Czech Foods Recipes

Taking inspiration from last week's quinoa cookie , a leisurely hot breakfast quinoa was made on an uncommonly chilly summer morning: apples, cinnamon, star anise, pumpkin seeds, and dried cranberries were all tossed in, and set to simmer. The result: honey-sweetened and milky-creamy, only a bit of maple syrup was added in the end to balance out a very tasty and wholesome breakkie. Continue to Recipe... Recipe: Apple-Cranberry Breakfast Quinoa Adapted from Leite's Culinaria Serves : 4-6 Time : 30 mins 1 1/2 cups quinoa 3 cups water 3 cups milk 6 small apples - peeled and chopped (2 1/2 cups) 2 whole star anise 1 tsp cinnamon  2 - 3 tsp vanilla extract 100g dried cranberries 2 large tablespoons honey 50g pumpkin seeds - chopped maple syrup 1) Rinse quinoa well. Combine a med pot, quinoa and water. Bring to boil. Reduce to simmer. Add milk, apples, anise, cinnamon, vanilla, cranberries and honey. Let simmer 20 - 25 minutes, until thickened. 2) Remove the start anise, top with pu...

Looking to liven up sandwich time? In an effort to stretch the mid-week dollar, tuna is ending up back on my plate. This is not at all as depressing as it might sound. In fact, I look forward to tuna sandwiches as a simple and quick lunch that offers me those omegas and other fishy goodies, all in a can with a pop-top. The saving grace, tapenade : a Provençal black olive spread. I simply cannot get enough of this tangy condiment. For years, a new jar would no sooner hit the shelf of my fridge before it was headed for the recycling bin...empty, and thoroughly enjoyed. Here, tapenade livens up whatever best-quality tuna one can procure, married with a bit of capers and mustard, topped with vine-ripened tomatoes and crisp arugula, all stuffed in a fresh slice of focaccia bread. Heaven. For lunch. On a plate. Continue to Recipe... Recipe: Tapenade-Tuna Sandwich Serves 1 - 2 Time 10 mins Adapted from Bon Appétit July 2008 1 large can (or 3 small) tuna 1 Tb red onion , minced 1 Tb capers i...

It's seems to be hot in nearly every time zone. Conversations with friends afar keep drifting to 'Its just so hot in my country X.' After weeks of wailing about the weather and devouring salads for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (and yes, I do mean breakfast), I craved meat.  I recently hit upon what I consider to be summer-meat-ingeniousness: thin slices of beef, veal, or pork, wrapped around some veg, cooked for a mere ten minutes in a sauce of tomatoes plus broth, with a handful of fresh gnocchi cooking along in the same pan.   Complete dinner, twenty minutes tops, no oven, and one pan. I am in roulade love. For last week's version (with much prettier pictures), check out Veal Roulade with Herbed Eggplant & Peppers. Continue to Recipe... Recipe: Beef - Green Bean Roulade with Gnocchi Serves 2 Eat with Chianti Classico  Time 20 mins 9 oz (260g) thinly sliced beef/veal a few big handfuls of green beans , ends trimmed 1 can stewed tomatoes 1 cup beef broth 1 tsp dr...

Some days lead one looking for a filling plate of meat. These days do not come as a surprise. They predictably stop by on the very same days where a 15K run was had under an eighty-degree morning Roman sun. Everything fueling that grueling wake-up had been burned off, and I was ready for lunch by 10am. And I wanted a proper lunch. Salads be damned. People always joke about the vast quantities of food slim girls are able to put away. It's been like this for as long as I can remember. You know those skinny girls in middle school who rivaled their older teenage brothers at the dinner table? I do. Something about genetics, something about lifestyle, but it gives skinny girls the go-ahead to chow down for years. Then they grow up. They learn to fit in with the other girls by joining fitness classes, or cycling groups. They also learn to keep their mouth shut in the locker room when others are griping about the insurmountability of those last few pounds. But those skinny ones who were ne...

