This has been my very very new experience: pears cooked in red wine and flavored with spices. Though I don’t drink much and very often, but I like wine. I feel excited whenever I try a glass of wine and it tastes good. I’ve never read much about wine and I criticize the quality of wine based solely on my taste and liking. But I do hope when conditions allow, I will learn more about wine and wish to experience the varieties of wine more deeply and widely.
Normally I don’t like eating pears, maybe because the taste is not to my liking. Even when I make cakes with pears, I often don’t feel very interested in eating. When I see pears look so good at markets, I will buy some as my husband loves them. This time I bought some small pears then I decided to try this dessert, which I’ve observed in many websites on the Internet. I followed the recipe in one of my cookbooks titled "Guilt-free desserts" – a collection of low-fat desserts. Then, what I liked most was not the pears but the syrup made from red wine which was enhanced with brandy and other spices.
I toasted some pistachios for decoration purpose and for adding texture to the dish. The pear was very tender and the flavor of wine was very deep, it was absorbed a lot into the pears, which made the pears very special in taste.
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I first heard of saffron when I watched TV shows on cooking competitions, seeing great chefs using saffron as special spice in their dish. I was so curious about these tiny red threads and I searched for more information about them. Then I decided to buy a box of saffron threads. It was rather expensive for a small box of around 50g, but each time only a small number of threads are used, so I think it is quite reasonable and that I will not finish a box like this too soon.
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It’s been very cold in Hanoi these days, and I felt like having something hot and crispy, not minding if it is greasy as any dish of this kind is so suitable for these days’ weather. And it is greater to enjoy a bowl of this sweetcorn fritters with my hubby while watching our favorite movies.
It only needs a little preparation in advance for the fritter batter should stand in the fridge for several hours before you can combine it with sweetcorn kernels, then your fritters will taste so good. I followed the recipe from the book "Professional Cooking" by Wayne Gisslen. However, as it is high in calories and fat, I do not suggest to have these fritters often, especially when we just sit and relax as couch-potatoes.
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I seldom eat fast food at fast food restaurants. The only one that I go to more often than the others is Subway, where the meals are supposed to be healthier and that I can choose what I want to add to the sandwich. I remember I’ve eaten burgers just only a few times at McDonald and Burger King. They were not so fancy to mel.
Until I watched Kitchen Nightmare hosted by chef Gordon Ramsay and seeing him making beef burger, I was so inspired to make a real homemade burger. What I like is that I can substitute part of the beef with breadcrumbs, and I can control the amount of onion I want to put in the patty, just that the amount is reasonable to be equally distributed in the ground beef.
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This is the first time I cooked and tasted this kind of cocktail. I am still not sure why this dish is called "cocktail", but finding that the dish seems to be refreshing, I thought: it’s quite simple, why not make a try?
There’s no way I got dissappointed at this dish. It was really great to serve as an appertizer. The colors of the whole cocktail cup were eye-catching with the red and green in harmony with the fine color of the "dressing" or "cocktail sauce"? It had a tangy taste that impressed me right at the first bite. It’s better that you use live prawns (now in Vietnam, I can easily buy live prawns right at wet markets) as they are fresher and the texture is firmer.
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I couldn’t resist the temptation to buy a pack of fresh raspberries. The red color and the small shape of these berries make it impossible for me to leave my eyes away from them.
And they also inspired my fiance to take some pix of them. I will remember these moments for long.
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This was my first experience with tabasco pepper sauce. I found the name in one of my cookbooks, then after searching for information about this sauce, I was curious about how the taste is like. I hesitated to make this corn cakes just because I wondered whether it is available at supermarkets. One day I found it at one giant supermarket and I was glad to make these corn hush puppies.
It was very interesting to eat those small stuffs. They were a little bit spicy but the spicy taste was special due to tabasco sauce. Sweet corn kernels, after being quickly fried, were sitll very juicy and sweet. We almost ate these corn cakes for dinner without having anything else and still felt satisfied with the meal.
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I think this is too much for a weekend breakfast. Without a toaster, I toasted the left-over white bread over direct flame, then fried two eggs for my fiance and me.
I bought a pack of bratwurst several days ago (which was on promotion and sold at attractive price). This was the first time my fiance knew how bratwurst tasted like, though this was only one kind of many varieties of bratwursts.
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