Ok, I made it at home today. It's a special treat for my fiance. It can be very nice at restaurants that make it carefully, don't cut corners. But it's not sublime. I wanted to produce a sublime tiramisu. So I ignored all the easy-make, quick-step, derivative, and variations on tiramisu and looked for something that, given my knowledge of cooking , had the right feel to it. I found my perfect recipe in Lorenza di Medici's Basic Tiramisu. The recipe is:
Ingredients
* EGG YOLKS, 3
* EGG WHITES, 3
* SUGAR, superfine (castor), 4 tablespoons
* VIN SANTO, or MARSALA, or BRANDY, or RUM 1-1/3 cups (I used rum)
* ESPRESSO COFFEE, very strong, 1/2 cup
* MASCARPONE CHEESE, 8 ounces
* CREAM, 1 cup (This is UK double cream so in the US get heavy whipping cream. NOT UHT crap, please.)
* SAVOIARDI (LADY FINGERS), I believe I used 18 of them for the bowl I used.
* Cocoa powder - the highest quality, pure cocoa.
* dark chocolate - I used a super high quality bar of black african chocolate - 86% which is amazing since the highest I've ever previously seen was 72%. This was dark, silky, and sweetly intense.
You will need 3 mixing bowls for this and 1 large glass souffle dish or any glass serving dish with high, straight sides - I recommend 4" high.
Directions
1. Make a zabaglione by beating the egg yolks and 3 tablespoons sugar in the top of a double boiler until ivory colored. (I used a large pyrex mixing bowl with a handle over a pot of boiling water and a hand mixer.)
2. Add 1/3 cup liquor and whisk over gently simmering water until the mixture begins to thicken. Let it cool.
3. Stir about 1/4 cup coffee into the Mascarpone. Taste and add a teaspoon or so of sugar if desired, I did. I also added a bit more coffee to get the soft, silky texture I wanted.
4. Whip the cream to soft peaks.
5. Beat the egg whites until stiff. Fold the egg whites into the zabaglione.
6. Dip the lady fingers into the remaining liquor mixed with the remaining coffee and line the bottom of a 9-inch bowl or individual containers (wine glasses work well).
7. Cover them with half the Mascarpone, then half the zabaglione, then half the whipped cream.
7a. Dust with cocoa powder after the zabaglione layer before you add the cream.
8. Repeat the layers, starting with more dipped ladyfingers and finishing with the cream.
8a. Dust or sprinkle lightly with cocoa. Shave the chocolate bar over the top so chocolate curls/bits scatter all over it.
9. Refrigerate for several hours (4-24) before serving.
9a. Alan says add more shaved chocolate on top before serving.
Whew! I finished the tiramisu and it's now sitting quietly chilling in the fridge, the flavours maturing and mellowing.
We'll have it for dessert tonight. I'll know if my work paid off after we've tasted it. It looks gorgeous and smells gorgeous so I have high hopes.
If you have a dishwasher, this isn't any more than a horribly huge amount of fussy, careful, skilled work. If you have to wash it all up afterwards by hand, as I do, this is almost unspeakable. But one must suffer for beauty.
If you want quick and easy - get an "apple pie" at MacDonalds.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Bye-Bye Betty
Betty Frieden, one of the founders of American feminism, died Feb 4th, on her 85th birthday. I was still a child when her book The Feminiine Mystique was published. I remember older friends talking about the then radical idea that a woman might need, not just want but need more than a husband and children.
I had conflicting opinions back then and after decades I still have conflicting thoughts about the whole subject. Of course women want and need more than the narrow little role of wife and mother. I have no conflict with that. But what has always troubled me is how those who rejected traditional roles denigrated and condemned and ridiculed those who chose to retain the roles or attempted to integrate a wide variety of roles. Fundamentally it was just a switch in the gender of who was telling us how to live. So we discarded the male lifestyle direction of women for female lifestyle direction and surprise! the females trying to direct our lives were as uncaring of individual women's needs and wants as their previous taskmasters! Fourty years later stay at home mums still are not respected and people still ask them "do you intend to go back to work?". Ha! Anyone who asks that should be sentenced to raise 3 young children without extra household help for a few weeks. All women work. Some do it in the home and some in a office, but they all WORK. Dont ever fool yourself about this. The most high-pressure, techically difficult project management job I ever worked on was a freaking piece of cake compared to daily care for 3 children (or more sometimes).
