Lentils are versatile and I use them all year, for soups and stews in the winter and salads in the summer. I often have cooked lentils in the fridge to pull out on the spur of the moment to make a lunch or dinner salad. In this salad I used leftover beets and carrots from my new sous vide experiment, more on that later, but you can make this without a sous vide by boiling... View Article
So it never rains it pours. Haven’t made desserts in a while and now that’s all I want to do. Go figure. Some will make it to this blog if the images work out. This cake is easy to make and requires only two bowls (one for dry and one for wet ingredients) and a whisk, no mixer necessary. My kind of cooking as I am not a fan of using too many dishes. Now,... View Article
Matcha became trendy a few years ago as a drink and soon found its way into modern cooking. Matcha is green tea leaves ground to a powder and there is a ceremonial ritual to follow when making an authentic version of the drink. When it comes to cooking with it matcha has a sweet, slightly smoky and nutty quality and a lovely green colour. You control the shade of green by the amount of matcha... View Article
One of the culinary treasures of southern Italy (Puglia) is the burrata: a creamy, perishable cheese that is shipped daily to vendors and restaurants in other parts of the country to be consumed the same day. Burrata means “buttered” and in the categories of cheeses it is not a mozzarella, nor a mozzarella di bufala, although it is made with buffalo milk. To make burrata cheesemakers fill a thin skin of mozzarella with a mixture... View Article
Enchiladas are a delicious Mexican comfort food and and now and then I absolutely crave these tortillas, wrapped around a flavourful filling and baked in a mildly spicy chile-tomato sauce. I fill them with beans and corn, potatoes or vegetables and scatter a little cheese to melt on top. What type of tortillas to use: Traditionally, white or yellow corn corn tortillas but flour tortillas also work. Red or green sauce? Either. I usually make... View Article
If you have your grill fired up it’s an opportunity to try a few grilled salad versions with summer produce. I particularly like to grill radicchio and serve it as a warm salad and this time with a few shitake mushrooms I had on hand. If you don’t grill you can make this in a skillet on top of the stove. The process is simple: cut the radicchio in half or quarters, brush with... View Article
After watching an entire season of Masterchef Australia where home cooks prepare amazing foods and seeing them make ricotta within a short time frame to use in ravioli and other dishes , I decided to give it a try and make the cheese myself. Now, considering that I try to stay away from dairy in my daily cooking, this is a pretty adventurous move for me. The process is very simple and the cheese really... View Article
This spring was not a good season for artichokes locally. I barely saw an artichoke once or twice at the local grocery store and nothing at the markets. That’s unfortunate because I love cooking with them. On my last trip to the store though I found a few reasonable looking specimen and thought I’d take them. Instead of cooking the artichokes whole, I cut the outer leaves down almost to the heart and then into... View Article
Roasting cauliflower completely changes its flavour profile, bringing out caramelized, sweet and deep flavour. For this roast I drizzled the florets with a little saffron dissolved in water to get the golden colour that you see in the image. If you don’t like the flavour of saffron this dish will not cut it for you. You can try and substitute with turmeric, curry or even a little paprika instead, or leave the cauli plain. To... View Article
If there was one dish that is my signature summer food it would be a potato salad. I make a lot of potato salads in season using whatever I have on hand or what I find at the market that is fresh and interesting. With my gals home for the weekend eating a couple of dinners at home was a given. One dinner was more “formal” with plated dishes that stretched over a few courses,... View Article
So I had the pickled beets from another recipe and wanted to use them with the rest of the Quinoa that I had cooked the day before. Since I sliced the beets very thin I thought they would be good as carpaccio layer under the quinoa, and then topped it with roasted asparagus and beautiful green Onion I got at the market the other day. I wasn’t quite sure how to plate it so tried... View Article
Sometimes when I make gnocchi I leave them smooth and pillowy instead of pressing them against a gnocchi board or a fork to create ridges. I know that traditionally gnocchi have ridges where the sauce can cling and settle in the grooves, but it’s also okay to leave them smooth, like little pillows. I make gnocchi often, being the starch lover that I am, and I have a few different ways to serve them. One... View Article
