and then ran 4 km which amounted a total 8 km exercise.

We have some friends from our neighbourhood and they also started to run around the same period. We formed an amateur runners group with them where we shared our experiences by whatsapp messages and we started running together from time to time.

For a fun experience we decided to participate a race which was held in Ancona in last November. It had 4 km, 10 km and 21 km categories. We decided to sign up for a 4 km run for our first race. None of us had a similar experience before. The instant they blew the whistle we lost each other and everybody was for himself. It was fun to run with such a crowd. We also loved "very Italian" gifts we were given at the end of the race: wine and pasta! I can't think of a better motivation, can you? :)

(As a side note, in my first race I missed the 4 km sign which I was signed up for and I ran 8 km instead :) This funny mistake made me see also my own potential. I started to run 8 km since then and in my next race in Jesi I signed up for a 10 km run! )

We participated in 6 different races since November 2014. Of course we've never even dreamt about to be amongst the highest rankings. What we cared was to challenge and improve ourselves and have fun. Nevertheless, once you're in a such a race with crowd it's the fact that you end up pushing yourself beyond your limits and often break your own personal record ;)

The penultimate race we participated was DeejayTen which was held in Bari, 400 km from where we live. Because of the long distance we needed to spend one night in a hotel. This gave us also the chance to visit Bari, which we'd never been before.

On Sunday 8th March, 5.000 participants of DeejayTen with their blue tshirts, which were gifted the day before, "ran" like a river throughout the streets of Bari. It was a scene worth seeing. 
It was a sunny and joyful day. An experience we'd like to repeat in future, in Florence or Milano streets...

Another reason which made us choose running as exercise is its simplicity. All you need is your running shoes. You are free to decide on the timing, day, place and the distance according to your own circumstances. We set a 10 km distance for ourselves to run in the mornings 3 - 4 times a week.

By the way, I said all you need is your sneakers but we have two other things we get with us before to go out. Our cell phones and earphones. We use our phones to listen to music and also record our performances. This way we are able to evaluate our self-improvement by seeing the recorded distance, speed and pace of our runs (or walks). 

Final words before closing this sport topic.. In many sport articles they mention about the importance of cross training and its help to overall body health and improvement. We are too cross training by exercising pilates and strength training besides running.

I surely do not consider myself as an expert in nutrition and sports, but I will share with you what I've learned, by reading and then experimenting on myself: 

Constancy: the body adapts to what you usually do, and so does your metabolism. I'd recommend you to walk 3 - 4 times a week instead of a single 2 hour long walk. 

Increase activity gradually: start walking, add some jogging to walking, slowly increase the intensity, so both your body and your mind become accustomed and accept the change taking place.

No excuses: If you really want something, find a way, otherwise, you will find an excuse. This has become my husband's motto: before he used to blame his overweight problems onto his thyroid condition, accepting it as uncontrollable.

No matter what you do, if you want to see results you need to be commited. Even something that you practice without much will nor enthusiasm, if you give it enough time and do it constantly, can become a part of yourself and your identity.

If I, who hated so religiously to run, transformed to someone who runs 4 times a week, even participating in races, I strongly believe that anyone can! 
This reminded me a TED talk by Matt Cutts where he says "Try something new for 30 days". 

And finally the recipe...

Today I'd like to share with you guys a delicious soup recipe which I make very often

Ingredients:
1 - 2 cloves of garlic
2 - 3 sprigs of rosemary (leaves only)
25 g extra virgin olive oil
500 g cooked borlotti beans or 2 cans of borlotti beans (1 can = 400g; drained amount is 240g)*
200 g canned tomato puree (or canned diced tomatoes)
120 g buckwheat
1000 g boiling water**
1 tsp Thermomix vegetable or meat concentrate***

Optional;
Freshly ground black pepper
Hot pepper sauce
Grated parmesan


* I often cook my borlotti beans myself in my pressure cooker by boiling 250 g dry beans with 1 litre of water and 1 tbsp olive oil addition. 

