I have to recognise that this year I made "piftie" for the first time in my life although it is a very popular and traditional dish for Christmas and New Year in my birth country. My mother is making this dish for the New Year with regularity and I used to eat it with pleasure.

I almost forgot about this dish since last year when a good friend of mine (who is a fantastic chef) offered me a bowl of this traditional dish and it was so good that it imprinted well in my mind and triggered a desire to try to make it myself. Throughout the year I brainstormed about where I should buy the right ingredients for it. Recently, when visiting a Romanian shop, I saw what I needed: pork ears. You can imagine that I bought and bring them home with great motivation to launch myself in making this dish.

Pork ears and pork legs are perfect but I only had pork ears for my test. It worked very well with only pork ears too. There is a reason why this dish can be made from ears, legs or skin of pork: the natural gelatin. This is the key to create the jelly aspect that transforms it from a normal soup. The turkey is added only for having a meat addition inside the jelly. It exists a version exclusively made from turkey or chicken but you need to add extra gelatin as these birds do not have enough to solidify the soup.

There is a lot of garlic in this recipe (2 heads) as it is one of its main tastes. You can play with how strong you want the garlic taste to be by leaving the garlic in or straining it out. It is a personal choice. I chose to strain it but I feel that keeping the garlic inside could have been a better choice.

This dish is served cold, that's why the original name "racituri" means "cold things".

The Instant Pot helps a great deal with this recipe because it cooks the meat in 45 minutes so well that it detaches itself from the bones. Without an Instant Pot, the second boil takes 2-3 hours on low heat.

"Maman, GATEAU!" - This is what my son said when he saw this salad. He was so excited to see it, so he quickly grabbed a small plate and a spoon. 

I put a little portion for him and watched him trying it for the first time. Such a disappointment on his face after the first bite... no sweet cake... this was a salad...

Decoration may trick your sight but not your taste buds. This is a salad, a very popular one in Romania. In my childhood, a New Year's Eve without boeuf salad was not a New Year celebration.

Almost all Romanian wives know how to do it, and everyone does its own version. But the boeuf salad should be on the table for the New Years's Eve!

The great part of making this salad is that it exists in a vegetarian version, in beef version, in a turkey version, in a chicken version and so on. If you are confused about the word BEOUF in the name, yes it is coming from French that means beef. But actually, it doesn't matter if you do it with chicken, turkey, beef or no meat at all, it is still called the beouf salad. 

It always includes boiled vegetables and pickles. There is no such thing as a beouf salad without pickles. The pickles are the most important ingredient that gives the specificity of this salad. The quantity of pickles should be substantial as it gives the taste. My mother was always including in this salad pickled cucumbers and pickled Romanian peppers. These peppers are specific to Romania and they are called "Gogosari". You can easily recognise them for their round shape. Unfortunately, here in Belgium, they do not exist, so I used just fresh red bell peppers instead.

Another interesting aspect is that the meat inside is there just to make it more nourishing but the taste is totally faded away by the vegetables.

The salad is also put together with mayonnaise. If there is one thing that I hate about the classic recipes for this salad, well that is the amount of mayonnaise that it is put inside. And yes, it is an important ingredient because it links together all the vegetables, it preserves it for some days in the fridge but this doesn't have to mean that I eat mayonnaise with vegetables ... I want to eat a salad with a minimum amount of mayonnaise. Therefore this is my version, not flooded in mayonnaise.

These potatoes are absolutely incredible!

