Yesterday I found a moment for a little escape out of Ljubljana. The skies had mercy on me and delayed the storm for a few hours, so I was able to enjoy my walk in the countryside. It was just me, my photo camera, a pair of scissors and a wooden basket.

The silence around me was broken only by birds chirping and the green all around was but a balm for my eyes

Small chapels can be found throughout the countryside

These 'moo friends' showed a great interest in me - or in my camera

I also spotted some wild blackberry plants

Common chicory, a widely spread grassland plant

Chamomile, anthemis nobilis

Poppy, papaver rhoeas

And this white-blossomed plant on the photo below is the one I came for (in case you’ve wondered about “scissors and basket” part) – yarrow, Achillea Millefolium, the most essential medicinal herb, in my opinion. And same as last year, I came to pick a couple of bunches of yarrow, to dry it and store it for the winter season. This is the herb that helps me maintain my health. My day does not pass by anymore without a cup of yarrow infusion.

What a beautiful day it was! In my family’s garden, I hand-picked these gorgeous raspberries (and got stung badly by a nettle; not a pleasant feeling, I can assure) and ate half of them on the same day! With the other half I prepared some delicious jam. I also brought with me a bag of yellow beans, a bunch of parsley, thyme and a lot of green pea pods, all from the home garden.

And as if that wasn’t enough already, my gradnma presented me with a couple of kilos of blueberries, freshly picked just a day ago by her friend who even brought some whole plants with berries attached – you can imagine how happy I was! I spent the rest of the day in the kitchen, processing all the produce, feeling immensely grateful – thank you, Summer!

What do you do if you’re left with some dry bread? I, personally, have created a list of dishes where I’d use remaining bread – which doesn’t really happen very often, since I tend to store the stock of home baked bread in the freezer, and by portions, taking them out according to the expected need. Well, sometimes it happens I don’t calculate it that well. And given that throwing bread is not an option for me, I try to recycle it in various dishes.

Fortunately, bread can be used in savory as well as in sweet dishes, which leaves us with a great spectrum of use – the first dishes using dry bread I would think of -if you ask me- would be a) repápalos (a dessert of the poor, they call it – absolutely yummy!), b) meat/legume balls or patties and c) bread pie/pudding. Furthermore, I always make sure to turn some bread into breadcrumbs, and sometimes I’d leave some of it for croûtons. Also, bread dumplings are very common around here, and they make a nice side dish for almost any (mostly meat-based) stew. A great choice, indeed, don’t you think?

So, here I want to share with you this recipe for a truly tasty bread pie, inspired by the abundance of currants I’ve found myself in – yesterday I *finally* used the last bag of frozen red currants from last season (turning them into a jam) – while the new ones are popping up already! Yay! However, here I used the fresh ones.

BREAD PIE WITH RED AND BLACK CURRANTS

220g of dry/semi-dry bread
cca. 200ml milk
a dash of cinnamon
cca. 200g cooked, ground almonds (see the note)
3 eggs (M size)
75g powdered sugar + for serving
250g red & black currants, cleaned
75g molten butter + a bit for the mold

Note: I used cooked, coarsely ground almonds from making the horchata. You could substitute them with almond meal, and in case you do, you should increase a bit the quantity of milk then.

1. Cut the bread into cubes. Bring the milk with a dash of cinnamon to boil and pour over the bread cubes, and stir. Let sit for a while, for the bread to absorb the milk.

2. If using the cooked ground almonds like me, run them in a blender for a while to obtain the “paste”. Add the bread and process again until smooth.

3. Finally, add powdered sugar and eggs, and molten butter. Pour half of the smooth batter into a prepared, buttered mold (of 18 or 20cm in diameter) and sprinkle evenly with half of the currants. Proceed by pouring in the rest of the batter and top with the rest of the currants.

4. Bake at 180ºC for an hour or until golden. Here the technique of inserting the blade of the knife won’t work, since it will always come out wet – and that’s how it’s got to be. This pie is on the moist side which makes it so delicious and light!

