If you're tired of the traditional mashed potatoes with a cutlet and cabbage or beetroot salad - here's an idea: a quick and quite delicious dinner with tiger prawns, Japanese sauce, basmati rice, and vegetables.
An article for food lovers, then. Four tried-and-tasted spots in Liepāja where you can enjoy a meal or indulge your sweet tooth. Plus a purely subjective rating of each dining establishment - which, we hope, will be of use to visitors to the city.
We must say, we are not passionate fans of Asian cuisine, but always ready to learn something new and taste something enjoyable. So this Tuesday we headed to the Restaurant Service School for a BBQ masterclass with chef Māris Astičs and a tasting of Cesars products. In total, six fantastic recipes were prepared and sampled - ones I will not even attempt to replicate at home.
The restaurant name La Folie Chef's Kitchen suggested French cuisine - something rather pricey but sufficiently refined. Since today is Ēriks's name day, there was reason to stop in and treat the taste buds. How it actually was - in detail below.
Earth Hour yesterday, on 19 March - when people around the world were invited to switch off their electricity for one hour - we spent not only without light but in complete, impenetrable darkness, dining at a restaurant. It sounds slightly unusual, but such an experience is available in Riga.
When guests are over and you have absolutely no desire to knead dough and then stand by the oven, ingenuity comes to the rescue. And as is well known, the driving force of the world's progress is human natural laziness. So this time: desserts you can prepare in just a few minutes.
Alongside the jars of strawberry, cherry, and apple jam that Mum had carefully prepared from her own garden, I found a few that had been received as gifts or brought back from travels, as they had seemed exotic enough to warrant it. So at a home gathering I decided to organise a little attraction: tasting and rating less traditional jams together with the guests.
I decided to experiment a little in the kitchen and, after the substantial Latvian Christmas roasts with their rich side dishes, to prepare something seemingly lighter. Following an online recipe as a guide, I realised there is room to explore various variations of this dish. So this won't be quite a classic recipe.
This recipe was conveniently spotted on a news portal and put into practice with a small modification on my part. That evening the whole kitchen smelled of rosemary. The dish turned out filling and self-sufficient, needing nothing but a few tomato wedges to accompany it.
Over the Midsummer holiday weekend we visited Mum in Ludza - currently the best-kept of all the towns in Latgale, where even on Līgo and Jāņi, unlike the rest of Latvia, the sun shone and it was pleasantly warm. Of course there was no getting by without a proper feast of the kind characteristic of Latvians and Latgalians in particular - smoked fish, shashlik, beer, and blueberry muffins.