Risotto with Mushroom, Parsley & Truffle Oil

This is my favourite risotto to make. And it's so easy too. The addition of truffle oil at the end is a luxurious and fragrant touch, but not necessary. Just something to make a home cooked dish more special. Bon appetit!

Baked Egg, Nested in Avocado

This is a healthy, highly nutritious breakfast that's very easy to make. It requires pretty much less than five ingredients: the avocado, the egg, and whatever spices/sauces you want to flavour it with. For this one, I used salt, pepper, pesto and Sriracha sauce.

Here's a link to some of the healthy benefits of the avocado. Read here.

I made this for Easter Sunday breakfast at home, a few weeks ago. I served the avocado with some Green Tea & Chocolate Waffles with berries. It was a very interesting contrast in taste and texture: the crispy edges of the waffle with the creaminess of the avocado; the subtle sweetness of the chocolate in the waffle, with the tartness of the berries and spicy, savoury flavour of the toppings on the avocado. If you'd like to see the recipe for the waffles, click here.

Green Tea and Chocolate Waffles

This is my "go to" recipe for Belgian waffles. It's very easy to make and if you make the batter the night before (leave it in the ref, covered) and cook it the next morning, the waffle becomes fluffier, as the yeast has had time to grow.

You can make it plain too (and omit the green tea and chocolate).

I sprinkled the waffles with confectioner's sugar and served them with blackberries and raspberries.

Fettuccini with Lemon & Mushroom Cream Sauce

I went to Rome a few months ago and bought this delightful box of mushroom flavoured, egg based fettuccine. I decided to cook it with a lemony cream sauce with mushroom and parsley. It's very easy to make.

Since mushroom flavoured fettuccine is not readily available in Singapore, you can just use regular fettuccine or spaghetti pasta.

Tzatziki

We love making our own tzatziki, a Greek yogurt dip which is a perfect accompaniment for baked or fried dishes. Here's my recipe for it.

Baked Squid with Rice with Raisins & Pine Nuts. Recipe in this blog too.

Bittergourd (Ampalaya) & Tomato Salad

Ampalaya (Bittergourd) Salad, a refreshing Filipino salad perfect with fried fish or meat.

The salad is very simple to make and is a perfect accompaniment for dry, fried food, such as fish or pork chops. Because of the vinegar, it eventually turns into pickles, so you can store it in your ref for a prolonged period of time and just grab it when you have your next fried dish.

Zucchini, Carrot & Orange Cupcakes

Yes, these cupcakes have vegetables. But your little ones won't even notice them. They're very fragrant too, what with the orange zest and juice.

Fried Eggplants with Honey

This is a dish that we tasted in Cordoba, in the South of Spain. It is served with a cold, tomato and bread puree, called Salmorejo. See recipe here which I shared last week.

The original version of the dish was sprinkled with poppy seeds. But since this is a banned ingredient in Singapore, I replicated the dish sans poppy seeds.

Here are the eggplants, served with Salmorejo, extra hard boiled eggs, chopped jamon and bread. Yummy!

Zucchini "Pasta" with Mushrooms, Tofu & Fresh Oregano

I made this dish a month ago, after our recent family vacation in Spain. It was really great, from a historical, cultural and gastronomical standpoint. We loved the food and could immediately identify with it, as there are many common dishes between Spanish and Filipino cuisine. However, we sorely missed vegetables! Aside from the potato and occasional eggplant, there was hardly any vegetables among the food that we ate in Spain. :( Our family likes to eat healthy and after almost two weeks of a delicious but meat intensive diet, it was time to purge and go back to simple vegetables.

Thus, the weekend after we came back, we experimented with making a fully vegetarian "pasta" made from zucchini "noodles," mushrooms, cubed tofu and fresh oregano.

Detox Green Smoothie

Hello! My name is Melissa and I’m the daughter of MySuit&Apron's creator. I’m currently guest-blogging, to add a new element to Mom's blog that consists of recipes of a greater variety, from our whole family.

