Coming Soon....

Banana Bread with a special ingredient...

Julie&Julia HIGHLY recommended to ALL Food Lovers!

If you have checked out my blog, then you are probably like me a true Food Lover! I just came back from seeing Julie&Julia and let me just tell you, I could relate to SO MUCH of the movie! And I could relate to both characters: Julie and Julia. I wanted to go home and just start cooking up a storm, until I realized that my fiance is away this week and I can't very well cook up a storm for myself! Haha! I'll most definitely have some friends over this week and blog about what I make! Do yourself a favor though if you haven't already, and go see this film! It'll bring tears to your eyes, make you hungry, give you some clarity to your food obsession and brighten up your day!

Sometimes Failed Recipes are a Success!

It all started with a great idea, how about making mushroom, roasted pepper, cheese croquetas? I sauteed the mushrooms and the roasted peppers with onions separately. When the onion/roasted pepper mixture was nearly donel I added garlic and sauteed for a few more minutes.
Then I made bechamel by melting butter, sauteing a good amount of flour, and adding milk, mixing constantly until it thickened on a low flame. Then I added the roasted vegetables and blended with a hand mixer and added 125 grams of grated cheese. Then I poured the mixture into a dish and allowed it to cool.Normally once the croqueta mixture is cooled you can shape them with your hands like clay and then cover them in flour, dip them in egg and cover them with bread crumbs and fry them. However, I had a problem! The croqueta mixture didn't thicken enough! I know now in retrospect it's because I didn't add enough flour to the bechamel. The filling was way too delicious to waste so I tried to think, what can I do with it? Then it hit me EMPANADAS!

You can find empanada dough frozen in the grocery store. You can either buy mini-empanada dough which is called empanadillas, or regular empanada dough. Regardless of which you use, the way of making empanadas is nearly the same. With empanadillas you add the filling, paint raw egg around the borders, fold over and close pressing around the edges with a fork as you can see above. With a regular empanada you roll out the dough, fill it, cover it with another sheet of dough of the same or slightly smaller size, and roll up the edges. Then you poke a few holes in the top with a knife or a fork so that the empanada won't fill with air and blow up in size. With both, you finish by painting the outside with raw egg. This will make the empanada glossy. Stick the empanada in the oven and bake until brown. With the small ones you can flip them over halfway through and paint the other side with egg.
Here is the finished and cut large empanada.

Conclusion: if you have an idea and try to make something and it doesn't go well, use your imagination and think of what else you can do with it! You hardly ever need to throw out the food midway in a recipe due to it going badly. There is always something you can do with it! These "croquetas" EHM empanadas came out great! Enjoy!

Calamares en su Tinta (Calamars in it's Ink)

This is a popular dish here in Spain. It looks like it'd be difficult to make, but really it's not! Sautee onions, red and green peppers on a low flame for like 15 minutes. Add some white wine and the calamar ink (here is Spain they sell it frozen in the fish section, ask your local fish market). Blend the ingredients with a hand blender. Then add the calamars and cover. I cook this in a pressure cooker for 8 minutes. Be careful no to over cook the calamars! Enjoy over rice!

A Variation of the Last Dish

A variation of the last dish, would be to make sweet potatoes in stead of mashed potatoes. The first time that I made this dish I actually did it with sliced sweet potatoes sauteed in garlic and soy sauce. I am a huge sweet potato fan so I would highly suggest trying this variation!

Garlic Ginger Salmon with Garlic Green Beans and Real Mashed Potatoes

Two weeks ago I made this. The fun thing about salmon is that it can be made in so many ways. In that respect it's like meat! You just have to be careful not to overcook it! This particular night I was having a girlfriend over and wanted to make something different than what she's used to. So I sauteed heaps of garlic and some onion with some soy sauce and green beans. Boiled some potatoes and mashed them up with butter, milk, a dash of seasame oil, and sauteed onions and garlic. And I grated some ginger up to marinate the salmon with soy sauce and garlic. Later I cooked these ingredients, adding the finishing touches of fresh parsley. As a side note, the trick of peeling ginger is with a spoon! Try it, the skin comes off so easily! And, remember that the later you add the ginger, the stronger it will be. Try this dish it's super easy, delicious and guaranteed to impress your guests!

Mushroom Risotto

I made Mushroom Risotto last week. It was really an experiment. And I have to say, I LOVED IT!!! It was the simplest dish that you could make, yet it had so much flavor! Next time I make it I'll post how to do it. In the meantime, if you haven't tried, try! Just remember, the trick is to have a good stock and to have plenty of it and add it little by little, stirring the risotto constantly as you make it. This one took 40 minutes of stirring!

Some Recent Dishes

I'll be posting some recent dishes I've made soon.

About Me

I'm an American living in Seville, Spain. I was born in Brooklyn, NY, but grew up moving every few years and had to learn how to adapt to new places and situations. I think that my love of travellings sprouted as a young age, I just didn't know it yet! I got my first real taste of the world when I was 20 and left the University of Miami, FL to study abroad at the University of Wollogong in Wollogong, Australia. Whilst there, I visited most of the east coast of Australia, hiked for 5 days in Tasmania and spent my 21st birthday in New Zealand. It was an amazing experience and the start of many other journies. Upon returning from Australia, I decided that I needed to see more and signed up for a month long intensive English course in Seville, Spain. Being half puertorican I've always felt the need to speak Spanish. Falling in love with both the city and a special man, I stayed in Seville and have been living in Seville ever since March of 2004 and now am fluent in Spanish too! Throughout my years of travelling and living abroad there has been one great passion: FOOD. I hope to share my love of food here by posting pictures and blogging about what I make. Buen provecho! Enjoy!