5. Let the pie cool down completely (or till lukewarm, at least), then cut into slices. Serve with powdered sugar.

Whoever has been to Portugal, will for sure agree with me on one thing: Portuguese food rocks! Although I’ve only seen a tiny piece of this west-Mediterranean country (and I’m longing to visit it again!), and had lunch in only one village restaurant, I think I’ve got a good impression of what their cuisine is like – absolutely tasty! Though resembling to the Spanish cuisine in many ways, the Portuguese one appears to be yet richer, more filling, and… more caloric. Among their specialties are, of course, countless cod dishes (bacalhau), something not to be missed when you are in Portugal(!). Well, just in case you are not so much into fish (which might change once you come there), there are a variety of meat and vegetables dishes, delicious cheeses and sinful desserts that will keep you salivating non-stop.

I’ve been recalling our trip to Portugal a lot these days and decided to pick a recipe from one of the cooking magazines I bought there, to make a bit different lunch – I opted for this hearty white bean dish with potatoes, cut up into sticks, which is very common potato shape for Portuguese dishes. Assembled very quickly, healthy and filling – I know I’ll be cooking it soon again!

FEIJÃO À BRÁS
-serves 2 as a main dish-

250g Cannelini beans, cooked
3 big tomatoes
3 garlic cloves
ground sweet paprika
a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
1 big onion
6 middle-sized potatoes
olive oil
some basil leaves
a bunch of parsley
some black olives
sea salt
freshly ground pepper

1. Chop the tomatoes and using a blender, mix them into a puree. Heat some olive oil in a skillet and stir-fry the finely chopped garlic for a few seconds, then add the tomato puree and season with sweet paprika, nutmeg, salt and pepper and cook covered on medium heat, until the liquid has evaporated a bit.
2. In the meantime, peel the potatoes and cut them up into small sticks. In a big pan, heat up some olive oil and fry the potato “sticks” until golden. Transfer them into a bowl and then gently fry the sliced onion in the same pan, adding more olive oil, if necessary. When onion turns translucent, add the potato sticks to it and salt all together. Mix well to combine.
3. Back to the tomato puree, which has by now evaporated enough, add the cooked beans to it and stir to coat them well with tomato. Add the chopped basil leaves, then transfer the mixture into a big (oval) serving dish. Top it with the potato-onion mixture, sprinkle with chopped parsley and decorate with black olives. Serve immediately with bread and salad on a side.

My love for herbs has been growing at a high rate through the past few years and learning through reading books, picking herbs, processing them and then using them in daily life, all made me feel closer to Nature, making me aware of the great power the herbs possess.

I’m lucky that in Slovenia herbs grow in abundance. You can buy “loose-leaf herbs” for infusion practically at every market; the ones I buy usually come in bags of 50 or 75g and cost a little less than 3 euros per bag. I store the herbs in jars in the kitchen cupboard. There must be at least 20 jars in there right now, not counting the mixtures. I like to make herbal mixtures myself, according to the recipes from some old herbal bibles -as I call them- that are helpful for just about any health problem I encounter.

Now, under normal conditions I don’t have troubles with sleeplessness, however sometimes I really feel I need a cup of a soothing good-night infusion, for a lighter sleep. In such case I’d prepare myself some chamomile which is the most common sleep aid (among other things), while my Juanpi is more fond of peppermint tea. A few days ago I made this mix of herbs* suitable for an infusion before going to bed. If you have the chance to get these herbs, I warmly recommend it – even if you don’t have troubles sleeping. After a cup of this infusion you will sleep like an angel!

* All the herbs from this mix are used in their dried form.

