To celebrate the coming of Spring I wanted to create a dish with spring vegetables, and came up with these wonderful ravioli filled with baby asparagus, snow peas, peas, baby carrots, ricotta, parmigiano, and basil. Served with a fresh tomato … Continue reading Ravioli Primavera
Seaweed is healthy and delicious, and it is pretty simple to make your own wakame seaweed salad. With a soy, sesame and chili dressing the crunchy seaweed is a delicious appetizer or snack. Wakame salad is usually made from reconstituted … Continue reading Wakame Seaweed Salad
Happy Easter everyone! With Easter we celebrate Spring by eating eggs and lamb. Recently I posted a recipe for veal scaloppine with balsamic, and blogging buddy Kathryn aka Anotherfoodieblogger commented that it could also be made with lamb. I really liked … Continue reading Lamb Scaloppine with Balsamic and Roasted Eggplant
Pastiera is a traditional Easter cake from Naples, filled with boiled wheat, ricotta, and candied citrus. The wheat provides an interesting texture and also makes the cake quite filling. The candied citron, candied orange, lemon zest, orange blossom water, and … Continue reading Pastiera Napoletana
Cooking a delicious weekday meal can be as quick as it takes to cook the pasta. Thanks to my blogging friend Simona and her wonderful blog Grembiule da cucina, here’s another one. The combination of tomatoes and sundried tomatoes works … Continue reading Pasta with Sundried Tomatoes and Olives (Orecchiette con Pomodori Secchi e Olive)
Research has shown that eating nuts on a regular basis is healthy. The best reason for baking these cookies however is that they are delicious! They are gluten free and dairy free, if that matters to you. Walnuts and hazelnuts … Continue reading Walnut-Hazelnut Cookies
After figuring out the best time and temperature to cook rabbit sous-vide, I wanted to put my new-found knowledge in practice to make a proper sous-vide rabbit dish. That’s when I remembered reading about cajun rabbit on REMCooks.com. As Richard’s … Continue reading Cajun Rabbit Sous-Vide
Rabbit meat is very lean and easily becomes dry and/or tough. With sous-vide this can be fixed: the meat will be tender and succulent. So far I’ve been cooking rabbit sous-vide for 3 to 4 hours at 60ºC/140ºF. Sometimes it … Continue reading Rabbit Sous-Vide Time and Temperature
Do you like to spend less time cooking? How about less than 10 minutes?! Veal scaloppine are delicious, and cook very quickly. There are many variations, like with marsala, or piccata, or saltimbocca. In this case the sauce is made … Continue reading Scaloppine all’Aceto Balsamico (Veal Scaloppine with Balsamic)
There is a drawback of being a good cook — some friends tend to be intimidated by your prowess in the kitchen and don’t dare to invite you back over for dinner. And so I appreciate it a lot when someone does … Continue reading Butternut-Parsnip Soup with Shrimp
Happy St. Patrick’s day! It’s an Irish-American tradition to eat corned beef with cabbage on St. Patrick’s day. I usually don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s day (most people in the Netherlands haven’t even heard of it), but when I came across … Continue reading Corned Beef for St. Patrick’s Day
This decadent appetizer was inspired by the signature appetizer of Martín Berasategui, three Michelin star chef from San Sebastian (Spain), “Mille-feuille of smoked eel, foie-gras, spring onions and green apple”. The combination of foie gras with smoked eel and green … Continue reading Layered Foie Gras, Smoked Eel, and Green Apple
Fennel develops a great flavor when it is braised slowly until it lightly caramelizes and becomes mushy, and it pairs well with fish. In this case I chose whiting, and used the heads and bones of the fish to make … Continue reading Risotto with Braised Fennel and Whiting
This recipe is an embellishment on the easy flourless chocolate cake I posted about recently. I decorated the cake with whipped cream and amarena cherries, and used the syrup of the amarena cherries for the cake batter instead of hot … Continue reading Flourless Chocolate Tartlets with Amarena Cherries
Smoked eel and celeriac go very well together, and I’ve already posted about risotto and pasta with this combination. Even more refined are these ravioli stuffed with a creamy filling of celeriac and smoked eel, and served with a creamy … Continue reading Smoked Eel and Celeriac Ravioli (Ravioli di Anguilla Affumicata e Sedano Rapa)
