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Maria Shebets

And sweets....

Sweets

Gellewza grape clafoutis

Gellewza grape_

It was such a lucky find! While buying some fruits and vegetables in Gozo, I stumbled upon the box of Gellewza grapes. Without thinking for too long, I bought a big bag of them and half of it was finished on my way back to Malta.

Gellewza is a beautiful dark-skinned grape variety that is little-planted on the island nowadays, though up until 1990s Gellewza along with another native variety, Girgentina, were the only grapes grown in Malta and Gozo. Gellewza is used mostly to produce semi-sparkling Rose by Marsovin and Delicata winemakers. Besides that, it is also added to the reds, softening the spiciness of Syrah, for instance.

Gellewza grape’s flavour is very bright; it spins between the strawberries, plums and cherries. My clafoutis turned out sooo delicious!

Don’t be bothered by seeds, it’s not a big deal as they add extra flavour to the dessert. Remember that original French clafoutis recipe calls for the whole cherries with pits. Without doubts, when it comes to food, we can totally trust French people!

Since Gellewza grape has a cherry flavor, I thought it would be nice to add some almonds. I left the grapes to macerate a little bit in almond liquor and added some ground almonds along with the flour.

I hope you will try it once!

Gellewza grape clafoutis

Serves 6

Ingredients

  • 4 tbsp of Disaronno Amaretto
  • 450 gr gellewza grapes
  • 100 ml full fat milk
  • 150 ml cream
  • 1 vanilla pod
  • 3 eggs
  • 100 gr caster sugar
  • 2 tbsp plain flour
  • 2 tbsp ground almonds
  • A pinch of salt
  • Butter for greasing
  • Icing sugar for sprinkling

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 190 C.
  2. Wash and drain grapes, let them dry. Sprinkle with Disaronno Amaretto over them and leave to macerate.
  3. Put the milk, cream (both room temperature) and vanilla pod into a small saucepan and bring to boil over a low heat. Turn off the heat and leave to infuse.
  4. Place eggs (room temperature) and sugar in a mixing bowl. Whisk until creamy. Add the flour, ground almonds and salt, then whisk until smooth.
  5. Remove the vanilla pod from the milk. Scrape out the seeds and add to the milk, mix and add into the egg mixture. Beat until smooth.
  6. Grease an ovenproof dish and sprinkle with caster sugar.
  7. Drain the grapes, place them in the dish and pour the batter over.
  8. Bake for 30-35 minutes, but be guided by the power of your oven. Take clafoutis out when its nicely coloured. Remove and let it cool a little bit before serving. Sprinkle with icing sugar.

Notes

You may use any other fruits or berries instead of gellewza grapes. 

grape_ Gellewza clafoutis

 

Sweets

Roasted apricot and cardamom sorbet

roasted apricots sorbet

I think we all need something to cheer us up on Monday mornings. From time to tome we can switch from Bircher muesli and avocado on rye to something more intriguing and we will survive.

So, today I’m having roasted apricot sorbet dressed with olive oil and honey and sprinkled with bee pollen.

I did a small bunch of this effortless and satisfying sorbet on Friday morning. My friend and I were sitting, and waiting until it will set to a proper state to be scooped beautifully. We were waiting and waiting….and waiting….And luckily for me we decided to do something more productive and went shopping. But after, honestly, we worked hard.

So, today I opened the fridge, a row of beautiful glass jars were standing still like soldiers, waiting to provide me with super nutrition. It was my standard set of pre-made super healthy breakfasts like vanilla Bircher muesli, coconut milk chia pudding and cashew milk yoghurt. All homemade from scratch. I had a glance at the sad looking darkened avocado, and I realized I don’t have any rye… And then the choice became obvious. I started my day with this luscious roasted apricot sorbet.

I hope you had breakfast as delicious as mine!

sorbet in the making

Note: 

I try to cut down the amount of sugar as much as possible in my recipes but please note that this amount of sugar is enough for rather sweet apricots. Even if your apricots were slightly sour I wouldn’t recommend increasing the sugar too much. It is better to have slightly tart and sour sorbet then sticky and overly sweet one.

If you have never tried to use the olive oil as a dressing for your sorbet, why not trying it right now? It’s really nice, honestly. Especially mixed with honey. Enjoy!