MY HERBAL INFUSION FOR GOOD-NIGHT

2 Tbsp Menta x piperita leaves
2 Tbsp Melissa officinalis leaves
2 Tbsp Tilia leaves
2 Tbsp Rosa canina hips
1 Tbsp Valeriana officinalis root
1 Tbsp Foeniculum vulgare seeds
1 Tbsp Matricaria recutita flowers
1 tsp Rosmarinus officinalis leaves

Preparation:
Mix the upper-mentioned herbs together and store in an air-tight (tin) container, in dark place and away from any heat sources. For preparing a cup (250ml) of infusion, pour freshly boiled water over 1 tsp of herbal mixture, cover and steep for 3-5′, then filter and enjoy unsweetened or dissolve a teaspoon of honey in it.

Note: a cup of this infusion per day can not do any harm to you and given the minor quantity, there’s no need to fear the development of addiction to these herbs (I’m saying this mainly because of the Valerian root; you might have heard of cats having a tendency to develop addiction to it – while there has been no such report on addiction to Valerian by humans). However, more care should be applied in case you are combining herbs with synthetic medicaments – if so, I’d recommend you discuss it with your doctor prior to preparing this or any other herbal infusion.

After a week of hot and sunny weather, we got a surprise from the sky in a shape of heavy rain storm and a 15ºC temperature decrease, all in merely 24 hours. The weather in Slovenia can be highly unpredictable, even more as years pass by. Juanpi, used to the Spanish stable summer weather, is still struggling to adapt to this place – and I can’t really blame him for that. Although I’m having hard times making him believe that we truly didn’t have so many electric storms before!

Wrapped into a warm blanket, I was sitting there in my armchair yesterday, thinking of the dessert I’d make today. We’re not so into desserts in summer, but heck, with this cold all of a sudden, I’ve felt the urge to prepare something to cheer us up a bit. Something chocolaty, to be precise!

Chocolate mousse has been on my mind like for ever and today it seemed like that perfect day to finally make it. Yes, I’ve never eaten a chocolate mousse before – what a sin, I know. There must be a million chocolate mousse recipes out there (a million and a half, according to our dear Google) and most of them use either egg whites or yolks – I opted for the egg whites, adding a hint of cinnamon to the chocolate. I used a peculiar mix of chocolates, 50% and 99% (yes, you read it right, 99%! We love it!) which, naturally, gave a very dark result – just the way I like my chocolate to be.

DARK CHOCOLATE MOUSSE with cinnamon
makes 4 servings

150g dark chocolate of your choice
150ml heavy cream
1 tsp ground cinnamon (not Cassia) + a dash for serving
5 fresh egg whites
2 Tbsp cane sugar

1. Break the chocolate into pieces and melt it using the bain-marie technique. Separately, bring the heavy cream to boil with a teaspoon of cinnamon, then remove from fire.
2. Mix the molten chocolate with heavy cream and set aside.
3. Beat the egg whites firm and just before the end of mixing, add the sugar. Add the egg whites to the chocolate mixture with a lot of care, and pour the mousse into 4 molds.
4. Place the molds in the fridge and chill for a couple of hours at least.
5. Serve with a dash of cinnamon.

The mousse had a light, creamy texture and I totally adored the cinnamon addition. I froze 2 molds to eat them as ice cream in the following days.

A few more days, and it’ll be summer. Summer, of course, means light food and lots of refreshing drinks! It’s the time when we don’t feel like neither cooking nor eating much and when fresh produce becomes our preference.

I can hardly wait to get my hands on some juicy watermelon to prepare this fruit salad! Not to mention, we’ve been more than enjoying this refresco over the past few months already. In fact, I entered this home-made-drink mania the past summer, and I’m still on the search for new beverages, all healthy and simple to make. So, a while ago while browsing through this site, I discovered another drink so pure and modest that I felt an instant feeling of shame – how on Earth I hadn’t thought of making fruit water before!? 

OK, actually I have – but using lemon only! (which, by the way, adds a nice citrus kick to water).
So, to make fruit water, you need fresh, cold water, some ice cubes if you wish, and a variety of fresh (or frozen) fruit – your options here are almost infinite. Think apples, citruses, berries, plums, pineapple, (water)melon, mango… or even cucumber! You can be daring and make the most unimaginable combination of fruits, or even vegetables!

