Sunday, September 22, 2013

Curried hummus

This morning started out with rain, and plenty of stuff to do around the kitchen. First of all, the chickpeas cooked all day on low in the slow cooker yesterday needed to be converted into hummus. This time I used a farmers market inspiration of curried hummus and created my own version. – A classic hummus recipe but with a dash of curry and a tablespoon of maple syrup. Delight!

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Curried hummus (ca 2 cups)

  • 2 cups cooked chickpeas, liquid reserved 
  • 1/2 tsp fleur de sel (or kosher salt), or to taste
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1/4 cup tahini  (sesame paste)
  • 2 Tbsp reserved chickpea liquid (or water)
  • a few drops of Tabasco sauce, to taste
  • 1/2 – 1  teaspoon curry powder (start with less)
  • 1 TB maple syrup
Place all ingredients into a food processor (except the salt) and process until the hummus is finely pureed. Scoop into a bowl and drizzle with a good quality olive oil and serve.  

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Sunday, September 15, 2013

Swiss Plum Tart

Today I finally managed to bake an authentic Swiss “Waehe”, a plum tart with a very thin dough crust, fresh ground hazelnuts (filberts), Italian plums, and a custard made with eggs, cream, milk and some vanilla and sugar. – Delight!

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Swiss Plum Tart (“Zwetschgenwaehe”)

Regular 9 inch size tart pan, or a smaller and 2 mini ones.

  • homemade or store-bought short pastry or puff pastry (I used a frozen store-bought pie dough)
  • 1 pound Italian plums (or apricots, apples, or cherries), pitted and cut in quarters
  • 3-4 tablespoon of ground hazelnuts or almonds
  • 2 eggs
  • 100 ml milk
  • 100 ml whipping cream
  • 2 teapsoons of flour
  • 1-3 tablespoons of sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract


Preheat oven to 425F degrees (220C).

Layer a pie tin with thin short pastry or puff pastry, sprinkle the base slightly with ground hazelnuts or almonds. baked in the oven for 7 min to give the crust some stability.

Mix the prepared plums with 1 TB sugar. Once the pie crust is prebaked, remove it from the oven, and arrange the plum slices in a round pattern.  Add 1 TB sugar sprinkled over the fruit and bake in the oven on the lower part for 10 minutes

Meanwhile mix eggs with the milk, whipping cream and flour, add 2 more tablespoons of sugar. Season with vanilla extract. Pour the custard mix over the fruitcake and bake for another 20 minutes. Let it set for 10 min before serving taking it out of the pan. Serve with some whipped cream.

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Italian plums, pie dough with hazelnuts, and sugared plums.

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Arranged plums in pre-baked crust. Custard added to prebaked fruit.

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Baking!

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Setting for 10 minutes.

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Bon appetite!