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
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
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
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
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)
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
Quick, before the last strawberry is gone from the shelves! This delicious, and unusual dessert is made from the two crops for which the Constanza region is best known: strawberries and potatoes. The idea came after an email asking if I had any “gluten-free” recipes inspired me to make one that was entirely free of wheat.
September arrived and I breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment there I could feel its absence. I was looking forward to its departure, and excited about its replacement. But then, like a bad guest, it decided to stay a “little” longer. And here we are in mid-september and it hasn’t left us. Go
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
A couple decades ago, during the years of my ill-spent youth, I could have never thought I would one day call myself a mother first and above all. The idea that parenthood could define a person seemed foreign to me. Oh, how times change! And many a childless person will roll their eyes at me,
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
I have mentioned it before, but we Dominicans are not big fans of potatoes. And I am fine with that. It’s not that we don’t enjoy the noble tuber, after all it is the main ingredient in our beloved Russian salad, and a common ingredient in our soups, but as a side dish, potatoes lose badly
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
My husband and I spent our first years together, more than a decade and a half ago, wandering the country. For me sometimes revisiting places I had been to, for him learning what this land of ours has to offer: From pristine white sand beaches to the highest mountains in the region, from tropical deserts to
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).
Unless you have travelled or lived in Central America, you will probably have never heard of the pitahaya, also known as ‘pitaya’ or ‘dragon fruit’. It is widely cultivated in countries such as Nicaragua where it is mainly used in making a popular natural juice with a distinctive beetroot-pink colour. It is also grown in other
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
Coming from a coastal town in an area defined as “Tropical Desert Forest” my first visit to Constanza in my early teens came as a real shock. Geographically and climate-wise you would have a hard time finding two places so different and still located on the same small island. To my 13 (or 12?, can’t
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
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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