You guys didn’t really think I’d go to a fantastic place like Madeira and come home empty-handed when it comes to food-related things! I know, it took a few weeks, but you can’t rush a delicious meal, or the recipes for it, right? Anyways, during the first couple of days on that wonderful island, I really thought I’d return without showstoppers in my recipe notebook – not because the food was bad, mind you, almost everything we had was absolutely delicious – but because the traditional Madeiran cuisine we indulged in is a very no-nonsense one.
Continue reading “Madeiran Black Forest Duck & Sour Cherry Chutney”
As my november’ly share of the flu is slowly fading, my poor nose turned-glow-in-the-dark finally isn’t visible from out of space anymore and my tastebuds are picking up their work again, I think the right time has come to kickstart my system as well as my kitchen with something healthy and quick to make, something seasonal and packed with enough aromas to bring back the last stubborn tastebuds from their goo-induced slumber.
I was so waiting for a chance to share this one with you guys! This was one of the first handful of GW2-inspired dishes I cooked up a few years back, and one of the first times I intentionally used the Guild’s recipe list as a source of information and inspiration. Well, it seems, the time to pull this one out of my hat has come! Finding myself flat on my back with a nasty case of the flu brought back vivid memories of a very similar situation a few years back, when this recipe came to life for the first time.
Here we go again~! Another one of those Tyrian recipes that instantly make one of this side’s culinary world’s most classic dishes pop up in my head… Canard à L’Orange. Well, usually I’d jump at the chance to follow the rules for once, but I tried this one at home and at various restaurants time and time again, just to be disappointed… for some reason the Duck-Sauce-Potato’y Side-Combo never got better – not that it’s a bad dish in itself, mind you, the classic composition just turned out not to be my cup of tea after all.
Now, this is what happens when I set my mind to cooking up a storm on one of those days – when I can’t put a finger on what I actually want to eat, feeling like having seafood, hot chocolate and everything in between, and all that at the same time, if you please! Sometimes that kind of mood results in me shutting down the kitchen for the day in protest, sometimes it makes me pull out all sorts of ideas and go wild in the kitchen in an attempt to satisfy all cravings at once.
It’s mushroom season! Stores and markets around town are finally showing off wonderful displays of the huge variety of mushrooms growing in our forests this time of the year. After a couple of sneak-peeks into the matter, a handful of chanterelles as salad toppings here and there, just to name one, I decided to officially kick off mushroom season in my kitchen two or three weeks ago. With that idea in mind I purposefully hoofed to the next best farmers market to pick out some pretties for I-don’t-know-yet-but-there-will-be-mushrooms-in-it – just to pull out blanks as I was facing the somewhat overwhelming display of different options.
One fine day, around lunch time, about 2 years ago, I spotted the Poultry and Leek Soup recipe in the list at the Chef’s Guild and felt the sudden urge to have a bowl of something along those lines on this side of the screen. Pronto. Somewhat blindsided by this unexpected assault on my carefully laid-out lunch-plans, I dashed over to the store and grabbed everything I could possibly need to bring chicken and leeks together in a delicious dish.
Usually I have a plan set up, or at least some hazy idea about what I’m looking for on our saturday stroll across the big farmer’s market in town. This time… nothing. Nada. Zilch. Blanks and some cobwebs in the food section of my head, but not much else. Trying to force an idea of what I wanted to eat out of my skull gave me a headache and the very non-helpful adjective „colorful“. Hubby added the similarily helpful word „vegetables“ to the fog. Well, the market sure is the best place to find inspiration in the neighborhood of „colorful vegetables“ and something to go right along with them.
Chilli con Carne. In 35°C weather. You might think the heat in- and outside of the kitchen has finally taken it’s toll on my sanity. Well, believe me, I’ve considered an extended trip down to the looney bin on several occasions myself. This isn’t the result of slowly-stewing grey matter though, this is the result of the GW2 recipe list rudely kicking a part of my subconscious, usually hibernating during heatwaves, to life without offering it some coffee first.
Just a couple of months ago, two of our friends moved away. As „away“ as it gets actually – they moved to Argentina. Ever since they raised that topic I’ve been rubbing my hands and practicing my Evil Plan Chuckle™ while waiting for the BBQ season to come closer. One of my absolute favorites, condiment-wise, is the argeninian Chimichurri which goes exceptionally well with anything you could possibly throw onto hot coals. That’s me… a food-geek, if you will, drop the name of a country on me and I start flipping recipe pages in my head.
Nahdala's Kitchen 