I'm sure everybody who comes here loves chocolate in general and truffles as the epitome of creamy chocolate in particular. Yes, I've heard that such people that don't like chocolate exist but I think it's just an urban legend :). Well, if you feel the same way and if you want an easy to make scrumptious cake (and if you loved our recipe for spicy chocolate truffles :D), you might want to try this one.
Inspired by a similar cake in the Good Food Magazine, the February 2011 Romanian issue and by all the glorious truffle cakes we saw through the glass windows of sugar confection shops while walking through Brugges when we visited some friends in Belgium.
P.S: Can you resist this sight :) ? We couldn't. Enjoy!
This is a very fast and easy meal for very busy weeknights. Or a wonderful way to use up any canned fish in tomato sauce you might have on hand. It's not the average potato salad (it's much more leafy), but more like a criss-cross between various salad styles. It contains boiled potatoes smothered in tomato sauce flavored with a drop of Teriyaki (or Tabasco) and fish and flavorful artichoke hearts (canned as well). You may as well call it "Potato salad alla putanesca", like the famous pasta, given how most of the ingredients are salty and robust and conveniently canned. To keep this short, this was a lovely and very delicious salad and you should try it asap. :)
We've finally found the ultimate way to make crispy chicken without using any oil or frying it - the kind of dish that screams unhealthiness (in the good way :D) while actually being healthy. It's simple to make and fast and just right for busy weekday evenings. You can make this chicken file with any kind of sauce you like or chop it up and mix it through your favorite salad, but try it at least once with the Japanese Teriyaki sauce - it's sour and tangy and sweet and spicy and delicate all in one :). Enjoy.
Recipe source: Annie's Eats.
Now this is a fine sample of good Mexican flavors which is also fit for those of you who can't take spicy too well. It tastes fresh and yummy and has all the great flavors Mexican cuisine has to offer without the heat your typical chili packs.
The dish is basically formed of 3 components: corn cakes (little corn pancakes made of sweet corn, green onions flour, egg and spices), avocado-green onion salsa (chunky salad made of avocado, green onions, lime juice and spices) and refried beans (a typical Mexican side or dip which doesn't mean re-fried - as in double fried - but means very fried beans; made of boiled beans smashed and stir-fried with oil, spices and optional grated cheese). The combination of the three makes the best Mexican dish we've tasted in a long, long time. Enjoy.
Source: slightly adapted from BBC's Good Food.
The inspiration for this was a salad I used to eat at Springtime once in a while. I just used more veggies and spiced it up quite a bit. Easy to make and light, perfect to accompany a heavier main dish. If you plan on serving it by itself, it could work only if accompanied by bread. Otherwise I'm not sure you'll like it with all the raw green onion and chili. Anyway, enjoy :)
We wanted to make these mini-tarts a long time now, but somehow something else always got in the way and we had to make other things before finally, the day had come for these luscious goodies. They're very simple, very good-looking and very addictive. The sweet creamy taste of the dulce de leche cream is ideally balanced by the crunchiness of the tart shells and the sour tanginess of the jewel-looking fruit. Enjoy.
Also, we made this as an entry for May's Sweet Romania challenge.
This is a basic recipe for the sweet tart crust we'll be using for many, many tarts from now on. One of the three basic French doughs (pate sablee). A little sweet and very crunchy, it calls for delicious creams and fillings :)
Courtesy of Irina.
The dulce de leche (or confiture de lait) is a traditional South-American cream that feels and tastes like caramel, only with a more milky touch. It is widely used as an ingredient for various cakes and desserts, but is insanely good and addictive on its own as well, spoonful after spoonful.
The traditional method required mixing milk and sugar and slowly heating and continuous stirring for a long time, but modern methods using canned condensed milk are way easier. All the methods to prepare it are listed and well explained here but the oven one is by far the simplest and safest. It is this method that we will also portray below. Enjoy your dulce de leche, whatever you need it for! :)
We wanted to try a new soup, and as we're very fond of exploring world cuisines, we decided to try a lemon-egg-chicken soup in the good old Mediterranean tradition. To be honest we weren't really sure what to expect but the final result tasted way better than we imagined and hoped for. Given how easy and fast the soup is done we definitely recommend it to be tried as soon as possible.
We had it with crispy pieces of home-made focaccia bread :)
Recipe source: Saveur.
This was one hell of a heavenly bread (yeah, I know, quite contradictory :P). What could be more delicious and yet humble than a home-made crispy Italian focaccia? We love serving home-made bread with soups and watery stews or curries, and this one went right along a hot bowl of Avgolemono (Greek chicken-lemon soup). I won't keep the story long and just skip to the instructions. Trust me, you want to get started as soon as possible.
The addition of yellow tomatoes is optional. To have the completely traditional version of the focaccia, leave those out.
Adapted from Peter Reinhart, via The Purple Foodie. We made this for just 2 people and spread it more thinly because we want it crispy, but for the original size just double the quantities. Here it goes:
