Honest food.
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...
In this hectic world, there’s nothing I love more than to lose myself in making sourdough bread. One of the first things I’ve learnt about wild yeast, is that you can’t hurry it. You can’t ask the bread to proof faster because you have a deadline or a friend coming over, because you have to be somewhere, to run an errand or finish up with your home chores. This is...
Early spring is when all my orchids go in bloom. I simply adore them and they seem to adore me: they’re the only flowers I’ve been able to grow in my house, probably because they need so little care and watering :) I discovered that the more relaxed and confident I am in relation to their care, the better they feel; it must be the same with macarons- I’ve come...
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...
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...
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...
This year my sister-in-law came to visit from the UK and she told me in advance that her mind was set on my lemon curd cheesecake. I made this cake for the first time two years ago, on Easter Day, and the entire family was wowed. Because I spent so much time cooking and tasting – I found no pleasure in it (don’t tell me you don’t know how that’s...
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...
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:...
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...
I’m a major fan of easy-to-make cakes. Simple ingredients, give them a swirl, put them in a pan, then in the oven – kaboom! Baking is so much fun when it’s easy and has spectacular results. Take this cake, for instance: I only had one egg in the fridge, some yogurt and a bunch of lemons; I combined them with some sugar, flour, butter/oil and that was it – a...