Kosovan Pite

Moonlight

When I woke up in the morning I opened the window with a big smile on my face: the sun was rising. I went downstairs and I gave my mum a kiss on her cheek. As usually, I went to brush my teeth and she prepared my breakfast. When I was checking my backpack for school and I was about to go out, she suddenly told me that that evening we would cook “pite”! I screamed of joy. I really love preparing Pite!!!
I went to school and the lessons seemed endless: I wanted those five hours to become five minutes. When I turned back home I threw my backpack on the floor, I washed my hands and I was ready to put them in the dough.

Pastry dishes are very popular in Kosovo and the most consumed is “Pite”: that’s a pie filled with beef, spinach or cheese.

If you want to prepare a special Pite here is the recipe for 6 people

 For making pite with cheese you need only few ingredients: cheese, cream, salt, oil, yeast and flour.

For the dough: take a bowl and start putting your flour in it, begin to pour some warm water, put some salt and a bit of yeast. Mix then all the ingredients together then let it rest for approximately 30 minutes.

 Preheat the oven at 200 °C and take the dough and roll it up into balls in order to obtain 10/12 balls.

Take the balls and roll them one by one using a rolling pin: you will get the phyllo dough. Then put the cheese and the cream in order to have ropes: put all those ropes next to each other and put some oil and cream on top to make them crispy. 

Put your pite in the oven for 45 minutes and don’t forget to have a look at it from time to time or it will get burnt! Once out of the oven let it rest and cut it in some slices: the dish is now ready! You can taste it with peppers, pickles or tomatoes salad. But remember... drink a lot of water because it’s a very salted dish!!!

Glossary

Rising: (to rise) something going from a low position to a higher (in our case the sun was going to a higher position)
Downstairs: the lower floor of a house
Scream of joy: when someone screams because he’s/she’s happy

Dough: it is a thick mixture of flour and other ingredients that can be kneaded, baked and eaten
Bowl: a round container that is open on the top and is deep enough to hold fruit, sugar, etc.
Pastry dishes: some dishes (such as pies) are made of pastry casing that covers or completely contains a filling of a variety of sweet or savory ingredients
Pie: a baked dish with fruit/meat/vegetables, typically with a top and base of pastry. You can have sweet pies or salted pies
Few: a small/ non- specific number
Yeast: bakers use yeast to turn flat, sticky, dough into tall, fluffy bread
Pour: to make a substance flow from a container into another container
Rolling pin: a cylinder used to roll out dough to make it flatten
Phyllo dough: it is a very thin part of dough used for making pastries such as baklava or borek (pite) in Middle Eastern and Balkan cuisine
Pickles: vegetables that have been preserved in a vinegar sauce or salty water.

Mattoncini cake

Why the name “Mattoncini”? The cake we propose is made of various icing layers and biscuits: looking at this cake makes you think of the bricks that build a house and when you cuts a slice…well, the similarity stands out!
The last days of summer are over and you can see new autumn colours. It’s the best time to say goodbye to a beautiful season. We are going to propose you a great way to say goodbye to the best time of the year and to our favourite season: let’s prepare a tasty cake! You could enjoy this dessert with your friends and family. It is hard to resist the temptation of a sweet, especially if it is homemade! In fact I remember that when I came to come over my grandparents, the first thing at once I've seen at once was this beautiful cake that reminded me of my childhood.

Preparation time: 30/35 minutes

Recipe for 6 people

- a pack of biscuits.
- 125g whipping cream
- 125g cream.
- 50g cocoa powder.
- half a cup of milk.
- chocolate bar.


Step 1
For the icing, mix the whipping cream and a half cup of milk in a pan and fry so that it becomes creamy, follow the same procedure in another container by adding half a cup of cocoa powder.

Step 2
Place the biscuits in the cooking tray then spread on them one of the glaze to your liking. For the second layer of cake, dunk the cookies in the milk, then put them in the baking tray together with the glaze.

Step 3
Continue until you reach enough layers, then finish decorating the cake with some bars of chocolate.

