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Some time ago my dear friend Sumaya of Pukka Paki asked me to write an introductory piece for her other food-platform Food Niche Collective. What came out is quite an explanatory piece about my newly-found life call that I would like to share with you all. Let's all jump to the Food Niche Collective blog then. In the meantime, let me share with you a delicious recipe that I perfected for
This time a new month means also a new year. I am still on holiday mode and probably not ready yet to commit the year past to paper. Quite frequently my thoughts need a noticeable amount of time to crystallize into a concrete expression of words and metaphoric images. It will come the time when my ode to 2012 will be ready for publishing but for the moment it is Secret Recipe Club time (not
Comfort. What is comfort to our eyes? The feeling of home? A completely relaxed body? Or conversely a hyperactive session of our favorite sport? A visit to a museum can be comforting to many, but just because we stand still for hours in front of a magnificent piece of art it doesn't mean that our mind isn't going 100 miles an hour. Generally we tend to associate the word comfort with
It has been quite some time since I had guest posted for a friend and this time I am very happy to be hosted at Fahad's land of delicious treats SimplyFahad-istic. When he approached me asking to guest post, he mentioned that it would be for his "Liquid Friday" series. As the title says, this series concentrates on drinks and this is a first for me. My original idea was that of using the
Last week the New York area got hit by a terrible "hurricane" that crippled the city and the surrounding states. From this side of the Ocean, we couldn't help but feel the angst of the people getting ready for what was to come. Those who didn't have to evacuate were getting ready to live without electricity for a few days. Being from Sicily, I am used to loosing electricity power almost at
Autumn is the season of change. From the vibrant electricity of Summer days we slowly transition toward a sleepy November. The skies often mirror our moods and our woolly cloaks. Mornings are dark the blankets become our best friends. The sun isn't disappeared from our lives, it shyly emerges seldom from its blankets in the dark blue sky bringing a warming smile into our daily routines.
It takes some time to recover from bad experiences and it takes even longer to get back to or daily life after a short parenthesis of happiness. Almost one week has passed since my visit to London. As I am sure I have already mentioned in previous posts (here and here) London for me is synonymous of friendships. Nothing better of a vibrant metropolis filled with friendly faces and great foo
It was a sunny day that started with a little drizzle my last day in Paris. I was stationed in a little town close to the ville lumieres at arm lengths from Versailles. In the past I have told myself many times to just take the train and visit the old kings but I was never strong enough to disentangle myself from the parisian hug. This time I didn't have any excuse; I set my alarm clock,
August is here and so is the middle of summer, not only that actually; August usually brings my whole family to Bonn for a little summer vacation. My family has been visiting me regularly since I moved to Germany; a subtle way to keep an eye on my doing as well as experimencing new places, people and realities. The days of their visit are though punctuated by visits to some of our canonical
July is here. With its finnicky mood this summer feels more like an early autumn. Sunny and melting days are followed by gloomy gray mornings. Every now and then though, there are days with a perfect balmy temperature; the sun shines through the patches of puffy clouds swimming in an ultramarine sky and the sparrows are chirping. Autumn can be the best season of the year when it wants. T
Traveling always improves our lives; a rich baggage of memories and images can change us more than we can actually realize. Oral stories sung by bards and grandparents have left the place to printed works and the ominous prescriptions of altarpieces and religious friezes. Printed and visual experiences continously pull and push us around like little creatures on our shoulders whispering in
A trip to France always needs some time to get assimilated, especially when you come back with more than 1000 shots to edit. I often rethink at the great weekend I spent in Nantes few weeks ago under a summery sun and in great company. Aside from exploring the objective beauty of a city, I find that getting in touch with its soul is a much more rewarding feat. People watching is great fun
After a long week of holidays of sort, nothing better than a blog post to put the schedule back on tracks. Almost 10 days ago I started my trip to France to present (and defend) my creations (#1 and #2) at the 2012 Science et Cuisine competition. This being my main goal, I headed directly to Nantes where the competition final was held. The trip was uneventful, but not much so were the few day
At the beginning of the past week I was surprised to receive a phone-call from a delivery agency who communicated me that they had a parcel from England to deliver. The hours went by and the sun rose again, around 10am the delivery man rang the bell and I had my mysterious pouch in my hands. It was Giuliano Hazan's new cookbook "Hazan Family Favorites". I immediately brought it with me in my
Here we go with the second installment of the seaweed saga. In the past episode , I introduced you to the seaweed tasting experience I did for a recipe competition I entered; the theme of the competition was indeed seaweeds. They provided us with quite a few samples, mostly dried and just a couple fresh. I do prefer when seaweeds come in their dry form, since the whitish coating on them
