How our tongue works

As a beginner chef - I did not advanced too much from this position in the last 2-3 years - the most difficult problem was how and why to match various tastes and types of food. Thus, the basic of my learning in terms of food was to know what the foods and spices taste like. It took me some time and I still make mistakes, because I am more attracted to the color combination of different foods I am getting better and better.

When I've read this article in the NYT about the Chemistry Behind Great Food Pairings, I understood that it is more behind a simple match of the foods there are biological explanations requested by the way in which our human body is built. On the other hand, I continue to believe that some tastes and food combinations are part of our anthropolotical genome and that it is not only a matter of biology. 

Our food tells stories not only about our history and culture, but also about our bodies.

Paprika stuffed with quinoa

Quinoa is relatively newly entered into my food universe. Openly speaking I don't like it too much, as I did not find (yet) its specific taste. From my point of view, it is like eating nothing. 

Last week, I wanted to diversify a bit our menu - but still keeping the main vegetarian line. After reading various posts and closing a bit my eyes in order to imagine some interesting combinations, it resulted the following wonder:

boiled quinoa - max. 15 minutes

finely chopped mushrooms fried together with equally finelly chopped garlic

quinoa+mushrooms+garlic are fried together with avocado oil

The fresh paprika is delicately stuffed with the fried mixture and put in oven for another 15 minutes.

To be served fresh and warm. 

A fresh salad for a new beginning

This wonderfully green-looking salad was part of the never ending menu prepared for Rosh Hashanah.

The ingredients:
lettuce
avocado - half, finelly chopped
pomegranate seeds - 1/4
olive oil
1 table spoon of honey
Mixed them all together and serve them as often as possible. The final taste is delicious.

Eat and travel

This week I was in a very "intellectual" mood, trying to set-up a bit my theoretical background regarding my next steps of my food-writer-in-progress career. And I made the following discovery, I would like to share it to my readers:

Most part of the publications - with very glossy covers and wonderful colourful pictures - dealing with travel and/or food consider the two domains as intrinsically connected. Travel means discovering specific foods and food, as such, is a testimony of various cultural and historical influences you can identify during your travels. This is an observation I fully agree with and I will try, for sure, to explore in future blog posts.

Related articles

• Where They Ate: Authors, Eaters, and Food and Travel Writers Tell Their Favorite Eating Experiences of 2010 (gadling.com)

Easy springy salad

Here it is not spring, but after a long winter I am ready for a temperature change (at least). In the honor of the sweet spring and summer time, I will suggest you the following fresh vegetables receipe:

For 4 hungry persons:"

4 big tomatoes, sliced
100 gr. baby corn
2 medium sized zucchini, chopped
100 gr. pine nuts
100 gr. olive oil

That's all! Enjoy the flavor, smell!
I add to the whole miraculous combination a good taste of humus!

Novels about food

Haven't read none of them, but I am decided to spend some time in the libraries reading I would like for my long winter vacation to have a look on some of these books.

Indian spices?

Are you interested? Some solutions for your Indian cooking ideas might be found here.
Good luck and enjoy your food!

How to shoot ugly food

A problem I faced several times, but promise to outperform shortly.

Welcome to the world of boiled words

Image via Wikipedia

A couple of weeks ago, during my long never ending process of reorganizing my writing life, I opened a blog dedicated to my writing journey - http://wildwritinglife.blogspot.com/ (which I kindly invite you to read and criticize). This is a diary about my modest efforts to improve and develop my writing skills - in another tongue that my mother tongue. One of the domains I wanted to explore is also the food writing, an area I am not familiar with though the high interest for this new intellectual challenge.

For a long time, for various reasons, I stayed away of the gourmet experiences. Not too much time, not experience in the world of tastes and food. But, for various reasons, practical matters equally, in the last two years I was faced with the necessity to start preparing healthy and eatable food. And, I embarked on this trip with lots of enthusiasm and courage. In most part of the cases, I didn't use recipes, although I have a couple of nice and colourful resources. I am using often Internet for various technical problems: as, for example, how to cut a mango fruit, but also for some inspiration - cookies, the weekly change of the menu.

I do not consider myself experimented cooker or expert. I learned a lot, but the most part of experience is waiting for me. This blog - I hope once to turned into an interesting resource for women like me - is the diary of my successful and unsuccessful experiment. Initially, I intended to host my food writing on my normal writing blog, but a couple of minutes ago I decided that it might be better to have a separate chapter of my life, as I am seriously thinking to gather all these experiences into an e-book one day. 

Once again, welcome into my world of tastes and looking back for advices, conversation, exchange recipes and everything interesting to share about food, learning and good life.