Choice of Magic - Travel, Food and Books

Vegetarian Middle Eastern Dinner Food Lunch

The Most Delicious Creamy Butter Beans with Herb Oil

July 3, 2024

One more recipe from Ottolenghi – his butter beans with preserved lemon, chilli and herb oil, is an all time party favourite of mine so I just had to bring some minor adjustments to it and add it to my blog. You can find his original recipe in his book Shelf Love. And if you’re as big of a fan of his recipes as I am, you can find one more of my favourites which I published on the blog a few months ago. As to this one, just keep on reading for a fantastic dish that you can enjoy directly from the pan!

Middle Eastern Breakfast Food

Lahsa – The Delicious Breakfast From Yemen

June 19, 2024

This recipe is a delayed part two of what I wish to be a series of breakfasts from around the globe that have eggs as a base. You can find part one – Portuguese Peas and Eggs over here. Additionally find here my green version of shakshuka (which does not count for the series as I’m trying to brand the series as alternatives to the by now way too famous afro mentioned shakshuka). So we’re starting with lahsa – the Yemeni breakfast with eggs, tomatoes and cream cheese. You might have seen it on Instagram and TikTok already, personally I discovered it with Chef JJ over here. My recipe is pretty consistent with his, but since I couldn’t find it on any blog, here goes my blog written version of it.

Mediterranean Vegetarian Food

Exotic Fennel Salad with Burrata and Smoked Salmon

June 14, 2024

Lately I’ve been challenging myself more to cook with ingredients I am not that familiar with, and fennel is just one of those. While analysing this tendency of mine, I’ve reached the conclusion that it might be a consequence of growing up in post-communist Romania. Being deprived of much of the non-native to Romania produce that the West had access to, I’ve grown quite obsessed with them. It can get quite maddening when guests come over and instead of serving a regular dish that would work with everyone, I´ll run a risk and come up with something half crazy – salads in particular refuse to do the boring way, as demonstrated here. So I took inspiration for this particular salad from a fennel and tangerine salad online from this site, but I swapped it for oranges and added the salmon before coming up with this final version, which now that I’ve tried over and over again, I am happy to share with you too.

Germany

My Favourite Restaurants in Berlin

May 24, 2024

It’s crazy to me to think that Berlin´s Best Coffee is one of the first blog posts I ever put online on the new choiceofmagic. I can hardly recognise the writing and the pictures anymore, but there you go. Your girl who drinks coffee every blue moon, wrote about the best coffee in Berlin, the city that never rests, where I lived for five years before moving to Lisbon. Fast forward a few more years, and having gone back to Berlin, I felt it necessary to write a post about my favourite restaurants in Berlin. Some of the old ones have unfortunately closed in the meantime, but here’s what rocked my taste buds in 2024, as I returned to Berlin on a beautiful spring day.

International Dinner Food

Fantastic Prawn Orzo with Marinated Feta

April 25, 2024

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…

Brunch Food Romania

Three Fantastic Brunches You Need to Try in Sibiu

April 9, 2024

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.

Mexican American Dinner Food

André´s Delicious Fajitas

March 19, 2024

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.

Romania

Food I Loved in Sibiu

March 15, 2024

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.

Middle Eastern Vegetarian Dinner Food

Moroccan Inspired Carrot Salad

February 27, 2024

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.

International Dinner Food Lunch

Creamy Cauliflower Soup with Cannellini Beans

January 29, 2024

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.

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