Glossary
Among: within, amidst (eg. Their music’s popular among college students)
Clear: eg. He poured water into a clear glass
Layers: overlay, tier, coating, encrustation (eg. The chef layered the chocolate frosting of the cake)
Baking tray: tin, container for biscuits, etc.
Icing: frost, frosting, ice, icing the puck, etc (eg. to pipe icing onto a cake)
Dunk: to dip, to plunge (eg. I dunk the cookies in the milk)

Easy Apple Pie

The first time I ate the apple cake I was a child.
My mum used to prepare this cake for breakfast (in particular in autumn) and I’ve always loved it because it is tasty and a simple sweet with poor ingredients (almost just apples!).
She prepares it very well and this is her secret recipe…

INGREDIENTS 

• ½ cup butter, softened 

• 1 cup sugar 

• 2 eggs 

• ¼ cups all-purpose flour 

• 1 teaspoon baking soda 

• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 

• ¼ teaspoon salt 

• 1 ½ cups shredded peeled apples (about 2 medium apples) 

• 1 Cup chopped walnuts

• Cinnamon ice cream


STEPS
Heat the oven to 175°.
Then, in a large bowl, beat butter and sugar with the electric mixer (on medium speed) until it becomes light and fluffy.
After that, beat the eggs one at the time.
Cut the apples and put them in a large bowl.
Stir in vanilla, flour, baking, soda, cinnamon, salt, apples and walnuts.

Mix the dough and put it in a bowl.
Then, bake the cake for 40/45 minutes or until the thoothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.
Finally, cool 10 minutes longer the cake and serve warm with ice cream.
I suggest you vanilla or cinnamon ice cream.

GLOSSARY
Recipe: a set of instructions for making or preparing something.
Teaspoon: a small spoon used to stir tea and coffee, eat dessert, etc.
Cinnamon: a sweet-smelling spice made from the inner bark of various Asian trees of the laurel family.
Walnut: an edible meaty nut with a hard, wrinkled shell.
Stir in: o mix.
Toothpick: A small, pointed piece of wood, for removing food particles from between the teeth.

Food Tour Menu

Hi everyone!

Welcome on this blog!
Today we would like to propose this menu: the FOOD TOUR. In this menu we will present some dishes from different countries.
We will take you around the world!
Enjoy this recipe and this particular taste!

First dish: Rice with Saffron

The saffron rice is a typical dish of the north of Italy. This rice can be enriched with mushrooms, sausages or speck.

“Risotto Giallo” in Italy is a synonym for richness and cheerfulness, because saffron was a very expensive ingredient in the past.

Recipe for 4 people

Average time: 25 minutes cooking.

Ingredients:

280 g of rice;
40 g of butter;
½ onion;
½ glass of white wine;
1 saffron bag (0.15g);
40 g Parmesan;
1 L Broth.

How to prepare it:

                     

                                Peel and finely chop the onion and brown it with 30 gr of butter in a pot until they golden.

Merge the rice and make it toast in the condiment.

When the rice has golden, add white wine and hot broth. Stir the rice constantly and at the same time add the hot broth to avoid drying the rice.

At half-cooking, add the saffron bag (previously dissolved in a cup of hot broth) to the rice.

After cooking (about 20 minutes) remove the pot from the fire, add a butter nut and parmesan and keep it stirring.

Wait a couple of minutes before serving saffron rice in the dishes, so that the rice rests and the flavors get stronger.

Glossary
Brown: to make or become brown
Parmesan: a variety of Italian cheese. Parmigiano-Reggiano is commonly grated over pasta or stirred into soup and risotto
Saffron: an orange-coloured condiment. It is a very expensive condiment. It was probably first cultivated in or near Greece
Golden: to make something become gold-colored
Stir: to move a spoon or other kitchen tool around (a liquid or another substance) in order to mix it thoroughly
Dissolve: to become incorporated into a liquid so as to form a solution.

Pancakes Time

Bittersweet

Hello guys!

