What do you eat, when you’re eating alone? Say your husband/boyfriend/roommate is out for the evening, and you’re settling in to dine solo. You’ve got your favourite embarrassing music on, or maybe you’re eating in front of the TV, watching that show you love that they just don’t get (my choice would be Gossip Girl or Ugly Betty, depending on the night). What’s on your plate? Read more…
Risotto is one of my favourite things to make. Not only is it delicious and relatively foolproof, but it’s also improbably impressive. Announce to a group of friends that you’re making risotto for dinner and someone is bound to gaze at you in wide-eyed incredulity, regarding this as some kind of domestic tour de force. Read more…
We all have our favourite flavours, right? The ones that keep tempting us, year after year, and become mainstays in our home cooking. Also the ones that as food bloggers we have to watch ourselves on, lest we become known as “the girl who writes that goat’s cheese blog“. Read more…
You know how, as food bloggers*, we like to convince our readers that we always eat like this? That beautiful, creative, well thought out and healthy meals grace our tables daily and effortlessly? That we never succumb to take-out pizza, boxed cake mixes or store-bought vanilla extract?
(*I’m addressing this to “food bloggers” because I’m convinced that at least 90% of food blog-readers are food-blog writers, too.) Read more…
I hope you’ll permit me to begin this post with a bit of a rant:
How unfair is it that it’s only the beginning of August, and the days are noticeably shorter already? Obviously I realize that science (or whatever- physics?) dictates that the Summer Solstice is sometime at the end of June, and after that the days get shorter. Fine, I get it. But if I was in charge of the world (and therefore physics answered to me), I wouldn’t let the days shorten until the end of August at least. The whole thing just puts a damper on summer, doesn’t it? Read more…
I should probably explain, huh? This dish unfortunately goes by the moniker “Plaster Pasta” in my house. Charmingly bestowed by Andrew, it’s from the early days of the recipe, when I was still working out the kinks. As it cooled, the ricotta would firm up and the whole thing would stick together in a rather unappetizing way. Unappetizing for him, I should say. I didn’t really mind- it still tasted good! If plaster pasta sounds less than appealing to you, though, not to worry. I fixed the recipe and it doesn’t do that anymore. Unfortunately, the name has stuck. Read more…
Stuffing pasta with cabbage seems like a half-baked idea, I know. For many of us, doing anything with cabbage seems a bit far-out. I used to hate cabbage- well, actually, I used to think I hated cabbage, which is something completely different. We didn’t eat it all that often when I was growing up, so I never really got the chance to decide for myself whether I hated it- but every kid hates cabbage, right? Read more…
This recipe is a summertime favourite of mine. I first made it last year for a quick weekend lunch and a way of using up leftovers. I like that the lack of any real “sauce” leaves the lovely colour and shape of the romanescu intact and visible. Of course, this would work with any shape of pasta, but I like it with orecchiette. The thick, chewy shape seems to hold its own against the cauliflower. Read more…
I’ve been on somewhat of a pesto kick lately. What with my recipe for Stromboli and my Broad Bean Peasto, it’s definitely been appearing in my kitchen more since summer began. I even have a rocket pesto in the fridge right now, which I made earlier today for tonight’s dinner. That fresh herb flavour just seems to go with everything right about now, doesn’t it? Read more…
As I mentioned on Sunday, macaroni and cheese has got to be one of my favourite dishes of all time. Sure, I’ve graduated from the Kraft Dinner I loved as a kid (and, um, university student), and these days I’m more likely to experiment with making my own. But really, I’ll take it any way: stovetop, baked, from a package, homemade. I’ve never met a macaroni and cheese that I didn’t like, and I’ve met a lot. Read more…
