Top 24 recipes of 2011

And this year is gone and it is almost my blogversary too! Many (but not too many) are the recipes I have proposed you across the past 12 months and it was very hard to choose some that have stuck in my flavors library.

After skimming my picture catalog I have reduced them to a Top 24. With one new recipe every two weeks may this list help you bringing a little more happiness into your 2012.

Top 24 of 2011

Risotto with broccoli, poached prawns, roasted sesame seeds oil and dark chocolate shavings

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.

The Secret Recipe Club and a cloudlike fluffy cake

This is the first of hopefully a long list of posts.
Few weeks ago through the Yahoo-group foodbloggers Amanda of Amanda's Cookin made us think about how many people actually tried our recipes leaving perhaps a comment with a feedback on our posts.
Many of us felt the same in affirming that we love when this happens, we do this for you guys after all; we do enjoy our food but the ultimate word is spoken from our guests and readers. I guess this is a special application of the old saying "If a tree falls in a deserted forest would it still make a noise?".

With our posts we often don't do anything else than throwing a pebble out there in the big lake of news, ranting, opinions and recipes. Sometimes we ourselves are attraced by one of these same pebbles shining through the "increspata" surface of this lake so to pick it up and add our special touch to it before sending it back. There are way too many pebbles on this lake's bed and some gets out of sight pretty easily so it is nice when we have that special pair of goggles that allows us to isolate a group of them from the rest.
Amanda helped us in doing just this by setting a new monthly bloging event: "The Secret Recipe Club".

Orange cake: one and a hundred

From the records of this blog, you might have realized that I do not really bake that much; I usually do so more for catering than for private appreciation.
It is more than one year already that a friend of mine asked me to bake for her a weekly orange cake. I worked over the recipe she gave me to bring it to my liking (though still I could tweak it) but after the beginning excitement it all looked quite repetitive.
As usual, I do not really like to repeat my things over and over again if not for the purpose of development so I ended up producing quite a certain variety of orange cakes. The cake is a really nice one, neither too sweet nor too rich but very aromatic and satisfying and different garnishing add specific accents to the orange flavor; Chinese rice wine, rose’s petals, rose water and orange blossom water, tarragon, pink pepper, gooseberries or rhubarb played all a role in one version or another.
This post serves the purpose to show how versatile a single cake recipe can be, without the need of including a frosting or pastry cream of any sorts.

Basic and delicious Orange Cake

TweetPost #1: Chickpeas & Mussels; a couple made in Heaven!

So here we go with the fast post composed, posted and eaten without much fuss :P
The first one is about tonight's dinner. It was long time since I last had chickpeas with rice so today I decided to swig that way. This is what I came up with:
Chickpea Risotto with Tarragon and Mussel