Italian cocktail party.. in La Celle Saint Cloud!

We had a cocktail party here at restaurant on Sunday night! Here some pictures just five minutes before the event!

caprese (tomatoes and mozzarella di bufala)

Raw vegetables with basil mayonnaise and garlic mayonnaise

homemade focaccia with parma ham and speck

Italian aperitif with fresh smashed strawberries and white wine

tiramisu and again tiramisu!

my friends Melisa and Thania

artistic picture:)

crema al cioccolato

ottima tiepida, fredda, con la panna, come base per una crostata di frutta.. la crema pasticcera al cioccolato é versatile quasi quanto quella alla vaniglia!

ecco qualche dose da "famiglia numerosa".. sbattere 10 rossi d'uovo con ( 2 cucchiai da minestra di zucchero per ogni rosso d'uovo utilizzato e 1 cucchiaio da minestra di maizena per ogni rosso d'uovo utilizzato) far quasi bollire 1 litro di latte e versare sulla crema, sbattere molto bene e rimettere tutto sul fuoco senza smettere MAI di mescolare (ora aggiungere una tavoletta di cioccolato da 200g) fino a quando non diventa densa.

vanilla muffins

..niente da dichiarare:)

Raspberry tarte

This tarte had a big success!! I made 2 version: a big one with pastry cream (my favorite), many small ones with chantilly (beautiful but less tasty)

I add 2 tbsp of rose water in pastry cream.. try this combination, raspberry love rose scent!

Rotella cookies

There are many ways to transform a normal cookie in a party cookie.. is very easy and your kids will love it! Choose basic cookie dough, bake it and let it cool.

Prepare your homemade icing with 1 egg white, 230g icing sugar and 1tsp fresh lemon juice, beat it, put it in a deco plastic bag and start make your deco!

You can use it as glue for candies and you can add some drops of food color… in 2 or 3 hours it will be completely dry.

Pain au chocolat

Pain au chocolat is the brother of croissant. Shape is rectangular, dough is the same but inside there is a piece of dark chocolate. Generally speaking man prefers pain au chocolat and woman croissant.. reason is a mystery but I remember that at kindergarten I chose vanilla cream and little boys chose chocolate cream, so maybe is an ancestral matter:)

Yesterday I made an experiment.. I “forced” myself and I eat a pain au chocolat! Well it was good ..

wedding cake in Montalcino

Being a foreign correspondent for lecupcakequotidien is becoming popular these days:), Tommaso from Firenze went to a wedding in Montalcino (yes is the city of Brunello di Montalcino!) and took a picture of wedding cake.. is so beautiful that I posted it! Unfortunately we will never know the inside of cake.. fault of Brunello Tommy forgot to took a picture of his slice before eating it!:)

marché des enfants rouges

There is a nice place in Paris to have lunch-brunch on a sunny sunday.. is marché des enfants rouges in le marais.. in a open sky "restaurant market" you can choose the food that you prefer, this time we eat Japanese, but I looked into plates of Italian restaurant (hidden behind a rose plant I also took a picture!) and next time we will speak Italian:)

dal lato Italiano..

playing with chopstick:)

green tea

fried fish

maki

Banana tarte

So good and so light! prepare your dough, shape it and put tarte mould in fridge.

Cut your bananas

Put bananas over dough; add some noix de muscade, butter, caster sugar and rum. 45 minutes at 180°C that’s it!

tiempo de clamato

Este bebida en Mexico es muy popular.. para hacerla sigue las instrucciones por favor!

1) juice of a lime

2) add Worcestershire sauce

3) add pimientos, go go!

3) add valentina, hot sauce manufactured by the Salsa Tamazula company of Guadalajara in western Mexico

4) add clamato, tomato juice flavored with spices, clam and celery

5) add mexican beer

tonight my mexican friend Thania came with a bag of pimientos! she taught me how to make a mexican clamato, now I could open a clamateria in Cancun!

Tropical cake

Banana, pineapple, cinnamon, vanilla, walnuts… in one cake ? there are not too many flavors in only one slice? No no no.. believe me this combination is perfect. It makes me dream about a Caribbean beach with white sand and fresh bananas and pineapple still on their trees.. cream cheese frosting gives that Anglo-Saxon touch that I love so much!

Tarte au chocolat

This tarte is just delicious. Dough is crunchy, filling is soft and perfumed with grounded coffee.

For the crunchy effect you have to put your shaped tarte in fridge for 1 hour before baking, and you need to bake it at least 30 minutes before adding the filling (chocolate filling needs to cook only 10 minutes!)

Pancakes

Between Pancakes and me there is a love story.. I eat my first pancake in Boston in 1996 (wow!) This “frittella” (Italian translation) is good, is fat (a little just because is fried!), is soft and you can eat many without getting bored of it! After U.S. I learned how to make my own pancakes thanks to wonderful recipe of Chef Jamie Oliver and every time is a big success!

You can eat it nature or with icing sugar and some fruits, but my favorite version is “pancake drowned in maple syrup” I love this natural sweetener, it has a wonderful taste and when I eat it I feel that is good for me! (mi mangio una frittella ma la innaffio con lo sciroppo d’acero quindi alla fine mi fa pure bene!)

Where does it come from this precious liquid?

Maple syrup is usually made from the xylem sap of maple trees. In cold climates, these trees store starch in their trunks and roots before the winter; the starch is then converted to sugar that rises in the sap in the spring. The basic ingredient in maple syrup consists primarily of sucrose and water, but we can find also organic acids, potassium, calcium, zinc, manganese and amino acids. When you buy it follow same rule of honey: don’t save money, just choose the best one!