Zita’s virtual baby shower: Kasopita or let me treat you an easy, traditional greek cheesepie!
I met her almost 2 years ago.
She was there, along with many other wonderful food bloggers from all over the world, at Food Bloggers Connect, August 2011, in London:
Zita: where are you from?
Artemis: Athens, Greece
Zita: Oh, I can still remember that tavern in Plaka, Yasemi (do I remember right Zita?)
And conversation just went on and on!
Today, we ‘re keeping our online communication still alive, not only with Zita from Hungary but with many more food bloggers from all over the world: Italy, Belgium, Germany, England, Holland to refer only to a few.
I could never imagine that a 3 day meeting with food lovers would result to a non stop long time relationship!
I love our common passion for good and tasty food, love of all the nice things on earth, life, photography, styling, writing, communicating with people!
I love you people!
And I love actions like these, where we’re devoting a vegetarian/vegan recipe for Zita and her newborn baby!
Here are the rest with their own unique recipes:
from Giulia: scarpaccia,
from Regula: Nourishing Stout & Oat Drink,
from Beth: Moghrabieh Salad with Preserved Lemon and Coriander Pesto,
from Jasmine: Whole wheat flour cocoa cookies,
from Sarka: Kiwi Carpaccio with Manuka Honey and Pecans
from Emiko: Ricotta and dark chocolate cake,
from Sneige: Pomegranate curd bars with seedy pine nuts crust,
from Simone: Pistache-almond cakes with rosewater whipped cream,
from Karin: Fresh Pea Souffle with Goat
And I’m wishing you, with all my heart, Zita, your new, wonderful member of your family, will lead you to more creative paths of your passion for food and life!
Love,
Artemis Read more…
Green.
The colour of optimism, of hope, of energy, of the unity of sky and earth.
The colour of nature that goes wild and of the crystal clear light blue sea.
The colour that I like to give to anything positive and pleasant.
Sometimes, the colour of my eyes.
Some of my t-shirts.
The Aegina‘s pistachios, my favourite dried fruits.
The colour of this cake.
Its sweetness and its unique taste.
The most delicious colour.
The colour that I love the most.
Adapted recipe by the Gourmet magazine 2009 -from my scrapbooks.
Ingredients:
- 250 gr sugar
- 250 gr melted butter
- 4 eggs
- 250 gr all purpose flour (preferably shifted for a more refined result)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 250 gr pistachios unsalted and powdered (use a multi or anything else to make them like flour)
- 200 gr dark chocolate or any kind of chocolate you love chopped into pieces. I love when pieces are small cubes in size because they are so tasty when baked.
Directions:
- Pheheat oven at 170 C (340 F).
- Put in a mixer bowl the eggs with sugar and beat well until you get a fluffy cream.
- Stop mixer and add melted butter, flour, baking powder and powdered pistachios. Stir softly with a spatula and get mix.
- Add the chopped chocolate and mix softly again with the spatula.
- Butter and flour a cake mould and add the batter.
- Bake for 1 hour. It’s time to make the knife test -put a knife into the cake until you get to the bottom and if it gets out clean, the cake is ready. Otherwise, bake for about 5′ more.
- Take it out of the oven and let it cool into the mould for about 20′. Then unmoulded and let it cool completely onto a rack. Dust with icing sugar or enjoy it as it is.
You might also like:
Chocolate-banana cake
Olive oil in a chocolate cake. Yeah!
“Colourful” chickpeas. With curry. And pasturma.
There are days that grey is the colour.
Deep blue or purple. Dark anyway.
There are times that I like that. It’s like as if I’m in a comfort zone, into a nest, peaceful into darkness. As if I’m in need of all these blues, all that silence, it makes me recharge my batteries.
There are also days that are colourful.
Light everywhere, the sun is shining, a rainbow. It’s like as if I’m full of energy, can’t stop moving and being in action until I collapse into all this madness. As if I like this frenetic movement that makes me carry away everything and everyone around me.
