Most of these are traditional Dominican food recipes, many are original recipes by Aunt Clara, inspired by the flavors of the Dominican Republic.
The Dominican diet is rich in fresh ingredients and simple food. Some of these dishes, however, are very sophisticated and require planning and preparation. We have tried to make the recipes as easy to understand as possible, and suggest substitutions whenever we know an ingredient might be particularly difficult to acquire outside the Dominican Republic.
You will find here authentic Dominican dishes and meals, just like Mami makes them, however, and as we constantly remind our visitors, they may differ from the ones that you have tried in your own home. Remember that each family has their own cooking style and secrets.
You can recognize the traditional Dominican recipes because we also give you the original name in Spanish.
I like my pasta dishes simple. A few ingredients, some olive oil, toss, serve. This cannelloni filled with ricotta and spinach are so easy to make, so filling, so rich that I wonder why I just don’t make it more often. Mother’s Day is coming (in the Dominican Republic it’s the last Sunday of May), so
I must tell you that my daughter and I have a bit of an obsession with these oatmeal and nut breakfast muffins. It’s never too early to teach kids to love good, healthy food, and to instill in them the love for cooking. With some assistance (with the oven part) my 7-year old was capable
Do you know what a sancocho is? If so, I know what you’re thinking: “if it’s vegan, then it isn’t sancocho”. After all the recipe in our blog is called a “seven meat-stew”. You can hardly get any more carnivorous than that, short of chasing and killing your own prey. I love sancocho, but I’m
I loved this chickpea and zucchini blossom salad. Few of these are ingredients traditionally used in traditional Dominican cuisine, but you know what I love the most about it? I grew almost everything that went into it. Yep, I did. Nothing tastes as good as freshly-picked vegetables that you grow yourself. I have been obsessed
I am not sure what changes as one grows older. Slowly our taste in foods change, and things that we would have considered “gross” or that we didn’t like as kids slowly become acceptable foods, enjoyable even. I have yet to meet a kid who doesn’t love pasta, or one who enjoys eggplants. Likewise, I
A few weeks back in a conversation with some fellow bloggers I mentioned that eventually I might run out of Dominican dishes to write about. Oops. Hit the panic button! Not really. I have four words for you: morir soñando ice cream. In 12 years doing this I have gone through about a little over a
We Dominicans love rice, looove it! Some even feel like a lunch isn’t complete without a serving of the grain. Corn and bulgur make an appearance in our cuisine as rice substitutes. But those are not dishes that are served frequently. I have to be honest, I love rice, but it would bore me to
We all have talents. Big talents, and minor ones. One of my minor talents is the ability to remember what foods my friends and relatives don’t like or are allergic to, once they have been my guests. As minor talents go, this comes in pretty handy if you don’t want to end your dinners with
I have been receiving requests to add this recipe for a long time, years in fact. I have to say that it isn’t just procrastination that has caused this, if you know me well, you know that I am not a big fan of fried foods. As a food blogger that documents a lot of
Did you hear that Dominican Republic won the World Baseball Classic? No? OK, good, let me brag about it. Baseball is the sport in the Dominican Republic. Not to say that other sports are not played and followed; they are. Basketball, volleybal and others have good following and loyal fanatics, but baseball rules king. As
This smoked salmon and avocado mayo canape it’s a lot like our family. I know that a great deal of our readers belong to bicultural or multicultural families. And anyone of them could tell you that this is not always an easy life, but it’s never boring. A successful multicultural family almost certainly require people
Wanna hear what I did this weekend? I worked 16 hours a day for 3 days, I squeezed the work of a week in those hours. It doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, but trust me, I loved it. If you do what you love for a living, you’ll be on vacation all your
Two years ago I asked my readers a question: “Do we really do this?”. The full question was “do we Dominicans really use sopitas (bouillon cubes) so much?”. The question came after a discussion with some online friends on the subject. Coming from a family in which cooking with natural ingredients was the norm, I rarely
I finished cooking, served lunch, and my husband had a first taste of a dish I was cooking for the first time. My dear spousal unit is my usual test subject, and he knows to be honest. This is no time to lovingly lie to protect my feelings. My readers count on him. – “It
Since the dawn of time, people have associated certain foods, fruit and vegetables with sex. The ancient Greeks and Romans who were famous for their bacchanals and orgies even had treatises and writings about the effects of various foods on their libidos. Some of these beliefs, whether true or not, endure to this day. There
A bunch of years ago, about 10, I think, I was a regular in a news and travel website about the Dominican Republic. Through the forum I got in touch with somebody who also lived in Santo Domingo and who, coincidentally, picked up her groceries every week at a business very close to where I
My dad is a inveterate practical joker. With him, life was always an adventure. One day he showed up at home with what looked to be dog food. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had been trying to trick us into eating dog food, but the label was clear: “soy meat” . “What’s that?”
