Posts by The Culinary Chase

This aromatic sweet is perfect for a picnic or backyard barbecue. The Basbousa, a Middle Eastern dessert, is sweet and soaked in syrup and has a spongy texture.  Semolina is made from durum wheat and is yellow in color.  It is usually the basis for dried products such as couscous and bulgur as well as…

Sunday dinners at home usually meant meats roasted in the oven or in the summer my Mom would marinate roasts overnight and use the rotisserie on the barbecue. I can still hear the rotisserie as it labored to turn the meat around. Those aromas always strike a chord in my heart and so it was…

Casual entertaining has always appealed to me and I like no-fuss recipes that can be easily made ahead of time and keeps me more in front of my guests than in the kitchen. The following recipe can be prepared up to the point where the spinach is grilled. When your guests arrive, finish off with…

Almost every region in Italy has its version of stuffed pasta. Historically vegetable-based fillings were eaten year round by those too poor to buy meat but such is not the case today.  Homemade pasta is so easy to make and not as fussy as one might think.  Celeriac, (also known as celery root), is an…

For my birthday, my girlfriend Patti gave me the book, Comfort Me with Apples by Ruth Reichl.  I was intrigued to read it as it was Ms. Reichl’s memoirs of her becoming a restaurant critic, not that I want to become one, just curious as to how people people get their start in such a…

Fiddleheads, you ask, are the unfurled fronds of a young ostrich fern. They are collected in the wild before the frond has opened and sold as a seasonal vegetable in stores and outdoor markets.  They are called fiddleheads because they resemble the curled ornamentation (scroll) on the end of a stringed instrument, such as a fiddle. …

I enjoy reading other food blogger recipes and Peter, from Kalofagas (Greek Food and Beyond), is one I view on a regular basis.  His food postings always show at least three or four photos of each recipe along with tidbits of information allowing the reader to get a feel for the dish from start to…

I’m a big fan of salads especially those that are as simple to make and as nutritious as this one.  Spinach is an excellent source of vitamins and minerals. Researchers have identified at least 13 different flavonoid compounds in spinach that function as antioxidants and as anti-cancer agents. It is also a source of calcium…

There’s something about comfort food that strikes a chord in all of us. And, quite honestly, who hasn’t experienced a food memory?   It’s that sense of easy satisfaction from being warm, feeling full from a meal and the surroundings from which it was made.  Comfort food invokes feelings of nostalgia and of food that…