The beginning of each month is highlighted by the Secret Recipe Club so there is always something good to look for around the corner. For the month of May I was assigned Megan's blog "Megan's Cookin". From her blog it is evident that she loves to cook and eat a bit of everything, so much so that she end up being a polygamous! But can you blame her to love both citrus and chocolate? Nah we can
Have you ever taste tested a bunch of seaweeds? Probably when you were a kid at the sea shore hands deep in sand and slimy grassy things you attempted to eat them, but this wasn't one of those situations. If you are regular to this blog you might remember me entering the "Science, Art et Cuisine" competition the past years. With this year the competition changed organisational team, being n
This month you are lucky! Two post in just a few days, must be a record for me, I hope that isn't too much inspiration for your belly to bare. I am very happy to announce that my Pomegranate shot won February DMBLGiT challenge in the Originality category; my first win in this challenge! Many thanks to the judges for choosing my entry. If you want to enter the March edition of the
March has been a pretty busy month; my cooking classes and a couple of food related competitions made my daily schedule as hectic as I have rarely experienced before. But it has been a great and exceptional month, the best I had in the last couple years. Healing from my Candida overgrowth has caused my diet to be extremely restrictive nowadays but the positive effects are mighty. I am my old
It never happens but when it does it is in the worst moment possible. How often have we said these words with a cursing tone toward the stars (or the municipal house). I have been living in Germany for roughly 7 years now and can still count on the tip of my fingers the times that transports have gone on strike, actually I think they are quite under 5 in total and yesterday was one of the
March is starting to look like a pretty busy month. Long time has passed since I had so many deadlines and possibilities to earn some money. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that I have started giving cooking classes in my town, Bonn. It took some time for the city (represented by the Volkshochschule) to realize the need of offering public classes in English but once they start
In many of our cities, the past weekend has been dedicated to the celebration of Carnival; it sure has been around here in Bonn. With Bavaria, North-Rhine Westphalia is the German region where "Karneval" is mostly felt and longed for since the 11th of November when the preparations for the celebrations start (at 11:11am to be precise). Till last year this fixation with the number 11 sound
It slipped almost unnoticed but our little baby just turned 3. It doesn't look like right? Still so small and full of promises, rough around the edges but with a softy heart. It came to life amongst the street of Paris between a narghile pipe and a chai, between wild chemistry talks and calm heart-pouring sessions between friends. In 3 years it found many friends and supporters to mak
On January the Secret Recipe Club took a hiatus to allow for quieter holidays for most of us but not for our hosts. They have been working behind the scenes to update the whole machine. The head-master of the whole process is Amanda of Amanda's Cookin'. Destiny wants that I was the one chosen to cook out of her blog this month. It did take a little bit for me to find what to propose you o
And this year is gone and it is almost my blogversary too! Many (but not too many) are the recipes I have proposed you across the past 12 months and it was very hard to choose some that have stuck in my flavors library. After skimming my picture catalog I have reduced them to a Top 24. With one new recipe every two weeks may this list help you bringing a little more happiness into your 2012.
It all started few weeks ago, when my friend Jenn told me about a photographic competition hosted by the blog Culinographie. The challenge was to come up with a white & gold Christmasy composition. I rarely shoot high-key compositions but I am esthetically attracted to them so I decided to give it a try. Christmas goes very well with white naturally, think of flaky snow, powdery sugar
So it seems that the day has come... Nelly got hooked up. Nah it isn't for her endless ranting about the sprigs of mint over desserts and neither because of her magnificent contribution to the extintion of bananas Murray finally asked her to be his lovely wife (blinkey-blinkey ring and all). But I bet you all know that by now, she was squeeking for DAYS! I had to use hamburger buns on my e
I have to apologize with Stephanie from Groundcherry blog for having missed my aim at this month's Secret Recipe Club http://secretrecipeclub.com/how-it-works/. This happens when you get on doing as many things at once as your computer can bare. I got originally assigned with her blog but in the process of looking for a recipe through the days I stumbled on a tab that had Winnie's blog on i
I am going through a period when I just do not feel the sparks sparkle. New dishes may come out and find their way to paper but they stop there, there is no drive into cooking them or is it perhaps the photo shoot that somehow scares me? To create compelling pictures you need a driving idea, a theme that is going to diffuse into your pictures. Most of my works so far have been concentrated in
Daily rhythms, recognised by ringing bells, chirping birds or simmering pots, are what shape our lives. Rhythms are inherently characterized by repetitions and so our days repeat one after the other often without an appreciable perturbation in their structure. We do attribute time-milestone quality to activities that otherwise would be simply dictated by unpredictable Nature. Breakfast at 8am,
Sometimes sleep seems to love you sooo much that doesn't let you go. A fuzzy embrace of promises of wishful thinking and premonitions, as enchanting as the sirens' song. Where is the main-mast when we need it? Navigating through our lives we get swept from shore to shore by the inclement weather, a sparkle of sun in the distance our aim. Read more »
