When I first saw the recipe for healthy fettuccine alfredo with cauliflower sauce by Pinch of Yum on Foodgawker, I immediately fell in love with the idea of making a perfectly healthy alternative to my favorite alfredo sauce. Plus, seeing this sauce immediately brought back the memories of a few years back, during Atkins diet craze, when I used to make “fake” mashed potatoes using cauliflower and how much I enjoyed it!

Making this healthy alfredo sauce has long been on my mind but what stopped me from making it was simple logistics: I would forget to buy cauliflower at the store! Finally, here we are – with several cauliflower florets in the refrigerator, I was ready to go!

I made several adjustments to the recipe to bring it closer to the true fettuccine alfredo:

1) I sauteed shallots and garlic in a little bit of butter which added a really nice subtle flavor.

2) I added 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese to the sauce – you are, of course, free to add more if you like.

3) I added sweet peas which add a touch of sweetness and perfectly compliment just about any pasta dish. Sweet peas went perfectly with the creamy cauliflower sauce!

What can I say about the result of this endeavor? I simply love cauliflower in mashed form! With the addition of a little bit of heavy cream, Parmesan cheese, shallots, garlic, and sweet peas, this dish becomes a pure vegetarian heaven! I literally could not stop eating it. Right now, my head is full of many other variations I’d love to try with the cauliflower sauce in place of alfredo, but for now, please enjoy this recipe!

Makes 6 servings.

This cauliflower sauce reheats beautifully, so feel free to refrigerate the leftovers and reheat them later.

1) Clean the cauliflower head from green leaves, and chop it into reasonably large but manageable pieces. Place it in the big sauce pan with water, bring to boil and boil for 30-40 minutes until cauliflower is really soft. Remove from heat and drain cauliflower from water. Do reserve some cooking water.

2) Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add minced shallot (or 2 tablespoons of minced regular onion) and minced garlic and saute until tender. Add heavy cream and Parmesan cheese and bring to a boil. Cook just for a minute, stirring, until cheese melts. Remove from the heat.

3) In a food processor, combine cauliflower from step 1 and creamy sauce from step 2. Process really well, until a very creamy sauce forms. Feel free to add more heavy cream or cooking water (using 1/4 measuring cup) from step 1 to thin the sauce if it is too thick. Transfer sauce into a large sauce pan and keep it warm on the stove top. Season with salt and pepper, and nutmeg, to taste.

4) Cook the peas in boiling water for about 5 minutes, or according to instructions if using frozen peas.

5) Bring a large pot of water to boil and cook the fettuccine in boiling salted water until al dente. Drain.

6) Combine the cauliflower sauce (from step 3), cooked shelled peas (from step 4), and pasta cooked al dente (from step 5). Toss to combine thoroughly – over medium heat. Stir the sauce constantly. Sprinkle with remaining Parmesan and garnish with parsley, if desired. Serve immediately.

I’ve been making a lot of tropical fruit salsa lately. You could say I am on a tropical fruit salsa kick. Fruits and veggies mixed with the lime juice and spices are so good, and there are so many possible variations – I can eat it with anything! The salsa goes especially well with seafood: I’ve made mango salsa with salmon, pineapple salsa with shrimp, and now it’s time for white fish with salsa.

In this recipe, I am entering a new fruit – cantaloupe! Who knew that cantaloupe could be a delicious addition to tropical fruit salsa! It’s sweet, it’s soft, it’s colorful! It balances perfectly with the rest of ingredients: tomatoes, pineapple, red onion, cilantro, lime juice, and spices.

On these photos you see fresh black cod right from the Seattle seafood market, but, really, any white fish can be used: tilapia, halibut, mahi mahi, sea bass. I found that they all go great with tropical fruit salsa! Black cod that I used in this recipe is an exceptionally flavorful and very buttery fish – it’s very easy to cook it due to its high oil content, therefore, it’s almost impossible to have a dry black cod. If you get your hands on good quality black cod – by all means buy it! If you tend to overcook your fish and then don’t like the resulting dry taste – try this fish, because it’s virtually impossible to fail with black cod and overcook it.

