Food Blog

This white bean salad is an excellent way to bulk up any meal. I like making salads like this to add to my nightly garden salad. Around these parts, our salads are serious business and anything we can add to them to make them bigger and better, that’s just fine with me. Especially when what we add is as beautiful and tasty as the dish in this post. I used navy beans in this dish, but feel free to use any white bean you can get your hands on. Navy beans are good because they’ve got a lot of health benefits, but Cannellini beans are nice too because they’re buttery smooth. Choose what you like. Otherwise, this dish features a nice sherry vinegar and olive oil vinaigrette, red bell pepper for its crunch, scallions, parsley, and shallots. The shallot is soaked in the vinegar to improve its taste and the beans are infused with a garlic broth. This is an interesting recipe and I hope you click through to try it out. If you do, let me know what you think. Thanks! Continue reading…

For much of my life, I’ve attempted to settle upon which food I’d choose, if given the option of having only one, on a deserted island with me. When I was a kid, I chose bananas. I don’t know why. I guess I thought they’d sustain me. Just a few weeks ago, I changed my mind to whipped cream. I suppose I’m not so picky about sustainability anymore. Today, my mind has changed again. It’s lasagna rolls. These lasagna rolls to be precise. I chose them because they’re awesome. First, there’s something to be said about avoiding the lasagna mess while attempting to plate something such as this. Rolls make the entire process so much neater. Second, these rolls have everything traditional lasagna has, but in a sized portion. Again, the making life easier thing. Finally, take a look at the ingredients in the recipe; spinach, onion, garlic, Parmesan cheese, mozzarella, ricotta, herbs – it’s all in there. If you love Italian food and are ready to make an incredible dinner, click through for the recipe and to take a peek as some beautiful photos. Continue reading…

As you may have guessed, these types of salads appeal to me. Orzo, pearl couscous, grain – no matter what it is, if it’s got a nice vinaigrette, some olives, some sort of vegetable, and a sweet element, I’m all in. I think you’ll like today’s salad as well. It features whatever type of grain you’d like (I used farro), dried dates, green olives, honey, thyme, cayenne pepper, walnuts, and a few other ingredients. It’s Mediterranean in nature and it’s got all the flavors you’d need in a salad. What I think sets this one apart is the dates, olives, and the walnuts. To add some additional flavor, I suggest toasting the walnuts for a few minutes in a small skillet with some olive oil and salt. If you compare that to a regular untouched walnut, you’ll be wondering why you haven’t been toasting walnuts all along. Overall, this is an excellent salad and I hope you’ll give it a try. Click through for the recipe. Continue reading…

Every so often a wonderfully simple to prepare and perfectly delicious to taste dessert comes along to make my day. This is one of those desserts. If you take a peek at the recipe, you’ll find just a handful of ingredients; cream, vanilla, cream cheese, and fresh fruit. Mix things up a bit and serve. I’m not sure how the forces that be worked this one out, but it’s awesome. Tasty, sweet, creamy – everything. If you’ve got a date night coming up, this might be the dessert you’ve been looking for. If you’re having guests over for dinner, same thing. Don’t stress yourself out over some far-too-involved dessert when you’ll get many more oohs and aahs with this one. Cut the labor and go for the flavor. Now that’s a good rhyme. Click through to take a look at the recipe and some very appetizing photos. Continue reading…

Bread recipes make me nervous. I’ve had too many experiences where my dough had failed to rise and that type of thing really demotivates me. If there was only some way to test the yeast before moving forward and using all that flour and effort. Oh wait…there is. There are obviously methods for testing yeast, but none as simple as this one. Because this boule recipe calls for apple cider, which has sugar built right in, it’s easy to see if your yeast is any good or not. If not, all you did was waste some apple cider. Nothing else lost. If the yeast is good, just a bit more effort will surely produce a lovely round loaf of some wonderful bread. By the way, that round loaf of bread is referred to as a boule. It’s a French word that translates as “ball.” As it refers to bread, a squashed ball, to be exact. If you’ve never tried apple cider bread or if you’ve yet to try to make it, give it a shot. It’s easy and the results are just downright fun. Click through for the recipe. Continue reading…

