Let’s wrap things up after Christmas! My turkey and three cheese wrap

It’s that time of the year again – the time to ask the question: what should I make with the leftover turkey meat? As a small family, we always buy turkeys that are on the small side. Even so, there is always extra meat left, which lingers in the fridge for days on end. I use shredded turkey in the omelette I make for my husband in the morning, and in the occasional post-Christmas turkey sandwich. Moreover, I have recently started to use leftover roast turkey to make wraps.

My husband is not a big fan of wraps. He gets to eat a lot of them at work, and the ones that are delivered by the catering company are always on the heavy, greasy side (or so he says) and have a lot of mayonnaise in them. Thankfully, I have persuaded him to give wraps another try, with promising results.

As you know by now, I hardly ever use mayo in our home-cooked meals, and wraps make no exception. Instead, I use cheese – a lot of it! In this wrap I used no less than three cheese varieties, all to my and husband’s liking: cottage cheese, feta cheese and mozzarella. The fluid wholesomeness of the cottage cheese works well with the constant assertiveness of the feta and the gooey seductiveness of the mozzarella. In my opinion, this combo can really do no wrong.

Getting back is hard – so can a pork roulade make a difference? :-)

These past few weeks have been really hectic for me. First, school is back and I’ve been fretting over classes, syllabi, and meeting new colleagues and students. I have been stressed and out of shape intellectually, and going back to a full work schedule has proved nothing short of exhausting. Second, my mom’s recent flight back to Europe was delayed for several hours, causing her to miss a connecting plane in London and to arrive at her destination well after midnight. My mom is a senior citizen who doesn’t speak English, and the whole experience was a nightmare for her, as it was for us. Such stressful events are definitely not conducive to creativity in the kitchen. 😦

Getting back to cooking and blogging was hard. In the end, I found inspiration in an email exchange I had with my cousin, who is a passionate gardener. This summer he has grown tomatoes, zucchinis and cucumbers galore, and he was writing me that he had just finished sun-drying some of the tomatoes. My mind instantly went back in time, to the years we spent in England and to a recipe we used to like a lot: pork roulade stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes, parmesan cheese and herbs.

Egg on toast, and much more: Why mayo is out – and dandelion greens are in!

It occurred to me the other day that I had never told you why I don’t use mayo in my sandwiches. Indeed, if you look through my sandwich and panini recipes you’ll find none with mayo, and plenty with sour cream, cottage cheese or mustard. I know mayo is a very popular sandwich ingredient, and for good reason: you need a good creamy component to “bind” everything together and to turn the sandwich into a coherent whole. Still, we find mayo way too heavy and not particularly flavorful, and this is why I’ve been using other ingredients in its place. We’ve always been big fans of sour cream and cottage cheese (both of them lighter than mayo, in our opinion), so why not use these in panini or sandwiches? Moreover, on some occasions, I turn to other less used ingredients and I take advantage of their luscious creaminess to create a satisfying light lunch. Such is the case with the sandwich I am going to write about today, whose creamy component is a fried egg.

This sandwich is special to me because it incorporates a lesser known green element: dandelion greens.

Vive la France! My “almost” French lunch, featuring croissant, Camembert and tomatoes (again!)

I woke up this morning and remembered something: today is the National Day of France, which is also called Bastille Day.  This day is always celebrated in my home country. Our culture is closely related to the French culture – so close that we are members of the International Organization of the Francophonie. I am really glad I remembered about Bastille Day. Better mark the occasion later in the day than not mark it at all!

In honor of Bastille Day, I decided to make a French-inspired lunch: a stuffed croissant.

CLOSED The goodness of tomatoes, the goodness of summer: a review of Red Gold Tomatoes grilling recipes – and a giveaway!

To write about food is to write about memories – and this is certainly true in my case, when it comes to writing about tomatoes. To me, they remind me of the many gorgeous summers I spent in the countryside while I was growing up. My aunt and uncle owned a small house about 20 miles away from the city, and they loved having me and my niece Anne Marie over when school was out for the summer.

Those were the days I never got tired because the world and its wonders kept me in awe, and my uncle’s garden was something to behold. We used to play hide-and-seek in that garden, tirelessly running around the cherry trees, digging deep and hoping to discover allegedly long-lost treasures at the root of the old fir tree, or happily hunting down Colorado beetles in the mild sunset light. We would always play and eat in that garden – who could have resisted freshly picked raspberries, apricots, apples and, of course, tomatoes? Indeed, no day would pass without me eating a tomato from my uncle’s garden. Firm, slightly sweet and deliciously thirst-quenching, my uncle’s heirloom tomatoes would give me that much-needed energy boost to go on with my playing. 

Happy 4th of July! My mighty meaty burger menu

Who has the time to plan in advance and to create elaborate menus? Not me, that’s for sure. The 4th of July weekend is coming up, and I have yet to do any menu planning and to buy any ingredients. Having an infant around has made things harder and less organized for me on the kitchen front. Nowadays, it’s all about the baby – and so it should be. 🙂

I know I won’t get the chance to prepare as many dishes as I did last year. I will most likely focus on burgers and I will make a few of my family’s favorites. 

Roast beef for a special occasion: our first celebration of Father’s Day!

We are a household of carnivores, but our meat preferences are very different. Chicken is my favorite meat to cook and to eat: light, versatile and affordable, it makes up the central element in a variety of dishes I love. Whenever I think of chicken I think of mom’s chicken recipes, and I get all excited and happy. To me, mom knows best and is the best cook 🙂

Meanwhile, my husband is a diehard fan of red meat, who always chooses steak over breaded chicken. I wanted to cook something I knew he would enjoy, so I made roast beef to celebrate his first Father’s Day ever. This is one of my mom’s recipes – this is the way she usually cooks beef, pork and even mutton. I followed her recipe, but also changed it a little by adding mixed peppercorns and oregano.