FOOD RECIPES

Mushrooms Spread with White Wine and Parmesan Cheese

2017-01-06T22:50:00.000-08:00

Ingredients: 5 oz butter (150 g), 2 oz parmesan cheese (60 g), 10 oz mushrooms (300 g), 1 medium sweet onion (3 oz or 90 g), 2 table spoons of sunflower or olive oil (1 oz fl or 30 ml), 1 bay leaf, 2 table spoons of white wine (2 oz fl or 60 ml), ground black pepper, dill, parsley, salt.

1. Wash the mushrooms very well and chop them as fine as you can.

2. Chop the onion in very small pieces and stir it in hot oil for 1 minute.

3. Cover the pot and boil the mix for 30 minutes at low flame.

4. After 3o minutes remove the pot from the stove and add some fine chopped dill and parsley.

5. Take the butter out of the refrigerator and let it stay at room temperature to get softer.

6. Mix the butter and the cooked mushrooms thoroughly (remove the bay leaf before mixing).

7. Grade the parmesan cheese; half of it mix it with the butter and the cooked mushrooms and the other half spread it uniformly on top of the mix.

Serve the spread cold with fresh baguette, crackers or pita bread.

Tomatoes and Bell Peppers Filled with Chicken Liver Pate

2017-01-06T22:47:00.001-08:00

Ingredients: 10 oz chicken liver (300g), 3 oz butter (90g), one small sweet onion (3 oz or 90 g), small tomatoes, small bell peppers, ground black pepper, salt.

1. Clean the chicken liver of all skins.

2. Fill up a pot with water and bring it to boil.

3. Add the chicken liver, boil it, and cool it down to room temperature.

4. Chop the sweet onion in very small pieces.

5. Let the butter soften to be easy to mix.

6. Mash the chicken liver.

7. Mix the mashed chicken liver with butter and onion.

8. Add salt and black pepper to your taste.

9. Cut the tops of the tomatoes and the bell peppers.

10. Scoop the tomatoes with a spoon and clean the inside of the bell peppers.

11. Fill the tomatoes and the bell peppers with the chicken liver pate.

Serve them with French or Italian style bread.

The chicken liver pate by itself could be also served as a spread on fresh baguette or crackers with pickles.

Roast Duck with Fried Sauerkraut

2017-01-06T22:44:00.000-08:00

Ingredients: one 4-5 lb duck (2-2.5 kg), 2 big onions, 1 big head of garlic, 2-3 big carrots, 2-3 big parsnips, 2 lb sauerkraut, 2-3 tomatoes, 1 red bell pepper, 3 table spoons sunflower or olive oil (3 oz fl or 90 ml), ground black pepper, ground paprika, 1 bay leaf, salt.

1. Use 2 oz fl oil (60 ml) to wet an Aluminum cooking tray and place the duck in the tray.

2. Cut one onion in pieces (about 6 pieces)

3. Cut the carrots and the parsnips in 2 in (5 cm) pieces.

4. Separate the garlic in cloves.

5. Place the onions, carrots and parsnips pieces as well as the garlic cloves in the tray, spreading them uniform around the duck. Add salt and ground black pepper.

6. Preheat the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius).

7. Cover the cooking tray with Aluminum foil and place it in the oven.

8. Every half hour check the duck with a fork (the fork has to go in easily), and use a cooking oil pump to spray the duck with the juice formed in the tray every time you check it.

9. Place one table spoon (1 oz fl or 30 ml) of oil in a frying pan and heat it up on the stove.

10. Chop the other onion and the red bell pepper and slice the tomatoes.

11. Stir fry the onion until is starting to get yellowish.

12. Add the sauerkraut and the red bell pepper and stir every 2-3 minutes until the juice is gone.

13. Add the tomatoes, the bay leaf, salt, ground black pepper, ground paprika and keep stirring for another 10-15 minutes.

14. When the duck is almost done, remove the Aluminum foil cover, spray the duck with the juice using the cooking oil pump, and live it uncovered for another 10-15 minutes (or until is forming a medium brown crust) increasing the temperature to 400 degrees Fahrenheit (around 200 degrees Celsius).

Place the duck on top of the sauerkraut in a big plate and serve it hot with Italian or French style bread.

