In this episode, Charles, Markus and Grace leave their comfort zones. The scene is Grace’s tiny-ass apartment and its accompanying tiny-ass kitchen. The theme is Italian. The med students are on mid-year break and have ample time to procrastinate and ignore the mountain of work that lies ahead of us. A whole afternoon is dedicated to the project and consists of sipping long blacks, admiring Grace’s decorative knick knacks and attempting to cook/bake/assemble food. The afternoon whiles away and just as the coffee turns into the sweetest damn Moscato you ever tasted, the crisp afternoon turns to night. Two glasses of wine is no challenge for Markus’ tolerance and conversation devolves inexorably into med school chat. A choice is made to play Diablo 3 in order to stave off shit yarns. It was a good day.
Sounds like the start of a shitty screenplay or something.
Real talk: cooking can be solitary business so its real nice to get together and just cook something. I decide to do dessert for literally the first time in my life; Tiramasu. With the added challenge of baking my own biscuits. Just buying it from the store is not nearly as fun. Charles and Grace handle the savoury department, having excelled in the dessert department before.
Menu
Starter – Garlic Bread cause who doesn’t love garlic bread
Main – Gnocchi with venison sausage, pecorino dolce and wilted baby spinach
Dessert – Tiramasu
I seriously need to up my photography game cause it’s pretty shit right now. I took like two pictures and they look like shit so I apologise.
Recipe for Biscuits (Savoiardi)
Ingredients
- 4 eggs, separated
- a splash of vanilla essence
- 145 g of caster sugar
- 110 g of sifted flour
- a pinch of salt
Method
- Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius. Beat the egg yolks, vanilla essence and half the sugar until it is thick and creamy
- Splash a bowl and the whisks with lemon juice to make sure that they are free of grease. Whisk the egg whites while adding the rest of the sugar slowly until they form stiff peaks.
- Fold the egg yolks into the egg whites followed by the flour and salt.
- Whack everything into a piping bag with a hole that is about 1 cm in diameter and pipe out onto a baking-paper-lined baking tray. About 10-12 cm in length.
- Bake for about 15-20 minutes until the biscuits are golden brown. They may look crispy, but they aren’t and they are quite niggly to peel off the baking paper as in they leave a bit behind on the paper.
- Cool on a cooling rack.
I don’t think I’ve ever piped anything in the past and I’d picked up this cheap-as-shit $2 piping kit from the supermarket. Luckily enough Charles had the sensibility and expertise to lend me his proper piping kit so I wouldn’t fuck it up.
Tiramasu Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 egg yolks
- 40 g of sugar
- 75 ml of cream
- 250 g mascarpone
- 2 egg whites
- strong coffee, preferably espresso
- a shot of brandy or rum
- the savoiardi you made earlier
- cocoa powder or chocolate
Method (disclaimer: I literally read the ingredient list and made this shit up as I went along.)
- Brew the coffee. I made two cups of coffee from my 3 cup moka pot which was a good amount for the number of biscuits produced from the recipe. Fortify this with a shot of rum. I also used Baileys
- Basically I whipped everything separately i.e. egg yolks and the sugar, cream and egg whites. Make sure you give the utensils and mixing bow the lemon juice treatment before you whip them egg whites up.
- Then I folded everything together to make the sauce. To assemble, dip the biscuits in the coffee mix and make a layer in a glass bowl or similar. Spread a layer of the cream. Sprinkle with cocoa or grate some dark chocolate on top.
- Repeat until the cream and biscuits have run out. Top with cocoa and/or chocolate.
- Refrigerate until ice cold
It was a great night. The gnocchi was absolutely delicious despite not having a potato ricer. And garlic bread is literally always delicious. You can’t fuck it up. Oh yea and the tiramasu was good too. The fingers turned into that sponge-like consistency soaked in coffee and covered in creamy mascarpone goodness.
The Shitty Food Blog 