Not only you’re getting a refreshing, lovely-colored and aromatic drink – you even get to eat the fruit! I mean, who could possibly think of discarding it…

However, my favorite drink still remains plain water, although I truly don’t mind certain modifications – like this one, for example! Here I used plums, frozen berries (strawberries, black currants, blackberries, raspberries) and lemon. Berries gave the water some of their color -besides the aroma- and the result was splendid. I haven’t thought of adding sugar, not even for a moment.

It wasn’t so long ago when I used to buy organic lemons for 1 euro per kilo; now they cost 2.5 euro per kilo. No matter how much I try to purchase the seasonal vegetables and fruit only, and as locally produced as possible, the bill is still high and the effort seems in vane.
I don’t remember buying fish for the last time. I do long for it, though. But 2 salmon fillets for 10 euros sounds a bit exaggerate, doesn’t it? And regarding the meat prices, well not much better there, either. I really like my friendly butcher who always gives me the best cuts of local origins, however 25 eur for a kilo of veal just strikes me. Luckily for us, we’re more into chicken and turkey .

And while I’m doing my best to support Slovene products, I’ve found myself in a dilemma once I learned that not all the milk they sell as “Slovene” is actually of Slovene origins anymore, but rather imported from some other European country, while our milk is being sold over to our neighbors.

OK. So, quite suitable with the topic, here I have an example of a very satiated, low cost meal, apparently originating from a town by the Sava river (Zagorje ob Savi), an area once known for its coal mines. This energetic dish used to provide the miners with enough energy to spend several hours digging underground, and also, it’s a kind of flexible dish, allowing whatever addition you might have handy. It has a curious name – grenadirmarš – and basically it calls for 2 main ingredients: boiled potatoes and cooked pasta. I adapted it to my taste and added onion and leftover turkey. You may, of course, use whatever other ingredient. You really can’t go wrong! And in case the name didn’t scare you, you might give it a go!

PASTA AND POTATO HOTCHPOTCH
serves 2

An example of a basic recipe:
6 middle-sized potatoes, cleaned
150g of desired pasta (I used spinach tagliatelli)
generous amount of olive oil
1 (red) onion
2 cloves garlic
salt and pepper

Plus:
100g turkey breast, cubed
1tsp (Dijon) mustard
a few drops lemon juice
1 tsp chopped thyme
a dash of sweet paprika
salt and pepper

1. Cover the turkey cubes with the mustard marinade and place in the fridge for a little while.
2. In the meantime, boil the potatoes with their skins on until tender. Cool a bit and peel. Slice them thinly and set aside.
3. In a pot that you use for cooking pasta, bring to boil a sufficient quantity of water, add salt and then pasta. Cook according to the instructions. Drain well and set aside.
4. Heat some olive oil in a (big) frying pan and stir-fry the marinated meat. Take it out of the pan and keep warm.
5. Add some more olive oil to the same pan (the potatoes soak a lot of it, yup) and sauté the chopped onion and garlic until translucent (not brown), then add the sliced potatoes and season with salt and pepper. Stir a few times, letting the potato take on a little color.
6. Finish by adding the pasta and turkey, stirring to combine all the ingredients. If you have some parsley or chives handy, don’t hesitate to decorate the dish with it.
7. Best served with a bowl of salad on a side. Good appetite!

Three years ago I was the proud owner of a tomato plantation. It was the 1st and only time I took over the family garden entirely (something that most probably won’t happen again) when, after a very successful seeding, I converted the entire garden into a big tomato scene. I drove everyone mad with those tomatoes (nope, no such tomato lovers at my house), but I enjoyed every moment of taking care of my “babies”. It’s just impossible for me to explain how much I learned that year in the garden.

