Chef, What Was Your Inspiration…

The Inspiration… It comes from all the strange places. And limitations… Like you want to bake the Diana Kennedy’s mushroom pudding but you won’t dare to start the oven – it’s damn hot and AC is still broken… Or your friend comments on somebody’s pic on FB, you click out of curiosity, and start looking [...]

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Acelgas con Elotes y Crema

Fantastic dish i just learned from my friend, Rancho Gordo. He made it already twice in the last three days and i’m planning to do the same.

RG made it with watercress as the original idea suggested – i went with chard. There was not watercress in the store and in hindsight chard was no less [...]

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Mushrooms and Potatoes, the Eternal Duo

After a hearty lunch that included tacos de lengua and carnitas, meat was out of the question for dinner. I got mushrooms and potatoes. And dill. Scallions were already in the fridge.

Should i mention that our AC has been broken for several days already and i started to master the art of stovetop cooking?
Luckily i [...]

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Moorish Chickpeas with Spinach

Wegmans started to carry nice organic legumes – got some split peas and chickpeas to try. Decided to make the chickpeas/spinach dish one can find in every spanish cookbook. My version came from Jose Andres. I made some changes in spicing – braised chickpeas with cloves and cinnamon. Didn’t use saffron, and forgot paprika (stupidly). [...]

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Borek or Achma?

Mediterranean dishes are funny this way. You look at the recipe for water borek (turkish) and then for achma (georgian) and you coudn’t tell one from the other…

Tonight i was trying to recreate a dish i had many many years ago in Moscow: i didn’t remember the name but from my memory it resembled both [...]

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