Winter minestrone

Soups are no-brainer, who needs a recipe? Right. You don't. If you know a couple of rules, you don't. Because there are soups and there are soups. I went ahead and made the latter.

Lemon spaghetti

A very refreshing lunch. Clean lemony taste, light and enjoyable. A nice surprise for your senses. And all in 10 minutes.

Chocolate shells

It's Hania's birthday party tomorrow. I made chocolate shells to fill them up with mascarpone cream. I know I'll run out of time tomorrow, so anything I can do today...I'm doing today. 

I had serious doubts about the shells. The recipe used aluminum forms. I knew paper ones were out of the question (after reading reviews). I have silicone forms I bought a couple of weeks ago. Without doing any more research, that would take more time than the process itself, I proceeded with my experiment. I melted a chocolate bar, spread the chocolate inside the forms, flipped them upside down and went to pick up my daughter from school. When back, I broke only a couple of shells while trying to take them out of the forms, but most of them came out perfect. The broken ones were just too thin, not enough chocolate.

We haven't decide which mascarpone cream to use yet, but these beautiful shells can hold anything creamy and delicious. And you won't have to do the dishes.

Recipe adapted from Giallo Zafferano

Time: 15 min preparation + 1-2h cooling = 1-2h 15 min

MAKES ABOUT 8 SHELLS

ingredients
100 g (3.5 oz) dark chocolate (I used 50% cocoa chocolate)

directions
Melt the chocolate in a water bath. Use two pots, one larger, one smaller. Fill the larger one with water, the smaller one with pieces of chocolate. Place the smaller pot inside the larger one. Heat up the water, don't boil it, turn the heat off. Keep mixing the chocolate till it melts, about 3 minutes.

With a small spoon, spread the melted chocolate inside the silicon forms, making sure you cover it all well. The places where you can see the silicon through, that's where it's going to break later. Place the forms upside down on a parchment paper or a grill till the chocolate sets, about 1-2 hours, depending on the type of chocolate and the outside conditions.  Gently, detach chocolate from the top edge of the silicon form. Then, keeping the form upside down on a surface , slowly roll the silicon from the chocolate.

To be safe, store the shells in the fridge till you're ready to use them.

I would not recommend using mascarpone cream from tiramisu recipe. The cream needs to be thicker.

Chocolate chunk cookies with almonds (Giada's incredible cookies. Version 1)

I didn't give up. The recipe calls for hazelnuts. I had a couple of bags open, leftover from Christmas. Well, I burned them all...and I only needed toasted nuts, not burned. So, let's say I used my hazelnuts up. Anyway, I rarely feel like hazelnuts. They have too much flavor, almost nauseating.  Except when I make these cookies. The original recipe calls for hazelnuts and that's all I've used in the past. And the cookies were always fantastic. Today I made them with almonds. And they are not bad at all. In fact, I'm going to forget about hazelnuts all together.

Toasting almonds

Toasting nuts is a tricky thing. None of the directions I have found so far have worked. It seems like it's experimenting every time. Maybe it's the type of nuts, how they have been stored, was the bag opened, how old they are, how dry or how moist. Are they from California, China or Turkey? I don't know. But it all seems to matter.