ALBANIAN BAKLLAVA

Albanian Team

Bakllava is the Middle Eastern dessert par excellence, but it’s also part of Balkan traditions.
We chose this sweet because it is good, it is often cooked for religious parties.One day, a Ramadam’s day, my friends Abdyl, Adrian and I went to have lunch at an Albanian’s post which makes pizzas, kebabs and other traditional things from Albania. After eating, we decided to take a slice of bakllava, and we really liked it, for this reason we decided to choose this sweet, also because it is a traditional dessert in Albania.
The Baklava is a layered sweet of thin phyllo dough, just like leaves or sheets of paper, grated and leaned in a pan: chopped nuts
together with pistachios, are scattered over the various layers, which are then rolled and baked in the oven before being soaked with a solution of sugar and lemon juice or honey and spices with water.

Ingredients

- 500 gr phyllo dough
- 200 gr chopped nuts
- 150 gr crushed pistachios

- cinnamon powder
- 180 gr melted butter

Ingredients for the syrup
- 50 gr honey
- 450 gr sugar
- 300 ml water
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Preparation
1-Prepare the syrup making it melt on the fire with water, honey and lemon juice. After a few minutes of cooking you will see that it becomes dense: take it out of the fire and cool it in the fridge.

2-Divide the dough into at least 12 parts and roll with the help of a rolling pin so that you get 12 thin sheets that you will lay in a rectangular.

3-Paint the first pie with melted butter and lay on top of another 5 sheets that will squeeze each with butter. On these first 6 layers sprinkle the crushed nuts and pistachios not too big; finish with powdered cinnamon powder. Cover everything with the other 6 sheets that will be scrubbed each, including the surface of the last, with the remaining butter.

4-Take a knife and cut the dough until it touches the bottom of the pan, diagonally in both directions to get rhombuses.

5-Bake at 180º for about 40 minutes until the dough is cooked well and is golden.

6-Take the baklava from the oven and pour over it the hot syrup.

GLOSSARY
phyllo dough: pasta of Greek origin made from flour, water, corn starch and sale, made of thin layers, of a consistency similar to that of a leaf, used in the kitchen for sweet and salty preparations.
syrup: a solution of sugar dissolved in water and often flavoured with fruit juice. It is used for sweetening fruit, etc.
cinnamon powder: a sweet-smelling spice made from the inner bark of Asian trees.

HOMESICKNESS

Lifestyle 

The Mars Cake is a tasty and crispy dessert. It is very easy to prepare, but generally the recipe is interpreted at pleasure by the chef with the addition of creative ingredients, sometimes not included in the original recipe. Definitely the purists of the kitchen will turn up their nose hearing a recipe of a cake made with Mars (junk food), but I think that every sweet contains at least one unhealthy ingredient and that is not the use of junk food in itself to define our health, but how much of it we consume!
I personally know a special recipe that one of my dearest friend has kindly given to me: we cooked it together last summer and during the preparation she confided to me that this dessert always reminds her of her childhood and her holidays in Tunisia, when her grandfather prepared it with much care and passion for her and her sister. He died four years ago and whenever she misses him, she makes the Mars Cake to feel a little better. Obviously there is a secret ingredient that he has handed down to her granddaughter and that unfortunately we can not reveal …

Ingredients:

· 200 grams of puffed rice
· One confection of Mars
· Chocolate
· 80 gram of butter.

Preparation:
1. Butter the pie;
2. Slice to pieces the Mars;
3. Melt the butter with the chocolate in a pot, if you want you can use the microwave oven;
4. Put the puffed rice in the baking tray with the chocolate;
5. Put everything in the baking tray in the fridge for two hours;
6. Remove from the fridge your cake and taste it!

Glossary
Crispy: something that is thin, dry, and breakable
Slice: to cut some objects
Pieces: it is a portion of the food, a portion of something larger
Melt: to reduce something from a solid to a liquid state.
Pot: it is a container used in cooking
Baking tray: it is kitchen utensil made of metal used for cooking cookies or biscuits in the oven

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

Gelo di melone - Memory of a summer day

gooline project

I’ve been familiar to this recipe by chance…
It was a hot sunday morning in summer 2015. My friend and I decided to ride our scooter to the Oglio river near Palazzolo and there have a swim. Around midday other friends of us joined us and we had our bag lunch all toghether and after that we started getting fun diving and swimming in the river. After taking some pictures and selfies, it was time to go back home. When we climbed on our scooter again my friend and I realised that it didn’t start. We tried and tried again but it definitively left us walking home. So we had to push it for about 2 km until the house of my friend’s granny. She soon noticed we were very tired after the effort so she offered us a refreshing traditional dessert from Palermo. It’s called “gelo di melone”, a kind of watermelon pudding with chocolate chips on the top combined with a glass of black cherry sparkling syrup. I enjoyed it so much that I immediately asked her the recipe. Here it is, except the quantities of the ingredients because, my friend's grandmother said, "they are a secret".

 
Ingredients:

Watermelon
Cornstarch
Sugar
Chocolate chips

Preparation:

Grate the watermelon, separating the juice from the pulp and the seeds.
Pour the juice into a small pot, heat it adding the cornstarch and the sugar until you get a thick and jelly-like mixture.
Pour the  mixture into proper molds and garnish with the chocolate chips.
Once it's cooled down, leave it to rest in the fridge for at least two or three hours.
Finally serve the "gelo di melone" with a glass of black cherry syrup (possibly diluted with sparkling water) to accompany it.

Glossary

by chanche: without plan or intent; accidentally.
to join: to come into the company of; meet or accompany; to participate with (someone) in some act or activity; to take part with others
bag lunch: a lunch meal made at home or bought and brought to work or another activity in a paper bag or similar container
to dive: to jump quickly into water, especially headfirst
to realise: to understand clearly
effort: something done by hard physical work
watermelon: a large melon with a hard, green rind and sweet, juicy, usually red pulp
pudding: a soft jelly-like dessert, usually made with milk, sugar, flour, and flavoring
syrup: a thick, sweet liquid consisting of fruit juices, water, etc., boiled with sugar
starch: a white, tasteless chemical substance in plants, forming an important component of rice, corn, wheat, and many other vegetable foods, used for thickening gravies and sauces, making puddings, ecc...
jelly: a savoury food preparation set with gelatine or with a strong gelatinous stock and having a soft elastic consistency
mold: a empty form for giving a particular shape to a liquid or a soft substance
to cool down: to reduce temperature
to rest: to relax, to sleep, to take a break

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