Sea scallops are one of my favorite foods. This quick and easy preparation makes them shine: they are pan-fried and then finished with a sauce of white wine, lemon, capers, and anchovies. The sauce is pretty hefty, but the scallops … Continue reading Scallops with Capers, Anchovies, Lemon, and Wine (Cape Sante in Padella)
This post was inspired by two of my blogging friends. The idea to use riso venere, black rice, came from ChgoJohn. Black risotto can be made in two ways: by using squid ink to make ordinary risotto black, or by using … Continue reading Black Risotto with Crab and Artichoke (Riso Venere con Granchio e Carciofi)
To celebrate a friend’s 20th birthday, I got him a vintage port from his birth year and an accompanying dinner. Since I know he loves blue cheese, it wasn’t difficult to decide what to prepare to go with the vintage … Continue reading Steak with Blue Cheese, Belgian Endive (Witlof) and Mushrooms
Calamarata is a pasta shape from southern Italy that looks like rings of calamari, and it is most often served with a seafood sauce. This fish ragù is very simple and can be prepared while the pasta cooks (provided that … Continue reading Calamarata al Ragù di Pesce (Pasta with Fish Ragù)
Recently we were on vacation in Cabo Verde, an archipelago off the coast of Senegal where the sun always shines. We were there for the weather, 25ºC/77ºF and sunny, not the food. There is an abundance of fresh fish, obviously, … Continue reading Seared Tuna: to Sous-Vide or Not to Sous-Vide
Do you like chocolate? Do you like to impress your guests with your skills in the kitchen? Do you find baking a bit intimidating? Then this is the perfect recipe for you! This flourless chocolate recipe is much easier than … Continue reading Easy Foolproof Flourless Chocolate Cake
This pasta dish is quick and easy enough to serve for a weekday meal, and special and delicious enough for a dinner party. It takes less than half an hour to prepare, and only a few ingredients are required. The … Continue reading Fusilli with Smoked Eel and Celeriac
There are three things I don’t like about artichokes: (1) it is a lot of work to clean them, (2) they don’t go well with wine, and (3) you can only eat a small part of them and have to throw … Continue reading Artichoke Ravioli (Ravioli con Carciofi)
The first time I made Red Snapper Veracruz, I used the last of the pickled jalapeños that Richard had sent over. The Veracruz was so outstandingly good that I wanted to make it again, and so I had to make … Continue reading Jalapeños en Escabeche (Pickled Jalapeños)
These tartlets are a new side dish that I invented because I wanted to prepare something with cavolo nero (black cabbage), the Tuscan cousin of kale. Since cavolo nero is a typical ingredient from Tuscany, I chose to combine it … Continue reading Kale and Chestnut Tartlets (Sformatini di Cavolo Nero e Castagne)
Each region of Italy has its own pasta shapes and pasta recipes. Valeggio sul Mincio, a town near Lago di Garda and the city of Verona, is famous for its Tortellini di Valeggio, tortellini made of pasta as thin as … Continue reading Tortellini di Valeggio
I dedicate this post to Richard and his Baby Lady, as they did not only inspire me to create this dish, but also taught me the techniques as well as donated the chiles used. And I also think they’d enjoy … Continue reading Chile Ancho Relleno (Ancho Stuffed with Pork)
When I saw this original way to prepare zucchini as a side dish on the blog of my Italian blogging friend Bea, I knew I had to try it. I’m glad that I did, because it is absolutely wonderful. Zucchini … Continue reading How to Turn Zucchini into a Wonderful Side Dish (Contorno di Zucchine)
Quail legs are a perfect snack to serve at a party. When they are cooked right (sous-vide first to make them tender and then finished under the broiler to enhance the flavor and add some crisp) they are unbelievably delicious, … Continue reading Quail Legs Sous-Vide: The Perfect Cocktail Snack
With our new ‘pet’, the sourdough starter that lives in our fridge and needs to be fed once a week, I’ve been baking sourdough bread and learning about it along the way. Before I started with this sourdough adventure, I … Continue reading Sourdough Bread
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