This is really not the way to eat mjaddara (mdardara to be exact). But if you’re in Italy and that’s the only way to get some bread around your food… well, beggars can’t be choosers. So here’s Pia’s recipe for the mjaddara (mdardara):

Ingredients: 2 cups of lentils 3/4 cup of rice 1 large onion Some olive oil, salt and pepper + Plenty of onions for the caramelized onion topping! Preparation: Cook the lentils in plenty of water until soft. Wash the rice and add it to the cooking pot. Cover the lid after the water boils again. Let it simmer for about 20 minutes. In the mean time, dice the onion and cook it in just a bit of olive oil until translucent. Add the cooked onion, salt and pepper (to taste) to the other ingredients. Then add 2 large table spoons of extra virgin olive oil to the pot. Mix well, then turn off the heat. Pour in a serving dish and top it with caramelized onions.

The mjaddara is a dish best served cold (like vengeance!). It gets even better tasting after a couple of days in the fridge. The sandwich I made was just some (old) bread, mjaddara, rocca (ruccola), sliced tomatoes and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar to top it off. Simply yummy!

Riomaggiore

Manarola

Corniglia

Vernazza

Monterosso

Le Cinque Terre are five beautiful towns situated on the Italian Riviera,  in the Ligurian region of Italy. The five villages are: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore.

These fives towns are famous for their beautiful landscapes that overlook the sea, their panoramic terraces and lack of visible modern development!

Cinque Terre products:

• Pesto (Sauce made from basil leaves, garlic, salt, olive oil, pine nuts and pecorino cheese)
• Anchovies of Monterosso
• Focaccia (Bread topped with herbs)
• Farinata (Bread made with chick-pea flour)
• Sciachetrà (Sweet wine)
• Grappa (Brandy made with the pomace left from winemaking)
• Limoncello
• Grapes
• Olives

Here are some photos of the coast of the Italian Riviera as seen from the towns
The posts that will follow will be displaying photos for each of the towns.

This weekend was very special. We went on Friday afternoon to Cinque Terre in the Italian region of Liguria. The Cinque (five) Terre (lands) are indeed five beautiful towns (Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza & Monterosso) right on the Ligurian coast, all connected by multiple pedestrian paths through the mountains. The towns are also accessible by , train, buses and ferries.
The towns’ economy basically depend on fishing and tourism. Le Cinque Terre are also considered an important national park and a protected marine and land reserve.

Well, right after we arrived to Riomaggiore, the first of the five towns we learned first-hand how friendly everyone is around here… including the Ligurian cats!

You can see beautiful chubby cats everywhere, and they are not afraid of people. All seem to be well fed, well treated and they don’t mind the tourists. We’ve been away from our cat “The Boss” for a while now, and feeling home-sick just a little bit. My husband went to pet one of the cats sitting on side of the street minding its business, and the cat went all cuddly and nice, leaning to rub its chubby head on the back of his hand. It stayed there, and allowed me to pet it myself. Later that night we found another cat (in the next town) that did the same. And another one… well it was raining and the cat was sitting under a bench trying to hide from the sparse drops of rain. Still it welcomed our petting hands on its head, for a little while before it looked away (probably saying to itself: “tourists!”).

Well I decided to write this blog and post some of the pics we got for the Cinque Terre cats!

We did much more than pet cats here. Maybe that should go in another post!

I’ve been eating Spaghetti ala Bolognese for as long as I remember. Well, I thought I have anyway. After I got married though, I truly tasted the Bolognese sauce for the first time (as it should be) and it was even greater.
Well, today we wanted to go to Bologna to taste the real thing. We took a train from Rifredi train station (in Florence) at about 11:30am and got there shortly before 1PM. An easy ride, and we had some time to study what parts of the meetings we missed this week.
Arriving at the train station we did what we customary do as soon as we get to a new city: get the bus tickets. The lady at the tourist information office almost laughed at us, saying we should simply walk over to the center of the city. We got a free map from the information office and waited about 10 minutes for the bus that goes to the center anyway.
We spent a few minutes in the center near the Neptune fountain then quickly decided to go get some food!
We found a nice cozy place (Pietro’s Trattoria) we read (on some blog) it had good food. Pia had the Tagliatelle with Bolognese sauce, and I asked for some Large Raviolli. Well, the tagliatelle was good (as one would imagine), and the raviolli were indeed large, all three pieces! And the wine was simply great. I’ve been drinking Chianti and other Tuscan wines for a while, but this was truly wonderful. It’s a shame we didn’t get any with us, but I forgot to ask for it when we had to leave (some Dutch guy who was behind us struck a conversation with me right after after lunch).
After lunch we strolled around the center, saw the hordes of university students with weird dresses and gothic look filling the streets. It was truly disturbing!
Finally we went back to the center and waited for an hour or so for our train. We tried to find a bus back to the train station, but an old lady looked at us funny and explained (in Italian) that it’s about 500m away, only one bus stop anyway. Well, we walked over and took the train back.
A nice day all in all, I should have ordered the Spaghetti ala Bolognese myself. Maybe next time!

