appetizers recipes

This flatbread recipe can be made simply and with no toppings, as a snack or even as a thicker and heavier bread base for your pizza (I must admit that I often like a thick crust). I always have leftover fresh yeast when i make breads and leftover tomato sauce when I make pasta or pizza and this flatbread is perfect for them. This sun-dried tomato...

A POGO is a sausage covered in batter and then fried. Pogos (or cornsdogs) were invented by Germans in Texas in the 1920's. Pogos are as good as they are surprising, you can eat them as a treat during a cocktail-dinner, served alongside other easily held finger foods (my guests loved them). The regular version of pogos uses hotdogs, but I...

There’s a legend about roquefort (that bluish-green specked cheese from southern France) and its accidental invention. I have a thing for legends, folktales, fairytales and myths (and a collection of hundreds of books about these from around the world) so I want to believe it. A young shepherd, whose eye was caught by a fair damsel, left...

Flammekueche (pronounced fla-mu-kush) is an Alsatian (eastern region of France bordering Germany, and part of Germany in the past, so kind of in-between) specialty of a bacon, onion and sour cream topping over a flat bread base, baked in a wood-burning oven. Strata is a clever mix of ingredients (and/or leftovers) laid over a base of day-old bread...

Now here's a perfect solution for a last-minute cocktail event ! Okay, it's mid-week and you're getting home (perhaps a bit earlier than usual) from work and you bump into a few friends and/or neighbors that you haven't had a drink with or chatted with in a while… why not ask them to pass by your place later on to share a...

I always boil too much pasta to go along with my prepared sauce and always leave all that extra pasta on the side which just dries out the next day and is often nibbled on the next day and/or finally thrown away the day after that ! Enough with the wasting of food, you can turn this leftover pasta into a snack. All you need is for the pasta to be...

This is the easier & quicker way to make an almost traditional tzatziki recipe, relatively white like the common version, made with cucumber and yogurt. A simple recipe that (almost) everyone knows and, a modified version of the tzatziki recipe with avocado and green pepper based version with a few changes. The question was how to create...

Chips are good… chips are very very good ! When I used to buy chips, I’d buy 7-10 bags at a time, they were large bags, one per day. I stopped buying chips, not the healthiest of snacks, but anyways I’m not a nutritionist, i just cook/bake/fry stuff. I do miss them. But once in a while, when they’re homemade, they become...

There seems to be something magical (yet crazy) about making your own versions of simpler things we usually can buy at the store such as chips, bread sticks and/or crackers but how about crispy seed crackers. What more can I say ? They’re seedy, they’re crispy, they’re wholesome, they’re great on their own, they go...

Tarama fish roe dip is usually beige or pale pink in colour when home-made or bright pink when industrially-made. The eggs that are traditionally used are either codfish or mullet fish but obviously these are much harder (and expensive) to find and buy than lumpfish eggs, whether red or black, which readily available in 100 gram jars at any...

These salty potato balls are more a method or just a fancy trick so stop giggling ! Anyways, these potato balls are round, salty, airy, crispy, resembling a small hummingbird's nest or a miniature ball of string. Everyone has a tea strainer (or two) lying around so here's a new way to use it. I used regular potatoes, you can perhaps try it...

If you could have only one thing handy when friends pop over for a drink or two, I think this may be it, in replacement of the usual yet appreciated medley of bread, cheese, dried sausage and olives or pickled vegetables… it’s bready, salty, herby, with olives and cheese (I avoided adding some cured ham or sausage but feel free to add...

Usually, I use spinach and feta cheese  for making those little greek spanakopita triangles, a type of soft cheese and egg filling to which you add some cooked vegetables and wrap up in sheets of buttered filo dough (a simple recipe but requiring a longer preparation that you can see here). In the meantime, you can quickly whip these...