Taj Kebab Recipe

When I was first offered the Haute Potato project a year ago, I was asked to come up with 75 gourmet potato dishes. On that very same day, I probably already had hundreds of recipes lined up in my head. I tried featuring potato dishes from around the world, but as you can imagine, a lot were left out of the final product. So today here's a potato dish that would have been in the "Spicy" chapter.

I learned this dish from Mina, my husband's cousin. It's called "Taj kebab" and if you like meat and potato as much as I do, you will love this one. This potato dish consists of layers of spiced ground beef, sliced potatoes, and thick fresh tomato slices.  The recipe was developed in Agra, just where the Taj Mahal is, and it will transport you to one of the seven wonders of the world!

Braided Tapenade Bread Recipe

Braiding is a fancy way to present stuffed bread. To get this recipe started, I prepared the dough and let it rest for a few hours. Once it's ready to roll, the sides of the resulting long rectangle are cut into long strands, filled with tapenade (or your favorite filling) then the bread is tied into a two-strand braid. 

I used homemade tapenade made with kalamata olives, mustard and capers. I love the way the deep-purple color contrasts with the bread. The bread would also work well with hummus, guacamole, salsa or roasted bell pepper spread.

Tomatillo Risotto Appetizer Recipe

This is my take on a Mexican-inspired risotto flavored with tomatillo. I prepared salsa verde and added it to creamy risotto. I spooned the risotto onto blue tortilla chips and topped them with salsa verde and crumbled queso fresco as a reminder of the flavor.

I recently received a goodie box of a selection of Queso Del Valle and Karoun cheeses. I’m a huge fan of their products and with Cinco De Mayo just around the corner, I’ll be sharing recipes all week using the cheeses. I’m not a master of authentic Mexican cuisine, but I love Mexican ingredients and flavors and use them often in fusion dishes like this one. 

Pepper Poppers

If you've been following my culinary adventures for a while, you probably know that Daddy's (my father-in-law) diet revolves around anything spicy. So he rarely eats the French dishes (except for the desserts) or Vietnamese meals I prepare for the rest of our family. So today, I prepared pepper popper appetizers. Who doesn't like fried food? Not even Daddy could say no. I prepared mild ones using mini tri-colored peppers and jalapeno peppers, and a couple of really spicy ones just for him.

Mini peppers are hollowed out, stuffed with a cheese mixture, breaded and deep-fried. You can't go wrong!

Crab Appetizers (Savory Cheese Cookies)

If you've been following my culinary adventures for a while, you probably know how much I love seafood. There's a French word "gourmande" that merely translates to "greedy" and I think it accurately sums up my personality when it comes to les fruits de mer (seafood). Thus it was fitting that at the Asian market this week I bought way too many crabs (again)! 

Lulu's grand-uncle, who also enjoys crab, came to visit us, so I made a few crab appetizers for him. At first, I didn't know how I was going to present the crab, but I finally settled on savory "cookies" flavored with Dubliner cheese. A bit of cottage cheese serves as the "glue" for the whole appetizer, and the depression in each cookie is perfect for a spoonful of crab meat.