Moleskine 48 & 49

Struggle for life in comics

Inspired by the new catalogue IKEA !

Sticky Toffe Pudding with Ludovica

Today we decided to bake a sticky toffee pudding from Nigella. One of the key ingredient is the muscovado sugar, which is an unrefined brown sugar with a strong molasses flavor. 

Combine 90g muscovado sugar with 175g self raising flour. Make sure the muscovado has no lumps anymore. In a jar mix together 125g milk, 1 egg and 50g melted butter. Pour these liquid ingredients with the sugar & flour and combine well.

Chop 200g of dates (weighted without stones) and add to the preparation.

Transfer the whole thing in a tall oven dish (we used 20 cm diameter). It does not look very full but it will gets bigger.

Sprinkle over 175g muscovado sugar and 25g of butter in dots.

For us, it looks like half the content consists of the preparation and another half is occupied by the sugar. I have to say it looks a lot of sugar however it is not overpowering at all at the end. 

The intriguing part is then to add 500mL of literally boiling water on top of that.

We now have one third of the preparation and two thirds of sugar + water. I was (a bit) skeptical at that point.
Put it straight in he oven at 190°C for 45 minutes.

The whole thing got bigger; the top should be springy and spongy; the water, sugar & butter have turned in a beautiful sticky sauce.

Leave to rest 10-15 minutes; it will retract a bit.

Serve warmish with cream, yogurt, or something similar.
It is truthfully awesome. A must try.

Gnocchi with Ludovica

Since I am now living with Ludovica and we both enjoy cooking, we sometimes make recipes together. This week we did with gnocchi. Only two ingredients are needed : super fine pasta flour grade 00 and floury potatoes. Proportions looks simple : 100g of flour for 500g potatoes. Actually, it is more a guideline and exact quantity of flour has to be adapted to obtain the consistency.

First step is to cook potatoes, boiling with the skin so that they keep their flavor.

They should be slightly undercooked.

Mash the potatoes thinly (we passed them through a grating device) so that you do not have any lumps.

Mix the mashed potatoes with the flour 00. As you want your gnocchi to be soft and moist, you should try to use the least flour possible, meaning that the dough will be sticky. So best is not to overwork it.

Roll the dough in long sausages thick like a thumb. Like earlier, try not to add too much flour so that you keep the softness & moistness.

Cut them the size you like your gnocchi and shape them with a fork so that they can trap the sauce. Ideally you want stripes and gauge to attract a maximum of sauce.

That is the step we clearly need to improve...

Put them in boiling salted water.

The gnocchi once cooked will start floating. The bigger they are the slower it goes. 

Pick up the gnocchi that are floating and serve immediately.

Serve with tomato sauce (tomatoes, a clove of garlic, a bay leaf, a spoon of sugar gently cooked while you make the gnocchi for example) and fresh grated parmesan. Eat right after you cook them.
Totally worth the effort, which is actually not big. Really soft & moist, nothing to do with the ones you can buy already made in a standard supermarket.

Moleskine 45 & 47

I love this set-up and will try to make a step-by-step next time
(already tried here)

Urban life vs Nature

Moleskine 42 & 44

This page has been a real mess for a long time so it was a puzzle to make it right

A dreamy girl looking beyond the gate
(All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental)