It was my birthday a few days ago and it’s turning into a fine little tradition that I treat my colleagues with several self-made pies for my birthday. This year I decided to make a chocolate cake , an extremely delicious strawberry cheese cake (I will post the recipe later) and this great old favorite, an apple galette. It’s very easy to make. This is the recipe (from Delicious magazine):

Ingredients (for 6 persons)
1 roll of ready made puff dough
1 whisked egg
2 green apples, peeled and cut into thin slices
melted butter
honey
a few unsalted pistachio nuts, cut into smal pieces

frangipane
3 Ts unsalted pistachio nuts
3 Ts almond powder
40 g soft, unsalted butter
3 Ts fine sugar
1 egg yolk
1/4 ts vanilla essence

Blend all the ingredients for the frangipane together in a blender.
Preheat the oven at 220°C. Roll out the puff dough and cut it into a rectangle of ca. 22×30cm en 3mm thick. Put the dough on a with parchment paper covered oven tray. Draw a line with a knife at about 1cm from the border without cutting all the way through the dough. Prick some small holes inside the lines with a fork and brush on the egg. Spread out the frangipane on top of the dough (except the border) and cover with the apple slices. Brush some melted butter thinly on the apple slices.
Bake the galette for about 15 minutes at 220°C. Then turn down the temperature to 200°C and drizzle some honey on top of the apple slices. Bake for another 15 minutes until golden brown. Drizzle some more hony and sprinkle some of the pistachio nuts on top.
And to make this already great apple galette even better you could add some vanilla ice cream.

Djemaa El-Fna Food, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Live Performance on Djemaa El-Fna, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Djemaa el-Fna sunset, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Djemaa El-Fna Food, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Bab Agnaou, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Just a a little time ago I was still dreaming of Morocco and here I am, already back from my trip to Marrakesh. I went to Marrakesh for a week in the beginning of May. It’s such an amazing place, even though it has become extremely touristy.
The Djemaa El-Fna Square is where a lot of the action takes place, especially at night when a bunch of open air restaurants set up, selling the best Moroccan food, and acrobats, musicians, snake charmers and other artists perform for hundreds of people, both tourists and Moroccans.
The medina (the old city) is a great place to just walk around and get lost, there are so many nice little corners that would probably be impossible to find if you try to, so the best way is to let chance take you there.
I also took a organized excursion to the Ourika Valley, which is a beautiful valley about an hour outside of Marrakesh. It’s at the foot of the Atlas mountains and the views were spectacular.
And I visited Essaouira, a little town at the Atlantic Ocean. It was refreshing change from Marrakesh with the nice sea breeze and cooler temperatures.
I had a great time in Morocco. I stayed at a wonderful little riad called “Casa Del Sol”, a nice low-budget place with extremely friendly managers. I would definitely recommend staying there, especially when traveling alone like I did, it’s a great place to meet people.
Being a vegetarian, it was not really a problem to find vegetarian food, but I have to admit that I ended up eating vegetarian tajine or vegetarian couscous (which is basically the same) a lot. At the end of my stay however, I discovered this great little vegetarian restaurant in Marrakesh, theEarth Cafe and I wish I’d known about it before, ’cause they had some really delicious food on their menu.
For more pictures, please visit my Flickr page .

Essaouria port, originally uploaded by ibeepix.