Notice: Function add_theme_support( 'html5' ) was called incorrectly. You need to pass an array of types. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 3.6.1.) in /customers/6/8/f/missfoodwise.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/functions.php on line 5833 Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /customers/6/8/f/missfoodwise.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/functions.php:5833) in /customers/6/8/f/missfoodwise.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/feed-rss2.php on line 8 foodie Archives - Miss Foodwise https://www.missfoodwise.com Celebrating British food and Culture Mon, 12 Oct 2015 07:15:21 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 201379755 Chestnut cake from Monteriggioni, Tuscany https://www.missfoodwise.com/2011/11/chestnut-cake-from-monteriggioni-tuscany.html/ https://www.missfoodwise.com/2011/11/chestnut-cake-from-monteriggioni-tuscany.html/#comments Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:49:00 +0000 https://www.missfoodwise.com/2011/11/chestnut-cake-from-monteriggioni-tuscany.html/ A beautiful farmers market in the heart of a fortified town. It was a sunny autumn morning when we left for Monteriggioni, the fog had slipped away and gave way to a yellow and brown colored landscape. We changed our clocks one hour ahead that night so when we awoke the dew had already dried...

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A beautiful farmers market in the heart of a fortified town.
It was a sunny autumn morning when we left for Monteriggioni, the fog had slipped away and gave way to a yellow and brown colored landscape.
We changed our clocks one hour ahead that night so when we awoke the dew had already dried up and the sun was giving a warm glow.
We drove trough the rolling landscape of Tuscany to reach the hill where the quintessentially fortified town of Monterriggioni lies.
From a distance the town looks like a giant fairytale castle, as we drove towards it my thoughts wandered off to the Middle Ages when Monteriggioni was at the very heart of the conflicts between Florence and Siena. I imagined large battalions of knights approaching the town and peasants going about their business. The knights have all gone now but the farmers remained and were the reason we were driving here today.
Today was a special day in Monteriggioni because in the heart of the fortified town there was a farmers market going on. It was only for one day and there were no certainties for it to happen ever again. The town square was filled with food stalls, producers were proudly presenting their new Organic olive oil and wines were given to taste generously. There were smiling faces everywhere, from the stallholders insisting we’d try their food to the people who were enjoying the scenery and the sun. It was like at this moment, everyone was happy here. There was no music, no dancing but nonetheless this was a feast, a food fest.
The produce at this market was absolutely beautiful, if I could I would have bought something from every stall. But luggage restrictions bound me to making choices, a choice like this is hard to make. What do I leave behind, the glorious organic chestnut flour or the tasty Boar salami… I decided to leave the Fava beans behind and regret that choice every day since. What if I could have fitted an extra bag in my luggage?
Oh well, you can’t have it all and I went home with a beautiful selection of food. 

Monteriggioni
Chestnuts roasting

Fill your own cone of tasty chillies
Proudly presenting the new Organic olive oil of 2011

Snail ragout, suprisingly delicious
Wild boar delicacies

Chestnut cake, recipe for my version of this cake below.

Chestnut bread and chickpeas

I baked a cake with the organic chestnut flour I bought at the market. 
My friends and I tried to bake this cake in the evening as we tasted chestnut cake at the market that day. The heath of the oven warmed Giulia’s house and filled it with a lovely smell of chestnuts, on this chilly autumn evening.
We loved it so much at the market, I decided I wanted to have another try at reproducing this wonderful cake. After a few tries I came up with this recipe, it’s not at all the cake we tried at the market but I think this one tastes more of chestnuts, which was something I was going for.

Ingredients
200 gr of Chestnut flour
75 gr of corn flour
175 gr good quality butter (unsalted)
1,5 teaspoons of baking powder (check the pack, not all brands of baking powder are gluten free)
4 organic eggs
50 gr of cane sugar
3 teaspoons of Ricotta
1 teaspoon of Cocoa

Method
Preheat your oven to 160° (gas)
Cover a cake tin with baking paper
1. Mix your butter and the sugar, whisk until creamy
2. Add the eggs one by one
3. Add the Ricotta to the butter and egg mixture and stir
4. Add the two types of flour to a bowl and add the baking powder
5. Add the butter, egg and sugar mixture to the flour and mix together.
6. Pour the batter into your baking thin and put in the oven for about 50 minutes.

When you take it out of the oven, leave it to cool in the baking tin.
Dust with Cocoa when the cake is still warm.

You wouldn’t believe how much this cake tastes of roasted chestnuts, just divine!
A good thing about this cake is the low amount of sugar used.
Enjoy!

Next week I’m attempting another dish I discovered in Tuscany: Fagloli al fiasco
Have you missed my previous post about our Tuscan escape? You will find it here

Special thanks to Giulia from Juls’ kitchen

Please leave a comment. I appreciate every single one.

