ReTorte

Lunch in Wolfville, NS

2011-08-31T18:34:00.003-07:00

I am on holiday in the Maritimes! So, just a quick post today, and I wanted to share the great lunch I had at a diner here in Wolfville called Front Street Cafe, at 112 Front St. I want to eat as much east coast seafood as possible on this trip, and the feasting started today with this huge plate of Digby scallops and chips. EXCELLENT! It was perfect! Check it:

Fries were homemade and fresh and the scallops were luscious and lightly breaded.

Tomorrow, I'm off to Halifax for the day. Not sure what I'm going to do there because there are tons of options. But there will be lunch!

Shindig Rundown

2011-08-28T11:22:00.008-07:00

Yesterday I had a small gathering at my place as a kind of going-away party, with the ulterior motive of using up as many of my leftover baking ingredients as possible before I move - all part of OPC (Operation Pantry Clear-out). It was lovely to just bake and bake for a couple of days. I realize I've been missing that in my life. However, the weather here was so hot, and continues to be, so it was a tad uncomfy to be in my kitchen for the amount of time I was. But it's OK.

Here is a shot of my spread:

So, on the white platter, top left, we have these rum & chocolate chip blondies, only without pecans because I'd already used them all up. Also on that plate are sour cherry & chocolate chip brownies. That recipe is basically my usual blondie recipe, only I replaced 1/2 cup of the flour with 1/2 cup of sifted cocoa powder. They are amazing!

In the pottery bowl next to that platter (the pottery was made by my super-talented potter friend, S) are these cookies. They were great.

Bottom row, left, we have a rhubarb tart. I made the pâte brisée recipe from Earth to Table, which you can see here. Incidentally, that's the same pumpkin pie recipe I used for the pumpkin pie you see in the bottom row, right, in the photo. It's sooooooooo gooooooood! I love that pumpkin pie recipe! It was a big hit at the shindig yesterday. For the rhubarb tart, I used frozen rhubarb, that, as it thawed, shrunk into probably just less than 4 cups of rhubarb; very annoying. But it was perfect for a tart, and I decided to do a lattice top. The rhubarb tart was a hit, too. The filling also contained 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp ginger, 1 tsp cinnamon, and about 1 tbsp of cornstarch.

Finally, between the two fruit pies/tarts, we have a basic banana bread. Very basic. I got this recipe from my friend Anita, who made this regularly when we were in university together. It's been my go-to recipe ever since because it's super simple and super moist.

Anita's Banana Bread

2 ripe bananas, mashed
2 eggs
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
dash of salt
1/2 cup walnut pieces, optional

Beat the eggs with a whisk and add butter, brown sugar, and bananas until well-combined. Sift in the flour, soda, and salt until the batter comes together. Add nuts, if using. Pour into a greased or lined loaf pan and bake at 350F for about an hour.

Everyone went home with a baking doggy bag. I'm leaving soon after all - I didn't want to keep any of it.

Up next, my trip to the Maritimes, Wolfville, Nova Scotia and Charlottetown, PEI, to visit family, I just know there is going to be absolutely TONS to food blog about! I can't wait!

Chocolate Chip & Sour Cherry Cookies

2011-08-21T13:48:00.004-07:00

I'm moving to the coast at the end of September, which has prompted me to start Operation Pantry Clear-out (OPC). I'm trying to use up as much as I can so I have less to move. Makes sense, right? Next Saturday, I'm throwing myself a little going away shindig and I thought it would be a great opportunity to bake like a madwoman in order to use up all kinds of stuff. Today I started, and this cookie recipe was the first thing on my list. Originally, this came from Tish Boyle's The Good Cookie, but I adapted it slightly since I don't have any white chocolate on hand (and why would I go and buy it, since OPC is in full swing) and I didn't use slivered almonds (again, not on hand so tough luck). My version is hugely delicious, however!

Chocolate Chip & Sour Cherry Cookies (adapted from Tish Boyle's The Good Cookie, page 59)

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
3/4 cup dried sour cherries
1 cup chocolate chips

You know the drill (don't you?). 350F for 15 or so minutes. I got about 3 dozen.

Incidentally, as part of OPC, I also made the blondie recipe right below this post - and used up the rest of my rum! They are very rummy indeed!

EDIT: the cherries are Chukar cherries, and my friend Jodi - giver of great foodie gifts - got them from here.

Chocolate Chip Pecan Blondies...With Booze!

2011-08-01T13:11:00.003-07:00

The Good Cookie is a book I bought a few years ago and have not used enough. It's not that it doesn't have good recipes in it - it does - but I seem to always go back to my tried & true recipes and I seem to overlook it. But, in an attempt to reassess what cookbooks belong on my dedicated bookshelf and which ones I can do without - because I'm moving - I revisited the book to look for inspiration. And I found this recipe, which turned out to be just killer. The rum is essential, let me tell you! In fact, I doubled the amount to make these extra boozy! Yeah, I'm keeping this book. I gave the blondies, again, to family members because, again, what is a single gal trying to watch her waistline going to do with a big pan of blondies?

Chocolate Chip Pecan Blondies, adapted from The Good Cookie, page 119, by Tish Boyle

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup butter
2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup amber rum
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
1 cup chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350F and line a 9x13" baking dish with parchment paper, or grease & flour it very well.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients.

3. In a mixer, beat butter & brown sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Beat in vanilla and rum. At low speed, mix in the dry ingredients until just combined. Fold in the pecans & chocolate chips.

4. Scrape batter into prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for 35 - 40 minutes, or until just golden brown and the centre is set. A toothpick should come out clean but not dry. DO NOT OVERBAKE THESE!

5. Cool completely, portion, and serve!

Magazine Monday #82: Pumpkin Coconut Pound Cake

2011-08-01T12:26:00.003-07:00

In addition to having a lot of frozen rhubarb on hand to use up before I move at the end of September when I move to the coast, I also have a ton of pumpkin in the freezer I really don't want to go to waste, either. I have a lot of pumkin recipes kicking around, and this one I have had in my binder for a few years; it's from Cooking Pleasures Magazine, which I used to get with my membership in the Cooking Club of America. I let my membership to this lapse a few years ago because it was getting too expensive with all my other various subscriptions (which have also gone by the wayside by now, too) but I still have quite a few recipes I've saved I want to try.

I made this last week and gave it to some family members to eat; I certainly didn't need an entire cake hanging around my house, especially as it was my birthday and I knew I was going to have lots of leftovers from my celebration (more about that later). I did take one slice, however, just to taste. I'll give you my critique after the recipe! Originally, this recipe is accompanied by a creamy vanilla sauce, but I didn't do that. I also didn't add the pecans as I had just used mine up in another project.

Pumpkin-Coconut-Pecan Pound Cake, from Cooking Pleasures Magazine

1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 can (15oz) pumpkin puree (I used 2 cups of my own pumpkin puree)
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup sweetened flaked coconut (I used unsweetened)
1/2 cup chopped pecans

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease & flour a 12-cup bundt pan. In a large bowl, beat the butter until light & fluffy. Beat in the sugar until light & fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in pumpkin & vanilla until well combined. Mixture will look curdled.

2. In another bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. At low speed, slowly add them to the wet ingredients. Fold in coconut & pecans.

3. Spoon into prepared pan & bake...about an hour or so, or until done.

4. Cool & serve!

Now I really liked the combination of pumpkin & coconut. I love both flavours and they work well together. But this cake wasn't super pumpkin-y, which was disappointing. The colour was a bit pale. I also over-baked this slightly, so it was a bit dry. My bad for sure. The taste was good and I would try this again, just perhaps with a bit more pumpkin in it and I'd be a little more careful with the baking time.

If you make it, let me know how it goes!

Cookbook Review: Best Recipes Ever

2011-08-01T11:09:00.006-07:00

My regular readers should probably know right now that I am a huge fan of Canadian Living, as evidenced by the sheer number of Magazine Monday recipes I post here that come from their magazine. They publish a lot of cookbooks, and I was lucky to receive a review copy of one of their recent releases, Best Recipes Ever. It's a co-release between Canadian Living and CBC, which airs the show Best Recipes Ever, hosted by Kary Osmond. I have seen the show, and it's fairly basic and a tad boring, but they do have great ideas. In fact, it was after seeing an episode on cabbage rolls that I was inspired to email my friend Mr. Anchovy and ask for his mom's cabbage roll recipe, which resulted in my epic cabbage roll day.

The book is very much what fans of Canadian Living have come to expect over the years: reliable, easy, consistent recipes that have mass appeal. I found it refreshing that the book didn't get divided into the predictable chapters of "appetizers", "mains", "desserts" etc., but rather it was organized into categories like "Party Fare", "Meat-lover Mains", "Eggs and Brunch" and "Beat the Clock." It's different, and it's more specific, and it makes sense.

I recognized many of these recipes from the magazine and some of them I'd even made and showcased here as part of Magazine Mondays. For instance, the Curried Pork Burgers on page 105 - which has become a favourite among my extended family - is something I've made and posted here, as is the Blueberry Oatmeals Squares recipe on page 167. There are others I recognize, too.

There are plenty of recipes I am dying to try, as well. The Halibut & Spinach Curry on page 165 look amazing and is right up my alley - halibut is my fave fish! - and the Sublime Mac & Cheese on page 303 looks like it lives up to its name. And it probably will; the beauty of these recipes is that they are Canadian Living tried & tested, and I know from years of making them that they're going to turn out.

One new recipe I tried out was the Rhubarb Coffee Cake on page 281. I have a bunch of rhubarb I need to use up before I move and this was a good opportunity to bake with some. The cake was excellent, and everyone I shared it with loved it. Perfect texture, great flavour - just another tried and true Canadian Living Recipe.

This is definitely a keeper cookbook for me, and if your a Canadian Living fan, or want to be converted into one, this is a great investment and worth some space on your bookshelves.

Latest Coyote's Kitchen Column!

2011-07-25T10:43:00.002-07:00

Wow, has it really been a month since my last post? Um...I have lots of material...just not a lot of motivation right now. We'll see what the next few weeks brings me in terms of energy levels.

In the meantime, here is my latest food column in Bread 'n Molasses Magazine. Ice cream - just in time for summer.

A Couple of Miscellaneous Vancouver Meals

2011-06-25T10:11:00.005-07:00

There is one chain restaurant that without fail pleases me every time I go there: White Spot. Call me crazy, but I love White Spot! And when there is one in my vicinity (none here in the Kootenays) I make a huge effort to go to one for a meal because I just love their food. It's comfort food at it's best. They make great breakfasts, they make great burgers, they make great milkshakes, they make the best coleslaw ever, and they're just a comfortable place to go for a casual, yummy meal.

I ate at White Spot three whole times in the 8 days I was a the coast. Terrible, I know, but also awesome! I didn't take pix of all my meals there, but here is the BC Chicken Burger, which is one of my perennial faves.

Now onto something a bit more refined but just as casual and yummy. I had a visit with a blog friend on the Saturday morning I was at the coast - the day with the best weather on the trip, BTW - and we headed into the city from Maple Ridge to Granville Island. I adore Granville Island! It's a quintessential Vancouver experience and I try to get there every trip. We only had a short time for lunch, but luckily there are lots of quick places to choose from at their food fair. I knew I was going for waffles at Miura shortly with my brother and also that he and I would be having dinner, so I went for something small and light: a bagel with cream cheese & lox. Yum!

And this was our view from outside the market, where we sat in the sun to munch:

Incidentally, I was there during the Stanley Cup playoffs, and one of the fancy bakeries in the market was selling all kinds of these, which looked great:

Very cute, but I didn't buy one. That Saturday was one awesome day of food for sure!

Dinner at The Cactus Club

2011-06-19T12:12:00.007-07:00

I went out to the Cactus Club with my friends Shihtzustaff and her partner, Deb, who hosted me during my stay. It was their treat and I was happy to go there because I'd eaten at the CC a few times before and really enjoyed it. The CC, from where I stand, is fairly chi-chi, but when you get there you realize that it's probably one of the places the real wannabe chi-chi people go to pretend they're chi-chi, while the true chi-chi in Vancouver go to places like this.

In any case, the CC does great food, and one of their selling points is that they have a bunch of signature dishes on their menu created by big-name celebrity Chef Rob Feenie, who owned the now-closed Lumière. Deb kept raving and raving about the Hunter Chicken (for a description, go here) and vowed to order this, even though she is a vegetarian. After agonizing over an appy, I ordered the Tuna Tataki, which I'm not sure is a Rob Feenie dish, but it looked good and it was light, and indeed, when it came, it was very tasty. I had never had Tuna Tataki before, and this was a great first time experience.

