Haddock Charmoula

This is one of those dishes you would enjoy making, every single step of it. First roast sliced potatoes topped with a layer of olive-oiled tomatoes/spring onions/italian peppers mess – the dish within its own right. In the meantime make charmoula – tiny red bird chiles, preserved lemon (bergamot), parsley, mint, scallions, garlic, cumin – [...]

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Potstickers, Mediterranean Touch

Came up with a new filling: chicken and eggplant.
Two globe eggplants (about 1.5 lb) halved, deeply scored, salted, sprinkled with cumin seeds and brushed with olive oil and roasted on thyme branches in 425F convection oven until sligtly charred and soft. The flesh is scooped out and drained. Don’t discard a skin before trying snacking [...]

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Cucumber Lavender Sour

A drink. A cucumber… and some flower. Like Hendricks gin.
Flower of My Secret perhaps? Or Lavender Sour maybe?… What flower compliments cucumber better?… Or it’s the other way around? The cucumber complimenting the lady flower… Which one it prefers to be with then?..
At the end i was the one who decided:

Loved the original recipe, and [...]

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Chebureki, Made Right

Today i was seriously craving chebureki, and it didn’t even matter that we had an overload of deep fried food this weekend.
Well one can get chebureki in any russian grocery here but i don’t care much for the taste. Another option is to make chebureki myself but up until now my attempts to recreate this [...]

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Mushrooms Tempura and Deep Fried Shrimps

Time to pull out the deep fryer.
I coated hon shimeji mushrooms with a beaten egg, let the excess to drip off and then coated mushrooms in masa harina and green japanese pepper shaking the flour off. 1 min in 350F – excellent stuff. Next time i’ll use the egg white only.
The coating for the shrimp [...]

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Brown Rice Paella With King Oyster Mushroom Duxelles

I was thinking about using a brown rice in paella for a long time. Couple of days ago i took a plunge.
Mushrooms are always a great companion to brown rice and i had some nice king oyster ones. And chorizo (in reality it was some sort of portuguese lomo instead of chorizo in a fridge).
King [...]

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Mock Duck Wontons

The original recipe came from Ezard, and called for roasting duck legs, shredding the meat for filling etc.
I didn’t have much time or duck legs but i had a freezer full of chicken meaty bones waiting there to be used in stock. So the solution was obvious – roast the chicken, pull the meat off [...]

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Strange Brew

During this cold winter i sort of lost any interest in mixology. So no wonder i missed the article on the subject once so dear to my heart, of beer cocktails – Bartenders hop up cocktail flavors with beer… The article is so insightful and quotable you want to memorize it.
The Strange Brew sounded [...]

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