Recipe Sifter

A French-style country pate with veal, pork, liver, and ham studded with toasted pistachios. Warm spices and white wine give it depth. Excellent served hot or cold. Serves 8.

A scrumptious beef roast dish that calls for cocoa cola, carrots and whole cloves.

The Cincinatti Chili is, would you believe, an alternative to spaghetti sauce. It's mild and sweet (the cinnamon does that), and won't burn anyone's mouth unless you serve it boiling.

Norwegian pickled eggs in a savory spiced vinegar with bay, mustard seed, cloves, peppercorns, and cinnamon. No sugar, just clean tang and warm Scandinavian spice. Ready for a cold-cuts platter.

Creamy navy bean soup simmers soaked navy beans with carrots, celery, tomato puree, and thyme, then finishes with cream and milk for a silky high-fiber bowl. A vegetarian, gluten-free comfort soup.

Add a sophisticated look and taste to dinner with this scrumptious recipe that will become one of your favorites.

Green lentil soup with crushed tomatoes, garlic, bay leaves, and grated onion simmered for 2 1/2 hours. A splash of red vinegar at the end lifts the whole pot. Hearty, vegetarian, and deeply flavored.

This savory dish is perfect for a cold night and will keep you warm with every bite!

It is sure well worth the effort, because these sausages are the best tasting ones!

Wild duck breasts draped in bacon and braised in spiced wine with mushrooms, onions, and herbs. Warm cinnamon, cardamom, and clove notes make this a hunter's table showpiece.

An easy and delicious dish that can be simmered all day to create a wonderful aroma in your kitchen.

A hearty, flavorful dish featuring tender beef short ribs slow-cooked in a savory sauce with onions, garlic, and green peppers. Perfect for a comforting family dinner.

A garden vegetable spaghetti sauce loaded with peppers, zucchini, and summer squash, slow-simmered with garlic and a big handful of herbs. A meatless, freezer-friendly marinara for using up the garden.

Candied dill pickles transformed from store-bought dills into sweet-tart spears with sugar, vinegar, bay, and cloves. The Southern grandma trick that turns ordinary pickles into addictive snacking.

So to start off with the first post, I decided to make a meal that screams of comfort food. Whilst it does take a bit of a while to get the meal done, once you take that first bite, heaven couldn’t seem closer if you were Adam trying to touch God’s finger in the “Creation of Adam” fresco created by Michaelangelo. The meal I speak of is Cottage Pie. There is much debate as to what exactly a cottage pie is and how it is different to a Shepherd’s pie...I don’t know. The dominant theory is that Sheperds pie uses lamb mince, whilst a cottage pie uses beef mince. I don’t know about you, but the term “Sheperds Pie” does not get my tastebuds going quite as well, so I prefer the term cottage pie. Besides, comparing the price of ground (mince) beef to ground lamb, a student would pick up the beef mince in a heartbeat without even so much as glancing at the lamb in the meat section. This cottage pie that I made is full of flavour, and just makes you want to cuddle up next to a fire and watch TCM movies all day either by yourself, or with a significant other. Here is the recipe:

Wow, the pot roast came out so flavourful and the gravy was also very tasty. We thinly sliced the leftover, used in sandwiches and wraps. Bravo!