Hey, I’m back! For now at least I think this is the longest I’ve been ‘away’ since getting back into my blogging groove. My profuse apologies but sometimes, offline demands make themselves unavoidable and require all my attention! So this and my next few posts (until the end of June) will be haiku-like in their brevity. This ricotta gnocchi was my first entry towards the... 

MMMMMMMMM. These were so good! And SO SIMPLE! Some peeled core apple, some puff pastry. A little butter and sugar and that’s it! Oh c’mon! Even the most kitchen phobic amongst you can make this one. With my heart shaped cookie cutters I really went to town. Ever the experimenter I decided to play around with the toppings. In addition to the sugar and butter topping that Dorie uses in... 

Did ya think I’d forgotten ya? Hardly! However from now until the end of June I’m focused on some work-related activities that are extremely time and energy consuming, so my apologies from now that updates will be rather sparse. However if all goes as planned I will be able to resume a much more prolific schedule again This time around I’m back with today’s Tuesdays With... 

Here it is, down to the wire. Still über busy but I wasn’t gonna let the posting date for this month’s Daring Baker’s Challenge pass me by! The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge. I have made cheesecakes in the past but it’s been a long while and I was very excited to try this challenge... 

The past two weeks have been a blur, and I’ve fallen behind on food events and posts. Not that I haven’t been cooking, but finding time to sort and edit has been sorely lacking. In due in no small part to my having a heavier workload combined with 2 consecutive ‘truncated’ work weeks. One because of the local Easter Holidays, and the other because of the recently Summit of... 

I can scarcely believe that this post is so so late! It’s been ‘one of those weeks’ for quite some time now. And though I should be grateful for all the activity, I’m definitely becoming a bit worn and longing for a little tranquility. As a result of all the to and fro going on right now I only made this pie the day before it was due, and now I’m finally writing it up... 

I did it! I finally bit the bullet, pushed through my fear and made pasta! That’s right, thanks to Daring Bakers, I have finally achieved something that I’ve wanted to do since starting this blog in 2006 With the late showing of this post you would never believe that I actually made this lasagna over a week ago. What can I say? It’s been one of those weeks (for the past few weeks)!... 

It’s 3a.m. and I need to be up at 6 so I’ll keep this shorter than usual Coffee cake is not a fave of mine, so this wasn’t a great hit for me. Everyone else loved it though and that mattered more to me To be fair, it -is- extremely light and delicate, and the blueberries are not overwhelming in either flavour or textural contrast. If anything, that is probably where my disappointment... 

Mmm hamantaschen. In this part of the hemisphere, hamantaschen is probably the most recognizable symbol of Purim. These three-cornered pastries are usually stuffed with jams and sweet pastes of various flavours. My favourite base recipe comes from Joan Nathan’s Jewish Cooking in America,however my own twist is to use a filling of traditional ‘set fruit‘, combined with some chopped... 

This Sephardic Purim treat is rarely mentioned in Purim recipe lineups, overshadowed in familiarity by its Western European counterpart Hamantaschen. It’s a shame though, because this dessert is light, and deliciously addictive. Strips of dough are fried and sprinkled with confectioners sugar. I personally like to flavour the dough with a combination of almond and vanilla essences. The result... 

As my ‘raw’ adventures continue I find myself viewing the fruits and vegetables in supermarkets and roadside stalls with an almost reborn eye. This ice cream came about as a glut of soursops came into my line of sight and instantaneously caught my imagination. Soursop ice cream was a vague but pleasant memory from my childhood. For an extremely short time period in the early/mid-80′s... 

This is a recipe whose origins have become lost to the sands of time (and disorganization), however it is fast, nutritious and never fails to please. It’s a regular part of my Purim menu because of the prominent role that chickpeas play in that festival. In Trinidad cuisine chickpeas are routinely served curried or fried. Rarely do they get to shine, relatively unadorned, as the main star. This... 

Hummus is a never-fail crowd pleaser and so deceptively easy to prepare! I love to offer hummus as a starter at Purim because chickpeas figure so prominently in the Purim story. This recipe comes from one of my favourite cookbooks The Sephardic Table: The Vibrant Cooking of the Mediterranean Jews (you can read my review here). Although I have tried many hummus recipes and am not opposed the occasional... 

I’m a huge fan of soups, especially thick creamy soups, so this butternut squash bisque was right up my alley. It’s sweet and savoury, all in one, and so so smooth. As with most soups I find that slow cooking the vegetable components until they deeply caramelized ensures the most flavourful result, and don’t be afraid to salt the vegetable base in between additions as well. It... 

It’s with bittersweet reluctance that I bid February goodbye. Never has one month seen me cook and consume SO MUCH CHOCOLATE! Although my tastebuds do not approve of the inevitable shift that leaving the ‘month of love’ will bring, I can only think that my own waistline is relieved by the new page on the calendar! Still, if ever there was a recipe to end a chocolate high on this... 

Look at that cake! So perfect for this month’s Daring Bakers Challenge! Chocolatey, gooey, with a thin, crackly brownie-like crust… so light but rich, it melts on your tongue… and.. not a drop of flour in sight! *record scratch* … Yup, you heard me! A chocolate cake, luscious, decadent and gluten free! I loved dropping this piece of information on people, especially my... 

This recipe (well one of its variants) was my first introduction to raw ‘cuisine’. In my rather shallow, self-indulgent mind, if I could enjoy desserts as these, without fuss or guilt, I owed it to myself to learn more! Since then you’ll be happy to know that most of my raw consumption has expanded to include vegetables and proper meals, but raw brownies remain a guilt-free pleasure.... 

I’ll say it up front. I’m not a toffee fan. I don’t like its overt sweetness, or its sticky tendency to adhere to my teeth. So, when I saw that the recipe that had been assigned for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie contained toffee I was a little worried. These Caramel Crunch Bars appear deceptively complicated but their assembly is actually pretty simple. First a coffee-chocolate... 

Blog Party #43 is here! The theme this month is “Spice It Up”. According to the event’s host Stephanie of Dispensing Happiness: The chill of February has definitely gotten to me. I’m cold. I’m tired of being cold. I want warmth…but it looks like the only place I can find that is in the kitchen! Well there are definitely no chills here in Trinidad, unless you count... 

February is Black History Month and with it comes A Taste of Ebony, a food challenge hosted by Joelen of Joelen’s Culinary Adventures highlighting the work and recipes of Black chefs and food celebrities. When I began TriniGourmet Black food personalities were almost a shadow presence, and though I am glad to see, over the past year, the Food Network integrating African-Americans into its lineup,...