As for my main course, it was a tough call. The Hunter Chicken, which not only did Deb order, but Shihtzustaff did as well, was very appealing. But I was in the mood for lighter fare, and went against the crowd and didn't order a Rob Feenie dish; I instead ordered the wonton soup. I added shrimp and Cajun chicken to it. My was shaping up to have a very Asian theme to it, as I had just come off my Momo sushi experience in Gastown a few hours earlier.

The wonton soup was amazing. Lots of veggies, the broth was excellent, and the wontons were tasty. The only downfall of the dish was the Cajun spiced chicken; it didn't really go with the Asian flavours so I wouldn't do that again. But it was a lovely bowl of soup, and quite filling, so I was pretty happy.

Dessert was a very tempting affair. Although I was pretty full, the CC dessert menu was gorgeous. I caved and ordered this chocolate thingy - the name escapes me and I'm not sure if it's a Rob Feenie dish, either - and boy was it good. And it was a nice light dessert, too. A great ending to a great meal.

The Cactus Club is a busy place, so if you plan on going and trying it out (which if you find yourself down at the West Coast, I encourage you to do) make a reservation or go at a non-peak time. But it'll be worth it!

Pho!

2011-06-18T13:07:00.006-07:00

My brother & SIL live in downtown Vancouver, right at Robson & Seymour, and there are like a zillion options for eating out right within a block's radius. It's ridiculous. When I went to visit Jem last Saturday, after our Miura Waffle experience, we decided a couple of hours later that it was time for dinner. Since Jem was very under the weather, he was in the mood for soup, and he recommended a pho joint near Robson & Richards - a mere two minute walk from his place.

Alas, I did not get the name of this pho place! But as soon as I entered it - it was tiny and had two chairs available at a small window front counter for people to eat at, so it's definitely a take-out place - I was overwhelmed by the smell of broths containing star anise. It made my tummy grumble. There was a small menu that included four types of pho, a few Vietnamese subs, and some salad roll type things. My brother opted for one of the beef phos and I had the chicken one. They were all $6.45. I also ordered a Vietnamese salad roll for $2.75.

This is not environmentally friendly take-out, as you can see. You get with the pho three containers: one for the noodles & meat, one for the broth, one for sauce, and then you get a plastic baggie with bean sprouts and fresh basil. You mix all this up at home.

Plus, I of course had a container for my salad rolls. Mother Nature is no doubt justifiably upset.

Guilt aside, the meal was great. The salad rolls were OK (I've had better other places). The noodles were a rice stick, there was plenty of chicken, the addition of the bean sprouts and basil was great. But I had some surprises in store for me. As I was eating the soup, I came across two small eggs. I am assuming by their size that they are quail's eggs. I was not expecting that. I also was not expecting a few large chunks of pale sausage of unknown origin. It tasted OK, but I was a little leary at first. I doubted it was a pork sausage but I also doubted it was a poultry sausage. In the end, it was a mystery. It tasted fine, though.

The sauce that came with the pho was not to my liking. It was actually a brown sauce with a large squirt of a red spicy sauce, so I just skipped that part of it. All in all, excellent meal at an excellent price. I just wish there was a more environmentally friendly way of doing this particular kind of take-out.

Some Vancouver Sushi

2011-06-17T20:51:00.009-07:00

During my trip to the coast in March, which was 5 days long, I didn't get any sushi. None. It was very disappointing indeed. During this most recent trip last week, I made sure I got some sushi in. Sushi is ridiculously cheap and easy to come by at the coast. It's everywhere and it's good and it's very economical. Here in this one horse town, I can get a sushi roll at LOGS for about $7 - $8. At the specialty grocery stores at the coast, like T&T Supermarket, which is Chinese, H Mart, which is Korean, and Fujiya, which is Japanese, there is excellent supermarket sushi (and bento boxes and other roll-ish foods) in copious amounts and for super cheap prices. It's like heaven. Seriously.

The first sushi I had was at a place in Gastown called Momo Sushi. I had just had a busy afternoon of shopping and visiting with blog pal Scout of Harper Valley, and after we parted I had some time to kill before my ride went to take me back to Shihtzustaff's place, where I was staying. So, I saw this Momo place along Water Street and looked at their menu. To my shock, I could get a duo of sushi rolls - Dynamite and California - for $7.25! I was in! I got a seat, ordered, and was soon in sushi bliss.

It was absolutely wonderful sushi, and beautifully presented. I couldn't believe how much sushi I got for $7.25! I was blown away when the waitress brought me my board full of sushi.

I highly recommend this place if you're in the Gastown area and in need of a sushi fix!

I used to shop at T&T Supermarket when I lived in Coquitlam when I was in culinary school and it was always such a cool experience. It's like no other grocery store I've been in. There are so many live fish available for purchase that you practically feel like you're at the Vancouver aquarium (no, you don't eat the fish at the Vancouver Aquarium, but you get what I'm saying). T&T has pretty good grocery store sushi, so I got myself a spicy shrimp roll as I was in the store looking for some cooking ingredients I can't find here. This was just OK; not terribly fresh, but tasty enough and it was good enough considering it cost like $4.

Fujiya is where I hit the jackpot with awesome grocery store sushi. In fact, I also got a bento box for good measure. This is a spider roll, made with deep fried soft shell crab. With an exotic ingredient like that, I was super stoked about the pricetag:

$4.95! That is unheard of in these parts! And it was really tasty and fresh, and the crab had a bit of a kick to it in the batter. Awesome!

I also got a bento box for frakking $5!

This was a bit odd, I have to say. The shrimp were great, the rice was great, the green sesame salady thing (top left) was great, but the potato salad (bottom right) was brutal and contained frozen peas & carrots (ew!) and the other seafood items were weird. They included two fake scallops. I have never heard of a fake scallop, but it was much like fake crab meat only scallop-shaped and not pink. There was one deep fried shrimp, which was fine, and then there was a small piece of other fish I couldn't identify. This was accompanied by tartar sauce. Next time, I'd go for something else because this was nothing to write home about and the combinations were really strange.

Believe it or not, that was all the sushi I had. I could have had more, but there are so many foodie options down there it's just too much!

My Miura Waffle Bar Experience

2011-06-17T20:25:00.007-07:00

Sometimes there are things you just HAVE to do. You see them, you drool, you get a tingly sensation, and you just KNOW that THIS IS FOR YOU. Such was the case when my friend Jodi told me about an eatery in Vancouver she saw on a food blog, and knowing that I was making a trip to the coast in the imminent future, she strongly recommended I try it so when she and I get together for the first time in person in October, I could wholeheartedly throw my own recommendation behind it and we could go there together. This eater is the Miura Waffle Bar on Davie St. right in downtown Vancouver.

The post Jodi initially saw this place on is here. When I looked at this myself, I just about died! It looked fan-freaking-tastic, and a visit to the Miura site further convinced me that this was a MUST for my trip to Van, which I just came back from on Tuesday. I immediately alerted my brother & SIL, who live right downtown Vancouver, to the place, only to have my SIL alert me that they'd been already and they thought it was totally awesome.

I got the chance to go to Miura last Saturday, a spectacular day in which I met a friend for a small lunch and a browse around Granville Island Market, and then after taking the Aquabus over False Creek, I met my brother Jem outside his film school campus on Hornby St. Miura was on our way back to his place, so we stopped in. He was very ill and not interested in a waffle, but he did order a flavoured milk, as that is Miura's other specialty.

As soon as I saw the Miura site well before my trip, I knew what I was going to order: the Tiramisu Waffle Sando. It was a tough call given the other stuff on their menu, but I just knew the tiramisu option was for me, because tiramisu is one of my all-time favourite desserts.

For $4.49 you can't go far wrong. And so this is what I ordered. It was prepared for me in a short period of time and came to me in a little basket.

It was a little basket of pure orgasmic heavenly blissful sinful amazingness.

It was a freaking religious experience. I mean, check it:

Look at that oozy goodness! I mean LOOK AT IT. It's beyond words...It defies description! It was unspeakably unspeakable!

I almost wanted to order another right away, but I had to resist knowing that we were going to have dinner out in the not too distant future.

Holy crap, if you live in Van or are thinking of going there, I highly recommend you check this joint out! Jodi and I are definitely going there during our get-together in October!

Magazine Monday #81: Peanut butter, chocolate chip, and bacon cookies

2011-06-04T17:45:00.004-07:00

I have to admit, until today, I hadn't ventured into the whole chocolate-bacon flavour combination craze. But as is common with me, strange cravings come upon me suddenly, and I get to thinking about recipes I've come across that didn't appeal to me at first glance but all of a sudden seem like something I just have to have right now. This recipe was one of those times.

Thank God - and my mom! - for Food Network Magazine! In the most recent issue, they had a recipe for peanut butter, chocolate chip, and bacon cookies, and so I made them this afternoon when a craving inserted itself into my brain.

The recipe is here.

Usually not a fan of savoury items paired with chocolate, these cookies were awesome! In fact, I think they could have used more bacon than what the recipe called for. I didn't put the chilli powder in the dough because I thought that was going a bit too far and seemed a bit too weird, but the bacon paired with the peanut butter and chocolate was just great. The cinnamon was a perfect little hint of spice. My dad came over and I fed him some, and he thought they were the oddest combination of ingredients out there - and he couldn't taste the bacon. So next time, more bacon! Also, I had to add a few tbsp of milk to the dough as mine was too dry to form into balls.

Other than that, a totally keeper recipe!

Magazine Monday #80 and 101 Uses for a Roasted Chicken #27

2011-05-23T09:56:00.004-07:00

I'm on a bit of a pizza kick lately, and as mentioned in the previous post, I'm trying to use up things in my freezer. I still have a bunch of that roasted chicken from a catering gig last month frozen, and so I decided to make pizza with it - again! - and use a new pizza dough recipe I came across in Food Network Magazine, a publication I really look forward to receiving each month.

Yesterday, in addition to making blueberry crumble, I made a chicken, red onion, kalamata olive, and mushroom pizza. It was delish!

The pizza dough recipe is here, and it came from the March 2011 issue of the magazine. I really liked this recipe. It made enough that I could divide it in three portions and put the other two in the freezer, and it was quite a light crust that bubbled up attractively when baked.

It's been a great weekend of food around here, that's for sure!

Blueberry Crumble with Coconut Pecan Topping

2011-05-23T09:39:00.005-07:00

Out with the old and in with the new! That's what I'm trying to do with my fridge freezer these days. I plan on making some more big batch stuff shortly, and it's also about to become summer fruit season, so I decided to stop hoarding frozen fruits and start using them so I can fill the freezer with fresher stuff. I had 7 cups of blueberries from last summer bagged up, and I took 6 of them out to make a crumble yesterday.

I never use a recipe when making a crumble. I eyeball everything and add what I feel would work. So that's why, apart from the 6 cups of blueberries, there aren't any measurements. Actually, I did measure the butter because, with the price of that particular ingredient, I am hoarding it a bit.

Blueberry Crumble with Coconut Pecan Topping

6 cups of blueberries
juice of 1 lemon
some white sugar (not too much; the blueberries were sweet enough themselves)
cornstarch, so it coats the blueberries lightly

for the topping:

oatmeal
coconut
brown sugar
two handfuls chopped pecans
cinnamon
2/3 cups butter

You'll need a 9x13 pan for this, and I'd bake it on a baking sheet in case the filling boils over. Bake at 375F until the fruit is all bubbly and the top is nicely golden brown.

It was pretty delicious, I must say! All it needed was some ice cream, which I didn't have on hand.

Now, I have a whole whack of pumpkin to use up!

Magazine Monday #79 (on a Saturday): Guy Fieri's Soft Pretzels

2011-05-21T15:55:00.005-07:00

Strange cravings are upon me these days, and while going through a pile of magazines taking up space on my coffee table, this soft pretzel recipe by Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives host Guy Fieri caught my eye. I have recently become a Triple D (or, as I like to call it, D3) fanatic. I don't know why it took me so long! Where has this show been all my life! It took a while for Guy to grow on me, but grow on me he has, and now I am addicted. This is probably another reason I wanted to make this recipe.

Unfortunately, I didn't think too much of Guy's soft pretzel recipe, which came in the January/February issue of Food Network Magazine. The recipe is here.

Lately, I have been practicing making bagels, which are boiled. I have posted before (here and here) about some pretzels I've made that are also boiled. I have to say, I much prefer that recipe and the boiling method over this non-boiled pretzel by Guy. Guy's are tasty for sure, and I enjoyed the stuffed ones (I used homemade pesto and mozzarella cheese to stuff mine), but they are, essentially, a pretzel-shaped bun without that nice chewy texture.

So, I'd give this a miss. Sorry, Guy! I love you, but this wasn't my cup of tea!

