Sharing my life call and an Italian tarte

Some time ago my dear friend Sumaya of Pukka Paki asked me to write an introductory piece for her other food-platform Food Niche Collective. What came out is quite an explanatory piece about my newly-found life call that I would like to share with you all.
Let's all jump to the Food Niche Collective blog then.

A gingery beef stir-fry and the lovely Sciacca

This time a new month means also a new year. I am still on holiday mode and probably not ready yet to commit the year past to paper. Quite frequently my thoughts need a noticeable amount of time to crystallize into a concrete expression of words and metaphoric images. It will come the time when my ode to 2012 will be ready for publishing but for the moment it is Secret Recipe Club time (not without a brief account of my holidays so far)!

The past two weeks have been quite unusual for me and my family; spending the holidays far from home but still in a home with a family, a large family not yet formally ours, have made these festivities something to remember.

Comforting Italian Trifle

Comfort.

What is comfort to our eyes? The feeling of home? A completely relaxed body? Or conversely a hyperactive session of our favorite sport? A visit to a museum can be comforting to many, but just because we stand still for hours in front of a magnificent piece of art it doesn't mean that our mind isn't going 100 miles an hour.

Generally we tend to associate the word comfort with something soft, fluffy, enveloping and translating this abstract and deep feeling into food is quite an interesting endeavor.
Certain ingredients can, by themselves, elicit such an emotional response so much so that we may find ourselves savoring luscious sour cream by the spoonful directly from the tub in these deep moments of need. The texture of fatty rich food makes us melt into expressions of pure enjoyment, probably an instinctual response to the fact that we are well provided for the cold season.

Zahtar buttermilk biscuit and my first days in London

It takes some time to recover from bad experiences and it takes even longer to get back to or daily life after a short parenthesis of happiness.

Almost one week has passed since my visit to London. As I am sure I have already mentioned in previous posts (here and here) London for me is synonymous of friendships. Nothing better of a vibrant metropolis filled with friendly faces and great food to ease the mind from a life of routine boredom.
This time around though the friendly call was accompanied by a call to action. It was the Food Bloggers Connect weekend and I was asked by the organizer Bethany to present few talks on food science.

Salmon-Eggplant-Cardamom cakes and a French prize

After a long week of holidays of sort, nothing better than a blog post to put the schedule back on tracks.
Almost 10 days ago I started my trip to France to present (and defend) my creations (#1 and #2) at the 2012 Science et Cuisine competition.
This being my main goal, I headed directly to Nantes where the competition final was held. The trip was uneventful, but not much so were the few days that preceded it. Stressed out for the presentation I had to hold, I spent the 3 days preceding the departure in a sleepless walking coma. I did manage to test my speech though, being it in French I couldn't just rely on my admirable qualities of orator, could I? I was rather happy to notice that despite all the "Ahem...", the "Mmmm...", the "Alors..." the speech was still within the 10 minutes I had at my disposal.

Swiss-chard and almonds gnudi and a book review

At the beginning of the past week I was surprised to receive a phone-call from a delivery agency who communicated me that they had a parcel from England to deliver.
The hours went by and the sun rose again, around 10am the delivery man rang the bell and I had my mysterious pouch in my hands.
It was Giuliano Hazan's new cookbook "Hazan Family Favorites". I immediately brought it with me in my usual coffee shop and started my reading meal. Page after page, I wanted to get a clear idea of this book so to write a proper review that you all would appreciate.

They do say to never judge a book by its cover but in this case you should. The book design has been so cleverly done that right from the front cover you have a taste of the warm oranges and dark terracotta colors you will meet inside.

Citrussy crepes soufflées

March has been a pretty busy month; my cooking classes and a couple of food related competitions made my daily schedule as hectic as I have rarely experienced before. But it has been a great and exceptional month, the best I had in the last couple years.
Healing from my Candida overgrowth has caused my diet to be extremely restrictive nowadays but the positive effects are mighty. I am my old self, full of energy and positivity; even my photography style has changed. With this extra energy I can now face this stark schedules and more!

The first third of the year has been dedicated to a food competition since the last 3 years: Les Réncontres Science et Cuisine (check my 2011 and 2010 posts) but this year a new one popped up in the same time window and it was a food-photography competition too.

Coco-nutty crepes cake for #NellysBigDay

So it seems that the day has come... Nelly got hooked up. Nah it isn't for her endless ranting about the sprigs of mint over desserts and neither because of her magnificent contribution to the extintion of bananas
Murray finally asked her to be his lovely wife (blinkey-blinkey ring and all). But I bet you all know that by now, she was squeeking for DAYS! I had to use hamburger buns on my ears to avoid breaking my timpans.

