September 6, 2011

pick me up





The weekend just gone was a tough one.  At least to begin with.  It's not something I want to write about just yet, but we've had an emotionally trying fortnight which came to a head on Friday evening when we should have been eating pasta and drinking red wine.  Instead we did the opposite and after that, it could only get better.  Thankfully it did.

After a lazy Saturday in the garden, it was Fathers' Day and my plans to bake a cake were foiled somewhat, so we ended up making tiramisu, a dessert that has been on Will's mind ever since I bought the packet of savioardi biscuits months ago.  He is a coffee lover, so it makes perfect sense that he should love this dessert, which we made with fresh coffee, grand marnier and marsala.  Here in Brisbane, sourcing a good or even half decent bottle of marsala is not as easy as it sounds, so a special trip was required, after some internetting and old fashioned phone calling to find something better than the last bottle we sampled, which was awful.  (Don't buy Boronia, it tastes like flat Coke - find some proper Italian stuff and quietly disregard the air miles involved in getting it to Australia.)

Choosing the recipe is half the battle for me.  I pore over my cook books, agonise over what the internet has to offer, working out which of the gazillions of recipes on offer will be the one that will work for us.  It's the same with any new recipe I try.  I Google it, then get lost in the search results, by which time the kids are about to wake up from their day time naps and I've run out of time to get organised and try something new.  Not this time though.  I decided to go straight for what I knew should be a winner by typing in 'Food Safari tiramisu' and lo and behold, there it was.  A reasonably fuss free recipe for what looked like a pretty perfect dessert.

And the verdict?  Sensational.  The biscuits were soaked just enough, with just about enough coffee flavour and booze.  The Grand Marnier addition was an inspired one, the dessert tasted like Christmas and we used up some of that gorgeous orange liqueur that would have otherwise languished until the festive season.  We ate our first portions after two hours of chilling and that was something special, until I remembered what we had done the night before this morning, and I couldn't even wait until 10am before helping myself to a smallish portion.  The overnight stay in the fridge sent it from delicious to top quality.

And there you have it.  We succeeded in using up the savioardi biscuits we thought we never would, we made something new and untried, we managed to rustle up a treat for Fathers' Day and it just so happened to be the pick-me-up we needed after a shaky start to what ended up being a great weekend.

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