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 section.
Spring
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 well as tasty.
I know few people who do not like bread and I still know less that do not like warm, freshly baked bread. There are many ways to make reasonably good bread in our kitchens and with far fewer chemical ingredients than the bread you buy at most bakeries or supermarkets, but this is my favorite because it results in a rustic bread with a crunchy crust. It is true that it takes a lot of time in the fermentation phase, but it pays off with a huge simplicity in its preparation.
This Easter bread is a slightly sweet bread with a very soft crumb, very different from the purchased ones, that I simply flavored with orange and fennel. If you want to add other aromas (cinnamon, lemon, just to give some examples) you can do it. It is also a sweet bread that you can make at any other time of the year. Skip the boiled eggs on top, completely optional, and accompany with a cup of tea or coffee. It is delicious slightly toasted and spread with a little butter, so, if there is any left, here’s a suggestion for…
You may think that a marble cake is not a major innovation, but I like very simple cakes, with no fillings or frostings. The kind of cake you make at home on a Sunday afternoon for your kids and friends. This version of a marble cake adds a few layers of flavor without departing from its natural simplicity. Roasted ground hazelnuts and dark chocolate (not chocolate powder) make the interior moistier, and the coffee combined with the chocolate adds its aroma in a subtle tone. In addition, I must confess that this was my first marble where the marbled pattern…
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 notes at the end of the recipe before you start making this filo pastry roulade. I ended up adding pine nuts, which I roasted together with the leeks to save some time, because this is one of my latest addictions: toasted nuts (pine nuts, sliced almonds, hazelnuts) added to pasta…
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 interesting. Sometimes I add walnuts or hazelnuts, but the fried onion remains my favorite. So when I saw a recipe of quinoa and kale with salted granola in sweet Inês blog I immediately thought that a savory granola could well be my next craze, capable to replace the beloved fried…
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 cream interspersed with Ladyfingers soaked in coffee. Light and dark, like the keys of a piano. I used the same basic recipe that I use when I want to make an ice cream without using a machine, cream and condensed milk, and I added the tiramisu’s own flavors: mascarpone cheese,…
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 in taste and color. Garnishes are optional but I recommend that you do not ignore them. The crispy fried onion, the slightly salty feta cheese and the freshness of the peppermint transform a soup that is very simple in its genesis in a harmony of different flavors.
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 time with pleasure. Because I’m used to, and love, cooking for someone else, whenever I have to cook for myself I feel a little bit lost and think it’s not worth the effort. Therefore, I usually just eat a soup, sometimes I make a sandwich, but very rarely I cook…
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 beans still standing on the kitchen counter waiting for inspiration and respiration, because without the sense of smell there is no cooking. I therefore anticipated next week’s recipe which, by a strange fortuity, was already made, photographed and written; and quietly waiting for her turn in the blog’s server.
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 sugar; and this one, from the city of Portalegre in the southeast, which is the one that brings me the sweetest memories.
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 imagination dictates. It is common to find cheesecake made with gelatin, but I’m not very fond of that version. The more traditional version should be cooked in a bain-marie in the oven, just like this lemon ricotta baked cheesecake topped with little purple blueberries that I bring to you today.
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 the rainy winter days that we crave to leave behind. But with rain or without it, early spring is also a harbinger of a renewed abundance of ingredients and one of the first to come is the wild asparagus.
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 better at the right time? Cabbages are greener in winter, strawberries taste and smell better in the spring, tomatoes are more red and juicy in summer, chestnuts are firmer and sweeter in the fall. Those who live in the city and make their shopping at the supermarket do not always…
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 peeling the egg and open the can of tuna and is much tastier.
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 competition, the bakery, that at 7 am already has batches of bread still warm from the oven. However, from time to time, I feel like making bread at home. I like the whole ritual. To wait for the yeast to come alive, to watch how the loose flour becomes an…
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 the inside, and is usually decorated with fresh fruit and some kind of syrup or jam.