When I left for university in 2012, I strove to maintain a healthy lifestyle comprised not only of a strict workout regimen but healthy eating habits. Living alone for the first time enabled me to take greater control of my food decisions, which eventually led me onto a path of a predominant vegetarian lifestyle, now nearing vegan, for most of the week, aside from fancy dinners out once or twice a week.

That being said, after our family vacation to Spain last month and surviving on a diet rich in meat and bread (something my body is no longer familiar to), I decided to embark upon a green smoothie cleanse. Green smoothies have always been part of my diet. Though now, I have greater motivation to allow them to play a larger part, serving as my breakfast substitute, as something to quench both my hunger and my thirst in the mornings, during university lectures, until I manage to find some time to eat. That being said, this recipe I’m sharing today is part of a cleanse, meaning that it has some rather potent detoxifying effects, at least, for the first two days of consuming it three times a day with an accompaniment of a raw vegetable meal for lunch. The task is to not use any processed ingredients in the smoothie - no artificial sweeteners, not even honey - and if you must, liquid stevia is preferred, though opting for a banana to sweeten is a bit better, in my eyes!

Barley Salad with Cucumber, Carrot and Coriander

I am writing this blog post on a train from Cordoba to Barcelona. I have been in Spain for vacation for the last ten days and it has been amazing, from a historical, gastronomical and personal standpoint! The Philippines (where I grew up) was colonized by Spain for 333 years, so you can imagine that our culture--from the food, language, certain behaviors and even our names---are heavily influenced by Spanish culture.

It was great to finally try the authentic versions of some Spanish influenced Filipino dishes like lechon (roast suckling pig, which the Spaniards call Cochinillo), Callos Madrileña (tripe and chorizo stewed in tomatoes), chorizo (sausage), churros con chocolate (Spanish doughnuts with chocolate), and many, many others. Our versions of these dishes are very close, if not identical to the originals, and that was very refreshing to see.

However, what we noticed is that Spanish cuisine lacks vegetables (aside from the occasional potato and eggplant); and we missed vegetables and fruit so much!

So for this week's blog post, I'm posting a salad made from barley, cucumber and carrots. Oh vegetables, I missed you so much!

Now a little bit about this salad. I first encountered this healthy salad in a party with some Japanese friends. It's very simple and refreshing. Barley is a healthy, whole grain that is high in protein, and packed with nutrients and antioxidants. Read more about barley and its health benefits here.

Barley Salad with Cucumber, Carrot and Coriander

The salad is very simple to make. In fact, the first time we tried to replicate it at home, my teenaged son made it by himself. It's great with roasted, grilled or fried food, especially dry dishes.

Crispy & Cheesy Broccoli & Cauliflower

This is a great and delicious way to have broccoli and cauliflower, two vegetables that are often avoided, especially by the kids. The thinly sliced florets become brown and crispy on the edges, and the parmesan flavoured breadcrumbs add an extra crunch.

Green Apple and Carrot Salad with Japanese Mayo & Wasabi Dressing

This salad is healthy, totally raw and refreshing, which makes it an excellent source of fiber.  It has a Japanese twist because of the Japanese mayonnaise, nori (seaweed) and wasabi.

Carrot & Cucumber Sesame Salad

This is a cold, raw salad of carrot and cucumber, sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds, in a dressing of lemon, honey and sesame oil. Simple to do, very refreshing and perfect with dry, grilled or fried food. It's very healthy too, because it's completely raw and fresh!

Strozzapreti with Spinach, Mushrooms and Sundried Tomato

On a recent business trip to Cincinnati, I ate at an American Italian Restaurant with my friend and colleague, M. We had an antipasti of Buffalo Mozzarella, with Tomatoes and Basil. So fresh! We shared a pasta (you know how American servings are, soooo huge!), which the restaurant called as "Country Style Pasta with Brocollini," with oven dried tomatoes, garlic and white wine sauce.

When the dish arrived, the pasta looked like short strips of dough which were rolled, so that it almost looked like coils with thin ends. Then I remembered watching a food show a few months back, showing two old Italian grandmothers, hand rolling these pasta, which are actually called strozzapreti. Strozzapreti literally means "Priest Strangler!" Why? Check out the interesting story behind the unique name here.

