I love trying out new dishes and cooking with foods I’ve never even heard of never mind cooked. I went to the local fish counter and had the pleasure of being dealt with by Daniel, a kind, helpful and delightful man who gave me cooking tips for Safio – conger eel. I didn’t even know what it was so I was very happy for his input. And for google telling me what it was!

My mate Annie told me about a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe for a Cauliflower broccoli blue cheese pie that she and Andy love, so I decided to look it up and give it a try. But as I only had half the ingredients, wanted to make something with chicken and had a guest who doesn’t like blue cheese, a whole nother pie was born!

Uta and Markus are more deevine family members on my husband’s side and we just love them. Markus is Joerg’s cousin and Uta is his wife. We were lucky enough to be able to spend a little time with them this summer and Uta made these deeelicious patties for us.

Beef olives have nothing to do with olives that you pick from a tree, but it is thought that the name comes more from its shape than anything else. In some countries one uses the German word rouladen or roulades, and in others olives. Whatever you call them, they are deeelicious and Tante Inge’s recipe is to die for!

We had this fantastic dish in a restaurant in Chaves and we loved it so much I just had to try it myself. It is now a firm favourite in our household. The recipe apparently originates in the Algarve, with the black pork coming from the Alentejo, hence the name. It is downright deeelicious!

We tried skate wings at Scott and Helen’s, our lovely Irish friends, several years ago and loved them, but I had never actually made them myself until recently. And they couldn’t be easier to prepare. And they are deeelicious so this is truly a win-win situation.

This is a Portuguese recipe (and we all know I love all things Portuguese), but I am embarrassed to say that the best Kale soup I have ever eaten was in America and not Portugal. Come on Portugal, you need to improve your national dish, hee hee!!

Although I am still working through our wonderful South African trip, we are actually currently in wonderful Portugal and I cooked this wonderful fish yesterday and it turned out wonderfully! I’d never even heard of it and now I can’t get enough of it!

I have wanted to make these for years and somehow never got round to it, which is a real shame as they are deeeelicious and easy to make to boot. There are many recipes out there for these delicious studded meatballs, but we are quite happy with my version. Try it and tell me what you think!

Joerg and I are trying to eat a low carb diet as much as possible, so I came up with this recipe and we think it’s superb! We didn’t miss the lasagne sheets at all. I used sausage instead of minced meat, well because I happened to have loads of it!!