This Tuscan Wild Tomato Panzanella is bright and colorful and bursts with flavour. Read More
Tuscan Wild Tomato Panzanella
Tag Archives: basil
Spinach Feta Omelette
This Spinach Feta Omelette with fresh basil is super delicious and very quick to prepare. It’s great for breakfast or lunch and even as a light dinner with a green salad on the side. To cook the omelette, I used a method that is often used in the Provence, which involves turning your omelette around instead of folding it in half. Both sides become nicely browned this way making the omelette even more tasty. Omelettes are such a great way to create a super quick and tasty meal. The best part is that you can add any ingredients you like. Feta cheese, spinach and basil are such a great combination. Read More
Sticky Sweet Quinoa Salad
This Sticky Sweet Quinoa Salad with balsamic shallots is very simple in its use of ingredients but has so much depth of flavour. It’s also quick and easy to make. A fluffy bowl of quinoa is ready in less than 15 minutes. I added chickpeas from a can and, some chopped sweet pointed peppers and baby tomatoes. The shallots are cooked in balsamic vinegar with some coconut palm sugar until they become caramelised and sweet. The sweet, sticky shallots and the left-over syrup serve as a vinaigrette. It adds a beautiful sweet, intense flavour and also makes it more succulent. Read More
Smoky Harissa Pepper Soup
This Smoky Harissa Pepper Soup shows how delicious simple ingredients like red bell peppers and tomatoes become when you love them up. This soup takes time, not in the sense that there’s a lot of hands-on cooking. The Roma tomatoes are slow-roasted in the oven until caramelised, sweet and delicious. The red peppers are charred, which gives them a smoky, sweet flavour. The fresh chili peppers and the blend of spices like cumin, caraway and paprika gives this soup a nice bit of heat. Read More
Minestrone For A Rainy Day
This Minestrone for a Rainy Day is the perfect dish at the end of the summer. As fall is creeping in upon us, it’s time to start cooking more warming foods.The temperatures at night have dropped and our evenings are getting darker and darker. Yesterday after a few bike rides through town, my clothes and shoes were soaked right through as rain came pouring down from the sky. These relentless rains are the first tell-tale signs of autumn. Cold weather calls for warming foods. This bowl of soup is my idea of comfort food at the end of a long cold and rainy day.Read More
Cannellini Bean Wild Rice Salad
This Cannellini Bean Wild Rice Salad with sweet corn, tomato and guacamole is inspired by Mexican food but with some Italian twists. I have used typical Italian ingredients such as homemade oven-roasted tomatoes, cannellini beans, Italian tomato paste, lemon, balsamic vinegar and basil leaves. I have used them in typical Mexican dishes like guacamole and corn salad. We enjoyed cannellini beans in many dishes during our trip to Italy. Very popular in Tuscany, they are widely used in soups and saladsRead More
Farro and Pearl Barley Salad
This recipe for ‘Insalata di farro e orzo’, Emmer and Pearl Barley Salad, is inspired by my trip to Umbria. The big flavors in this recipe come from using beautiful fresh This recipe for ‘Insalata di farro e orzo’, Emmer and Pearl Barley Salad, is inspired by my trip to Umbria. The big flavors in this recipe come from using beautiful fresh ingredients such as ripe and juicy tomatoes, fresh basil, a good quality moist mozzarella and a slow pressed extra virgin olive oil. Read More
Fresh Garden Herb Salad
This Fresh Garden Herb Salad literally brings you close to the source and gives you a taste of the season. It’s brilliant in its simplicity. You cannot go wrong with it. Simply use fresh, local and seasonal produce or even better your homegrown herbs and salad leaves. I must admit that I bought some of my salad ingredients at our local organic shop but some it was grown right here in my home. Read More
Mixed Italian Salad
This Mixed Italian Salad celebrates the beauty of pure flavors and fresh produce. As I am planning a trip to Italy soon, I have become slightly obsessed with cooking Italian food. My cabinets are stocked with items like polenta, risotto rice, tomato passata, capers, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, buffalo mozzarella and lots of fresh vegetables that remind me of Italy. Read More