There are some dishes that stick with you forever and remain imprinted in your mind. For me, it was Tetsuya’s Confit of Ocean Trout, as well as Marcus Wareing’s Lemonade dessert at Petrus. One that came from a meal I had while back was the papardelle from Pendolino’s in the Strand Arcade. I’ve said that I’m not a big pasta eater, but now that Winter is coming up, it seems that it’s what I crave. I will admit I haven’t had much papardelle in my life but when I tried theirs I sought to rectify that.

I bought these lasagne sheets as I was again, seduced by the packaging. What I didn’t realise was that they required pre boiling unlike most lasagne sheets you can find today so I stowed them away and used my ready to bake ones instead. Then I realised that I could make fat papardelle pasta out of it with whatever thickness I liked. It was a bit fiddly, and I would certainly recommend either buying some papardelle or fresh lasagne sheets instead but the taste of this with the creamy ricotta, spicy chorizo and zingy lemon zest is gorgeous. The ricotta was sent to me by Perfect Italiano and it’s is a soft ricotta which is ideal for using in a recipe like this where it needs to meld into the sauce.

The flavour was everything that I wished for and more and we both ate greedily, even though the dish should have served up to three people, it served just the two of us on this cold, rainy Winter’s night. And it was eaten in a silence of satisfaction, where there is no need to talk or converse. Our contented murmuring and eating was the perfect background to the falling rain.

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Picture this: it’s cold, you’re in your pajamas and the heater is on and you’re all rugged up for bed. Outdoors seems like a forlorn, lonely cold tundra and you’d rather gnaw off your foot than go outside. But a chocolate craving strikes you so intense that you beg your flatmate/husband/dog to go out and fetch you some chocolate cake. Of course they don’t and you’re left contemplating eating the box of chocolate flakes with a spoon and wondering why on earth you don’t have a “Break Glass in Case of Emergency” slice of chocolate cake.

Then I have a good crutch for you. It went round the internet a while back and I’d heard varying descriptions from heinous to delicious so I didn’t bother making it. Then a friend Nic who is a new mum to baby Xavier and doesn’t have a lot of time to pfaff about the house making cakes put me onto it. I admit I fiddled with the recipe just to make it a bit more luscious and whilst it won’t replace a quintuple chocolate cake, it’s a damn fine replacement for it when times are tough, desperation is harking and the chocolate withdrawal symptoms won’t cease.

Baking powder version

You can also use baking powder in which case it will be lighter (simply add 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder to each mug when you add the flour) but it will spill over so place it on a plate before microwaving it and just be aware that it won’t look as pretty. The cooking time of course depends on the microwave you have. At 2 minutes, mine wasn’t dried out at all and still moist and had a lovely layer of chocolate and a molten layer of chocolatey goodness at the bottom. However mine is not a particularly powerful microwave so setting it at medium, which is what I melt my chocolate on, was perfect. To me, the cooking time is crucial and if you have a particularly powerful microwave, 1 – 1 1/2 minutes will probably do you just fine (and they do cook further on standing remember).  I couldn’t resist of course and served it with a cafe au lait ice cream that I made a while back-if you have ice cream it’s a delicious addition. And with that my chocolate craving subsided. And don’t like chocolate cake? Try my blogging buddy JdG’s Lemon & Coconut version here at Play With Your Food! Newsflash: I’ve found that if you add baking powder but cover it with Glad Wrap then it won’t spill over yet is lovely and fluffy.

This is also my entry to Gel’s Kitchen’s No Time To Cook May 2009 challenge!

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When I first heard about the May 2009 challenge I thought to myself “Easy!” until it dawned on me a few seconds later that we would be making our own pastry. I’m slowly getting into the whole pastry making process having found reliable recipes for a Quiche pastry and a shortcrust pastry. Puff and Filo however remained off limits due in part to an innate fear of pastry (and does pastry, like dogs, smell the fear?). They even make an excellent all butter and vanilla flavoured puff pastry so I had no motivation to go even further into the “Dark Arts”.

Once I had resigned myself to the challenge and talked myself down off the ledge I went through all kinds of strudel options from savoury to chocolate & nut ones. Then I decided to go a more traditional route and make a cheese and cherry strudel with a slight twist – adding coconut to it to give it an unusual texture and flavour.

The pastry wasn’t too hard to work with and I think the key was really letting it rest overnight. That way it provided very little resistance when pulling and stretching with very little tearing or holes. As for the method, I think we are one of the few households that don’t own a tablecloth so I used a large butcher’s apron instead which worked perfectly. They say that the dough needs to be tissue thin so that you can read love letters through it and I was pleased to see that I didn’t get too many holes and I could easily see the striped pattern underneath it.

The flavour was gorgeous with the breadcrumbs providing a crunch and allowing each layer of the pastry to remain their own distinct layer. The filling was gorgeous with the three flavours harmonising beautifully. Sometimes you just have to go the traditional route – with a twist of course. I wouldn’t be “the weird girl” without it.

The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.

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