Food and Crafts for All Occasions

Hearty and Fragrant Stew with Pork, Chorizo, Butter Beans and Kale or My Take on Spanish Fabada Asturiana

This wonderfully fragrant dish was inspired by Spanish fabada. Fabada Asturiana is a thick stew made of large white beans, pork (sometimes salted) and chorizo sausage and often spiced with smoked paprika and saffron.  Sort of cassoulet, Spanish style.

Folded Chinese Buns with Kalbi Marinated Flat Iron Steak, Quick Pickled Carrots and Soy-n-Peanut Sauce

Kalbi marinade is very versatile and works not only for short ribs. Yesterday, I used it to marinade a beef flat iron steak, which then was grilled and served in folded Chinese buns along with some relishes.

Grilling Season: Kalbi

Kalbi, sometimes also pronounced as Galbi, is a Korean dish made with thin, cross-cut beef short ribs, marinated in soy sauce and sweet rice wine and then grilled to perfection. It’s an absolute winner at parties. I haven’t met a person yet, except, of course, vegetarians, who wouldn’t fall in love with these ribs.

Super Tender Braised Lamb for Society Consulting People

Hello guys! During our Mediterranean lunch on May 1^st some of you asked me for the recipes. I’m extremely pleased and flattered that you liked my food and am going to post some lunch recipe as promised. I’ll start with the lamb recipe since it seemed to be the most popular dish.

Puff Pastry Turnovers with Lamb and Curried Potato Fillings

Despite all my proclaimed love to cooking from scratch, I have no problem with occasional semi-homemade cooking, i.e. using some commercial foods like cooked beans, frozen puff pastry or fresh pasta when I don’t have time to make them myself.

For these turnovers, I used good quality store bought puff pastry from Aussie Bakery, which saved at least a couple of hours of my time while giving very satisfying results. For the fillings, I used ground lamb, sautéed with fenugreek and mashed potatoes with curry powder and green peas.

Lamb Tartare

Continuing with a steak tartare theme, if you didn’t get enough of it yet (and I never do), here is another one for you. Mediterranean style this time, which means lamb instead of beef, lots of warm spices, and toasted pita for serving it on.

Steak Tartare wit Asian Flair

I haven’t been blogging for a while again. Somehow, with years I’ve become more of a doer than a talker, and every time I feel I need to sit down and write to my blog I find another hands-on project to do. So today, after at least a month of procrastination I finally force myself to catch up on my blogging.

 

Steak Tartare

Ilya and I are having steak tartare for dinner tonight. Along with some toasted bread, green salad and potato gratin.

If you're not familiar with this dish, steak tartare is a finely chopped raw beef fillet that is usually served with pickles, mustard and a raw egg yolk. My relationship with steak tartare has developed along the same lines as with oysters: from incomprehension to interest to passionate love. Though I never had that nose wrinkling abhorrence towards steak tartare, at first I simply skipped it in menus and went to safer items. But with times I came to a conclusion that sticking to safe and familiar food is not only boring, but limiting as well. If you don’t try new things, you rob yourself of new impressions, pleasant surprises, great finds. You stop growing.

Minced Lamb Kebab

Grilling season is coming soon (Hopefully - keep your fingers crossed!) and here’s one good recipe for you. If you are not big on lamb, take not too lean ground beef or poultry instead.