Ambrosiac musings of a food maniac

A surprisingly delicious dish which will also work well with fresh pasta such as Fettuccine or Tagliatelle. I never thought that pumpkin would taste so good to me :)

The grated potato makes the meatballs juicy and fluffy and the seasoning is just exquisite. This dish is excellent served over mashed potatoes or clean white rice.

This bread has such a rich taste and soft texture, it's a real treat. The basil gives it an amazing aroma and the nuts are crunchy and full of flavor.

I first made this sauce when I had some very ripe grape tomatoes (a plum-shaped variant of cherry tomato) left over. I sliced a few of them, threw in the wok with some garlic, chili peppers and rosemary and then found out I was out of red wine, so I used some balsamic vinegar instead. The sauce was surprisingly delicious and I earned a new recipe.

You can use regular tomatoes instead of cherry tomatoes, but try to pick the smallest, ripest tomatoes you can find. If using regular tomatoes, cut each tomato to 4 or 8 pieces, according to their size.

This marinade makes for an especially tender and delicious dish. The chicken thighs are also suitable for cooking as whole steaks on a BBQ.

The easiest way to make this marinade is to throw all solid ingredients with a little olive oil into a food processor and run it for a few minutes, until everything's chopped. This way, you don't even have to peel the garlic cloves - the BBQ fire will burn them anyway.

This soup was an improvisation using leftover vegetables from a previous shipment of Chubeza, my CSA provider and a few vegetables from the latest shipment. What I like about this kind of improvisations is that often I find the result to be much more tasty than I have anticipated, like this particular soup has proven to be. Only later did I find out that the combination of chickpeas and chard is actually quite popular.

The name translates to "Pappardelle with cream of sweet bell peppers". I hope I got it right - anyone from Italy care to comment?

The recipe for this soup is an excellent basis for all kinds of different soups; it can be modified to use lentils, beans, chickpeas or any other type of legume. I have also used it to make a broccoli cream soup and an asparagus cream soup. Try to improvise on this basic recipe and find out what works best for you.