Scones for a Crowd

2011-05-15T11:00:00.005-07:00

This is a recipe we make weekly at work, and they all go up to the hospital coffee shop. We alternate between blueberry one week and cranberry the next. This is a pretty good recipe, I have to say. It makes four big rounds that we cut into eight triangles.

Cream Scones

9 cups flour
4 tbsp baking powder
1 1/3 cups sugar
2 tsp salt
2 cups butter
8 eggs
3 cups cream or milk
egg wash & granulated sugar for topping
blueberries, cranberries - frozen - optional

Whisk together the dry ingredients and cut in the butter until it's small pea-size. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs and cream. Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the wet until combined. Add fruit at this point. It's always better to use frozen fruit so the juices don't saturate the batter with tons of colour. It's an aesthetic thing. Don't overwork the dough, but make sure you get a nice consistent dough. It will be sticky. Turn it out onto a well-floured surface and cut into four even pieces. Pat each piece into a circle about 1" thick. Place on greased baking sheet and cut into desired number of triangles. Glaze with egg wash & sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 350F until golden brown and cooked through.

Enjoy!

Vegan Black Metal Chef!

2011-05-15T09:52:00.004-07:00

OMG! If you haven't seen this video yet, I highly recommend you sit back and prepare to be entertained!

I'm a metal fan, but not really a black metal fan, however, this is awesome! And it's hilarious and clever! I don't really like the looks of the sauce (too much sugar), but seriously, this is funny, brilliant stuff! This video is getting a lot of attention, and so it should! The lyrics are fantastic and there are so many priceless lines in it. This is the most entertaining cooking video I think I've ever seen.

Check it!

101 Uses for a Roast Chicken #26: Epic Chicken Sandwich!

2011-04-25T21:09:00.006-07:00

So, I had a hormonally-induced hankering for a big-assed BBQ chicken sandwich. I also watched the Divers, Drive-ins & Dives marathon on Food Network over the weekend, and it had me salivating. Funny how one thing influences the other. I had a chicken carcass from one of my roast chicken dinners to turn into stock, and a couple of backs a relative gave me after a chicken dinner she made. I got a lot of great meat off these bones when I made up the stock on the weekend, and I wanted to do something different from the usual pot of soup. So, it was actually three events (hormones, Triple D, and stock-making) that induced this particular craving.

It's very simple: get a big giant bun. Grill some veggies (in this case, onions, peppers, and mushrooms), slice some havarti, and dig out your favourite BBQ sauce. After the veggies have done, put them on the bun and top with some havarti. Add some left-over roast chicken to the pan and heat through; add BBQ sauce. When everything is nice & hot, throw it on the bun & top with more havarti.

Sensational!

I served them with some homemade oven fries and this meal totally hit the spot!

Lemon Trifle

2011-04-24T09:45:00.005-07:00

Happy Easter to all my readers who celebrate it!

We had our Easter dinner last night due to scheduling issues, and after my lemon pound cake disaster last Tuesday, I offered to bring a dessert so I could get rid of that ugly beast pronto to make room in my freezer for more successful endeavours. Lemon-flavoured desserts in the spring are just the best, I think. Well, they're the best at any time of year, but it seemed particularly appropriate yesterday because it was a beautiful sunny day for once and lemons remind me of sunny things. This is a super simple trifle that was an enormous hit.

So:

- one lemon pound cake, cut into cubes
- 1 jar lemon curd (I used Robertson's because it was the least expensive at LOGS)
- 500mL whipping cream, whipped to a decent firmness, just not butter
- 1 large package (the one that makes 6 servings) vanilla pudding, prepared

Layer in the cake with the lemon curd dabbed over the top of the cake cubes, then pour over the pudding, then some whipping cream, and repeat till everything is used up, topping the trifle with whipping cream. I topped mine with some almond flower decorations.

It took about 15 minutes to make and was absolutely heavenly and delicious!

Have a great day everyone, and for those of you who are Canucks, enjoy the long weekend!

101 Uses for a Roast Chicken #25: Pesto, Chicken, Goat's Cheese, and Onion Pizza

2011-04-22T20:09:00.005-07:00

I've been on a pizza kick these days - probably due to hormones. I was very grateful today for a load of fresh basil from my AeroGarden, with which I made some lovely pesto. I used the crust from the last pizza I made and froze, and some of the leftover roast chicken I had from that pizza, too along with the pesto to make a super delicious pizza. The goat's cheese was a new product from President's Choice, a low fat version of the soft, unripened, famous chèvre. I really like it and can't really tell the difference between it and regular-fat goat's cheese.

I'm really loving my pizza stone for these pizzas; you can't beat it for crusts that are crispy on the outside and nice & tender on the inside.

The Loaf Failure

2011-04-19T20:41:00.005-07:00

Something must be in the air in this God-forsaken place! Spring is soooooooo slow in arriving, I'm cranky as hell, and today I had a very frustrating kitchen failure that didn't do anything to help my mood.

I was inspired to make lemon loaf today after seeing my friend Pierce's success with this recipe this morning. I have a thing to go to tomorrow afternoon, and I thought I'd pack a dessert with me, and since lemons were on sale this week at LOGS, I thought a lemon loaf would be perfect. Plus, it's spring-like! And God knows, I need more springlike things in my life right now!

Tina had great success with her loaf. But mine was a disaster. Granted, I didn't use the food processor as directed in the original recipe, but I don't think that's the explanation for this loaf that A) overflowed from the side of the pan during baking (luckily, I baked it on a baking sheet), B) had a texture that was a bizarre mixture of coarse sponginess with a bit of rubber thrown in, C) didn't rise, and D) it seemed like all the butter sunk to the bottom of the loaf during baking because the bottom was full of grease, and E) it wasn't very lemony. Perhaps my lemons were lemons.

BY NO MEANS AM I DISSING TINA'S RECIPE OR TINA! Tina's looks lovely and according to her, tasted great, too. I obviously messed up big time somewhere along the line, I just don't where. Sometimes things just don't work out. Like I said, there is something in the air up here... I will freeze the loaf and use it for trifle down the line somewhere. I certainly am not letting it go to waste.

101 Uses for a Roast Chicken #24: BBQ Chicken Pizza

2011-04-19T20:14:00.004-07:00

Yeah, I know it's been forever since I've done an installment in this series. I haven't been on the ball, what can I say?

Recently, my relative, C, did a catering job and had so many leftovers she was giving them away to everyone she knew, and I was lucky enough to receive a bag of roasted chicken pieces. I put most of them in the freezer, which is a great boon to me. Tonight, I had a hankering for pizza, and since my friends Chris and Deb gave me a bunch of Tony Roma's BBQ sauce, I thought making a BBQ chicken pizza was the way to go.

I have no idea who Tony Roma is, but he has a restaurant chain named after him, and this chain also sells its own name-brand BBQ sauce. I used the hickory one, and it was quite tasty.

The crust I used was Giada de Laurentiis's pizza dough, which is now my go-to recipe. I cut it in half and froze the other half I didn't use tonight.

Otherwise, the pizza was very simple: a light smear of cream cheese went on the crust first, after I softened it in the microwave. After that, I chopped up two pieces of chicken and mixed them in the pizza sauce, then put that down on top of the cream cheese. Then I sauteed some red onion and on that went. Finally, I topped that with a bunch of low fat mozza.

The end result: ridiculicous! This is definitely a keeper combination! And my crust was awesome - probably the best result I've ever had. I think the pizza stone I baked it on helped with the crispy texture.

Roasted Tomatoes, Garlic, and Fresh Herbs

2011-04-16T18:02:00.006-07:00

My AeroGardens have provided me with such amazing bounty this winter. The fresh herbs alone have been a God-send, and I am so grateful to my friend Jodi for giving me this huge gift!

The oregano I originally didn't think would make it has become quite prolific, and the thyme is doing excellently, too. The basil is awesome, as is the Genoa basil plant that has a very anise-y flavour to it. The lemon basil is pretty much kaput and I think I'm just going to yank it out and put in some cilantro in its place. The mint is hugely prolific, as is the dill. I almost have an overabundance of both!

While wondering how to utilize all this hydroponic bounty, I had a brainwave: last fall, after the garlic festival I attended, I made this yummy meal, and so I made another version of it the other night. I didn't have the fancy garlic this time, but that was OK. I still used about a head of garlic in total, and I roasted the tomatoes & garlic with a bunch of sprigs of thyme. After it was done roasting, I added chopped oregano and basil. And Bob's your uncle!

It was another simple, spectacular, and very cost-effective meal ('cause I'm more about cost effective now than I ever was before).

Spoil-myself Food

2011-04-16T14:00:00.001-07:00

When I feel like spoiling myself, I often make these shrimp salad rolls. They have fresh mint in them from my AeroGarden. They are very easy to make, but are a bit finicky. They are so worth it, however! And when I feel I'm worth it, I make them. This afternoon was such a day for such a treat!

Elk Steak Dinner

2011-04-16T11:54:00.010-07:00

My dad is the local gun guru, and as such, he always has a line on some game meat through his gun pals who hunt. Dad hasn't hunted in years, but he did when we were kids, and I remember one time he came home with a moose that we ate for the better part of a year. It was awesome meat, from what I recall, and to this day, I really enjoy moose meat. Game meat in general is great stuff: basically organic, free-range, drug free, and leaner than beef, pork, or other meats you get in the grocery store. And it tastes amazing. Some meats I avoid, however: bear is gross and I don't like eating teddy bears; white tail deer is very gamey and strong; and I won't touch cougar for ethical reasons.

Elk is a large animal and it's extremely lean. I have had elk done poorly, and when it's done poorly, it's really bad. However, when it's done well, it's excellent. Last night, Dad brought over an elk steak of unknown cut for me to grill up along with a beef sirloin he had hanging around his freezer.

The elk steak was ginormous, and it required some trimming to that I could fit in into my rather modestly-sized grill pan. it had two sections of bone in it and a large piece of very tough fat around the edge that was almost the texture of cheese rind. After trimming, I managed to fit it into my grill pan. I seasoned it with Montreal Steak Spice.

I have one of those cast iron grilling pans and I've yet to master using the stupid thing because I always seem to heat it too high and cause a lot of smoking to happen. While grilling last night, it got so smokey in my kitchen that my smoke detector, located in the living room, went of twice. I reduced the heat but still got smoked out. It was brutal!

I don't know how long I grilled this per side. I do know that you don't want to grill the crap out of game meats because they are so lean, so my aim was to cook this to a nice medium rare - which is how I like my steaks done anyway. Once I took it out of the pan and let it rest, though, it wasn't done to my father's satisfaction: it was still too rare for him. So I put it back in the pan for another few minutes - creating more smoke - until finally, it was done to perfection.

It was delicious and cut like butter. It was a beautiful thing indeed. I served it with some mini potatoes, also donated by my dad, and some yams. It was so big we each had a hunk and I sent my dad home with about 1/3 of it that was left over.

Oh, and the beef steak was pretty good, too, but not as good as this bit of elk. Go game meats!

Magazine Monday #78: Sweet & Salty Cookies

2011-04-09T16:04:00.004-07:00

Sometimes I just see stuff in a magazine and I HAVE to make it, no matter what. This recipe from the most recent issue of Canadian Living was one of those recipes.

OMG, this is now my new favourite cookie! It called for candy covered chocolate pieces, and I though that the Easter-coloured M&Ms would be perfect. They were. I used crushed up pretzel twists.

Awesomesauce and a half!

Peruvian Chicken & Rice Soup

2011-04-04T18:22:00.008-07:00

I finally got around to making that delicious Peruvian Roast Chicken carcass into a soup. It was very straightforward and I used the same flavours in the soup that appeared in the rub on the roast - minus the mint, though, because I was out of it. I use a lot of mint and my AeroGarden can barely keep up!

The stock was a very basic carcass-celery-carrot-onion-garlic affair, with some salt & pepper. As usual, I did it in my crock pot. The flavours still on the carcass infusing themselves into the stock were utterly mouthwatering.

For the soup, I used:

carrots
onion
cabbage (from a coleslaw mix)
1/2 cup of white rice
more garlic
1 720 mL bottle passata

For the spices, this is a general idea of what I used but I think I adjusted after tasting, so I recommend you do the same thing.

1tbsp cumin
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp oregano
2 tsp paprika
generous squeeze of lime
1 tsp chili powder

In the end, it was really missing the mint, so I'll know for the next time to make this when mint is readily available to me. Otherwise, the results were fantabulicious and I got 9 servings in total. Which means I got 12 meals from one measly carcass - awesome! I am cheap and proud of it!

Vancouver Food, Part 1

2011-03-25T20:52:00.004-07:00

Busy times! Last week, I returned from a trip to Vancouver to visit friends & family. I have a ton of photos, so it's hard to sort out where to start.