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Tuscany in the autumn, a celebration of food. https://www.missfoodwise.com/2011/11/tuscany-in-the-autumn-a-celebration-of-food.html/ https://www.missfoodwise.com/2011/11/tuscany-in-the-autumn-a-celebration-of-food.html/#comments Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:28:00 +0000 https://www.missfoodwise.com/2011/11/tuscany-in-the-autumn-a-celebration-of-food.html/ The view at 7 in the morning… You know that feeling when something sounds to good to be true? I had that feeling about Tuscany… Like so many people, I had fallen in love with the pictures in magazines, travel guides and the tales of good food and wine. I was very eager to find...

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The view at 7 in the morning…

You know that feeling when something sounds to good to be true?
I had that feeling about Tuscany…
Like so many people, I had fallen in love with the pictures in magazines, travel guides and the tales of good food and wine.
I was very eager to find out if the story’s about Tuscany were wildly exaggerated or true.

After arriving at Pisa airport, I took the train to Florence where I would meet two of my fellow food bloggers Zita from Hungary and Karin from Germany. We were going to explore the city and later drive back to to meet our lovely hostess Giulia, for dinner at Trattoria Bel mi’ Colle in Colle di Val d’Elsa. Florence is grand, we had fantastic coffee at Roberto Cavalli, visited David and strolled around town feasting our eyes on all the pastries. When we left Florence it started to get dark, we saw the sun set over the Ponte Vecchio and drove off to Colle di Val d’Elsa in pitch black.

Panforte, a Tuscan speciality   –   Carabinieri   –   Lovers lock at the Ponte Vecchio

The next morning I woke up at 6:30, too early but so eager to finally see Tuscany! I got up, took my camera and opened the blinds on the windows of the house.

The view at 6.30 in the morning.


The view… Perhaps it was the cold and the fog of dawn, but I was breathless for a moment.
I think I must have stood there for half an hour, looking at how the colors of the landscape changed by the minute.
Seeing the sun rise up behind the roof of Giulia’s house and warm the room with the last warmth an autumn sun gives.
I ran outside, still wearing my gingham pyjama and only a big red scarf to warm me. There was so much to see, so much beauty.
The dew on the olives was slowly drying up, the landscape turned from pink to orange and the sun shone on my red hair making my braid look like it was on fire.
I felt all kinds of emotions at ones, running around like a child, trying to capture every moment with my camera.

In the house, the girls started to wake up. The light changed from orange to a bright yellow with a deep blue sky. The day had started, we had a cup of tea and left to have breakfast in a little pasticceria in Siena.

We ate grapes straight from the vines, sat in the sun and tasted a lot of delicious food.

These grapes that were left behind after harvest, were without doubt the best I’ve ever had!

On our roadtrip we went to a medieval little town called San Quirico and to a village known for its thermal waters, Bagno Vignoni. This is where we ate Pici for luch, a traditional thick hand rolled pasta whilst sitting in the warm sun. When we arrived at the Renaissance town Pienza, the sun was already hanging low in the deep blue sky. We tasted pecorino and wild boar sausage in a sweet little shop and walked trough the town when the setting sun started to color the ancient buildings orange.

The evenings are getting quite chilly so when we were walking through the streets of Siena in the evening, we warmed our hands on a bag of roasted chestnuts, not that it was very cold but we just enjoyed the romantic feeling of passing the warming bag of chestnuts to eachother.

Chestnuts warming the hands of lovely Giulia

The height of our trip must have been the farmers market at Montereggioni, a quintessentially medieval castle. We tasted the new Organic Olive oil, had snail ragout for the first time and bought a load of beautiful local produce. I will show you this adventure in my post next week. (see post here)

For lunch we made chickpea crepes, pasta cacio e pepe and for dinner we made fresh pasta tagliolini with truffle. In the evening we went to the Chestnut festival in the old part of Colle val d’Elsa. Everything seems to evolve around chestnuts, wine and olive oil at the moment. Autumn really is the perfect season to visit Tuscany.

Tuscan pastries: left: Castagnaccio, chestnut bread with rosemary.  right: Schiacciata con l’uva, flatbread with grapes
At the chestnut festival the whole town waits while the chestnuts are being roasted..

Sadly, the next day our journey came to an end, so after a nice walk through the Tuscan countryside we set sail to our homelands.
These were truly a wonderful four days, thank you Giulia for being such a fantastic hostess and for your warm persona.
I will never forget this, ever.

Olives are harvested by families, who then take the olives to a mill where they press their own Olive oil.

If you would like to see Tuscany through a local girl’s eyes like we did, Giulia arranges Tuscan food & wine tours and Italian cooking classes at her fabulous Juls’ Kitchen.

