3 Colorful Salad Recipes That Will Surely Brighten Your Day

A bowl of fresh green salad is an ideal everyday snack. However, using the usual greens and dressing can make it look and taste bland easily. Take your salads a notch higher and go for these delicious recipes that are full of color!

Rainbow Salad With Rosewater Dressing

What you need:

4 large tomatoes, chopped
1 cucumber, chopped
1 red onion, chopped
1 small green bell pepper, chopped
1/2 cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes
1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons water
1 teaspoon rose water
Salt and ground black pepper to taste

Continue reading “3 Colorful Salad Recipes That Will Surely Brighten Your Day”

3 Simple Crock Pot Recipes For The Cooking Beginner

If you recently found a passion for cooking, a slow cooker can be a big help in your learning process. It can help you cook more complicated dishes with just little effort. But as a beginner, it’s ideal to prepare simple recipes first even with the use of a crock pot. Here are simple crock pot recipes you can start with:

Easy Crock Pot Black Bean Soup

What you need:

1/2 kilogram uncooked black beans, rinsed
2 carrots, grated
2 stalks celery, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion, diced
4 cups vegetable broth
2 cups water
1 cup salsa
1 tablespoon chili powder
1/2 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon oregano

Continue reading “3 Simple Crock Pot Recipes For The Cooking Beginner”

The Secret Recipe of Neapolitan Pizza

The Neapolitan pizza history goes back to the people who wanted to retain the ancient tradition of an authentic taste. The well-secured ingredients include the Italian flour of highly refined nature, San Marzano tomatoes and Mozzarella di Bufala that is fresh mozzarella made in buffalo milk. San Marzano tomatoes are special because they grow up in volcanic soil with a slightly sweeter taste and of less acidic nature.

Things to Remember

The pizza only uses the hand kneaded dough which need not be rolled using any mechanical method. Also, the pizza cannot exceed in diameter more than 35 centimetres and it should not be thicker than one third of a single centimetre at the centre. The most essential condition is to bake it in a domed, wood-fired oven kept at 900 degree F for 60-90 seconds. Creating Neapolitan pizza is an art as it is a perfect blend of exotic ingredients and a traditional cooking style.

Secret Ingredients Continue reading “The Secret Recipe of Neapolitan Pizza”

Nutritional Benefits of Couscous

Not so many people know what couscous is and fewer people have actually tasted delicacies and dishes made of this healthy food. Couscous is actually a grain food that is comparable to pasta or rice. It is actually made of semolina wheat that’s moistened and then formed into tiny grain shapes. Couscous grains are smaller than rice grains and are dusted with flour so that they can retain structure. It can be interesting to know that couscous is staple food of some regions of the world and is considered like the pasta or rice in some countries. Just like pasta and rice, the couscous can be very versatile in terms of preparation and can be used in various dishes and salads; and they can also be used to prepare side dishes.

Since couscous is made from semolina grain, it is manufactured and sold in various ways. Some sell couscous without adding any kind of seasoning or without any extra ingredient. However, there are some stores that sell them in different varieties including couscous that are roasted in onion, garlic or olive oil. Amazingly, couscous can also be made with other kinds of wheat to give different flavors to it.

People from different parts of the world prepare the couscous differently. Some countries, like those from the African region, serve couscous in thin broth and in combination with cooked vegetables. In Morocco, however, couscous is served with lots of vegetables, sauces and beans. In Western countries, however, couscous is used more like an alternative to rice and pasta. If couscous is not local to your area then you can always buy them from health stores or from the ethnic food section of some supermarkets. Continue reading “Nutritional Benefits of Couscous”

Step Brothers – Macaroni and Cheese

Brennan Huff is an unemployed 39-year-old living with his mom. Dale Doback is an unemployed 40-year-old living with his dad. But what happens when Mom and Dad decide to get married? These two adult losers will have to tolerate each other’s presence by not only living together, but also sharing a room.

Things shouldn’t get too heated. After all, there are some ground rules.

Rule #1: Brennan is under no circumstances allowed to EVER touch Dale’s drum set. When the temptation is too much for Brennan to handle, it ends with a bat and a golf club.

After the debacle, the boys are given a dreadful ultimatum: get jobs, or be kicked out of the house.

Did we see it coming? Dale and Brennan have more in common than they thought, and the new living situation is the start of a beautiful friendship. They turn their separate beds into bunk beds and share their deepest secrets. Continue reading “Step Brothers – Macaroni and Cheese”

Professional Tips on How to Make Traditional German Spatzle at Home!

