appetizers recipes

Do you know which country consumes the most cheese in the world ? Answer : Greece ! This includes cheeses in baked goods as well as non-baked goods. Each citizen of Greece consumes an average of 30 kg of cheese per year, and 2/3 of that amount is in the form of feta cheese ! I wish Greece all the best for what they’re going through and hope...

Simple is great too so these appetizers require more assembling and less preparing but a little effort will make it tastier ! Once you get the cherry tomatoes and mozzarella balls and fresh basil leaves, then you can decide whether you use prosciutto or pancetta or other smoked and cured meats or you may decide to leave aside the cured meat and...

This flatbread recipe can be made simply and with no toppings, as a snack or even as a thicker and heavier bread base for your pizza (I must admit that I often like a thick crust). I always have leftover fresh yeast when i make breads and leftover tomato sauce when I make pasta or pizza and this flatbread is perfect for them. This sun-dried tomato...

A POGO is a sausage covered in batter and then fried. Pogos (or cornsdogs) were invented by Germans in Texas in the 1920's. Pogos are as good as they are surprising, you can eat them as a treat during a cocktail-dinner, served alongside other easily held finger foods (my guests loved them). The regular version of pogos uses hotdogs, but I...

There’s a legend about roquefort (that bluish-green specked cheese from southern France) and its accidental invention. I have a thing for legends, folktales, fairytales and myths (and a collection of hundreds of books about these from around the world) so I want to believe it. A young shepherd, whose eye was caught by a fair damsel, left...

I didn’t have much of a choice, it’s been a zucchini year, so here’s another recipe (a simple one) for a light lunch or dinner ! You can always make a regular omelette and just toss in chopped vegetables and cheese and whatever else makes you happy, but this is an impressive way of making individual omelette bites or parcels and...

With this heat, comes the urge to take it easy, hang out in the garden and perhaps go to the beach, but has your summer vacation already begun or will you have to wait some more ? Why not pretend you’re already on vacation and make some small fish skewers at home, whether with small sardines or with large anchovies. You can either grill them...

I always boil too much pasta to go along with my prepared sauce and always leave all that extra pasta on the side which just dries out the next day and is often nibbled on the next day and/or finally thrown away the day after that ! Enough with the wasting of food, you can turn this leftover pasta into a snack. All you need is for the pasta to be...

This is the easier & quicker way to make an almost traditional tzatziki recipe, relatively white like the common version, made with cucumber and yogurt. A simple recipe that (almost) everyone knows and, a modified version of the tzatziki recipe with avocado and green pepper based version with a few changes. The question was how to create...

Chips are good… chips are very very good ! When I used to buy chips, I’d buy 7-10 bags at a time, they were large bags, one per day. I stopped buying chips, not the healthiest of snacks, but anyways I’m not a nutritionist, i just cook/bake/fry stuff. I do miss them. But once in a while, when they’re homemade, they become...

Laziness can sometimes be a good motivator to do one thing just so you don’t have to do other things. This was the reason behind making pickled and marinated vegetables ! Sometimes you’re just too lazy or tired or don’t have enough time to ccok up something, and with just a little effort and very little money, you can prepare...

ASPARAGUS ... so weird & funny-looking ! I know I usually use filo dough pastry sheets when I bake but there are more varieties of prepared types of pastry dough out there than you expect ! Brik pastry sheets, usually used in North African countries is round, thicker and sturdier and there is no need to double it up as we do with filo...

Tarama fish roe dip is usually beige or pale pink in colour when home-made or bright pink when industrially-made. The eggs that are traditionally used are either codfish or mullet fish but obviously these are much harder (and expensive) to find and buy than lumpfish eggs, whether red or black, which readily available in 100 gram jars at any...

These salty potato balls are more a method or just a fancy trick so stop giggling ! Anyways, these potato balls are round, salty, airy, crispy, resembling a small hummingbird's nest or a miniature ball of string. Everyone has a tea strainer (or two) lying around so here's a new way to use it. I used regular potatoes, you can perhaps try it...

If you could have only one thing handy when friends pop over for a drink or two, I think this may be it, in replacement of the usual yet appreciated medley of bread, cheese, dried sausage and olives or pickled vegetables… it’s bready, salty, herby, with olives and cheese (I avoided adding some cured ham or sausage but feel free to add...