Mediterranean

The happy faces and the smiles and the ‘ohhh and yes’ are all over the place when I put a bowl of Pimientos de Padron on the table at home. We all love it so much. Daughter Lalaine lives in Spain, we once rented a house in Galicia for a whole summer and ate Pimientos de Padron every day. As a snack. Als a starter. You can also get them here. And it’s a party right away. This tahina sauce also brings me right back home to the Middle East.

This is a delicious, original and versatile way to make a potato dish. Keftedes are a household name in the levant and Mediterranean area, and this is a nice variation on that theme. Delicious with ‘toum’, the garlic dip that I explain in a recipe elsewhere on the site.

So I’m not a potato eater at all. Not interesting. Needless filling of the stomach. That kind of thoughts. But prepared this way, I keep relishing it. One baked potato left on a dish on the counter. And it’s gone soon. In my mouth. Make this recipe with good firm jacket potatoes, they are the best.

Turnips, I’d never seen, held, let alone tasted one. But I got some from the market garden where we get a lot of our vegetables. “See if you can do something with it,” she said. They lay in the refrigerator for days. Everytime I saw them, but left them there. “Ga je nog wat met me doen?” And then I decided it had to be done. I thought of mustard. I thought of the oven. I thought of fresh basil. And boy, it was so good. I decided to serve it in the restaurant the week after. Everyone just has to taste this.