Raw strawberry spring cake

Dear Spring, How I’ve longed for you! For your delicate and sweet morning light, your temperamental winds, your wise and patient blossoms! But, most of all, how I’ve longed for the freshness of your fruit and greens, for the flowers underneath my balcony, for the sweet buds in the trees! I can’t help but celebrate you in the most delicate way I know: with a light cake, full of promises...

Beet burgers. Lush. Delicious. Irresistible.

Every winter I’m going through a beet phase. I’m a mean, lean, beet-cooking machine. I buy lots of it and then I get creative: salad, soups, dips, spreads and now… burgers. Why? Because beets, as you probably know already, are incredible veggies, packed with potassium, magnesium, iron, vitamins A, B6, C and folic acid, carbs, proteins, powerful antioxidants and soluble fibers. What does that actually mean? It means that it...

Gnocchi in cheesy leek sauce

I am a major fan of easy, tasty pasta recipes: I find that they’re the most accessible source of energy out there. Although I love tomato-based sauces and I can’t get enough of freshly made pesto, I’m always on the lookout for “something new”, something different. This is how I “discovered” this creamy, cheesy leek sauce that simply won me over; however, I suspect that if you are not a...

Veggie cabbage rolls

There’s nothing more traditional in Romania than cabbage rolls with polenta and a slice of walnut sweet roll (cozonac) for dessert. For this recipe, the cabbage is pickled for several months in a mixture of salt and water, which gives it an absolutely fantastic taste – of course, you can make it with normal cabbage and boil the leaves for two minutes, but it won’t be the same. The best...

Parsley and walnut salad

Winter is the glorious time of immune boosting smoothies and juices. But what if I told you that there was something you could eat, so nourishing and so tasty, so full of calcium and vitamin C that would make your immunity levels go through the roof? It’s a recipe as old as time, or, better yet, a timid reinterpretation thereof: walnut parsley salad with pomegranate molasses. So popular in the...

Moist chocolate and red currant cake

For a very long time I’ve been looking for a cake that: 1. is super easy to make; 2. has a lot of chocolate; 3. has simple and handy ingredients; 4. has a slightly crunchy exterior yet is extremely moist on the inside and 5. is awesome looking. I’m happy to report that I finally found it (insert Single ladies theme song here – oh-oh-oh-oooooh-oh-oh-oh-oh!). There’s just no way around this:...

Red lentil minestrone

There’s nothing better on a cold winter night than a hearty minestrone. Not the usual type, with pasta or rice, but the experimental type, with red lentils. Ok, I’ll admit it, it’s not experimental in the sense you might imagine, but rather as a result of the need to cook something fast, from scratch, with the little things I had in the fridge/freezer. You see, we had just returned from...