Creamy Pumpkin Curry

by Diana

Halloween always makes me think of those very simple yet essential privileges that living in London offers. We never celebrated this 'feast', not necessarily because it was pagan, but possibly because it was dangerous. I never drove my pink tricycle in the streets around my neighbourhood as even in the 1990’s my overprotective parents, rightly so, feared for thieves and kidnappers. I cannot really imagine what could happen now if a bunch of children are out and about in the streets in Caracas, knocking on strangers doors and demanding sweets. Furthermore, with so many basic foods shortages, it’s hard to think of what could people give away, if they can afford to be generous at the moment. There is one other thing in my mind, very much linked to the previous idea, and that is food waste. I am creative, don’t take me wrong, and I strongly support pumpkin carving as with any other art activities, it could be good for your wellbeing, specially if it's done as a family. But if on the following day you could use your spooky sculpture leftovers to cook something together, then that would not just balance out your kids' nauseating sugar intake, but could also give you an excuse of another family gathering during which, in the back of your mind, you could be grateful for those very simple, yet essential moments of freedom that other families are not able to afford. 

© The Teaspoon

Citrus Loaf

by Diana 

It’s very difficult to unlearn those things that are an intrinsic part of the way you see the world. As my multiple grammatical mistakes reveal, English is not my first language and no matter how hard I try, Spanish would always flourish one way or another.

In (Venezuelan) Spanish the word for lemon means actually lime. We call ‘limón’ the smaller, green more bitter variety of citron and ‘lima’ the big yellow one. This knowledge is so embedded now in my stubborn adult mind that it comes with images and flavours which makes it even harder to deracinate. I know I am not dyslexic so perhaps I am just obstinate.

Last week I was searching for a recipe calling for the ‘limes’ I had lying around in the kitchen and found one that solved all my problems and actually called for both. As I didn’t have ‘lemons’ I just used limes and to make things  even more confusing I covered the cake with almonds so my citric problems would never be revealed. I told everyone at the office that because of the almonds, it was a deceiving cake, and inconsistently described it as both lemon and lime when people dared to ask. Perhaps I’m just a liar. The cake is really good though, so I hope you like it too!

© The Teaspoon

Cornbread

by Diana

My mother is the kind of person that when an idea gets into her head there is no power on earth that can persuade her to give it up. When her projects don’t demand my time (as I treasure every minute to do the exact same thing but with my own little projects) then I do admire her determination and extreme insistence to reach her goals. Most of the time we are talking about meaningful and important projects she sets herself to do  but sometimes it’s just a recurrent thought she transform into a task for all of us to deliver. As the passionate psychologist I know she is, I am convinced she sees this as ‘bonding’ time. There was one summer she (meaning my  husband) would spend every day on the hunt for the perfect blue pair of shoes that would match the exact colour on the blue dress she fixated with on the previous year. These last few months the theme is cornbread as all the other types of flour in the world are just wrong of course. It doesn’t matter what we have on the agenda, where we are or who we are with,  if she (meaning we) could stop and enquire about cornbread then that would make her happy. And what’s the point of having a food blog if I can’t help my own mother fullfill her bread related fantasies. So just to see that smile on her face (and so we could get some rest) then I am making her a American southern style corn bread that I am sure I’ll be making over and over and over again at least until the next idea comes up. 

© The Teaspoon

Spicy Apple Soup

by Diana 

Not a lot of people can claim they had their very own mango tree when growing up. We were lucky to have access to an amazing tropical garden but, as it often happens, the priority was to drive my pink tricycle around the heliconias rather than harvesting the fruit. I self-reproach not having fully appreciated that privilege, as living in London has taught me to be content now with just a few not very exciting indoor plants. 

The farther you live from the city though, the higher the chances you ever have to shop for fruit again. My friend Patricia is at the moment overwhelmed with an abundant autumnal produce as she wisely chose to exchange the city commodities for a wide range of trees and a happy family life in the countryside. We visited her last week and were mesmerised with the colours and generosity the season brings to her garden. Not surprisingly she fed us with exaggerated portions of delicious apple crumble and waved us goodbye with equally generous fruit-full ‘goodie bags’. I used her apples for a heart warming soup inspired by a cold version my sister-in-law did for the blog a few years ago.