How about Ikea?

What is a trip to the coast without a stop at Ikea? My dad loves Ikea, particularly their food section. He loves their coffee and he stocked up big time. He also likes their bread mixes, and so do I, so he bought a few of those, too. Dad really likes the Ikea cafeteria, for reasons I just don't get. Yeah, it's inexpensive, but I was at the coast - I wanted to have lunch somewhere more "coasty". We compromised by having a snack at the cafeteria (which is oddly very similar to the BC Ferries cafeterias) and going somewhere else for lunch.

So, here is what we had.

My SIL had this chocolate torte thingy that you can buy whole in the frozen section of the food part of the store. She said it was pretty good. She downed it with a lingonberry juice.

My dad had this bran muffin that had an odd shape. He downed it with some of his favourite Ikea coffee. I have been advised that when I go to Van in June (which is in the works) that should I pass by Ikea, I am go to in and buy Dad a huge stockpile of coffee and bread mixes.

I had an Ikea cinnamon bun. It was OK. I've had way better, which you will hear about in the future!

Pancake Tuesday 2011

2011-03-08T19:49:00.004-08:00

Tonight was one of my favourite nights on the calendar: Pancake Tuesday. AKA Shrove Tuesday, AKA Mardi Gras, AKA Fat Tuesday. As usual, I had a dinner, but this year it was only my dad and me. Because he likes things made with whole grains, I made whole wheat and oatmeal pancake recipe, and because I don't have a griddle or a frying pan of decent size, I turned these into waffles. My dad, as usual, supplied some locally-made sausages & bacon. In this case, they were buffalo English sausages, and the bacon was something a friend of his was experimenting with, but it was way too salty for my taste and it cooked up very strange, causing quick burning & a lot of smoke. There must have been something in the curing solution that made this happen. And of course there was tons of maple syrup!

The recipe for the pancakes/waffles is here, from the February 2008 issue of Gourmet Magazine. and also constitutes my third magazine recipe of the week! I am three for three! I'll be submitting this to Magazine Monday for sure! The recipe turned out great and I'd definitely make them again.

Happy Pancake Tuesday everyone! :)

Magazine Monday #77: Flaky Biscuits

2011-03-07T18:59:00.003-08:00

Wow, two recipes in two days - go me!

I just whipped some borscht out of the freezer for dinner tonight and needed something to go with it, so I flipped through my clipped recipes and found a biscuit recipe I hadn't tried yet.

This is it. It is, once more, from Canadian Living, this time the May 2010 issue.

I added fresh dill from my AeroGarden and some grated cheddar cheese, and they were fantastic hot out of the oven! This is one of the nicest biscuits I've ever made, I think. Definitely keeping this in my repertoire!

Magazine Monday #76: Egg & Shrimp Sandwiches

2011-03-06T17:32:00.003-08:00

My AeroGarden containing the herb mixture is doing great, I am happy to report, especially the dill. In fact, I have so much dill I'm not sure what to do with it all. I might start drying it for a rainy day. Tonight I am planning a dilly pasta for dinner, and now I am obsessed with finding recipes with dill... Dill bread? Dill biscuits? Dill cookies??? There is so much dill I don't know what to do!

So, in an effort to use a teeny bit of what I have on hand, I decided to make this sandwich today for my lunch. This is the Open Faced Shrimp & Egg Sandwich, made on a toasted bagel, from the June 2010 issue of Canadian Living Magazine. The recipe is here.

Very easy, very tasty. And it hit the spot. You can't beat fresh dill - unless you have too much of it and it beats you!

Another Lunch at Max & Irma's

2011-03-04T10:34:00.003-08:00

I think my dad and I are addicted to Max & Irma's in Nelson, because we went there for another lunch yesterday, and once again, had a fabulous meal. Every Monday night they have a ethnic theme, and this Monday, the 7th, it's Greek. Oh, I'd love to go because I adore Greek food!

Here is our lunch from yesterday.

Dad opted for the spinach salad, which came topped with prosciutto. It was accompanied by M&I's homemade multi-grain bread.

After much deliberation, I chose the chicken club wrap and it was so excellent!

Since we both had "lighter" lunches, we decided to give into dessert temptation. M&I's make their own desserts and they are always excellent. The dessert board contained an item that immediately caught my attention: peanut butter & chocolate ganache pie! OMG! Fantabulicious! I got quite a large slice and it was very rich and filling, but so amazing!

Dad had ordered the same, but there was only one slice left and I got it, so he went with the flourless chocolate espresso torte. He said it was excellent.

I'd love to go back for dinner because they really have a great menu.

Peruvian Roast Chicken

2011-03-02T11:08:00.003-08:00

Long have I been a reader of Future Grown-Up's blog, Growing Up (And Having Fun) After 40. She makes a ton of delicious stuff - well, everything she makes looks delicious - and long have I been threatening to make some of her recipes. Alas, I haven't gotten around to keeping to that goal, until now. The other day, FG-U posted a recipe for Peruvian Roast Chicken with Garlic & Lime that so excited me I immediately went over to my freezer and took out my very last roast chicken from my last cross border shopping expedition. I was also excited because my herb AeroGarden is producing mint like crazy, and I had tons of fresh mint I didn't have to buy to use in this dish; everything else I had on hand. And so, last night, I made the chicken.

PHENOMENAL! Abso-freaking-lutely fan-frakking-tastic! This is one of the tastiest roast chickens I've ever made, if not the most tasty roast chicken I've ever made.

There recipe is here.

Making the paste was a beautiful thing, the colours, the scents...

And here is the end result:

The only thing I would change next time - and there will be a next time - is to perhaps halve the salt; I found the 2tbsp to be a bit too much.

Other than that - perfection!

Thanks FG-U!

50% Whole Wheat & Flax Bread

2011-02-28T18:31:00.004-08:00

Another day, another loaf of bread. But before I get to that recipe, I got a shot of C's borscht and what it looks like when she makes & cans it. As you might recall from my previous post, I deviated from her recipe's instructions and got a different-looking soup. Here is what hers looks like, in a 1L jar. Isn't it pretty?

Now, onto the bread.

I adapted this recipe from my Le Cordon Bleu Complete Cook book, where I also go the milk bread recipe from. I don't like 100% whole wheat bread; I don't like the texture and my stomach has a hard time with that much fibre. So I cut the whole wheat flour in half and also added about 1/4 flax seeds, which I had hanging around my freezer.

50% Whole Wheat & Flax Bread (adapted from Le Cordon Bleu Complete Cook, page 463)

1 tbsp instant yeast
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups white bread flour
2 tbsp butter, softened
2 tsp barley malt syrup (or honey)

Directions here. And this is what she looked like:

The original recipe called for 2 tsp barley malt; I have no idea what is meant by that - whether they're talking about a powder or a syrup or what. I've had a jar of barley malt syrup kicking around since I made bagels a couple years back, so I use it whenever I get a chance. It adds great colour & flavour to bread.

Milk Bread

2011-02-23T21:00:00.003-08:00

Milk bread (pain au lait) is one of those standard French breads that was heavily drilled into us while in culinary school. There are a zillion recipes for it (here is the culinary school recipe I've made several times). In need of a good basic loaf this week, I went for a different milk bread recipe, this time from my Le Cordon Bleu Complete Cook book, which is just excellent. The recipe is for buns (petits pains au lait) but I just shaped the dough into a loaf and...forgot that it was proofing...Yeah, not my prettiest loaf by far, but still edible and it makes great toast. The texture was a bit crumbly, so I prefer the other milk bread recipe, but this one did the trick, and now I know that I need to put the timer on when I'm proofing something in addition to putting it on when I bake something! We live and learn.

Milk Bread/Pain au Lait (adapted by me from the recipe on page 462 of Le Cordon Bleu Complete Cook)

1 tbsp instant yeast
1 tbsp sugar
4 cups bread flour
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 - 2 cups milk
2 tbsp melted butter

Directions here.

And here is my loaf...

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

2011-02-21T20:22:00.006-08:00

Sometimes I crave stuff, and since I've been icing my shoulder because I have some tendonitis in my right deltoid, I have been craving pumpkin. This might have to do with the fact that I am using frozen blocks of pumpkin I stashed away over a year ago to ice my shoulder with. I have also been craving chocolate, and I do love pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, which I have made before. It's a great combination. But, I wanted muffins! So I searched around the net and found this recipe on In Erika's Kitchen. I made the recipe this afternoon.

I halved the spices (1 tsp each) because I didn't want such strong spices overwhelming the chocolate, and I used plain white sugar. These turned out really well and made quite cakey muffins. But the recipe was so large I got a bonus pumpkin chocolate chip loaf out of it as well. I baked this in my largest loaf pan, but I think because the batter was so delicate, it didn't have enough structure to support itself as it rose during baking and therefore it never rose in the middle. I topped it with some sugar crystals.

Still the flavour is there! A really great treat and it hit the spot. I'm going to freeze the loaf to take to a family member's place on the weekend.

Magazine Monday #75: Three Seed Biscuits

2011-02-20T13:16:00.003-08:00

This recipe from Canadian Living's November 2010 issue caught my eye. Biscuits can really be indulgent in my world because they are so buttery, so fluffy, so good. These looked healthy, so I could enjoy them with a little less guilt than normal. I made them yesterday to go with the borscht I made & froze last week. They were excellent! I didn't have any sunflower seeds on hand, so I put in poppyseeds. Also, I didn't have any wheat germ, so I substituted quick oats.

The biscuits were great, nice & crunchy, and right out of the oven, they were a perfect accompaniment to the soup! This morning, I had a left over one with eggs for breakfast, and I have one more to enjoy later on, perhaps with some jam.

This keeper recipe is here.

My Boss's Goulash

2011-02-19T20:18:00.007-08:00

I am blessed with some excellent bosses at the Telegraph, and one of them (that I know of) happens to also be a pretty good cook, if what he brought to our Christmas party is any indication. We had our Xmas shindig at the local cross country ski...place...(it's not really a hill...) where there is a big cabin groups can book for events. There was a big wood stove and an outhouse, and that night we got a huge dump of snow, so the kids were happy (and some adults, too, though I was not one of them). Everyone brought something for dinner; I brought a cake for dessert, Boss A brought sangria and mulled cider, Boss D's wife made homemade bread, which she makes professionally at a local coffee shop; and Boss AB brought Hungarian Goulash and some egg noodles. The picture above is of that meal, served on fancy paper plates!

I have always enjoyed goulash, and indeed my next article in Bread 'n Molasses Magazine will be about the goulash I enjoyed as a kid, made by my mom. That recipe, however, came from an old edition of Betty Crackpot's (AKA Crocker) definitive cookbook and is a highly Americanized version of the traditional Hungarian dish. AB's is different, and it was so good when we chowed down on it at the ski cabin in the middle of a snowstorm. During a my recent big batch freezing spree, I asked AB for his recipe so I could make a crock pot full of it to freeze, and he very nicely shared the recipe with me.

I quote:

Fry up stew meat and onions in quite a lot of butter until browned on the outside. Then I put enough cans of pureed tomatoes in the crock pot with the meat that it looks 'stewy'. Then I cook it for a whole day, adding some salt and a fair bit of paprika (I like the smoked). I'll add carrots and mushrooms, though some say this is a sin! I may even splash in some hot sauce to bring it up to the level of tangy-ness I like. Finally, if it feels too watery I'll add some cornstarch to thicken it a little. Oh, I also put garlic in because I put garlic in almost everything.

So, using this as a template, I got a family pack of stewing meat at Safeway that was about 1.2kg in weight. I had most of a bottle of passata left over from the quinoa salad recipe, so I dumped that in, along with a partial can of leftover diced tomatoes from the borscht I made last week. I have two kinds of paprika on hand, Spanish and Hungarian. I used a few tablespoons of both. After letting the goulash cook on high for several hours in the crock pot, I added some Worcestershire sauce to make it a bit tangy, but when I tasted the broth, I found it lacking. It needed something to cut the acidity of the tomatoes, so I added a couple of tablespoons of brown sugar.

It was fantabulous. Not as fantabulous as AB's, but fantabulous enough for me. I may not even freeze any; I might just spend a week eating this. For the initial meal I had, I served the goulash with what my mom used to serve her goulash with, Noodles Romanoff. A sinful side dish indeed - but wonderful, and nostalgic. It was perfect!

Awesomeness!

