05 | June | 2012 | Bewitching Kitchen

Following Celia’s tradition at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial, I share with you what’s been going on in our kitchen these busy days. It seems like yesterday, but in fact I published my first “In My Kitchen” almost one year ago! Now, 11 months and 5 posts later, a bittersweet moment: this will be the last one to come from our Okie home. A new bewitching kitchen is waiting for us in the “Little Apple“, and I cannot wait to share it with you in the near future!

In my kitchen…
KIND, our favorite cereal bar! We tried it for the first time while living in Los Angeles, and were thrilled to find its many flavors, all delicious, in a special store here in town. They are moist and satisfying, with a perfect combination of flavors. My favorite is the mango-macadamia, super tasty!

In my kitchen…We always have some type of dark chocolate hanging around. Phil loves to nibble on a little piece with his coffee, and his passion for chocolate is highly contagious: I find myself more and more dependent of a small piece before going to bed. This brand, Chocolove, is a new favorite, with a very smooth finish. To make it even better, it is a fair-trade product.

In my kitchen…
A bottle of sorghum molasses. For a few months now, it seems to me that every cooking magazine I open has one or two recipes using sorghum. I finally found it and brought it home. Hopefully, when my life gets a little less frantic, I’ll be able to try one of the recipes in my “sorghum folder”. 😉 If you want to know more about it, click here.

In my kitchen…
A new way to shape a loaf of bread, following a braided method from “How to Make Bread”, from Emmanuel Hadjiandreou. This particular recipe is his multigrain bread, substantial but not too heavy.

In my kitchen… So many gifts!
Two Korean wooden dolls, given to us by a former undergraduate student, they live near our kitchen, and love to watch us cooking. They get along quite well with their Brazilian clay friends, a gift from our friend (and amazing cook) Anita.

In my kitchen….
A very special gift from our graduate student Vy, who was recently in New York and brought back a bag of chocolate disks from Jacques Torres.
Here is what they look like. These babies make fantatic chocolate chip cookies, I promise to post the recipe in the near future. It will be worth the wait… 😉

In my kitchen….

Have you ever seen this amount of saffron? And I mean, great, authentic saffron! Talk about a special gift! I am lucky enough to have a friend who travels to Saudi Arabia once a year, and he surprised me with this incredible load of saffron. When the box arrived, I could smell the saffron through the box and the double wrapping of paper! And, if that wasn’t special enough, he also included in the package a bag of…
Ras El Hanout! One of the few spices I didn’t have in my cabinet! Am I lucky or what? No doubt in my mind I have the most amazing friends!

and finally, in my kitchen….
A very well-behaved dog, who never begs for food, but makes sure his eyes are as sad as he can possibly make them while Phil and I are enjoying a nice dinner… 😉