© The Teaspoon

Turmeric Chai Latte

by Diana

Trying to incorporate in our diet every single ingredient that claims to hold the magic key to longevity and overflow us with miraculous natural benefits can be an obsessive-compulsive triggering thing to do. Everybody knows there is not such thing as a formula for healthy lifestyle; it’s a combination of habits -and spice mix alike!

One element that most trendy ingredients and have in common is undoubtedly their aesthetic quality. Without its absinthe-like, psychedelic appearance it would be harder to have Matcha so imposed on us everywhere we go for example, nonetheless we would just spontaneously prefer it over our instantly gratifying vanilla latte, no matter whether its frenetic consumption would feed our longing of everlasting youth. Turmeric is another one of those ‘good-looking’ roots that promises to forever save us from all distress. The small captions that nobody ever reads explain that we need to ingest absurd quantities in order to begin to grasp its medicinal properties.

When it comes to food and taste there is something quite obvious that we can’t ignore. We are talking about senses and it’s hard to indulge the body and yet remain fully rational and pragmatic. We may not pick turmeric because it’s delicious, we want it because we are convinced is good for us, but ultimately, we go with it because is just stunning and, within its pigmenting beauty, we are essentially pleasing our senses, at least one of them. 

I’ll leave you with this recipe that I am confident won’t fulfil you with antioxidants but that for sure will successfully please your sight and taste.

© The Teaspoon 

Heirloom Tomato Salad with Parsley Pesto

by Diana 


I have a tendency to (sentimentally) preach about the importance of noticing beautiful things in daily life in order to overcome joy-consuming low mood and boredom. People blame my often annoying happy attitude on the ‘latinamericanism’ but everyone knows I have quite a mixed heritage so I wouldn’t be so sure.  Stopping and appreciating what would otherwise be insignificant, requires only our willingness to do so and can indeed contribute to some emotional tranquility, very much needed in the hecticness that overflows the city. Mindfulness is so trendy now and there is so much written nowadays about it and so many approaches,  resources, apps, support groups and self-help tools that makes finding out about it overwhelming in itself. My take on it is quite simple though: look up, stop, absorb, smile.

A couple of days per week I work in one of the most chaotic of London’s boroughs. It’s busy, noisy and with the ocasional stabbing. I like it though, despite the cannabis smell in the park, as there is a fruit and vegetable market in the high street every day and on my break I go for walks in search for cheap avocados and just to be as curious as a foodie can be. The other day, whilst looking up I found bowls of green tomatoes, which I’ve never seen before, perhaps for not noticing enough but possibly because they were simply out of season- if there is such thing as ‘unripe fruit season’. It may be quite basic but I was able to find my daily beauty dosis in the Autumn fallen green tomatoes. I doubt that staring at fruit bowls is at the heart of mindfulness practice yet it’s all about being able to get away from yourself, at least for a moment and to contemplate.. or cook! This is my attempt to preserve the instant. 

© The Teaspoon 

Raspberry & White Chocolate Cake

by Diana

If there is a non plus ultra to stepping out of one’s comfort zone then (for me) emigrating gets the golden prize. My parents are both quite careful and over-thoughtful about making decisions, particularly when it comes to uncertain outcomes. As a child I valued the safety and stability they provided us with and expectedly, as a teenager, I resented it. I sought challenges and found in art the best unpredictable journey, until I decided to restart my life in a new country, away from home, and from the new land, I unconsciously sought to reach stability and safety one more time. I learnt to value the commodity of knowing but as a therapist I had to learn how to appreciate the beauty of not knowing all over again. I now try not to label myself as I can certainly relate to both aspects which makes me feel somehow balanced. 

