Food – Page 2 – Choice of Magic

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.

Vegetarian International Dinner Food Lunch

Lentil and Avocado Salad

October 25, 2021

After about a year of waiting in my pantry, the can of lentils I had stored away finally met its purpose in a delicious lentil, avocado and cress salad. It´s essentially this green salad but since I don´t like arugula, it´s with cress. On top of that I replaced the sunflower seeds with sesame seeds and topped it off with some vinaigrette sauce which I felt went wonderfully with it. Whether you prefer the above version or mine, I do hope you try one of them, they´re truly scrumptious.

International Breakfast Food

Fluffy Breakfast Egg Muffins

October 18, 2021

In my efforts to cook as little as possible during the week (at least for breakfast and lunch), I came up with these fluffy breakfast egg muffins and I have to say I am really proud of myself. They´re super easy to make, require few ingredients and give you the opportunity to rescue any soon overdue produce from your fridge. Aaaaand they´ll be the solution for your breakfasts from Monday to Friday! Now you can literally use any veggies and meats you want for them, I´ll just give you the ingredients I used last time, but please, be creative!

International Dessert Food

Apricot Jam and Cream Cheese Cake

October 11, 2021

When you´re not great at baking, you gotta get creative. So you grab a jam (I chose apricot) from the adorable care package @dealurileUilei sent you, find yourself the easiest cake base recipe (inspired by Anca Cheregi´s cheesecake) and you end up with an apricot jam and cream cheese cake ready in no time, and devoured in even less time (what´s less than no time?). Curious? Keep reading this week´s #homemadeMonday.

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.

International Vegetarian Dinner Food

Zucchini and Pea Soup with a Touch of Pesto

September 20, 2021

Inspired by Ottolenghi´s courgette, pea and basil soup, this #homemadeMonday recipe is a soup just perfect for the incoming autumn (yes, I refer to it as incoming as I still spend my weekends at the beach for the time being and am in denial). While Ottolenghi´s recipe contains double the basil of mine, I added a few teaspoons of pesto to enhance the taste, a green onion to give it a punch and I topped it up with some truffle oil. Oh, and I changed the proportions quite a bit. Keep reading for my interpretation of what is possibly one of my favourite green soups of all time (in case you, reader are Portuguese – don´t worry, caldo verde is up in the top too).

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.

Mediterranean Seafood Food Lunch

Shrimp on a Bed of Salt – Simple as That

September 8, 2021

This week´s recipe is not much of a recipe to be honest, but I did feel the need to record it here on my blog, just like I would in a physical recipe book. I stole the idea of this shrimp on a bed of sea salt from one of our gourmet dinners in Mallorca, at the Belmond La Residencia hotel. This was one of the nine courses we had there and its utter simplicity and amazing taste made us want to redo it at home. So we bought ourselves the two ingredients – shrimp and sea salt, and a little wooden tray that would resist maximum temperature in the oven, and we got to cooking. It took less time to cook it than it did to write this intro. You absolutely have to try it!

International Dessert Food

Esther´s Wonderfully Simple Walnut Cake

August 30, 2021

Cakes and pies – my nemesis. I love them (albeit I am generally I crave salty stuff more), but I generally suck at making them. The dough won´t rise, the cream will be too liquid-y, something´s bound to always go wrong. Unless. Unless we´re talking about my grandma´s strawberry cake which is suuuuuper easy to make, or Esther´s wonderfully simple nut cake, which is even easier. I´m not quite sure of the origin of this one, I just copied it from one of Nonna´s handwritten notes, with her insisting it´s actually her niece Esther´s recipe and not hers. I upgraded it with a simple chocolate cream, and voilá one of the easiest #guestchefseries editions ever.

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