We had this as a starter salad, and I love it: the dressing is sharp, the carrots are aromatic, sweet, and flavourful, the rucola is slightly bitter, and the feta is salty. The recipe is a modified version of what I saw in the BBC GoodFood February 2017 magazine.
Another recipe from the fabulous cookbook Plenty, this was our dinner yesterday. I love the flavours! And once again, the serving suggestion is to serve it warm. The boyfriend will have none of that.
I am in love with a new cookbook of mine, Plenty more by Yotam Ottolenghi. I made yesterday’s lunch form it, and I felt really cheffy while making it. For me, just the right amount of fiddling with the number of steps, as well as a straightforward recipe.
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.
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.
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.
This is a winner: made on a weeknight for guests, it was delicious and not terribly complicated to make. Alongside the spread, I served warm fluffy pita breads, as I prefer them over the thin flatbreads. We had some white Burgundy to drink, it fit quite nicely.
I am continuing my series of crappy photos of recipes that taste fantastic. This time, featuring Amarone risotto. It. Is. A. Keeper.
