Super Flaky Pastry from Italy, yumm.

The baking challenge for this month turned into an even greater challenge than I realized! We were to choose to make homemade ricotta cheese or candied orange peel, to make a dough, and then finally to attempt to make Sfogliatelle Riccia, Sfogliatelle Frolla, or American inspired Lobster Tails. My initial plan was to make the ricotta then to make the Riccia dough, however I had a small, water issue, my kitchen flooded on the day I had planned to make the dough. By flooding I mean, about an inch to an inch and a half, of water that was standing in my kitchen, from our ice maker in our freezer that broke. We had a cleaning crew that had a large number of fans blowing air around our home attempting to dry out, our floor, kitchen floor, cabinetry, and walls; however none of this before my sweet husband attempted to extract the water from the floor.

Now the other thing that should be noted is that I had 15 air movers, a dehumidifier, and my appliances were pulled out from their assigned spaces.

 

 

This made for a miserable few days, fortunately, the flood occurred on Thursday, and we were moving our appliances back in on the next Tuesday night. I will add however that the floor, cabinetry, many baseboards, and doors still need to be replaced so my kitchen counters are still a wreck.

On to the Challenge:

Blog-checking lines: Sandie of the lovely blog, Crumbs of Love, was our November hostess. Sandie challenged us to make a traditional Italian dessert, along with it's American version - Sfogliatelle (or better known in the US -lobster tails!) The flakey, 1000 layers of super thin dough, shaped into a horn and filled with a scrumptious filling. Cosi buono!

I ended up making the ricotta two times, and I was thoroughly surprised at how easy and delicious it was! After the first attempt as I did not want to throw it all out I made a crockpot penne pasta which was much like a layered lasagna. It was very tasty and rich, not to mention, the hubs loved it! So once my kitchen was back together to a certain extent, I decided I was going to give this challenge another attempt, and I made more Ricotta.

Milk and Cream awaiting boiling.

Ricotta after sitting in the cheese cloth for a few hours.

 

 

 

The second round of Ricotta did not make as much as the first batch, so I am not sure if I had an issue with the cream, boiled the milk too long, or if my ingredients were not fresh enough as I was using the dairy just before expiration dates, and the lemons I had for a while.

 

The next step was to make the dough and let it sit over night in the fridge, the dough was gorgeous! I would love to find multiple uses for the dough it was so pretty! Once my dough had time to sit overnight, it was time to tackle the rolling it out to an incredibly thin sheet. I was able to use my pasta hand crank dough roller and had a bit of trial and error but came up with a way to roll thin batches, stretching small sections, and then layering them together, rolling the log up with the shortening and butter mixture.

 

This is my dining room table being utilized for the rolling of the dough.

The thinly stretched dough with the shortening and butter mixture.

Here is the dough in the process of being rolled into the log before cutting.

 

 

I was so proud of my ability to get the dough so thin and the fact that I was able to use my pasta roller made me thrilled!!!! I was so fortunate that I had the pasta roller, and am just so impressed by the bloggers who had to utilize their hand rolling skills only.

 

 

After the dough is rolled up it sits in the fridge for a few hours to solidify the shortening and butter. Then you get to cut the slices. I was amazed to see how you really could see the layers of each cut piece.

 

This photo is a bit bright, and does not do the layers much justice, but you can see them a little bit.

 

This one is a little better, which I took with my phone.

 

 

The next step is to push the little layers our much like a collapsing cup so there is space for the filling. The filling is a semolina, homemade ricotta, and traditionally candied orange peel, I opted for candied cherries, as one of the other bloggers utilized that combination, and I was pleased to follow that bloggers lead. Here are the photos of my filling.

 

First the semolina after it had been cooked and chilled, much like a chilled polenta.

Ricotta and semolina just before mixing.

Mixture with the cherries added to it.

 

The final step was to fill the pastry and then bake it. The filling was a very thick filling, and when I initially tried to put it in a zip lock bag and use that to fill the pastry the bag split in several places. Once I located my pastry bags though I was ready to fill and bake!

 



 

 

 

These turned out so wonderful. I enjoyed eating a few with my husband at home, and took the remainder to work.

 

Don't they look wonderful!

The crunch was amazing, you see my little Gigi in the background listening while tilting her head at the crunch.