So back to Betty. I always liked Betty and what she had to say. My arguement was with the come-latelies like Gloria Steinem. The ones who weren't interested in giving women a choice, the ones who kicked the concepts of equality to the side. My arguement was with the All-females-are-dykes-under-the-skin radical and men are the anti-christ crowd. The ones who imposed a conventionalism on the new feminism that was as narrow and confining in its own way as that previously imposed by men. Is it better for the gulag to be guarded by them or us? We are still in the gulag.
Bye Bye Betty. You fought the good fight.
I had conflicting opinions back then and after decades I still have conflicting thoughts about the whole subject. Of course women want and need more than the narrow little role of wife and mother. I have no conflict with that. But what has always troubled me is how those who rejected traditional roles denigrated and condemned and ridiculed those who chose to retain the roles or attempted to integrate a wide variety of roles. Fundamentally it was just a switch in the gender of who was telling us how to live. So we discarded the male lifestyle direction of women for female lifestyle direction and surprise! the females trying to direct our lives were as uncaring of individual women's needs and wants as their previous taskmasters! Fourty years later stay at home mums still are not respected and people still ask them "do you intend to go back to work?". Ha! Anyone who asks that should be sentenced to raise 3 young children without extra household help for a few weeks. All women work. Some do it in the home and some in a office, but they all WORK. Dont ever fool yourself about this. The most high-pressure, techically difficult project management job I ever worked on was a freaking piece of cake compared to daily care for 3 children (or more sometimes).
So back to Betty. I always liked Betty and what she had to say. My arguement was with the come-latelies like Gloria Steinem. The ones who weren't interested in giving women a choice, the ones who kicked the concepts of equality to the side. My arguement was with the All-females-are-dykes-under-the-skin radical and men are the anti-christ crowd. The ones who imposed a conventionalism on the new feminism that was as narrow and confining in its own way as that previously imposed by men. Is it better for the gulag to be guarded by them or us? We are still in the gulag.
Bye Bye Betty. You fought the good fight.
Monday, February 06, 2006
I'm not too keen on any organized religion. Much like professional sports, organized religion is a machine. A business set up to empaower itself and control the rest of us.
I'm disgusted with Islam in the same way I am disgusted with Christianity. I have no problem with people practicing their beliefs in the privacy of their home on a fully consentual basis. But the moment anyone tries to impose their faith-based beliefs on me , I have absolutely no use for them left.
I'm disgusted with Islam in the same way I am disgusted with Christianity. I have no problem with people practicing their beliefs in the privacy of their home on a fully consentual basis. But the moment anyone tries to impose their faith-based beliefs on me , I have absolutely no use for them left.
Dear muslims,
If you do not like my country, please leave.
If you do not like the way our women dress, please leave.
If you do not like our separation of politics and religion, please leave.
If you support violent responses to criticism of Islam, please leave.
If you support terrorism in any way, shape or form, please leave.
If you cannot accept satirical cartoons in our newspapers, please leave.
If you do not support democracy or the freedom of speech, please leave my country.
SBrant http://face-of-muhammed.blogspot.com/
If you do not like my country, please leave.
If you do not like the way our women dress, please leave.
If you do not like our separation of politics and religion, please leave.
If you support violent responses to criticism of Islam, please leave.
If you support terrorism in any way, shape or form, please leave.
If you cannot accept satirical cartoons in our newspapers, please leave.
If you do not support democracy or the freedom of speech, please leave my country.
SBrant http://face-of-muhammed.blogspot.com/
Comment on the Danish cartoons
This said it well so I'm copying it-
Friday, February 03, 2006
A Moment of Truth
A new non-political international movement is rising.
4000 terror attacks after 9/11, the world was still slumbering. But 12 innocent satirical drawings in a Danish newspaper, the kind of cartoons printed daily by the thousands in newspapers all over the world, have changed the geopolitical situation.
Suddenly, a new understanding is emerging across political differences.
