CHERRY VANILLA MOUSSE WITH STRACCIATELLA YOGURT

I know summer has arrived when I’m wearing my cherry earrings again. Traditionally, since childhood the very first cherries turn into edible juwelery. After enjoying the look of them for an hour or two I can’t resist any longer and have to eat them. Cherries are lovely summerfruit and really don’t need any complicated preparation to taste delicious. Enjoy them on a plaid underneath a parasol for the ultimate summer feeling.

Lately I’ve been having cravings for ice cream, especially stracciatella ice cream. The creamy white vanilla ice cream with little dark brown chocolate bits was a real summer treat for me and my little sister. When our parents bought us ice cream and we could choose our own flavour we would choose stracciatella evermore. Maybe it was because of its combination of vanilla and chocolate, maybe it was because of its exotic name. For what does stracciatella actually mean? Stracciatella turns out to be the Italian word for little pieces or snips and in Italian it is used to describe more dishes than only ice cream. For instance you have stracciatella alla romana: an Italian soup with little snips of egg. There’s stracciatella di bufala: an Italian buffalo mozzarella with a shredded texture. The ice cream is called stracciatella because of the little chocolate pieces of course but it hasn’t anything to do with the chocolate itself. Knowing this I can create my own stracciatella texture using another ingredient, say black sesame seeds and by using Greek yogurt as ice cream this is a very healthy stracciatella summer treat. Adding some oatmeal to the yogurt the night before will make it as firm as a soft vanilla ice cream. Totally brill.

And are you maybe familiar with the phrase ‘Open Sesame’? Ali Baba used this magical spell to enter the cave of the forty thieves in search of a hidden treasure. When his brother Cassim came after him, trying to steal the hidden treasure from Ali Baba he couldn’t remember the kind of cereal on his way out, leaving him mumbling  – ‘Spelt? Rye? Buckwheat? Oat? – trapped in the cave. Eventually he was found by the Forty Thieves with all its consequences…

The crunchy and tasty sesame seeds in this recipe provide for the stracciatella texture. The cherries I turned into a soft vanilla mousse using chia seeds. The amounts in this recipe make more cherry vanilla mousse than you could possibly eat at one time, so you can make your breakfast as sweet or savoury as you like.

Recipe Cherry Vanilla Mousse with Stracciatella Yogurt

Makes 2 portions with a serious amount of mousse

Ingredients Cherry Vanilla Mousse

250 gr halved and pitted cherries

pulp from one vanilla pod

juice of ½ lemon

pinch of salt

4 tbsp chiaseeds

1. Put all the ingredients except the chia in your blender or food processor and blend on high speed until smooth. Right now you have your hand on a very delightful cherry smoothie (just saying). Pour the smoothie in a bowl and stir in the chiaseeds. Leave to set in the fridge for at least one hour, but preferably overnight.

Ingredients Stracciatella Yogurt

6-8 tbsp Greek yogurt

4-6 tbsp rolled oats

4 tbsp black sesame seeds

1. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Cover the bowl with a plate or a towel and leave to set in the fridge for at least one hour, but preferably overnight.

2. Portion the yogurt into two bowls or cups. Serve with the cherry vanilla mousse and a couple of extra cherries on top. Sprinkle with black sesame seed.