Since then, I’ve been of opinion that one can learn about life much better in the garden -or generally speaking, in nature- than at school – solely by observing the plants and the animals. I knew nothing about growing tomatoes prior to that year and learned all about them by paying attention to the plants from the very day I’d placed their seeds (of Spanish – Riojan origins) in the soil. I truly cherish those moments spent in the garden, and the numerous photos remind me of the amount of huge, juicy tomatoes we had that summer. There was no way we’d have been capable of eating all of them right away, so I turned them into tomato preserve/sauce, using a recipe of Juanpi’s mother. I had written about it once already, but that was like a long time ago and I have, naturally, adapted the recipe ever since, so I’m sharing it with you again – my newest version. I hope you like it!

TOMATE FRITO* FROM SCRATCH
* Tomate frito (lit. fried tomato) is the Spanish word for a good tomato sauce.

The ingredients you’ll need:
beautiful tomatoes, more on the ripe side than not
red onion
garlic cloves
red chile pepper (check their sharpness prior to using!)
green bell pepper
basil and oregano leaves
sea salt
cane sugar (the quantity depends on the sourness of your tomatoes – you may not need to add any at all)
freshly ground pepper (or pepper mix)
freshly grated nutmeg
sweet paprika powder
good quality olive oil

clean, sterilized jars with lids

And the preparation goes like this:
1. First, chop all the vegetable ingredients (previously washed and dried).
2. Then heat a generous quantity of olive oil in a bigger skillet/frying pan and gently fry the onion and green pepper until it becomes translucent. Add garlic and chile, followed by tomatoes, basil and oregano, salt, nutmeg and sweet paprika.
3. Covered with a lid and giving it an occasional stir, let the tomato saute until most of the liquid has evaporated. It’s essential to taste the sauce and -if needed- stir in some sugar. Freshly ground pepper should be added at the very end.
4. Have the jars prepared: pour the hot sauce in the hot jars (I keep them in the oven at 70ºC until using), you can also add a couple of fresh basil leaves if you like. Drizzle the top with a little olive oil, cover with the lid and screw tightly. Pasteurize them in the oven for some minutes, then turn off the oven and leave the jars inside until cool (overnight, for example).
5. Tomate frito should be stored in a cool, dark place, or even better, in the fridge.

And my favorite way of using tomate frito? On pasta, of course! Top it with some grated parmesan and you could hardly wish for more.

Our first flat was rather small. So small, in fact, that we didn’t have any oven, as it just couldn’t fit in the house. No matter how much I wished for baking a cake or pizza, I could not do it. I got quite desperate after a while, so that I “baked” pizza on the stove one day. Hey, it wasn’t bad at all!

Regarding the desserts, I was forced to be creative and after cooking pancakes and milk rice a-la-every-possible-way, I tried baking “cakes” in my bread making machine. Those were simple cakes that would take even up to 3 hrs to bake, or more. I’d have coated them with quark cheese, chocolate, or simply spread some jam or whipped cream over them. Boy, those were times!

There’s another thing I’d have “mastered” back then – making desserts without cooking: fruit and yogurt cups, tiramisu varieties and balls of all sorts. The following recipe is one of the first desserts I prepared as a cook-beginner and it is still one of my all-time favorite. Perfect for any time of year, these semolina coco (coconut) and cocoa balls are both light and refreshing snack you can nibble on every time you open your fridge – without feeling any guilt!

SEMOLINA COCO(A) BALLS

1/2 milk
2 Tbsp butter
cca 80g semolina
60g grated coconut + more for coating
a couple of tablespoons sugar/honey, depending on your sweet tooth
1-2 Tbsp cocoa powder
a splash of dark rum (optional)

1. Bring milk to gentle boil, add butter and stir for it to melt.
2. Slowly add semolina (I use either whole wheat or farro semolina) while stirring to prevent lumps forming. Incorporate the rest of the ingredients and keep stirring/whisking until thick.
3. Let the semolina mix cool down completely.
4. Finally, using the palms of your hands, shape the balls and roll them in grated coconut. Then place them in the fridge because they will taste best the following day. Don’t worry if they appear somehow soft – once cooled, they tend to harden up a bit. The balls keep well for several days in the fridge.