In recent years, the world crisis between Islam and the non-Muslim world has been discussed in thousands of books, countless television debates and millions of articles across the globe. It did nothing but divide us. Even former western allies were divided, and a wave of anti-Americanism has swept even the free western societies.
Now ridiculous circumstances have changed all that. A sense of humour has changed what all the debating could not.
For 1400 years, Islam has waged war on all surrounding non-Muslim civilizations. During the course of history, Christianity was reformed, Europe colonized the world and set it free again, dictators lived, reigned and died, and totalitarian regimes emerged and vanished.
But Islam stayed, unreformed. And today, it imprisons more than 1 billion people, moderate and radical souls alike, in a huge gap of difference to the rest of us. Across political divides, across national boundaries, across various degrees of freedom, across race, people or religion, black or white, rich or poor; it stands out as our opposite. Only Muslim reformists seek to lessen the gap. And their voices are quickly silenced.
In modern times, waves of immigrants from Muslim countries have entered Europe. All European countries have been subject to islamization; the process of slowly incorporating Islamic values and Muslim customs into our way of life. Far East countries like India, Thailand, Indonesia and China are experiencing the Muslim Jihad. Israel lives with it. America feels it. Africa suffers from it, and is too weak from disease and poverty to resist.
It is suddenly coming to our attention that Islam is not, cannot, and will not be integrated or assimilated to the values of freedom and democracy. Islam is not only a religion; it is a totalitarian and expansionistic political ideology.
It is now a moment of truth. The current events unfolding all over the world are opening our eyes. 12 cartoons have touched the soul of the free societies: The right to speak freely without fear.
The drawings did not cause this. But they catalyzed a world conflict dormant since the birth of Muhammed.
Now we know what his face looks like. And we are still in majority on this earth to stand up to it.
The current events will eventually lead to either a 3rd world war or finally some sort of Islamic self-realization that has been 1400 years in the making.
posted by sbrant
Friday, February 03, 2006
A Moment of Truth
A new non-political international movement is rising.
4000 terror attacks after 9/11, the world was still slumbering. But 12 innocent satirical drawings in a Danish newspaper, the kind of cartoons printed daily by the thousands in newspapers all over the world, have changed the geopolitical situation.
Suddenly, a new understanding is emerging across political differences.
In recent years, the world crisis between Islam and the non-Muslim world has been discussed in thousands of books, countless television debates and millions of articles across the globe. It did nothing but divide us. Even former western allies were divided, and a wave of anti-Americanism has swept even the free western societies.
Now ridiculous circumstances have changed all that. A sense of humour has changed what all the debating could not.
For 1400 years, Islam has waged war on all surrounding non-Muslim civilizations. During the course of history, Christianity was reformed, Europe colonized the world and set it free again, dictators lived, reigned and died, and totalitarian regimes emerged and vanished.
But Islam stayed, unreformed. And today, it imprisons more than 1 billion people, moderate and radical souls alike, in a huge gap of difference to the rest of us. Across political divides, across national boundaries, across various degrees of freedom, across race, people or religion, black or white, rich or poor; it stands out as our opposite. Only Muslim reformists seek to lessen the gap. And their voices are quickly silenced.
In modern times, waves of immigrants from Muslim countries have entered Europe. All European countries have been subject to islamization; the process of slowly incorporating Islamic values and Muslim customs into our way of life. Far East countries like India, Thailand, Indonesia and China are experiencing the Muslim Jihad. Israel lives with it. America feels it. Africa suffers from it, and is too weak from disease and poverty to resist.
It is suddenly coming to our attention that Islam is not, cannot, and will not be integrated or assimilated to the values of freedom and democracy. Islam is not only a religion; it is a totalitarian and expansionistic political ideology.
It is now a moment of truth. The current events unfolding all over the world are opening our eyes. 12 cartoons have touched the soul of the free societies: The right to speak freely without fear.
The drawings did not cause this. But they catalyzed a world conflict dormant since the birth of Muhammed.
Now we know what his face looks like. And we are still in majority on this earth to stand up to it.
The current events will eventually lead to either a 3rd world war or finally some sort of Islamic self-realization that has been 1400 years in the making.
posted by sbrant
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)