Red Cabbage Salad with Head Cheese

2017-01-06T22:39:00.001-08:00

Ingredients: one 1-2 lb red cabbage (0.5-1 kg), 0.5-1 lb head cheese (250-500 g), 1-2 table spoons olive oil (1-2 oz fl or 30-60 ml), 3 table spoons apple vinegar (3 oz fl or 90 ml), ground black pepper, salt.

1. Chop the cabbage and place it in a bowl.

2. Slice the head cheese and add it to the same bowl.

3. Add the oil, the apple vinegar, salt, ground black pepper and mix them thoroughly.

Serve the salad with Italian or French baguette.

Save Money - Make Secret Restaurant Recipes at Home!

2017-01-06T22:37:00.000-08:00

Learn the expert cooking techniques for over 300 top restaurant recipes. Save money and skip those long lines. Get the step by step instructions for making America's most wanted recipes in your own kitchen.

The average American family eats out 3 or more times per week. Considering the amount of money it costs for a decent meal these days, this can easily translate into hundreds of dollars spent on food each month.

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Uncover the cooking techniques used by world class chefs from famous restaurants.

Endive Salad with Olives

2017-01-06T22:30:00.003-08:00

The endive salad is a healthy salad when you use the right salad dressing.

Endive is rich in many vitamins and minerals, especially in folate and vitamins A and K, and is high in fiber. This veggie is called sometimes chicory. It is an edible annual leafy vegetable belonging to the daisy family and can be cooked or used raw in endive salad. The leaves are delicate tasting, just slightly bitter. Originally from Egypt and Indonesia, it has been cultivated in Europe since the 16th century. This veggie is grown in Belgium, France, and also in California. There are two kind of endives: the narrow-curly used mostly for salads and the broad-leaved endive, also called escarole and used for cooking.

For endive salad you have to pick up the best Belgian endive when the leaves are tight at the top of the veggie and have a nice white color with golden yellow tips.

Belgian endive is grown from chicory roots in a dark environment using a labor-intensive growing technique called "blanching". Belgian endive was discovered by a chicory farmer who stored the roots for drying to use them as coffee substitute. After a few months, he found the roots had sprouted tender white leaves with a slightly bitter taste. Belgian endive grows to about six inches in length, is shaped like a torpedo, and can be refrigerated for 1-2 weeks. It grows in different colors (green, yellow, and red), and since there is no difference between these varieties, you can mix them to create a great looking endive salad.

Ingredients: 5 Belgian endive heads, half pound of black olives (I prefer Kalamata olives), juice from one medium size lemon, 2 spoons of olive oil, salt and ground black pepper to taste.

1. Wash thoroughly the endives and separate their foils (if you prefer, you can chop them big, like 1 inch in width).

2. Pit the olives.

3. Mix the endives with the olives in a large serving bowl.

4. For the salad dressing mix olive oil and lemon juice.

5. Add salt and ground black pepper to the salad dressing and mix well.

6. Pour the salad dressing in your endive salad little by little, toss gently, and taste every time.

Serve the endive salad immediately with fresh Italian or French baguette or as a side to the main course.

Thanksgiving Turkey with Cooked Sauerkraut

2017-01-06T22:27:00.004-08:00

Ingredients: one turkey, 2 big onions, 1 big head of garlic, 2-3 big carrots, 2-3 big parsnips, 2 lb sauerkraut, 2-3 tomatoes, 1 red bell pepper, 2 medium size apples, 1 small red cabbage, 3 table spoons sunflower or olive oil (3 oz fl or 90 ml), ground black pepper, ground paprika, 1 bay leaf, salt.

1. Use 2 oz fl oil (60 ml) to wet an Aluminum cooking tray and place the turkey in the tray.

2. Cut one onion in pieces (about 6 pieces)

3. Cut the carrots and the parsnips in 2 inch (5 cm) pieces.

4. Separate the garlic in cloves.

5. Place the onion, carrot, and parsnip pieces as well as the garlic cloves in the tray, spreading them uniform around the turkey. Add salt and ground black pepper.

6. Stuff the apples inside the turkey.

7. Preheat the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius).

8. Cover the cooking tray with Aluminum foil and place it in the oven.

9. Every half hour check the turkey with a fork (the fork has to go in easily if the turkey is cooked), and use a cooking oil pump to spray the turkey with the juice formed in the tray every time you check it.

