Hot Squids with Peppers and Tomatoes

This is an uncomplicated recipe that helps you to bring the flavors of the sea into your lunch using cheap, fresh and easy to found ingredients.


Ingredients for approximately 4 persons: 3 lbs. of squids, 2 red peppers, 1 onion, 3 tomatoes, 4 ozs. of black olives, 1 red hot pepper, parsley, olive oil, salt.

Preparation: clean and wash the squids, in the meanwhile put a pan on, using a small burner, and brown in it the onion and the peppers cut in small stripes. Add then the squids, the tomatoes, the red hot pepper and salt as needed and let the pan on for twenty minutes.
Before serving sprinkle the food with the olives and chopped parsley.

Syruped Pineapple with Banana Cream

Considering the heat of these summer days I wished to prepare a "tropical" dessert. I perused then through my cookbooks and internet to find out some recipe that could worth the effort to stay near the cooker. This dessert should be of south american origin: you can close your eyes while eating it and dream of a white sand beach, palms and fresh blue sea... then it's coming late and you'll have to return to work.


Ingredients for approximately 4 persons: 1 fresh pineapple, 2 ripe bananas, whipped cream, rum liquor, cane sugar, limon juice, powdered cinnamon.

Preparation: peel the pineapple, taking out also the central part, and slice it. Put the slices in a container together with 2 glasses of water and 1 glass of rum and let them settle for some hours. Then take out the pineapple and put the liquid in a pan on low fire until the sugar will caramelize creating the syrup.
In the meanwhile crush the pulp of two ripe bananas together with some drops of lemon juice, so it won't turn black being exposed at the air. Add then some whipped cream, until you'll get the desired consistency, using a whisk to mix the ingredients.
Put the pineapple slices on a plate, dress them with the syrup and cover them with the cream, upon which you sprinkle some powdered cinammon.
Keep the dessert in the refrigerator for some hours before serving it.

P.S.: the oleander flower in the shots is there just for decoration porpouses. Don't eat it , it's poisoneous.