My Cooking and My Garden: Beautiful Food.

I love to have, to prepare and to share beautiful food. By saying that, I mean that food does not only taste good, but it has to look good.
Simple food, such as sandwiches, can be presented beautifully. What you need is colours, you could get them from herbs and edible flowers.

When the children were little, we often went out for a luncheon with friends, and they loved their finger sandwiches to take along to share. Their experience was excellent, as the sandwiches were so favourite, and they have become our tradition since.

Sandwiches are convenient food, and indeed almost everyone loves them. I made beautiful finger sandwiches for sharing today for morning tea. They have egg and herbs filling, and also ham, ricotta cheese and sun dried tomatoes.

Beautiful Finger Sandwiches.

Filling For The Sandwiches

Egg and herbs filling
4 boiled egg, soft hard-boiled but not too runny
1 tablespoon mixed herbs, chopped fresh lovage and mints
1 teaspoon mustard
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
salt to taste
Mash the egg until smooth, add in the mayonnaise and mix together
Add in the mustard, herbs and salt, mix them thoroughly
Refrigerate until ready to use

Ricotta, sundry tomato and ham filling
250 g fresh ricotta
5 Sun-dried tomato, chopped finely
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon mixed fresh chopped herbs: dill, parsley
salt to taste
Mix all ingredients together until all combined
Refrigerate until ready to use.

You can make eight sandwiches with both fillings, cut and slice into strips, they make 32 pieces. Place them onto a platter, decorate with flowers or herbs to keep their freshness, and last but not least, cover with plastic wrapper tightly. Refrigerate until you are ready to take them out along with you to a function. These sandwiches travel well, they are excellent and delightful food to share. People enjoy food more, especially if they are beautifully presented.

edible flowers and herbs are washed and cleaned for food presentation.

Pretty That Pie

Light, delicious, apple and pear pie that I baked today was appreciated by our friends. No, I did not use short or puff pastry, but it was a rich scone dough, it had egg, cream and oil.

Beautiful Sliced Apple and Pear Pie is ready to serve.

I did a research about how to freeze scone dough. Is it possible? It is. I thought it would be fresher to serve scones on the day of baking than fresh scones that are kept in the freezer.

This is what I did, I prepared scone dough for my apple and pear pie, then I fixed the pie to keep in the freezer overnight, to bake the next day.

The ingredients: 2 cups self-raising flour, 2 small eggs, 1/2 cup cream and 2 tablespoons oil and some sugar. Mix all ingredients together, gather to make a ball. Knead lightly then keep in a bowl to rest. In the meantime prepare the filling: peel and quarter the fruits, boil them with 1/3 cup sugar until just cooked but not too soft. When they are cold, slice them thinly.

Preparation And Baking

Simply roll the dough out, into the round with 1/2 cm thickness, place the slice fruits in

the middle, bring the edges of the dough in, and almost covering

The fruits. Leave the pie slightly open in the middle, and bake

in a hot oven at 200 degrees C, for 25 minutes OR if you prefer, at this stage

you could keep it in the freezer and bake it when you need it.

Freshly Baked Apple and Pear Pie, Dusted with Icing Sugar

To bake the pie from frozen, take the frozen pie 25 minutes before baking time. It does not need totally defrosted. It worked well, and the taste was delicious. The pie was shared with friends.

Baking For The Family.

Baked Apple Strudel

Beautiful and pretty, I love both words relating to food that I prepare and cook. For the family I did apple strudel, it is a treat as the pastry is much simpler and no cream to serve.

Pretty Apple Strudel