I’ve written already something about chive flowers not long ago. Today I’d like to show you, what I have done with the rest of them, because they were just too beautiful to let them go to waste!

Did you know you can make chive flower scented vinegar? I love to add herbs and spices to the vinegar I use for my salad dressing. Fresh basil, oregano and rosemary, for example, make an exquisite addition to the white wine vinegar. All you have to do is wash the herbs thoroughly as well as dry them well, place them into the jar, pour vinegar over them and keep the jar on a sunny window or at least in a warm place (e.g. kitchen, close to the stove). I’ve seen some people even keep their jars on the window sill outside -in the warm part of the year, of course- which is a good idea, too.

So here’s how to make your own chive flower vinegar – in pictures:

Place the washed and dried chive flowers into a tall jar (mine was of 1l) and fill it up with good quality white wine vinegar

Place the jar on a sunny window sill for 2 weeks

After 2 weeks, the flowers will have "lent" most of their color to the vinegar

Filter the vinegar and decant into prepared cleaned bottle(s)

I think it would make a lovely home made present, wouldn’t it?  

In Spain I discovered they prepare a similar plate with an addition of tuna or bonito, olives and asparagus and they call it ensaladilla rusa, or Russian salad. A yet richer salad plate that I could easily imagine wrapped in some quality jamón, ibérico for instance. It would make a lovely appetizer or finger food.

I like to steam the vegetables whenever possible. It’s essential not to overcook them. Potato is cooked/steamed with the peel on, then cooled, peeled and cut into small cubes. It goes the same way with the carrot, just that we peel it first and cut it up, then cook/steam it. Green peas (preferably fresh or frozen) are added to the carrots right at the end of cooking, a minute or two is all they need in order to keep their beautiful green color. The egg is hard-boiled, cooled, peeled and finely chopped. Pickled cucumbers are the only ingredient that doesn’t need cooking, we just chop them very finely. To all of this we add mayonnaise, some salt and a mix of freshly ground peppers – and the salad is ready! Well, now it needs to chill for a little while in the fridge, because that’s how it tastes best: cold.

If you’re looking for a side dish to your Vienna steak, why not try this salad? 

Ox-eye daisies, leucanthemum

Glossy scabious, scabiosa lucida

Apples

Pears

Peaches

Cherry plums

Grape vine

Meet Tara, our friendly St. Bernard

Also, yesterday I was browsing through my old photos and I remembered some dishes with green beans I’d made last summer. Oh how much I long for them!

Last year we planted both, yellow and green beans

And while I won’t be able to eat them any time soon yet, I can at least share with you one recipe, right?

LAMB WITH GREEN/YELLOW BEANS

Ingredients for 2:
half a leg of lamb, deboned
1 red onion
3 cloves of garlic
1 tsp sweet paprika (chili)
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chopped (fresh) rosemary
1 tsp chopped (fresh) savory
freshly ground (black) pepper
freshly grated nutmeg
a few drops lemon juice
sea salt
olive oil
1-2 bay leaves
150ml dry white wine
200ml puréed tomato
400-500ml freshly prepared vegetable stock (hot)
2 carrots
cca. 150g “dwarf beans” (the one I used here was of Golden teepee variety, you can use the common green bean/string bean without a prob)
some chopped parsley and/or chives

