Skip to main content

About Me

Hello and welcome to my adventures in the kitchen!

I am not a chef, I do not have any training, I am not even that good of a cook, but I like cooking. I have a foodie instagram where I post what I cook (when I remember to do so).

I love trying out new recipes and challenging myself. I am a disaster in the kitchen and I often end up with my fingers bleeding or an entire pumpkin cream soup on the kitchen floor, yet nothing seems to keeps me away from the room where it happens! You might think "of course you cannot stay away, you have to eat", and it's true, but that doesn't mean I have to cook especially since I married a wonderful cook - most of the things I know, I learnt from him. So there is no need per se, just a desire that I cannot control - not even after I almost fainted when I sliced my finger in a mandoline; but I learnt my lesson and haven't used one ever since, I feel like there was probably another lesson I should've learnt - like using the safety thing that came with the mandoline, in which you stick the vegetable so your fingers are nowhere near the blades, but I like to live life dangerously!

As you can see, I ramble a lot! But I will keep it to a minimum when sharing recipes because I hate it when I look for a recipes online and I have to go through hundreds of paragraphs about God knows out to get to the damn recipe (apparently there is a copyright reason why food blogs talk a lot before giving you the recipe, no shade, no shade)! And I have another blog where I ramble, called Andreea's Nonsense because that's pretty much what it is - plus a lot of posts about books.

So that's it, dear reader. I am Andreea, a clumsy cook, with a passion for collecting cookbooks and learning new things. Cooking is the only thing that stresses me (A LOT), yet I still do it day after day. And this blog will be the place where I share my adventures in the form of recipes - and maybe more, who knows. I am not creating these recipes. I learn them from friends and family and cookbooks and I will always share the original links (or page number in a cookbook/magazine). Why am I reposting recipes that are available in a form of the other, you ask? Because I am treating this blog as my own recipe binder - which makes it easier for me to find a certain recipe or see what exactly I changed if a certain ingredient was not available to me. If I repost your recipe and you want it taken down, please email me at apandreeap@gmail.com.

Thank you!

Popular posts from this blog

Grandma's Sarmale

Well, they are mine now because I tweaked her recipe a bit. But without further ado: I MADE SARMALE! I don't know how or why, but while talking with a friend I decided this year I am cooking sarmale for Christmas. Then I started telling everyone, my dad sent me cabbage and minced meat and... well, I had to actually do it now! I was a bit scared because all the friends I spoke with who had their sarmale cooking experience told me it would be hard. And that was not my experience at all.  Stuffed cabbage or grape leaves is a thing in many countries, but I think it may have all started from Turkey since the Turkish word "sarma" means wrapped. And in Romanian we call one "sarma" and many "sarmale", and since you never make just one, the meal is called sarmale . Actually my grandma was mad when she heard I only made 23 sarmale , and not 60 or 100 like she expected me to. In my country, this is a traditional dish that we usually have for Christmas and Easter....

Restaurant Review: Ciao New York

The plan was to write this post in December, since this restaurant is one of my favourite places to go to around the holidays - it has a very homely vibe and the nicest winter decor. Plus the dim lights, the brick walls, the wine racks, and the sparkling glasses just add an extra something to the festive atmosphere. Ciao New York is an Italian bistro, perfectly pairing the delicious Italian nonna food with an exquisite rich-bitch attitude (obviously rich-bitch is not the word I am looking for, but it's exactly how my friends would describe my taste). I prefer it in winter because it's tiny, cosy, doesn't have outdoor seating anyway, and because I've never been here in the summer  months. I dined here with my husband and our neighbours. It was our neighbours' first time in this restaurant and it's now officially their favourite restaurant in town. Without further ado, let's discuss food. As it is my habit, I start with coffee no matter the hour I have dinner....

Sugar Syrups: Simple & Rich Dem

  I think I always had a passion for cocktails but I started being serious about it (and it's seriously fun) only last year. If 10 years ago I was only making Bellinis and Mimosas, now I love mixing spirits, learning about the history of cocktails, and... even making my own basics - this time: sugar syrups! Sugar syrups are extremely easy to make. It's all about ratios - a simple syrup is a 1:1 ratio, and a rich one is 2:1. And you can also make a semi-rich syrup which is 1.5:1. Simple Sugar Ingredients: 1 cup white sugar 1 cup water Rich Dem Ingredients: 2 cups Demerara sugar 1 cup water Method: Method is the same for both.  Demerara sugar is a raw brown sugar and it gives your drinks a toffee-coffee aftertaste. It's amazing and goes great with whiskey or my favourite Espresso Martini (recipe for it coming soon). Combine the ingredients for your syrup in a pot over heat, stirring continuously while the sugar dissolves. Once the sugar is dissolved, remove the pot from the ...