Chocolate, cheese, action

A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye.
~ Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

It strikes me now that I fed my flatmates and guests an overbearing amount of chocolate and cheese for dinner tonight… oops!

The first thing I started working on late this afternoon was the chocolate crust bit of this recipe from Tessa Kiros’ “Falling Cloudberries”:
#52 Ricotta Tart with a Chocolate Crust – Page 331

It looks like a thin pizza here, but really, it isn’t. It’s a comfy cake tin lined with a deep chocolatey pastry bed encasing some silky citrusy cheese mix (pre-baking).

I like starting dinner preparations with Dessert leading the way.

Now, lest you begin to believe it turned out to be a perfect success, it wasn’t. Perhaps it is due to the fact that I didn’t have a food processor and beat it all by hand, but it refused to set properly even after an excessively long time in the oven. It eroded with startling ease when one of my flatmates accidentally dropped the cake tin too (the tin landed on its bum, thank God!) Here is the remains of the eroded tart depicted, after everyone had a wobbly scoop of it:

Taste-wise, though, what can I say? You can hardly go wrong with the good flavours of ricotta, chocolate, lemon & orange juice and orange zest… ;-)

And this? No, it’s not a quirky dessert; it’s salad! Salad with arugula, feta, pistachio nuts, cranberry sprinkle, sliced almonds, plump dried apricots, onion, snow pea shoots, orange zest, and just for fun – chocolate bits (inspired by Molly Wizenberg’s book, “A Homemade Life”).

We also had filo parcels filled with chicken, apricots, brie, chutney, garlic, onions, cashew nuts, basil, parsley, salt & pepper… but I neglected to take photos of those.

I was a little sleepy as we sat in the lounge afterwards, so I missed out on quality engagement with the others… but it was an enjoyable night nevertheless and I’m glad everyone else got to see each other, eat, relax, spend time together. Super.

[edit] It is now Saturday morning, and I’ve just had a lovely surprise.

The ricotta tart has somehow improved greatly in taste and texture overnight (I just a small slice of it for breakfast). I’m not a fan of leftovers most of the time, but in making a few of Tessa’s desserts, I have been finding that they taste a million times better when they are given time to sit in the fridge or on the kitchen bench, depending on the dessert in question of course. [/edit]