Pad Thai – The snow peas version

Snow Peas Pad Thai

Snow Peas Pad Thai

Hello my foodie friends! I am so sorry for the long hiatus, life just got in the middle, but we still cook and eat delicious home-made dishes (well, most of the time we do) and I still desire to share them with anyone in the world’s foodie community that’d like to cook with me!

I’m afraid posts will keep appearing irregularly or less frequently as the used to, but neither me nor my blog are going anywhere, so I hope you be patient with me and pop into “Around the bowl” once in while… By the way, I always share pictures of my recipes in my instagram account, so follow me if you’d like to see what I’m cooking (and some other random things that I enjoy) and please let me know if you are particularly interested in any recipe you see there that can potentially become an interesting post!

We have just finished enjoying today’s recipe, it’s easy, it’s quick, it’s healthy and most importantly: utterly delicious! Other than that, I don’t think Pad Thai needs any further introduction, doesn’t it?

Just as the tittle indicates, I’ve made some adjustments to the traditional recipe: I replaced bean sprouts by snow peas, mainly because we had loads at home that needed to be used and because I love them! and I replace peanuts with cashews because I don’t like peanuts, but I do enjoy the rest of the ingredients of a good Pad Thai, so I thought: why not?

Do you fancy trying it?

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Arroz Amarillo con Pollo – Chicken Yellow Rice

Arroz Amarillo con Pollo

Arroz Amarillo con Pollo

As far as I can recall, because you know memory can be tricky sometimes, this is the very first actual recipe I cooked on my own, when I was around 10 years old. I say actual, because far before then I used to “cook” cube stock with soup noodles, as you can see I’ve been obsessed with soup from a very early age.

My grandma Ajó (from my father’s side) was the one who taught me this clearly paella-inspired recipe that was one of her star dishes, along with empanadas, that everybody loved. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to successfully reproduced her empanadas but luckily I came much closer to her arroz con pollo.

Both my grannies were the ones who introduced me to cooking, check out the first recipe in the grannies series here, which is also another legendary family dish from my other grandma, Dina. They were both great cooks, each one with their own signature style, but a common ground: they mastered a few good recipes, nothing fancy or exotic, that they repeated over the years with always the same steady and delicious result! I’ve always admired that, because my outcomes in the kitchen are much more variable. I guess it has to do with the global approach and large flow of information we have nowadays that make us keep trying different things all the time. I am happy to be able to enjoy both the traditional and the innovative approaches in my kitchen…

Arroz con pollo is a quite common dish in Argentina, where I come from, that has most probably been adapted from our Spanish heritage. The cooking principles are the same as the paella ones, with easily available local ingredients. The yellow colour comes from the saffron, which being such an expensive ingredient back in the day, was usually mixed with some sort food colouring, such as turmeric, but sold under the generic name of “saffron”.

Shall we cook now?

By the way, how do you like this year’s header, aren’t you craving soup now? yummy!

U.S. Senate Bean Soup (with Serrano ham)

 

U.S. Senate Bean Soup

U.S. Senate Bean Soup

U.S. Senate Bean Soup

I spotted this recipe in Pinterest, pinned it and unlike most of the times, I decided to try it right away instead of pin it for another time and forget about it, as it usually happens (I’m not the only one, am I?).

As its name indicates, this is a soup served daily at the U.S. Senate restaurant from the beginning of the XXth Century. There are two official recipes, with or without potatoes, according to the U.S. Senate web page. However, the one that caught my eye linked me back to a Foodista recipe that has also carrots on it and it was the one I cooked and slightly altered to the ingredients I had at hand and to a quicker version.

I loved the result and therefore wish to share it, besides it is the first American recipe I post and it always makes me happy to broaden my culinary borders. I hope you enjoy it!

Sopa de Legumes Portuguesa – Portuguese Vegetable Soup

Sopa de Legumes Potuguesa – Portuguese Vegetable Soup

Sopa de Legumes Potuguesa – Portuguese Vegetable Soup

Hello foodie friends, I hope you’re all having a great 2015 start! With this post I’m not only celebrating the beginning of the new year but also my one year anniversary with “Around the Bowl”, I can’t believe a year and so many soups have gone by! It’s been a pleasure, and I’m tremendously eager to keep sharing many more!