Menu di oggi (today’s menu):

- Primo: Cannelloni con ricotta e spinaci (Spinach & ricotta cannelloni)
- Secondo: Bistecca e ruccola (Steak on a bed of arugula)

We didn’t actually have a salad, but it was too much to eat already.

The recipes are truly simple.

For the primo: We got a box of cannelloni from the supermarket (250gr). We also found a plastic box of spinach all cleaned, cut and ready. Now that’s convenient
On top of that, a 200gr pack of ricotta cheese actually costs less than Labneh. So put that with the spinach and mix, then stuff it all in the canneloni (do not pre-bake those) Pia: season with salt and pepper to taste, also some extra virgin olive oil here to bring the mix together.

Now for the “hard part”, make some “roux”, mix with milk a bit of mascarpone (we had this laying around) and season with salt and pepper.
All in the oven for about 20-30 minutes. Wow! We had half at lunch and I finished off the rest earlier in the evening.

Pia adds: Abdallah missed the fact that I added some grated Parmigiano Reggiano to both the sauce, and on top of the dish before sending it to the oven. It gives a nice color and a wonderful extra taste.

As for the secondo: well, it’s a piece of steak. Season it with some salt and pepper. Put some extra virgin olive oil in the pan (no idea why!) and put the steak there for a couple of minutes. Done!

Of course, just doing the above may give you the worse meal ever. But with my wife, it tastes and looks great. She makes it sound so easy. Heh!

Check out the pics below. And let me know how lucky I am.

“When it rains, it’s definitely time for soups and stews!” says Abdallah.

Today it rained in the morning,  so I decided to cook something special for my dear husband.
It’s been three weeks now that I am cooking almost everyday. The COOP is near, and I ‘m managing with the ingredients here.
So far we’ve had: Tawouk, Mjaddara, Riz w Fasouliah, Balila, Fasouliah Bzeit and Tabbouleh (without mint & bulgur). But we were still craving for stews with rice, and Abdallah had mentioned earlier craving for ‘Aleb Khodra’ (Lebanese vegetables stew).  I had found earlier in the frozen section of the COOP, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables for Minestrone*, and I thought  I could give this traditional italian dish a Lebanese twist

Meat, onion, tomato sauce and paste, pepper and oregano… and cooked rice.

Minestrone: Thick Italian soup made with vegetables, often with the addition of pasta or rice. Common ingredients include beans, onions, celery, carrots, stock, and tomatoes.

We can’t wait to get there, meet all the friends and attend the International Convention by the name:
‘Keep On The Watch!’ (Mt 24:42)

We will spend 7 days in Rome and 2 whole months in Florence.  I will be posting details on this blog everyday and photos too!
Btw, I think my new DSLR, Nikon D90 will be here tonight!! if my big brother Juliano will arrive today from KSA (but we never know exactly when he’s coming, do we????).

Only 6  more days to go! Gotta start packing …

Catch you later guys!

Pia

My Grandmother and mother were coming to have lunch at our place last week.
It all happened the last minute, I was cleaning the house and preparing many things… I was nevertheless  able to make a decent meal.
I cooked a chicken and potato casserole (with wine and mushroom) and even made a delicious banana cake. But what about salad?  Granny loves cabbage! and that’s how the idea of  this combination came out:

Ingredients:

• Cabbage (mixture or green & red cabbage) julienned
• Carrots shredded
• Avocado (cut to cubes)
• Lemon Juice
• Olive oil
• Parmesan shavings
• Walnuts crushed
• Salt & pepper to taste

Preparation:

Mix the cabbage and carrots together and add the lemon juice, salt & pepper and olive oil.
Serve them in a big salad plate, distribute the avocado cubes evenly on top.
Use a potato peeler to make Parmesan shavings to garnish the salad.

Bon appetit!

I decided to cook again the recipe that my husband liked a lot last time, Pumpkin pasta with my own twist this time.
This Pumpkin weights about 4kgs. I only used half of it for this recipe.

Pumpkins

Ingredients:

• 2 kgs  Pumpkin  peeled, seeds removed & cut to cubes
• 1 pack of spaghetti pasta
• 2 onions diced
• 1 clove of garlic
• salt & pepper to taste
• 2 teaspoon cinnamon (goes really well with pumpkin)
• 2 cubes of chicken stock (not liquid, the pumpkin contains enough water)
• 1/4 cup of white wine (whatever is available)
• 2 tbsp of pine nuts for garnish
• 2 tbsp olive oil

Preparation:

Heat the olive oil in a non-stick pan, then add the onions on medium heat for 5 mns or until they become translucent.
Add the garlic and stir for one minute, then add the pumpkin, salt, pepper cinnamon and close the lid and let it simmer for 25 minutes or until the pumpkin becomes tender.
At this stage you can prepare the pasta by adding the pasta to the salted boiling water,  and cook it according the package instructions.
Now we can add the wine to the pan and the stock cubes after splitting them to pieces and stir until they dissolve
Taste and adjust seasoning.
Serve the pumpkin and the pasta together and garnish with pine nuts

Hope that you will enjoy this recipe, I promise to post a photo of the dish soon.

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