I just love this recipe! Eating white, flaky fish with all that fruit and vegetables is very refreshing! I feel like I am in Hawaii!

1) Mix all chopped ingredients for tropical fruit salsa in a large bowl, add lime juice, add salt and pepper to taste. Set aside to let the juices combine together.

2) To prepare seasoning for the fish, mix salt, pepper, paprika, oregano, cumin in a small bowl.

3) Heat large skillet on high heat. Season fish on non-skin side with salt & pepper and other spices from step 2, generously. Add oil to the hot skillet: the oil should sizzle. Add fish to the skillet non-skin side down (skin side up) and sear for 4 minutes, moving the fish around the skillet to make sure oil coats the surface of the fish and that the fish is not sticking to the pan while searing.

4) After these 4 minutes, turn the fish over to the skin side and sear for another 3 minutes on high heat. After searing on the skin side, you can actually remove salmon skin easily at this point and discard, if you don’t like to eat it.

A while back last year, when Smitten Kitchen cookbook just came out, I won it at one of the giveaways, which made me very happy because I really wanted her book and because I usually don’t win anything. Since then, I have been using that cookbook mainly as my night time comfort reading, enjoying Deb’s stories and pictures right before I fall asleep. Then, I had a realization last week that I haven’t even cooked anything from that cookbook yet, and that was about to change when I started flipping through the pages and saw her chocolate peanut butter cookies, sandwiched together with a thick chocolate peanut butter frosting.

These cookies are so-o-o special! They will appeal equally to kids and adults, to those who like chocolate-based desserts and those who don’t. These cookies have a perfect ratio of sugar to peanut butter: they are perfectly sweet and the chocolate frosting does not overwhelm the peanut butter taste.

I also love that the cookies don’t have a large amount of butter in the frosting (only 2 tablespoons of butter in the frosting enough for 40 sandwiched cookies!) – just enough to fluff up and soften up the creamy peanut butter! As a result, I don’t have that feeling in my stomach that I am stuffed even after I eat a whole bunch of these cookies!

I also love the small size of each individual cookie! Sometimes peanut butter cookies could be too rich, but these are not! They are just perfect little dessert.

I am definitely adding these easy-to-make cookies to my collection of simple-to-make but good-looking cookies!

Ingredients for filling:

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter, room temperature
• 1/3 cup powdered sugar
• 4 ounces semisweet chocolate

Makes 40 sandwiched cookies

To make the cookies:

1) Beat butter and peanut butter in a large bowl until well combined and fluffy. Add the sugars and beat until combined. Add egg and beat until smooth.

2) In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt).

3) Add dry ingredients from step 2 to the wet ingredients from step 1 and beat on low speed until just incorporated.

4) Divide dough into 4 parts: the dough will be crumbly. Form a rectangular shaped log out of each cookie dough part and wrap in plastic wrap. Freeze for 30 minutes until cookie dough firms up.

5) Preheat oven to 350. Line baking sheet with parchment paper or lightly greased aluminum foil.

6) Slice each log of cookie dough (after it’s been in the freezer for 30 minutes) into 1/4 inch thick slices.

7) Carefully place sliced cookies onto the prepared baking sheet (remember the dough is very crumbly). You don’t have to space them too far apart because these cookies won’t flatten. Bake for 10 minutes until lightly puffed and just a little bit golden brown at the edges.

8) Transfer to the cooling rack and cool completely before filling.

To make the filling:

1) In a medium bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the butter and peanut butter until light and fluffy.

2) Gradually add the powdered sugar, beating until well combined.

3) In a microwave melt the chocolate and add it to the peanut butter mixture, beating until well incorporated, fluffy and spreadable.

4) Place about 1 teaspoon of chocolate frosting on top of a cookie and place a second cookie on top of the chocolate frosting. Press 2 cookies together. Repeat with the rest of cookies.