** If I boiled my beans, I use the remaining cooking water in the soup. I first add and weigh in the cooking water from the beans, then I add boiling water to reach to 1000 g.

*** As you know Thermomix concentrate contains quite a bit salt. If you are using canned products, since they also contain salt, 1 tsp of Thermomix concentrate will be enough. You can add more concentrate or salt if needed. Since I boil my beans with no salt addition, I use about 30 - 35 g of Thermomix concentrate in the soup.


Preparation:

Sun Dried Tomato Pate

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Last year we decided not to keep doing unhealthy diets anymore in the name of (supposedly) healthy living. Instead, we agreed to adopt an essential healthy lifestyle change.

As we all are told many times by the experts and printed on our brains, there are two building blocks for this topic:
1.) A healthy balanced diet 2.) Regular physical activity

The difference of opinion among popular diets (Vegetarian, Vegan, Raw Vegan, Paleo, Low Glysemic Diet, Gluten-free, Atkins, Dukan, Mediterranean...etc) arises of how to achieve that healthy diet. This division of opinions often leaves us, the general public, with confusion.

We researched and tried to read a lot on different takes on the topic. We decided to steer clear of any nutrition trend but adopt an alimentation that we see fit at the moment for ourselves. Happily we've got our effort's worth. The "well-known" secret is being constant.

Stefano, my husband, suffers from hypothyroidism and is on medication. As people familiar with the condition may know, hypothyroid patients often find it difficult to lose weight. They suffer from lower energy levels and get exhausted more easily. We tried different diets in the past, including one by a dietitian, nothing seemed to work until recently.

Even though I didn't have problems with my thyroid neither I had much excess weight, I didn't feel myself fit enough. I had some kind of constant fatigue issue, no matter how much I rested I often felt exhausted.

As a result of our lifestyle change Stefano has lost 9 kg and myself a modest 2 kgs at a slow but consistent pace, without starving ourselves to death. Our LDL and total cholesterol reduced, HDL increased. We've started to feel more energetic. 
How did we succeed this? (I would like to share our own experience with you guys thinking it may interest some but, by all means, do not ever take me as an expert on the topic! )

- Firstly, we started to practice sport regularly, 3 - 4 times a week. I will talk about it in detail in my next post.

As for our change of alimentation...

- We increased protein intake in our diet as we noticed we didn't have as much protein as we thought we did. When losing weight you will want to lose body fat but maintain lean muscle. Protein helps you do that. By the way, there is often a misperception as if Protein = Meat. We increased our protein intake by consuming protein rich foods such as legumes (lentils and beans mostly) and eggs more often, we didn't start eating more meat.

- We have red meat not more than once a week. We rather eat fish or chicken. We are one or two days a week vegeterians.

- For breakfast we eat a mixture of oats, yogurt, raisins, goji berries, cinnamon and nuts. Mostly on the days that we do more physical activity we have protein shake.

- We haven't cut out bread, pasta and rice from our diet but reduced. We rather choose whole grain  varieties when we eat.

- We eat plenty of fruits and vegetables.

- We avoid any refined, processed and convenience foods.

- We don't consume any low/reduced fat or calorie diet products. We rather have full fat alternatives, obviously paying attention on the amount and calorie intake.

- We use extra virgin olive oil for salads and cooking. We add nuts, often toasted sunflower, pumkin and flax seeds, to our salads.

-  We cut out soda and artificial sweeteners altogether. We reduced sugar almost to none (if we don't count 1 teaspoon of unrefined brown sugar that Stefano adds in his espresso) 

- We have a daily treat. We eat 1 - 2 mini square of chocolate which obviously has minimum 70% cocoa ;) They come in many flavors: orange, lemon, mint, licorice, caramel, cocoa beans, ginger, chili, rum and many others.
Very strict diet plans are very hard to stick to. They fail you in so many different levels. You either fall off the vagon very soon or, as soon as you stop dieting you go back to your old eating habits and end up overeating all the things you starved yourself. Therefore we had better not to be too harsh on ourselves ;)

- We drink a lot of water, at least 2 liters a day, plus green, black and herbal teas.