10. Place one table spoon (1 oz fl or 30 ml) of oil in a wok and heat it up on the stove.

11. Chop the other onion, the red cabbage, and the red bell pepper and slice the tomatoes.

12. Stir fry the onion in the wok is starting to get yellowish.

13. Add the sauerkraut, the red cabbage, and the red bell pepper and stir every 2-3 minutes until all juice is gone.

14. Add the tomatoes, the bay leaf, salt, ground black pepper, ground paprika and keep stirring for another 10-15 minutes.

15. When the turkey is almost done, remove the Aluminum foil cover, spray the turkey with the juice using the cooking oil pump, and live it uncovered for another 10-15 minutes (or until is forming a medium brown crust) increasing the temperature to 400 degrees Fahrenheit (around 200 degrees Celsius).

16. Take the turkey out of the tray and place it on a big plate on top of the cooked sauerkraut.

Serve it hot with Italian or French style bread.

Romanian Christmas Gargantuan Feast

2017-01-06T22:22:00.001-08:00

On Christmas Day, Romanians are gathering early after noon to celebrate this holiday with plenty of gourmet food and drinks. Here is where Romans learned it from.

For starters there is "Tuica" (Romanian plum liquor), boiled egg whites stuffed with fresh chicken liver pate or with anchovies paste, olives, sardines, lemon slices, cold cuts (several kinds of salami and ham including "salam de Sibiu", Romanian gipsy ham, Romanian jambon, "kaiser", "babic", "ghiudem"), spicy or sweet mustard, Romanian sheep and cow feta cheese, Romanian "cascaval", smoked "cas" and other cheeses including "brinza de burduf", tomatoes stuffed with a mix of feta and cottage cheese, black and red caviar with toast and butter, pike caviar spread, and several meat and cheese pastries ("pateuri" and "saleuri"). Home made bread or fresh white bread baguette from bakery it's a must for the entire feast. A Romanian dry white wine ("Feteasca Alba" from different wineries) and mineral water for white wine spritzer it's necessary to wash down all these. Romania is one of the world's largest wine producers, so there is a huge variety of wines to choose from.

After a couple of hours, it comes the next round: beef salad with mayonnaise ("salata de boeuf"), pork in gelatin ("piftie de pork") served with various pickled vegetables (green tomatoes, red bell peppers, cauliflower, cabbage, baby watermelon, celery, carrots, cucumbers), stuffed pike or perch with mayonnaise, "saramura de crap" (carp in brine) and grilled catfish served with Romanian garlic sauce ("mujdei de usturoi") and "mamaliga" (cornmeal boiled into a porridge). All these are washed down with a Romanian dry white wine and mineral water for white wine spritzer.

Now it's time for a Turkish coffee break.

Around six o'clock, a new round of food it's served: Romanian hot and sour soup with meatballs or pork meat (green or red chili peppers are brought extra for whoever likes it spicy hot) and stuffed cabbage with or without sour cream served with "mamaliga". "Tuica" is the drink of choice for these dishes.

After a short break, it's time for meat and Romanian meat specialties for Christmas: home made pork sausages, pork liver sausage ("caltabos"), head cheese, pork organs (liver, heart, kidneys) grilled or roast, pork and wild game roast with sliced baked potatoes. All these are served with various pickled vegetables (green tomatoes, red bell peppers, cauliflower, cabbage, baby watermelon, celery, carrots, cucumbers) and several kinds of mustard. Romanian red wine ("Babeasca", "Pietroasele" or "Feteasca Neagra" from different Romanian wineries) are just right for these dishes.

Another Turkish coffee break to make room for desserts is appropriate after this round.

Around eight o'clock, the desserts and fruits are brought over: sweet pastries and house made cookies, a few kinds of "cozonac" (Romanian babka) with nuts, raisins, poppy seeds, chocolate, cake with chocolate and vanilla, chocolate tortes, grapes, apples, oranges, pineapples, mandarins, bananas, pears. Those are served with a dessert wine like "Grasa de Cotnari" or "Muscat Ottonel de Murfatlar" and, of course, Turkish coffee.

And if this is not enough, one can start again from the beginning.

