Semiserious Chefs

In the Norse cooking of Sweden, Norway, and Finland, potatoes usually accompany a main dish that may have a sauce and fresh herbs already included, so often they just serve the potatoes boiled and skinned to be added to the main plate and mashed with either butter or the main sauce. Here we have roasted […]

‘Ground Provisions’ was a rather obscure sounding dish when I first came across it. Interestingly it’s a pretty straight forward idea. They are simply ground-based vegetables, AKA roots, tubers, corms, and rhizomes, that are providing the carbohydrates for the meal. These are most often potatoes, sweet potatoes, African/Asian yams, taro, cassava, squash, or plantains, even […]

This punny recipe came about with my desire to learn new uses for African and Asian yams. When I say yam, you probably think of those dark orange sweet potatoes they sell in most every US market. They are, in fact, exactly that, sweet potatoes. I know, this is where you say, “No, no, no! Sweet […]

This super easy and very cheap salad can be served warm or cold. The recipe below makes for a mildly hot dressing. You can of-course add more chili as desired. The same goes for the sesame oil. I tend to only like a little bit in my dishes, but feel free to add more to […]

Though taken from the name of a town in Spain, Marbella is actually an American made recipe based off of the flavors of that region. All the rage among the shoulder pad clad who’s-who of the 80’s, chicken marbella was the creative genus of Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins, proprietors of the very trendy Silver […]

Manakish, pronounced manakeesh, is a very popular flat bread from the Middle East. It is most commonly topped with a za’atar blend, but can also be found topped with tomatoes, local cheeses, ground seasoned lamb, chilies, or greens. It can be sliced or served whole, and eaten flat or folded. Manakish is common for both […]

At the store recently I asked Nathan what kind of vegetable he would like to go with dinner and he picked out some nice looking zucchini. I know there are a lot of people who are not really fans of zucchini. In fact, I don’t often get it myself. I am simply not a ‘Spiralizor’ […]

Last week I began my journey to explore tapas. I started with a hilarious adventure in making chorizo al vino, then the much more successful recipe, Galician Scallops. This week I wanted to make boquerones but it requires fresh anchovies, and I just don’t have access to any at the moment. Instead I stumbled across […]

Ojingeo means squid, and chae means shredded or julienne so Ojingeochae (오징어채) is dried squid strips, and then you add muchim (무침) meaning mixed to title the dish. As the second half of the name implies the sauce and the dried squid strips, (already processed with salt and sometimes sugar,) are simply mixed together and […]

Htipiti, Kopanisti, Tirokafteri I know those words are each a mouthful. χτυπητή: htee-pee-tee or ktee-pee-tee (also written as ktipiti or ctipiti) Κοπανιστή: cop-en-es-tee τυροκαυτερή: teer-oh-kaaf-tehr-ee. Not so bad, eh? Each being Greek, the last of these translates as ‘Spicy Cheese’ from tiri for cheese and kafteri for spicy, while kopanisti is used to describe something […]