Carmelita’s Cookitaly

White Chocolate Tart with Seasonal Berries

This is a very easy, very quick desert that looks and tastes great. If you can have a good dish without much effort I am all for it and this one you can put it together in moments. Keep your cupboard stocked and you can amaze your unexpected guests withj a stunning loking sweet .

It is not a traditional dish but one I picked up from an Italian cooking magazine a few years back. It is wholly Italian in it simplicity: just a few ingredients and no going mad adding this spice and that garnish. I have no desire to "put my twist" on recipes that are perfectly good already. Certainly not in the case of recipes that have been tried, tested and imporved over decades and at times centuries, but also when the recipe comes from a friend or a food magazione. If it works, no need to "fix it".

So here it is, just as I found it in "Sale e Pepe"  Or maybe it was the Italian "La Cucina Italiana": a recipe for a simple sweet that looks and tastes sublime.

Torta al Cioccolato Bianco con Frutti di Bosco

250g (9 ounces) of ready made puff pastry (or make your own pasta frolla or short crust if you prefer)

200g (7 ounces) white chocolate

400g fresh runny cheese ( for example a mixture of Ricotta and Robiola or Philadelphia)

120g (4 ounces) small berries in season - ideally the tiny elongated and super fragrant Alpine strawberries or woodland strawberries, or else whatever berries are at their seasonal best

optional

2 tablespoons sugar

half a teaspoon of powdered cinnamon

Confectioner's sugar to finish

• Pre heat the oven to 180° C (350° F).

• The flaky pastry I buy here comes on it own sheet of baking paper. If yours doesn't, flour and butter the tart tin. Delicately roll out the bought pastry.

• Place the pastry in the baking tin and pierce the base several times with a fork. Cover with baking paper and fill with dried beans . Bake at 180 ° for 20 minutes till crisp and golden.

• If when you lift off the paper the inside of the tart does not look well cooked, protect the edges with kitchen foil and return to the oven for a 5 minutes or so.

• While the pastry shell is baking, very briefly rinse the wild strawberries and leave to dry on kitchen paper. Break the chocolate into small pieces

• Place the two cheeses in a bowl with the cinnamon if using and whisk together with a wooden spoon or spatula till it is very smooth and well blended

• Melt the white chocolate over low heat in a water bath.

• Leave to cool a little then pour gradually onto the cream cheese and blend the two mixtures thoroughly. Taste and adjust for sweetness with sugar or honey if you wish. Refrigerate this filling for at least 2 hours.

• 10 minutes before serving, sprinkle the raspberries with the sugar and leave to macerate.

• Just before serving fill your pre-baked tart with the cold white chocolate "cream". Smooth the surface with a spatula or the back of a metal spoon.

• Pour the fruit all over the top of the filling and serve.

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Variations:

As you can see in the top photo, we made a little rasberry syrup by cooking the riper fruit with a little sugar and water.

You can sprinkle thickly with confectioner's sugar (icing sugar, powdered sugar) if you like. Do this only just before serving.

You can garnish with little sprigs of fresh mint and/ or chocolate curls or grated chocolate.

You can" bury" most of the fruit if you want a white colour top: Place most if the berries, reserving some for decoration, on the bottom of the cooled tart then spread or pour over the white “crema”. Smooth the surface over as before. Use the reserved berries to form the outline of a flower, circle, an initial, a heart shape etc.

Chicken, Apricot and Pine Nut Salad

Here's a fresh and zing-y easy salad that is low calorie, colourful and delicious, so long as all your ingredients are super fresh. If you poach the chicken and prep. the carrots the night before, you can assemble the salad in minutes for a light lunch the next day.

Here's what you need:

a boneless, skinless chicken breast

a small Cos lettuce

about 200g of Lamb's lettuce or baby spinach leaves

2 small carrots

5 plump dried apricots

a small handful of pine nuts

The grated zest of 1/4 of an orange

optional: 500 ml vegetable stock

evo and salt for dressing at table

And this is what you do:

The night before peel the carrot then continue peeling ribbons stopping when you reach the hard core. Place the ribbons in a bowl of water and set in the fridge so they crisp up and curl.

Clean the lettuces and gently spin dry. If keeping overnight wrap loosely in kitchen paper and then place in a plastic bag, which you press to exclude air. Keep in fridge overnight.