I had in my fridge a big package of cheese for raclette and I wanted to use it for something different than the classical cheese melted in small pans and poured over boiled potatoes. I was looking for something roasted rather than boiled.
I saw a similar recipe once and I liked very much the design of these potatoes. The are many versions that can be done, starting from potatoes brushed with flavored olive oil until all sorts of variations of fillings inside the potatoes.
But I wanted to use my cheese and also add a bit of ham/bacon and this was for me the perfect time for me.
Cutting the potatoes and hiding the cheese and bacon inside takes a bit of time but makes the whole taste. The flavored olive oil on top is like the cherry on the cake, it helps to avoid burning and completes the extraordinary flavor.
My both kids simply loved them. For them, on one side, it was the taste, but on the other side, it was also the "game"of discovering each and every slice.
After this one, I am totally motivated to try other versions as well. In fact, my daughter already put on her wishing list of recipes cooked by mommy, the same potatoes but only with cheese. I'll let you know what are the results.
But for now, let's see in detail how to do it.

It is amazing how normal dishes can look outstanding by just changing the styling. I baked potatoes so many times but slicing them and arranging them in rose shapes was something fun to do. The result was a tray of potato roses.
They can be served as a side dish instead of the classic squared gratin. They can be eaten as a muffin, with a spoon or in an original way (as my daughter did), petal by petal.

Cooking in cast iron skillet is one of favorite way of cooking.We tend to forget our old way of cooking in natural materials for new ones that promise the Moon on the sky. Yes, it has also disadvantages: it is a heavy pan, sometimes sticks and it needs seasoning after each use. However, it is healthy, it is tested over centuries, it gives taste to food and is so versatile in terms of the heating used. I got rid of all my teflon pans and I kept only one that serves me for frying, cooking and for baking.
I love potatoes baked in the oven and combining two types of potatoes in one skillet makes the taste more interesting. Potatoes in this recipe are not melted in oil. I used a thin layer of oil only for the bottom of the pan to avoid sticking and I brushed spiced butter to add more taste and avoid drying them on the top. In the end, they are not heavily greased and is a pleasure to eat them as a side dish.

Most of the people think nowadays that the use of a fire woven is mainly for pizza and maybe bread. In fact, in a fire oven you can bake everything that you bake in a classic oven. The only trick is to master the temperature inside.
For baking a gratin, handling a fire oven is a piece of cake. I had my oven heated at 300ºC. It may look a bit too much and at this temperature, the gratin can become very quickly brown on top. To avoid this, use an aluminium foil ... it will work like a miracle. If you want in the end to give a light brown color to the crust, just remove it and let it bake for few minutes more.

Baking this in a fire oven adds a smoky flavour to the dish and improve the original flavours of the vegetables. Of course, this dish can be cooked in a normal oven also but in my opinion, the taste you get in the fire oven is greatly improved. I probably didn't mention that the spring onions were harvested fresh from my own greenhouse ...

This is not a real bread. It looks like one but in fact is a side dish, a vegetable bread.

Has a composition of a quiche or savoury tart, but because it is baked without a crust and in a bread form, it looks like a bread. Interesting and tasty in the same time ;)

This is a dish that my mother was doing a lot when I was a child. It is an autumn dish. The quince it is a symbol of the autumn.
As strange as it might look, although the quince is a fruit, this dish is not a dessert but rather a dish in itself that you can eat with bread or a side dish near some meat.
Every time I see quinces in a shop my mind go straight to this dish. As it is December, I was very lucky to still find them. In Belgium, these fruits are not very common and I needed to chase them in Turkish shops. And I am wondering why ... in Romania, my grand mother had a quince tree in the middle of her yard. When the autumn was coming, the parfum of the quince was all over the place.
I also remember my grandma's dog who was eating the quinces when they were falling down from the tree.
As a child, I hated to wash the fuzzy quinces. We were eating them after cutting them in slices as they were too hard to bite. My relatives were making this dish or jam from them. I did not appreciated them so much back then, but now I miss them so much ...

Yes, I know! Chips are not the most healthy food that you can put for dinner. But do you really believe that the ones that you buy in a bag or a box from supermarket are more healthy than the ones homemade? I do not believe so. And if I want mouthwatering chips than I prefer to make my owns.

Chips are extremely simple to do at home, you only need the right tools.

So here is the recipe ...

I love potatoes. They are so common but there is always a way to make them different.

It is a very classical recipe and this is how I do it.