Welcome
I’m Marta Oliveira
Recipe writer, photographer, and the person who eats it all afterwards.
I have been writing recipes down properly since 2017, from a flat in Porto and now a house with a slightly better oven. Everything here is cooked at least four times before it is published, photographed on the fourth, and written for someone who is tired and hungry rather than someone with a free afternoon.
Who is cooking
Hello, I’m Marta
Four rounds of testing in an ordinary kitchen before anything gets published.
Behind the blog
How it all started
It started as a shared document. I was cooking the same eight things on rotation and writing them down badly — half a method, no quantities, a note that said “less butter next time” — and every few weeks someone would ask for one and I would have to reconstruct it from memory.
So I began testing properly. Four times, minimum, before anything gets written up, and always in a home kitchen: one oven that runs hot, a pan that has seen better days, and whatever the shop had that week. If a recipe only works with a stand mixer or a spare two hours, that is the first thing you will read.
Nine years later the document is this site, and the eight things have become a few hundred. The rule has not changed.
Meet the team
Recipes & photography
Marta Oliveira
Cooks everything four times before it gets written down. Shoots it on the fourth.
Testing
Ines Carvalho
Re-tests every recipe in a different kitchen, because ovens lie.
Words
Joana Pires
Edits the method until a nervous first-time cook could follow it.
Get to know me
Coffee order
flat white, one sugar
Couldn't live without
a lemon and good salt
Sweet or savoury
savoury, then sweet
Go-to weeknight meal
anything on toast
Favourite kitchen tool
a fish slice, for everything
Always in the pantry
anchovies
Guilty pleasure
supermarket custard
Most-used pan
the scratched one
Frequently asked
Can I use a different oven temperature?
Every recipe is written for a fan oven. Add 20°C if yours is conventional, and start checking five minutes early either way.
Can I make this ahead?
Where it is possible, the Notes under each recipe say exactly how far ahead and what changes.
What if I cannot find an ingredient?
Substitutions live in the Notes. If a recipe genuinely will not work without something, it says so before the ingredients list.
Do you take recipe requests?
Yes. Reply to the Friday email or use the contact form — requests that arrive more than once tend to get made.
Can I share these recipes?
Please link to them rather than reproducing the method. A photo and a link is always welcome.
Out now
My First Ever Cookbook
Sixty recipes built around cooking once and eating twice — a long Sunday lunch, and what it becomes on Tuesday. Hardback, 240 pages, photographed in the same kitchen as everything here.
New recipes, most Fridays
One recipe, no sponsored filler. Unsubscribe whenever you like.
