Simply nutritious and delicious: Chicken Liver Pate

To get the perfect consistency and flavor, use butter. No doubt It makes the best liver pate.

The basic recipe to prepare duck or chicken pate is to brown the livers in butter, deglaze with brandy, dry white wine or stock add seasonings and stir until the liquid is mostly gone. Then toss in the food processor with softened butter and season with salt.

For a variation, process with sauteed onions and mushrooms. This one keeps refrigerated 3-5 days, and the plane version lasts well covered and refrigerated for 5-8 days.

Serving suggestion: For a quick meal or snack, serve on toast or prepare a sandwich with melted Swiss or Mozzarella cheese.

The most important, the nutrition part:

So what makes liver so wonderful? Quite simply, it contains more nutrients, gram for gram, than any other food. In summary, liver provides:

An excellent source of high-quality protein
Nature’s most concentrated source of vitamin A
All the B vitamins in abundance, particularly vitamin B12
One of our best sources of folic acid
A highly usable form of iron
Trace elements such as copper, zinc and chromium; liver is our best source of copper
An unidentified anti-fatigue factor
CoQ10, a nutrient that is especially important for cardio-vascular function
A good source of purines, nitrogen-containing compounds that serve as precursors for DNA and RNA. ...From The Weston A. Price Foundation files

For more information visit: The Liver Files: Recipes and Lore About Our Most Important Sacred Food

by Chef Melissa - CookingDiva · May 12, 2008 · 01:22 PM
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Of fritters, ceviche and a woman’s right to cook

Thank you Karina Arrue and The Green Magazine for featuring The Cooking Diva this month!

Food blogging is a thriving enterprise these days; with over 48,000 blogs in theu.s. dedicated solely to culinary pursuits, these palatable web diaries are changing the way we relate to food. From popular blogs like Chocolate and Zucchini to Gluten-free Girl and Smitten Kitchen, there is bound to be a self-proclaimed foodie on the net, armed with the recipe needed to satisfy your precise hankering—say for an artichoke and goat cheese mille-feuille—at any given moment.

Their growing number leads me to believe that a small culinary miracle occurred when I stumbled upon the Cooking Diva a couple of months ago. I was looking for a recipe for carimañolas, a yucca fritter made in my father’s homeland, when I first came across Chef Melissa De Leon’s charming blog, and I have been a regular visitor since. The 30-something Panama native drew me in with her knowledge of Latin American cuisine, which is a rarity on the Internet—especially in English—despite the food blog boom. While her perspective on cooking is exceedingly cosmopolitan, no doubt a product of many years of living and traveling abroad, her voice is refreshingly warm and lacking the pretension often found in elevated culinary circles.

Open the PDF file with the complete article...Download MarApr08_DailyBREAD.pdf

by Chef Melissa - CookingDiva · April 03, 2008 · 06:53 PM
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London Gastro Tour: Borough Market

The day was perfect and the company fantastic! We (The Nokia Food Bloggers) went on a tour of the Borough Market in London. The charming Celia Brooks Brown was our guide. To give you an idea of what we experienced, next follows an excerpt from Celia's website:

...Hear the extraordinary history of this ancient market and share an insider's view. We start the day with elevenses / brunch at the glorious ROAST restaurant perched above the market, then follow with lots of specially arranged tastings: scallops, rare breed meats, olive oils, Ceylon tea, exotic Mexican chillies, Italy's most prized Parmesan cheese, and many more, plus a chance to hear the stories behind the creation of these fabulous artisan foods. We'll sit down for a wine tasting at Bedale's accompanied by a spread of delicious French goodies, concluding with a tasting of simple tapas combinations at Brindisa Spanish Foods. Head over to her website to learn more about her gastrotours...

Now enjoy the photos, they were all taken with my new N95 8GB:

1. Girl Interrupted Eating & The Cooking Diva, 2. Maria Luisa from Mil Sabores, 3. Perfectly round mini carrots, 4. Stylish purple-orange carrots, 5. Mushrooms, tasty mushrooms!

by Chef Melissa - CookingDiva · March 20, 2008 · 11:47 PM
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Nokia Food Workshop in London: Disfrutando el N95 8GB

De Panamá a Londres...

Se nos hizo hoy el día corto en el workshop al que Nokia nos ha invitado en esta ocasión, para conocer de las bondades del práctico N95 8GB que nos han obsequiado. Una estrategia de mercado excelente! Que mejor que el segmento prolífico de los food bloggers, de todos colores y sabores, diseños y originados en coordenadas geográficas inimaginables!

De igual forma ha sido maravilloso el poder finalmente conocer a algunos de los foodies cuyos blogs leo desde hace ya tiempo:

La Olla Suiza, de España

Blog Mercotte, de Francia

Just Hungry, de Suiza

Cavoletto Di Bruxelles, de Italia

Girl Interrupted Eating, de Londres, Inglaterra

Y mi querida Maria Luisa de MilSabores, de Venezuela

Mañana, entre otras cosas, visitaremos el Borough Market, el mercado de alimentos más antiguo de Londres.

Seguiremos reportando...

Un abrazo,

Melissa

*Photo credits / foto: Piña, La Chorrera-Panamá

by Chef Melissa - CookingDiva · March 19, 2008 · 09:15 PM
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Video From the Tropics: Behind the Black Eyed Peas & Authentic Hot Pepper Relish

Life Made Simple in Panama, show #7, hosted by Aimee Arnold & Chef Melissa De Leon.

This time we show how to prepare black eyed peas Panamanian style: with smoked pig's tail and freshly made hot pepper relish. Simply delicious!

In history, black eyed peas originated from when the slave were brought over from Africa. Now many people celebrate New Years Day with Black Eyed peas to honor the slaves who fought for freedom. Today many people continue to celebrate this tradition by preparing Black eyed peas for good luck, good fortune and or good change, not only for New Years day, because it is a well loved comfort meal, very economical and easy to prepare.

Enjoy!
Chef Melissa

Behind the Black Eyed Peas & Authentic Hot Pepper Relish Recipe from Melissa De Leon on Vimeo.

by Chef Melissa - CookingDiva · March 18, 2008 · 09:02 PM
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