Salmon, salmon, salmon. How I love good quality wild fresh salmon! This salmon you see on the photos is directly from the famous Seattle seafood market, and it is SO-O-O GOOD! Especially when you turn it into an Asian sesame salmon, beautifully caramelized and a little charred:

For this dish, I made a very simple but oh-so-flavorful Asian sauce, by mixing together the sesame oil, honey, rice vinegar, soy sauce, red curry paste until honey melted and blended beautifully with other ingredients. This creates a very tasty and gooey Asian sauce that is SPICY, SWEET, and SOUR – all at the same time!

Then I broiled the fish for about 5-7 minutes to caramelize the salmon, brushing with the sauce. As the final touch, I reduced the sauce slightly on the stove top and then poured it over the fish! Very simple? Yes! Very rich in flavor? Absolutely! Serve it over quinoa, rice or your favorite veggies.

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2) In a small pan on low heat, whisk together the sesame oil, honey, rice vinegar, lemon juice, soy sauce, red curry paste until honey melts and blends with other ingredients.

3) Place salmon skin-side down in a baking dish, pour half the sauce over it, bake for about 10 minutes. Remove from oven. Increase oven temperature to broil. Place the fish back in the oven and broil for 5-7 more minutes, brushing with the sauce.

4) Remove skin from the salmon, pour sauce from the baking dish back into the small pan in step 2 (to the remaining half of the sauce) and reduce it slightly on medium heat. Pour the reduce sauce (glaze) over salmon. Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds.

This recipe was also included in The Kitchn’s Delicious Links!

Because it was my mom who taught me how to make crepes, my dessert of choice for this Mother’s Day is dessert crepes! I love crepes! My mom used to make them for me and my twin sister almost every other weekend when we were growing up. We would usually fill them with all kinds of jam or preserves and have them for breakfast on the weekends. Those were the good old days!

Lately, I really like to fill my crepes with sweetened ricotta cheese filling and stuff them with all kinds of berries. I use agave nectar to sweeten the ricotta cheese, because agave nectar is very sweet and you only need a couple of tablespoons, and it’s easy to mix agave with ricotta cheese on low heat. I tried using regular or brown sugar and it just isn’t the same.

If you know how to make crepes, the rest of this recipe is super easy. This is one of my most favorite desserts, because it’s so easy to make (especially if you have a stack of pre-made crepes) and because it’s filled with berries!

Makes 4 servings

1) Prepare crepes according to instructions.

2) Heat ricotta cheese and agave nectar in a small skillet on medium-high and keep mixing it until the mixture becomes liquid and of even consistency. Remove from heat and let it cool. Once it cools a bit, the mixture would become more solid, which is what we want.

3) To serve: add 2 tablespoons of agave-ricotta cheese mixture on top of the open crepe, scatter blueberries, and fold the crepe in half. Ready to serve!

Mac and cheese brings up nostalgic memories in a lot of people, as it certainly was a favorite food for a lot of us growing up. I’ve always wondered, however, whether adults remain as passionate about mac and cheese as when they were children, and for me the answer to that is YES! Except, these days I like to enhance my mac and cheese with funky additions, such as bacon and caramelized onions. Oh my yum! Don’t even get me started on how good bacon is in this dish. To go even further and make it even fancier, I often use prosciutto or pancetta in place of bacon – and that elevates this mac and cheese to another completely yummy level!

Also, I like to simplify things, just like when I was a kid, and this recipe is especially simple since I don’t use Bechamel sauce (and I did make a classic mac and cheese using Bechamel sauce once), I don’t make roux, and I also don’t use custard-based cheese sauce. I just simply mix milk, heavy cream, white Cheddar and Gruyere cheese (in just the right proportions to achieve the desired creaminess) plus spices – to make a very creamy and cheesy mac and cheese! I guess based on the cooking method I used I could call this mac and cheese – Fettuccine Alfredo, too!

Adding caramelized onions certainly makes this more of an adult mac and cheese, and what a delicious addition it is! Just make sure to caramelize onions for 30 minutes to make sure they brown thoroughly, without burning. In the end, you should have onions that are soft and sweet from all the caramelization process.