Poach the chicken at a gentle simmer in the hot vegetable stock or water. As soon as it is done (how long will depend on how thick it is but don't overcook it), place the chicken breast in cold water for 10 minutes then remove, wrap in plastic food film and refrigerate.

Toast the pine nuts slowly and carefully in a dry pan over medium low heat until toasted all the way through. When you can easily smell their slightly bacon-like aroma they are done.

Slice the apricots. Just before assembling the salad, slice the chicken breast neatly against the grain when it is still cold from the fridge.

Use a potato peeler to cut thin strips of pith-less zest from the orange, then slice into julienne strips using the tip of a small sharp knife. Alternatively use a ring zester if you have one.

Assemble the salad on a wide shallow platter. Make a bed of the two kinds of green salad leaves, top with the chicken and apricots, scatter over the pine nuts and orange zest and finish with the drained curly carrot ribbons.

Dress at table with excellent evo and salt.

Ring the changes:

No apricots or almonds in your store cupboard? You can use celery, raisins, walnuts and apples with the chicken breast and include a few red salad leaves for a change. Or try combining with sliced red onions or spring onions, pineapple pieces, sliced radishes and some sweet corn kernels.

Fennel and Orange Winter Salad

I was only in Bologna's Mercato del Mezzo to take photos for my Facebook Cook Italy page when it hit me,  the fragrance from the Tarocco oranges I was shooting.

Instant decision: I just had to make an Insalata di Tarocco e Finocchio, my absolute favourite Italian winter salad, the fennel and orange salad from Sicily.  When the weather conditions are right to produce a thermal shock -  very cold nights after relatively warm clear sky days -  the Tarocco oranges turn from "blond" to red, and these were just turning, judging by the two sliced orange halves in the display.

     

Making this winter salad is a simple matter. Remove the first leaf of the fennel bulb and slice as much of it as you like in the way that you prefer. Peel the oranges to remove skin, pith and the membranes enclosing the fillets, here's a nice Link to The Kitchn that shows you exactly how . Finely chop some flat leaf parsley, assemble and drizzle with olive oil.

There are a few traditional additions of which I sometimes add one or more: finely sliced green leek tops, black olives, or very tiny slivers of salted herring or anchovy, the winter fish for days when the sea was too rough for the fishermen to go out.

Simple but spectacular to look at, and it is also very refreshing with that crisp crunch from the anise flavored fennel. Let me know if you like it or if you have other orange salads you enjoy.

Pork chop with sage and scallions, fennel and potato puree

For a quick, simple and very tasty lunch today I cooked lovely juicy shoulder pork chops, delicately fat marbled and always more tender than loin chops. These were especially good as they came from Sadurano, a wonderful farm on the hills above the historic town of Castrocaro Terme (Forli' & Cesena province) that has been completely organic since 1982.

First I made a bulb fennel and potato puree by cooking a sliced fennel bulb in boiling salted water in one pan, while in a separate pan I cooked two unpeeled floury potatoes starting them off in cold water. This made enough puree for 4 servings. When both were very soft I peeled the potatoes and then squished everything through a potato ricer, to hold back all the stringy parts of the fennel and make the puree nice and lump free. I used a little of the already salted fennel water to soften them, so no extra salt was needed, and kept the puree warm on very low heat while I cooked the chops. I had intended to add some milk and butter to the puree but it tasted perfect just as it was so I left well enough alone. Good decision!

For the pork chop, I shredded a few sage leaves that survived the snow, and thinly sliced four scallions. I warmed up a tablespoon of good olive oil in a large non-stick skillet and then browned the chops in a single layer on both sides, a few minutes per side. The beautiful chops shed very little fat and absolutely no water during this process, wonderful. I then added the scallions and sage to the pan and seasoned with salt and just ground white pepper, and after a minute or so I deglazed the pan with white wine from Tenuta Godenza, a local winery - I love it when I can be really local in my cooking!

Then I covered the pan and left the chops to simmer covered for about 10, maybe 12 minutes while I set the table. There was still quite a lot of liquid so I took the lid off and let the pan juices reduce to a beautiful creamy glaze and the chops were ready. I served them with a little mound of soft and fluffy fennel potato puree on the side, home made bread, and a glass of young red Sangiovese from the wonderful La Zerbina estate.

Buon Appetito!