Bircher Muesli

by Diana 

For a long time now, passports have joined the long list of basic good shortages Venezuelans are brutally faced with. My husband has been waiting since April for his new documentation and we have now reached the point of travel band due to the looming expiration date. As we refuse the government-led black market sale of $1,000 a passport (a bargain considering official employees are shamelessly charging five times that amount), I am going to take us on a comforting food journey across less corrupt countries around the world. We’ll be starting with Switzerland at the top 5 with its 118 year old Bircher Muesli recipe which ingredients I am sure Swiss would never struggle to source. 

© The Teaspoon

Coconut Scones with Coconut Custard

by Diana

I was forever convinced that all my grandma’s cooking was 100% Syrian. Looking back and analysing the brief compilation of recipes we inherited, I can clearly see that she not only had to make pertinent adaptations to match the local available ingredients but would also make her very own versions of traditional Venezuelan dishes which as a child I trusted were of Middle East origin. I find quite moving to go through the pages of her old notebook and encounter recipes of one culture or another, arbitrarily. To me that’s the perfect exemplification of cultural integration and the best model to follow when it comes to writing (or posting) my very own history of migration.

This is Mary Berry's buttermilk scones recipe but adapted with dry toasted coconut and demerara sugar and served with an also versioned custard, enhanced with the humble flavours of this classic tropical fruit. 

© The Teaspoon

Beetroot Maftoul

by Diana


I am not sure if it’s just me (over)coming to the age or actually paying more attention but I seem to be surrounded by new mums, each of them with their very unique approach and conviction about postnatal nutrition. Last week I learnt that sugar and salt was not recommended during the first year of the newborn, and later on, I discovered that any form of lactose does not marry well with breastfeeding. My mother works with neonates and it took her years to develop the miraculous ‘new mum’s diet’ which comprises a long list of unappealing restrictions. Nevertheless, results are surprisingly positive if obediently followed. I am confident dieting alone is not the only risk factor for postnatal depression but a bland meal can certainly contribute to a saddened heart. Therefore, my challenge this week is to offer that lactose-free-devoted new mum of mine a flavourful and colourful recipe that would hopefully make her meal times more attractive so her tummy can be satisfyingly ‘refilled’.

© The Teaspoon

Chocolate & Coconut Loaf

by Diana 

When I chose ceramics as my specialty creative medium during my BA in fine arts, I never imagined that many years later, the closest I would get to the kiln experience would be through my kitchen oven. Back then, I fell in love with the magical alchemy and uncertainty of the process. Learning to be patient cost me several broken pieces and a few tears. It was a painful but therapeutic process -as it tends to be. 

I remembered discussing with my tutors the so many similitudes between ceramic practice and baking. The later would always be somehow more replicable and accessible but, to me, the transformative quality of ingredients through careful measurement and specific procedures and their choice-less  submission to elevated temperatures would forever remind me of my now forgotten ceramist side. This neglected persona emerges on those counted ocasions though, when the outcome of my kitchen experiments turn into textured, volumed and proportioned shapes worthy of brief contemplation, remindding me that it's my choice to see the world throgh the lens of art, either using clay and brushes or relying on flour and baking powder.  

Ps. The lack of ‘interior’ images is not just me conceptualising the cake as a sculpture but it was another office birthday intended cake so giving it sliced was going to compromise the lack popularity I have already achieved. 

© The Teaspoon