Dairy

This one is a follow up of the previous recipe on Maestra, the traditional one pot greek dish that is such a stable for the summer and the winder and the spring and the fall… Yeah you got it all, year around. Once you cook it you can serve it straight up, but you can also have some fun with it. Fun meaning… Decorate it. Make it fancy. You deserve some fanciness in you dinner. And this one is great dressing trick for burgers or chicken. You only need cheese.

Take two thin s...

Today I came across an interesting question on a reat blog I very often read (as often as they publish). It belongs to the pioneer woman, Ree, and it is the blog that gave me the idea for step by step photo shooting of the recipes I post. I talked in the past about that. She mentioned that where she lives it is hard to find milk some cold winter days, and she was wondering if you can freeze milk. I had tried to do that in the past with no success. I tried and I froze it, but upon thawing the result was miserable at least texture wise, with a lot of fat separation.

The butternut squash has been featured before on this blog, in the very famous, but elaborate recipe about the butternut squash ravioli. I just quote from that blog the few words about the humble star of the dish. Butternut squash (Cucurbita moschata), also known in Australia as Butternut pumpkin, is a type of winter squash. It has a sweet, nutty taste that is similar to pumpkin or sweet potato. It has yellow skin and orange fleshy pulp. When ripe, it turns increasingly deep orange, and becomes sweeter and richer. It grows on a vine.

Tzatziki is one of the most widely known greek dishes, served in every greek restaurant and dinner. It is a dish that is served, with, grilled meat, stew meet, fried vegetables, stuffed vegetables, seafood, on its own as an appetizer with ouzo, or even with bread just like a spread. Although a very popular dish, there is no particular story associated with the tzatziki. Its origin is lost somewhere in the area of the middle east & balkans. In turkey there is a similar concoction that is called "cacik" (pronounced "tzatzik") and is a soup with cucumber, garlic and yogurt. All around the Balkans there is a similar dish that calls for yogurt and cucumber.

Again here staying in the same tunes as the last entry we will be dealing both with tomatoes and with summer food. Fresh tomatoes and summer food are made to go together. This recipe brings the element of the seafood, something that we have not dealt that much in this blog. Well there is not much more to say about the tomato itself since all is reported on the previous post. However it is worth taking sometime to talk about the king of misunderstood food the krab meat.

Staying tuned to the same frequency as the previous post, I will have a second summer dish, that I love. It is a simple humble summer dish that can be eaten warm, but I prefere it room temperature. It is a cauliflower casserole… Just that. Cauliflower and a simple sauce, one of the four mother sauces, baked in the oven. I got this idea from Ece a friend of mine that she made a similar version a few years back. The homeyness of that food will never be forgotten. But since we are having the first entry ever for the cauliflower as it is custom to this blog, we will start with a small history of the cauliflower, a distant cousin of the broccoli and cabbage.

Cau...

Zucchini (Courgettes) is a small, thin skinned, summer squash. Its Scientific name is Cucurbita pepo (a species which also includes other squash). It can either be yellow or green or light green, and generally has a similar shape to a ridged cucumber, though a few cultivars are available that produce round or bottle-shaped fruit. Unlike the cucumber it is usually served cooked, often steamed, boiled, grilled, stuffed and baked, barbecued, fried, or incorporated in other recipes such as soufflés.

Peppers sweet, spice, small, big all are part of the Capsicum family, which is a genus of plants from the nightshade family (Solanaceae), native to Mexico, and now cultivated worldwide. Some of the members of Capsicum are used as spices, vegetables, and medicines. The fruit of Capsicum plants have a variety of names depending on place and type. They are commonly called chili pepper, red or green pepper, or just pepper in Britain and the US; the large mild form is called bell pepper in the US, capsicum in Australian English and Indian English, and paprika in some other countries (although paprika can also refer to the powdered spice made from various capsicum fruit). The original Mexican term, chilli (now chile in Spanish) came from Nahuatl word chilli or xilli, referring to a huge Capsicum variety cultivated at least since 3000 BC, according to remains found in pottery from Puebla and Oaxaca.