Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

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.
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Blueberry muffins, A Sunday’s afternoons delight.
Photo © JE Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson for CMC 2011

Sunday afternoon, I’m leafing through at least two cookbooks and several leaflets of muffin recipes that my mother had handed over to me over the years, in search of consistencies between the recipes. I could of course try the Internet too, but that would most likely compound the problem of coming up with a trustworthy recipe for something as simple as a muffin, since depending on culture and beliefs about information sharing, authentic recipes over the Internet are rare finds.

I used 300 grams of deep frozen blue berries softly stirred with white sugar. Whole fresh berries might have been better.

In this day of social media where technology lends overwhelming support to the creation and sustenance of the knowledge economy, it leads to the fact that a lot of people are managing their expert know-how to their cooking by just not wanting to tell how they do it, thus leading to any number of nonsense recipes on the Internet, being just plain wrong.

It’s frustrating, time consuming and infuriating to not be able to get all details to the cooking or baking, from the ingredients and their quantities, to more precise information such as when eggs are best used, to if they should be cold or room temperature before whisking them them together with some butter to get the right consistency.
Continue reading “Blueberry Muffins Knowledge Conceptualization and the Knowledge Spiral” →

Walnut in honey, with aged parmigiano reggiano hard cheese from Parma, Italy.
J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011

One of the most fun culinary discovery trips is when you take a known concept and add a twist to it. Here, we’re having Parmigiano Reggiano from Kulla Gourmet, a company whose family produces the cheese in Parma, Italy, accompanied with walnuts in honey, produced by another family owned Swedish company, Birgittas Matbod in Öland.

It was during our 2008 visit to Florence, Italy, dining at Trattoria Quatro Leoni we experienced a memorable moment having Italian hard cheese with honey. And since then, we’ve been experimenting with different honey, cheese and wine combinations. (See, A caseinic tour of Europe), trying to find our favourite combination of flavours.

We brought back a few things from the past week’s Passion för Mat food fair, and this weekend lent a serendipitous discovery by combining Swedish made walnuts and honey to our 24 months old Swedish-Italian Parmigiano Reggiano. What’s more? No cooking needed. Simply cut the cheese into squares, lay it on the plate, pour out the walnuts in honey… and enjoy!1

Triple chocolate, chocolate chip cookies with Pacari 100% organic raw cacao.
Photo © JE Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson for CMC 2011

The event for all food lovers in Sweden is happening end of this week, Passion för Mat! from 25-27 February, 2011 at Erikbergshallen in Gothenburg.

At this year’s tradefair, as with Passion för Mat 2010, a segment of the very large hall will be dedicated to an open to public Cooking School or Köksskolan, where reknowned personalities from the food industry and celebrity Chefs make their appearance at various hours, tutoring and entertaining the public on how to cook different types of food. What sounds most interesting this year is Friday’s (25th February, 15:00 hrs) focus on the basic raw ingredient of eggs and how best to fry an Omelette, where a competition will be held to see who can serve up the best creation! That, and several tutorials on from how to best cook fish and wild meat to how to cook Vietnamese and Italian, will be topics that pique my interest.
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Our Valentine’s Day shortbread cookies, being dusted with icing sugar.
Photo © JE Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson for CMC 2011

I’ve been meaning to come up with some very decadent and fancy, most likely chocolate filled dessert this Valentine’s Day in celebration of Friendship, Passion and Love. Most everything crossed my mind from raspberry filled molten lava chocolate cake to Dulce de Leche brownies and chocolate fudge cake laced with Amaretto or Kahlúa.

But after pondering recipes and life experiences, my thoughts often came back to butter cookies and shortbread cookies. Shortbread was central in my life because it was my Mother’s favourite cookie. And it was also what I was immediately offered, crusted over with granulated sugar, first thing I stepped into my grandmother’s house regardless of whether it was lunch or tea or dinner.

Shortbread is, in all its simplicity, decadent and luxurious. What makes it so irresistible is the ratio of butter to flour and sugar that make these cookies melt in your mouth by the touch of the tip of your tongue to the cookie. Breathe over it and you risk having the cookie turn molten between your fingertips!
Continue reading “Shortbread, an uncomplicated Love” →