Fasnacht, Krapfen or whatever else you want to call them!

My childhood memories are steeped in food traditions, maybe that is why food is an integral part of my life and why I am constantly striving to give that to my girls.  Today is Shrove Tuesday- I never knew many people who celebrated this as a kid but in our house my mother always made Fasnacht.  Again, for years I asked people if they did this and not one person knew what the hell I was talking about.  In fact, I never knew until we moved to Austria that Fasnacht is actually Shrove Tuesday in German- it also refers to the the donuts we ate, however,  in Austria the donuts are called Krapfen and they are filled with Apricot Jam and dusted with sugar.  They arent very sweet as well- actually all sweets in Vienna are not very sweet even though they look it, I think that is actually why you can have a slice of cake in the afternoon and it doesn't send you into a sugar coma.

Anyway, I chose to make a yeast raised donut this year.  My mother makes the dough with potato but I left it out and went the purist route.  I had high hopes of sending the girls to school this morning with sugared chins and I even made the dough last night.  But as with all great intentions something went wrong.... as in I overslept!  So I had to tell them they could have them after school instead.  I cut them in the diamond shape my Mother always made and let them rise again for about 30 minutes and fried them up in some Crisco until puffed on brown on one side then flipped them to finish off.  Once I took them out to drain on paper bags I dusted them heavily with powdered sugar and called the neighbor kids to come and get them.  They were pretty good and all were happy!

Triple Chocolate Mousse

I'm going to start by saying I don't often make sweets....  I love them, but face it- I don't need them and neither does anyone else in this house.  But here something I have made recently.....  for a clients' dinner party.

Triple Chocolate Mousse- this simple french dessert was something that a client asked me to make for a plated dinner party so I immediately thought I had to do one better then straight chocolate- So I made 3 different chocolate mousses and served them in a martini glass!  (FYI anything served in a martini glass is elevating it to super stardom status in your guests eyes)  I have made chocolate mousse maybe once ever and to be honest I couldn't even remember how to make it so I started looking around online to see what my options were.  I wanted something stable that could hold up through the dinner and be really yummy so I went with making a custard base and separating it into 3 bowls and adding 3 different chocolates: white, milk and dark.  A custard is so simple really and very versatile so I would suggest everyone know how to make it- you can then take you base and make it sweet OR savory- as in the case of roasted vegetable bread pudding (yum) with a roasted garlic custard.  Ok, I digress so back to the chocolate mousse recipe.

A proper custard recipe:

Cream or Whole Milk steeped with Flavoring  (Vanilla bean in this case)
Egg Yolks whisked with sugar- you want the eggs to be light yellow and billowy
pinch of salt

the tricky part of technique here is combining hot milk with eggs..... so you temper it by starting with a ladle of hot milk and rapidly whisking it into the eggs.  You want to bring the temp of the eggs up closer to the cream so you don't shock them and make some sweet scrambled eggs.... literally.  Once you get a few ladles in and are happily whisking away pour the mix back into the saucepan with the rest of the cream.  DO NOT STOP WHISKING for about a minute or so.  Then put the pan over lowish heat and switch to a wooden spoon.  (I think a flat edged wooden spoon is the best)  Once you have heated your custard to the point where you get big flubby bubbles coming to the surface, you are done.  Since I was making triple chocolate mousse, I separated the custard into three bowls to cool.  I melted three different chocolates- white, milk and dark.  When everything was coolish I folded them together along with a little whipped cream.  Then I layered these beauties into Martini glasses and set them in the fridge to set up.  When it was time to serve, I brought them to room temp and added a raspberry and dark chocolate shavings... tada.......  instant hit!

My most memorable dish

I have eaten in a lot of places.  I find that eating street food in a foreign country can rank just as high as a 16 course dinner at Joel Rubuchon.  It is about the moment that you are in.. at the moment!  The most memorable thing I have ever eaten has to be an egg yolk ravioli over wilted spinach with black truffle.  It was at Artner in Vienna, Austria.  I totally loved this dish and had never had anything like it.  It won me over so much that here I am 3 years later still talking about it and trying to replicate it.  Until then I had never heard of a runny egg yolk encased in fresh pasta over anything.  Since then I have done some online research and found that it is a pretty old Italian dish.  I also have talked about this with a lot of people and gotten a lot of input about recreating this dish.

This time (virgin run) I wanted to go pretty simple, pretty traditional.  So I started out making some semolina pasta dough.  I think you can even buy the fresh pasta sheets here and use it.  Then I made a ricotta mixture- fresh garlic, ricotta, s&p, and lemon zest.  After I cut out the squares to build my ravioli I put a little spoonful of ricotta, making sure to create a well to hold the egg yolk.  Trick to the egg yolks... use VERY FRESH & VERY COLD EGGS.  Once you get this part together- wet the edges and press another square of pasta over top..... be very careful at this point.... I broke two completely before I even got going!    Then I popped them in the fridge to get very cold.  I boiled some heavily salted water and separately wilted some spinach in a saute pan.  Once the water was rolling I dropped in the ravioli and let it simmer away.  I didn't want it to be to over cooked so I let it go about 2.5, 3 minutes total.  I plated the spinach as the base and the ravioli over top, then I drizzled some black truffle butter over it all and grated some fresh black truffle for good measure.  Since I was feeding the family I had some roasted Chilean Sea Bass as well.

FYI, everyone loved it.

Next time I would certainly jazz it up- as someone suggested a base of duxelle in place of ricotta would be delish or using quail eggs.... all great ideas for another endeavor.