Roasted apricot and cardamom sorbet

To make about 750 ml

Ingredients

  • 1 kg sweet local apricots
  • 1 tbsp caster sugar
  • 50 gr castor sugar
  • A small handful of green cardamom pods
  • 1 tbsp. of rose water
  • Honey, olive oil, fresh lemon juice, bee pollen for dressing

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 200 C.
  • Wash and dry apricots thoroughly and cut them in halves. Put apricots on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Sprinkle apricots with 1 tbsp of sugar and roast for 25- 30 minutes. Fruits will become very tender and juicy. Take out of the oven and let them cool.
  • While you are roasting the apricots, prepare a syrup. Gently bash the cardamom pods to open them up. Pour 200 ml of water into a small pan, add the sugar and cardamom. Bring to the boil on a medium heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Off the heat and let to cool and infuse.
  • Take out the apricots, remove the stones and put the fruits in blender with all juices. Remove the cardamom pods from the syrup and add the rose water. Pour the syrup over the apricots and whizz until very smooth.
  • Pass the mixture through a fine sieve to remove the skin and fibre. Leave the mixture to cool a little bit, and then place it in the fridge to chill.
  • To make a sorbet, use an ice-cream maker according to the manufacture instructions.
  • If you don’t have one just put the mixture to the plastic container and let it freeze for an hour and a half, then take out of the freezer, scoop the mixture into a blender bowl, and whizz it well. Put it back to a plastic container and freeze for an hour. Repeat 2-3 times. Doing this will help you to get smooth texture.
  • To serve take the sorbet out of the freezer and leave it at room temperature for 10 minutes.
  • Mix equal proportion of olive oil, honey and a tiny drop of lemon juice and whisk well to emulsify.
  • Scoop sorbet into a nice bowl, drizzle with dressing and sprinkle with bee pollen.

roasted apricots sorbet with honey and olive oil

Sweets

Chocolate ravioli with apricot filling

deep fried ravioli with apricot filling

 

Chocolate ravioli is a fancy dish, which I advise you trying at least once. I was lucky to find some super sweet apricots at the local market one of these days. Later on, while relaxing on the sun and enjoying these fruits, I was thinking of a perfect company for them. And I thought of chocolate… After some serious tests, I can say that apricots go well with chocolate but there is one condition – the fruits have to be really sweet. Do not try to use under ripe apricots with chocolate, as they are too sharp for it.

ingredients for ravioli

making chocolate ravioli_

apricot filling

chocolate ravioli with apricot filling

These deep fried chocolate ravioli turned out to become my very new favorite combination. They just need to be slightly cooked, so that the filling won’t have time to change a lot and you will find it at the same state you put it inside the raw dough. The dough itself has a nice chocolaty flavor, strong enough to emphasize on the sweetness of the apricot filling. The most important trick is not to overcook the ravioli – otherwise you risk ending up with burned bitter dough and not so tasty filling.

deep fried chocolate ravioli with apricot filling

Chocolate ravioli with apricot filling

To serve approximately 18 ravioli 10 cm diameter

Ingredients

Filling:

  • 500 gr apricots (stoned)
  • 50 gr castor sugar

Dough:

  • 115 gr flour
  • 1 egg + yolk (reserve the egg white)
  • 20 gr cacao powder
  • 15 gr sugar

Plus

  • 1 liter sunflower oil to fry
  • Icing sugar to dust

Instructions

Filling:

  • Roughly chop the stoned apricots and place them in the heavy bottomed saucepan. Add sugar and 2 table spoons of water.
  • Slowly bring to a boil. Cook on a medium heat stirring from time to time for about half an hour until apricot mixture thickens and becomes like a jam. Transfer to a bowl and leave to cool.