Darkness and light. Suck all the energy you can get from both, balance what is left in you at the end of the day, take a deep breath and smile.
P.S. I read this somewhere: “Smile. It makes others wonder what kind of pills you’re getting”. I’m often asked about it. The answer is that when I was a young girl, I threw myself into the magic potion. The one called “life”.
R.I.P. holidays’ buffets!
As if it doesn’t want to go back where it belongs -to the store room- my christmas tree keeps standing bright and shiny to its place in my living room.
No, I don’t want to prolong the christmas mood or anything. I’m just too bored to deal with it! Yeap! And I just wanted to “forget” it for a few more days, give it a chance to make its presence more intense this year.
But, these are its last days standing there, I can see that. Along with all the other ornaments, lights, candles and everything that goes with it.
However, what I don’t want to “forget” from those days, are the taste of the delicious fingerfood of the buffets that were set up to various friendly houses and mine of course.
So, lets drink to it! To the memorable christmas and new years eve buffets!
RIP you wonderful buffets!
We shall remember you and meet you again soon in various lives… eh, versions!
Live to remember:
Parmesan chips
Spicy arabic pita chips with yoghurt sauce
Ladenia -vegan pizza with tomatoes and onions Read more…
Vegan pumpkin cake with walnuts and spices. Marinated mushrooms. Oh, and a Happy New Year!
What kind of person are you?
Do all these christmas, shiny, bright, colourful ornaments, lamps, shops, streets make you smile? Do you love “Last Christmas” every time you hear it, everywhere, all the time?
Or are you depressed, deep in melancholy, from all this consuming games of marketing? Boring that you have to decorate a shiny christmas tree one more time just for a few days? And have to think of what presents your folks would like this year -one more year?
Well, whoever you are, whatever you like, there is one common thing among all of us:
YOU ATE A LOT.
YOU DRANK A LOT.
EVERYTHING.
AND ALL THE TIME.
Don’t worry, I don’t judge you, how could I?
Because all of us are the same, as far as this point is concerned, at Christmas, at New Year’s Eve and the days before and after that -some of us all year long!
There is one thing though that you shouldn’t have: guilts.
Don’t have guilts for whatever you ate and drank, for the calories or anything. You must be happy and thankful for being able to have food and drink at your table this year too and for being healthy to do it again next year with your beloved ones, wherever you want, with any way you want.
Happy New Year! Read more…
Summer sealed into a bottle. Basil liqueur.
A lot of things can be found in a bottle.
A old sea travelled letter, spirits, scented oils and vinegars, sweet homemade lemonades and all kinds of fruit juices, wine, raki and ouzo.
This time, I decided to seal into a beautiful, hand drawn bottle, the essence, the smells and the coolness of the almost six months greek summer -although the recipe is a classic italian one from my beloved Tessa Kiros and her new book Limoncello and linen water, a “jewel” to me as all her books.
And also, to make my first animated food video!
Coolness of frozen sweet handmade lemonade, spicy scent of the shaken with my fingertips basil -a few days before its end for the season- and the heat of raki.
All these, sealed into a bottle for a few days, brewing and mixing scents, essential oils and juices.
And here is the basil liqueur.
Sip by sip, you drink summer itself, until it’s here again.
When the world turns upside down: with a savoury tarte tatin with tomatoes, pepper pesto and white cheese.
I love tarts and pies.
Sweet and savoury.
With or without phyllo.
In fact, any kind of phyllo, homemade or not, crust, dough, any base.
How could I resist to this beautiful easy tart with the yummy red sweet pepper pesto at its base?
And with only two other ingredients?
And all these upside down?
A savoury tarte tatin?
Well, that’ s true… I’m indifferent to normal things! Let’s turn everything upside down in life every day! Even to food!
Here you are:
a red sweet pepper and almond pesto tarte tatin with fresh tomatoes and white cheese. Read more…