A few days later, on the way back to Singapore, I passed by New York City for a few days. On a visit to a Greenwich Village shop selling cheese, jams, foie gras and other deli items, lo and behold, I saw strozzapreti there and bought some!

Inspired by that dish at that American Italian restaurant, I've recreated my version of the dish here, Strozzapreti with Spinach, Mushrooms and Sundried Tomato, especially dedicated to my Pinoy friend M, now a Cincinnati resident.

This is a vegetarian version but you can easily turn it into a non-vegetarian one by adding some sausages. Or even bacon.

Roasted Cauliflower Head

This recipe is adapted from Domenica Restaurant in New Orleans, and the recipe was featured in Epicurious magazine here. It made quite a stir and launched the lowly cauliflower to become one of  2013's "it" food.

The original dish is served with a cheese sauce (which I've tried making too), but when we eat it at home, we actually prefer it without the sauce as it is healthier. My version omits the salt and I use chicken bouillon instead, and I also add a tablespoon of mustard seeds. If you want to make it purely vegetarian, then substitute the bouillon with salt.

I love this recipe and have served it to friends, who are amazed how the mundane cauliflower can taste soooooo good!

Quinoa Stuffed Bell Peppers

Whenever I go to Cyma, a Greek restaurant in Manila, I always order their Paidakia, the chargrilled lamb ribs, and I always have it with the Rice Stuffed Bell Peppers. The peppers are divine, but they are very oily. Plus the white rice is not that healthy too. So I've refashioned this tasty dish into a healthier one by swapping the oily rice stuffing with quinoa in tomato sauce and pine nuts. It's now a healthy, vegetarian dish which can be a meal in itself (we eat this for breakfast at home), or a side to a dry main dish, like grilled pork chops, chicken or steak.

Twice Roasted Asian Ratatouille

Over the weekend, I went to the northern Philippines, at the province of Ilocos, for a short vacation with two girl friends. It's a very beautiful place, with many historic churches, windmills, sand dunes, mansions owned by famous historical figures, including former President Marcos. The place is also famous for longganisa, a local pork sausage, and bagnet, a slab of fatty pork that is deep fried. The food was great, but oh so fatty! So it seems quite fitting to post this vegetarian recipe, because tomorrow will be back to reality, and back to a more "normal" diet. Aside from that, I'm posting this here for one of the friends I was with over this short vacation, my friend G, who just loves this dish and who is requesting for its recipe.

This is a twist on another recipe I posted here, Twice Roasted Vegetables with Quinoa. This one has a more Asian flavour, because of the hoisin sauce, sesame oil and Chinese wine.

I used yellow and green zucchini, eggplants, red and yellow bell peppers, broccoli, button mushrooms and onions. But you can also do this with other vegetables like cabbage, other kinds of mushrooms, pumpkin, French beans, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts...the possibilities are endless!

Barley and Mushroom Cream Soup with Truffle Oil

This is a healthy, vegetarian soup, very rich in protein. It can, in fact, be a meal in itself when served with bread. It looks really fancy and smells fragrant, with that truffle oil drizzled on top.

See the health benefits of barley here.

Twice Roasted Vegetables with Quinoa

Roasted fresh vegetables with quinoa, topped with freshly grated parmesan cheese.

On weekdays, I follow the VB6 Diet by Mark Bittman of The New York Times. VB6 stands for "Vegetarian Before 6 pm," and this is what I try to do from Mondays till Fridays. Weekends are my cheat days when I eat almost anything, but in moderation.

One of the best vegetarian dishes I ever tasted was at the Pump Room at the city of Bath, on a recent visit to the United Kingdom.  It was very simple but delicious! I ordered this dish as a main course and here, I've tried to replicate it at home.

It's a very healthy dish, what with the vegetables, as well as the quinoa, which can substitute for rice. Thus, with this dish, you don't need to eat rice at all, because it's very healthy and filling. You can also make it a tasty side dish for meat.

This recipe also includes how to cook quinoa.