Chocolate mousse

For another biologists' dinner, I brought dessert. As there were lots of kids, I made chocolate mousse, a suggestion of D. I don't eat chocolate myself so I also made an apple tart.
I found a recipe in the series 'La cuisine de A à Z' from 1970, belonging to my mother and before that to my grandparents I guess. When I started cooking as a kid, I often looked to these books.

Serves 4-5

200 g cooking chocolate
30 g butter
4 eggs
50 g sugar
1 packet vanilla sugar

Heat chocolate and butter at very low heat until the mixture is molten.
Add egg yolks to sugar and vanilla sugar and whisk until creamy.
Take chocolate off heat and add egg yolk mixture. Stir well.
Beat egg whites until very stiff, then add them gently to the chocolate.
Keep in the fridge for a few hours.

Note: if there are no children you might add a bit of cognac

A photograph might follow, if I remember to take one of the few spoons that are left.

Easter at the seaside

We went to collect Easter eggs

at the seaside

Present

I received a present which meant a lot to me.
It tasted delicious! Thanks D and Y!

Baie de Somme

Went to Baie de Somme in northern France for a weekend. Weather was misty at the beginning so we couldn't even see the spectacular landscape, but the last day made everything ok.

We saw seals when we went on a boat tour

we had delicious mussels on the beach behind St-Valéry-sur-Somme

and across the bay you could see le Crotoy where we had stayed.

Rice pudding

Someone in my household loves rice pudding, so I've started making this again.

It's a very easy recipe from the Farmer's Wives' Association cookbook (Boerinnebond), which taught generations of Flemish to cook.


Serves 2-4

1/2 l milk
50 gr rice (special rice for dessert or for risotto)
25 gr sugar
1 cinnamon stick

Add rice and cinnamon to milk and bring to the boil. Stir regularly.
When it boils, cover the pan and turn down the heat. Let it simmer on very low heat for 40 min, again stirring regularly. Add sugar 5 min before the end of cooking. Pour into a bowl or different small bowls.

Note: Last time the taste of cinnamon was very strong, so now I only used half a stick and took it out after 5 min of boiling.

Tiramisu

I cooked another lunch at my new appartment, for starters we had another beef broth and as a main course chicken couscous according to Claudia Roden, served with raisins and chick peas in separate dishes.

For dessert I made tiramisu, a special version without eggs. I got the recipe from Annabel at PicNik, a great place for tasty vegetarian lunches.

Tiramisu, version 1 - serves 10

1 packet of boudoir biscuits (Delhaize)
1 packet of Lotus speculoos
1 small pot of coffee
500 gr mascarpone
400 ml whipping cream
10 tbsp sugar
1,5 tbsp spirit e.g. grappa, rum
1 tbsp cocoa powder

Whisk cream until stiff, mix it delicately with mascarpone, sugar and spirit.
Pour coffee in a deep plate, quickly turn over the boudoir biscuits in it and fill the bottom of a dish with the biscuits.
Add cream mixture.
Dip only 1 side of speculoos biscuits in the plate with coffee and put them on top of the cream.
Add another cream layer.
Sprinkle with cocoa powder just before serving.

Note: I used apricot pálinka as spirit, which I brought from Hungary. It went very well in this dish.
For my own reference: I used my largest oven dish.

Before I always used a Tuscan recipe which my mother got in Italy.

Tira Missou, version 2 - serves 10

3 packets of cuiller biscuits (3 x 100 gr = 300 gr)
1 small pot of coffee
500 gr mascarpone
5 eggs
10 tbsp sugar
1,5 tbsp spirit
cocoa powder

Add egg yolks and sugar to mascarpone. Whisk egg whites and add them to the mixture, then add spirit.
Turn cuiller biscuits over in coffee, put them in dish. Cover with mascarpone mixture. Alternate more layers of biscuits and mixture, ending with mixture.
Sprinkle cocoa powder over dish before serving.

I'll add a picture if I can find it. As a nomad between appartments, I guess it must be on another computer.