Recent Posts

Alton Brown’s Chili Powder

Alton Brown’s Chili Powder

I am a big fan of Alton Brown as you may already know, as well as a big fan for home made spices. And when these two come together, the result is an instant combustion chili powder that will make every chilli recipe (or any other that call for chili powder) an explosive winner.

Cranberry Walnut Celebration Bread

Cranberry Walnut Celebration Bread

This bread involves heaps of dried cranberry (9 ounces to be precise), that paired with walnuts, scream “Christmas”, and tastes pretty darn close to Panettone (texture & taste) which we usually associate with this time .

Crepe Recipe Song

Crepe Recipe Song

So, what happens if you like to cook, you like writing songs and like video-production? You might start singing about recipes and post them in a videosong. Which just happened with me. It’s a practical song that you can actually cook! Crepes Recipe is the debut song from a collection of videosongs I plan to post in an album called “Kitchen Tunes”.
You can download the Crepe Recipe mp3 for free from Reverb Nation.

Please leave a comment and let me know if you cooked this Crepes Recipe and if you liked it!

The Paw Paw in Our Backyard

The Paw Paw in Our Backyard

Shrubs, flowers, ornamental trees of all sorts, are very common to find in a usual suburban backyard but a Pawpaw tree? That’s what you will find if you come to our backyard (actually two of them).

The Return of Sour Dough – Night One

The Return of Sour Dough – Night One

For those of you lucky dogs and ducks that inherited a piece of my multi-million dollar sourdough starter, here is the first blog post in the series discussing how to actually bake a sourdough bread that will gain back your spouse’s respect, as your kids and friends would bow in front of you and address you as “Your Royal Majesty”. This series is a remastered version of the original Sourdough Chronicles I wrote a while ago.

Meeting Alton Brown

Meeting Alton Brown

Meeting Alton Brown
Alton Brown and a nervous Gabi

Many of you are aware by know of my obsession with Alton Brown’s Good Eats food network show. It is possibly because of my affinity to science, cooking, film making and… geeky-ness. The Good Eats show captures all these in a fascinating way, so each episode is a new load of knowledge, history tips and tricks, and a wonderful recipe that makes sense — unlike other food shows where the star just slaps you with a recipe and that’s it.

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Godiva Coffee Tiramisu

Godiva Coffee Tiramisu

Look, I understand why everyone who puts his or her hand on a Godiva’s Pumpkin Spice and Caramel Pecan Bark coffee should instantly think of brewing it and drinking it as fresh or in a beverage of sorts. But why not trying these coffee blends in a dessert recipe like Tiramisu, and sipping freshly brewed along with it?

Not Your Mom-in-Law’s Stir-Fry, but Mine!

Not Your Mom-in-Law’s Stir-Fry, but Mine!

I am also a musician, and like to improvise on my guitar when we are getting together with a couple folks for a jam-session. This recipe will give you the freedom of doing just that… culinarily speaking (don’t use this dish to play music, it might get awkward).

Sun Dried Tomato and Cheese Chicken Breast

Sun Dried Tomato and Cheese Chicken Breast

Sun Dried Tomato & Cheese Stuffed Chicken Breast

Looks like I’ve been having my fill of BBQ this summer. Every Friday I pull it out and start improvising with whatever I have at hand that day. So the other day I opened an almost empty, un-inspiring fridge, to discover that I sill have a couple frozen chicken breasts, cream and blue cheese, olives, lemons, parsley and garlic and butter. “Garlic and butter!” I thought to myself… I am saved!

The Art of Slitting

Use this recipe as a guideline for stuffed chicken breasts. You can use whatever you have available to stuff, from spinach to pesto, dried fruit (like figs or apricots), artichoke hearts or asparagus tips. If it comes down to anything that you might have to pay attention to is how to slit the breast to make a nice pocket without ripping it.

The way I found it works is by placing the breast half horizontally on a cutting board and making an incision on the plumpier side of the breast not wider than say 1 inch then carefully making the inside pocket wider, working with the tip of your knife, going as close as possible to the edges without ripping.Once you stuff the breast, seal it with a wooden toothpick and off you go!

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The ones here were stuffed with a mix of cream, Parmesan, blue cheese butter and garlic mix, sun dried tomato halves, olives and parsley

I marinated my stuffed chicken breasts in a mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, lemon zest, parsley and garlic for about 1 hour before they went on a hot charcoal grill. There I had to babysit them pretty often by turning every 5 minutes or so, I got a nice crust and color.

So, really, try your hand at this — you will impress yourself and those around you!

Roasted Onion and Asiago Miche

Roasted Onion and Asiago Miche

You know that fall is approaching when you start baking. Lately the temperature in Chicago was more baking-friendly so I thought it was time for another BBA Challenge dust-off here with a delicious Roasted Onion and Asiago Miche.