Little known Gourmet Food Recipes

2007-06-27T22:42:00.000-07:00

This is a collection of gourmet food recipes as my mother taught me and I creatively enhanced and adapted to the actual conditions. Try them with special occasions and I guarantee you are going to impress your guests. If you are getting hooked please visit this blog often since new recipes are going to be posted. If you need exotic recipes for special occasions, please contact me at info@foodrecipesbooks.com and I will create that unique menu for your event.

Romanian cuisine is little known internationally although includes a variety of very tasty dishes. It is influenced mostly by the Greek, French, Russian, Middle Eastern, Italian, German, and Hungarian cuisines based on the geographical position and historical background of the country. It is also marked by an abundance of natural ingredients available for cooking a gourmet meal. Try more recipes at www.foodrecipesbooks.com

Potatoes Salad with Smoked Fish

2007-06-27T21:30:00.000-07:00

Ingredients: smoked fish (preferably smoked whitefish), mayonnaise, potatoes, olives (I preffer Kalamata olives), salt, black pepper, sweet onion.
1. Boil the potatoes in water with one teaspoon of salt. Do not overboil them.
2. Peel the potatoes while they are still warm and let them cool down.
3. Slice the potatoes in 1/4 inch pieces.
4. Clean the smoked fish of the bones and skin and dice it in 1/2 inch pieces.
5. Pit the olives and cut them in halves.
6. Slice the sweet onion as thin as you can.
7. Mix the potatoes, smoked fish, olives, sweet onion and mayonaise in a bowl.
8. Add salt and black pepper to taste and mix the salad carefully to not mash the potatoes.
Refrigerate the salad for a few hours and serve it cold with fresh Italian or French style white bread.

Hot and Sour Soup with Turkey

2007-06-10T21:37:00.000-07:00

Ingredients: turkey dark meat and organs (wings, necks, gizzards, harts, livers, drumsticks), onions, bell peppers, tomatoes, carrots, parsnip, dried black pepper seeds, sauerkraut juice, salt, lovage, chili peppers.

1. Boil the turkey meat with a couple of whole onions, a little salt and dried black pepper seeds in a deep pot untill the meat is almost completely cooked, scooping the foam out.

2. Slice the carrots and the parsnip in 1/2 - 1 inch pieces.

3. Take the meat out on a plate, add the carrots and the parsnip and boil them.

4. Slice the bell peppers and the tomatoes and add them together with the meat.

5. Add the sauerkraut juice and salt to taste, and boil the soup for a few minutes.

6. Dice the chili peppers and add them to taste.

7. Dice the lovage and season the soup.

This soup should be served hot with white Italian or French style fresh bread.

Spring Salad

2007-06-06T21:00:00.000-07:00

Ingredients: tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, cucambers, salt, black pepper powder, vinegar, and sunflower oil.
1. Slice the tomatoes and the bell peppers.
2. Slice onions very thin.
3. Slice the cucambers thin.
4. Mix the tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, and cucambers with the sunflower oil and vinegar added to taste.
5. Add salt and black pepper powder to taste and mix well.
Could be served as appetizer or together with the main course.

Eggplant Salad Spread

2007-05-26T22:17:00.000-07:00

Ingredients: eggplants, sweet onion, sunflower oil, tomatoes, salt.

Make sure the eggplants are hard. The soft ones usually have a lot of big seeds, and this is not what you need. You want to use hard eggplants with less seeds. The Chinese eggplants are ideal for this dish, but the Italian ones will work as well.

1. Grill the eggplants on medium fire untill become very soft and the peel is changing color. Sometimes the peel might open up with a popping noise.

2. After they are grilled, and while they are still warm, peel off the eggplants in warm water.

3. Squeeze the peeled eggplants very well one by one and put them in a food processor.

4. Add sunflower oil slowly and little by little taking a 2 minutes break after each one-spoon add. The adds should be made while mixing. The color becomes lighter.

5. Add salt also little by little during mixing (to taste).

6. Fine-dice a sweet onion (you can use the food processor for this) and squeeze it untill most of the water is eliminated.

7. Add the diced onion to the spread and mix it vigorously with a spoon.

Refrigerate the salad for a few hours and serve it with sliced tomatoes and Italian or French style fresh white bread.