My beloved friend Carla sits comfortably on the stable side of my life in London. She is the personification of reliability and, like me, she both embraces and resents routine. We joked as she would always demand the same cake for dessert when invited over to ours for a meal, no matter the occasion. I admire her determination and her proud approach to security and stability. You need a friend like that when everything else continues to feel like an adventure. You need a friend like that in life, full stop. When Carla was offered the opportunity to challenge herself and re-emigrate to Italy to be part of an amazing project then our safety poles conglomerated to make an uncertain choice. A month or so after her departure I wanted to say ‘arrivederci’ with the recipe of the white chocolate and raspberry cake she so long adores, hoping that in the middle of the uneasiness, she’ll hold on to the stability of our friendship, found in the well-known flavours that the cake will always bring her for breakfast.

© The Teaspoon 

The Teaspoon Relaunch

by Diana

Lots of things have happened since my last post about four years ago, including loosing the web’s domain to a family-owned lunch spot in Texas! We wish them good luck though and welcome our new British identity as theteaspoon.co.uk

The Teaspoon began in 2012 as a platform to celebrate our family’s ever-changing migratory identity, and to narrate multiple stories shared with homemade flavours and cuisine. In 2014 the blog was somehow used to protest about the socio-political situation back home in Venezuela. I would have loved to relaunch with a hopeful and comic post of a tasty recipe but I can’t do that knowing that the country’s economy has crashed, the hyperinflation is expected to reach one million per cent by the end of 2018, that crime continues fragmenting families, that Venezuela is the focus of an unprecedented Latin-American exodus about to reach humanitarian crisis levels and that everyone that’s left in the country is starving. It’s estimated that 64% of Venezuelans have lost 11kg (about 1.7st) of body weight last year, including my dad, due to the crisis. It’s not a secret that families are stretching their supplies and skipping meals in order to survive.

I couldn’t think of any recipes to post here which ingredients could be currently accessible for the average Venezuelan household. Food shortages mixed with hyperinflation make it impossible for people to cook themselves a treat. I am not hoping the empty set below will make a difference or have an impact but it’s just a coping mechanism I am using to transform the sadness and frustration into something more meaningful that helps promote awareness.

The Teaspoon will continue embracing multiculturalism in the kitchen, whilst tracing back our ancestor’s journeys in time and combine them with our own, but not today.

© The Teaspoon

Caraway Seed 'Half-Pound' Cake

by Diana

When I am not cooking, thinking about recipes or addictively buying ingredients to cook new dishes, and most importantly, to photograph them, I work in museums. Yes, disappointingly as it might sound for some of you, starting with my own brother, art is my real and true passion. The thing is that it can be really difficult to combine museum practice with the love of cooking, unless a weird contemporary hybrid is discovered, something absurd and ridiculous like museum-cooking-therapy, which I am sure already exists somewhere. 

However, by pure and wonderful coincidence, about two weeks ago I was trying to explain to some children who William Kent was, so they could get going and design their own garden and I surprised myself reading the briefing and affirming with loud conviction that he was a 'famous 18th century designer of houses and gardens and a lover of good food'. I stopped all of a sudden and rewinded fearfully, wondering if that last phrase was about William Kent or just about me. So I double checked that my unconscious didn't betrayed me, secretly using visitors to promote my blog again and so I discovered that this 18th century fellow was in deed a promoter of good eating in Georgian times. What I heard from kind volunteers is that William Kent was the first one to incorporate the dining room to interior design and that's when a dedicated space to eat in the house was firstly created in England about 300 years ago, impacting the traditions of the time and refining food taste forever.

So after this pleasant discovery I thought that the best way to celebrate was by posting a genuine recipe from the Regency period: Caraway Seed Pound Cake. So here it is for you all, simple, tasty and full of history. Please notice that a pound cake was going to be too much, even for my husband, so I took the liberty to reduce it by half and to make just half a pound.

Finally, if you want to get all your senses involved, not only try out the recipe but save a piece of cake to enjoy it after visiting the William Kent exhibition at the V&A. 

I hope you like it!

© The Teaspoon

Shuku-Shuku -Nigerian Coconut Biscuits

by Diana

A few weeks ago we published a recipe for Matooke, Uganda's national dish, in support of Malaria Mission fundraising campaign. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Malaria affects half of the world’s population in 106 countries and territories. Since Malaria Mission campaign's deadline is now looming and they have reached over 60% of their target, we thought it could be a good idea to keep encouraging them with another tasty treat, this time from the worst malaria-affected region worldwide: Nigeria. 

