Inspiring Movie .. a New Task is Born !

For Foodies & Food Lovers .. This is the movie to watch ! It's combines two stories of two women and their journey in finding themselves through food and recipes. Julie & Julia (2009)
The movie talks about a young woman who's frustrated with her government job, her & her husband's living arrangement in Queens and her purpose in life. She takes on a task of cooking 524 recipes of her idle's book; Julia Child's Mastering the art of French Cooking. She starts blogging about each recipe and the struggles, the accomplishments and all the emotional challenges she faces. The movie also takes us into Julia Child's journey in the making of the book and her career as a legendary chef.

This inspired me to do the same. I have many chefs that I'm inspired by and would love to try all their recipes. Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver, Todd English, to name a few.
I would love to start out trying to cook almost everything in Nigella Lawson's How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking & the Art of Comfort Cooking.. I already have tried so many recipes from it and why not go for the whole thing from cover to cover?!

So there, another task to add and another challenge to tackle. I'm contemplating the timing and the deadline.
This is a fun idea to take on, I'm still processing it.. so this is pending until I post the start & due date.

Pending until further notice....

Eating is Believing ! a recipe blog

The well fed club.. my recipe blog.. updating it when I can.. and adding more recipes when possible..

A new post.. a new recipe.. it's been a while..

http://wellfedclub.blogspot.com/2010/09/syrian-oozie.html

Eating is believing ! a recipe blog

I'm a recipe collector, so this is going to be my digital kitchen. posting recipes that I love and some that I recently tried.

Link

I love trying different types of recipes and experimenting with flavors.

This will be my archive for all my recipes because I'm sick of stacking them!
and why not share them with everybody? sharing is caring you know. those recipes come from different sources...famous chefs, places I visited, family recipes, friends and books.

so check it out...

it's a work in progress

a little bit of everything...

القاهرة، مصر (CNN)

توفي الفنان المصري الكبير فؤاد المهندس السبت، عن عمر يناهز 82 عاماً، بعد أن ترك تراثاً كبيراً من الأعمال الفنية في المسرح والسينما والتليفزيون والإذاعة، على مدى أكثر من نصف قرن ... التفاصيل
http://arabic.cnn.com/2006/entertainment/9/16/almouhandes.dith/index.html

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Tuesday's recipe will be by Nigella Lawson whom I think set new standards for cooking, or did she just follow her instinct? she has a unique outlook on cooking, her role and the audience. The following is a juicy quote from a one of her books to give you a better idea of her philosophy.

"...Cooking is not about just joining the dots, following one recipe
slavishly and then moving on to the next. It's about developing an understanding
of food, a sense of assurance in the kitchen, about the simple desire to make
yourself something to eat. And in cooking, as in writing, you must please
yourself to please others. Strangely it can take enormous confidence to trust
your own palate, follow your own instincts. Without habit, which itself is just
trial and error, this can be harder than following the most elaborate of
recipes. But it's what works, what's important."

This is the recipe I picked and I hope I will be making today..

PRAWN AND BLACK RICE SALAD WITH VIETNAMESE DRESSING

Ingredients:
For the Vietnamese dipping sauce/ dressing

2 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
2 fresh Thai birdeye chillies or other red chillies, finely sliced
approx. 4cm fresh ginger, finely minced
4 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons lime juice (about 1 lime)
4 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons caster sugar

for the salad
250g Nanking black rice
500g raw, peeled prawns
salt
juice of half a lemon

Instructions:
To make the sauce, simply mix all the ingredients together. It doesn?t get much less complicated than that, frankly.Well, there is the small matter of the rice and prawns. The rice you just cook by following the instructions on the packet; the prawns you poach in some simmering salted water, to which you?ve added the juice of half a lemon, for 5 minutes or so or until just cooked through but still very tender. Let both rice and prawns cool, then give the sauce a quick stir and spoon some over the rice, fork this through and then tumble the prawns on top, spooning a little more sauce over as you go.


* The black rice is real black rice, not wild rice and not white rice dyed black with squid ink. (if you can't find it you can settle for wild rice)

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and finely... Quote of the day..

"Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there."

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Tuesday...... here comes the recipe..

“Where Cuba meets Italy”

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil
¼ cup diced sun-dried tomatoes
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 lime, juice
¼ cup chopped basil
1 tablespoon chopped green onions
2 tablespoons diced green bell peppers
1 tablespoon chopped walnuts
2 tablespoons minced cilantro
1 small avocado, diced
¾ pound fettuccine
Salt & pepper to taste
½ pound turkey bacon, cooked and crumbled

Combine olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes, vinegar, lime juice, basil, green onions, green peppers, walnuts, cilantro & half the avocado in a large bowl. Toss well.
Cook the fettuccine in a saucepan in boiling water for 3 minutes; or until al dente, drain.
Toss with the avocado mixture while still hot. Place mixture on a serving platter. Top with the bacon and remaining avocado.

Enjoy….

Tuesday Recipe: Herbed Risotto

I'm not feeling very well today, and my gathering is cancelled.. but I'm still going to post the dish I was supposed to cook..

