Tiny dinner again? – Chocolate and Peanut Butter Tartlets

Chocolate and peanut butter tartletsChocolate and peanut butter tartlets

I have continued to neglect the uploading of recipes….I know…I’m terrible. But I’m always busy or sick. Right now I’m recovering from my 4th respiratory disease of some sort in less than two months. It’s crazy. Just when I’m getting back on the wagon, back to a good daily routine with lots of exercise, cooking, crafting and gazillions of endorphins per day (either from exercise or chocolate…you guess)….no, my body says. And its back to resting for three days straight without doing anything fun. Hmmph. This has to stop! The good part of not posting though, is that I’ve cooked a lot of new things in between posts, and so I can pick the yummiest! This time I present you with a hard to surpass combination; chocolate and peanut butter, on a crunchy, buttery, flaky tartlet. Sounds delicious? That’s cause they are. I created these because I had a birthday dinner party for one of my best friends, but she’s super tiny (tinier than me) and so I made mini everything for dinner. (Yes, again) Tiny burgers, tiny fries, tiny salads, tiny stuffed portobellos, and of course, tiny desserts! Pavlovas, which I’ll post as soon as I sort the photos out, and these incredibly good chocolate peanut butter tartlets. The tartlet shells are a bit tedious, yes. But you can skip that and make a regular size tart using a pastry ring, because the filling is really really easy and fast. Just make sure you weigh your tart shell properly. Read more for the recipe!

(The above mentioned tiny dinner. See why I had to make tarlets?)

tiny dinner

Beating eggs into doughSablageShort pastry dough

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No more Christmas – Fried rice with quail eggs over bok choy leaves

Fried rice with quail eggs, rib eye and bok choy

I’m back from the holidays! I know I left without any warning, but I figured everyone would be eating so much anyway that the internet could do without one more food blogger for a month. I’ve been cooking like crazy though, and since I didn’t actually have a proper holiday, I had quite a bit of time on my hands to think up new things to simmer, bake, reduce, fry and chop. I’ll start today with a not-very-holidayesque recipe, but still quite delicious and apt for all those who are sick of having leftovers, as is my case. This mainly because in my house we have a yet to be diagnosed kitchen disorder which prevents us from cooking anything in small, appropriate amounts, leaving us with enough to go around for a week. And so our Christmas turkeys (in Mexican tradition we have turkey for Christmas dinner) become staple diet until sometime in January. Not that I’m complaining, it’s only once a year, and hey, I got to make my own turkey this year (and it was scary. I never thought weight mattered, but when you’re facing a naked empty 23 pound animal all sorts of things can go wrong) which turned out delicious, if I do say so myself.
Enough Christmas rambling, I intended to write a post sans the holiday references, but failed. So I’ll get on to today’s recipe: Fried rice with rib-eye and quail eggs over bok choy leaves. No need for further description, it is every bit as delicious as it sounds. Read more for the recipe. (And make it even though it takes quite a bit of chopping! its worth it!)

Carrots, bok choy, mushrooms, garlicBoiling the rice

Carrot brunoiseZucchini brunoise

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