Headcheese and Brains

When a friend wrote recently on his blog, Food With Legs, about making brawn, headcheese, pâté de tête, whatever you want to call it, I wrote him saying that I knew the food well from my childhood as piftie. And there was nothing that could ever get me to eat it again.

I should probably explain that the Romanian version of headcheese not only involves odd pig parts suspended in gelatine, but the aspic is also garlic-flavoured. Now I love garlic, and regularly double the amount of garlic I put in every recipe, but the smell of the garlic-gelatine permeating the house as my parents cooked this piftie was really something else. I would carefully avoid the dining room, where the headcheese was put to cool, as long as it was there, and had a look of sheer disgust on my teenage face for as long as the piftie was around.

Making Greek Ricotta Dumplings, and then throwing a bunch of tasty ingredients on them

The New York restaurant Kefi is one of those places that's my idea of a good place to eat. Casual, perhaps a bit too loud (ok, so that part isn't so ideal), with inexpensive, moderate portions that are very, very tasty. Perhaps the most delicious dish I have had there is the small, warm bowl of sheep's milk dumplings, tomatoes, pine nuts, and spicy lamb sausage. So you can imagine my delight when I saw that blogger Peter Minakis put up a recipe for ricotta dumplings. It is based on the recipe Michael Psilakis, the chef of Kefi, features in his new book How to Roast a Lamb: New Greek Classic Cooking.

Lentil, Apple, and Arugula Salad

This is a very simple salad that is great for lunch or dinner. It is both light and incredibly filling. Despite the fact that I made a double portion the last time I made it, resulting in my having to eat this one salad for an entire week, it still tasted good days later.