Simple breakfast bread (dairy free)

I wanted a bread recipe I could make sandwiches with, turn into toast for breakfast, and do everything we do with packaged white bread. I no longer buy that and most of the homemade versions I found called for milk or butter (or both). I thought of making Kim Boyce’s oatmeal bread, which is delicious, replacing the butter with olive oil, but the making of that recipe is not as straightforward

Panzanella with a Spanish touch - perfect for the weekend

I remember the first time I made panzanella at home: it was a revelation. Who could have thought that a salad made with stale bread would be so delicious? The Italians, of course. :)

As much as I love Italian food – half of the blood in my veins is Italian, after all – I have added a couple of Spanish touches to my panzanella: crispy chorizo, chickpeas, sherry vinegar in the dressing. The

Roasted garlic pecorino focaccia

I can say that after the lovely Ina my favorite Food Network presenter is Rachael Ray – she is fun and her food always looks good – even though most of the times her portions look too generous to me. :)

She constantly says how much she loves garlic and I always relate to that: I have a heavy hand with it comes to adding garlic to my food and usually double the amount requested in recipes (

Gorgonzola and fresh oregano grissini

At home we like nibbling very much, especially on weekends, and that came to my mind as I set up a plate of bread, cheese and fruit last Saturday for dinner: a glass of wine and the meal was perfect.
Sometimes we have guacamole with homemade tortillas, and of course there are days I don’t even want to enter the kitchen: those are the days for pizza. :)

If you are feeling a bit more

Apple cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing

Baking bread is something I deeply enjoy, even though I have not done that much lately. Unless you have access to good artisanal bakeries (which are very few here in Sao Paulo), it is the only guaranteed way of having good bread on the table.

These apple rolls were my idea to turn the humble cinnamon roll into something even more special, to get people interested in them again – like Nic

My tuna salad sandwiches

My husband and I are not people who swap meals for sandwiches very often – we do like our rice and beans, soups, pasta dishes, and now Joao has some serious competition on my Bolognese sauce, since my 2 ½ year-old nephew loves it as much as Joao does. <3

However, when burgers or tuna salad sandwiches are involved we are happy to have sandwiches for lunch or dinner, and more recently, the

Coconut sour cream buns and polarizing flavors

I thought I was crazy for sweets until I started working at my current job, two years ago: my coworkers are addicted to all kinds of sweets, and being a Swiss company you can imagine the ridiculous amounts of chocolate coming every time someone travels from headquarters to Sao Paulo. :)

One of the executives at the office keeps a jar of candy on top of his desk, and the group is welcome to get

Beef and leek pide

I believe that the first time I saw/heard of Turkish pizza was watching one of the episodes of the fantastic Ottolenghi's Mediterranean Island Feast, a long time ago – what he actually made was called lahmacun and it looked absolutely delicious, topped with a fresh salad.

Fast forward many months and I was reading about pide recipes on a magazine (the Australian Delicious, if I am not

Soft rye bread with sardine rillette and more childhood memories

Many, many months ago, while I still had plans to write a book, I was reading about rillettes and found them very interesting – as I read recipes for pork rillettes, I instantly thought of my mother and her love for this kind of meat, which I link to her German heritage.

As I thought of how much she would love that kind of rustic pâté, I also remembered the sardine salad (which we call “patê”

Pesto and cheese rolls and family traditions

Yesterday I started thinking about family traditions and how some of them go from one generation to the other, sometimes without us even noticing.

My brother and I have become much closer since my nephew was born, and that brings me a lot of joy. So on weekends we are inevitably all together, either they come to visit Joao and I or we visit them – I love that. It reminds me of when I was

Panettone

Even though I have been posting Christmas recipes at this time of the year for a long long time, I have not baked panettone – or chocottone, for that matter – in ages. We sometimes get panettones as gifts, and my husband sometimes buys some at this time of the year.

This year, however, Joao told me he wanted homemade panettone and since I was on a Christmas state of mind I decided to make it.

Cheese and poppy seed bread sticks

It has been incredibly hot here in Sao Paulo lately, so turning on the oven is a matter of courage – as much as I love baking, and I do, you know, if possible I stay away from the kitchen while the oven does all the work. And sometimes I also try to make things to nibble with a cold beer or a glass of Prosecco instead of actually cooking – I feel like a complete loser in the summer, for the

Olive oil buns and great news

There hasn’t been a new post around here in a good while but there is a good reason for that: my job hunt has come to an end! Days ago I started working in a new company (for those of you who don’t know, I work as an executive assistant) and it was a very busy week – it was all about meeting lots of new people, getting to know how the company works and the details of my job description. I feel

Caramelized onion and gruyere focaccia and the excellent "Bloodline"

Now that I have brought my husband to the dark side – the side of the addicted to TV series – he keeps asking me what we’ll watch next: I find it both funny and lovely and I hope he stays this way for good. :)

We finished watching the first season of The Americans and while Netflix doesn’t bring us more episodes – I cannot wait! – I suggested we watched Bloodline, for its great cast and