While I would love to think of myself as an intrepid investigative writer, travelling the Dominican countryside in search of hidden treasures of our culinary culture, the fact is that I am nowhere near that. We just travel aimlessly around the country from time to time, sampling the local foods and befriending perfect strangers on
Sit down, let’s have a coffee and a delicious cheddar cheese bread roll. I have something to tell you: You my dear reader might not know it, but I was once unfaithful to you. Up until a few months ago I kept another blog titled “The Home in Paradise”, which chronicled my adventures – and occasional misadventures
How has the year treated you so far? For me last year was a year of professional growth, and some personal challenges. I saw some more of our beloved country, met new people, networked with some awesome colleagues, got a lot of new clients. In all, the balance was good, and it seems like this year
For today I had a rich dish that included a cup of butter in its preparation. There was a change of plans. The night I was supposed to go in the kitchen to make this dish I woke up at 3AM with a dull pain in my stomach. Don’t worry, nothing more serious than an
A few years back, as part of an advertisement campaign, a certain local company had a funny commercial in which a newlywed husband called his wife on his way home to ask what she was cooking for supper. We never see the wife, but the husband gleefully repeats what she says: – “Pastelón de arroz?!”
If nostalgia were a disease, I would be immune to it. I have yet to remember any time in which the past seemed like a place I wanted to go back to. I live by the philosophy that if we spend our lives yearning for the times gone we won’t find the energy to make our present the best
It’s the day after Christmas Eve. The house looks like a battlefield, it’s a mess everywhere. People in various states of undress pass us by scratching assorted body parts. Lots of yawning. We’re still dizzy from a night of happiness, laughter, lots of food and the occasional argument over something that will be forgotten the next morning. And
I have long had this idea on my mind of writing a post about the process of writing a post for our blog: “How the sausage is made”, metaphorically speaking. From the outside it may seem like a simple process, but it is not. From concept to publishing it may be a few days, it may
Ever since this site was started I have been posting vegetarian and vegan recipes, including a pretty decent vegan version of our sancocho (which was lost in the moving process but I am planning to revisit it). There is a reason for this recipe for avocado vegan mayo being here: For more of half my
We have mentioned before the old maxim that while cooking is an art, baking is science. We are sorry to have perpetuated a myth. We’re usually better than that. The fact is, cooking is as much science as baking, and baking is as much an art as cooking. Very few artistic disciplines are rooted in
About ten years ago I was in Denmark, where my husband hails from, spending the holiday season with his family. With a full schedule of eating and more eating ahead, I had the “brilliant” idea of treating everybody to an “authentic” traditional Dominican pre-Xmas Xmas meal on the 23rd, including a delicious pan de batata (sweet potato cake) for
I love soups. There is something comforting, soothing, heart-warming in a bowl of warm soup. Frankly, few foods have this effect on me. When I am sad, down, when life seems to be going in the wrong direction, I drown my sorrows in a bowl of soup. When I don’t feel well, when my body resents
Finger foods and dips go together like… like, er, two things that go together. Ahem. Today I am kinda blocked, so please bear with me. I have received many an email asking for recipes for sauces and dips that go with fried finger foods, you know, like yuca and batata fries, croquettes, etc. So, I
Locavores are those who are part of a global movement that proposes the consumption of locally-grown food. It’s a movement fueled by concerns about the environment and the nutritional quality of food that has travelled from afar, and subjected to diverse methods of preservation. As with anything, there are several sides to this argument. As with any
In an a recent interview for a magazine I was posed a question: “Where do you get your recipes?”. I’m not going to reproduce my answer (the interview hasn’t been published yet), but this recipe is perfect for exploring some of it. Inspiration sometimes comes from odd places. But let me mention that these mini-tart shells (tarticos in the DR)
It was love at first sight with Mr. Queso de Hoja, the cheese vendor, whose, uh, balls of cheese were always the freshest… Oh, how I miss the street vendors. All vendors really, but in particular, and in no small part due to their multitude, the food vendors, of course. The travelling hair accessories guy
Aunt Clara's Kitchen is a collection of traditional Dominican and Dominican-inspired recipes, home ideas, crafts, and the chronicles of Aunt Clara and Aunt Ilana's adventures.
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