just a bunch of food pics :)

rice noodles

chinese srhimp and green peas dumplings


zucchini risotto

broccoli, zucchini and chili pepper pasta

lemon potato and chicken stew

mosquitos make scones

when i woke up today i was so mad.. i couldnt sleep last night because of some mosquitos in my room (and for some other reason i dont really know) weather got a little chillier and there they are, trying to survive enjoying my heating and sucking my blood!

well when i got up, my left arm was covered with bites.. i'm quite sensitive (i dont say allergic but who the hell knows) to insect bites so you can imagine its conditions. i rubbed some tons cortisone lotion and decided to make the brunch of a queen, just to cheer myself up.

well it worked :D
i made some quick scones.. whatever scone you make, they always turn out awesome. i chose to give them the perfume of cardamom, i met this spice in finland for the first time and loved it.
blueberry jam and white fresh cheese on warm scones.. how can one stay upset after that?
sipping my caffelatte, reading mail and news with a sort of pleasant snobbish aloofness.. it's nice sometimes not to care of the outer world at all.
the man just sent me a sort of good morning email.. together with a good breakfast, small things that make my day :)

cardamom scones

(makes about 8)
250g plain flour
180ml milk
50g butter, softened
1tbsp sugar
1tsp baking powder
1 pinch of salt
1 pinch of cardamom
1tsp olive oil

rub flour, salt, baking powder, cardamom, sugar and butter with fingertips to make fine crumbs. stir in the milk and knead lightly till the mixture is smooth.
flatten the dough to 2,5 cm in thickness and cut rounds in it. place on a baking tray and brush the top of the scones with a little olive oil.
bake for about 10min in preheated oven at 220°C.

one good merenda

i recall pretty well this merenda.. it was on suomenlinna island, finland :)

the place was a very nice small cafè, my mom and sister went there in the winter too and told me it moved to a bit bigger place.. i like old finnish wooden buildings, with so weird pastel colors and nice claddings.

that was probably the best cappuccino i've ever had in finland, a real cappuccino eheh but i really loved that sort of big fried soft and yummy thing, filled with blackberry jam.. mmh so good. i must find a good recipe of it, though i'm really a culinary disaster about fried food :P

i enjoy very much merenda time, that nice break around mid afternoon to have some treat and a cup of tea or coffee.. that's the italian name of it but i guess you can call it teatime if you will :)

it's a nice interval during the day, something that can cheer you up or just accompany your activities.. i prefer some real break like these above, but even nibbling at some cookies with a glass of milk will do perfectly.

every year when everything starts off i tend to skip merenda and, in the rush between the gym and the school or the bus, i just eat some cereals bar quickly and just because my body screams for food ehehe
so now that i'm settled and i begin to really organize my time, i'll think of some way to have a good merenda even in the middle of such activities. a few years ago i used to make pain au chocolat on sundays so my sis and i would have a nice homemade snack.
last year instead i started to make some awesome puff pastry stuff.. and that's where i mean to go back to :D

an ode to burrata

i love burrata. really.

first of all, let's check out what wikipedia says about it.. fresh italian cheese, made of mozzarella and cream.
"The outer shell is solid mozzarella while the inside contains both mozzarella and cream, giving it a unique soft texture."


right. it's a beautiful white shell that jealously holds its milky treasure, a delicious heart that will melt in your mouth.

to me it's just awesome.. i love mozzarella and this is the best of :D the creamy filling is one of the most luscious things one can eat.. the taste is simple, delicate, outstanding.. involves you like a sweet hug.. palatable, harmonious, mellow..

the best way to eat it to me it's burrata alone, without any other flavor to taint it.. just pure pleasure :) makes an amazing caprese, just some few drops of olive oil, freshly ground black pepper and tomatoes.

that said, sometimes i use burrata for some other dishes.. a few days ago we had 3 or 4 burrate, so i made some pasta with it. first of all one should never heat burrata, so i cooked my pasta (maccheroni to be precise) while i was preparing a rough pesto with pine seeds, fresh basil and black pepper.. then i mashed a burrata (you can use a fork or a mixer.. burrata is already quite soft, but in this way it gets a nice mousse-like texture).
so i mixed pasta with my pesto, took everything off the heat, poured burrata stirring well and that's it! very nice pasta to eat in the summer :)

monthly life update!

