Chickpea, tomato, lemon and mint salad

Another year, another Carnival ... and another salad – savory, this time – after tons of food and booze. :)

Again, mint is the refreshing agent around here – I never knew it would go so well with tomatoes. Just delicious.

Chickpea, tomato, lemon and mint salad
from The Commonsense Kitchen

1 tablespoon olive oil
½ red onion, diced
1 clove garlic, crushed
salt
2 cups cooked chickpeas, well

Easy sausage bake

I believe that most of you reading me now like cooking and baking, just as I do. But we are all caught up in busy days and tight schedules, so finding time to spend in the kitchen is a difficult mission.This dish is a great choice for a quick meal: it’s put together in a flash – you can chop the veggies while grilling the sausages and boiling the potatoes – and then leave it in the oven for half

Roasted tomato and goat's cheese tart with fresh oregano

Apparently, it’s still winter here – after a week of 33ºC (91.4ºF) days, we’ve been having much colder ones.I know that tomatoes are much tastier in the summer, but I would never be able to wait that long to make Pille’s wonderful tart. Would you? :)The only change I made was to use fresh oregano instead of thyme - just because I happen to grow it.I used to have a hard time digesting garlic but

Sage and ricotta ravioli

Some things are worth repeating; there are movies I have seen more than five times and I’ll gladly catch any TV reruns.

So here I am, more than a year later, making raviolis with Deb’s pasta recipe again. It’s so divine I don’t know what took me so long.

I still haven’t bought a pasta machine but made it anyway, so put a little faith in your arms, grab a good rolling pin and you are good to

Pasta with tomatoes, olives, grana padano and basil

Joao loves pasta but he’ll mostly have it with tomato or bolognese sauce. He tried pesto when I first made it and liked it, but still looks at other pasta possibilities very suspiciously. That’s silly and I always tell him that.So when I choose different pasta recipes to try he goes all “I want mine with bolognese sauce, please” and I go “ok, same old pasta for you, mister”. I won’t force him -

Crispy goat’s cheese, tomato and basil salad

Another recipe by Donna Hay – from her magazine, issue #35, to be more specific.

I’m a huge fan of hers and those of you who have been around my blog for a while already know that – Joey and I go hand in hand in our love for Donna’s recipes! :)

I tried goat’s cheese for the first time while on vacation last September and can’t imagine how I had lived without it till then. I tried it on salads

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

Giant stuffed steak

I was looking for something on my other blog archives when I saw a stuffed pork loin I made last year. Then I decided to make something similar, using beef instead.There’s a dish here called “bife à rolê” that my husband likes a lot – steaks are filled with chopped carrots, bacon and green olives, secured with toothpicks and cooked in a simple broth (most people here use a pressure cooker for

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