Today’s recipe is brought straight from Portugal, as we received the New Year in Porto, an enchanting city in the Douro river estuary with very kind local people and amazing food! Old and modern collide in a very special way in Porto producing amazing results design and food wise. I was totally inspired by it all: its streets, its old buildings and churches with their blue tiles, the river and the good design shops, cafés and restaurants.

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I was positively overwhelmed by Porto’s good food and the fact that soup was served everywhere; definitely my kind of town! Pastries of all kind are also typical and delicious. The majority of food establishments are open all day long, serving pastries, tea & (great) coffee during the morning and afternoon and complete meals at lunch and dinner. Check out the following places that we loved and the photo galleries for recommendations!

• Aurora Portuguese Restaurant: a very cozy restaurant with amazing service and great Portuguese dishes with a modern approach. Also ideal to try Douro wines and of course Porto wine! We loved it so much that came back more than once!

Pumpkin Soup

Chestnut Soup

Cod with Chickpeas Puree

Veal in Douro Wine Sauce

Vegetable Soup

Caldo Verde

Octopus Rice

Porto Wine

• Casa Grande Chocolatier: in a great location this lovely coffee shop and tea room is an ideal place where to make a stop and try delicious chocolates, cakes and pastries. We also had a light lunch one day, consisting of soup and sandwiches, as good as the sweet treats!

Casa Grande Chocolatier – Porto

Cappuccinos & Bonbons

Chocolate Cake

Pea Soup

• Mercearia das Flores: beautiful grocery store and tasting place for local delicatessen, located in one of the most cute streets downtown.

Mercearia das Flores

Goat Cheese with Fig Confit

• Mitica Inspiraçao: probably the most amazing pastry shop I’ve ever been to, everything is very tempting and utterly delicious. Is not centrally located, but it was around the corner from our hotel, so we enjoyed our breakfast there every single day!

Breakfast with Sweet and Savoury Pastries

Meat Puff Pastry

Aren’t you hungry now? Then is time for a wonderful vegetable soup, so let’s cook!

Fideuà – The Lesser-known Mediterranean Classic

Fideuà

Fideuà

Honestly, I hadn’t heard from fideuà until I came to live in Catalonia, where I first had it and instantly loved it!  Fideuà is a sort of paella’s cousin but made with noodles instead of rice.  As it happens with paella, there are endless recipes and variants and it’s also original from Valencia, but eaten all along the Spanish Mediterranean coast and definitely a Sunday and festive staple dish in Catalonia.

You’ll find vegetable, meat, chicken fideuà, but the most traditional is the seafood fideuà. Besides the seafood, the famous “fumet” (fish stock) and noodles are the basic ingredients. In Spain you can find fideuà noodles in any supermarket, but any short thin kind of hard wheat noodle will do the trick.  In the image bellow you’ll find the two most common kind of fideuà noodles. I prefer the thinner ones.

Fideuà noodles 1

Fideuà noodles 2

Here it is my humble approach to Fideuà, hope you enjoy it!

Courgette Cream Soup

Courgette Cream Soup

Courgette Cream Soup

Hello my foodie friends! Busy times around here, so quick and healthy solutions are required without sacrificing flavour. Also, with the most caloric holiday season of the year around the corner, I like to keep it as light as possible as long as I can, before chocolates, pannetone and other Christmas delights become impossible to resist…

Last evening I prepared this simple and easy cream of courgette soup that I’d like to share, I hope you like it! An easy formula that can be applied with any other vegetable you fancy: aubergine, pumpkin, carrots…

Simplified Dak-kalguksu – Korean Chicken Noodle Soup

Dak-kalguksu

Dak-kalguksu

Hello my foodie friends! Here I am again with another Korean comforting soup. Who doesn’t like a good chicken noodle soup during the cold months? Ideal both for lunch and supper, and of course, it makes a great left over if you want to cook some extra to take to work or freeze.

Dak means chicken and kalguksu stands for knife-cut noodles. Making Dak-kalguksu from scratch is quite time-consuming and being this a simplified version I used bought fresh noodles. As part of this simpler approach, I also choose to incorporate the seasoning, which is  usually served separately, to the stock directly. However, I did make the stock, but for an even easier version you could use bought or pre-prepared chicken stock and chicken roast left overs. Generally the vegetables used to cook the stock are discarded afterwards, but I like to cut them and include them in the soup.