Shuku Shuku is a Nigerian sweet delicacy, we could say that it is the equivalent to our well-known Western truffle, but of course somehow less pretentious. Although they may look a bit humble in appearance, they are deliciously soft inside, with a contained coconut explosion, awaiting for your bite. I can guarantee that they will cheer up the rainiest and most miserable of days. We also heard that it is a favourite snack among children in Nigeria and my experience tells me that they know more about these matters that we adults do.

For the record, Malaria is a risk for 97% of Nigeria’s population and 86% of these cases are unfortunately our little experts. 

If this worries you as much as it worries us, there is something you can do about it. Please give your contribution to Malaria Mission and show some support to the world.

We hope you enjoy this one!

© The Teaspoon

Apricot Muffins

by Diana 

My father is a bit peculiar when it comes to routine. He likes to have things under control, like for example the grocery shopping which he does every 2 weeks at the same time and place for as long as I can remember, with or without food shortages in the country. Part of his routine is his diet, that for many factors, including a vast amount of genetic disasters, tends to be very limited and strict. Inside his fridge you will always find apricots, as he has 2 every day as part of his breakfast and it's worth saying that the amount of apricots he buys in the supermarket is of course premeditated and carefully planned. He loves his routine though and my brother and I always enjoy trying to break it just to spite him. On his defence, he always alleges that he is too busy working -even on Saturdays- to do things differently, but the true is that it gives him peace and a sense of security which is paramount to his life and comfort. 

Last week, 4 men with guns broke into his home in Caracas, they robbed, threatened, vandalised and tied everyone up, including my 64 year-old dad. This disgraceful event was obviously disturbing for the family and I can't but feel impotent after the invasion and deprivation of freedom that for two hours the people that I love the most had to unfortunately experience because of the sad socio-economic and political conditions of the country that we call home. What frustrated me the most, for what it symbolises it is the fact that my father told me disheartened that these men shamelessly ate the apricots from the fridge during the assault to his property, topping up their vandalism with humiliation. 

This is the misfortune that not only my dad faced, but everyone else in the country does, where nowhere is safe anymore, not even your own home and you just have to unjustly accept that everything you build everyday with effort and honest work, can be snatched overnight, including your own life. And I don't know about you but I think this is completely unacceptable.

What I admire the most about my father is that in less than a week he has fixed all the damages, used his good sense of humour to cheer up everyone around him, including me on the other side of the Atlantic, and left that ugly robbery chapter behind. He also went back to the supermarket and stocked up his fridge with apricots. There is no other choice but to move on he says. This recipe is of course for him. 

Enjoy!

© The Teaspoon

Matooke with Chicken Stew and Sautéed Vegetables

by Diana and Julie

It is not a novelty to say that African, Latin-American and Asian food traditions have many ingredients in common because, after all, we share the same imaginary equator line. Our gorgeous and frequently envied -by the British- climate allows crops like plantain, corn and cassaba to grow in abundance, becoming the 'daily bread' in the dining table of millions of families across many countries. Although food and good weather are of course exotic elements to share intercontinentally, we also have one plague in common that is capable of destroying the lives of thousands of people every year in those countries. Mosquitoes are the most dangerous animals on the planet and malaria is one of their many unfortunate legacies.  

This week's post is a courtesy from my dear friend Faith Wilkinson (née Kimuli), who has suffered and luckily survived malaria in more than a few occasions when she lived in the kingdom of Bunyoro in Western Uganda. Uganda is the country with the worldwide highest incidence of malaria and one of its typical dishes is Matooke accompanying beef/chicken/fish stew, served with vegetables or rice.

We are sharing this recipe today to support the fundraising campaign of Malaria Mission and their creation of an innovative way to fight this plague, reduce the impact of this disease and potentially save millions of lives. Their idea is targeting the malaria mosquitoes to prevent the spread of the disease. And let’s be honest, we all hate mosquitoes, don’t we? 

Let's help these culinary traditions to be preserved, not in a book or a blog like this written by strangers, but mouth to mouth, from parents to children who don't need to become survivors of their own living conditions.

© The Teaspoon