Grilled cheese and basil polenta

I never thought this would happen, but it did. Donna Hay disappointed me.

It was last Saturday – my Amazon box arrived and I couldn’t wait to go through my new cookbooks. Donna’s book looked so adorable and cute... I started to flip the pages, eager to choose the first recipe to prepare. Unfortunately, as I glanced at the photos there was only one thing going on in my mind – “I’ve already seen

Tomato, Minas cheese and eggplant salad

Isn’t it wonderful when a recipe exceeds our expectations?? I love it when that happens. This salad is one of those recipes.When I saw the photo on the book, I thought it would be good. But it turned out to be really, really good.The dressing plays an amazing part here – and the garlic is the one to blame. I have a friend who loves to cook with garlic and I’m sure he would like this dressing very

Almost Greek salad

Yep, almost Greek. Because I used a different type of cheese to replace feta – queijo Minas frescal. And I used lime juice in the dressing, instead of red wine vinegar.

The verdict? I had a huge bowl of this salad. HUGE. I mean it – it was all I had for lunch, with a glass of wine. Ok, 2 glasses of wine. :)

I still want to try it with feta, but my Brazilian twist worked so well I’m submitting

Parsley polenta with balsamic tomatoes

One of the bad things about living in São Paulo is the huge traffic jams I have to face every single day; it takes me forever to get to work and then to get back home. So exhausting.

I don’t know what happened in one of these days but the streets were so free that I arrived home in less then 40 minutes! A miracle! That deserved a celebration – a delicious dinner that I put together in 20

Tomato, hearts of palm, olive and parmesan salad with basil dressing

Every time I visit Kalyn's blog - and I just won't do it on a daily basis in case I'm sick or loaded with work - I feel like cooking everything she posts! Her food has a healthy tone and looks delicious. Hard to resist.This is my take on one of her recipes - I have made this salad several times already and even João likes it, even though he's not into tomatoes (crazy, I know).I used parmesan

Grilled Tilapia with basil-chive butter and parmesan steak fries

Yesterday Joao and I celebrated our 2 year and a half anniversary – I was (still am) recovering from a horrible flu that got me last week so we decided to stay in and celebrate it at home.
A nice meal made with love was mandatory!! :)

The recipe for the fish was taken from the July issue of Bon Appétit – I adapted some details. If you want to make it like the one in the magazine, use halibut

Tomato, broccolini and basil risotto

I was going through one of the editions of my Donna Hay magazines when I saw a delicious pasta dish* – I immediately thought of making it for our lazy Sunday lunch. The cold weather changed my mind – I knew then that I needed some risotto.I’d seen a recipe for roasted tomato risotto and it sounded great – but the tomatoes I had at home were so beautiful and juicy I didn’t want to roast them. I

Garlic chickpeas with cumin fried fish

This dish reminds of my dear friend Valentina – she is crazy for chickpeas and I’m sure she’d love this.



There’s not much left to say about Donna Hay’s recipes – they look good, taste fantastic and are not over the top complicated to put together. Her success is totally deserved – she’s the real deal, in my humble opinion.

What a delicious way to have chickpeas – they were the perfect side

Roasted tomato salad

For this edition of Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by the lovely Sher - a wonderful cook and my fellow Daring Baker - I chose this delicious and easy to prepare salad, a recipe taken from Delia Smith’s website.I’ve made three changes: I didn’t skin the tomatoes, I pitted the olives before adding them in the end and I also scattered the tomatoes with some capers.Although I had it in room

Baked zucchini and bacon risotto

Haalo is hosting this edition of Weekend Herb Blogging and being a huge fan of her blog I had to participate.



I adapted a recipe, using zucchini instead of pumpkin - it was delicious!

It was my first baked risotto and I must confess that while placing the ingredients together in the bowl I still wasn’t convinced it was going to work. I was so wrong: by the time I finished preparing Joao’s

Hearts of palm quiche

As some of you know, I love cooking with hearts of palm. So, for my first participation on Weekend Herb Blogging – this time hosted by Anh - I decided to make a hearts of palm quiche.I got the recipe from a Brazilian cookbook but the crust called for Crisco. I don’t like cooking with it. Call me silly, but I don’t even buy it.Instead, I made a delicious crust out of a Gordon Ramsey’s recipe that

Tenderloin medallions with carrot “farofa”

It’s amazing how many people I’ve been in contact with since I discovered the delicious (yep, pun intended) foodblog world – and then started my own blog.People who share the passion for food I have, people who understand the excitement of trying a new recipe, of cooking for family and friends, of tasting new ingredients for the first time.One of these people is Terry, from Blue Kitchen – a blog