The Great Chef

As a rule of thumb, I never refrigerate my fruits unless it gets really warm outside or they perish if left outside, like watermelon or berries, for instance. As a matter of fact, refrigerate most fruits causes them to lose flavor and gain a different texture. If you like your fruit fresh, put it in the fridge 20 minutes prior to eating it and you will get the full goodness of your fruit and the cooling effect you are looking for.  One of the fruits that looses most when refrigerated is bananas. They, almost instantly, turn their skins dark brown and start getting mushy. For that reason, I buy them more on the green side so they easily keep up outside all week long. However, if the weather gets warmer really quick, there is nothing I can do to prevent them to ripe too much. That was exactly what happened this week. Within less than 24 hours the temperature rose more then 10 degrees and my bananas were turning into an almost inedible point. I did not want to throw them away because ...

Because good things are never too much, we keep on chocolate realm today, this time to share the wonders of the most amazing chocolate cake I have ever tasted. Well... now that I just wrote that last sentence, I instantly remembered Chef Jean George's chocolate molten cake... I think it is a draw in deliciousness and decadence. Can you name anything more decadent than a chocolate cake filled and covered with  chocolate mousse ?! Grrrrrr..... This recipe is part of a book called "Absolutely Chocolate". The book joined our library this year when a dear friend of ours mailed it as a birthday gift for my husband. She knows us or what? It is a great book to learn most of the potentialities of chocolate and to indulge yourself into sweet happiness.  This particular cake is something that will require time but it is not technically complicated. I can assure you that it pays off all the hard work. The key to success is "divide and conquer", since you have to make a cake...

Who, in this world, does not love chocolate? It is luscious, warm and give you endless grades of sweet embracement. Almost like a good friend, the type that is almost extinguished. As my husband puts it, "chocolate was, probably, the best human invention". As exaggerated as the statement might sound - chocoholic enthusiasm - one has to admit that any true foodie praises chocolate as one of cuisine's gods. It is, in fact, one of the most difficult ingredients to work with and one of those that requires a great deal of skill to manage successfully. A simple chocolate mousse can be ruined in a blink of an eye if you use very hight temperatures to melt the chocolate. Any ingredient has to be treated with some degree of respect but chocolate demands additional patience, as if dealing with a capricious being.  This recipe for chocolate mousse is very fast and it has little margin for failure. For those of you out there who deal with lactose intolerance, just grab your Lactaid p...

Last Wednesday the Chinese Painting and Calligraphy group I belong to had a reception for the opening of our first exhibition. We organized everything with the kind support of the Yale Office of International Students and Scholars. Of course, food was included on the organization tasks. Each of us brought a dish - either savory or sweet - to offer to those who joined our reception. The diversity of the table reflected the cultural diversity of our group which was wonderful! And since I wanted to bring Portugal to that international table, I made a honey cake very traditional of Alentejo, a region southern of Portugal. For those of you who have been following my writings, you know how I deeply love and feel connected to that part of the country. My beloved grandma if from Alentejo and she passed me the passion for that wonderful region where one can live warm long days and have a kind of sustainability which is rare nowadays. One of the region's most famous dessert is this honey cak...

Among all nuts almonds stand, for me, as the most elegant and versatile. You can use them in a variety of ways, from savory dishes to decadent desserts without forgetting the milk, the perfect substitution for diary milk. In Portuguese cuisine, almonds are used mostly on desserts with the great majority of the recipes coming from the convents to us, along the centuries. One of the singular characteristics of the conventual desserts is the almost unbelievable quantity of eggs used. Portuguese conventual pastry was almost like a side effect of the excess of eggs produced within the boundaries of the convents. The result is a span of rich, creamy and gooey sweets that will embrace you in a wrap of sweet happiness.  The almond tart - one of the ex libris  of portuguese conventual pastry - is no exception. The other side of the coin shows that some people do not feel that much happy specially about the gooey part of the embrace. One of my friends is among those particular beings an...