Breakfast at Marie-Cecile

Last summer we drove from Como to the Cote d'Azur in the south of France to spend our holiday. We travelled from Bed&Breakfast to Hotel about every two days. It was hard to tell which B&B would be nice and which would be a bit of a disappointment, you never know if it's your first time there.

Our first two nights we spent at Villefranche-sur-mer where we stayed at the Hotel Saint Michel. We had a lovely little Ikea room with a tiny bathroom and toilet and some noisy neighbors. It's a lovely little town, very typical French riviera. Especially the Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat is very beautiful, it's almost an island with pretty beaches and amazing views.

When we arrived at our next stop, we were happy to have booked 5 nights at this wonderful place called CaraProensa in Flayosc. We were warmly welcomed by Marie-Cecile and her husband Roland who showed us our cute, very french room with private terras. But it got even better at breakfast. She made us a different special something every morning...american pancakes, rice pudding, poached peaches...Mmmm! Delish! All this was accompanied by fresh croissants, bread, juice, tea and home made confiture. One night we were invited to join them and their friends for a piece of homemade apricot pie and a glass of wine to celebrate a guests birthday.
We had some good times in their pool and cycled in the beautiful area filled with wine chateaus. It's not too far from St. Tropez and other pretty places like Aix-en-Provence.
We're coming back there this may, looking forward to it already!

More about our summer holiday...(and some of the more unpleasant surprises we ran into with), next time!

Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat

Hot summers bikride!

Salad at Hotel Saint Michel

CaraProensa, Flayosc

Petit-dejeuner de Marie-Cecile

Rice pudding

Pancakes and honey-yoghurt

The area

My Rooftop Garden

My rooftop garden

When I was still living in Rotterdam, Holland, I had a Rooftop Garden.

I had about a square meter on the roof which I filled with small pots. And some space in between the two roofs where I could put some bigger pots in a row. All in all about two square meters...not really a garden you would say.

But you couldn’t believe what I grew up there. I started in March with buying the pots, the soil and the seeds (mostly organic). I couldn’t choose, so I bought many different things to be able to see what would grow best in the Dutch climate.

I grew:

• Tomatoes, small and normal sized ones. They grew pretty fast and gave lovely plump tomatoes in the summer. I had three small pots (20 cm diameter). They grow upwards so they need to be supported with a stick of bamboo for instance.
• Beans. They grew very fast and I got a small crop every few weeks during early summer. I grew three plants in a bigger pot (40 cm diameter). Which was a bit crowded...

• Potatoes. Just let an organic (or any kind you like) sit in the sun by the window for a week until it begins to grow roots. Then put it in a big pot about 10 cm deep, so it does not get to see the sun. It takes about three months to grow, but then you’ll have the most velvety, creamy young potatoes you’ve ever eaten! And one potato can make up to 50 new ones, if your pot allows it.
• Lettuce. I grew different kinds. It’s quite hard to grow outside, when it’s still chilly every now and then. But it works!
• Fennel in big pots. Mine didn’t fatten very well. But they still tasted lovely. It just takes a while to grow.
• Beetroots, which didn’t grow very well. They stayed small, but tasted great!
• Courgette, wow! That really worked! I had just one plant in a medium pot and it gave me lots of good courgettes. I also used the flowers of course!
• Pumpkin, unfortunately these didn’t do it very well. It grew a lovely curly plant which went all the way up to the roof. And it even made some tiny pumpkins but they fell off after a while. It could be that they weren’t fertilized properly by the bees (who carry the much needed seed on their bellies). Hopefully that will work better next time.
• Hot red chillies, they grew pretty slow and some flowers fell off. But the lovely looking red chillies tasted great! P.s. I just grew them from the seeds of a regular red chilly. 
• Strawberries, from a bought plant. What a great feeling to eat your own strawberries!
• Then I grew fresh herbs like mint (from the seed, which is difficult, but it worked), thyme and basil. And some flowers, just because I like them so much!

I grew everything from seeds and started them up in the house as it was still too cold outside. This rooftop garden lasted for only one season but I’m planning to get a new one soon. The veg should grow a lot better here in Italy, where it’s already starting to feel like spring....

look at the courgettes in the upper left corner!

Snoes loved to sit with me while 'gardening'

To the fair!

Last summer I went to the Pitti Filati in Florence with my boss. It was about the hottest day of the year.
We took the fast train from Como to Firenze and arrived in a hop and a skip!
We saw lots of pretty threads and a great trend presentation with knitted tops, dresses and trousers on little dolls using all the threads made by the companies presenting in the fair. All inspired by the different parts of our world.

Luckily there is also always a lot of foody stuff to find at these places. Every stand has a snack ready for their customers and there was an amazing color presentation made with food and drinks....

Fresh pizza machine

pretty buns

cookies

drinks

The flowershop on viale Lecco...

