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.
I guess some skeptics among you might have read the title of this article and thought this would be a pamphlet. After all, the British are not particularly well known for their exquisite cuisine. True, but a real foodie will always find some yummy dishes, no matter the damp and rainy country she ends up in. So be ready to be immersed into the food universe I experience during my short weekend stay in Edinurgh. Read about the food I loved, but also the ones that were meh and the places I wouldn´t necessarily try again.
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.
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.
What do you do when you repeatedly find yourself in a city you hate? And moreover, when that city is the capital of the country you were born in? And your friends are divided about it as well – some love it and some hate it? I tried answering that question during my last two trips to Bucharest this summer. I met with people that see beauty in the city, I revisited the few places I loved and explored some new ones that took me by utter surprise. And I ended up fancying a city I had hated for over two decades. Here are the spots that made me change my mind.
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.
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!
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.
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.
After spending a week in Mallorca with a bunch of our friends, I came back struggling to answer the question “How were your holidays?!”. A lot of fun was had, but I have to say that despite all the regular research I usually do, Mallorca was not at all what I had expected. There were parts I loved, of course, but there were also parts I well … hated. So I thought that instead of writing an article with a week´s itinerary for the island, I´d write an honest review of what I loved, hated and I didn´t expect of Mallorca.