Awesome Lunch & Artistic Coffees

2011-02-16T18:34:00.005-08:00

On Saturday, my dad and I had a day out that started with some excellent wildlife photo ops at a location out on the Kootenay Pass where volunteers from two local wildlife associations feed a herd of big horn sheep. The purpose of the program and the feeding is to keep the sheep off the highway so there aren't any accidents that can kill or seriously harm both sheep and humans. The sheep were very placid and allowed me to take photos with no problem, and I also got a Telegraph article out of it, so if you want to read more about this unique opportunity, you can go here. I have a full Flickr set with all the big horn sheep photos here.

After that, Dad and I went to Nelson to do some grocery shopping, something we do very regularly, and we always have lunch! We had wanted to go to The Preserved Seed, but they are closed on the weekends, which we were very disappointed about. So, we opted instead to go to Max & Irma's (previously blogged about here) where we had a lovely lunch.

I had the Pollo Calzone, which had in it chicken, sauteed onions, artichoke hearts, and three cheeses. The crust was perfect and spectacular! I complimented the chef on my way out because it was so fabulous!

My dad had the Santa Fe melt, on multigrain bread. The bread was homemade. Not sure what was on the melt other than chicken, tomatoes, peppers, and onions. Dad said it was excellent. Both meals came with a fresh house salad and Dad's came with a side of tortilla chips.

Max & Irma's always has really great homemade desserts, but we were both full, so we didn't have any. Great meal!

On Valentine's Day, my brother Jem came up to town and we went for coffee at a local shop called the Alpine Grind. I had to take a picture of these very lovely drinks they made with the decorative tops. Beautiful! The one on the bottom, the darker one, was my mocha, and the other one was a vanilla latté, which my brother claims is the best in town. It was a crummy day weather-wise up here on Monday, so a big hot drink was just perfect.

Magazine Monday #74: Quinoa & Chickpea Salad with Tomato Vinaigrette

2011-02-13T09:38:00.003-08:00

After a disappointing last couple of issues, Canadian Living's March 2011 issue has a lot in it that I have bookmarked. This quinoa recipe is the first of a few recipes I plan on making. I love quinoa, and it makes me feel good to eat it because it's so nutritious. This was an easy salad to put together and I have lots around in my fridge for lunches & snack attacks.

I used fresh dill from my AeroGarden, which I had in abundance until I harvested it all a few days ago to make this dish and the borscht I posted about yesterday. Fresh dill is the shizz!

Quinoa & Chickpea Salad with Tomato Vinaigrette

1 cup quinoa, rinsed
2 cups green beans, trimmed & chopped
1 can chickpeas, drained & rinsed
1 red pepper, diced
1 cup feta cheese, crumbled
(my addition - a whole pile of fresh dill, chopped)

Tomato Vinaigrette

1/3 cup bottled strained tomatoes (passata)
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp liquid honey
(original recipe: 1/2 tsp each dried Italian herb seasoning and salt)
1/4 tsp pepper
pinch cayenne (which I skipped)

In a saucepan, bring quinoa and 2 cups of water to a boil; reduce heat and cover. Simmer for 12 minutes. Fluff with fork & let cool.

Meanwhile, in a saucepan of boiling water, blanch green beans until tender-crisp, about 3 minutes. Drain & refresh in a bowl of ice water. Drain & transfer to a large bowl. (Fresh green beans at this time of year around here are scarce and not worth the money if you can find them; I used frozen beans which I steamed & then cooled.)

Stir in cooled quinoa, chickpeas, red pepper, and feta.

For the vinaigrette, whisk together all the ingredients and pour over the quinoa mixture; stir to coat.

This is an excellent salad, and the dressing has a hint of sweetness that nicely compliments the saltiness of the feta. Definitely a keeper recipe!

C's Borscht

2011-02-12T21:25:00.007-08:00

You might recall C, my SIL's mom, who does catering on top of her busy day job. She also created a homemade cookbook with some of her favourite recipes in it, as well as the fave recipes of some of her friends and family. Last weekend, I helped C cater the concession at the curling club, and one of the items on offer was C's homemade borscht.

I have previously posted about borscht here, and that post included some information about this hearty Russian soup as well as a recipe I've previously made with great success. C's version is also extremely awesome, and although there are beets in the soup, they are there more or less for colour and are discarded during the cooking process. I only like non-beety borscht because I am not a fan of that particular root veggie; however, C's borscht is the most brilliant pink colour I can barely describe it. I was too busy during that concession to take a picture of her borscht, so you'll have to trust me when I say that stuff was PINK, man!

Anyway, I had a bowl of C's borscht for lunch at the curling club one day and it inspired me to make some of my own so I could freeze it in portions for quick nuking when I don't feel like cooking. Yesterday, I got down to it and made the soup. The total cost for ingredients was $9.95; I got 11 portions, which makes each portion $0.90! You cannot beat that! That's even cheaper than my cabbage rolls!

Here is the recipe, which C generously allowed me to share here.

C's Borscht (I am taking some liberties with the method; these directions are not exactly how they appear in the original recipe)

2 beets
2 large carrots
4 large potatoes
dash of salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup whipping cream (35%)
1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
1 quart canned tomatoes (I used 1L diced)
1 head cabbage
2 tbsp dill, preferably fresh, or to taste (to be honest, I used WAY more than that!)

1. Peel the beets, potatoes, and carrots; chop and add to a large pot. Cover with water & add a dash of salt. Bring to a boil and cook until veggies are tender. (I personally wouldn't dice the beets again; I'd keep them in chunks; they are there more to impart colour and you don't want to spend a lot of time fishing them out when it comes time to discard them.)

2. When the veggies are tender, drain everything and discard the beets. Save the water! Mash the carrots and potatoes with 1/2 cup of butter and half the cream. Add back the water from the cooking vegetables. (Now, I deviated from this and it was a BIG MISTAKE. I just fished out the beets with a slotted spoon and mashed the carrots & potatoes in the pot with the water, but I couldn't get a nice smooth mash. No wonder. It wouldn't happen in the water; you have to do it out of the water. I ended up pureeing mine with an immersion blender. This was my first mistake on the path to getting a completely different borscht than the one C makes.)

3. In a large frying pan, saute the onion & pepper with 2 tbsp of the butter until the onion is clear and soft. Add tomatoes and dill & simmer.

4. Chop the cabbage very fine. Add it to the sauteed tomato mixture. Cook until cabbage is tender. (I had to deviate from the original recipe at this point, too, because I didn't have a pot big enough to accommodate the cabbage; I was using the big pot to boil the root veggies. So I wound up added cabbage to two pots and making two pots of borscht in the end, which I mixed together to make it all consistent.)

5. Gradually add the cabbage mixture to the potato mixture.

6. Very gradually add the rest of the butter and cream to the soup, stirring frequently (if added too quickly the acid in the tomato mixture will curdle the cream). Do not boil. Serve. (I just added the cream with the cabbage and didn't experience any curdling. I also boiled! No ill effects at all, but I had to in order to cook my cabbage since I was splitting it between two pots.)

My soup looked like this:

Yeah...very different from C's. But it tastes fantastic! Which is what counts, I guess. Next time I'll follow C's directions more closely and hopefully get that fantastically pink borscht she does!

Corset Cookies = Awesome!

2011-02-12T19:30:00.003-08:00

I just did a post here about my love of corsets, and one of my readers sent me a link to this photo:

OMG! These are awesome! I want one badly - very badly! Think of all the decorationg possibilities! I am going to have to see if my local kitchen store can find me one of these cutters! These have got to be some of the prettiest cookies ever, too. The piping is amazing and took considerable control and experience. Whoever thought of this deserves a some kind of big giant cookie award.

Cadbury Mini Egg Ice Cream

2011-02-11T17:09:00.005-08:00

In a fit of premenstrual pique last weekend, I purchased a 1kg bag of Cadbury mini eggs. It felt so evil, but they are so good! I just finished the bag off now, and let me tell you, it took considerable will power on my part to not inhale the whole bag within a day of purchase.

I didn't eat them all in their natural state, however. I had a brain wave during my PMS craziness: ice cream! Why not? I am out of store-bought ice cream and it's so frakking expensive here for the good stuff and the stuff I like that I'm not going to buy it. But it's cheap as hell to make, so make it I did! And the results were excellent!

Cadbury Mini Egg Ice Cream

2 cups whipping cream (35%)
1 cup whole milk (3%)
3/4 cup sugar
3 vanilla beans (I have a package I'm trying to use up because they're getting dry, so that's why I used this many)
1 cup chopped Cadbury mini eggs

This is my typical ice cream recipe (minus the mini eggs, of course). I just combine the cream, milk, sugar, and vanilla, really well in a large measuring cup, and pour it into my ice cream maker. Close to when the ice cream is ready to come out of the machine, I added the chopped mini eggs. Freeze till firm. And Bob's your uncle!

The shells turned the final product a bit of an odd colour, but that's OK. It tastes great!

I may need to buy another bag...

Dill = Awesome

2011-02-08T20:43:00.006-08:00

My AeroGardens continue to produce awesome stuff, providing some much needed zazz to my diet. The dill has done tremendously; I couldn't be happier with it. And I finally got around to using it tonight.

I inherited some nice baked potatoes from a catering job I did over the weekend, and this was very exciting because A) they were free, B) I didn't have to bake them myself, and C) I immediately knew what I was going to do with them once they were in my hot little hands - and I knew that my plans would involve dill.

I have felt a need for a shot of summer now that we are in the dead of winter, and nothing says summer more than potato salad! With lots of dill!

Very simple:

2 large baked potatoes, cubed
4 green onions, chopped
2 hard boiled eggs, chopped
2 small carrots, chopped
a whole bunch of dill, chopped
enough mayo to bind everything just nicely

And voilà:

Sooooooo looking forward to this winter being over and done with. In the meantime, I have another use for my dill, also inspired by the catering I did on the weekend, but that is a post for the near future!

"Say Yes to Noh!"

2011-01-31T18:25:00.005-08:00

Best motto ever!

It comes from this company, Noh, which makes a whole bunch of Hawaiian mixes, one of which, the Haupia Pudding/Luau Dessert AKA Coconut Pudding, arrived in a nice box from that fair State, along with the macadamia nuts I've been making cookies with, courtesy my friend Jodi. Tonight, needing a sugar fix very badly, I made the pudding mix. It was dead easy, being one of those "just add water" jobbies.

The picture on the package doesn't look much like a pudding, however; the little squares of whiteness look like something much thicker than a pudding, but in the fine print on the package, the word "flan" is used. That's more like it. The pudding, once cooled in the fridge, set up in a very solid, flan-like way. You could cut it into any shape you wanted to.

The verdict: weird! Very weird! Solid, and not creamy the way a flan normally is. I guess that's not surprising given it only required me to add water to it. But it was also quite flavourless, which was disappointing; it tasted bland and watery. I added some chocolate chips to mine just to make it more interesting, but I still couldn't finish it in the end.

Oh well! It was still a bit of a tropical, cultural experience in my Canadian winter surroundings, so that alone was worth it.

Incidentally, the package also says this makes a great topping for cakes, but I wouldn't go there. I also don't think it would be good warm on ice cream, as the package also suggests. Go with Jello pudding instead!

AeroGarden Herb Usage #1

2011-01-30T19:23:00.005-08:00

My AeroGardens continue to pay off and today I harvested some herbs and made a dish I've been craving for a while.

I have a TON of dill ready to pick, I just need to feel inspired to use it. The mint and the basil, however, was another story. I have no idea what brought on a craving for Asian salad rolls, but a craving I did have and as soon as the mint was big enough I was in business. Mint goes for $1.99 for a small package, and fresh basil is the same. The herbs were delicious!

My salad rolls contained both mint and basil, and also lettuce from my lettuce garden. Also in there was rice vermicelli and shrimp. The sauce I used was the Vietnamese-Must Have Table Sauce (AKA nuoc cham) from Hot Sour Salty Sweet. This is an awesome sauce: fresh and zingy and it went perfectly with the salad rolls. The original recipe contains a bird chile, but I A) don't have access to such a thing and B) don't like spicy.

Vietnamese-Must Have Table Sauce (page 28 of Hot Sour Salty Sweet by Jeffry Alford & Naomi Duguid)

1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1/4 cup Thai fish sauce
1/4 cup water
2 tsp rice or cider vinegar
1 tbsp sugar
1 small clove garlic, minced

Combine!

Awesomeness! Go AeroGardens!

Macadamia Nut Cookies

2011-01-22T11:30:00.004-08:00

In December, my good friend Jodi went to Hawaii for a holiday and sent me a really nice box of Hawaiian goodies. It included all kinds of macadamia nut products, including a couple of bags of Mauna Loa dry roasted macadamias with sea salt. Oh my God - yum! I love these! They are not too salty, which is great, and as such they make a great addition to baking, adding just a touch of saltiness to the sweetness of cookies. I have made two batches of cookies - so far! I have almost a full bag of nuts left, too, so there should be more on the way!

