Italian – Choice of Magic

Baked Basmati Rice Puttanesca

May 29, 2023

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.

Italian Vegetarian Dinner Food Lunch

Spaghetti with Pumpkin and Halloumi

November 10, 2021

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.

Italian Fish Dinner Food Lunch

Green Avocado Risotto with Sweet Chilli Salmon

November 4, 2021

Behold the first ever risotto recipe I ever tried (cooking). Yes, you read that right – my first ever risotto was an exotic green avocado risotto. I cannot for the life of me remember where I inspired myself from for this recipe, but I swear by it, have passed it on to various people and return to it again and again. Or at least whenever I have avocados in the house. There´s nothing fancy about the salmon other than a sweet chilli marinade, and the risotto is pretty standard except for the avo touch, so please don´t be discouraged by how exotic this sounds and just give it a try. Here´s the recipe.

Italian Dinner Food

Creamy Curry Risotto with Chicken and Apples

September 27, 2021

In our house I am a self proclaimed master of weird, yet always yummy risottos. The first one I´ve ever done was a green risotto with mashed avocado and smoked salmon and it absolutely killed. Next I ventured into more simple mushrooms risottos, then went exotic for a colourful risotto with octopus, and as the cold season came my mother in law taught me how to do a pumpkin risotto, and one of my favourite Italian restaurants near my house inspired me to make a drunken pear risotto, which is a fantastic Christmas meal idea! As for this #homemadeMonday, I thought of showing you all how to make a curry risotto with chicken breast, apples and walnuts. It´ll warm your rainy autumn days right up, trust me.

Italian Vegetarian Dinner Food

Pizza with Chevre, Arugula and Peanuts

September 13, 2021

Before you tell me peanuts on a pizza sound weird, let me just stop you there. This pizza flavour is seriously one of the best ones I´ve ever tried. Nothing new about combining chevre with honey and even arugula. The innovation here comes from replacing the traditional tomato sauce on the base of the pizza with (wait for iiiiiiit) fajita sauce. Genius or idiotic, I don´t know. But I swear by it. And then the crushed peanuts on top – omg. Don´t even ask me how we came up with this combo, part of it was a fortunate accident, part just sheer madness. But it works. And you need to try it. So here goes.

Italian Dinner Food

Prosciutto and Fig Pizza

July 19, 2021

For my first ten years of eating pizza, I always, always, always went for the prosciutto e funghi option. I guess that´s not so unusual for a kid, to find THE pizza and stick to it until adulthood. Maybe a bit more unusual (to not use the word sad), is that once I reached teenagehood, I found myself a new pizza I stuck with for about ten years, and that was Hawaii (outrageous, I know). And now, in adulthood, I´ve been stuck on Diavola. So essentially, it´s been three pizza flavours defining my life, and I rarely strayed from them. Recently, though, I found myself twice (and that is a lot!), choosing pizzas with figs in them, a combination I never thought would work. And boy, did I like it. I liked it so much that after doing some testing at home, I came up with an own prosciutto and fig pizza recipe, which I´m happily sharing with you this #homemadeMonday. I promise that even if it doesn´t sound like your cup of tea (or slice of pizza), you´ll be amazed by how good this combo tastes.

Vegetarian Italian Dinner Food Lunch

Minestrone – The Ancient Roman Comfort Soup

June 21, 2021

To me, all dishes I end up loving carry with them the story of when, where and with whom I first had them. When it comes to minestrone, I wish I could tell you I had it on a narrow Italian street as I was visiting that beautiful country, but the reality is, I first tried minestrone on a dark day, in a tiny Italian restaurant in the middle of Berlin, with my friend Sam. I loved it instantly but it wasn´t until years later that I finally tried doing it myself at home. And now, after much testing and tasting, I bring you this recipe (inspired by Magnolia´s Table). Minestrone is an ancient soup, literally dating from B.C. times, in what was the Roman empire. And while you can technically throw in it any veggies, I find that there are a few “cannot miss” ones – like celery and carrot. Anyway, read on to see how I make minestrone for the whole block.

Vegetarian Vegan Italian Food

Penne Alla Traviata (They´re Actually Our Version of Arrabbiata)

May 3, 2021

You know those recipes you return to over and over again? This is one of those. I initially started making penne all´arrabbiata after Jamie Oliver´s recipe, but as per usual we started adapting it to our liking. An Italian might even be outraged to hear we added corn to it! But after regularly making this again and again, on a weekly basis, and it becoming André´s favourite dish, I thought it was time to share it on a #homemadeMonday. Hubby insisted I call it penne alla traviata, instead of all´arrabbiata, as the original Roman dish goes. So here you go. You ca thank me later.

Italian Food Lunch

Black Spaghetti with Shrimp, Garlic and Butter

February 15, 2021

Living in Portugal with easy access to great seafood really makes me realise I have no excuse for not adding more seafood recipes on here. The truth is, I let the Portuguese boyfriend do most of the seafood (and red meat, and fish) cooking and so I don´t always put those recipes on here. So this time I decide to at least photograph and film him as he made a delicious seafood pasta recipe for this week´s #homemadeMonday.

Italian Food Lunch

My Mother in Law´s Pumpkin Risotto

January 25, 2021

You know all the jokes they make about mother in laws. Well they might be partially true, but all I can say of mine is that she is lovely and kind of goofy, and boy, can she cook! She always improvises, always changes something about perfect recipes, sometimes accidentally ruining the meal (and what a tragedy it is when said meal is the new year´s eve meal!), but she also has some signature dishes which just melt in your mouth – one of them, this pumpkin risotto. Now I´ve been cooking risottos for a long time, but this one is indeed something special. For once, the rice is only added towards the end and does not get “drowned” in wine, as per usual. This results in a super creamy and cheesy risotto, with a very poignant pumpkin taste. Secondly, it implies some herbs I am not used to add to risottos – like ginger or bay leaves! Thirdly, well, you´ll discover it yourself as you read through this #homemadeMonday´s #guestchefseries…

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