Joke aside, Nelly is just on of the sweetest-jumping Dominican I have met so far. We know each other since 1 year but as all Twitter-relationships, we end up knowing each other more than we do our family. We do spend the best part of hour waking hours together after all.

Sourdough and the Creative life

I have to apologize with Stephanie from Groundcherry blog for having missed my aim at this month's Secret Recipe Club http://secretrecipeclub.com/how-it-works/. This happens when you get on doing as many things at once as your computer can bare. 
I got originally assigned with her blog but in the process of looking for a recipe through the days I stumbled on a tab that had Winnie's blog on it and so I thought that was my to-be source (since it was opened already for a few days).
You see, I have been using my browser window more like a pin-board with as many as 10-15 tabs opened simultaneously at each session (and hence inherited by the next one until I deem them worth retiring).

Chocolate, Butter, Strawberries and an unexpected guest

It/we are back!! Who? The Paperchefs naturally.
It has been quite some time since the last challenge was announced on the dedicated blog but as often happens, a temporary hiatus is a positive experience and something not to be feared. It helps clear up our minds and focus on part of our life that often we only perceive out of the corner of our eyes.

If you are new to this challenge, it is one of the nicest out there (except the Velveteers' one naturally). Out of a list of more than 100 ingredients, a random quartet is drawn and assigned for the monthly round. The creative time allotted for each challenge is rather short, from a weekend to up to a week on rare occasions. Thankfully this was one of the latter.
I have taken part to a few rounds and I can assure you that it is a lot of fun!

Sweet savoury secret scones

It is time for the second round of the Secret Recipe Club. Already one month has passed since we opened the doors of this respectable and young establishment to all of you.
What is it about? Shall I repeat it? Yeah let's do it.
Amanda (LINK) during one of her many creative surges came up with the idea of opening a Club of bloggers that would love to do recipe hopping. This gives us the chance to try one of the recipes posted by another member of the group.
Last month I had the opportunity of browsing through Avanika's recipes and picked up this fabulously soft and airy cake. Naturally we are granted creative rights on the original recipe so I came up with my own version that I also served for my birthday party; worthless to say that I had a real hard time keeping the sticky fingers of my friends from snatching a whole quart of the cake for themselves.

Back in love

Before loving the others we must be able to love ourselves.
I don’t know who said this, because I am sure that such a deep truth must have come out in human history quite a few times.
I am loving myself and my life more and more these days. Something has changed, something that can’t be touched or described or interpreted; me for one I am not sure of what happened. The only secure thing is that it isn’t the effect of drugs, except my daily cup of coffee I am almost vices free (sigh).
It just happened this week, last Tuesday to be precise; after a dreadful weekend of self commiseration and depression I sort of started seeing the sun shining again. In total truth I believe that this “miracle” has a cause but one step after the other.

It is not always black or white

You probably have noticed already that this month I was pleased to host among this creative walls one of the most interesting challenge out there in the blogosphere: Paper Chef.
Strangely from the usual chaotic recipe development process, the first idea to come out and to be scribbled over one of my notebooks was the winner. Do not get me wrong, I wrote down short of a tenth of candidate dishes but either sleepiness or the recognition of a sparkle of efficiency made me concentrate on the first pasta dish.
The perfect Teutonic efficiency stops here because it was only when I had almost completed the dish that I realized one of the four PaperChef’s ingredients in my head was wron. Peaches went in instead of candied orange peel. No big drama, the two fit quite well with each other so, more fun for our papillae!
What I propose you today is a sweet and earthy savory dish, a really lovely and elegant one that I really won’t mind having in a tete-a-tete dinner by the candle light even if with a mirror.
Cutting it short, here I present you my

Middle Eastern raviolo served with cranberry-sage butter sauce, fresh peach crescents and thyme leaves

Dinner Experience: Restaurant Basilico, Bonn

Tonight was a special night. A very good friend of mine invited me and other four friends out for dinner. She chose the Basilico restaurant by the Hotel Dorint in Venusberg, Bonn.
The hotel is situated in a great region around Bonn. High on the hill of Venusberg, surrounded by woods (and hospitals) the Dorint hotel has a terrace with a great look over the city of Bonn and the Rhine river.
The outside of the building reminded me of a mountain chalet; quite a different feeling from the marble and alabaster covered lobby. The restaurant has gone a restyling lately and the new look is quite appealing with its basil green wall, dark wood furniture and big copper light fixture on the roof.

When we arrived, we were greeted by our maître at the reception and he escorted us to the best table on the terrace. We could look directly at the city without being disturbed by the gorgeous trees.
Once sat down, we started choosing our meal (I have to stress that I do not remember the exact name of the dishes, so what I will write as such is based on what I had on the plate).