Featured
Lobia Masala or Black Eyed Peas Curry is a popular dish in North India (and Pakistan), and very easy to make in a pressure cooker or instant pot (see boxed text below) . It is made in an onion-tomato gravy, with ginger, garlic and a tasty combination of spices.
Since I am the happy owner of an instant pot, I make many more Indian dahls, legume stews, soups and endless more (freezer friendly) meals. The ingenious device has a timer, so you can decide when your food should be ready. After a long walk in the woods, when you come home from an assignment, after chopping firewood or working in the garden for a few hours?
A very ordinary Saturday morning that couldn't be more beautiful. Rain was predicted again for the afternoon so I harvested ingredients for tonight's dinner (recipe below) in time and picked fresh flowers. Absolute beauty in the backyard.
If you've ever travelled to East Africa, you've most probably tried mandazi (fried donuts) with bharazi often found in smaller restaurants or sold by street vendors. We loved it! Traditionally bharazi is made with pigeon peas.
We have a huge harvest of leeks. Great, of course, but how do you process all these members of the Allium family? At that moment in autumn, I always open the book 'De Geur van Witte Rijst' (‘the fragrance of white rice’) , and cook my aunt Bep's 'sambal goreng leek'.
UGANDA ~ Ever since we visited Uganda, we enjoy making mandazi now and then: light fluffy doughnuts. They are a great snack on their own but we love them paired with bharazi, an East African dish of pigeon peas simmered in coconut milk.
Did I ever tell you my favorite color is green? I often use the color in my designs, my most worn sweater is green, I like to wander for hours in the woods among trees in all shades of green, I prepare a lot of this color on my daily plate and it will not surprise you that I am not very disappointed if not all my tomatoes turn red or orange. Because yes, then I just make .... Indian green tomato chutney!
This bok choy (paksoi) dish can be prepared in less than 10 minutes and is among the easiest, most tasty preparations of cruciferous greens imaginable. It pairs beautifully with almost any Asian dish, but I prefer it on its own, with a bowl of rice.
This bok choy (paksoi) dish can be prepared in less than 10 minutes and is among the easiest, most tasty preparations of cruciferous greens imaginable. It pairs beautifully with almost any Asian dish, but I prefer it on its own, with a bowl of rice.
Tuscans are known as mangiafagioli (‘bean-eaters)’) and this filling soup has a long history in rural Tuscany where big pots were cooked in farmers’ families so that this delicacy could be enjoyed for days on end by re-heating the soup prepared in advance.
You may want to include more cruciferous vegetables in your diet, both for their health benefits as well as their ability to grow fast in almost all places. I will add a recipe every Monday.
Cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli, are widely promoted as important part of a healthy diet and have been associated with reduced risk of heart disease and stroke, and are being studied for their potential role in cancer prevention.
Women belong in the kitchen, right? So on this International Women's Day I'm sharing a simple, healthy and plant-based recipe with you from India.
Here’s an easy, quick and healthy recipe for you! You can make this broth in less than 30 minutes, refrigerate it and have it on hand during your busy week. Combine it with vegetable leftovers, with rice, quinoa or chickpeas and enjoy a tasty, plant based, oil free soup packed with healthy ingredients.
Rajasthani parathas (a flatbread native to the Indian subcontinent) are made with a blend of chickpea and wheat flour, and this version is spiced with curcuma, fenugreek and ajvan seeds.
On Zanzibar, an insular autonomous region of Tanzania, I met Zainabu, originally from Mozambique and now frying doughnuts in a road stall.
She fried many a day and taught me how to make them.
This is how the love women from a Moldovan village cooked Borscht, a beautifully coloured beetroot soup. Normally topped with cream and /or a boiled egg, a plant based version is easily adjusted.
It’s not threateningly cold on my French mountain as yet, but I have prepared myself. Not least because I have more talent for preparing Christmas dinners for birds than for people.⠀
This dense, mildly sweet, hearty rye bread is traditionally prepared over the course of 12 or more hours by placing the dough into covered pots and sinking these into geothermal springs. It’s sliced thin and served with smoked, cured, or pickled foods
Kimchi is a fermented food, which makes it an excellent probiotic. The same lactobacilli bacteria you find in yogurt and other fermented dairy products are also found in kimchi. These so-called ‘healthy bacteria’ in kimchi can help you maintain a healthy digestion.
For our Bread Project, we photographed and tasted delicious focaccia in Matera, Italy. When staying at our family house in France, I love to prepare this focaccia, an Italian flat bread made with yeast and olive oil and flavoured with herbs, out in the open in our garden.
On Saturday, It’s 'kicheri day' at our Duniya Education School in Varanasi, India. Almost 100 happy kids queue in front of the washing tub in the courtyard, to wash their hands and to grab a large metal thali plate from the basket, to get a big scoop of kicheri, dished out by cook Anju
This is an adjusted version of a recipe I noted down in Vietnam where they used sweetened condensed milk instead of coconut cream. I also added the 85% chocolate. You can even make a yellow version by adding some kurkuma! Or red with beetroot! Play around and enjoy.
Chapati is perhaps the most popular type of bread in India. Even very young girls bake them with the greatest ease on open fires or on a chulha and often laugh at my misshapen tryouts. It's not so easy to make a perfect, beautifully round chapati with the simplest of ingredients!
Badam doodh (almond milk) is a popular Indian drink where almonds are blended with milk and flavored with saffron and cardamom. Prepared the traditional way, it’s made with whole cow milk and quite a lot of sugar, which makes it not only rich in texture, but for sure also in calories.
I was really looking forward to see how thunderbread, rúgbrauð” or “hverabrauð, was prepared. This is how! Meet Siggi from Iceland.
This is Alan’s noodle soup. He’s from Hong Kong and delivers Mr. Lee hot soup once a week, transported in a red thermos. Alan brings soup to more HIV patients, some at home others hospitalized. He himself functions reasonably well due to good medication.