Fabulous places:
Nannini, Via Banchi di Sopra, 24, Siena. For Panforte.
La taverna del Pecorin, Via Condotti1, Piento. For cheese and delicatessen
Trattoria Bel mi’ Colle, Via Giuseppe Garibaldi 56, Colle di Val d’Elsa. For good local food and wine.
Caffè Giacosa, Via Della Spada, Firenze. For the best coffee and a slice of cake.
Pasticcerie sinatti, Via Fiorentina 99, Siena. Fantastic place for breakfast.
Trattoria La Parata, Piazza del Moretto, Bagno Vignoni. For traditional pici.

To be continued…

Other posts about Tuscany:
• A trip to the farmersmarket of Monteriggioni and Chestnut cake

Please leave a comment. I appreciate every single one.

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British cheese – a British treasure https://www.missfoodwise.com/2011/09/british-cheese-a-british-treasure.html/ https://www.missfoodwise.com/2011/09/british-cheese-a-british-treasure.html/#comments Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:36:00 +0000 https://www.missfoodwise.com/2011/09/british-cheese-a-british-treasure.html/ There is something to be said about British cheese. They are versatile as much as they are delicious. I’ve been a keen explorer of these cheeses for a few years now and I am amazed by the variety of cheeses this country holds. Caraway seed cheese by Crudges – The Cotwolds Some are huge, some...

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There is something to be said about British cheese.
They are versatile as much as they are delicious.
I’ve been a keen explorer of these cheeses for a few years now and I am amazed by the variety of cheeses this country holds.

Caraway seed cheese by Crudges – The Cotwolds

Some are huge, some are tiny some have strange shapes but they all have one thing in common: they are a product of love and caring.

I was lucky to talk to a few cheese makers and the most important thing they all have in common is a passion to create an outstanding product.
As you might know already, my heart beats a little faster when I meet people who are passionate about creating their delicious product.
I enjoy to see the smile on their face when they tell me how they made it, the sparks in their eyes because someone is taking an interest and the warmth they share by telling me about it.

Over the last years the small cheese makers are popping up all over the UK.
There are over 700 cheeses produced in the UK so there will be a cheese to everyone’s taste.

A broad public is becoming more aware of the benefits of artisan products and are starting to prefer these product to the mass produced items the supermarkets have on offer.

Lord London by Alsop & Walker – Kent

Trelawny, Keltic Gold, Cornish blure – Cornwall

Cheese has been made in Britain for over thousand years but it was during Roman times that the  techniques were refined. In Medieval times most of the cheeses were made by monasteries.
Cheshire is one of the oldest British cheeses. It dates from Roman times and is even mentioned in the Domesday Book. Wensleydale was made by monks at Jervaulx abbey in Yorkshire and can be traced back to the 12th century.

From around the 16th century, cheeses were being named after the region in which they were made.

In the 19th century during the Industrial revolution, it became more profitable for dairymen to sell milk rather than making cheese. The new railway networks made the transport of fresh milk over larger distances possible. This resulted in a situation where less cheese was being produced in Britain.

In the 1940s cheese making suffered another blow due to WWII. Milk was rationed and the Ministry of Food banned cheese making in general, only one type of cheese was allowed to be made: the National cheese. By the time the war had ended only a few varieties remained.

It would take almost 30 years before cheese making became popular again and it hasn’t stopped since. We’ve only seen a thriving trend with old cheese recipes being re-discovered and new ones being developed. Cheese varieties that were once lost were now found again.

I’ve been wanting to write this post about British cheese for some time now but as it’s British cheese week this week I thought it was just the time to start writing.

British Cheese Week starts with the announcement of the winners of the awards and the opening of the Great British Cheese Festival.

Some British alternatives to well known cheeses
Tunworth – Camembert
Carnevale’s Greys Farm in Theydon Bois, Essex. – Ricotta
Farmers’ Hand – Parmesan
Mature Winchester – Parmesan
Fine Fettle –  Feta
Cornish brie – Brie
Frances Wood’s Somerset mozzarella – Mozzarella
Berkswell – manchego
Ogleshield – Raclette
Cornish Blue – Roquefort
Cashel blue – Fourme d’ambert
(note that there are a lot more…)

A few places to buy British cheeses:
Neils Yard dairy
Borough Market
Daylesford farm shops
cheddar gorge cheese co

Online
UK
Neils Yard dairy
Daylesford farm shops
cheddar gorge cheese co

USA
www.zingermans.com
www.igourmet.com

Useful links

http://www.greatbritishcheesefestival.co.uk/content.asp
http://www.britishcheese.com/
http://www.thecheeseweb.com/contentok.php?id=205
http://www.great-british-cheeses.com/

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