This mac and cheese can be served as is, or as a side dish to the steak, which is how I like it!

Makes 4 servings.

1) To caramelize onions: heat 1 tablespoon olive oil on high heat in a large skillet, when oil is heated, add sliced onions and cook on high heat for about 10 minutes, constantly stirring with spatula. The onions should start to brown, but without burning (a couple of onions may be burnt here and there, but overall they should not be charred). Reduce heat to medium and continue cooking onions for 10 more minutes, continuing to stir, as onions brown even more without burning. At this point add just a pinch of salt over onions. Continue cooking for 10 more minutes on medium or low heat, stirring occasionally to make sure onions don’t stick to the bottom of the pan or burn. Total you should have cooked onions for 30 minutes. Remove from heat and sprinkle onions with a small amount of balsamic vinegar to deglaze the pan. Using spatula, mix the onions, scraping the bottom of the pan and coating onions with a pinch of balsamic vinegar you just added.

2) While you’re caramelizing the onions, cook bacon: I usually bake it in the oven at 350 until it just turns crispy. Drain the bacon on paper towels and chop into small pieces.

3) Cook elbow macaroni according to package instructions. Rinse the macaroni under cold running water, drain. Set aside.

4) In a large saucepan, add heavy cream, milk, sharp white cheddar cheese, Gruyere cheese and 1/4 teaspoon salt on medium heat, stir and mix, until cheeses start to blend. Add black pepper, Cayenne pepper and paprika to your taste, or omit them if you don’t want them. Add elbow macaroni to the creamy sauce, stir to coat on low heat for about 5-10 minutes until cheeses melt completely and coat the macaroni.

6) Add caramelized onions and chopped bacon to the creamy macaroni.

7) Serve on warm plates (warmed in the oven) as is, or with more cheese (finely grated) sprinkled on top.

I am sharing this recipe with Shine Supper Club as part of their Favorite Childhood Recipes Round up (May 2013).

My recipe was also included in The Kitchn’s Delicious Links!

Yes, I have a lot of fresh pineapple at my disposal right now. Thus, this is the second time this week I am making a recipe using pineapple – and I don’t mind it in the least! I love fresh pineapple!!! I could snack on plain pineapple all day long, but I also like to use it as an ingredient to enhance recipes, such as making this pineapple salsa to accompany fish or shrimp.

I love southwestern flavors and I love seafood – the two concepts I combine in this simple dish. The shrimp is coated in southwestern spices: cumin, oregano, chili powder, paprika, garlic, plus salt and pepper. It is cooked on the stove top on high heat for a short time – I don’t want to overcook the shrimp! It can also be grilled, but this is a weeknight dish for me, so I don’t have time for the grill.

The pineapple salsa is simply delicious! Fresh and bright in color, it’s full of anti-oxidants, fiber, and other nutrients. I have a hard time staying away from it, so usually very little of this salsa makes it to the actual dinner table, and I simply have to make a double batch. You might have to double the salsa recipe – it’s too addicting!

Placing shrimp spiced up in southwestern spices on top of pineapple salsa creates a pure delight! And it only takes about 30 minutes (maximum 40) to throw everything together! Perfect weeknight dish for seafood and shellfish lovers!

1) Mix all chopped ingredients for mango salsa in a large bowl, add lime juice, add salt and pepper to taste. Set aside to let the juices combine together.

2) Rinse the shrimp.

3) Mix salt, pepper, sage, paprika, oregano, cumin, and chili powder in a medium size bowl. Add shrimp in shells and minced garlic to the bowl with spices and mix and toss to coat shrimp with spices.

4) Heat 4 tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan on high heat. Add shrimp, coated with spices and minced garlic, and cook about 3 minutes on each side, until shrimp becomes red in color on each side. Remove pan from heat.

