What if I tell you that a potato salad without mayonnaise, sour cream or boiled eggs can be THE BEST potato salad in the world? Well, here it goes. (The best part is, it is guilt-free indulgence!)
Ingredients:
3 lb Golden, Russet or red potatoes. Boiled, peeled, and cubed.
2 celery stalks, thinly diced
1 large tomato, seed removed and sliced
half of a small red onion, thinly diced
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tbsp Italian spice
2 tbsp sun-dried tomato paste
2 tbsp parsley-garlic paste (options: If you don’t have this, substitute for 3 tbsp Italian parsley, and 3 cloves of minced garlic)
1 tsp oregano (optional)
1 tsp salt
ground pepper to taste
Keep the potato aside, mix all other ingredients until combined. Add potato, toss gently and serve!
Notes:
Fresh ingredients are key to this salad. But if you don’t have any fresh parsley, oregano at hand, dried herbs will do the trick.
I will post the parsley-garlic paste recipe shortly. 🙂
This recipient is close to my heart (and tummy). It is succulent, juicy and festive, as it is the DISH for any special occasions in the family gat (Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or birthday) and definitely sparks joy. 🙂
Ingredients:
beef prime rib roast (bone-in, cap-off, around 5 lb )
three yellow medium onions, diced
1/2 head of garlic, peeled and crushed
Yellow mustard (3/4 cup)
60 ml (4 tbsp) beef bouillon concentrate
30 ml (2 tbsp) soy sauce
3/4 cup hot water
Gravy ingredients:
4 tbsp corn starch, fully dissolved in 1/4 cup of cold water
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar
Instruction:
Preheat oven at 300F. In a dutch oven, over medium high heat, sear all sides of the roast (about 3 minutes on each side) until brown.
Generously spread yellow mustard all over the roast.
Add crushed garlic, diced onions into the pot. Add beef bouillon, soy sauce and water. Stir till mix.
Bake at 250F for 3 hours. Check every 1.5 hours and pour juice on top.
Once cooked, take the roast out and slice into 1/2 inch slices against the grain.
Return the slices back to the oven, cover and bake for another 1.5 hour at 250F.
Carefully take out the meat slices, and save the sauce for gravy (instruction below).
The gravy:
G1. Use a submerge blender to blend the sauce in the pot. Bring it to a quick boil on stovetop for 1-2 minutes. Once the liquid is reduced to the desirable amount, and add the soy sauce and brown sugar.
G2. Remove from heat and slowly stir in the corn starch mixture while stirring. Let cool for 10 minutes and the sauce will thicken.
Note:
The roast can be made a day in advance before by following Step 1-7. Let cool and refrigerate overnight. Reheat for 1 hour at 250F before serving.
-Puff pastry (2* 10 inch squares or one large piece)
-500g ground beef
-1 pepper chopped
-1/4 onion diced
– pepper
-BBQ sauce to taste
Instruction:
1. Sautée all ingredients (apart from puff pastry) and then season with pepper.
2. Lay out pastry, make five 2 inch slashes on sides as shown in photo. Put cooked meat mixture in centre of pastry.Braid pastry, while using water lightly dabbed to help stick together
3. Bake 10 minutes @ 450F, then 20 to 25 minutes at 400F. 4. Slice and serve with mashed potatoes, baked beans/ green beans.
– Mixed the dry and wet ingredients separately. Then mixed wet into dry and beat mixture until smooth. Refrigerate the mix for 2 hours.
-Cooked in a frying pan making very very thin pancakes. The first side took about a minute to cook then flipped the crêpe and put chocolate chips and mini marshmallows on half.
-Cook for about another minute, then all good to go. Fold the pancake in half take out of pan serve to a hungry hungry child.
This is one of the most tested and loved recipes in our home. I have made hundreds of them over the past 10 years. My husband loves them frozen during any time of the day, and I love them dipped in a cup of strong espresso after a meal.
Ingredients
-1 cup hazelnut (toasted, husked, coarsely chopped)
-3 cups all purpose flour
-2/3 cup cocoa powder
-1 teaspoon baking soda
-1 teaspoon baking powder
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-1 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)
-1 1/2 cup sugar
-3 large eggs (room temperature)
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-1/2 teaspoon almond extract
Preparation
Preheat oven to 350 F. Line baking sheet with reusable baking parchment paper.
2. Whisk all the dry ingredients together (flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, salt) and put aside.
3. Beat butter and sugar to blend, add eggs, vanilla and almond extract until blended.
4. Beat wet mixture (from Step 3) into dry mixture (from Step 1). Add hazelnut in the end and mix.
5. Divide the dough into 2.5 inch wide log. In a conventional oven, bake at 350 F for 40 minutes (For convection oven, adjust temperature to 300 F for 40 minutes).
6. Let it cool on the counter for 10 minutes. Cut into 1/2 inch slices.
7. Once cut, turn them on their side, and re-bake for an extra 15 minutes.
Nothing beats a warm, crispy piece of bread topped with Franco’s home-made bruschetta spread!
Hand-chopped roma tomatoes, sweet red onion, shredded mozzarella, Parmigiano reggiano and Romano cheese, mixed with home-made basil-garlic, sun-dried tomato and parsley paste. Topped with a splash of olive oil and kosher salt. This. Is. Simple. Luxury.
The pandemic has changed everyone’s life since March 2020. For me, personally, it has finally given me the push I needed to work on the content of myfoodetc.com, a web domain that has been in my possession for over a decade (yes, definitely a bit shameful. Better late than ever, I suppose?)
Here is the first photo I took on our honeymoon in Venice, Italy in August 2013. As the first destination on our trip (after dropping off the luggage), we visited Gelateria Chocolat in Mestre, which was ranked the #1 Gelateria by TripAdviser at the time of our visit. I am happy to see that 7 years later, it still held its place!