Almond, Ricotta & Fig Cake

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Fig, Almond & Ricotta CakeMy third year of college, I spent fall semester in Florence, Italy.  Immediately, I fell in love with the place–the different-from-home hum of the streets, trips to the market, gelato strolls, counter side cappuccinos, and, of course, the figs.

Hang on, I think “fell in love with figs” might be the understatement of the decade.  This was no fleeting love, this was deep, down, stupid, do-anything love.  Fig season was in full swing when I arrived and if I hadn’t been similarly mesmerized by all the other foodstuffs that I was surrounded by, I could have lived off them.  I took long walks, casing neighborhoods and hillsides that had fig branches hanging over gates and fences.  I was not afraid to scale walls, I…should probably stop there.  

If I managed to get any of the figs back to my apartment, I mostly I just quartered them and ate them in their natural state or with a bit of honey and a wedge of cheese.  If I had slowed down long enough, I like to imagine I would have baked something like this cake.  This is another distinctly Italian tasting cake–not too sweet, not too heavy, moist with ricotta cheese and loaded with almond flavor–topped with thick slices of juicy, ripe figs.  It’s delicious as dessert with a spoonful of whipped cream and heavenly next to a cappuccino in the morning.

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Swiss Chard Torta with Pine Nuts & Raisins

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Swiss Chard Torta with Pine Nuts & RaisinsEvery time I step into my backyard, I am amazed by how much Swiss chard my little garden is capable of producing.  For going on 2 months, I’ve been eating chard a few times a week either with pasta or in garlicky sautés with potatoes or beans.  And while I’m still not sick of it, I have started looking for a few new ways to prepare it.

This past weekend, I looked to one of my forever-favorite cookbooks for inspiration, Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking and found a recipe for tegliata di biete, a Swiss chard torta with pine nuts and raisins.  Now this is the kind of recipe you might skip over if you were simply flipping through the book and didn’t happen to be sitting on a mountain of chard, but it’s exactly the sort of recipe I love to stumble upon.  There’s nothing especially flashy about, but it’s a perfect example of how with effort and care, a few simple ingredients can be transformed into something entirely new, nuanced and intriguing.

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Croatian Chard with Potatoes & Garlic (Blitva)

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Croatian Swiss Chard with Potatoes
It’s been a little while since I’ve shared a new recipe here.  I didn’t mean for it to be that way, it’s just that a switch flipped and, magically, summer began.  Suddenly, I was less interested in spending time in the kitchen and a whole lot more interested in digging up dirt and taking long walks.    

Now, of course, I’ve still had to eat but it’s mostly been a lot of mishmash salads and really simple dinners.  One of my recent favorite simple (and slightly extravagant) dinners was an evening spent on my patio, eating a giant T-bone and a big pot of garlicky Swiss chard and potatoes.  And don’t get me wrong, though the steak was certainly nothing to sneeze at, I think I was actually more upset when I finished my last strand of chard.

So let me give you a little background on this side dish–I certainly didn’t invent it and, quite honestly, I think a few years ago I would have thought it was an odd combination.  Around this time last year, I took a trip to Croatia and was first introduced to blitva, garlicky sautéed Swiss chard with potatoes.  I saw it on darned near every menu, ordered it a few times, and worked it into my repertoire once I got home. 

Dubrovnik Rooftops

 

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Parisian Gnocchi with Arugula Pistou & Crispy Prosciutto

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Parisian Gnocchi 2

When people discover you have a food blog, suddenly everyone has a great idea for what you should cook next.  I get a whole lot of (well-intentioned) requests for things like gluten-free baking ideas, cute holiday treats, and homemade girl scout cookies/bloomin’ onions/pumpkin spice lattes/etc.  In other words, I often find myself gently reminding folks that I’m capable of eating an entire baguette on my way home from the grocery store so gluten-free baking is really not something I have a huge interest in, that “cute” is something I do very poorly, and there’s this special place called Pinterest where I’m sure those “top-secret” recipes you want me to recreate already exist.

So when my boss approached me with, “d’you know what would be great for your blog?” I braced myself and started thinking of ways to let him down easy and hold on to my job.  But he followed it up with, “Parisian gnocchi.  I think you readers would really like it.  Do you want my recipe?” 

Umm…yes, absolutely!  Finally, a suggestion I didn’t have to politely turn away! 

(Okay, fine. If you don’t know me in real life and you’ve never wandered over to my about page, I suppose it bears mentioning that my “real” job is waiting tables, so it helps that my boss happens to be the chef of a French restaurant.)

So armed with Vincent’s recipe, I went home to make Parisian gnocchi.  Parisian gnocchi are unlike the Italian gnocchi you’re probably more familiar with.  Instead of relying on potatoes, Parisian gnocchi are made with cheese-enriched pâte à choux, which is the same type of pastry dough that’s used make gougères, profiteroles, and other such treats.  Yup, copious amounts of cheese, butter, and egg–leave it to the French.  The cheesy choux pastry is piped into simmering water and poached.  From there, you can go ahead and eat them or shock them in cold water, then sauté and sauce them later.  I’ll walk you through the how-to and show you how I served mine.

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Cherry Marsala Olive Oil Cake

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Cherry Marsala Olive Oil Cake

The way I see it, there are 2 species of cake. There are the fancy, celebration cakes with swirls of frosting, bells, whistles, and the whole bit. And then there are the everyday cakes. I’m talking about the cakes that are made at a moment’s notice when you need an afternoon pick-me-up or when eating a salad for dinner only seems like a viable option if you get to round out the meal with a little slice cake.

Today’s cake, if you hadn’t already guessed, falls firmly into the second category. It’s nothing fancy, just a good, solid anytime cake to have in your repertoire. It’s the kind of cake that can be made on a whim, mixed up in less time than the oven takes to heat. Olive oil gives it round, fruity flavor and a splash of Marsala gives it a subtle but haunting Italian flavor. 

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