More shrimp recipes:

• Garlic spicy shrimp and asparagus pasta
• Spicy curry shrimp pasta: curried tomato sauce, snap peas and orzo

These peanut butter cookies stuffed with Rolos and rolled in sugar belong in the hall of the best peanut butter cookies ever! I highly recommend these – they are definitely the best peanut butter cookies I have tried so far, especially considering how easy they are to make! The cookie itself (even without the rolos) is so perfect with its yummy brownie-like texture: it’s both chewy and soft at the same time. There is just the right amount of peanut butter: not too much and not too little. You can definitely taste a peanut butter in this cookie, and yet it’s not like you’re eating overly rich peanut butter cookies. Topped with utterly delicious milk chocolate caramel candy (Rolos), these cookies reach a completely new level! And when you bite into the chocolate center, and it burst with chewy caramel – it’s then that you realize that these cookies completely justify their name: peanut butter SURPRISE cookies (with rolos).

The seemingly unimportant step of rolling these cookies in granulated sugar right before putting them in the oven is the reason why these cookies look so pretty (almost like sugar cookies), why they are light in color and have beautiful cracks on top. Coating these cookies in sugar before baking serves two purposes:

1) The cookies acquire lighter, much more attractive color when sugar coated. If you don’t roll these cookies in sugar, they will come out much darker, almost looking like dark peanut butter. Rolled in sugar, they come out looking like sugar cookies!

2) Rolling cookies in sugar gives them a nice soft crunch on the outside of the cookie.

For cookies to have that nicely rounded, puffed up shape, roll them in balls between the palms of your hands and then roll each cookie ball in sugar. If the cookie dough is too soft for you to work with, let it chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes before rolling.

Let the cookies bake without Rolos for about 7 minutes, just until they spread a little and puff up. At this point, remove the cookie sheet from the oven and add one Rolo candy in the middle of each cookie, by pressing it down gently. Bake for additional 5 minutes, no longer, just until cookie edges begin to brown slightly, and the chocolate covered candy starts melting on top, without disintegrating.

The result are amazingly yummy cookies that are popular with kids and adults alike! They have a moist, almost brownie-like texture and only get better as the days pass by. Keep them in air-tight container and they will last you for up to 2 weeks – that is,if you’re disciplined enough not to eat them all the first day!

Makes 15-18 cookies

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Using an electric mixer, cream peanut butter and butter in a mixing bowl until smooth. Add brown sugar; beat until combined. Add eggs and vanilla, and continue beating until creamy.

2) In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Gradually add dry ingredients from step 2 to wet ingredients in step 1, beating on low speed.

3) Prepare baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper or lightly greased aluminum foil. Place granulated sugar on a plate. Roll spoonfuls of cookie dough into balls, rolling each ball between your hands. Roll balls in sugar to coat them completely.

4) Place cookie balls 2 inches apart on a prepared baking sheet. Bake until cookies begin to puff up slightly, about 7 minutes. Remove from oven. Press one Rolo candy in center of each cookie. Return to oven; continue baking for about 5 more minutes, until cookies just turn golden brown and chocolate begins to melt. Remove from oven and let the cookies cool at least 10 minutes on baking sheet before transferring cookies to rack to cool completely.

Right now, April-May, is the best time to buy fresh mangoes and pineapple – a self-imposed mission my husband has successfully accomplished for the past 3 weeks. I now always have a fresh pineapple (or two, or even three!) on my counter, and a couple of mangoes sitting in the refrigerator or ripening quietly in the pantry. Velvety fleshed and tasting like honey, mangoes are especially my current favorite! I only like to use them raw as mangoes seem to lose their flavor if cooked.

So, with the abundance of mangoes and pineapples at the market (and the abundance of salmon in my freezer), it was only a matter of time before I made a dinner combining broiled salmon with mango salsa.

This is one of the simplest (and most delicious) recipes you will ever make! If you scroll down, you might notice my lengthy cooking instructions but they are lengthy only because sometimes I can be quite verbose describing the simplest of things. Often, the simpler the recipe, the more I seem to talk about it.