 Dough:

  • Sift the flour with the cacao powder add the sugar and mix everything. Put ingredients on the working surface and make a well in the middle to place eggs. Mix ingredients with your hands to make a smooth dough adding 1 or 2 tablespoons of water if needed or a little more flour. Wrap in a plastic film and put in the fridge for about 15 minutes.
  • Set up the pasta machine or get your rolling pin ready.
  • If you use the pasta machine, divide your dough into halves. Wrap the second halve in a plastic and roll first one to make it around ½ cm thick. Pass trough the pasta machine on a widest setting, fold it and pass again. Repeat three times. Adjust the pasta machine setting (reduce the thickness of rollers) and repeat tree times more. Reduce the thickness again and repeat until you will rich almost last one setting. Don’t make dough too thin, as it can split up during frying.
  • Lay rolled out dough on the lightly dusted working surface and cut out discs using a cookie cutter or whatever you have on hand.
  • Place a small amount of filling on the each disc leaving a border. Don’t be tempted to put too much filling, otherwise the ravioli may explode during frying. Lightly beat the remaining egg white and brush the borders of the discs with it. Cover ravioli with a clean kitchen towel and repeat the process with the second half of the dough.

Process:

  • To fry ravioli pour the sunflower oil in a deep pan and heat it up to 175 C (it is best to use special thermometer if you have one).
  • Carefully dip the ravioli down into the hot oil and cook not more than 1-1, 5 minute. This should be enough to make them golden without burning them. You can use a skimmer to lower floating ravioli into the oil to make them golden from all sides. Cook in batches and when ready, place them on a paper towel to get rid of the excessive oil.

Dust with some icing sugar end enjoy!

Notes

You can prepare the filling even the night before.

preparing apricots deep fried chocolate ravioli_

Sweets

Naspli with baked labneh

fresh naspli

I was curious about this fruit when I first saw it few years ago on Ta Qali market. I bought two packs of naspli, as if I was sure I’d love it. I came home and started my investigation….

Fuzzy thick skin, little dark spots here and there. I washed one, cut it in half and saw big seeds with a beautiful golden shine. I could smell a very delicate sweet floral aroma. The succulent light yellowish flash was firm and smooth; it reminded me of an apricot. Finally, I tasted it. I must admit I fell in love with naspli from the first bite! Soft and juicy texture, slightly tart, sweet and mellow at the same time. The flavor of naspli resembles plum, peach, apricot and apple. Now this is one of my favourite fruits. Even though some people find its flavor too simple, I found it very delicate and unique.

My further research helped me to find out that naspli (or loquat) is also packed with vitamins and minerals. Fruit contain vitamin-A, vitamin B-6, potassium, iron, copper, calcium and manganese. Being rich in dietary fiber and pectin, naspli is also relatively low in calories.

When you choose your naspli, I advise you to be guided by their smell – ripe fruits have a pleasant sweet aroma. Spots are quite common and do not necessarily mean that the fruit has gone bad – on the contrary, most of the time spotted ones taste sweeter. Besides that, I would recommend to choose those naspli that are soft to touch and deep in colour.

Please note that the seeds are toxic and not edible!

Last year after I got myself a big box of fresh naspli and started to experiment. I made naspli pickles, naspli in syrup, few chutneys, I baked and poached naspli and tried to make some naspli jam, of course.

Today I want to share with you a really simple recipe of poached naspli, which could be used as a topping for yoghurt, porridge or even ice cream. Drizzle your dish with some honey and mmm..! I like serve them with labneh slice, which is also really easy to make.

P.S. if you don’t have labneh you can substitute it with drained ricotta.
preparing naspli

Baked labneh slice with chamomile poached naspli

To fill 23 square tin

Ingredients

for labneh/ricotta:

  • 500 gr labneh/ricotta
  • 2 eggs, lightly beaten
  • Zest of ½ lemon
  • Juice of 1 medium lemon, 50-60 ml
  • 1 vanilla pod
  • 100 gr caster sugar
  • 1 tbsp flour

 

for chamomile poached naspli:

  • a couple of handfuls of naspli
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • ½ cup of dried chamomile flowers
  • ½ cup of caster sugar
  • Water

Instructions

For labneh/ricotta:

  1. Preheat the oven to 150 C. Line baking tin with a baking paper. Cut vanilla pod lengthwise and scarp vanilla beans with a blunt side of a knife. Mix vanilla beans very well with some sugar.
  2. Put all ingredients and the remaining sugar in a big bowl and mix very well until smooth.
  3. Transfer mixture to the baking tin and bake for 30 minutes.
  4. Leave it to cool. It will firm up. Then refrigerate it.

