When long evenings and fantastic weather come together and the first tell-tale whisps of smoldering embers are wafting through town while an avalanche of dangerously juicy, golden orbs is burying the displays in evey corner of the farmer’s market, Spring is definitely turning into Summer in our parts.
Continue reading “GW2 Apricot-Stuffed Veal Chops & Crispy Braised Leeks with Hazelnuts”
I really hope you guys had a fabulous, delicious, long and relaxing weekend like we did! Whether you actually celebrated the holidays or not, if you found yourself in our part of the world, you would have been able to enjoy Mother Natures’ grand entrance to the party that we can now officially call “Spring”. She really put on her Sunday dress this year and rocked our world for the last couple of days, making everybody sigh contentedly, close their eyes and tilt their faces towards the sun for four days straight~
With the apple harvest season slowly coming to an end in our region, you can’t swing the proverbial cat without hitting a raucous apple/wine or apple-wine festival around here once you stick your nose outside of town. Anything edible or drinkable you could possibly turn apples into – including the trees themselves, I might add (Keywords: applewood chips, smoker, piles of meat and veg) – is cozying up next to other seasonal goodies on carry-around plates, carried around by happy people indulging in the festivities (and the cider…).
As promised, here’s part two of this year’s Asparagus Season Finale, a follow-up for last week’s Asparagus Risotto. We had both of these dishes a couple of weeks back, conveniently and absolutely unintentionally timed for Saturday and Sunday dinners on that one “Cats and dogs are falling out of the sky with their claws out” weekend of the season – the absolute perfect weekend to spend an extended period of time in the kitchen, white wine in hand, noses and spoons in the pots… a smashing way to celebrate the veggie stars of the season while they were getting exactly what they needed as well, a serious dose of rain~!
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.
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.
About 15 years ago the entire culinary world, so it seemed, was raving about a shiny oh-so-new and oh-so-trendy kitchen toy – the wok. A couple of weeks into the craze little teenage me went to the bookstore in search of a chinese or thai cookbook – if woks are all the rage all of a sudden, there have to be cookbooks covering any and all types of asian cuisine popping up left, right and center, right? Boy, was I wrong…