Preparation:
1. Chop the meat into small chunks/cubes, removing the fatty parts, if you wish. Marinate them with paprika, cumin, rosemary, pepper, nutmeg and some drops of lemon juice. Cover and place in the fridge for a couple of hours.
2. Slice the onion and carrot, chop the garlic finely.
3. In a bigger pan with a lid, heat some olive oil and add the meat chunks, stirring to brown them equally on all sides. Now add the onion, garlic, carrot and sautée for a while more. Finally, pour in the liquids; first the wine let reduce), then the tomato purée and enough hot stock to cover the meat. Cover with the lid. Later on, while cooking, you’ll add more stock if necessary.
4. When the lamb becomes tender, add the well washed and cleaned (halved, if too long) beans and pour in some more stock if needed. Now season with savory, the bean spice as I call it, and let simmer until the beans are done (not too tender, preferably still a bit crunchy to the bite) – this might take 20 minutes, more or less.
5. Once cooked, let the dish sit for a while – this will ensure yet a better taste. Serve with chopped parsley and/or chives.

If you liked this dish, you might want to check out another recipe of mine, using green or yellow beans. You’ll find it over here.

I could have just taken it easy and have a little rest from cooking (or better said, from *washing up*, which is my least favorite occupation in the kitchen), but well… I really suck at resting when I’m home. There’s *always* something to do/to be done, apart from cooking and washing up; be it cleaning the dust (mission impossible here, in the construction town), processing the herbs I’d pick in the garden (preparing them for drying; chopping) or baking bread.

And today I decided to pamper myself with some tasty food – I prepared a 4-course meal which took me 4 hours to eat (with breaks, of course – namely, in those 4 hours I cooked, ate, baked bread, cleaned the house and did the washing up *twice*). I savored some of my favorite vegetables, including home grown spinach (yes, our garden’s long awaited 1st crop!), I indulged in my 1st asparagus this year (it finally got affordable) and tasted some sinfully delicious ice cream. I couldn’t ask for more!

And here’s the menu:

• Red beet carpaccio
• Prosciutto crudo and basil wrapped asparagus
• Lemon chicken skewers with basil and sunflower seed pesto;  Spinach and cauliflower risotto
• Vanilla ice cream with stewed red currants

My dear JP is actually fond of red beets (not at all as much as I am, though) but not so much of the raw ones.  He likes asparagus – if it’s white, canned and served with mayonnaise – I prefer non-canned, green one. When I buy cauliflower, I know I will have to eat it all by myself (none of a problem for me) – unless if I turn it into puree of a sort and mix it with other ingredients – but he has a good nose for such things and can’t be easily fooled. And for some reason, he dislikes the skewers (the pin, not the meat)  – while I adore them. It must be for my Balkan blood because the Balkans love their ražnjiči (skewered kebabs).

For a better view of what was cooking on my stove today, I have some photos for you:

Red beet carpaccio: one thinly sliced red beet with vinaigrette – olive oil, lemon juice, white wine vinegar, salt, grated parmesan and a bit of Dijon mustard.

Prosciutto and basil wrapped asparagus, gratinated in oven for 20 minutes at 180ºC.

Lemon chicken skewers with basil & sunflower seed pesto: chicken, marinated in lemon juice, salt, ground pepper and chopped fresh thyme; pesto is made like pesto genovese, replacing the pine nuts with sunflower seeds.
Spinach and cauliflower risotto: sautée some finely chopped garlic on a little olive oil, add thinly sliced cauliflower, the rice, nutmeg, salt, chopped fresh oregano and cook adding enough ladlefuls of hot vegetable stock for the rice to absorb it, just before the end mix in chopped spinach and some cooking cream.

And for the sweet finish, real vanilla ice cream with stewed red currants – I used frozen ones, and stewed them with some lemon juice and cane sugar. The hot-cold contrast is just indescribable.

Could you tell I am a pampered girl?

Chives belong to the onion family and as such, make a fantastic addition to all of those dishes where you’d normally use onion. My favorite way to eat chives is to add them chopped to my summer salad, consisting in tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, onions, feta cheese and sometimes legumes (from beans to lentils) or sweet corn.

