With a base of chopped canned tomatoes, sprinkled with quartered pickled mini-onions, sliced chorizo, and grated gruyere, this is a lunch to fit the gloomy autumn day. Yum!
Pesto, zucchini, and parmesan tart
Take some octagonal puff pastry, score it along the edges, spread with a mixture of mascarpone and pesto, cover with sliced zucchini and grated parmesan, and bake in the oven at 200˚C for about 35 min. You will not be sorry.
Because potato means love
Mango lassi
Despite his objections to eating blitzed vegetables, the boyfriend has no objection to eating blitzed fruits. Enter mango lassi.
Hummus
I made this so many times already, I cannot believe it is not yet featured on my blog. My version always contains a bit more garlic than it should, but hey… you only live once.
Baked feta with za’atar
I am quite proud of this one: it was a spur of the moment decision, possibly a result of some combination of recipes from Pinterest and the fact that the oven was on.
It is delicious, slightly gooey when it comes out of the oven. This time, it was served as the vegetarian part of my arabic spread, but I can also imagine this being served as a starter at a dinner party.
Dinner menu for meat-eaters and vegetarians
It has been quite a long week, and some very long weeks are coming up, so I was looking forward to the opportunity to lose myself in cooking. We have guests, so this is a good excuse to make copious amounts of food.
Pear and chocolate tart
Looking at the recipes, the most important criterion is whether the combination of ingredients looks promising enough to produce a tasty dish (another criterion is whether the boyfriend will eat it, but that is a can of worms I will not open at this point).
But very often, and I think for many people, an important criterion is whether the ratio of effort and the tastiness of the resulting dish is favourable. For example, one dish with a very favourable ratio is some variant of “minestrone.” In my rendition, it consists of throwing together some vegetables and perhaps a bit of smoked bacon; add some pasta or potato, finish off with parsley and a drizzle of olive oil… For winter, I cannot think of an easier, yet more satisfying dish to make, and this is why I go back to it over and over again.
Braised beef
I still have loads to learn about the anatomy of a cow to be able to name all the muscles and bones that are appropriate for particular dishes. In the meantime, I went to a butcher and asked for some braising beef. The piece I got was about 800 g, just enough for a weekend’s worth of food.
The recipe I used is a modification of a recipe from Giorgio Locatelli’s book “Made in Italy. Food and stories.” He used veal shanks, with the intention of making them into ravioli. I had the same ambition with my braised beef. But first things first.