The next time you crave pasta, I encourage you to try this dish. It turns a regular pasta dish into something much more impressive – leaning on spectacular. When I prepare pasta, I usually cook it and the sauce separately and then combine the two on my plate. With this dish, the ingredients are combined au gratin style and baked together. That’s where the magic happens. And by baking in a dish or skillet, you’re able to add more butter, cheese, and olive oil than you’d normally be able to. If you break everything in this recipe down, you’ll find that what you’re really doing is making a hearty sauce and some pasta. But by turning things into an au gratin, you’re making it all much, much better. I love this dish and I’ll be making it again soon, I’m sure. Click through to take a look at the recipe and some photos. Continue reading…

This is a bean salad I would never have thought on my own of making. Typically, when I prepare a bean salad, I cook the beans, perhaps sauté some vegetables or simply add them raw and have at it. This dish is different. Because of the glaze in which the beans are tossed, there’s a sweetness added. Also, when the red wine vinegar glaze is being prepared, the flavor of fennel is infused. Ultimately, the glaze is a combination of fennel, sugar, and red wine vinegar. If that isn’t unique enough for this salad, add in some toasted nuts, grapes or dried figs, and fennel seed. The result is just about perfect. I encourage you to click through to take a look at the recipe as well as some very nice photos I took of this dish. You won’t see something like this too often, so please give it a try. Continue reading…

Pearl couscous is one of my favorite foods. It’s got a nice, firm bite and its toastiness tastes great. Many people think pearl couscous is a type of grain; it’s actually a type of pasta made from semolina flour (which is made from durum wheat). You can find it under a few different names – maftoul, ptitim, Israeli couscous, or pearl couscous. No matter what people are calling it, it’s a nice ingredient to work with and it’s just about perfect for light dishes like the one I have to share today. If you click through to take a look at this recipe, you’ll find many flavorful and interesting ingredients that are commonly found in the Mediterranean. Grape tomatoes, kalamata olives, ricotta salata, pine nuts, baby spinach, fresh basil, and a few others. When combined, they create a wonderful dish that can stand on its own or be added to another as a side. I prepare salads like this all the time and this is definitely one of my favorites. Continue reading…

There are many variations of cannelloni. The most popular is probably spinach and ricotta, topped with mozzarella. Basically, cannelloni is a rolled pasta with something stuffed in the inside. In this recipe, that stuffing is a combination of mushroom, leeks, onion, garlic, cream, and a few other things. And the cannelloni isn’t topped with mozzarella; it’s topped with a wonderful cream sauce. Manicotti is also a stuffed tube of pasta. It’s the Italian-American version of cannelloni. The difference is that manicotti is larger with ridges, whereas cannelloni is smooth. Whatever the case, pretty much all manicotti and cannelloni is excellent and fun to make. The recipe I share today is no different. The entire process will take about 45 minutes and there isn’t a challenging step involved. Click through to take a look at the recipe and some photos of this tasty dish. Continue reading…

If you’re looking for a garlicky and hugely flavorful side dish that’s simple to prepare, look no further. I’ve got one for you. I pulled this recipe from Mary Berry’s Complete Cookbook and prepared it a few evenings ago. I’ve never tried something like it before, so I was interested in seeing the result. Do you really need me to tell you how it turned out? Just take a look at the above photo. By baking the eggplant, it became very soft and developed some wonderful flavors. It also became infused with the garlic, parsley, and basil that were stuffed into the slices I previously made. But wait, that’s not all. I also sprinkled some blue cheese and mozzarella on top and then melted it across the entire dish. Salty and cheesy and an incredible bite. Click through for the recipe. This one doesn’t take much to put together, so give it a shot. Continue reading…