Chocolate Chip Macadamia Nut Cookies

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups chocolate chips
1 cup coarsely shopped macadamia nuts

Bake at 350F.

Oatmeal Coconut Macadamia Butterscotch Chip Cookies

2 cup butter, softened
2 cups packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups quick oats
1 3/4 cups butterscotch chips
1 cup unsweetened flaked coconut
1 cup coarsely chopped macadamia nuts

Bake at 350F.

Both cookies were awesome!

At Last - Salad!

2011-01-15T09:49:00.003-08:00

My AeroGardens have come through! Yesterday I harvested the first lettuce from my lettuce AeroGarden, and I made a nice fresh salad for dinner. While purchasing the other salad ingredients in LOGS, I gave the lettuce section in the store the finger!

The AeroGardens have been growing for 32 days now. Here are the herbs & tomato plants:

Magazine Monday (on a Friday) #73: Molasses Oat Bread

2011-01-14T11:56:00.005-08:00

I'm trying hard to get back into making my own breads, just to keep my grocery bills low and to help me feel productive. For the last few weeks, I've managed to do this, and I'm also making two at a time so I can freeze one for later, too.

I came across this recipe for Molasses Oat Bread in the November 2010 issue of Canadian Living Magazine, in a segment on bread machine breads. I didn't use a bread machine, of course, just my regular method.

I'm not the biggest molasses fan in the world, but I fancied it for some reason. And it turned out quite well in the end. I didn't have any whole wheat flour on hand, so I just used white. It's sweet but not overly so, and will be just fine with a nice bit of ham & Swiss cheese!

Cooking with Kylie: Neil's Chilli-salt Squid!

2011-01-14T11:33:00.003-08:00

I love Kylie Kwong, but her books are not cheap! I did get some Christmas money, however, so I treated myself to Kylie's Heart and Soul. As is the norm with Kylie, everything is so mouthwatering, and also very simple to make. I have a ton of recipes flagged in there, but I decided to make something that really grabbed my eye the first time through the book, Neil's Chilli-salt Squid, on page 35. The flavours really appealed to me, and I do love calamari. I don't have access to fresh squid, unfortunately, so in order to get any at all, I had to make a trip to the LOGS in Trail where they sell frozen squid in 1lb packages. It's times like these when I miss living on the coast...

The dish was very easy to put together, but I didn't think it was an incredible success. This wasn't the fault of the recipe, though, but more my execution of it. I had to shallow fry the squid because I didn't have enough oil, and I don't think I heated the oil enough. It was hot, but not as hot as I realize now it should have been. The squid didn't crisp up, and though the meat was done perfectly, the coating didn't stick. Next time I'll make sure I have the proper amount of oil, deep fry, and make sure the oil is much, much hotter. The flavour was there, though, and the oil turned a spectacular colour!

I served my squid with some baked fries and an Asian coleslaw.

The recipe is here.

Epic Cabbage Rolls!

2011-01-13T16:11:00.015-08:00

So, when my mood is in the crapper food, eating, meal planning, cooking, and grocery shopping all become very challenging for me. The last bout left me scrambling for meals and it wasn't pretty, so I decided during a sunny spell of three days and the resulting lift in my mood to get organized, get prepared, and start stashing meals in my trusty new freezer so that the next time I don't feel great, I'm not living on scrambled eggs and oatmeal and junky stuff that's easy to grab off the grocery store shelves.

Enter the humble cabbage roll. Actually, enter that show we get in Canada every afternoon called Best Recipes Ever. I was flipping around recently and decided to watch this; I'd kinda turned my nose up at it before because it's a Canadian Living thing and I already get the magazine and the subject matter is...well...cue the snoot...simpler than I prefer in a cooking show. But, there really was nothing else on so I gave it a go. And the chick made a vegetarian cabbage roll recipe that triggered some memories. My mom used to make killer cabbage rolls when we were kids, and also, my good friend and fellow foodie Mr. Anchovy, also posted eons and eons ago his mother's cabbage roll recipe. Mr. Anchovy comes from a Polish background and he has been known to post delicious recipes from that culture from time to time. A quick email to him asking about the cabbage roll recipe resulted in a quick response and a trip to the grocery store after the next pay day. All of that resulted in an epic cabbage roll afternoon.

It was as lot of fun, and in the end, after a few hours, I got 46 cabbage rolls, which for me turned into about 15 meals. Total cost of the meal = $15.21! So, my budget was pretty happy, too.

There were a few issues. I ran out of cabbage, so I froze the leftover filling I had for another time. Also, I got long grain rice from the bulk bin at LOGS because I didn't want to use a whole bunch of my pricey scented jasmine rice in this, and the rice was terrible. I have no idea what happened to it, but it cooked up into a pile of mush, and when the cabbage rolls were cooked, the absorbed so much liquid from the sauce that the rice went even mushier in the roll. That was disappointing. I seem to remember my mom using raw rice in her filling, but I need to confirm that. Certainly, I'd do that the next time given this experience.

I made a few amendments to Mr. Anchovy's recipe. His mom used salt pork, but I didn't want to go around looking for something like that in the boonies, but I did have on hand some fatty home-made bacon my dad's friend smoked for him and so I used that instead. Also, Mr. A's mom used to put a pork rib on the top of her cabbage rolls, but I didn't do that either (not really a fan). Also, the original recipe called for ground veal, pork, and beef, but I'm not a fan of veal, and while I was looking for a lot of cabbage rolls, Mr. Anchovy's claim that this recipe makes enough for the entire Polish army wasn't far from the truth, and I didn't quite need that many cabbage rolls. So, I stuck with only ground pork and ground beef). My mom used to put green peppers in hers, so I added some to mine, too.

So, here is the adapted recipe I used. And yes, that is a gigantic turkey roasting pan!

Epic Cabbage Rolls

2 - 3 cabbages
1lb each ground beef & ground pork
1/2 lb bacon, chopped
2 cups long grain rice, cooked
1 - 2 cans (the big ones, 1.36L) tomato juice
2 chopped onions
1 chopped green pepper
salt & pepper to taste
ground basil & dried thyme

OK...This really is quite simple!

Take your cabbage, and dig as much of the core out as possible without de-leafing it. Steam until soft - about 15 - 20 minutes. Now, I had to keep steaming the farther into the head I went, so you might have to do that, too. Alternately, I've heard of people freezing their cabbages, then as they thaw the leaves come right off. Keep some of the cabbage leaves to line the bottom and sides of your pan.

Brown all meats with onion & salt & pepper to taste. Add to rice and mix until combined.

Now make sure everything is cool enough to handle, because this is where the hands-on part begins. Trim the fibrous spine out of the cabbage leaves. This helps flatten them & makes them easier to roll.

Make your rolls like you would a burrito (this is how the host of Best Recipes Ever described the process). Take a small amount of filling in your hand, put it at the top of the cabbage leaf, roll, folding in the edges. Then place seam down in the pan. Repeat. Layer the cabbage rolls at will. Repeat.

I sprinkled the seasonings and chopped green peppers between the cabbage roll layers.

When you're all done rolling, pour the tomato juice right over top. Make a lid with cabbage leaves, which will help keep things nice & moist. I ran out of cabbage leaves...

Bake long & slow: 325F for 2 - 3 hours, or until nice & boiling hot. Mr. A says it's OK if the leaves on the top & sides start to brown; they are caramelizing & turn sweet. Mine didn't do that; my oven was very slow and I actually wound up cooking the whole thing for about 4 hours in total. Keep checking for dryness. If your rolls are looking at all dry, just chuck in more juice. Bear in mind that you are braising here, so you'll need plenty of liquid.

And, voila!

These freeze excellently...Here are all the fruits of my labour...

Woo-hoo! I am so set!

Full Flickr set here.

Many thanks to Mr. Anchovy for the recipe & the advice!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Biscotti

2011-01-13T15:55:00.004-08:00

It shouldn't surprise you to find out that I was highly disorganized this Christmas and didn't actually have most of my home-baked gifts ready until Christmas afternoon. It's a long story, but I do have to thank the weather in part for helping me get it all done: the good old outdoor fridge was my ally and let my baking cool much more quickly than it would have had I kept it indoors. It was sunny but chilly, and the new deck's railing was the perfect size to keep the pans reliably steady.

I am in the habit of giving biscotti to C & R, my SIL's parents because they are big biscotti fans, and they have always told me how much they've enjoyed receiving it in the past. This year I made a double batch so that I could give some to my brother & SIL, too. Previously, I've made chocolate hazelnut biscotti and a lemon & sour cherry biscotti. This year, I chose to do peanut butter & chocolate biscotti.

It's always the same recipe, which I got from culinary school. It's fairly generic and therefore versatile.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Biscotti

85g butter
185g sugar
2 eggs
2tsp vanilla
300g flour
50g cocoa powder, sifted
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 pinch salt
1 or so cups of peanut butter chips
chopped toasted peanuts for sprinkling on top
about 1/4 cup or so dark chocolate chips or other dark chocolate, melted, for drizzling on the top

Cream butter & sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, then vanilla. Add the dry ingredients.

Knead the dough lightly and pat into a "half moon" shape for even cooking, about 3/4" thick. (The "half moon" thing is in the original culinary school recipe; it's a little deceiving. What that means is rounded sides and a slightly rounded top.)

Bake at 350F for about 20 minutes, or until the top is firm to the touch, dry and cracked-looking. Remove from the oven and cool slightly. Slice with a serrated knife, and then bake again until crisp and dried out - another 20 minutes or so.

Cool completely. Drizzle melted chocolate over the top and sprinkle with nuts.

Apparently, these were a huge hit!

Dad's Birthday & Black Forest Cake

2011-01-08T08:40:00.006-08:00

Steak & Kidney Pie and Black Forest Cake: probably two food items better not seen in the same sentence, but...

My dad has his birthday on Dec. 24, and though many people assume he gets stiffed with his day occurring in the midst of the biggest holiday of the year, the guy is actually spoiled freakin' rotten! We always have a great meal and I always make a special cake as per his request. The traditional meal for Dad's birthday is his favourite dish ever, Steak & Kidney Pie. Can we all say "yuck"? Yeah. We all detest it, but Dad's very British and this is our family tradition. I always associate raw kidneys with Christmas, because growing up when my parents were still married, my mom would buy a kidney from the butcher and soak it in the dishpan in the kitchen. It would ooze..."fluids." It was disgusting.

Now the pie is generally made by my SIL Shan and Dad gets the kidney. Here is a post from a couple of years ago about the making of the pie, including some detailed shots of Shan chopping the kidney up. This year, she couldn't do it. She just didn't have it in her, she told me. So she had my brother Jem do the chopping, and because kidney stinks like nothing you've ever smelled before, the filling for the pie was cooked entirely outside of the house: the kidneys were grilled on the BBQ and then combined with the other filling ingredients in a slow cooker that was placed in the far reaches of their garage.

Shan makes a great meat pie. This year, she did steak & kidney Guinness Pie for Dad and just a Steak & Guinness Pie for the rest of us. Our pie was great; Dad loved his version, too, and had plenty of leftovers to enjoy, too.

Here is Dad's pie, complete with his initials so there is absolutely no confusion about which pie is which!

And here is our pie, followed by a shot of the interior, and it was delicious. Shan knows how to make a mean meat pie, I can tell you that!

Now onto a more pleasant topic, Dad's cake! He requested a Black Forest Cake, and that's what he got. I made the cherry filling from scratch and it was absolutely amazing! I had wanted to get frozen cherries from the States, but bringing stone fruits, including cherries, across the border isn't allowed, and although I didn't know if that meant only fresh cherries and not frozen, I wasn't willing to take the chance, so I instead used a 720mL jar of sour cherries in juice purchased from LOGS (local overpriced grocery store).

Here is what I did. I didn't measure anything - sorry! Also, I had wanted to use kirsch as is traditional, however it's way too expensive for my modest budget and there weren't any minis available. So I used rum and it worked great.

Sour Cherry Filling

1 jar (720mL) sour cherries, strained, juice reserved
a bit of sugar until I felt the sweetness was right, but not too sweet
some cornstarch mixed with the reserved juice
generous amount of amber rum, again to taste

- boil cherries & half of the reserved juice & add sugar to taste. With remaining cherry juice, add some corn starch & mix to dissolve. Add slurry to boiling cherries until desired consistency. You don't want it too liquidy but not too solid either as it will thicken as it cools. When desired consistency is reached, throw in some rum and combine. Let cool.

For the cake, I used my go-to cake recipe and baked it in a bundt pan. Because the dinner was being held in another town, I assembled the cake there for easy travel.