- Even though we don't have any regular, planned snacking between meals, if we feel like to have a snack we opt for one portion fruit or a few unsalted, toasted nuts such as almonds, walnuts, brazilian nuts, hazelnuts and cashews.

- We get two Omega 3 pills a day. (Ours have 500 EPA / 250 DHA) Among its countless benefits they are told to promote weight loss by boosting your metabolism and help you burn fat, increase your HDL cholesterol and lower triglycerides.

- And finally we loosen ourselves once a week. We have one cheat meal. That special meal we enjoy whatever we please such as pasta, pizza, brunch, dessert...etc. It probably goes without saying that we eat reasonably.
This freedom is important for the long-term sustainability of your nutrition plan as well as preventing your body to go in hunger mode which would make you store more fat by slowing down your metabolism and so you'd end up burning less and less calories every day.

- As for physical activity we opted for walking and running. I will talk about that experience in my next post.

Today I'd like to share with you one of our favorite pate recipes...

Ingredients:
600 g water
250 g sun-dried tomatoes
Salt, if needed*

25 g basil leaves
1 clove of garlic
180 g extra virgin olive oil

* My dried tomatoes were already salted so I didn't add any. 


Preparation:

Chocolate Hazelnut Torrone

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The number of Thermomix Tarif Defterim's followers on Facebook are now over 1.000!
I was aware that the number had been recently growing however I honestly didn't expect that it would go over 1.000 before 2015. This has been a nice surprise and wonderful Christmas gift to me.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of you, those who follow the blog via Facebook, Forum Thermomix, Pinterest, Google+, Bloglovin, or directly on the web or through email subscription...

As promised, here comes the recipe for Chocolate Hazelnut Torrone.
It could make a delightful Christmas gift.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I hope 2015 turns to be one of your happiest years.


Ingredients:

300 g dark chocolate, roughly broken into pieces
200 g Gianduja chocolate or milk chocolate, roughly broken into pieces
200 g Nutella
500 g toasted hazelnuts

Preparation:

White Torrone with Nuts and Fruits

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If many colorful "Panettone" and "Torrone" packages have started taking their place in Italian shops you understand that Christmas is around the corner.

Panettone, although its look recalls more of a cake, is in fact a sweet kind of bread loaf.  It has many versions such as those with raisins, dried fruits or chocolate. As soon as I find a satisfying panettone recipe I am going to share it with you guys. 
Below you will see our two store-bought panettone, one is with pineapple and the other instead is with chocolate.

Well.. let's come back to our main topic here, which is Torrone.

When we talk about Torrone or Nougat, we can mention mainly two types: White and Chocolate.
They also have many hard or softer subtypes made with varying nuts and dried fruits.

Your delicious homemade Torrone confections, with the help of a simple transparent packaging and ribbon, could make some great and also very pretty Christmas gifts.

Today I am sharing the recipe for White Torrone with nuts. The chocolate version, which you see in the photos, will be the next recipe to share. 

With the ingredients below I prepared 3 Torrone, each was 6 x 25 cm about.


Ingredients:
1 egg white
400 g honey

Contents of Torrone:
200 g toasted nuts and dried fruits of your choice*(1)
Optional: 50 g white chocolate*(2)

Top:
Confectionary rice paper or "host" sheets aka ostia in Italian, or 100 g white chocolate*(3) 

(1) To be precise, I used 60 g of almonds, 60 g of pistachios, 60 g of peanuts and 30 g of dried cranberry & blueberry mixture.

(2) We prefer soft torrone so I added 50 g of white chocolate together with nuts to make it chewy.

(3) I couldn't find any rice paper around here. I had to order online and I didn't have time to wait for to be delivered. You need rice paper or ostia for such confectionery recipes so that it wouldn't stick to your hands while eating. Domenico, my brother in law, gave me the greatest idea. Thanks to his suggestion I coated my white torrone with a thin layer of melted white chocolate. This way I prevented stickiness issue and added also a delicate chocolate touch to the formula.