The shoreline is filled with bodies of all shapes and sizes. A clang rings out as a metal folding table is unfolded and an electric hotplate is ritually placed atop. A mum and a granny start a big pot of water boiling for the coming pasta. A couple of toddlers proudly bear their birthday suits and rush into the water. The lake is much different than the beach. Families load up the car with enough equipment to spend all week at the shoreline. Yet they are here just for the day. Lake Bracciano is just north of Rome. At first glance, it seems a bit rougher, almost like you can feel the cramped flats on the outskirts of the city from where the families left early that morning. Teenage girls sport undergarments in place of swimming suits. Boys shout from open doors of a camper van, while at their feet a dog lies panting. There are more bald spots here than at the beach. More bad tattoos. More bellies. The shore is covered in black pebbles that are much too hot to lie comfortably on. There...

Eating out, exploring new restaurants, is not only such a pleasure in itself, but can often inspire dishes to be recreated at home. A few weeks ago I shared a few bites of a starter salad of delicate ribbons of zucchini atop some punchy arugula. Lovely chunks of Parmesan were stuffed between the curls and some deeply flavoured olive oil was drizzled over all. Perfetto . Since then, there have been few waking moments where that salad hasn't been on my mind. So this week, I've been doing the same, with the addition of fresh lemon juice, Maldon sea salt, and with some warmed Italian flatbread called Piadina . Fresh and simple, it works beautifully as a light lunch, a starter, or even as a late night meal for those working evening hours and facing that dreaded 11pm I-need-a-quick-and-light-meal-and-don't-want-to-dive-into-the-bag-of-tortilla-chips-again moment. Although I must warn, try this salad once, and you'll be dreaming of zucchini ribbons for weeks to come! Continue...

Another wee blog absence has gone by...the last few weeks have been filled to the brim with 'important things to do' and weekends that disappear in a flash. One such weekend was spent back in Brno eating platefuls of dumplings and meat with my favourite 'granat' pivo to wash it all down. I hadn't noticed how much I'd missed Czech food (despite years of moderately good-natured kvetching) until I arrived, and my hosts asked if I was hungry. I replied, nope, I had řízek (schnitzel) for lunch before the flight. In Italy? Up went the eyebrows...Ummm, yes, I confess, I made řízek for lunch in Italy. At least I didn't smash it between bread slices and bring it on the plane with me  à la traditional-Czech-travel-snack . And what should happen when I'm back in Rome, in my kitchen, staring at some choice pieces of beef stew meat I'd just picked up? Yes, goulash. Yet this is not just any goulash. This is a trans-national goulash. Using a smoked Spanish...

Heart Healthy Foods   (from MedHelp ) Whole Grains Oatmeal Beans Fish Olive oil Cinnamon Pistachios Walnuts Flaxseed Tomatoes Avocados Oranges Blueberries Cherries Tea (3-6 cups of black/green) Coffee (2-4 cups) Red Wine (1-2 glasses) One can hate it, or embrace it, but it is near impossible to simply ignore Valentine's day . Living abroad, I find myself having to defend Valentine's day year after year. Not that I want to, or even that I feel as a good American expatriate that I necessarily have to. It just ends up that way. Comments on the holiday from my past Czech students were overwhelming focused on the forced emotional element . We'll see about the reactions tomorrow among my new Italian students. Differences? A large part of the negative image I believe stems from all the usual side effects of an exported holiday. Other cultures see the overpriced junk in the shops, and the nauseatingly clichéd displays of overdone emotion on the sitcoms. They are missing the pers...

There are few dishes I make repeatedly. Sure, I detest boredom of the palette as much as the next foodie, and a shortened attention span runs in my American eighties-baby blood. When something does get repeat play, it is guaranteed to be simple, relatively quick, and full of basic ingredients found in a mid-week kitchen. Chicken fajitas is one such recipe that's been in the rotation for years. Another is a fennel-orange salad - as a side or a quick brekkie, it's been hitting the spot for quite some time. And ever since I convinced a cute Sicilian to teach me a local dish, a saffrony pasta with sardines has been my cupboard staple favourite. And in the colder months of the year, butternut squash with curried lentils can be found in my bowl. I realized I've made mushroom risotto a total of three times...in just as many weeks. I had to share. A good-quality mix of frozen mushrooms makes this all too easy to start a pot going at a moments notice. Having a bottle of Marsala i...