 

 

When I say there is an amazing crunch, I am not kidding, I had to call a few folks just to share how crunchy it was. Such a decadent treat, and one I had to share with work. 

 

I had so much of the  filling left over that I decided to try the Frolla as it would be relatively easy to do on a day that I had to work as well as getting pre-work sleep. Everyone at work loved the efforts of both type of Sfogliatelle.

 

Thank you so much Emma! She is enjoying the Frolla type.

 

This challenge was so fun, and I had grand ideas of making more with my mom to enjoy with our Thanksgiving meal, however due to illness, the dread allergy cold, we opted to pass on this as it is a lot of work. I plan though to make these again in the future, maybe come up with an idea to make a savory filling, utilizing polenta, cheese, and something else. I hope you enjoyed reading and thanks for stopping by! 



 

Drowning in the possibilities, a Soup disaster.

Sopa Castellana an interesting Spanish Soup, that I was beyond excited to try to make. It has been chilly some in the evenings here in the Austin area and I thought soup would be a great thing to make one night and went for it. I ran to the grocery, the special grocery and got the necissary ingredients, though I will say I did not purchase veal bones, I purchased a shank along with a shank of beef; this was a cost prohibitive soup, the veal was expensive, regardless I did the best with what I had an gave it a go.

Blog-checking lines: Our November Daring Cooks’ hostess was Begoña, who writes the beautiful blog, Las recetas de Marichu y las mías. Begoña is from Spain and didn’t want to go with the more common challenges of paella or gazpacho, she wanted to share with us another very popular recipe from Spain that we don’t see as often called Sopa Castellana which is a delicious bread soup!

So what's a girl to do. I had the recipe and was ready to go, I should say this was my first time making beef stock from scratch. I often use a boxed stock, my go to is the Kitchen basics, but I though I would give it a go. I mean it is boiling meat, bones, vegetables, and water for a lengthy amount of time, skimming of the gunk and then you should have liquid gold right? Wrong! My stock was terrible, it tasted more like vegetable water with only the flavor of the vegetables coming through, celery to be exact. I was so disappointed but kept on going thinking maybe I was just overly picky and used to salty stock since I use store bought so often. On to the soup.

I had the Serrano Ham, the garlic, and the bread all ready to go and it was cooking away in the pot, boy were my expectations high. Once that was ready I added the stock, which from here on out shall be called vegetable water, and gently simmered the soup with such high hopes. Once it had simmered it's required amount of time, I pulled my soup crocks out which I use almost exclusively for my French Onion Soup, and began ladling in the soup over some bread that I had in the bowl. Then I added the egg, one to each bowl as it was just the hubs and me; and waited for the temperature of the soup to do it's thing, apprehensively so, as I am a stickler about cooked eggs.

Needless to say that nights dinner ended up being Whataburger for us. My soup never recovered from being just vegetable water. Additionally between the Serrano Ham and the olive oil it was like a giant oil slick on the top. I contemplated trying one of the other options available to us from the hostess, but decided against it. I may try one of the others in the future but it will not be any time soon.

So what went wrong with the vegetable water? I did a bit of research and I can only come up with a few options. The first I used too much meat and not enough bone. According to what I have found you really need several pounds of bones, preferably roasted and if they are big marrow bones they should be cracked a bit. The next place I went wrong is once the bones are in the water according to the research I have done they cook for hours, I am not talking the two or three hours suggested in the recipe I had, but 17hours- 2 or 3 days, this is so not happening in my house. Then the other things I read were regarding the vegetables that are added, many said to be cautious about the amount of celery you add, as it can overpower, I am going to guess that means not the whole bunch like I added. Additionally my research informed me that chicken stock is more manageable then beef or veal stock. Regardless the most important thing in this whole experience was that I enjoyed the process, if I am not enjoying the process then it is not worth it to me, if I am at least enjoying the process then while the meal was not a success the experience was. So now onto the photos...

The meat, pre vegetable water status.

 

Here is the soup waiting for the egg to cook.

 

Here is the soup when it is "ready." Ashley and I both tasted it, we were both disappointed.

 

 

I have other photos to share, but at this moment I am not certain where my camera is as our kitchen flooded following the preparation of this dish, and things got moved around haphazardly; should I find it I will add more later. I will finish with this last thought, even if it is a disaster it is important to try making and eating new things, there are always other options around the corner if it is a failure. Happy Cooking.