Edible Sea Vegetable: SeaWeed I confess, my kitchen turns into edible science experiments almost every day. Seaweed is my new ingredient in the kitchen lab. Once you get to know the nutritional facts and the familiar taste of popcorn it has when nori (a type of seaweed) is roasted on the fire, then you’ll definitely give…
Tag: easy recipe
Easy Spicy Zesty Sweet Chickpea Salad Recipe
What happens when you juice pineapples, carrots and fresh green serrano chiles? A spunky zesty salad with sweet and spicy flavours can be created to fuel you through the day. Last week, we bought lots of great farm produce from the City Bowl Market. Back at home, I put pineapple and carrots and threw…
Recipe: How to Make Spring Roll-Nori Wraps
This Nori (seaweed) wrap recipe is an alternative to spring rolls. It’s perfect for getting a balance of essential vitamins into your diet. It’s also delicious and beautiful to share at picnics and parties. It pleases: vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and my dad who likes to live on garlic and lamb chops will even chow these…
How to Cure your Own Olives in Brine: Greek Yiayia Style
Follow my blog with Bloglovin How to make your own olives edible. Mom would say, “Only eat 8 olives a day, honey.” But it was too easy to devour the salty Grecian delights by the dozen. With crusty brown sourdough bread and green virgin olive oil on a flat side plate, nothing satisfied me more…
South Africa’s West Coast Pomegranate and Peppercorn Salad
Soul smiles and surf-sore shoulders leave me mindful and replete. A montage of new faces smiling in the heat. Moon memories and salted dreams sail me through the Monday office beat. Yes, let’s strike out into the open, where wild places await. Let’s turn off the cell phones, leave our city behind. Let’s forget the…
Pickling Green Bean Recipe for St. Patrick’s Day
There’s not much that happens on St. Patricks day in Cape Town. You could go down to The Dubliner Pub on Long Street or wonder if wearing your “Kiss Me I’m Irish Tshirt” from college could get you a smooch. Growing up in Chicago, I remember the river turned green (or was it always? :0),…
Urban foraging and making Mulberry Tart
Growing up, we used to pick wild mulberries. The dark mulberries ripened to their juicy capacity and fell on the pavement, painting the sidewalks purple. This was nature’s graffiti and we were young urban foragers. Just below Chicago’s purple EL line, we thought the forest preserve was our Jungle Book fantasy and we ate from…
Scream for Ice Cream at Breakfast: Banana. Strawberry & Pecan Recipe-Egg and Dairy-free
Who said you can’t eat ice cream for breakfast? I don’t have a Vitamix. I don’t have an Oscar. But I can still make easy raw food creations with what I have. I’m using the trusty MegaMix Juicer. During the days tofu was all the hype, Mom would add frozen bananas to our morning tofu…
What to Eat when Visiting Greece’s villages: Nourishing Food Traditions
Summertime and road tripping lead to some of my favorite food adventure memories. In Greece, you can drive on national highways and come across Greek village tavernas that serve greek horiatiki salads under grapevines. Roadside stalls are piled with local fresh, dried, and preserved food that have been made and celebrated for centuries. Tradition, food…
It’s not Rabbit Food, It’s Rainbow Raw Salsa Salad.
