So at last here is the dessert from the underground restaurant event I held last month! It's a continuation of a recipe I posted when I first started this blog and it has slowly evolved into the dessert below. Anyway, enough babbling, here it is!

















Ingredients
Strawberry and Rose Jelly
1 sachet of powdered gelatine or vegetarian equivalent
500ml moderately hot, but not boiling, water
100g sugar
3 tablespoons good quality rose water
two handfuls of strawberries

Pistachio Cream
A small carton of double cream (or low fat equivalent)
a handful of roasted, unshelled, unsalted pistachio nuts
3 tablespoons of sugar
1-2 tablespoons of water

Cake Layer
1 small Madeira cake (recipe)


Method
You'll need to prepare the jellies and Madeira cake 3-4 hours (or even the night) before serving so plan ahead. The Madeira cake should be cooked and cooled (or bought from the shop!) by this point and cut into rounds encompassing the entire circumference of your chosen ramekins (there should be enough to make 6 pots). Put the water, sugar and 3/4 of the strawberries in a pan and make sure the water doesn't boil. Take the pan off the heat after 2-3 minutes. Mix the rose water in and make sure the sugar has dissolved. Strain the liquid into a measuring jug and vigorously mix in the gelatine making sure it is fully dissolved. Cool the mixture at room temperature. Place the Madeira cake rounds at the bottom of your ramekins and press down. Pour the liquid into the ramekins and let it cool down for 20 or so minutes. Place a few remaining strawberries in the jelly and use a toothpick to make sure they go into the position you want (presentation is important!). When the jelly has completely cooled down place the ramekins in the fridge.

Crush the pistachio nuts in a plastic bag until quite fine (make sure they're not all powdered - texture is important) and place them into a pan with the water and sugar. Heat together for a minute to so and leave to cool down whilst you whisk the cream. When the cream is fluffy add the pistachios making sure to fold them in. You might need to whisk the cream to get some more air into the mixture. Layer a teaspoon or so of the cream onto the jellies and top with extra crushed pistachios. Refrigerate for 20 minutes and then serve. Note: If you wanted to go all the way and make this into a trifle you could just add a custard layer!

Let's get this out of the way early on: Turkish coffee is an acquired taste. Turkish coffee is dark and bitter and bares no resemblance to the generic freeze-dried lame excuse for coffee common in the UK. The coffee revolution in England has been in full swing for at least a decade and a half, and a new breed of coffee buff is taking charge. But real coffee is still in the minority and exceptional coffee is still a rarity. But in Istanbul finding somewhere that serves great coffee is not usually an issue as coffee culture has had five centuries to flourish. Coffee has ancestral roots in Ethiopia and Yemen and by the middle of the sixteenth century the coffee trail had invaded Turkey's largest city. This blog entry is my homage to the impact Turkish coffee has had on the life of Lebanese people and beyond.

















One foodstuff that has been a beneficiary of the aforementioned coffee-shop boom in the UK has been the humble biscotti. Of course in Italian biscotti just means biscuit but in the English speaking world it refers to twice-baked rusk-like biscuit. Below is the recipe for my ideal coffee break: Pistachio Biscotti, Cardamom Cream and Turkish Coffee.

Ingredients
Pistachio Biscotti
100g self-raising flour
20g ground almonds
50g slighty salted butter
1 egg
50g crushed roasted pistachios
75-100g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

















Cardamom Cream
1 pot double cream
3-4 pods of green cardamom
3-4 tablespoons icing sugar

Turkish Coffee
water
freshly ground coffee beans

Method
Pistachio Biscotti
Put all the dry ingredients into a bowl. Whisk the egg, 50g of softened butter and vanilla extract until pale. Work the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and form into a dough. It should just about form a ball. Cover it with cling film and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 190degrees Celsius and grease a baking tray. Form the dough into two sausage-like shapes some width apart (they will expand). Cook until slightly golden (15minutes or so) and take out and cool. With a pallet knife cut diagonal biscuits and turn them onto their sides. You can brush them with more butter and sprinkle with icing sugar at this point. Place them back into the oven to crisp up and brown further. Take out of the oven and cool. Store in an airtight container. Note: this should make around 10-12 biscuits.

















Cardamom Cream
Split the cardamom pods and extract the little black seeds from inside. Discard the outer pod and gently grind the inner seeds. Whisk the double cream lightly before adding the icing sugar and crushed cardamom. Whisk until relatively stiff and scoop into a serving bowl.

Turkish Coffee
Heat the water in a a coffee pot on a medium heat. When the water boils mix in a 2-3 teaspoons of freshly ground coffee beans and return to the heat. When the coffee bubbles and is about to overflow turn off the heat. Serve in little porcelain glasses without any sugar. The sweetness of the biscotti and cream are a good counterpoint to the coffee. The biscotti give a nutty, buttery tone and the cardamom cream a spiced lift. I think I might go on another coffee break.

I'm not a person with a distinctly sweet tooth but I do crave something with a bit of sugar to round off a meal. These jellies are a perfect summer dessert - small, quite light and not too sweet! Unlike the first recipe I posted, this one is all my own creation, so I hope you enjoy it! I think it captures a distinctly Lebanese summer.

Ingredients
Raspberry Rose Jelly
1 sachet of powdered gelatine or vegetarian equivalent
500ml moderately hot, but not boiling, water
100g sugar
3 tablespoons good quality rose water
two handfuls of raspberries

Pistachio Cream
A small carton of double cream (or low fat equivalent)
a handful of roasted, unshelled, unsalted pistachio nuts
3 tablespoons of sugar
1-2 tablespoons of water


















Method
You'll need to prepare the jellies 3-4 hours (or even the night) before serving so plan ahead. Put the water, sugar and 3/4 of the raspberries in a pan and make sure the water doesn't boil. Take the pan off the heat after 2-3 minutes. Mix the rose water in and make sure the sugar has dissolved. Strain the liquid into a measuring jug and vigorously mix in the gelatine making sure it is fully dissolved. Pour the liquid into 4-6 ramekins and let it cool down at room temperature for 20 or so minutes. Place a few remaining raspberries in the jelly and use a toothpick to make sure they go into the position you want. When the jelly has completely cooled down place the ramekins in the fridge.

Crush the pistachio nuts in a plastic bag until quite fine (make sure they're not all powdered - texture is important) and place them into a pan with the water and sugar. Heat together for a minute to so and leave to cool down whilst you whisk the cream. When the cream is fluffy add the pistachios making sure to fold them in. You might need to whisk the cream to get some more air into the mixture. Place the cream into a ramekin for everyone to share. I would recommend you make this just before serving. Voila! There you have it: Raspberry Rose Jelly and Pistachio Cream.