Oatmeal cookies

Oatmeal cookies

On the left: the plain cookies; in the middle: the chocolate filled cookies; on the right, the coconut cookies

For our family Easter rendez-vous tomorrow, I baked three varieties of oatmeal cookies: plain, with coconut and with chocolate filling. The dough is the same for all of them.

140g of salted butter

240g of brown sugar

100g of wheat flour

150f of oat flakes

2 eggs

1 1/2 tea spoons of vanilla flavoring

Start by preheating the oven to 180ºC.

Beat the melted butter and the sugar with the whisk. Add the flour, the oat flakes, the eggs and the vanilla flavoring.

Cut a sheet of baking paper and sprinkle it with a bit of flour. Then use two tea spoons to shape the cookies on the paper: make a small ball (the size of the spoon) and spread the dough so it makes a thin circle. The thinner you make them, the crispier and the moister the cookies will get.

For the coconutly ones separate the amount of dough you want to use and add about a table spoon of grated coconut. Mix it with the same spoon.

For the chocolate filled cookies, make small circles on the baking paper, just like you did for the plain cookies. Melt 4 to 6 squares of cooking chocolate and spread a small amount of it on each cookie circles. Then cover each of them with another tea spoon of dough.

Place it in the oven for approximately 10 to 15 minutes.

Traditional markets

Markets are a really nice and interesting place to visit, specially when you're in a foreign country, as you can find food products that you don't find very easily in a commun supermarket. Last summer, in south Spain, I walked through a traditional market, where what caught my attention the most were the fruits and vegetables, the variety of cheese and the seafood.
You can see for yourself.

Many kinds of olives

Turnips, green and red peppers, aubergines and peas

Fish and other seafood

A world full of cheese

Green, red and yellow

There's a food that I'm always craving for and that I do almost everyday: a big healthy coloured salad.

My favourite kind of lettuce is the iceberg one, that in my country I can only find in the spanish supermarket Froiz. It tastes better than the other ones, it comes in a package with almost no dirt and it has a very fleshy consistency.

I chop it in very small pieces and put it in a big bowl with two ripe tomatoes and some grated emmental cheese (I prefer the Milram brand, also sold in that same supermarket, but you can use any kind of cheese you prefer). Normally, I season it with three or four table spoons of olive oil (it's healthier than oil because it's lower in fat, but don't use too much or your salad will only taste like oil with some chewable pieces) and some salt.

You can add some small pieces of wallnuts and some vinagre if you like.

My only problem with lettuce is that I can't eat it unless it's very carefully washed, but it takes a while to do so. Therefore, my solution is to put the leaves in a big bowl or a pan with water and some drops of vinegar (I always  pour more than I need just to make sure my salad doesn't have any undesirable habitants) and leave it there for some minutes, while I make the rest of the meal or I do something else. Then I change the water into plain water so the vinegar is all washed away and I'm ready to go.

In my pink apron: the beginning

This is the love story between a young woman and her passion for cooking, admiring and eating food.

It all began relatively late in my life, during that precious year where I had to start cooking no to starve to death nor to get terribly obese: my erasmus year.

I arrived in Paris with very basic cooking notions but not willing to waste my time in the most romantic city in the world inside a shared kitchen, cooking only for me. That's where I got it wrong: I fell in love. And when you fall in love, you take pleasure in serving your other half nice meals prepared by your own hands. At first it takes a while to be at ease with types of meal, with condiments and with boiling times, but with practice it all comes easily. And, for some, it becomes a real passion.