Summery Lunch

Spelt Focaccia with Tomato Salsa

You gotta make this! It's a feast for your taste buds... warm bread just out of the oven with a mediterranean, refreshing tomato salsa!

A light summer lunch for a searing hot day - combine with a home made iced tea and a watermelon to finish.

Posh Breakfast @ DuoMo Hotel

DuoMo Hotel Rimini Italy

That's my "first" breakfast course...

Tomato Tomato

Look! Aren't they cute?? I finally found those old varieties of tomatoes finally also in Italy. I knew that they were sold in Austria, but never had the chance to get them! You can make the most beautiful tomato salad with those different coloured and shaped, very sweet tomatoes!

All About Fruit

Assassino fruit bar, Rimini

Not many cakes lately, hm? - You're gonna ask. No, not really - I'll answer. After Easter and some weeks of simply eating  too much, I cut back a bit now. Well, ya know, the beach....
So, instead of cakes and cream, I'll have more fruit and salad. Now it's really the best time of the year, the fruit and vegetable markets are more than full with loads of varieties, but unfortunately my favourite fruit, my beloved STRAWBERRY, is already gone for the year.
Even for my sister's visit I didn't make a cake, but a summer fruit salad. Believe me, Italian fruits are so much better than the Austrian ones. The sun really makes a difference!

Just said no cakes, right? Come on, did you think I made it without at least ONE Strawberry Cake?? ;-))

Summer Preserves

Apricot jam

All fruit is now available in excess, so it's about time to fill up the storage for those cold and dark months of the year!

Saturday Fish Dinner

"When somebody offers you a fish dinner you mustn't decline it."

Seven Years

7 years already passed since the beer drinking competition between the language schools, where ISE almost won with me drinking several pints!
After the competition (feeling sufficiently merry - both of us) and with the help of a dear friend, Mr A took all his courage and asked if me I wanted to be his girlfriend. Well - you know the rest!
We celebrate this special day usually with our yearly visit to Sol y Mar - a very fantastic beach restaurant serving posh fish dishes and desserts out of this world (last year for example: Parmesan Ice Cream!)

Food Heaven aka Morocco

Thanks to our new friends, we had some really TOP culinary experiences during our 4 day trip to Morocco (Fez). All the fruits and vegetables are sooo good there... the African sun makes the difference! Have you ever tried an Avocado milkshake? I just can say wow! Those people really know how to eat and indulge!

Numana Beach Life

A weekend under the sun in a beautiful place isn't bad at all - paired with almost exclusively fish to eat and cocktails to drink not bad at all!
I can only recommend you a holiday in Numana (near Ancona) - it's such a lovely place. Relaxed atmosphere in a picturesque location, simply fantastic. Make sure you stop by "30 Nodi Beach Bar" where you find very good sea food, drinks and excellent service.

Austria Quick Trip

I went home for just 3 days... but I had a great time anyway! First of all I saw that Easter Bunny also left some goodies for me also there!

Flower Cooking Part II

Finally! Elderflower is blooming! Time for the once-in-a-year fried elderflower blossoms. So different, so special.

More Bread

Spelt-Wheat-Buns

I'm on the bread trip now. After some not so nice bread baking experiences, I had to prove (to myself that is) that it is possible to make really nice AND good tasting bread at home.

Butterbrote - Bread With Butter

Butterbrote (Chocolate biscuits)

These are "Easter Biscuits", specially made for Easter time. We call them in Austria "Bread with butter biscuits" as they remind of it... the black chocolate cookie base resembles the bread, the white-yellowish glaze stands for the butter and the chopped pistacchios would be the chives. Cute, innit? ;-)) .... These are the perfect chocolate biscuits!

Semmeln - Typical Austrian Bread

Zeilensemmeln with Fairtrade Mango Jam

Semmeln are a white bread, very typical for Austria, where we have it mainly for breakfast or with cold meat or cheese as a sandwich. They are the more luxurious bread for Sundays etc. in comparison to the everyday brown bread. White bread is (or was, at least at my childhood times) considered something special.

Easter Lamb

Another childhood memory now, that I'm grown up, made by myself: A sweet Easter Lamb for Easter Sunday breakfast. When I was little, my sister always said that the ass of the lamb is sooo gross and that it is soooo disgusting to eat an ass.... well, in the end I never ever ate the ass because I was really disgusted. And why did she do that?? Just to have one piece of cake more than me!!

Easter Picnic

Many many goodies for our Easter picnic in the middle of nature!

Why Love Italy?

That's why I love Italy: fresh fruit and vegetable markets everywhere!!!

Chocolate Mousse Cake

Chocolate Mousse Cake

Well, that's a PERFECT birthday cake!
I made this cake for my own birthday, and took it to the restaurant when celebrating with my friends. Out of experience, normally half a cake remains.... but with this one, even the last crumb was gone!

