Sometimes, a product you’ve bought with a specific purpose in mind, doesn’t match your expectations, becomes useless for that specific purpose even, and you might find yourself at a loss at how to salvage the whole deal. Just a few weeks ago, I had to deal with a major annoyance like that. A beautiful bunch of grapes I had bought with a spritzy Champagne jelly dessert in mind, turned out to be blessed – or cursed…? – with the thickest skins I have ever encountered around a grape.
Continue reading “Mustard-Grape Salad with Goat’s Cheese Bites and Parma Ham”
It’s Hubby-Special-Day today~! If you’re cooking for more hungry tummies than just your own on a regular basis, you might find yourself cooking up two different dishes for a meal every once in a while. While hubby and I generally enjoy the same things when it comes to kitchen-related goodies, there are, of course, a couple of things one of us likes while the other one wouldn’t touch it with a pitchfork.
Taking a look out of my window today made me realize why theres a statistical increase in happy-pill prescriptions during the post glittery-december-decorations winter months. Since I don’t believe in bogus, synthetic alterations of my moods and/or behavior I decided on making a lively and summery dessert instead. There’s just something about lemony sweets that instantly makes me smile, so I absolutely had to use lemons today.
Every once in a while, I take some time to browse the menus of some Michellin-starred restaurants in the area – without any delusions of grandeur or urges to pay more for a dinner than a week’s vacation in a nice hotel on a remote island involved. The reason for this peek into these world-class kitchens is relatively simple: in recent years, a lot of those restaurants have made a habit of ditching the usual, descriptive menu in favor of a list of 2-3 main ingredients per course. An absolutely fabulous habit in my book, scrambling my neurons in exactly the right way!
Have you ever had that moment where you wish you could just share one of your favorite comfort dishes in a sophisticated, stylish manner, fit to wow a dinner crowd? I usually get that kind of If-only-I-could idea when I’m rotating around the kitchen, juggling three or more dishes, wishing I had remembered to pick at least one dish I can breeze through on auto-pilot. Well, during this past New Year’s Dinner prep-work, my tummy did a wonderful job of nudging me into the right direction~
All right, time to crank up the heat~ I know the name of this dish might have a slightly absurd ring to it, but believe me, seemingly outrageous combination aside, the components work deliciously well together! A savory Tiramisu like this crossed my path for the first time during a school excursion some odd years ago. The combination with a slow-smoked-and-braised wild boar seemed so insane, I just had to try it… not just because a classmate dared me to order it and promised to pay for it if I cleared the plate!
Happy New Year guys! I hope you had a wonderful and delicious set of holidays and feasts these past couple of weeks! You know, I had a plan. Quite the delicious one at that – a masterpiece to start off this year’s Midweek Specials for you guys. But… well, I’ve been up to my ears in food these last three weeks, and, after a quick glance around my peers, I realized, I wasn’t the only one still feeling kind of full. So, pushing the hard and heavy to a back burner, I decided to get rolling with a simple, refreshing and quick-to-make salad with a fruity twist.
As you might already know, I go through some sort of a chocolate-marathon twice a year – once as the Easter holidays are coming closer, once for the Christmas holidays. The results of these sticky days don’t just serve the purpose of bringing smiles to the faces of those receiving my chocolate boxes as presents for the gigs, they’re also the times I experiment around and come up with new creations fitting into the months ahead. This time of the year, of course, the contents of my chocolate boxes go along winter’y lines, inspired by the scents hanging in the air whenever I leave the house, thanks to the many, many christmas market stands, cafés and bakeries selling their festive goods out in the biting cold.
All right, time for part two of my Madeira at Home experience – the last part, for now! Other yummy ideas, blurry or refined, I brought back home, captured in my infamous notebook, are better suited for the warmer months of the year~! This one was the result of the forgotten Ginja that kept haunting us like that one item you always forget on grocery trips and only remember once youre back home, stashing everything else away.
Nahdala's Kitchen 