Roasted pepper dip - my take on Muhammara

It's incredible how time flies!
When I published my previous post, at the end of June, I was not feeling like on holiday yet, but on the contrary I had the intention of writing something else before heading to Italy for my summer vacation and, most important, saying a "see you soon" to all my readers and wishing a lovely vacation to those - as lucky as me - able to take a break for a while.
But - and to be honest I can't exactly explain how - I am here to say "hello" only on the 5th of September, more than two months later. And even today what I can do is just a short and quick post, because of several other things to do. Unfortunately no time to share something about my summer in Italy. And probably when I have the time and the right concentration, it will be too late to be of interest to anyone.
But if any of you is curious to know something more about the time I spent in my home country, you can check my Instagram account where I shared quite a few pictures from Italy. It was a period of rest, also from the kitchen. time spent with the family and many aperitivi - mainly Aperol spritz, as you can see from the pictures.

But before leaving my desk, I want to share a recipe that I had made and pictured before going on holiday, still waiting to be published.

Chocolate and Hazelnut spread

Christmas is approaching very fast, as usual...and these last days are typically spent by many visiting shops, malls, markets, etc. to find the last Christmas gifts for relatives and friends; and for those who - like me actually - don't think to Christmas presents in advance, this is the busiest shopping period of the year. To be honest, I don't like spectacular, impressive Christmas presents...I prefer smaller things, not original maybe, but chosen with care and affection. And among my favorite kinds of gifts are edible things, and in particular homemade edible gifts (the other favorite category is that of small, high-value, not edible stuff). The time and passion spent for preparing, packing and wrapping any edible thing always deserve great appreciation. But, beside this emotional component which makes homemade presents always much valuable, what I like most of edible gifts is that they are usually of better quality and taste than the same shop-bought foods (of course if good quality ingredients are used). And this is the case, for example, of this chocolate and hazelnut spread, which is the homemade version (actually... one of the many possible versions) of a worldwide renowned, iconic spread that everybody knows and most of the people like. Frankly, I am not a fan of this product - the commercial one I mean - because I have many doubts regarding what it is made of; the list of ingredients printed on the label is not comforting: I would expect to find just chocolate or/and cocoa, hazelnut and not much more; on the contrary the list of ingredients is quite long and some of them ...ehm ...of questionable nature and origin. I know that probably somebody will hate me from now for this radical statement, but this is my real, actual opinion (in fact when I was a child - and of course guided more by the good taste and popularity of the product than by health issues - I ate jars of this cream, in several possible ways: spread on bread or toast, as an ingredient for other desserts, eating spoon of it directly from the jar or even - I shouldn't say this but I'm sure that many others do the same - taking it with fingers).