all the recipes
It’s BEAN season (or actually the season for those dried beans that we should use up during the winter) and I don’t feel like I eat enough of them, which ideally would be at least once a week, whether they’re chickpeas or lentils or fancier mixes and my absolute favorite : giant LIMA BEANS (also called BUTTER BEANS in English and...
RETSINA is a Greek dry white wine with resinous flavors because of the wooden caskets it is aged in, that are sealed with Aleppo pine sap. In my opinion, it’s an ideal alternative flavoring for winter dishes, just like rosemary and pine nuts for savory dishes and mastic resin for sweets. Other years, I focused on warmer flavors like...
The secret to their "domed" shape is not just due to using a mini ice-cream scoop. The cookie dough must be chilled and then baked in a very hot oven (just at the beginning) so that they retain their shapes and don’t flatten and spread out ! And the rest is easy : 1 cup of flour and ½ cup of everything else and 1 egg,...
It’s a Greek and Turkish version of SPAGHETTI & MEATBALLS but the KEFTEDES meatballs are braised in a spicy KOKKINISTO sauce, which means “reddened”; a rich and warming blend of tomatoes, onions, garlic, red wine, oregano, bay leaves, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, allspice and nutmeg and the rice grain-shaped...
It’s a double-post weekend with 2 recipes so you can make a very autumnal mixed roasted nuts & milk caramel pie, right after reading this ! Shortcrust pastry can be prepared following the simplest equation : 2 to 1 or twice as much flour as butter as opposed to puff-pastry that is 1 to 1 or equal amounts of butter to flour, and...
A delightful northern Spanish celebratory dish that’s involves rolling up 4 different layers and creating a multi-layered spiralling loaf, starting with a layer of freshly chopped tuna blended with onions, garlic, parsley, white wine, breadcrumbs and flour, then a layer of Serrano dry-cured ham slices, then an egg omelet layer, then the...
These cookies truly look like SNOWBALLS so the flavors should remind you of winter, whether it’s the colder and crisper smells outside or the warmer more domestic smells inside of a warm oven or a chimney fire, comforting your bones as you’re eating them. KOURABIEDES are like buttery shortbreads, but less crispy and more...
Every season needs its SALAD, according to what’s available and how hot or cold it is out there. It’s autumn so it’ll be some colder and fresher ingredients combined with some warmer, fried or boiled or toasted ingredients on top; and even though my modest version of such a well-known dish, from the southwest of France,...
It’s a treat, like a candy bar, but more sophisticated than that. What is often called a «millionnaire» shortbread is now a «billionnaire» shortbread (perhaps because of inflation and all that) but moreso because of our evolving palates and taste expectations. We always want more. Like when we were kids and...
A preparation that can be added to or included in almost any savory dish : quiches, omelettes, pizzas, pastas, lasagnas, sandwiches or just as a side-dish with roasted meats and fish … And with a special ingredient that we often don’t think off when we roast things : VINEGAR ! It adds just enough depth and acidity, like and alongside...
HAPPY NEW YEAR wishes with a sunny brunch recipe to better kick it off and perhaps a few resolutions to at least try everything once in your life, before it’s too late, because until you do or try something yourself, you’ll never realize the efforts it required to achieve it and hence may never learn to appreciate it enough...
A chunkier & heartier version of a perfect winter meal with a bottom layer of beer-braised beef, later shredded, cooked with vegetables, later chopped, followed by a layer of whole corn kernels and creamed corn layer too and topped with a layer of partly-crushed boiled root vegetables such as potatoes, parsnips and white carrots and then...
It’s something LIGHTER & CLEARER & ZESTIER and more of an autumnal or northern Mediterranean style fish stew or soup, without the tomato base and heavier spices typical of a summery and southern Mediterranean Fisherman’s or Bouillabaisse fish stew, which I also love, especially when its intensity and heat inevitably make me...
What do you get when you combine mixed roasted nuts and a milk caramel filling made with sweetened condensed milk and some eggs, and you place it inside a sweet shortcrust pastry pie shell ? You get this amazing autumn tart (or pie) ! You have the recipe & instructions for the sweet shortcrust pastry pie-shell because I posted that too...
We have a tall LOQUAT TREE in the shared garden of the property-owners. The LOQUAT isn’t a well-known fruit and it is still often called a Japanese MEDLAR or PLUM, even though originally from China and Central Asia. The other European names for this fruit that you might recognize are NISPERO, NESPOLO, PIPA, MISPEL, MOUSMOULIA, BIBACE or...