Maria Teresa Jorge

Maria Teresa Jorge, a Portuguese chef and cooking instructor living in Tuscany, is a force to be reckoned with. It seems that every time we blink, she's added a new (delicious-sounding) recipe -- a couple that have caught our eye are the Strozzapreti(little spinach and ricotta dumplings) and Sformatino di Pecorino al Miele, little pecorino soufflés with honey. Check out Maria Teresa's profile and fan her here.

Here is Maria Teresa's Q&A:

• What is the strangest food you have ever eaten?
  Jaca, a brazilian fruit - it looks and tastes very weird
• What do you cook when home alone?
  Fresh vegetable soup, a good creamy buffalo mozzarella with my own olive oil
• Your most treasured kitchen possession:
  My chef's knife but also my.. and my.. and my EVERYTHING! I am a kitchen utensils addicted shopper.
• Your ideal meal:
  Cooking a 3 course gourmet italian meal for my friends with all the seasonal vegetables from my garden
• Something you'd like a chance to eat or cook:
  I would love to cook a 3 layer chocolate cake I learned in the advance dessert part of the course at the Cordon Bleu School - it was really sophisticated and amazing! Thank you António!
• The number of bottles of wine you own:
  My husband is the sommelier!
• Your least favorite food personality:
  Rachel Ray
• The ideal number of guests for a dinner party is:
  8, maximum 12
• Kitchen pet peeve:
  Someone else using the kitchen utensils and either not cleaning them properly or misplacing them.
• Your favorite cookbook:
  I can't name a specific book because there are so many good ones but my favourite author is Maria de Lourdes Modesto (Portugal), because what she writes is the way we cook at home, plain traditional very good cooking. And although we are a family of gourmets and good cooks at home, she is my role model as a cookery book writer.