For poached naspli:

  1. Wash naspli very well. Prepare some acidulated water by mixing lemon juice with water. Naspli become brown very quickly when cut and keeping them in water with lemon juice helps to prevent the discolouration.
  2. Cut each fruit in a half and remove the seeds and membrane, cut in half again and put in acidulated water.
  3. In a small pan mix chamomile flowers with 1,5 cups of water and bring to a simmer. Simmer for few minutes, remove from the heat and let it steep for about 10- 15 minutes. Then drain the liquid and discard the flowers.
  4. Put the liquid in a medium pan and add 1,5 more cups of water and sugar. Bring to a simmer and stir to dissolve the sugar. Cut a circle from baking paper the same diameter with a pan.
  5. Drain naspli and put it in a pan. Cover with baking paper circle and small plate (to keep them immersed in poaching liquid). Off the heat.
  6. Fruits are very delicate and will cook in residual heat. Let them cool in their liquid.
  7. Drain naspli and reduce poaching liquid to a syrup. Let it cool a little bit. Put naspli in a syrup, stir very carefully and arrange over the labneh slice!

Notes

Labneh is made of strained plain thick yoghurt. To make labneh at home: just mix the yoghurt with a good pinch of salt, put it into muslin cloth, tide the ends of the cloth and hang it over a bowl to capture the liquid it releases. Let it drain for 24-48 hours. In order to obtain 500 gr of labneh, you will need approximately 800 gr of yoghurt (but it may vary).

baked labneh

 

Sweets

Red Velvet Cake

decorated cake

We decided to start with something simple but delicious, so we chose a RED VELVET cake as an example.

Basically, Red Velvet is a sponge cake which is made using the whisking method to combine the eggs and sugar until the light mixture has thickened and leaves a ribbon trail when whisk is lifted. There are other methods for this, such as creaming, rubbing-in and melting, but in this case the whisking method is best. Sifted flour is folded into the egg and sugar mixture very gently, in order to keep as much air as possible. Trapped air bubbles will cause the cake to rise under the action of the heat. Depending on the recipe, eggs may be separated prior whisking. Sometimes, the eggs and sugar are whisked over a gentle heat (such as a bain marie), which speeds up the dissolving of the sugar and thickens the eggs. This method is good for holding as many air bubbles as possible.

cutting the cake

Red Velvet Cake

to make 18 cm 4 layer cake

Ingredients

For cake:
  • 340 gr. of flour
  • 300 gr. of sugar
  • 300 ml of sunflower (vegetable) oil
  • 1 spoon of cacao
  • 1/4 tsp of salt
  • 1 tsp of baking soda
  • 2 tsp of baking powder
  • 3 eggs (room temperature)
  • 280 ml of buttermilk*
  • 1 tsp of vanilla extract
  • 2 tsp of dark red food coloring
For cream cheese frosting: 
  • 660 gr. of cream cheese “Philadelphia”, softened to room temperature
  • 225 gr. of unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
  • 200 gr. of icing sugar
  • 3 tsp of vanilla extract

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 170 °C. Line the baking forms with baking paper or just butter and flour them to avoid sticking.
  2. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt together in a large bowl. Set aside.
  3. Using an electric mixer, beat the eggs with sugar on a high speed until they form a fluffy and light foamy cream (they must triple in volume). Add vanilla extract and food coloring.
  4. Add baking soda to the buttermilk and set aside for 5 minutes. Then, add the oil and mix well.
  5. With the mixer on a low speed, add the dry ingredients and buttermilk mix in three alternating batches, mixing each addition until incorporated.
  6. Make sure that batter is dark red, if not, add more food coloring.
  7. Divide the batter into 4 equal parts using kitchen scale. Pour the batter into the cake forms.
  8. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and cool the cakes on a wire rack.

 

How to make cream cheese frosting

  1. Using an electric mixer, beat the butter on a low speed until it becomes soft and creamy.
  2. Add the icing sugar to the butter and continue beating on a high speed until the mixture has a smooth texture and an off-white colour.
  3. Reduce the speed to medium, add the cream cheese and vanilla extract and beat until smooth.
  4. Chill the frosting for a couple of minutes before using.

Notes

For buttermilk: you can either use kefir or mix room temperature milk with 2 tbsp of lemon juice after putting it aside for approximately 10 minutes.

cutted cake

 

Big thanks to Anastasia for the above recipe and to Renny’s farm for beautiful edible flowers.

Copyright 2021 Maria Shebets