On warm summer days tacos piled high with fresh vegetables and packed with well-seasoned kidney beans is a positively satisfying meal for lunch or dinner. This is the easiest recipe to pull together with the most stupendously delicious results. These tacos are packed with good for you legumes such as kidney beans, chock full of leafy greens, fresh tomatoes, delicious salsa, sour cream, and a dash of shredded cheese.
When one has an ice cream maker at home it is so much fun to get creative with ice cream flavors. The best part of having an easy to use ice cream maker is that we can make small-batch ice creams – just enough for one evening. This also means that we can experiment with different flavors in small quantities. The twins and I love trying out new and creative ice cream flavors over the hot summer months.
Saffron pistachio ice cream is a classic ice cream flavor in India called Kesar Pista, which translates to Saffron Pistachio. Used to be I could only find this flavor at Indian grocery stores or at Indian restaurants and ice cream parlors. But now with my easy to use ice cream maker, making Saffron Pistachio Ice Cream at home has become a breeze. Here is the recipe.
Amuse bouche is a complimentary, bite-sized portion of savory food served before a meal or in between courses at a restaurant.
When I invited our friends Dave and Rose to come over for dinner one evening to show us how to make pasta and tiramisu that they had learnt on their Italian holiday in Tuscany; Dave brought an interesting amuse bouche – goat cheese wrapped in seaweed.
This was a very unique amuse bouche because I would never think to combine an Asian flavor like seaweed with a western flavor like goat cheese. Dave’s amuse bouche was a delectable little bite that packed a ton of flavor. Here is the recipe.
Sometimes when I think of vegetables I can picture them as dainty or dashing, pretty or handsome. Tomatoes for example are beautiful – when they are in the basket with other veggies, all eyes are on tomatoes. While dark eggplant, potatoes, onions, and mushrooms look handsome.
With handsome vegetables like mushrooms and caramelized onions what you have with this recipe is a vegetarian mushroom sandwich that will satisfy the taste buds of all genders.
When I’m in one of my lazy salad moods, even making a salad with a simple vinaigrette seems like a lot of work. At these times, I toss together a salad that requires just a drizzle of olive oil and vinegar, salt & pepper – and that’s it. Continue reading Simple Salad→
This is a recipe I got from watching Barefoot Contessa’s show on Food Network. Ina Garten was making a beautiful goat cheese tart with thinly sliced zucchini. It looked positively gorgeous. But I am not a big fan of zucchini – no offense to zucchini fans. This recipe also called to make a homemade pastry crust – and I am not a fan of that either.
I decided to take Ina Garten’s recipe and make it my own. I used a store bought frozen piecrust (the kind you have to roll out) for the goat cheese tart, and instead of zucchini I used a jar of sundried tomatoes as my topping. To turn this delectable tart into a meal – I served it on Sunday evening with a tossed green salad as part of my Sunday Salad routine. Continue reading Goat Cheese Tart with Sundried Tomatoes→
I tried a bleu cheese dressing salad at one of the tapas restaurants called Loquita in Santa Barbara, California last fall, and that salad tasted so good that I decided to try and make something similar at home. I chose to make my salad with apples and a blend of mixed greens and arugula. I used apples because I knew these sweet apples would compliment the bleu cheese dressing very nicely. Continue reading Apples, Mixed Greens & Arugula Salad with Bleu Cheese Dressing→
I got the idea for this bleu cheese dressing when we were on holiday in Santa Barbara, California last fall. At one of the Spanish tapas restaurants called Loquita, I had an awesome salad with bleu cheese dressing. I am not a big fan of bleu cheese, I find the cheese to be too pungent and overpowering, I was dubious about the salad and wasn’t sure if I would like it. But the dressing was so delicately seasoned with bleu cheese that it gave just a hint of bleu cheese flavor. I liked the flavors so much that I decided to give the salad dressing a try at home, and it turned out pretty tasty. If you are looking for a change from the usual vinaigrettes, try this creamy bleu cheese dressing on your next salad. Continue reading Bleu Cheese Dressing→
Raita, an Indian yogurt side dish is very popular in our house. If the family could have it every day with their meal they would. It’s basically yogurt with raw vegetables such as tomatoes, onions, cilantro and cucumbers along with some spices. In many Indian households raita is used to soothe the palate when the main Indian meal is too spicy, as the cool yogurt raita helps to neutralize the heat of chili.
I made a caramelized shallots, baby spinach, and ricotta stuffing for ravioli that Rani and her friends were making from scratch at her birthday party, and I ended up with some extra stuffing leftover. Caramelized Shallots, Spinach and Ricotta Ravioli