If you want to really impress your guests, use the eggplant salad to fill up tomatoes and serve them on a nice aperitives platter.

Here are a couple of more versions of the eggplant salad for different taste:

A. Instead of sunflower oil you can use mayonnaise to taste and mix it with the eggplants in the food processor without adding any onion.

B. For the garlic lovers: fine-dice a few garlic clovers and add them to the eggplant salad before refrigeration.

One Middle Eastern version of this spread is known as Baba Ghanoush.

Tomatoe Salad with Feta Cheese - Greek Salad

2007-05-26T21:48:00.000-07:00

Ingredients: tomatoes, a couple of red and yellow or orange bell peppers, scallions, black olives (I prefer Kalamata olives), sheep feta cheese (my preferences are Romanian or Bulgarian sheep feta cheese), salt, black pepper powder, and olive oil.
1. Slice the tomatoes and the bell peppers.
2. Dice the scallions in half inch pieces.
3. Pit the olives and dice them.
4. Cut the feta cheese in half inch cubes.
5. Mix the tomatoes, bell peppers, scallions, and feta cheese, with the olive oil.
6. Add salt and black pepper powder to taste and mix well.
7. Top the salad with sheep feta cheese crumbs or graded sheep feta cheese. Serve imediately with fresh Italian or French style white bread.

Food Diet and Exercise can prevent Cancer

2007-05-24T22:07:00.001-07:00

This article was attributed to John Hopkins Hospital initially but the hospital claims that they did not publish it. However, the article contains a lot of information which makes sense to me:

1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billions. When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.
2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person's lifetime.
3. When the person's immune system is strong, the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.
4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle factors.
5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including supplements will strengthen the immune system.
6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastro-intestinal tract etc, and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.
7. Radiation, while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.
8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor size. However, prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.
9. When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and radiation, the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and complications. 10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.
11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer cells by not feeding it with the foods it needs to multiply. CANCER CELLS FEED ON:
a. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer cells. Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc are made with Aspartame and this might be harmful. A better natural substitute would be Manuka honey or molasses but only in very small amounts.

b. Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in color. Better alternative is Bragg's aminos or sea salt.
c. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened soy milk cancer cells are being starved.
d. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.

e. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole grains, seeds, nuts and a little fruits help put the body into an alkaline environment. About 20% can be from cooked food including beans. Fresh vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to cellular levels within 15 minutes to nourish and enhance growth of healthy cells. To obtain live enzymes for building healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).
f. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine. Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer-fighting properties. It is best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.
12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines becomes putrefied and leads to more toxic buildup.

13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining from or eating less meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the body's killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.
14. Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6, Flor-ssence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the body's own killer cells to destroy cancer cells. Other supplements like vitamin E are known to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body's normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.
15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor. Anger, unforgiveness and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.
16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment. Exercising daily and deep breathing help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells.
17. No plastic containers in microwave. Recently, Dr. Edward Fujimoto, Manager of the Wellness and Lifestyle Medicine Department at Castle Medical Center in Hawaii, was on a TV program to explain this health hazard. He talked about dioxins and how bad they are for us. He said that we should not be heating our food in the microwave using plastic containers. This especially applies to foods that contain fat. He said that the combination of fat, high heat, and plastics releases dioxin into the food and ultimately into the cells of the body. Instead, he recommends using glass, such as Corning Ware, Pyrex or ceramic containers for heating food. You get the same results, only without the dioxin. So such things as TV dinners, instant ramen and soups, etc., should be removed from the container and heated in something else. Paper isn't bad but you don't know what is in the paper. It's just safer to use tempered glass, Corning Ware, etc. He reminded us that a while ago some of the fast food restaurants moved away from the foam containers to paper. The dioxin problem is one of the reasons.
18. No water bottles in freezer. Dioxin chemicals cause cancer, especially breast cancer. Dioxins are highly poisonous to the cells of our bodies. Don't freeze your plastic bottles with water in them as this releases dioxins from the plastic.
19. No plastic wrap in microwave. Also, Dr. Edward Fujimoto pointed out that plastic wrap, such as Saran, is just as dangerous when placed over foods to be cooked in the microwave. As the food is nuked, the high heat causes poisonous toxins to actually melt out of the plastic wrap and drip into the food. Cover food with a paper towel instead.