Last year I planted the chives for the 1st time. This year they developed flowers, beautiful edible, purple petals with a taste of onion! Once it begins flowering, the chive becomes unsuitable for eating; it feels rather hard to bite. After flowering, the plant needs to be cut back to about 5cm from the ground level in order to encourage the growth of new leaves.

I’ve prepared two chive recipes for you, one using leaves and the other flowers. I hope you will like them!

LEMON HERB BUTTER

You need:
100g (unsalted) butter, at room temperature
fresh chives, washed, dried and chopped
4 green olives, pitted and finely chopped
a few drops of lemon juice
1/2 tsp of grated lemon peel
freshly ground black pepper

In a bowl, combine all the ingredients and mix well. Store in the fridge, always covered. You can also shape it into a “log” and cut slices, when needed, to add them to steaks or cooked vegetables. You can also form the butter into little balls and freeze them. And if you’re in a spring mood, you can serve it the following way: take some chive leaves, washed and dried, and cut them to the size of the plate you’ll use. Arrange the leaves on the plate so that they look like “grass”. Place small amounts of soft lemon herb butter on top of each chive and press down to form a “blossom”. Serve with freshly baked bread or toast.

EGG OMELETTE WITH CHIVE FLOWERS

You need:
eggs
a bit of butter or ghee
chive leaves
chive flowers
basil leaves
salt and pepper

Prepare the herbs: separate the chive flower heads from the stems and snip off their florets. Chop the chive leaves and basil leaves (but only in case they are big). Beat the eggs together with salt and a generous amount of freshly ground pepper. Add the chopped chives, basil and half the amount of florets. Melt some butter or ghee in a frying pan, pour in the egg mixture and cook over medium-to-low heat, covered with a lid. Once half done, sprinkle the omelette with the rest or chive florets and again cover with the lid to let it set completely. Serve warm. I made this for last Sunday’s breakfast.

I’ve tried it with apples (most often), pears, peaches, apricots, plums and cherries and honestly, I liked all of them. Of course, I was eager to try other fruits, too. And given that lately rhubarb is popping up everywhere in the blogosphere, I was too tempted to make a rhubarb clafoutis. Rhubarb is a type of vegetable (not fruit!) that only appears on the shelves at my grocery store for a couple of weeks per year, so I took the chance and bought enough of sticks to make clafoutis and a lot of compote because rhubarb makes one of the best compotes I’ve ever eaten. I paired my clafoutis with an apple, I could have used other fruit too, for example strawberries, but they are not ripe yet.

RHUBARB AND APPLE CLAFOUTIS
serves 2 hungry people

Ingredients:
150 – 200g rhubarb
1 medium-sized apple (or cca 100g of other fruit)
2 large eggs
50ml heavy cream
200ml milk
75g blond cane sugar + a Tbsp for sprinkling
a dash of ground cinnamon
2 – 3 Tbsp semolina (I replaced it for the flour/starch, because I like its little grainy touch)
butter for the pan

Preparation:
1. Wash and peel the rhubarb sticks and cut them into 3-4cm  pieces. Rhubarb contains a lot of water, so you might want to let it release some of it – put the slices in a colander and sprinkle them with sugar, cover and let stand for about an hour. OR what you could do instead of this is to sauté it gently on some butter. I prefer the 1st option.
2. To prepare the batter, beat the eggs (whole) with the sugar. In a separate glass, mix together the milk, cream and semolina, then add this mix to the egg mixture. Finally, aromatize it with cinnamon and set aside.
3. Wash, peel and core the apple and slice it. Arrange the slices on the bottom of one round (18cm) pan, previously greased with butter. Add the rhubarb slices, then pour the egg-semolina batter over and transfer the pan into the oven, preheated at 180ºC. Bake until golden (it will take from 30-40′).
4. Serve warm or lukewarm straight from the pan.

The taste was exquisite – the juicy rhubarb makes a wonderful couple with apple. You could also replace the cinnamon with cardamom (ground, of course) – I used the cardamom to scent the rhubarb compote and its taste was excellent, I really recommend it.