well yep, i finally came back to update this blog! i really didnt have the time and the wish to do something about it in the past weeks.. a lot of things and matters were going on and then i was on holiday for 2weeks :D
i have to say the holiday in sicilia was awesome and all the good food i ate down there brought my inner foodaholic to absolute delight and made me come back to the kitchen loaded for cooking madness eheheheh i bought almond paste, ground coffee, pistachio and almond rosolios, oregan, sicilian pesto and such.. ready to make some of the wondrous stuff we had there :)

i already posted a couple of recipes (that have nothing to do with sicilian food though eheheh) so i guess it's time for a brief update about the rest.
finished the year in helsinki i'm finally home for the summer, by september i'll manage to move to pisa (tuscany come to me, yay!) i'm looking forward to that.. then maybe there will be some more moving in the next years, maybe zurich, maybe somewhere else, anyway for the moment it's pisa :)
holidays went very good.. i love the south of italy and sicily is just beautiful! it was quite hot though and the days we visited ruins it was almost hellish LOL so i'll confess, the day we spent in selinunte we stayed on the beach instead of sightseeing the archaelogical park.. and i have to say it was the best seaside ever.
beautiful places, awesome food, hot weather, transparent water, a troll, some good books and a lot of obsolete pieces of architecture.. soooo good, i guess i would have liked to spend at least 2more weeks down there.. but well, that's the only complain i could have eheheh

i have so many pics i havent had the time to put them in order yet!

ananas and peppers

here it is, today's dinner :)

i'm a huge fan of angel hair pasta (capelli d'angelo in italian) but it seems this week i couldnt find any up here, so i tried these mais this noodles. they're not bad at all, though not as good as angel hair to me.






i made them with chopped and sauteed sweet red peppers and red chili, topped with some fresh basil.. it was nice, just a bit spicy (not sure about my perception of spicy though after my misadventures with the habaneros LOL)




then i decided to have a quick and fresh dessert, so i made some ananas mousse! very easy and rough one.. just smashed ananas, cane sugar, vanilla flavor and whipped cream eheheh

little finnish update

so well.. this is not about food but a little update about finland is needed :D

last week finally we got a bit of summer (actually it was better than last summer weather eheheh) but in these last few days it's turned to cold again.. and i mean COLD.
on the other hand finland is getting green and very beautiful, i'm having some very nice walks. i took these pics today on the shore near my area, it's such an awesome place :)

yea right after i took the pics it started to rain badly and i was like 30min walk far from home.. the result is a nice sore throat and frozen feet LOL although the view was amazing and i love the rainy sky colours ^^


about my schedule well i will be here till the first week of june then i'll be back to italy for a couple of months before moving to zurich. there will be time even for a bit of holidays, i'm craving for the seaside after the finnish winter ehehehe

i'm happy for i'm going to spend some few days with the man right before flying home.. and then i will be back to italian food yay!
i already have the topic for my next update.. this week i re discovered my passion for fresh goat cheese, specially spread on dark chocolate.. mmh mh ^^

btw yesterday, crying for the chili, i did some quick search about capsaicin.. i knew something about but i never checked out deep the scoville scale thing O_o i also knew that the habanero chile is one of the hottest but i didnt know i bought exactly the red savina kind LOL oh well, i still have 2 of them to eat tomorrow..

update i tried in vain to post on my website :)

i know i know it's been way too long from last one.. but first i had some matters with the domain (or whatever, i get a half of these things LOL) then i've been pretty busy here (yep sounds incredible but sometimes i do have something to do up here ehehehe) btw i'll try to update quickly about what i've been doing then i'll hopefully manage to upload some new recipes (ah i forgot to say my external hd fucked up with all my html files in it ò_O ergo i have to retype the few recipes i had "queued" to upload :)


talking about food, as always i've made some sweet stuff :D i got a wondrous magazine all about cookie recipes and these dark choco dipped cocoa-coffee stars are my fav atm :)











this apple and cinnamon tart was just an experiment.. no precise doses but some good luck it seems, it was just luscious :D i've also been trying some chip cookie recipes, i'm very fond of buttery chip cookies but i seem to never find a good one.. they're never buttery enough and they always look ugly, whatever i mix ehehehe



i made tiramisu several times LOL this firmly keeps on being my fav dessert ever so i cant resist more than 3weeks without making at least a couple of glasses of it, better if it's a tin ^^

of course i dont live of sweet food only.. so sometimes i find myself making some delicious sandwitch :)

i also tasted some strange (tropical?) fruit.. here you find such kind of fruits quite often and i'd never seen some of them before O_o here a cut dragon fruit or pitaya i guess it was the funniest one..

nothing to remember about the taste though :P

and last but not the least, the fruit monster, the fruity anemone, the uncutable beast *drum rolls* the legendary pomelo :D myth narrates it's a sort of chinese grapefruit.. we think it's a scary giant mix between a mandarin and a pomegranate LOL

it came a bit long and all about food O_o so for the moment i'm done, but i'll update with some of the pics mom and sis took around here last week and some other stuff i've been doing lately :)

first post!

here i am! i'm still struggling with my website.. there are some few matters i havent been able to solve about it yet so i cant update it for the moment :P anyway i hope i'll manage to asap!

let's see if i can be steady at least on updating this blog :D