The Secret Recipe Club is back! This time I got assigned Melissa's blog: A Fit and spicy Life. In here Melissa, tries to reconcile her love for good food with a healthy lifestyle made of stress-relieving cardio and weight-lifting sessions. Among the healthy and simple recipes Melissa proposes us, my eyes were caught by her Salmon with Pumpkin seeds pesto. Read more »
Bitter-sweet, sour-sweet, life has to be sweet one way or another. But what do you prefer to be coupled with it? bitterness or sourness? I'd say, give me some salt and I am happy with both. I do like sour things, they give me a high. Have you ever sipped apple-cider vinegar (for health reason not just because there was nothing better to drink at home) when you are sleepy? You can alm
Does Photography really steal souls? Probably not steal but capture it. Capturing, stealing, what's the difference? Probably the fact that we can't capture the whole soul of a place but just bits and pieces of it. So when we go on a holiday, visit a new restaurant, bar or anything alike and take snapshots of it, do we really capture its soul or just what resonates with us, what we
Et voilà! A before and after shot.... What do I really want to talk about in this post, I still ask myself. I have been working on these pictures for the last days, a whole week actually, without really being satisfied with their appeal. I know I could have re-staged them but nah, that would be too easy nevertheless I ended up posting them here (not that I have any hope any of them will ever
Free food... What is the power of food offered as a gift? Does it depends on the subtlety of the offer or is just linked with the food itself? Is our ability of evaluating a meal influenced when it is offered to us? Naturally it is different if a sibling, friend, colleague offers us a morsel of his/her sandwich as answer to our starving-puppy eyes or if the meal is offered by complete strange
Two months have passed since I last shared something with you and last time it was actually Nelly who gave us a glimpse of her baker's (actually frier's in that case) creativity. In this period not much has happened except the visit of my family and a lovely trip to London. First things first, in August my family payed me a visit for almost the entire month while my sister was follo
Everybody meet Nelly author of Cooking With Books. Writing from the Dominican Republic she keeps most of ours twitter sessions alive with tales of bananas, bacon, chocolate and baking (with the occasional pilates-sore-muscles rant). You see, she has graduated from the CIA in New York as pastry chef so she is partial to anything that can be shoveled into a hot oven. This doesn't mean that she
For this month Secret Recipe Club, I got to pick a recipe from Laura's blog "This is how we eat". Faithful to its name, her blog is pretty a straightforward account of family recipes that punctuate daily meals carried out with that touch of inventiveness that can make a little kid eat her veggies. Going through her articles, I found a few that sounded particular interesting in terms of flavors
The past days have been again pretty devoided of any creativeness of sparkle. Don't get me wrong, give me some nice ingredients, challenge me with a "I will never ever eat XX with YY" and I will be more than happy to try and change your mind creating a nice recipe for your palate. The hardest part I found these days to be writing the forewords to the recipe itself. I have been made you used
Time passes by faster than we realize and it is July already. Half year has slipped through my fingers with probably nothing concrete to show that I have made the most of it. The past days have been pretty gloomy in this side of the world. Weather has turned itself into November mood as did I. Closed as a clam shell, surrounded by a silent and quiet sea of apathy I find myself cornered in
This month Secret Recipe Club has been brought you by Robin of Penny-Pinching Provisions. When I got assigned Robin's blog as my monthly virtual cookbook, I started going through her posts to look for something that would make me want to cook right away. Can't deny that her Babka's recipes were pretty tempting (what about this Nutella Babka for instance??). But the time went by, days after
It/we are back!! Who? The Paperchefs naturally. It has been quite some time since the last challenge was announced on the dedicated blog but as often happens, a temporary hiatus is a positive experience and something not to be feared. It helps clear up our minds and focus on part of our life that often we only perceive out of the corner of our eyes. If you are new to this challenge, it is o
Sugar; we all know this fella, don't we? A mysterious substance able to give us pleasure; not guilt free unfortunately. Coming in all the shades of brown, tawny to sparkling white we are used to sprinkle it on many of our food items to enhance their flavors. Present in many natural products it represents the way nature is able to store easily accessible energies; it won't come to any surprise
Often simple pleasures are those that can reach deeper into our hearts. May it be the right piece of music at the right moment, that subtle breeze that caresses our cheeks in a sunny spring day, the smell of somebody's home-cooking while coming back home from work; these light feathers of emotions are able to make our day. As a foodie I tend to gravitate toward food in one form or another, to s
This is being a year full of lovely friends and travels. All started in April when I had the chance to meet sweet Pamela of My Man's Belly and hubby. Luckily enough they were in Düsseldorf for some business and that means below 1h of train of distance from me. After convincing them in meeting up in Bonn instead of Cologne, we enjoyed a very lovely day coffee hopping and belly filling; usual r
