Let me start off by saying that this marvellously flavourful recipe is Ottolenghi´s, not mine. I honestly make so many of his recipes (like this rice puttanesca) that I should add a tag on the blog for them. I’ve been meaning to cook with orzo (or risen, as Italians would call this pasta type) ever since I’ve seen it used over and over again in Mihai Gateste´s recipes, but I failed to find it in supermarkets. Until now…
I’ve given you a restaurant guide to Sibiu with Food I Loved in Sibiu, but on this trip a realisation actually hit me – Sibiu´s brunch scene is blooming. And so, off I went to try them all (some again, some for the first time), and figure out which of these spots you should visit next time you’re in the city where houses have eyes. So without further ado, here’s where you should brunch in Sibiu next time you’re around.
Fajitas – or André´s signature dish during his uni years. I know what you’re thinking – regular people´s uni years meals were canned ramen noodles at best, but it seems I am marrying a rare specimen of a man who learned how to do this tex-mex dish for his fellow students, while the rest of us were eating scraps. Fast forward many years – André and I are dating and he’s making me fajitas. I remember the first time very well because we had a silly fight. As we did the second time he made me fajitas. I was afraid they were cursed at this stage, but soon learned how to enjoy spiciness on the fajitas and not in snarky comments that would make us argue. Almost eight years later it is a dish I love. We make it when we have big dinners and we make it for the two of us and proceed to eating it for days. It’s a hard dish to photograph so I never tried until today, but I thought it was high time you also got this recipe.
In the heart of Transylvania lies the town of Sibiu – the place where I was born and spent the first 18 years of my life. It’s a fairly mid-sized town for Eastern European standards, but to me and everyone visiting it (especially for the Christmas market or its many festivals) it’s like a piece from a fairytale. Eventually I´ll do a guide to Sibiu, but for now I´ll leave you with a collection of my favourite restaurants and bars in this magical city where houses have eyes.
If you, like me, are not the biggest carrot fan but desperately want to introduce this vitamin packed veggie into your diet, this salad might just do it. You can make the dressing is bland or overpowering as you like, and play around with the ratio of the other ingredients, depending on your preferences. You can also incorporate the carrots in any way you like – I personally like to “shave” instead of shred them, because for whatever reason I feel they absorb the dressing better this way (and look cooler in pictures). Having said that, let’s get to the salad recipe.
This creamy cauliflower and Cannellini (white) beans soup has bran on repeat in our home this winter, and I swear that it’s not just because of how easy it is to make (yes, I used canned beans, guilty as charged). I think I love it so much because beyond the delicious taste, it is also super nutritious – high in fibre and a great protein source due to the beans and high in vitamins C and K due to the cauliflower. This soup is basically the perfect comfort food for a cold winter day, or for a sunny day when you need to prepare something super quickly. I’ve iterated upon recipes I came across online until reaching this one, so without further ado – here goes.
Welcome to part I of a series of articles about the six weeks we spent in South East Asia last summer. It took us pretty much forever to choose a place in the world where we´d want to spend six weeks of our sabbatical. Things we took into consideration when making this decision were: safety, weather, cost, variety of things we could do (since we were going to spend such a long time on the road), and cultural attractiveness. When we ended up choosing South-East Asia it was then just a matter of figuring out how much can we squeeze into six weeks and which countries were prioritary for us. In the end we were left with Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. My idea for this series is to walk you through our itinerary, with focus on how we got from point A to point B, as the planning of transportation bit took us forever and I want to spare you all that research, leaving all the information in one place. There will be other posts expanding on some of these destinations, the food we ate there, and more. But in this one I will just focus on the itinerary of our 15 days in Thailand.
On our first evening in Bangkok I was utterly overwhelmed by how bright and loud it was. This overwhelming feeling turned out to just intensify over the next couple of days. From the aforementioned sounds and lights, to smells in markets and sheer options of where to divert your attention at or even what to eat. In a city equally famous for its street food as it Is for its Michelin Guide restaurants, where do you even begin? Well if you’re a first time tourist to Bangkok, let me try to help you a little bit by sharing with you my favourite places for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I have mixed feelings about adapting the classical puttanesca dish to this baked basmati rice version, but truth be told it is so delicious that I think you’ll forgive me. I initially found a baked orzo puttanesca in Ottolenghi´s book Shelf, but I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could make a version of it with basmati rice instead. I left out the traditional anchovies, and changed the proportion of the ingredients around a bit, but the technique is still the same as Ottolenghi´s so feel free to check his original recipe out too. For mine, keep reading.
My first trip of 2023 (if we neglect that I started the year abroad already), was Barcelona with my family. It was my third time there within six months, so by the time I was back to Lisbon, I felt I had plenty of material to put together this article on #foodIlovedinBarcelona. As always, I´ll start with breakfast and brunch places (including a great coffee spot and an artisanal ice cream joint), then head over to lunch and dinner restaurants, finally ending with some cool cocktail and dancing bars. I´ll be back to Barcelona in June, and might add some new spots after that trip, so stay tuned with this work in progress article. But until then, let this list inspire you.