To begin you will need:

250 grams of all purpose flour

3 whole eggs

1 teaspoon of salt ( I used fresh ground sea salt)

90 ml of water

While you are getting all your ingredients together, start a large pot of water, and bring it to a boil. This way you don’t have to wait for the water to heat up after you are done mixing the dough. Multitasking is important in any kitchen! Add a little bit of salt to the water to help season the noodles while cooking, not too much though! We don’t want salty noodles!

Mix all your ingredients in a medium size bowl, and mix them together with a wooden spoon. If you find that the dough is to dry you can add another little touch of water. Whether you will need to add more water or not can depend on the size of the eggs you used (how much moisture they added to the overall recipe), and the measuring cup you used to measure the water. Some measuring cups seem to be a little larger than others. Continue reading “Professional Tips on How to Make Traditional German Spatzle at Home!”

Classic Macaroni and Cheese

Mac and cheese comes in endless variations. That might seem like an exaggeration, but consider the possibilities, from the shape of the pasta to the combination of cheeses. The addition of meats and vegetables adds even more variations while also making it a one-pot meal. There are so many possibilities, but the most popular way to make mac and cheese simply brings together elbow macaroni, bechamel, and cheddar. That’s an Italian noodle, a French sauce, and an English cheese. This unique combination of foods somehow results in a delicious dish, one that has become an enduringly popular and familiar comfort food. The recipe below will tell you how to make a classic mac and cheese.

This recipe can be made entirely on the stove or baked. If you choose the latter route, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Or if you simply want to get the top brown and crunchy, stick it under the broiler for a few minutes.

Ingredients: Continue reading “Classic Macaroni and Cheese”

How To Eat Spaghetti Without Making A Mess

Spoons are for children. All the professionals agree. You should never eat your spaghetti with a spoon. The correct way to eat pasta is with the fork alone.

Yet thirty years or ago it was accepted, in America at least, that the correct etiquette when eating spaghetti was to twirl the pasta around the fork using the spoon. The spaghetti was eaten from the fork not the spoon.

Nowadays there is a certain degree of snobbery about this method. Today those in the know prefer to use just a fork alone and deride those who use the spoon as well.

The reason for the change in spaghetti eating etiquette is that the wide bowls that are now commonly used were once a rarity in both restaurants and homes outside Italy. Pasta was frequently served on a flat plate which made the spoon essential for spaghetti.

With a bowl there is no need for a spoon. You can wind the pasta against the edge of the bowl.

The idea is to use the edge of the bowl to allow you to twirl the spaghetti around your fork. That’s fine if your pasta is served on a bowl rather than a plate. Continue reading “How To Eat Spaghetti Without Making A Mess”

Spaghetti Alla Carbonara: A Lighter Version

Spaghetti alla Carbonara, a simple recipe of spaghetti, cheese, and eggs, has survived for centuries. The hot spaghetti “cooks” the eggs. Simple as this dish sounds, it can be trucky and if you aren’t careful, wind up with spaghetti and scrambled eggs.

What is the origin of the recipe? Nobody knows for sure. Clifford A. Wright examines some of the possibilities on his website. Despite all of the theories, the history of this historic dish is “vague,” according to Wright. Still, it continues to be on restaurant menus in Italy and America.

Unfortunately, Spaghetti alla Carbonara (which means coal workers’ style), can be dry. To correct this problem the Williams-Sonoma recipe tells cooks to reserve some pasta water and add it to the spaghetti, if necessary. Other recipes call for dry white wine. You may also add extra cream. Continue reading “Spaghetti Alla Carbonara: A Lighter Version”

Cavatelli – “Ghavadeels”

Cavatelli: to write or to say the word as it is written is something of an embarrassment. To any Italian American this dish is called “Gah-vah-deels.’ Any Italian American knows that word in the way that they pronounced it. Of course, the correct Italian is “cavatelli ” (Kha-vah-tell-ee). Back in the day, in the 1950’s and 60’s, cavatelli were a special dinner that appeared on the table on special occasions. Cavatelli were not made at home in my house. They came from two very different sources. Most often my father bought the cavatelli from an old time shop in West Philadelphia where he also bought the home made ricotta. In those days the ricotta came in a perforated metal container that was covered in a sheet of plastic held tight by a rubber band. We used to make string line telephones from the cans. The other source of cavatelli was our neighbor, Alfred the tailor, whose wife made them herself and sent them over. Alfred and his wife also made their own wine and grew a garden of rows of lush red tomatoes and green Swiss chard. The old shop is long gone and so is Alfred, but cavatelli are a very easy and quick pasta to make at home. It’s also one of those foods that offers a certain tactile enjoyment in its preparation. The simple dough has a soft and silky skin-like touch that is pleasing to fold and roll.

Continue reading “Cavatelli – “Ghavadeels””