Milan Departure And Arrival

Look what I found while I was waiting to get on the train in Milan:

SOYJOY bars, my all time favourite bars!!! Finally! Once I got some as a present from a trip to Hong Kong, but I couldn-t find any in Italy, or even Europe. Imagine, I even wrote to the producer asking where to find them! No luck anyway. And now - I bumped into them by chance at the station. Of course I bought many many straight away. Many different flavours like orange, strawberry, plum, goji berry, banana, blueberry.Took all of them! They come from Japan and it seems they built up a distribution in Europe now. So happy!

Milan Milan

Thanks Grace!

It was a great sunny and warm shopping weekend in Milan. This was our breakfast:
A selection of Italian bread. This bakery was sooo cute!

 Our lunch in Via della Spiga - the high fashion shopping road....

Really top quality food, very very nice. The bresaola ham was cut paper thin, the Parmesan top, and the olive oil very tasty. The fruit was so fresh and sweet, like straight from the field.
After all that and more (no pics sorry), there was no need for the mini bar in the hotel room! Even if it had some really nice things in it, like very special varieties of nuts.

Mini Cakes

Now I'm perfectly equipped for making only mini cakes in the future if we don't have any guests. That means we can satisfy our sweet tooth without overeating on it.

Thanks to Grace, I'm now the proud owner of some really cute new mini cake tins:

Soon I will come up with some recipes!

Herbed Soda Bread + Fig Chutney

Herbed Soda Bread

This bread is soft, flaky and has an irresistible smell!  

Salmon Tartar

So easy and so posh! ;-)

Spring Finally! Flower Cooking Part I

Dandelion - Dente di leone - Loewenzahn

Finally there are the first signs of spring and the first rays of warm sun!

Spring for me also means starting to cook "with the nature". There are many blossoms and flowers you can eat.
Now it's time for dandelion:

Lent

As you might know, one should prefer fish to meat in lent (this is old catholic traditions). Recently we really ate loads of fish, and my man became verrryyyy good in cooking fish. This was our pre-Ash Wednesday experience, as in reality it still was Mardi Gras, but hey - good food doesn't care when exactly it is eaten!
Anyway I prefer not to eat too much on Ash Wednesday, let's say - I don't wanna make a feast of eating fish on this special day like many people do nowadays, which I really don't find correct.

As a starter we had smoked salmon and fresh marinated sardines on toasted, buttered bread. I had mine with a dash of mustard, which I love with salmon.

Linguine with seafood: The first time my man made it for me 6 years ago, I simply couldn't eat those "bugs of the sea"...it looked too disgusting. By now, I got used to it and even learned to love it!

Seafood sauce for pasta

Baked fish in the oven: Thanks to a friend who every now and then brings us some huge fish, which we eat together then, we make oven baked fish with vegetables around. That's so yummy AND healthy!

For dessert I was lazy and didn't bake anything. A friend brought "castagnole" - the fancy kind, which is kind of fried choux pastry balls coated with sugar and filled with Nutella or cream.

With this feast we had my favourite white wine, Gewuerztraminer, another bottle of white wine which I didn't taste and to close with we opened a bottle of  "visciole" (sweet cherry wine from the Ancona area). Just had a sip but I loved it!

Carnival In Venice

Street artist show in Venice

Of course also this year our yearly "Carnival in Venice" tour started with 2 typical specialities: Spritz cocktail (Aperol and sparkling wine) and Tramezzini!!! Love love love Tramezzini!

After some more Spritz and some litres of Sangria and Strawberry Daiquiri at a fruit stand .... hmmm better not to say anything (btw: should have eaten more tramezzini ;-))!

The day after a mid afternoon cure was needed: Piadina (local flatbread with raw ham, soft cheese and rucola - available also with different fillings) and Pizza at the harbour and later on a visit to a café where I wanted to go since a long time was just the right thing!
What a nice sunny day!

Earl Grey Lavender Tea - super flowery and fantastic!

Carnival!

Krapfen are THE Carnival food in Austria! And when I was a kid you could find them ONLY in the carnival period. Nowaydays you can buy them all year round, just like in Italy, where they are called "bomboloni". The traditional filling is apricot jam, but my Italian guests requested also a batch of cream and a batch of Nutella filled ones.

Another request were "salty" bomboloni, which is simply Krapfen filled with cheese and ham! First I was very sceptical, but after the first bite I fully approved! They're fantastic!

These are typical ITALIAN carnival balls - called "castagnole". I tried the "traditional" recipe (by now there also exist some fancy forms), which is basically cake dough formed in balls, fried, and covered with sugar and liquor.

In this pic you can also see another fried dough, which I personally didn't like that much. It's kind of fried pasta dough covered with powedered sugar. The recipe I had was simply not good.
Now carnival is over and we should cut down on sweets and heavy food in lent... we'll see if I manage!