Hummus is an ancient and traditional dish from the Arab culture. It is a kind of pâté made with chickpeas and a few simple ingredients. The only exotic ingredient is tahini, a sesame seed paste, but one that you can already find relatively easily in the supermarkets in the eastern food…
A suggestion with sea flavor and a taste of holidays. Simple and quick to prepare, it’s a good idea to share with friends on a late evening gathering.
This lemon poppy seed cake falls in the category of simple cakes, of the “mix everything together and bake in the oven” kind, which are my favorites. The lemon scent is however intense and the poppy seeds give texture and look beautiful, small bluish spots dotted on the pale batter.
As spring begins, I immediately start to think of the peas and the fava beans that are about to arrive. This pea soup is quick to prepare and takes only peas (you can use frozen), asparagus, leek, spring onion and mint, so it is also a rather light option, as…
I don’t know why I do not use filo pastry more often. I love puff pastry: light, crispy and really golden. But filo pastry has these same characteristics and looks beautiful and golden in half the time. It’s a bit more delicate though and I advise you to read the…
For some time now, whenever I make a salad I usually add a spoonful of fried onion, which I buy at a certain well-known Swedish store (hehehe). I do not know if it’s because of the saltier taste or the crispy texture, but this little extra makes salads much more…
It’s so simple to make your own vanilla extract and it requires only two ingredients: vanilla beans and vodka. After you taste the flavor of the homemade version you’ll never want to use the industrial one again.
In a spring that so quickly gives us a beach day as, in the next one, puts us back looking for socks again, I took advantage of one of the good days to make a fresher dessert, a tiramisu ice cream cake, with layers of cream and mascarpone cheese ice…
This soup is laborious because it requires peeling the beans twice: the first to remove them from the pods and the second to remove the outer skin. However, all the work and effort involved in preparing this fava bean soup are, in the end, rewarded with a delicate soup, both…
Mia Couto, a Mozambican writer, said “Cooking is not a service. Cooking is a way of loving others.“. There is, in this sentence, the idea that we cook for someone else: a loved one, family, friends and so we put care and affection in what we do and spend our…
This week I should be publishing another recipe, something savory in which fava beans would be the star. But a relatively serious episode of allergic rhinitis, I suspect related to the fact that I live on a street lined with jacaranda trees in early spring, has led to the fava…
Among the many Easter bread traditions that are found all over Portugal, I especially like three: one from the northeast region of Trás-os-Montes, savory and proudly displaying the good sausages from that region; the one from the southern city of Olhão, rolled and stuffed with a lot of cinnamon and…
Cheesecake is a dessert in which the main layer consists of a mixture of soft cheese (usually cream cheese or ricotta), eggs and sugar. It can have a bottom layer, made from crushed cookies or biscuits, and can even be topped with fruit, whipped cream, jam, chocolate or whatever the…
Spring has barely set and everyone is already complaining about it. They say that it is late and shy, forgetting that this is a transition season, like autumn, and that it can both enthrall us with the promise of the summer days that are to come, as reminds us of…
I bought Swiss chard for making soup, but it came so perfect in its colors, between green and purple, and the leaves so young, bright and tender that I chose to make chard rolls stuffed with minced beef and rice for lunch. Have you noticed how everything looks and tastes…
Even when we are short on time, some simple cares are enough to make an ordinary sandwich become more interesting. Renew the usual tuna and egg sandwich adding a thin layer of mustard, grilled asparagus and thinly sliced red onion. It doesn’t give a lot more work than boiling and…
When I was little pastry cakes were the exception. Chocolate, yogurt or marble cake were lovingly made at home and, on special days, decorated with egg white frosting and sprinkled with little colored confettis. And, for me, these continue to be the best cakes in the world.
It is not very common to make bread at home, I’m lucky to have a great bakery right outside the door. Wheat, rye, carob or corn bread, large, small, rolls, you name it. I’ve had a bread machine but that type of loaf, equal one after the other, lost to…
These pretty round zucchinis stuffed with minced lamb are a light and tasty dish. Just add some fluffy couscous on the side, that go great with the lamb meat. Ask your butcher to prepare the minced meat for you.
Pavlova is a dessert shaped like a cake with a meringue base, invented after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova trip to Australia and New Zealand, and today both countries still argue about which of them invented such a delicacy. The meringue basis is crisp on the outside and soft on…
