There are plenty of delicious sweet recipes with strawberries, but savoury recipes with strawberries are harder to find, usually in the form of strawberry salads. That’s partly because while other fruits such as apple and pineapple have made the crossover, strawberry changes taste so quickly when cooked. Just 15 seconds in the pan increases how sour it tastes by one fold, it seems! Continue reading “Prawns, Sweet Peas and Strawberries Stir-Fry”
The temperatures are as hot in London as in Singapore and it is that time of the year everywhere when fresh veggie recipes come to mind. Also, peppers are in season, which means they are sweet and tasty, what better time to use them than for a simple summer lunch? In Italy we do conserves where we put roasted peppers in jars and fill them with oil so they can be used during the rest of the year. Continue reading “Roasted Peppers in Olive Oil”
Chinese desserts are relatively few and far between, but there are a few special ones that can be hard to get in the shops, and this double layer/skin milk is one such dessert. The recipe dates back to the 1850s, and comes from the Canton region.
The key ingredients are full fat milk and egg whites – so it will give you plenty of proteins! It is also very easy to make, and the prep time only totals around 5 minutes, with a cooking time of roughly 20 minutes. However, there are quite lengthy cooling periods in between. You can also make it the day before and keep it chilled in the fridge! Continue reading “Double Layer Milk (Shuang Pi Nai)”
This chocolate cake recipe is inspired by Giallo Zafferano’s Scrumptious Cocoa Cake. In the Italian household of Blender and Basil, the hubby has a soft spot for chocolate. So when his birthday comes along I usually make a chocolate treat to celebrate – this year I made a more elaborate birthday cake than usual. The base of this cake contains dark chocolate and bitter cocoa, and I added less sugar than the amount suggested: this gave it a mildly sweet, mature and charged flavour. Continue reading “Scrumptious Cocoa Cake – The Tale of a Fail”
This steamed pork with couscous recipe is both traditional and modern – in that it uses couscous instead of broken rice, but the taste is so similar to what you’d traditionally eat that it’s very difficult to distinguish between the two. Traditionally the broken rice is made from chopping rice (or whizzing it quickly in a blender) before it’s cooked, so that each bit of the broken rice is roughly the size of a grain of couscous. We chose to use couscous for this because it’s already the right size, and a bit healthier than white rice – or for an even healthier alternative, use wholegrain couscous! Continue reading “Chinese Steamed Pork with Couscous (Fen Zheng Rou)”
I’m a huge fan of barley benefits: it’s high in fiber and helps lower cholesterol; it’s very nutritious and enriches any stews, broths or even salads. When I saw the unreasonable prices of risotto rice in Singaporean shops, I quickly turned to a barley recipe as a perfect solution! Since I’m making the effort to buy more local produce and use the local market as much as I can, instead of kale or broccoli exported from far countries, I chose a local green, gai lan (Chinese Broccoli). Continue reading “Chinese Broccoli (Gai Lan) Barley Risotto”
We all love kale: with a boost of vitamins and antioxidants comes a great solution for a quick and easy meal. This simple recipe serves two, and a few of its ingredients are easily interchangeable. Use it as a base for one of those evenings when you think you don’t have anything to cook, and when you open the fridge and cupboard you realise it’s not so bad. All you need is one ingredient and a few complementary ones to make a delicious pasta dish. Continue reading “Simple Kale Pasta with Cashew Nuts”
Easter has come and gone, and in Sardinia many families have cooked a very traditional dish for special occasions: Sardinian panada. Many claim that this pie was created during the pre-nuragic period. I doubt so, judging by its similarities with empanadas, I would say that the idea was probably coming from our Spanish invaders. Legend says that the first place where it was cooked was a small town called Assemini, where back then fishing was the main activity. Hence, the panada di anguille, filled with eels is the classic version, which is also the one I’m presenting to you today. However, ingredients are easy to change: for the Easter holidays for example, the preferred filling would be lamb meat, accompanied by potatoes or other veggies. Continue reading “Sardinian eel pie (Panada di anguille)”
We have a bit of news to start with. Those who follow us on Instagram might have noticed that many of our recent posts are Singapore-based. In fact, the Italian half of the blog (ironically) is going to be based in Singapore for an indefinite amount of time. This will mean painful missions to find Italian ingredients to keep up with traditional recipes. But it will also mean a lot of foodie travel posts (hopefully) and frequent posts on culinary curiosities about this city, which really is all about food!
It’s the week before Easter, and if I had all my kitchen utensils with me I would probably make you a lamb roast, or some delicious Torta Pasqualina. But instead, while my kitchen is still on its way here, I’m gonna talk to you about toast. Coming from London, where we even have a cereal bar, it shouldn’t have surprised me so much when I noticed there were cafes and chains everywhere selling mainly toast. Yet, it tickled my curiosity! Soon I discovered that an important part of the traditional Singaporean breakfast is kopi and kaya toast. These come in sets, like mini breakfast menus, and there are various types you can choose from. But first let’s cover the basics. Continue reading “How to Have Your Kaya Toast and Eat It”
With spring in the air, we’re here to share another light and easy Chinese veggie recipe this week. Pine nuts are not only subtly fragrant but extremely nutritious, and make up the main ingredient of this week’s recipe, along with corn.
I’ve always got some frozen corn in the freezer as it’s so versatile and easy to store (not to mention tasty!), so this recipe is often a go-to if the fridge and food cupboards are looking a bit bare.
Continue reading “Chinese Corn and Pine Nuts Stir-Fry (Song Ren Yu Mi)”
Blender & Basil 