Preparation:

Pineapple Coconut Cheesecake

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Today Thermomix Tarif Defterim is turning 5...

When it comes to anniversaries, for some reason, the multiples of 5 outshine the others. Since I couldn't believe that I've arrived at one of those milestone moments, I had to redo some calculations to convince myself by extracting 2009 from 2014 ! ;)

When I stepped into the blog universe I didn't have an action plan, nor I have it now. In the course of time I've tried to improve myself and the blog constantly, nevertheless everything I've done was with an amateur spirit.

Palate of people may change from one to another. The important thing for me was only to include doable, repeatable, hassle free recipes which I was satisfied with. I tried to explain them in detail and took as many pictures as possible. Certainly Thermomix's working principle, which enables a recipe system that formulates everything almost like an scientific experiment, made my job very easy.

Thanks to blogging my path crossed with many people from all around the world. I hope I was able to spice your lives even if just a pinch.

2 weeks ago, when I remembered that the blog's anniversary was around the corner, I started thinking what cake I should make to celebrate the day. Since I adore cheesecakes I felt like preparing a fruity one and Pineapple Coconut Cheesecake was just what I was after. 

I hope you enjoy ...

Ingredients:
Base:
130 g butter, roughly chopped
250 g Digestive biscuits

Cheesecake:
500 g Philadelphia, roughly chopped, at room temperature
150 g caster sugar
3 eggs (60 g each)
125 g coconut milk
1 can crushed pineapple, drained (1 can brut 440g)

Top:
Shredded Coconut


Preparation:

Simit : Turkish Sesame Bread Rings

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I am so very happy !
There are mainly two reasons for that. The first reason is those marvelous things you see above!
Finally I was able to bake "street simit" just like I wished. 
Those who had the chance to visit Turkey for business or pleasure may be familiar with these gorgeous sesame bread rings.

Simit is a very popular bread in Turkey which you can find almost anywhere, from street vendors to pastry shops and bakeries although the texture of the ones from the last two is a little different from their street-sold brother. 

It is often served for breakfast with cheese and tea or as snack. 

When one lives abroad simit is one of the most missed things of Turkish cuisine. As I haven't been able to find a similar bread around where I live, I am either obliged to bake them myself at home or wait for my next visit to the motherland. 
With the help of our dearest Thermomix and this recipe I am now able to bake delicious street simit whenever I crave for it.

Let's come to the second reason for my happiness, which is that the number of the blog's Facebook followers is now way over 900 and going towards 1000 despite the fact that over the last months the blog was overly silent as never before. (I will tell the reasons for this absence in my next posts.)

To tell you the truth, this growing interest has been the driving force for me to finally sit and prepare this post at a time that I thought I couldn't find time for almost anything.
I hereby promise to try to be more active in the following days ;)

And here is the recipe...

Ingredients for 6 simit:

Dough:
270 g water
10 g sugar
15 g fresh yeast
500 g high gluten flour or strong flour
40 g sunflower oil
12 g salt

Top:
1/2 cup pekmez (grape molasses)
1/2 cup water
120 g toasted sesame seeds*

*  If you don't have toasted sesame seeds, you can simply toast your seeds yourselves.

Toss them in a large pan and toast by stirring constantly with a wooden spoon at medium-low heat until their color turn to be golden brown while you carefully pay attention not to overburn them. When they are done, transfer your toasted seeds into another plate so that they wouldn't continue cooking.

Preparation:

Chocolate Mimosa Cake

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This is the chocolate version of classical yellow mimosa cake. 
We obviously love them both ;) 

Ingredients:

Cake:
250g flour
20g unsweetened cocoa powder
1 sachet of baking powder (15g)
1 sachet of vanillin or 1 tbsp vanilla sugar
200g peanut oil
5 eggs (each 60g)
250g sugar
A pinch of salt

Syrup:
100g water
50g sugar
50g Rum

Filling Cream:
250g fresh milk cream (35% fat)
250g mascarpone
250g Nutella, at room temperature


Preparation:

Rose Bread with Pesto and Cheese

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I baked this gorgeous bread on Valentine's Day. We loved it so much that I was very impatient to share it with you guys and even though I had many other older recipes waiting for their turn to be published, I decided to post this one as the first thing !

