Romaine Lettuce Salad with Halloumi Cheese

On a hot summer day, a fresh salad with some filling additions is all that is needed for lunch or dinner. This colorful salad is full of flavors and textures, and is the perfect example for such a dish.

Blue Cheese, Rosemary and Pecan Crackers

Homemade crackers are so much better than any store bought ones. Not only that when you’re baking them at home you can control the quality of ingredients used, you can also prepare them exactly to your liking.

Burekitas – Sephardic Savory Pastries

Burekitas are a type of small hand pies that are well known in any Sephardic household.

Belgian Endive, Apple and Blue Cheese Dressing

This post is not about a recipe per se, but more about how to create different looking dishes by using the very same ingredients.

Mushrooms Tart with Potato Crust

While we can get mushrooms year round, for some reason, winter always seems like a more appropriate season for mushroom dishes.
This easy and tasty tart is a good example for such dishes. It is hearty yet not too heavy – just perfect for a cold days lunch or dinner.

Goat Cheese Mini Quiches

These beautiful and tasty goat cheese quiches will fill your kitchen with amazing aroma, and even more so, if you choose to use the mature goat cheese on top of the fresh one in the filling.

Brie, Peppers and Prosciutto Tart

This easy to assemble tart has layers of flavors and colors: buttery and crispy puff pastry, topped with delicately salted prosciutto, roasted peppers and onions, creamy Brie cheese and crunchy pistachios.

Yogurt, Dried Apricots and Pistachios Squares

Cheese cakes are a favorite of mine, but at the same time, I find them quite heavy and sweet, not to mention it takes quite a bit of time to prepare and bake them properly.

So, I went on a mission to create a quick, lighter and less sweet version of cheese cake. I tried low-fat cream cheeses, but didn’t like the taste or texture. Instead, I’ve decided to try and bake a cake with thick yogurt and just loved the results.

Colorful variation on Caprese Salad

It’s hot outside, so I thought about preparing a nice quick salad that doesn’t require cooking, and yet is filling like a cooked dish. Caprese is exactly this kind of salad.

Cheddar Rosemary Fingers

The following cheddar fingers will delight anyone who loves cheese crackers, but doesn’t want to munch on the commercial ones (they actually hardly have any real cheese in them!)

The amount given here may seem like a lot, but these tasty morsels are fairly small and on top of it, they are alarmingly addictive and tend to disappear very quickly, so it makes sense to have more…

Palmiers – Sweet and Savory

“Palmieres” is the French term for small pastries made of puff pastry. The dough is rolled in a way, that once cut and baked, the pastries resemble palm leaves, or “Palmiers” in French. In other places the pastries got some less complimenting names, such as Elephant Ears, or Pigs’ Ears – so obviously, it’s best to stick with the much nicer French term…
But no matter how you call them, these pastries are very delicious and very easy to make.  Another great thing about Palmiers is that the rolled log can be kept in the freezer for up to a month. So having a prepared log in the freezer makes it easier to make them in no time.