Hi, I’m Adriana. With this website I’m trying to accomplish the simple task of writing down all the dishes that have ever been made. Okay, maybe not all of them. But I have been meaning to collect all my favourite dishes, desserts and cookeries for a long time – the food I come back to from time to time and have to look up recipes for. That’s why I thought it would make sense to start writing them all down at the same place, so I don’t have to go through all my cookbooks every time. This is project has primarily been for myself, but if I end up changing somebody’s life because they had never had the idea of combining feta cheese with strudel pastry I’m very glad I could help.
When planning for this project, I asked myself what my “thing” in the kitchen is. Do I even have a thing? Something I can say when people ask me: “So what’s your food all about?” Because it’s not always healthy, nor vegetarian, nor new, nor classic. It’s a mixture of recipes I always liked, recipes I learnt from my parents or grandparents, and recipes I discovered by myself. Since I’m Swiss, I’d call it Swiss Cuisine. And while I cater to my country’s stereotype by adding cheese to everything, I think what defines Swiss cuisine is an influence of the countries surrounding it. There’s a lot of Italian, French, German, Mediterranean, Central European influences in my recipes because that’s the food I grew up with. You may also call it an Old World Recipe Collection. Yeah, I think that’s going to be my thing. But sometimes I also just cook Indonesian food, because, you know, I can.
Since I’m calling this page “About my kitchen” I quickly wanna say a word or two about my actual kitchen. It. Is. The. Worst. The house I live in is pretty old and our kitchen has last been renovated in the 70s(?) and looks like it. It’s super small, there’s no exhaust hood and until recently, our gas stove looked like it was one million years old. A year ago, the old stove finally broke and we got a new one. The guy who installed it said the old model had been oldest stove he had ever seen in his life. The new one has not been much of an improvement though. But as an avid cook, I have learnt my way around the stove’s gimmicks. Cooking with gas is actually pretty nice when you’re doing pasta or pizza. Cakes are a bit more tricky, but I think I got the hang of it (oven thermometers are your friend!). I’m looking forward to the day when I’m all grown-up (haha) and will hopefully have a modern kitchen with lots of space. In the meantime I’ll do my best with what I have: a semi-working kitchen, great ideas, and a kick-ass kitchen playlist.