In this recipe we are using a kind of high gluten strong flour which is also called Manitoba flour here in Italy. You can opt for some strong bread flour.

In summer I prepared a lot of pesto using our own basil in our garden and put them in the freezer so that I wouldn't ever run out of pesto in the winter. I stored them in small disposable espresso cups. I used 2 of them for this bread.

Let me tell you a little bit about the cheeses I used. You can replace them with similar ones or up to your taste.

Stracchino is a very soft and creamy Italian cow's milk cheese which is aged very brevely (20 - 30 days). It is originated in the Lombardy and Romagna regions of Italy. Crescenza is a very fresh stracchino that is not aged at all.

Provolone is a semi-hard cow's milk cheese. Provolone dolce is aged for 2 - 3 months annd it has a sweet taste whereas provolone piccante is aged for more than 4 months and it has a stronger taste.

Fontina is a semi soft cheese which is made of raw cow's milk.

Ingredients:

250 g milk
10 g sugar
25 g fresh yeast
500 g strong bread flour (high gluten flour like manitoba)
10 g salt
1 egg
30 g butter, chopped

Filling:
120 g pesto
100 g stracchino cheese (or crescenza, robiola... etc)
120 g provolone dolce, very thinly sliced
50 g fontina cheese, roughly chopped
30 g parmesan, roughly chopped

Preparation:

Our Valentine's Day Cakewith Almond, Carrot and Cream Cheese Frosting

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PER ITALIANO

I had been searching for an heart shaped Valentine's Day cake recipe when I met this one on Pinterest last year. The link took me to a web site, Forum Thermomix, which I was quite familiar with. JulieO, one of the forum's hero members, found this splendid recipe on UK Thermomix web page and served it decorated with a delicious cream cheese frosting.

As a matter of fact, what I had in mind was more like a red or pink coloured cake but I fell in love with the looks of this one. It kind of reminds me wedding cakes. This could be a nice recipe to serve in anniversaries as well.

I would recommend you though not to wait too long to bake it if you miss out Valentine's Day opportunity. It is beautiful, delicious, impressive. I prepared it countless other times since last year.

The recipe is originally intended for a 26cm diameter cake pan. Julie is using a 26cm pan too. My heart shaped pan instead, is a smaller one as you can see from the pictures. This being the case I needed make a few modifications on the original recipe. I basically reduced all the ingredients by 1/3. I believe it would be good for a 20cm pan.
(Note: The pictures that show the pan size are from another recipe so here is the explanation for the brown colored base in the photo)

While reading the ingredients, on the left you can see the original amounts which are intended for a 26cm pan. On the right instead you'll see the amount I used for my pan.


Ingredients:

Cake:
300g 200g blanched almonds
300g 200g sugar
Peel of 1 lemon (without the white)
300g 200g carrot, roughly chopped
4    3 eggs
80g  60g flour
2 1 tsp baking powder
A pinch of salt

Frosting:
250g 170g Philadelphia
210g 140g sugar
2 1 tsp fresh lemon juice
Toasted almond flakes
Kavrulmuş file badem
Candy decorations as you wish


Preparation:

Valentine's Day is coming...

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Our Valentine's Day dinner from last year may give some ideas to those who wish for a romantic, quiet and private dinner at home.

I prepared Creamy Tomato Soup. I cut bread slices with a heart-shaped cookie cutter, toasted them, spread some Roquefort Sauce and placed them in the center of the soup.

I grilled Breaded Chicken Slices. I served them with some mixed vegetable dish using whatever vegetable I had in the fridge.

Additionally I baked Champignon and Smoked Provola Quiche and Farinata di Ceci alle Erbe Aromatiche.

Besides Roquefort Sauce, I already had some Olive Pate and Pepper Salsa in the fridge.