"A delicately ~ scented dish"

Ingredients:
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 small onion, diced
3/4 cup arborio rice
2 cups hot chicken stock
salt & pepper to taste
1 pound mushrooms, diced
1/2 tablespoon olive oil
1 large ripe tomato, diced
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/8 cup chopped basil
1 tablespoon fresh rosemany, minced
1 tablespoon grated parmesan cheese


Melt the butter in a large skillet. Saute the onion until tender. Add rice, and cook it for 1 minute. Stir constantly.
Add chicken stock, salt & pepper. Cook, covered until rice is tender on the outside and chewy inside.
While rice is cooking, saute mushrooms in olive oil. When rice is done, fold in the mushrooms, tomatoes, cream, basil, rosemary & cheese.

Enjoy..

TGITuesday! a recipe is in order...

Tuesday is gathering day..and every Tueasday is recipe day for me.. so today will be my first tuesday of recipies here ;) ok.. I hope I didn't lose you with that comment. anyways, since it's my first, it should be special.. and what's more special than a recipe by the British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. I'm a big fan of the naked chef.. his recipies are exquisite.. his TV shows include...Oliver's Twist, Jamie's School Dinners, Jamie's Great Italian Escape, Naked Chef and Jamie's Kitchen.

Since this is a start.. the recipe I picked for today is a starter.. taken from the Jamie Oliver official website
Grilled Marinated Mozzarella - serves 4



Ingredients:
1 loaf of ciabatta bread - could be found at the sultan center or any bakery
8 thinly sliced turkey bacon
zest of 2 lemons
4 large buffalo mozzarella cheeses
8 sticks of fresh rosemary
1 clove of garlic
extra virgin olive oil
3 handfuls of mixed fresh herbs (chives, mint, basil, parsley)

for the dressing
1 good handful of nice black olives, stones removed
1 fresh red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
5 tablespoons lemon juice
5 tablespoons extra virgin
olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method
Remove the crusts from the ciabatta and tear up into rough 2.5cm/ 1 inch pieces. Mix it in a bowl with the bacon and lemon zest. Divide each mozzarella into 8 similar-sized pieces and add to the bowl. Keeping the leaf tips on the rosemary sticks, remove the lower leaves and then smash these up in a pestle and mortar with the garlic. Stir in 8 tablespoons of olive oil, then pour this mixture over the bread, cheese and bacon. Marinate for anything from 15 minutes to an hour.
Thread your mozzarella and bread on to your rosemary sticks, weaving the bacon in and around. Line up the kebabs on a wire rack and place under the grill on a very high heat until the bread and bacon are golden and crisp and the mozzarella is nice and gooey. While this is grilling make sure you keep an eye on it, as it can turn into a charred kebab very quickly. To make the dressing, chop up the olives and mix with the chilli, 5 tablespoons of the lemon juice and the same of olive oil. Season to taste.

To serve the kebabs, dress the herbs with half of the olive dressing right at the last minute so the leaves stay nice and fresh, then use the other half of the dressing drizzled over the kebabs.

Fondue Party...

I've been in a good mood lately, I'm not sure why! but hey, I'm not complaining.
I haven't seen my friends in a while because everyone's been busy with work and doing their own thing, so I thought to my self "why not host a fondue party tomorrow and envite everyone over?!" for the sake of a nice get together, catching up on things and enjoying a nice fondue pot filled with a sumptuous Sauce were we dip delicacies into it, pop in a nice movie, could be a classic, and talk all night. Sounds like a plan?? aha, tomorrow, Aug. 22nd, starts at 7 pm and ends.....?? well, whenever!

I'm still debating on what kind of fondue to make. I'm thinking maybe a chocolate fondue with a twist..

To pull it off, here's the plan:

I'm going to go get my old fondue pot that I got back in the states and neglected for the past ...."God only know how many years" . wash it, clean it, pat it dry and set it aside until it's action time.

Ingredients:

2 pounds grated chocolate bars
1 cup whipped cream
2 tablespoons instant coffee powder (optional)
1/4 cup hot water
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
pound cake cut into cubes
a few marshmallows
Peeled & sliced red apples
Peeled & sliced green apples
Sliced bananas
Sliced pears
Sliced Strawberries
Chunked Pineapples
Grapes would be good too.

and now for the preperation:

Cut pound cake into 1-1/2" cubes. Arrange the cake on a serving plate with the marshmallows, apples, pears, strawberries and pineapple and the rest fo your fruits
Meanwhile, combine the chocolate candy bar and whipped cream in the fondue pot. Cook over very low heat until the chocolate melts while stirring constantly.
Dissolve the instant coffee powder in hot water and add it to the chocolate mixture (again the coffee is optional) with vanilla and cinnamon; mix well.

After that I should be ready for my guests. Using the skewers, we'll dip the cake and fruit into the melted chocolate.... Yummy :)


oh, and the movie... I don't know?! any suggestions???




Fondue sets:
http://www.cooking.com/products/shprodli.asp?Keywords=fondue+pot