I cut the bundt in half lengthwise and spread in the filling, and then I put the top half back on. At this point, I kept things simple: I sliced & served with generous dollops of whipped cream.

It was a hit!

Solstice 2010

2011-01-05T12:22:00.003-08:00

It's a little late in coming, I realize, but I thought I'd share with you the non-dessert components of my annual Solstice dinner. I went back to basics this year since I have been sick again and I wanted to keep it simple. This is essentially the same menu I made for my first Solstice dinner in 2008.

The menu:

Chicken Breast Stuffed with Herbed Goat's Cheese and Wrapped in Prosciutto
Caramelized Onion & Brie Bread Pudding (the perennial favourite!)
Brussels Sprouts Sauteed with Pancetta & Pecans
Salad by my SIL
And of course the coconut cake

Magazine Monday # 72: Bobby Flay's Toasted Coconut Cake

2011-01-02T11:31:00.005-08:00

On Dec. 21 I had my annual Solstice feast and for dessert I had a really hard time choosing what to make. There were so many great magazine recipes to choose from, but eventually I settled on this little number by Bobby Flay, which appeared in the holiday issue of Food Network Magazine.

There were a lot of steps to this cake, but it was overall quite simple despite the lengthy recipe. And I have to say it was quite possibly the most ridiculously amazing cake I've ever made. I'm not kidding - I've made a lot of great cakes, but this one took the...er cake. There were no leftovers at all.

I will definitely be keeping this in my repertoire, but I did one thing different: I didn't make a coconut simple syrup. The cake was so moist that I didn't feel it needed to be brushed with anything. I was also far more liberal with the Malibu I went to the liquor store specifically to purchase (I only go in there when looking for baking & cooking ingredients and I don't know my way around at all, so luckily the staff is quite helpful there even though I get funny looks from time to time). Also, the buttercream was way too buttery. I would probably use half a cup less the next time, and I had a lot leftover, too. The coconut custard was divine; there was some of that leftover too, which I just spooned from the bowl.

The recipe is here. I was so impressed with this recipe that with an Amazon gift card I got for Christmas courtesy my good friend Charlie, I ordered the new Bobby Flay's Throwdown cookbook. I'm very much looking forward to receiving it because I enjoy the show a lot.

C's Caramel Corn

2011-01-01T20:26:00.004-08:00

Oh, how I indulged this Christmas! On the afternoon of Christmas Eve we had my father's birthday celebration at my SIL's parents' place. You may recall my mentioning C once in a while; she's my SIL's mom and she and my SIL do some catering on the side that I help out with from time to time. C also put out a cookbook of some of her best known recipes, and the recipes of some of her friends and relatives. While over there on the 25th, and then again for Christmas dinner on the 25th, C had one of her huge stainless steel catering bowls on the table absolutely filled to the brim with homemade caramel corn. It was addictive. I ate way more of it than I'd like to admit to. She added peanuts and pecans to it, too, so it was more like poppycock.

The recipe appears in C's Tried and True cookbook, and is shared here on the blog with her permission.

Carmel Corn/Poppycock

1 1/2 cups brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/3 cup butter
3/4 cup cream
1 tsp vanilla
3 quarts popped popcorn

Method:

In a large pot, combine both sugars, corn syrup, butter, and cream. Cook over medium heat until the sugar has dissolved. Wipe down the edges of the pot to ensure no sugar granules are sticking to the sides. Don't stir once it boils. Boil until the soft/chewy ball stage. Cool slightly. Pour over popped corn. Add nuts if you wish. Mix well. Form into balls if desired.

For more information on the soft/chewy ball stage mentioned, here is a good article.

AeroGarden Update

2010-12-31T16:24:00.003-08:00

It’s been exactly 3 weeks since I planted these puppies, and so far so good. Looks like I might have harvestable lettuce in about a week. Everything has sprouted & is coming along. The only one I’ve had any trouble with is the oregano (the one with the little dome on it still); it’s sprouted but it’s not doing too much otherwise, while the other herbs are really doing well. We’ll see!

Herbs, tomatoes, lettuce:

Christmas Feast 2010

2010-12-28T20:52:00.005-08:00

Apparently, I haz fanz. I got some feedback on Christmas day from someone I didn't even know read this site saying "hey, you haven't posted in a while!"

And then I see I haven't posted since the 10th of this month...

I really need a kick in the ass. It's not like I have a lack of things to write about...

Anyway, I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. I thought I'd post some pix of the Christmas dinner I had on Saturday night, which took place at my SIL's parents' place and which consisted of the usual ginormous spread of ham, turkey, and all the fixings. This time, dessert was provided by my SIL's Aunt J, and it was a yummy and light peaches & cream angel food cake. There were over 20 people at dinner that night, so I couldn't get a picture of everything, but you get the general idea.

But I did get a picture of my fan's doggy, Ali the Christmas Retriever! Isn't she great? I've met her before at other celebrations and she has such a lovely personality!

Thanks, Fan, for giving me a nudge to post! I will try to stay on it!

AeroGardening

2010-12-10T17:20:00.006-08:00

I have some really generous friends. After complaining about the crap lettuce at LOGS lately, a friend of mine offered to send me some AeroGardens she had bought for herself but never even taken out of the boxes. One thing led to another, and one day the Purolator guy showed up at my place with a huge box full of three 7-pod AeroGardens.

I had no place to put them at first, but as timing & good luck would have it, my dad got a new dining room table yesterday and I got a new bed. Dad came down to help me assemble my new bed and he brought down his old dining room table, and I just set the AeroGardens up on it in my spare room.

This is so exciting! Since I have three, I am dedicating one garden to my dad so he can have cherry tomatoes. The other two are for me; one is for mixed salad greens so I don't have to rely on the crappy stuff from LOGS over the winter (or ever again, for that matter), and the other one is for a 7 herb mix that includes dill, mind, oregano, thyme, and three kinds of basil.

I am totally stoked about this! They are very bright and they make a bit of a humming & gurgling noise because they are pumping water all the time to the bottoms of the seed pods, but that's OK. I can always close the door.

I'll definitely keep you posted!

Catering Capers

2010-12-09T09:43:00.005-08:00

Man, has it been this long since my last post. Wow. I really am neglectful.

My SIL and I catered a Christmas party on November 27, and here are some of the things we prepared. This was for the same people we catered a Christmas party for the year before, only this time there was a much simpler menu; last year there was too much food and too many leftovers.

The menu for this year:

Beef Yakatori skewers
Lemon, dill, and garlic salmon skewers
Chicken souvlaki skewers with tadziki dip
Boconccini & cherry tomato skewers with balsamic reduction
Crostini with goat's cheese & olive tapenade
Crostini with pesto & boconccini
Coconut cupcakes

Here are some photos.

I have another catering gig lined up with C, my SIL's mom, on December 22. It's for a curling club Christmas lunch. I'm really looking forward to that!

Latest Coyote's Kitchen Article

2010-11-16T09:06:00.003-08:00

This is from the November/December issue of Bread n' Molasses Magazine.

Latest Addiction

2010-11-11T17:23:00.002-08:00

The season is changing, the clocks are turned back, and my mood disorder is rearing its ugly head. One of the things this means is that I'm craving crazy foods. Most recently, apart from wanting to inhale chocolate, pizza, and ice cream (ironic, given that it's cold out), I have been on a deviled ham & ramen noodle kick.

It's odd.

And it's not cheap! The ramen is cheap, but canned ham is not. At LOGS, it's $2.99/can. At Safeway, I got a can on sale for $2.49. During my cross border shopping excursion the other week, I found canned ham for about $1.80/can. WTF? That's highway robbery for frickin' ham IMHO!

Anyway, the deviled ham sandwich is such a throwback to church teas and church potlucks, and I was inspired to make a batch of deviled ham after my work put on a tea for the seniors. And I have been hooked ever since.

For those of you not familiar with the bliss that is deviled ham, it's very simple: a can of ham, flaked; some mayo; some sweet pickle relish. That's it. I spread my bread or bun with cream cheese and have a nice dill pickle with my sandwich. It's awesome.

Ramen is ramen. Rarely do I crave this stuff because it's so bad for you, but I seem to be unable to do without it nowadays.

None of this is good for my weight loss goals!

Magazine Monday #71 (Yes, a day late): Asian Pork Burgers with Hoisin Mayo

2010-11-09T08:51:00.003-08:00

I really am enjoying the subscription to Food Network Magazine my mom got me for my birthday. I've been craving a burgers lately, and a recipe in the most recent issue of FNM caught my eye. It's actually a recipe for Asian meatball subs, but because I'm not in the mood these days to putz around making finicky things like meatballs (or at least making meatballs seems like a rather finicky activity to me right now) I decided to turn these into burgers. I think ground pork makes such excellent burgers - moist, juicy, and the flavour of the meat is mild & neutral enough to add all kinds of flavourings to it that work very well. You might recall the Curried Pork Burgers I made a while back; they have become a favourite of my brother & SIL. They might like this pork burger, too, as might you!

The recipe is here.

Frakking fantastic! Now, I made some adjustments. I didn't use any bread or milk or eggs as filler in my burger meat; I have moved away from doing that after reading Bobby Flay's burger book, and quite frankly, I think the burgers are better without all that stuff in them. I've never had a burger fall apart or crumble during cooking so I don't think it's necessary to add eggs & bread crumbs etc. I also didn't use the Asian chili sauce, and I broiled my burgers instead of frying them.

I loved these burgers so much I totally indulged and ate two! The Asian flavourings were wonderful, and I loved the crunch of the chopped chestnuts in them. I loved the bean sprout topping, too - also crunchy and tasty. As for the hoisin mayo...OMG...AMAZING! It was one incredible burger for sure, and that mayo was the cherry on the proverbial sundae.

Definitely give these a try if you're looking for a change in your same old, same old burger repertoire!

Latest Coyote's Kitchen Article

2010-11-04T18:38:00.002-07:00

Here is my most recent food column appearing in Bread 'n Molasses Magazine. Enjoy!

Magazine Monday #70: Lemon Loaves!

2010-10-31T19:54:00.004-07:00

OK, I got a great deal on lemons from the States recently (yes, you can bring certain types of fresh produce across the border, but stop off at Canada Customs on the way down to find out what you can & cannot bring home; tropical fruits are OK) - something like 2lbs for $3.50. This is an unreal deal since lemons are ridiculously expensive up here and if I'm lucky, I might be able to find a 2/99¢ sale, but I guarantee you the lemons will be crappy.

So, I brought all these lemons home and proceeded to not really know what to do with them. I'm a single person who lives alone; I was tempted to make a lemon pie, this one or a meringue, but seriously, I didn't want to eat it all myself. So, I made stuff I could freeze and pull out if I have company (which doesn't happen often).

The first thing I made was this lemon poppy seed loaf from Canadian Living. The original recipe has them as mini bundt cakes, but there is a variation in the recipe saying you can make it into a loaf, too. What issue is a mystery to me; the date was clipped off when I took the recipe from the magazine and the web site doesn't mention the date, either. Delicious! But a warning: there is too much batter for the specified loaf pan. I wound up getting a really ugly-looking, flat-topped loaf because the batter came right up to the rim of the loaf pan. But the texture and richness was lovely.

On a lemon roll, a couple of days later, I decided to make another Canadian Living recipe, this time the Lemon Yogurt Loaf from the September 2010 issue of the magazine. I had a bit of a disaster, though: my oven element began sparking away most alarmingly, and caught some piece of debris on fire. The loaves were almost done, but not quite, so I had to stick them in the toaster oven to finish baking. Disaster averted, but now I'm ovenless until the element can be replaced, and since the whole appliance is a total dinosaur, I'm worried they don't make the part anymore. (Check out The Dino here.) Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of these loaves before I wrapped them up tightly and put them in the freezer!

Oh, I also made a roast chicken with lemon, but that is a post for another time!

Some Calgary Hot Spots

2010-10-29T20:49:00.005-07:00

On my recent travels to Calgary for my friend Barb's beta version of BlogCon, I went to a couple of other foodie places in addition to the sushi restaurant I mentioned here.

The first one was a Lebanese restaurant on Steven Avenue, right in the heart of downtown Cowtown. I haven't had any Lebanese food since I left Ottawa 5 years ago, and let me tell you, if I miss anything about that fracking city, it's Shawarma King - the Bank St. location. Holy crap was that place amazing. As my fellow bloggers were enjoying a WordFest event held on Steven Avenue, I went off to have a mall experience and walked by this falafel place called Falafel King. When we all met up again, peckish, we decided to go to Falafel King for lunch.

