Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

In Sweden, you’ll recognize Mazariner as oval shaped tarts topped with a white icing glaze. A variation of it has raspberry jam either in the tart or on top of it.
Photo: J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011

These Swedish Almond Tarts, called Mazariner (Mazarin for singular) are possibly 400 years old cousins and variations of the Italian crosata di mandorle or torta di mandorle. Their heritage is apparent in their etymology, named after the Italian-French cardinal and politician, Giulio Raimondo Mazzarino or Jules Mazarin (1602-1661). He was born in southern Italy and raised in Rome. Apart from suceeding the powerful Cardinal Richelieu, Cardinal Mazarin was a food lover who together with Anne of Austria (Queen of France, 1615), with whom he had good relations with, was one of the few Italians who widely promoted pasta throughout France. It’s thus little surprising that these almond tarts who have his name to it, found their way in variations across Europe, seeing that Cardinal Jules was Chief Minister of France at the time with numerous foreign relations.
Continue reading “Mazariner – The Swedish Almond Tarts” →

Easy lunch – a soft dark bread sandwich with fried smoked and salted ‘kassler’ ham, soft boiled eggs and caviar with homemade mayonnaise and a dill and mustard sauce.
Photo: J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011

Sandwiches were never at the top of my list of wonderful things to eat, perhaps because I grew up in Singapore associating it with school excursions and picnic food. Sandwiches were packed and brought along wrapped in tin foil or placed in Tupperware only because you were going to eat on the school bus that day. What we’d end up with halfway through the scorching day-trip would be a cold and soggy thinginabox for lunch. Not too appetizing and certainly not something you’d voluntarily order on a plate, for any substantial meal.

Though notably English in etymology with the Earl of Sandwich giving a name to the concept of eating meat on top of bread and butter, it was the American culture that distinctly drew my focus on the sandwich as a meal per se. For example, I completely enjoy the segment on A Sandwich a Day in Serious Eats, looking forward to new pictures of sandwiches posted from different parts of the USA every other day. It’s never boring.
Continue reading “The ham sandwich, generations down from Eliza Leslie’s” →

Decorating eggs for the Easter celebration has had a long tradition, where some wrap the eggs in leaves and onion peel to get natural colouring.
Photo: J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011

I was decidedly going for pastels this year when it came to Easter Eggs, since 2010’s efforts turned out a little too intense.
Continue reading “Easter in pastels” →

A traditional Italian dish also known as Pizza Ripiena, usually eaten on Ash Wednesday and then again on Easter.
Photo: J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011

It was an article in the New York Times that I came across Pizza Rustica. I’ve always been a fan of quiche, so I could not stop myself from trying my hands at creating a version of this typical Italian Easter dish. There are so many things that seem more fun when the sun finally arrives back after a long cold winter up here in the North of Europe. Cooking is one of them.
Continue reading “Pizza Rustica” →