This is also one of my most favorite ways to serve salmon. You just can’t go wrong by combining citrus-and-honey-infused broiled salmon with the salsa made from fresh tropical fruit! The flavors are so perfect and refreshing, it’s like you’re eating a salad! And yet this meal will keep you full and satiated thanks to salmon packed with high quality proteins and omega-3 oils! This is a truly well-rounded dish: very colorful, full of anti-oxidants, fiber, fruit (mangoes and pineapple), vegetables (tomatoes and onions), protein and healthy fats ! So tasty! And, doesn’t it make a nice presentation, thanks to all the colorful ingredients?

1) Mix all chopped ingredients for mango salsa in a large bowl, add lime juice, add salt and pepper to taste. Set aside to let the juices do their work.

2) Cook 2 cups of uncooked rice according to instructions for the type of rice (or even quinoa) you’re using.

3) To prepare the glaze: combine honey, lemon juice and soy sauce in a small pan on medium heat until honey is softened and well incorporated with other ingredients. Set aside.

4) Preheat broiler. Season the salmon on both sides with salt and pepper. Before broiling salmon in the oven, I like to sear it a little bit on the stove top: this will add nice color and will also allow to easily remove the skin. Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil on high heat in a skillet until very hot. Add salmon, non-skin side down and sear on high heat for 2 minutes, constantly moving the salmon in the skillet so that it doesn’t stick. After it’s nicely seared, flip the salmon skin side down and continue searing for 2 more minutes on its skin side, constantly moving the salmon to avoid sticking to the skillet. After it’s nicely seared on the skin side, remove the skin easily with spatula.

5) Place the salmon in an oven-proof dish skin-less side up (with the side that used to have skin – down). Brush the top of salmon with half the amount of glaze prepared in step 3. Broil for about 3 minutes, brush with the remaining amount of glaze and broil for additional 2-3 minutes until nicely charred. Watch to make sure salmon does not burn because of the sugar in the honey. Remove from the broiler, cover with foil and let it sit for about 10 minutes before serving. This will allow salmon to cook through but not be overcooked.

6) To serve, place a scoop of rice (or quinoa) on one side of the dish and a scoop of mango salsa next to it. Top with salmon.

More salmon recipes:

• Asian sesame salmon
• Asian salmon and noodles
• Salmon fillet with Sake sauce and wild rice

And, some shrimp recipes:

• Southwestern shrimp with pineapple salsa
• Garlic spicy shrimp and asparagus pasta
• Spicy curry shrimp pasta: curried tomato sauce, snap peas and orzo

Whenever I make banana bread, it’s usually because I have overly ripe bananas that are about to rot but I don’t want to waste them. You should’ve seen these 3 bananas that went into this bread: they were black and already mushy inside their banana casing. My mother-in-law cringed when she once saw me save bananas that were this ripe. This time around, I also had a package of fresh strawberries that were getting dangerously soft and a package of wrinkled fresh blueberries, so why not throw all of these soft, wrinkly, mushy ingredients together into one deliciously moist strawberry banana bread!

And what a great and colorful banana bread it turned out to be! I also added a tablespoon of fresh lemon zest to the bread batter which gave the bread even more oomph! It’s like the summer entered my house! Mixed berries, spiced up by the lemon zest in a banana bread – to me, it tastes like a summer berry cake. You can’t really go wrong with a very moist banana bread stuffed with strawberries and blueberries.

1) Preheat the oven to 350 F.

2) In a large bowl, mix mashed bananas and melted butter, using wooden fork or spoon. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix just enough to blend the ingredients; do not over-mix, the lumps will work themselves out.

3) Add lemon zest, chopped strawberries and whole blueberries to the batter and mix them in to distribute evenly through the batter.

4) Butter a 4×8 inch loaf pan. Line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper, butter the parchment paper too. Pour the batter in the pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.

Note: lining the bottom of the pan with parchment paper ensures that the bottom of the bread will not get stuck.

More banana recipes:

• Banana bread with blueberries
• Banana bread with walnuts
• Banana bundt cake