Who among you doesn't like pancakes? Well, we love them!
Our pancakes take certain characteristics from the Holland pancakes and some peculiarities from the

British ones.
Furthermore we add a personal touch: the yeast. It is at this point that the pancakes road is separated
forever from that of waffles and get a recipe of their own.
This tasty recipe includes simple but nutritious ingredients: milk, flour, eggs, butter and
sugar, mixed together to obtain a fairly liquid batter to be poured into a pan placed on a
high heat. The pancakes are cooked first on one side and then on the other, until both sides
assume a brown color. As "dressing", then you only have to choose: honey or maple syrup,
butter and banana slices, berries and powdered sugar. Anything that makes you come up
with the idea of a tasty breakfast is fine for pancakes… but they are also good natural!
Let's see how to prepare this tasty dish!

What we need?

200 gr of flour
2 teaspoons of yeast
1\2 teaspoons of salt
1 spoon of sugar
2 eggs
250 ml of milk
3 spoons of oil

Sift the flour into a bowl, add a pinch of salt,
 a teaspoon of sugar
and baking powder.

Divide the egg whites from the yolks: mix both with electric mix.

In another bowl mix the milk and melted butter in a double boiler, combine the egg yolks,
add powdery ingredients and finally the egg whites. Now mix!

Butter to grease a pan, pour a ladle of the compound rolling the pan to distribute it well and
cook on both sides until you reach a brown color.

And finally enjoy these wonderful desserts in good company!

(Special thanks to Irene's Closet and Cucina con Federica for the photos!)

Glossary
Recipe: If you follow the recipe closely, your meal should turn out fine
Yeast: Bakers use yeast to turn flat, sticky dough into tall, fluffy bread. The yeast interacts with sugar and fills the bread with pockets of air as it bakes
Yolk: A yolk is the inner, yellow part of an egg. If you order eggs "sunny side up," those "suns" are the egg yolks
Melted: changed from a solid to a liquid state
Teaspoon: a small spoon used for stirring tea or coffee
Bowl: a bowl is a rounded dish that holds food. Many people start the day with a bowl of cereal
Sift: to bake a cake, you sift the flour to get out the lumps. When you sift, you separate one thing from another
Maple syrup: made by concentrating sap from sugar maples
Furthemore: just when you think your friend has finished her long list of complaints, she begins a new sentence with, “Furthermore…” a word that signals she has even more to complain about
Waffle: you might think of a waffle as a grid-patterned pancake-like food that's tasty with syrup, and you'd be right. But the word is also a verb that means to avoid making a definitive decision
Batter: a semiliquid mixture of flour, egg, and milk or water used in cooking, especially for making cakes or for coating food before frying
Poured: to pour is to flow rapidly in a steady stream, or to cause something to flow. You can pour good coffee into a cup and pour bad coffee down the drain
Dressing: something used as "filling"
Honey: a sweet, sticky, yellowish-brown fluid made by bees and other insects from nectar collected from flowers.
Baking powder: any of various powdered mixtures used in baking as a substitute for yeast
Double boiler: two saucepans, one fitting inside the other
Butter: a pale yellow edible fatty substance made by churning cream and used as a spread or in cooking
Ladle: a large long-handled spoon with a cup-shaped bowl, used for serving soup, stew, or sauce.
Rolling: move or cause to move in a particular direction by turning over and over on an axis
Pinch: To pinch is to squeeze or grip with your fingers

A delicious cheesecake :)

Life is like a recipe for a cake. 

If you follow the usual ingredients you will make the cake 

but you will already know how it will taste. 

People will appreciate it but they will forget it very soon. 

It always takes a touch of genius in any recipe to be sure that it won’t die 

with the last bite.

We are a group of girls with the passion of cooking and even if it's not your birthday today we are going to share with you some of our secret recipes!

Here is our special strawberry cheesecake... yummy!

INGREDIENTS
24 cookies
3 tablespoons of butter melted
250 g Philadelphia (or cream cheese softened)
¾ cup of sugar
3 eggs

DIRECTIONS
Preparation time: 20 m
Cooking time: 45 m
Ready in 4 h 5 m


PREPARATION

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Put 16 cookies in a plastic bag, flatten the bag to remove the excess of air, then finely crush cookies by rolling a rolling pin across the bag.

