Moussy business...

Last Saturday I held my belated birthday party for my friends. I invited them to come over to my mom’s house for dinner and drinks.

I couldn’t get myself to putting the menu together until Saturday morning, D-day.

I flipped through my mom’s cookbooks and thought of what I felt like eating…

We started with a rosé champagne and bruscette with three different toppings; mozzarella di buffala with lemon zest and red chillies, figs and rucola with balsamic vinegar and my own find with apple, tomatoes and avocado, you can find the recipe in an earlier post.

Then I felt the need to make my own pasta for the ravioli I filled with grilled pumpkin and ricotta. I served them with a drizzle of oil, some parmigiano, basil and balsamic syrup on top. I must say I forgot the porcini at the last moment, but no one noticed I hope/think.

As a contorno I had some salted oven grilled sweet tomatoes in different colours.

For the ‘grand finale’ I made a heavy chocolate mousse. I used 150 grams of 70% chocolate, 250 ml of cream, 4 eggs and about 100 grams of sugar.

I beat the egg whites and the cream until stiff (separately of course). In the meantime I melted the chocolate au bain marie and mixed the egg yolks with the sugar until frothy. Let the chocolate cool for a few minutes and mix in the egg yolk mix. Then bit-by-bit mix in the egg whites and cream, try to keep the air in as much as possible. Let the mousse rest for a couple of hours in the fridge.

My favourite way to serve it is with fresh raspberries…it’s all about colour and the fresh contrast with the sweetness of the mousse.

For the second part of the desert I baked a tarte-Tatin, I thought I knew how to bake it by now so that couldn’t go wrong…If only I had not listened to my mothers advice. Fully convinced of herself she told me to use goudreinetten, very Dutch big apples, used for apple pie and apple mousse…Thats exactly what my tarte-Tatin turned out to be like. A nice crust on the bottom and a very tasty but ugly mousse on the top. As we had enough mousse in this desert I decided to make a new one. My dear mom rushed to the supermarket to get me new apples, GOLDEN DELICIOUS! In the meantime I made a new caramel and rolled out the dough.  As someone who is in love with cakes I could not get myself to serve a completely failed tart.

Luckily the second one came out of the oven in a perfect state…Phew!

I think the dinner went all right, as there was almost nothing left over and every one went home with a smile on their faces…Thanks girls for the lovely night!

kneading pasta dough

hard work needs to be done in jeans!

ravioli filling

ravioli, almost done

the party table with amaretti on the plates

second try