Thursday, 12th February 2009

Inspirations

Last Saturday I met my Friend Susi in Munich. We went to a little but very good Italian Restaurant called “Il Gattopardo”, located in the Nordendstraße 58. The small room consisted of some tables only but looked a bit larger as the kitchen opens to the guest room. The staff was well trained, very friendly and very active, lets say: typical Italian.
As starter I ordered calamari with artichokes. The main course was pasta with scallops. During the time till we got our meal the owner offered small quantities of different products of his kitchen for trial. Finally, when we got our food we were already full, but we could not avoid to enjoy all these tasty creations which our host offered to us. Due to all that circumstances and impressions we felt being really in Italy.
Even when we saw the delicious dessert (Blätterteig mit Früchten auf Mascarponecreme) that the guests at the table next to us ordered, we where not able to indulge in that dream at all.
Some days later, animated by that dessert in that little Italian Restaurant I decided to create a similar composition.
On Monday I expected my friend Vera and Isabell as well (she wanted to have a look into my cook book of “Fingerfood creations” to get some ideas for her next fancy dress party).
So I snapped at the chance, invited my neighbour-friends Sabine and Danny, too, and offered them my new dessert-design Flaky-Pastry filled with Mascarpone, Advocaat and Berries.
They were crazy about that sweet-stuff.

Recognizing that I overestimated the required quantity at that time, I am going to present you a scaled down recipe:

Ingredients for 10 portions:

Directions:

1. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Then place he flaky pastry on it.
2. Cut flaky pastry into 10 similar squares. Do not place them too close together.
3. Preheat oven to 200°C and bake flaky pastry until the top is golden brown
   and crispy. Let it cool down a little bit.
4. In a separate bowl mash the mascarpone until creamy.
5. Separate egg white from the yolk. Add yolk to the mascarpone and beat white until stiff.
6. Add vanilla jogurt, vanilla sugar, custard und vanilla extract to the mascarpone-egg-mixture
   and stir it until creamy.
7. Then fold in beaten egg whites.
8. Heat frozen berries until they are warm but not mushy.
9. Cut squares carefully sidewards – now you have got a bottom and a top.
10. Take each bottom and pour some mascarponecream (1 or 2 tbsp/portion) on it.
11. First top it with advocaat and then with berries (1 tbsp/portion).
12. Place he flaky pastry tops on each piece and spread them with icing powder.