Place the crushed cookies in a bowl and add butter mixing carefully.

Press firmly onto bottom of springform pan














Beat the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla in a large bowl using an electrical mixer on medium speed until the mixture is well blended. Then add the 3 eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition.

Sprinkle with marmalade and make the cake tasty and lip-smacking adding red and fresh strawberries

Bake for 45 minutes or until the centre is almost cooked. Refrigerate 3 hours or overnight before serving.
Cut into 12 pieces and enjoy it!

If you resist eating the whole cheesecake store it in the refrigerator.

Glossary
Yummy: very pleasing to the taste, delicious

Flatten: to press (oneself or one’s body) against a surface
Rolling pin: a tool consisting of a cylinder (usually of wood) with a handle at each end
Bottom: the lowest or deepest part of anything
Pan: a wide or broad, usually shallow metal container used for cakes and for cooking in general
Blend: to combine or mix two elements together so that the constituent parts are indistinguishable
Sprinkle: to disperse or distribute here and there, for example you sprinkle sugar on the top of a cake
Lip-smacking: displaying or expressing enjoyment or pleasure, especially at the taste of food or drink

The Queen of the recipes

Newsroom: Truceklan!

Hello we are the Truceklan group!
We chose this topic because one of our class mate is very good at preparing this dish, and sometimes he makes us taste it (we are very lucky!)
This is his mother's recipe. We asked her if she could give it to us: at the beginning she did not want but later she decided to share it.

Ingredients:
- 1.5 kg of eggplant
- 3 eggs
- 150 grams of flour
- 500 g of tomatoes
- 1/2 onion
- A few leaves of basil
- 1/2 cup of oil
- 300 grams of smoked cheese
- 150 grams of grated Parmesan cheese
- salt
- oil (extra virgin olive oil)

How to prepare Parmigiana
To prepare the sauce soften the onion in oil, add the chopped tomatoes, just before finishing the cooking, add the basil and season with salt.
Slice the eggplants lengthwise, with a 2.1 cm thick, dip in flour, beaten eggs with a little salt and fry in oil.
In a baking dish greased with oil throw a ladle of tomato sauce, forming a layer of eggplant, a handful of grated Parmesan cheese, a ladle of sauce, mozzarella slices, another layer of eggplant and so on. Finish with the tomato.
Bake at 180 degrees for forty minutes.
A variant provides that eggplants are grilled instead of fried. In another, the eggplants are peeled and rolled in whole wheat flour, beaten egg and again in flour, making the dish look like baked pasta, because the eggplants treated in this way become almost unrecognizable.

Glossary
Recipe: a recipe is directions for making a dish or dessert
Eggplant: egg-shaped vegetable having a shiny skin, typically dark purple
Flour: Flour is a fine, powdery ingredient that's used to bake bread and cake and it is made by grinding wheat or other grains.
Egg: an egg is the shell-covered, roundish object that's laid by birds and reptiles, which usually has an embryo inside.
Potato: The potato is a tuber. You can find it baked, mashed, or fried,.
Mozzarella: Mozzarella is a soft, mild cheese that's commonly used to make pizza. If you love that stretchy white melted cheese on your slice of pepperoni, you're a fan of mozzarella.
Ham: Ham is a type of pork, or meat that comes from a pig.
Cheese: Cheese is a dairy product that's made from milk. Many delicious foods with cheese are made even more delicious .
Oil: You can dress your salad with olive oil and use motor oil in your car's engine
To cut: The verb cut means the act of slicing with a knife
To mix: To mix is to combine or blend different things together.
Season: one of the natural periods into which the year is divided by the equinoxes and solstices or atmospheric conditions.
Ladle: it  is a large spoon with a deep bowl for scooping and serving soup and other liquids. If you make clam chowder, it might be messy to serve it without using a ladle.
Baking tray: a cooking tool consisting of a flat rectangular metal sheet used for baking cookies or biscuits.
Immerse: to put something in a liquid.
Oven: An oven is a device for baking food using heat.
Pan: A pan is a container used for cooking.