Let’s cook?

Ten months, ten posts: Reader’s Top Ten Recipes

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Hello foodies of the world! Sorry for my absence the last few weeks. I’ve been pretty busy with no time for new recipes worth posting. Although I always cook, in busy days I tend to repeat old favourites or cook easy and quick things like omelettes and salads.

The truth is, I’ve never been good at extreme multitasking, I know, is shocking to acknowledge such a thing these days, but I’ve been like this since I can remember and I’ve made my peace with it. But, as I’m also a perfectionist, I rather do one thing at the time and do it right than to do everything just like that. To me, is like my father says: sometimes is not that I don’t have the physical time,  is that I have no “mental” time. Of course I keep challenging myself to find the balance, but I won’t fight my nature either.

I’ve thought of this post a while ago and since is less time-consuming than posting a new recipe is a good way for me to show up and say hi! I reckon that after 10 month blogging, it would be a good time to make a top ten of Around the Bowl’s reader’s favourites and give these recipes a second chance to be discovered and hopefully inspire someone new!

The top ten is based on the blog statistics for all ten months and the posts are rated upon visits and sharing figures. I hope you like the recipes if you haven’t tried them before or that they inspire you once again if you did! I’ll be back soon with new soup recipes to share!

Top Ten Recipes from Around the Bowl (so far)

1. Soup à l’ognion gratinée – French Grilled Onion Soup

2. Indian Minced Beef Curry

3. Mercimek Çorba – Turkish Lentil Soup

4. Thai Prawn and Lemongrass Soup – Ken Hom recipe

5. Ciorba de Perisoare – Romanian Meatball Sour Soup

6. Vegetarian Risottos – Aubergine and Mushroom + Spinach, Courgette and Mushroom

7. Parihuela – Peruvian Seafood and Fish Soup 

8. Dal Shorba (Indian Lentil Soup) with Summer Veggies

9. Avgolemono Chicken Soup – A Greek Egg and Lemon Chicken Soup

10. Thai Chicken and Aubergine Yellow Curry – The Basic Recipe

Shchi remastered (with Middle-Eastern Meatballs)

Shchi with Meatballs

Shchi with Meatballs

I can´t believe that 10 months have gone away since I started this blog! 60 posts later, it’s time to start revisiting some of my favourite recipes, to get creative and add a different twist. Shchi, the classic Russian cabbage soup was one of my first posts and definitely among my favourites! Now that autumn is finally here, some days ago I was really feeling like eating Shchi again, I haven’t cooked it since the first post! But this time, I added some Middle-Eastern style meatballs, and the fusion turned out amazingly well!

I slightly varied the Shchi recipe and the meatballs are of my creation, however you’ll notice a clear Middle-Esatern influence: I prepared them with bulgur, inspired by the traditional Kebbeh, and it just gave them the perfect texture! I think I’ll always use bulgur from now on instead of bread crumbs or flour. A pinch of cinnamon, among other typical spices, is a little secret I’ve been applying to my meatballs since I first saw the delightful movie “A Touch of Spice” (2003), which I highly recommend by the way, every foodie should watch it!

Would you like to try it? It’s a great healthy complete meal to warm up your evenings! and I made Yakisoba with the remaining cabbage, yummy!

Caldereta de pescado – Spanish Fish Stew

Caldereta de Pescado

Caldereta de Pescado

Calderetas are a kind of traditional stew all around Spain, originally cooked  with local ingredients: red meat inland or fish and seafood in the coasts along with in-season vegetables.

Fish caldereta is another delicious dish from Northern Spain, within the “Atlantic Diet” I first introduced in the Piperrada recipe. Of humble origin, the legend tells that it was traditionally prepared by fishermen on board of fisher vessels with whatever fish they had available, specially those that wouldn’t make the cut for sale and some other basic ingredients, generally potatoes. Although nowadays it can also be found in  fancy restaurants, cooked with expensive fish and seafood, it remains as a healthy, affordable and every-day option in many Spanish households.

Known as caldeirada in Galicia, caldereta or calderada in Asturias and Cantabria, marmitako in Basque Country (prepared with bonito), it is also a typical dish in Portugal. There are as many recipes as towns along the Cantabrian and Atlantic Spanish coast. Today I’m sharing my approach; simple and yet delicious, the trademark combination of Spanish Cuisine.