Triple chocolate brownies

I’ve got a secret to tell you, and I am pretty sure it will shock you a little: I don’t really like chocolate.

I can live without it for days, even months and not complain, even not crave for it.

It’s true I eat it from time to time, but just because somebody offers me some, and I can’t say no, or because I can’t get my hands on some other sweet stuff.

My husband Alex is, however, made out of a different material. He loves chocolate.

He loves everything coated in chocolate, I could probably coat meat in chocolate and he will eat it.. You know like that episode in Friends when Joey ate the most disgusting thing in the entire world:  a cake made of meat, jam, and something else, and he kept saying it’s great. What’s not to like: Meat? Goood! Jam? Good!

So having this in mind, I decided to go for some brownies. I’ve baked brownies before, but couldn’t actually remember where I found the recipe, so I went searching for a recipe on blogs I loved.

And I found one, that sounded really good on Use Real Butter and I went home to do my baking.

Behind..

hmmm..I am so behind schedule on everything these days..because I was on holiday.

Didn’t have the chance to add new recipes..I am not proud of myself for not taking any food pictures in Lisbon..

Not proud that I keep buying cooking books, but can’t seem to find the time to actually read them.

I need a plan..something that I’ll have to follow..

These are a few things that I need to do soon, I will list them here, so that if I don’t do them I will feel really bad..

1. Home made Vanilla extract

2. garlic oil

3. chilli oil and all kings of different oils

4. buy some spice jars, different bottles, bigger jars

5. pickle some cauliflower and carrots

I’ll start light..because I am afraid that if I add too many things on the list, I’ll get overwhelmed by them

Wish me luck please!!

Bacon and mushrooms muffins

I have to admit I was pretty busy at the office these past two weeks, so I neglected the blog a lot..sorry about that..I wish I could stay home and write my blog instead of going to an office and sit in front of a laptop, but I can’t for now…maybe soon .

I still cooked though, and I have some new pictures and a recipe from the Hummingbird bakery cookbook to share with you .

Here a picture of the lovely tasty muffins before we start working:

Salmon and risotto for dinner

Risotto… seemed to me just impossible to cook for a long time it..I was so afraid of it that I couldn’t bring myself to even try ..

But this time I did it..and it was so delicious but probably slightly overcooked.. I will be more careful next time..

I paired it with some honey and whole mustard glazed salmon and it was just perfect for dinner ..look:

Hummus

I just wanted for so long to do homemade hummus, but never did it..mainly because in Romania it seemed hard to find Tahini paste..which is very important to have a really tasty hummus..

But London has lots of stores where you can find the magical paste..so I bought some..and went home to prepare a hummus which we served together with olives, cheese, grilled artichokes and some chorizo .. a very multiethnic dinner if you like , but a really tasty one.

Beef steak with watercress, rocket and baby spinach salad

I have to tell you that we really looooove beef J. We love the taste, the looks and the fact that our livers appear to be happier with it compared to pork..

So once a week we have beef, usually steak because it takes a couple of minutes to be ready, it’s tasty and it’s suitable for dinner, for some of us …concerned about their weight…

So this week’s beef steak was a mustard beef sirloin with a crunchy salad. Just look at it..

Bacon and vegetables lentils

We were craving for lentils for sometime now, and I decided that a Sunday is a good day to have some lentils, with vegetables, bacon and served with some homemade Naan bread.

Naan bread

As I said in a previous post I like Kevin’s blog and I found here a recipe of Naad bread that I really had to try, and it was really great to be honest.

I served it on Sunday with lentils with bacon, the recipe will follow one of these days.

So..what do you think?

Eggplant and pomegranate salad

There is a restaurant in Bucharest – we call Nasser – I think it is Lebanese, but I could be wrong about this – where I had a nice salad a couple of times, and I think they called it Baba ganoush, but after searching the Internet it doesn’t seem right to call it so.. Anyway this salad had tomatoes, eggplant and pomegranate and was really tasty so I decided to try and reproduce it.

The picture doesn’t do it justice because it was delicious and quite perfect for a Mediterranean dinner with: olives, baked artichoke, cheese and fresh bread.

Baked cod fish with mustard and cheese

Yes..it’s fish again. I promise I’ll try to post some steak soon – I already cooked it yesterday and was great – but I still need to work on the pictures..

So let’s have another fish: cod this time, with a mustard, lemon, cheese and sour cream sauce, garnished with tomatoes. It came out a bit runny but absolutely delicious.