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.
With Valentine´s Day just around the door, I thought of sharing this festive cheesecake with pecan nuts and caramel topping that my beautiful and extremely talented sister baked for me and some guests for our last New Year’s Eve party. You can find the Romanian recipe on her and her friends Sabina´s Instagram page at @povestiaromate, or keep reading for the English version. Whether you’re baking it for or with someone you love, or just doing it for yourself, I am sure you’ll love it as much as I did. And with that the #guestchefseries kicks off another season.
I´ve been meaning to promote this latest salad recipe I came up with as a winter salad, but who am I kidding? This one will work as well in summer and any season, really. It’s the oranges that give me a winter feeling, along with the fact that due to the cooked salmon it’s a warm-ish salad. But the oranges can just as well take your mind to a summer in Tuscany, and give you all the sunny vibes we so direly miss this gloomy winter. Whenever you decide to make it though, I assure you that you’ll love it, as it is such a perfect blend of flavours – the buttery flavoured salmon (Ras el Hanout is my absolute favourite spice blend for salmon), the sweet and slightly sour orange, the mild yet buttery textured avocado, the nutty, kokumi parmesan, the fresh mint, and finally the complex sweet balsamic vinegar. It’s taken me quite a few iterations to get to this level of perfection, and now I am ready to share it with you.
Spending three weeks on the Spanish coast meant : 1. I finally got a bit of a tan and 2. I absolutely abused on their delicious food. And since we last spoke about Costa Brava, let´s speak about the Spaniards´ delicious dish of “patatas bravas”. Essentially meaning “spicy potatoes”, this dish is as simple as it gets and I won´t insult you by showing you how to make the potatoes (just cut them in cubes and fry them). Buuuuut I will give you a super easy recipe for the sauce that is sometimes also used over seafood, and that to be frank you can just put on top of anything. So here goes…
This Christmas season I wanted to bring a different Christmas dinner recipe for this international community, so I went for the Portuguese duck rice – a yummy dish of crispy rice and tender duck. Hubby and I did it for the very first time, and although it took us hours, I am quite proud of the outcome. These proportions are for a big meal of ten, but worry not if you´re a smaller group, it freezes quite well, so you can do that and enjoy it for the next couple of months. And I personally recommend you do just that, rather than cutting the ingredients, as this recipe takes about three hours to cook and if you´re gonna spend that much time on it, you might as well have duck rice for the full next year to show for it. 🙂
Coconut Cookies (With a Dash of Orange)
December 6, 2021As you might have seen on my Instagram, I have now officially entered the cookie frenzy period. Five days into December, and I am on batch number three. The twist? I´m switching it up and started experimenting with new flavours. So for this #homemadeMonday, I´m bringing you this super easy coconut cookie recipe that thanks to its dash of orange, will fill your house with a Christmas smell. These cookies are much fluffier and less flat than my traditional Christmas cookies and as they do not take chocolate, they´re lower in calories. Not that anyone´s counting anyway.
This #homemadeMonday is for both the ones of you that don´t like tomato soup (and need a twist to the tangy tomato taste), and for the ones of you who love tomato soup (and want to try it in a different shape and form). I, for one, love the taste of tomatoes, but as I was trying to rescue some that were going bad in my fridge, I just felt that they alone would not make for a great soup. So I researched the topic a bit on Pinterest and got this idea to add white beans to the tomatoes. Long story short, I loved the result, I feel the beans were just what was missing to make the whole thing creamier and add a bit of starchy, buttery taste. And am here to share the whole thing with you.
What do you do when life gives you too many limes and too little cachaça? You improvise and upon a failed trial, you end up with these delicious key lime & blueberry Oreo cups. Needless to say, this looked very different in my head. I first tried to make a tart out of this, but left the base for too long in the freezer and by the time it started defrosting, the cream also started melting. So in a desperate attempt, I improvised. I blended some Oreos yet again, sprinkled them in a glass, and topped them with the rescued cream. They were de-lish! And they held marvellously for a couple of days in the fridge!
The Portuguese have this dish called “ervilhas com ovo escalfado” ergo peas with poached egg. But as we´ve established several times in the past, I am useless at poaching eggs. I thought to myself however that just like a shakshuka works just fine without poached eggs, so will my Portuguese peas. So I simplified the Portuguese recipe, switched it up a bit, and came up with this really nice brunch recipe for you to try next time you´re throwing a brunch party.
Unlike pretty much every respectable food blogger out there, I have posted absolutely no recipe with pumpkins this entire fall. And to be completely honest, it´s because I´ve never been a big fan of eating pumpkin. I like carving it, decorating my house with it, but eating it – not so much. Well except in this new recipe I came up with recently. This one is a bomb. It´s essentially a threesome love affair between pumpkin, halloumi and sun-dried tomatoes, with a guest appearance of crushed walnuts, and of course spaghetti. Keep reading for the full thing.