Call it rabbit food, but it is damn delicious and surprisingly filling too. Inspired by Raw-vember, I made a spicy salad that is bright and tangy in flavour and festive on the eye. This is a super quick, easy and yummy crunch salad that has major nutrients because it is a whole bunch of raw…
Step by Step-Easy Dolmades Recipe (just like your Yiayia’s)
In less than a month, I’ll be back in Greece buying white peaches from my Yiayia’s (grandmother) neighbourhood laiki (produce market) and learning how to make feta cheese from the thea’s (Aunties) in the horio (village). But lately I’ve been channeling my ancestors by consuming far too many olives and craving those cultural food comforts…
Oat Milk Pancakes with Peach and Pear Syrup
This isn’t a vegan recipe but it can be. It’s an alternative pancake recipe when you look into your fridge and realize the milk is all gone. You’re still in your pajamas, too hungry to wait in a check-out line at the grocery store, so your creativity kicks in and you make a plan. How…
Prickly Cactus Pear Smoothie
The best thing about when friends house sit is the magic of new groceries that end up in your kitchen. One Sunday afternoon, I discovered prickly pear syrup (turksvy stroop) in my fridge and it sat there, waiting for me to make crepes or pour it on yoghurt. Instead, it ended up in my fruit…
The secret to making Oscar-winning Popcorn
The Academy Awards came and went but yet the popcorn-maker is still at work-satisfying each movie-goers mesmerizing experience in the world of cinema stories. You pay more for a Cherry Coke and Jumbo sized popcorn than a sit-down dinner at the show, and somehow a movie screening isn’t the same without this cinema snack. My…
Fool-proof Crepes
For my birthday this year, my ‘sweet as sugarcane’ man made us a crepe breakfast. His speciality in the kitchen ranges from delicious pasta dishes, creative braai ‘BBQ’ fish marinades, and his exceptional skill to flipping crepes with ‘kitchen ninja zen’ style. There is no need for a spatula when he is around so I…
Guacamole on Toast
Fresh vital goodness on toast, for breakfast, for a snack, appetizer, or just because it’s avocado season-Guacamole toast has been born. Or is it the lazy way of getting all the pungent delicious flavours into one bite without cleaning a food processor or pestle and mortar? Well if you have a cutting board and a…
Rooibos Rice with Smoked Paprika Mussels (Quick Paella-wanna-be)
I thought to myself, ‘How can I make a rice dish a little more interesting?’ So I started with the idea of color and decided to use all ‘red’ coloured ingredients in my kitchen. So first off, I made rooibos (redbush) tea-flavoured water to steam my brown rice. I also took flavours commonly found in…
How to Make a Fresh Fruit Smoothie (Batida)
An apple a day plus some other amazing ingredients will definitely keep el doctor away. I am self-medicating with an abundance of fruits in season. In my own kitchen I took the fruits in season in South Africa with some inspiration from the beloved country, Brazil, and I blended the fruit together to make…
Coconut Milk Borscht with Drunken Rice Noodles
Quite possibly the most delicious comfort soup on the planet. If soup is as old as the history of cooking, then this one surely makes history. Why? Cause we’re marrying Thai and Eastern European flavors into one incredibly colorful noodle dish, this ain’t your everyday ramen, folks. Rice noodles and beets get dunked and drunk…
The Perfect Soft-Boiled Egg
Is the perfect boiled egg done in 3, minutes, 4 minutes, 4 and a half? What if the egg is extra-large, or has been refrigerated? The beauty of the perfect boiled egg is that you develop your own quirky habits of ‘knowing’ when it is ready to the consistency you enjoy dunking freshly…
Vegetarian Bobotie
This layered oven-baked dish is a reflection of the histories, cultures, and cuisines that flavour the peninsula of Cape Town. The roots of the spices used in traditional recipes come from Cape Malay cuisine but is easy to make your own Bobotie-inspired dish with the flavours and ingredients in your own kitchen, celebrating…
Amatungulu Num Num Jam (Carissa-Natal Plum)
Carissa, also known as the Natal Plum, Num Num, Noem-Noem, or Amatungulu in our household was found growing just steps outside our house in Muizenberg, Cape Town, South Africa. My boyfriend Chris grew up with his grandfather making this jam out of the Carissa fruit that grows in Durban, Kwa-Zulu Natal. So when we saw…
Simple Carrot Soup
Underneath the soil lays an abundance of root vegetables that make delicious vegetable stock for spring and autumn dinners. This soup can be made in twenty minutes, fresh, from peeling to simmer to blend and in a bowl with a hearty piece of bread. Ingredients: 5 medium-sized carrots 1 Chinese white radish (resembles…
Easy Rice and Beans Recipe
This complete meal that leaves you feeling strong and capable of just about anything. About each culture has there own version and my particular favorite are those flavours that reign in the cilantro sprinkled regions of Central and South America.
The Culinary Linguist 