If you don’t know what casabe (cassava bread) is, Aunt Ilana wrote a fantastic article that explains it all. You’d be well-served to read it. If you know what casabe is, you are probably asking yourself why I have to write a recipe for it. After all, Dominicans just don’t make casabe at home. We
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
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
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
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?”
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
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
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
I mentioned this dish to somebody a long time ago, I finally got around to writing a recipe. Not a strange occurrence with me: I am the Queen of Procrastination. But let’s not talk about that. Let’s talk about this delicious dish, half salad, half cold dish, and one of my go-to foods when I
Not long ago I got two emails from readers asking if I could give them ideas on how to cook brown rice. About a week later we hear the alarming news that government agencies were warning consumers in the US that rice might be contaminated with arsenic. Shortly thereafter another warning: brown rice was even
Have you heard the adage “you can’t please everybody all the time”? Turns out that, like taxes and death, that also is one of the surest things in life. A smart person soon learns that trying to please everybody is a fool’s errand. In the end we all just have to assess our priorities and
In an introduction to Dominican party food for our book, Jill Wyatt wrote: “Just as a child’s birthday cannot be appropriately celebrated without a sugary fruit punch in which banana slices are set adrift, it appeared that mourners could not properly grieve, nor could merrymakers effectively make themselves so, without some alimentary offering”. Jill has a talent for capturing the
I love avocados. It’s in my blood. I am not saying there isn’t one out there, but I have yet to meet a Dominican that does not love them. And while everyones oohs and aahs over the smooth goodness of Mexican guacamole (I am partial to it myself), the way we Dominicans eat the fruit
I am glad that I am writing this post in English first (not an unusual occurrence), because conveying the concept this post is about is pretty hard to write about in a language (Spanish) that lacks a term for it. I am talking about comfort food. Yeah, that is right. There is not such word or
There are days when getting out of bed does not seem like the best use of our time. Wednesday was one of such days. We inaugurated the day with a raging tropical rain and strong winds. It didn’t take long until one of the shades in our terrace was ripped off its tracks. Things could only get
In my head paleta de batata (sweet potato popsicles) and summer are indelebly connected. When I was a kid I spent many a summer in the Santo Domingo neighborhood of San Carlos, where one of my aunts lived. Back then it was the kind of old-fashioned middle class neighborhood you see in movies depicting the
First of all, what sort of vegetarian are you? What the airlines describe as ‘lacto’? ‘Lacto-ovo’? These curious categories have long been obsolete everywhere except airline ticketing codes. They mean vegetarians who eat dairy products and vegetarians who eat dairy products and eggs. Are you a fishetarian? That means a vegetarian who eats seafood (my definition).
Quick, summer is coming soon! It’s barely May and round here the heat gives us little respite these days. Luckily it has been raining heavily for the last two days, which brings the heat and humidity down a few notches to more bearable levels. Cool enough to eat soup without melting into a puddle of sweat, and
Immigrants from the Middle Eastern region, mainly from Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt came to the Dominican Republic and other Latin American countries in the late 19th and early 20th century. At the time, most of the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe were under Turkish rule as part of the Ottoman Empire until
I’ve mentioned this many, many times: For such a small country this one has so many regional variations in its cuisine that it’s entirely possible to reach adulthood without trying something that is a staple on the other side of the country. Meet exhibit one: Aunt Clara. I was born in the northwest of the Dominican
Just as we do at home, we aim to keep the food in our blog balanced. This seems intentional, and to a certain point it is, but I’ve also noticed that over time I’ve unconsciously been avoiding repeating too many recipes of the same category. After posting a few rice, meat and other type of
I once met somebody who told me that her husband never ate leftovers. Poor lady. I don’t know what positive qualities her husband may have, but for me somebody who would not eat the occasional leftovers cannot be a candidate to be Mr. Aunt Clara. At our home we recycle all the leftovers, and the idea of
This past week one half of our family gathered at a local resort as we do almost every year. It is a time for relaxation, catching up, and on the practical side of things getting everybody together under the same roof, so to speak. We hope some day we’ll have a home large enough to
Before I get another word out let me clarify something: This is not like the Christmas rice you know. And I know this because I have yet to taste two that are the same. Everybody seems to have a different idea of what it contains and how it should taste. Having said that, I have
Years ago I shared with our readers the story of how I went from carnivorous to vegan some time during my early 20s. Many a sun has set and risen from that time, and my dietary preferences have changed too. I have gone from carnivorous to vegan, from there I lapsed into vegetarianism, and today I call
Have you ever heard of the word “scrumping”? No? You’re not alone. As it happens, neither have most of the world’s non-British English speakers, as far as I could find. And when they have, most of them think of a completely different activity than the one in the minds of Brits. Allow me to explain
Every nation has its rules about what goes and what doesn’t when it comes to gastronomy. Coffee here as we know is drunk sweeter than sweet. Those of us who decline any sugar at all are considered eccentric at best. In the same way as Italians who react with horror at ignorant foreigners who flout
Sometimes an idea comes to me, and although I have no clue how to make what I envision I can still feel, see or taste the result I want. This recipe is one of those ideas. Remember that cornmeal and beef casserole that I shared with you some time ago? Well, it turns out that
Ginger is used in Dominican cooking in desserts and the ever-welcome ginger tea. It is not a traditional part of our savory cuisine. I’ve set out to change that. OK, that would be a bit too ambitious. But in the meantime let me share with you the many ways in which we use ginger at
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.