On my way through Como, I passed the flower shop...

Lisa the Patissiere!

I know that sounds a bit ahead of things, but that's really how I felt yesterday!
I have been baking a lot lately as I need to practice on my patissier skills for who knows when...

I've been making all sorts of sweets. Such as the ordinary cake in all kinds of varieties such as chocolate/orange, lemon/almond, apple/marzipan. And last tuesday I made the famous Italian (from Napoli but introduced there by French cooks) dolce 'Baba al rum', which turned out to be the favorite dessert of my Love's colleague who I always send sweets to taste, which she doesn't seem to mind. I gave the original recipe a twist by filling them with orange-blossom-water marzipan, I made that morning.
It's a sort of brioche type of dough, which is (just after baking) soaked in a sugar syrup and liqueur. I chose Gran Marnier as it suited the marzipan so well.

For a while a had been looking for the recipe of my grandfathers favorite pastry 'Hazelnoot-schuim gebakje' but I could not find it anywhere. Yesterday I took the courage to make these sweet-bombs by putting a few recipes together.

Here is how I got to work:

For 4 individual cakes you'll need:

For the praline: (and a good amount extra to poor over ice, yoghurt,..)
- 250 gr hazelnuts, and about 12 hole ones for decoration (peeled and roasted)
- 50 ml water
- 250 gr sugar

Heat the nuts in a frying pan for a couple of minutes. In the meantime you put a thick-bottomed pan on the heat with the water and sugar, bring to boil. Chop the nuts finely in you blender ( not too fine, you want some crunchiness). When the syrup starts to brown,take off the heat, poor in the nuts and stir quickly. Poor the praline on a sheet of parchment paper and spread out. Leave to cool.
Crush with you rolling pin until fine. Prepare a plate with a good layer of the praline to roll your pastry in later on.

For the meringues:
- 150 gr egg whites
- 40 gr of praline (hey, you just made that, how convenient!)
- 175 gr of fine white sugar

Preheat the oven on 140 degrees C. Prepare two baking trays with parchment paper.
Beat the egg whites with the sugar (in three parts) until stiff and shiny. Mix in the praline with a spoon.
Fill a pastry bag (spuitzak/ sachetto per dolci) with the egg whites and make round shapes with a diameter of ca. 6 centimeter. You should get about 20 pieces.
Bake them for 65 minutes. And leave to cool.

Then for the mocha-cream you'll need:
- 60 gr of egg yolks
- 50 ml water
- 75 gr of white sugar
- 180 gr of butter (room temperature)
- a few drops of vanilla essence
- 2 spoons of strong coffee, cold

Beat the egg yolks with a dash of salt until light and airy. Make a syrup with the water and sugar in a thick-bottomed pan, boil until reduced to a semi-thick syrup without coloring! Poor the syrup slowly in with the egg yolks while beating. Beat until cooled to room-temperature. Beat, in another bowl, the butter until sof and airy. Mix in the vanilla. Then mix the butter in with the egg yolks, spoon by spoon. Until you have a smooth cream. Mix in the coffee until smooth again. Prepare a pastry bag with the cream.

To make all the ingredients into those fancy looking cakes:

Take a meringue as the bottom. With your pastry bag, make a layer of cream on top of it. Then put the next meringue on top. Fill up the space between the meringues and make a thin layer of cream all around the side, not on the top, so the praline sticks to it. Roll it trough the praline and so the side is completely covered. Take your pastry bag with cream and make those fabulous dots on the top until covered. sprinkle some whole nuts on the top.....Done! Now, just repeat for another three times and you're done!

Hazelnoot-schuim gebakje
My granddads favorite 

Meringues in the oven

Half 'Baba al Rum' with homemade apple compote and vanilla yoghurt

Lisa's patisserie

Christmas dinner 2010

I know it's a bit late but as I had to inform you about this christmas dinner anyway. I thought, better late then never.

However, it is not a very christmassy dinner at all. We started with a light aperativo just like the one we have in Como at our favorite bar 'da Gigi'; little pieces of bread with cream of pumpkin, sage and lard with honey. Accompanied by a light prosecco.

Then I made a sashimi of tuna and salmon bought by my aunt at the very nice organic supermarket in Amsterdam called 'Marqt'. I marinated the cubes in soy-sauce and served it with some wasabi and ginger past and a green salad.

Next was the main dish, marinated lamb chops with a dried fruit-sauce, steamed spinach and oven-baked potatoes.

And last but not least, my favorite part of almost every meal, the desert. A chipolata bavarois with savoiardi on the outside, Mmmmm! I made it the day before so the different flavors were all nicely combined. It was a fluffy sweet tasty pretty thing!

Ape da Gigi

Organic Tuna and Salmon sashimi

lambchops with spinach and patatoes

Bavarois

My mom's after desert

the table