Of course, on this special day we had a nice bottle of white wine which couldn't be missing from our table :)

You may think "But weren't all these too much for only you two?". Yes, they definitely were.  
I had already planned out what to do with the leftovers in the next couple of days. 

Furthermore, I wanted to prepare some material to publish on the blog. It wasn't all for my Valentine's sake you see. Well.. let's keep this last one between us, shall we? ;)

Oh.. There was also a gorgeous cake. You will have to wait for tomorrow for the recipe ;)

Oven Grilled Breaded Chicken

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

There is a first for everything.
It was the first time that I used my oven's grill function for real with this recipe. Before that, the only times that I used it were when I wanted to toast some bread.

When I first made these breaded chicken fillets I wasn't very sure about using oven-grill as I worried if they were cooked unevenly, burnt or dried.  Therefore I preferred to go with a method I was familiar with and cook them in a grill pan.

When I prepared them for the second time I finally decided to take my chances with oven grill. Thanks God I did so, I was unbelievably happy with the result. They were browned on the top, soft and juicy inside, not dry at all.

It is a very very practical recipe. I hope you enjoy it too.


Ingredients:

500 g chicken breast slices
100 g stale bread, in pieces
50 g parmesan, roughly chopped
A few sprigs of parsley (leaves only)
Peel of 1/2 lemon (without the white)
Salt
1 small coffee cup of extravirgin olive oil (espresso cup)



Preparation:

Creamy Tomato Soup

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Before I proceed with this beautiful tomato soup recipe, I would like to make an announcement about my new blog.

Some attentive blog readers have already noticed the small box that I placed on the right side of the blog, which links to my new blog. I started publishing on the 1st of Jan, 2014 but before I shared the news with you guys here I wanted the new blog to have at least a few recipes.

As you know, Thermomix is an indispensable piece of my kitchen and the best assistant I can ever get. I use Thermomix for almost anything.

Nevertheless, in time I had also some traditional recipes piled up. Even if I wanted to share them too, I preferred not to do so because I didn't want to impair the integrity of a blog that carried Thermomix word in its name.

On the other hand, I got used to reading recipes online, even my own ones. It helps me to see photos, tips, my small changes... So, I decided to organize my traditional recipes in a second blog and named it as Klasik Tarif Defterim, which literally means My Classical Recipe Book.

The bonus of the new blog will be that, this way, I will be able to publish the marvellous, award-winning (literally) recipes of Lucia who is my mother-in-law.
Even though Lucia is that holy person who gifted me my Thermomix, she herself is using traditional methods as moms, grannies of most of us. 
Her traditional recipes also will be in the new blog. I am preparing a series titled as "Recipes from Italian Cuisine with Lucia".

If you want to follow Klasik Tarif Defterim the links are:
Web address
Facebook page
Google+ page
Pinterest board

I'd also like to remind you the links for Thermomix Tarif Defterim:
Facebook page
Google+ page
Pinterest board

If you'd like to follow both of my blogs on Google+, you go to my Google+ account.  

Let's come to the recipe now.

I've always liked soup. In the past if my mom made creamy tomato soup that day I would be the happiest. 

I know it is not quite possible to find some good and delicious tomatoes in winter time however, to tell you the truth, I didn't have patience to wait for sunny summer days in order to prepare this beautiful soup.

Ingredients:

40 g butter
40 g flour
35 g tomato paste
800 g tomatoes, washed and roughly chopped
500 g water
1 tsp Thermomix Meat or Vegetable Concentrate
1 tsp sugar
Salt (if needed)
100 g heavy cream
Freshly ground black pepper
Croutons

Preparation:

Champignon and Smoked Provola Quiche

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Today I would like to share with you the recipe of this beautiful quiche.


Ingredients:

Rosemary Pâte Brisée:
1 sprig rosemary, washed and wiped, leaves only
300g flour
150g butter, roughly chopped
A pinch of salt
75g cold water

Filling:
30g extra virgin olive oil
300g champignon mushrooms
Salt
Pepper

200g smoked Provola cheese, sliced
2 eggs


Preparation: