The perfect Tiramisu is a balance of flavors of a sweet zabaglione, strong coffee, marsala wine, creamy mascarpone cheese and the dusting of unsweetened cocoa.

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

For this challenge I debated about changing up the recipe and doing an orange tiramisu or maybe a lemon and raspberry or my son, Paul, suggested pumpkin ladyfingers with chocolate filling.  I kept going back and forth on ideas and decided to go with the traditional version. You just can’t beat anything with chocolate in it and I may do the pumpkin version sometime in the fall.

For this challenge we were suppose to make our own lady fingers, and the marscapone cheese. The marscapone cheese was so easy and looked beautiful. My first thought about this challenge was “hey, I can use my ladyfinger pan that I have used only a few times in 40 years”.  I have such a collection of pans, everything form 2″ bread pans, tiny bundts, tiny shortcake, madeline, heart shape, fish shape, egg shape, and even cactus shape.  You could say I’m a sucker for gadgets and baking pans. The ladyfingers turned out absolutely perfect. I could have used 2 additional pans as I ended up using cookie sheets covered with parchement for the remainder of the ladyfingers.

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I love all the flavors of Asian food and this has them all.

I remember the first Asian type salad I ever had and it was sitting by myself in a pub in Truckee, CA. Years ago, our family had gone on a ski trip during a spring break from school. One day they were skiing at Squaw Valley and since I don’t ski (been there, done that, hurt knee, surgery, all that stuff–afraid now) I decided to drive myself over to Truckee to shop and have lunch. I didn’t know it at the time but later I found out that about 100 movies have been filmed in Truckee –Misery and True Lies were two of them.

Anyway, I went to this little pub for lunch. They had this great Asian Chicken Salad and I remember they had these fried won ton chips in and around the salad. I love this addition to the salad and now I make the little chips all the time for salads. When I set out to make an Asian type salad, I hardly ever remember what I put in it from one time to the next. So, I’m always coming up with something new to add to the recipe. Sometimes I use red cabbage sometimes the radicchio. You can pretty much put anything you like it in and it will be delicious.

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Wonderful little pockets of  bread to hold all kinds of good fillings.

The pocket in pita bread is created by steam and when it flattens it leaves a pocket on the inside to hold all kinds of delicious fillings. Grilled veggies are great served in a pita. Or, you can use the pita to make individual pizzas or better yet, make hummus and use the pita for scooping out the dip.

My mother was a really good cook and she of course made homemade breads. She would make wonderful cornbread and the best homemade biscuits and yeast rolls. I remember when she use to make biscuits and my sister and I would beg her to bang the pan on the counter so they would fall (now who in the world would do that — but she did, for us) because her biscuits had a wonderful crunchy bottom and by deflating them, you had a crunchy bottom and top. Over the years I learned to appreciate high fluffy biscuits and feel guilty for taking the air out of my mother’s biscuits. Never had pita as a kid, but I’m sure my mother could have made them.

For years I have bought pita and made pita chips that I brush with cumin, butter and lemon pepper. No, I didn’t buy the pita chips that are already baked and bagged. BUT, I have never made my own pita bread until a recent www.thedaringkitchen.com challenge where we were asked to make pita, hummus and a mezza table full of wonderful Middle Eastern treats.

These were delicious served with a bowl of fresh hummus.

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This past summer when we were visiting my brother in Chicago we decided to stop at a neighborhood restaurant (Northside) for a quick lunch on the patio.  Chicago’s July was much, much better than July in Texas, so we took every chance to sit outside and enjoy the nice weather.  I had a BBQ sandwich served on a pretzel roll, which I had never heard of before. Pretzel roll…yum, BBQ..not so much, way to saucy.   Funny thing, by the end of the weekend I noticed that pretzel rolls were a popular menu item at a lot of the restaurants we visited.  I’ve been thinking about making them ever since.

Besides pizza dough, I’ve never attempted to make bread before.  On Superbowl Sunday and I had high hopes to whip up tons of these babies to bring to a party.  Like with most things I procrastinated and started too late, then tried to rush things.  Not having a thermometer doesn’t help either, I think it is probably crucial to have the exact water temperature when activating yeast.

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The 2010 February Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Michele of Veggie Num Nums. Michele chose to challenge everyone to make mezze based on various recipes from Claudia Roden, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Dugid.

Mezze, tapas, muqabbilat, dim sum, hor’devoures, or simply “apps”.

What ever language you may say this word in, “mezze”, tapas, muqabbilat, dim sum, hor d oeuvres, apps, we are talking about small portions of food eaten before a meal or in place of a meal.  Mezze is a selection of Greek and middle-eastern small dishes served in “mezze” portions (like tapas.) Typically a mezze might include things like hummus, baba ganoush, pita, olives, dolmas, maybe some grilled vegetables or a kabob. A mezze table would have several small dishes served all at once. If you love grazing at parties, you will love this style of eating. All kinds of things to nibble on. Try this for your next party, or any get together with friends. Everything can be made in advance, making the party an easy one to put together. All you need to do is open your wine, beer or whatever beverage and enjoy.

My menu for my messe table:

Pita Bread
Hummus
Bacon Wrapped Dates with Blue Cheese
Eggplant Caponata
Spanakopita
Tagine Spiced Grilled Quail
Israeli Cous Cous (I bought this ready made)
Herbed New Potatoes
Chocolava

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