Awesomeness! Everyone but me had a falafel wrap; I had to have a chicken shawarma plate, which is what I always had at Shawarma King in Ottawa. Similar deal: shawarma chicken, pitas, rice pilaf, garlic sauce, hummus, and veggies. While not as completely awesome as the Ottawa eatery, this Calgary place was pretty damned good and it hit the spot. The guy who served us even gave me a bonus falafel, which was delicious. It was a huge plate of food, it was satisfying, and I left there a happy camper. We were even offered a sample of baklava for dessert, and it was fab! Great find; glad we went!

The other place of interest was Cookie Mama in Inglewood. Fellow BlogCon attendee, Sean, and I were looking for a cake place to purchase some cake for a belated birthday celebration for Barb. We eventually stumbled upon Cookie Mama after a fascinating trip to a second hand CD store in the same area. For specialty cakes, you need to give the bakers there about 48 hours notice, but they did have a wide selection of cupcakes to choose from, so we ordered a dozen of those. We chose flavours like Super Freak (lemon), Rocket Man (cookies & cream), Love Shack (chocolate & peppermint), Smooth Operator (red velvet), and Bohemian Rhapsody (ginger cupcake with cream cheese icing), amongst some others I cannot recall right now. They were excellent! Check out their menu on their web site, because if you are in Calgary, this is a good place to go if you want some really great cake action!

Lunch at The Alpine Grind

2010-10-27T18:25:00.007-07:00

We have quite a few coffee shops in town, but since I don't drink coffee, I don't get out to them regularly. Most do light lunches however, and one day when our usual spot, the Sunshine Cafe was closed, my brother, SIL, and I went to The Alpine Grind, one of our local hot spots, for lunch. The Grind changed hands back in December, and I had been there for the odd mocha as it's the daytime watering hole of my employers at The Rossland Telegraph. Under the previous ownership, I'd only had lunch there once or twice, and it was good, but pricey. Under new ownership, things have changed somewhat. There is a micro-bakery there now and I had an awesome baguette from there a few months ago, bought spur of the moment during a staff meeting I was attending. There is a wider selection of goodies, and one of town's most famous bakers, Rebecca of Sweet Dreams Cakery, sells her creations there, including her wildly popular cupcakes. There are also bagels from Nelson and a new sandwich selection.

Here is what we had.

Shan had the smoked salmon panini, which she said was excellent. The side salad comes with a house dressing that was really good.

Jem had the salami panini; he enjoyed it very much.

I had the chicken, brie, and pear compote panini, and it was totally awesome.

Now, onto dessert. I wasn't going to have dessert because the sandwich ate up my small lunch budget, but...but...one of Rebecca's cakes was calling at me from the display case. I'd had one of her lime margarita cupcakes at the farmers' market during the summer, and I was instantly addicted to this woman's baking. The cake at The Grind looked like something from my version of heaven: chocolate cake, pumpkin cake, ganache, pumpkin cream...How do you possibly pass something like that up? You simply do not. I broke my budget. And it was so frakking worth it.
This was un-effing-believable. I mean...unspeakably un-effing-believable. I savoured every freaking bite! It was a positively spiritual experience. I simply do not know what else to say about it...

Yeah, it was a good lunch. But it was an even better dessert.

Rebecca of Sweet Dreams Cakery sells her famous cupcakes at The Alpine Grind on Thursdays, now that the farmers' market is closed for the season.

Magazine Monday #69: Sesame Chicken with Snow Peas - and Hostessing Duties

2010-10-25T13:19:00.006-07:00

Thanks to my mom, I now have a subscription to Food Network Magazine! I love it!

After a series of heavy meals around Thanksgiving, I craved something lighter. I found a deal on snow peas at LOGS, and after a cross border shopping trip a few weeks ago, I finally had some chicken breasts on hand. And I found a recipe for this meal, which is actually supposed to be a healthier version a take-out dish, nutritionized by Ellie Krieger. I actually adapted the recipe to suit me more, leaving out the chili paste and doing this as a stir fry instead of steaming the snow peas separately. It was a tad bland, however. I love the idea of this recipe but next time I'll have to up the flavour a bit to make it pop a bit more.

The recipe is here.

This week I am also hosting Magazine Monday in order to help my good buddy Creampuff out, so here is a run-down of the other magazine recipes that were submitted by busy foodies intent on getting through their piles of magazine clippings!

Lynn of I'll Have What She's Having made Summer Rolls with Peanut Sauce from Gourmet Quick Kitchen.

Lorie of A Savory Nest made Roasted Winter Vegetables with Feta from the March 2010 edition of Food & Wine.

Sue of Couscous & Consciousness made Fig & Blue Cheese Wontons from Dish Magazine's spring 2004 issue.

The awesome Heather of Girlichef made two things: Currywurst Sauce from Saveur and Bacon & Four Cheese Mac from the Oct. 2010 issue of Family Circle.

Jamie of Life's a Feast made a beautiful French Apple Flognarde (AKA a clafoutis) from Saveurs' Sept./Oct. edition.

Ranjani of Four Seasons of Food made Peanut Butter & Banana Bread from Cooking Light's Oct. 2010 issue.

Jan over at Kitchen Heals Soul made Pumpkin & Spinach Lasagna from the Jan. 1998 issue of Food & Wine Magazine.

Thanks for entering, everyone!

Edit @ 9:15pm: We have a late addition! Melissa of It's the Way She... made Rustic Spinach & Cornmeal Soup from this month's Bon Appetit.

I Ate Sashimi!

2010-10-24T10:28:00.005-07:00

Last weekend's trip to Calgary was a very awesome experience, and I have a zillion stories to tell but one I thought might be interesting for my readership here was a sushi restaurant I visited with my one of my BFFs, J.

J loves sushi and she knows I love sushi, so she took me off to a place whose name I cannot remember, though it began with a K, on McLeod Trail. What's fascinating about it is that this was one of those sushi restaurants that has the little boats on a moving waterway carrying colour-coded plates of food around the bar, and you just pick off what you want as it comes around. I have heard of these places in Vancouver, but never been to one, so this was exciting for me.

Unfortunately the frenetic pace of the place, the yelling of sushi chefs, and the multiple birthdays that necessitated the staff doing a Happy Birthday routine several times during our time there, didn't make the place somewhere conducive to having a good chat. In fact, the high stimulation environment really bothered me to the point of almost not being able to function. But it was fun, and when we were done there, we repaired to a Tim Horton's so we could actually have a good chat.

The food was good. We started off with some tempura and J had some miso soup. We ordered several rolls as we watched plates go by us on the boats. Thankfully, we were provided with a picture menu so we had an idea of what was floating by us.

J ordered some salmon sashimi, I got some interesting octopus rolls and some calamari. The calamari was disappointing and overly greasy, as was, I have to say, the tempura. The octopus was good. We had a variety of other rolls, too, that were very good.

You'd think the plates were just whizzing by when you look at this photo. They were not. I just have a shitty camera.

The calamari. The sauce it came with was spicy, so I skipped it.

This is the octopus roll.

This is the salmon sashimi, and I really did enjoy it. It was my first ever foray into sashimi! It was served on a bed of shredded daikon radish.

And this was my most daring choice of the night, a raw scallop roll with some...stuff on it. Not sure what the stuff was, but it was delicious!

This was a very cool experience, and I'd definitely like to go to one of these places again, especially as there were some very interesting menu items that I'd never seen before. I will say, however, something did upset my stomach that night; I'm not sure what it was, but I was quite uncomfortable for a while. But it was not enough to put me off experimenting with sushi and sashimi again.

Magazine Monday (on Tuesday, not to mention a record!) #68: Pumpkin Pecan Bundt Cake

2010-10-12T17:42:00.005-07:00

Of course, just as I start getting back into the swing of things, I go away for a few days, but there will be lots to post here when I get back.

Anyway, I managed another magazine recipe for the week, which is a record: two in seven days is not the norm, as we all know. In fact, it's two in four days to be precise. Well, it was Canadian Thanksgiving here on the weekend so I made a nice dessert to take to a friend's for dinner on Sunday night, and since I have a ton of pumpkin in my freezer, and there was a special pumpkin section in the Oct. 2010 issue of Canadian Living, I just had to take advantage of all these planets aligning for me.

The recipe for the Pumpkin Pecan Bundt Cake I made is here.

OMG - this was so fantastic I barely have words. It was a huge hit, and I even had enough left over from Sunday night's dinner to serve my dad for dessert at our own little Thanksgiving celebration last night. He doesn't like pumpkin that much and even he loved it! This cake was really moist and flavourful, and the crunch of the pecans was wonderful. It was perfectly spiced. I didn't make the rum glaze, but instead served this with some sweetened whipped cream and some caramel sauce I've had hanging out in my fridge for ages. It was perfect!

Definitely a keeper!

Hill's Garlic Festival and Triple Garlic & Roasted Tomato

2010-10-09T19:27:00.010-07:00

I mentioned before that during my camping trip last month, I attended the Hill's Garlic Festival in New Denver with my brother & SIL. It was the first time at the festival and I was really looking forward to it, though the day was seriously crappy with a steady downpour. I'd only heard great things about the festival so I was really excited, despite the rain.

The admittance fee was $4 for the day - one buck, I was informed, more than it had been in previous years. As I came through the gate, I was greeted by a huge farmer's market-like set-up with tents all over the place containing the booths of all kinds of vendors, interspersed with big food vendor trucks of all different kinds. We were hungry and all wanted different things - Shan wanted Indian food, Jem wanted BBQ, and I was indecisive because there was so much on offer: Greek food, vegetarian food, Asian food, burgers, gourmet sausages, gigantic wraps, and so much more. So I poked around and eventually decided on the gigantic wrap place, where I ordered a chicken curry wrap that was absolutely delicious.

After grabbing some food, I went around the entire park and looked at everything. Though this is billed as a garlic festival, there was a lot more there than just fancy garlics - though there were plenty of those. There were a ton of local artisans - potters, jewelers, painters, and other crafty things - and tons of produce vendors. This was a foodie heaven! In the end, I had a budget and didn't spend much. I got two fancy varieties of garlic, some awesome corn on the cob, and some honey from a local apiary, one with garlic in it and one chocolate & honey mixture. I also got a decadent cinnamon bun from an artisan bakery truck that came from the Okanagan. There was a local baker there selling slices of her cakes, but I got there too late and she had already run out.

All in all, however, the prices at the festival were outrageous. Jem & Shan, Garlic Fest veterans, found the same thing. As Jem put it, it's gotten more "boutique" as it's gotten more popular. It use to be less expensive, but now that the bug has caught on, vendors seem to have jacked their prices up. Jem & Shan also didn't think it was as good as it had been in previous years, but as this was my first time, I had nothing to compare it to.

I treated myself, as I mentioned, to two gourmet garlics: some soft neck Siberian garlic and some hard neck Yugoslavian garlic. For two heads of the Siberian stuff, which were about the same size as that generic stuff we find in our grocery stores around here, I paid $3. For one head of Yugoslavian stuff, which was HUGE, I also paid $3.

I didn't really know what to do with all this garlic until I was inspired by one of Shan's relatives at a family dinner the night we came back from the Garlic Festival. She told me of a recipe she'd found somewhere in which you roast tomatoes with garlic in some olive oil and then put that on pasta. Perfect! It was simple, tomatoes are cheap right now, and I had some fancy black, squid ink pasta I'd been keeping for a special occasion, and I thought the colours would make a lovely dish. And I was right!

Triple Garlic & Roasted Tomato Pasta

4 huge tomatoes, roughly chopped
tons of garlic, peeled but whole: I used all of the Siberian stuff, plus three out of the four cloves of giant Yugoslavian garlic, plus two heads of the generic garlic I had in my pantry - we're looking at over 20 cloves of garlic in all
olive oil
salt & pepper to taste
1 lb pasta, cooked to package instructions

In a roasting dish, drizzle some olive oil. Place the tomatoes in there, followed by the garlic. Sprinkle with salt & pepper. Drizzle with a little more olive oil. Roast in a 400F oven until all the garlic is nice & soft.

Add the tomato & garlic mixture to the pasta and serve, with a little Parmesan cheese.

OH MY GOD. This was so simple and just so divine. It was ridiculously amazing! I might never go back to canned tomato sauce again, because roasting the tomatoes was so easy and so tasty.

Magazine Monday (yes, on a Saturday!) #67: Pulled Pork

2010-10-09T10:32:00.003-07:00

Long have I wanted to make pulled pork, but alas, the availability of the proper cut of pork - the butt, which is the shoulder - and the cost of said cut, has always put me off. Enter cross border shopping! On a recent trip across the border to get some good deals on all kinds of things, I found a 1.5lb pork picnic roast for a few bucks. Perfect size for one person!

The recipe I used came from Canadian Living's December 2005 issue, found here. It's a slow cooker recipe, which was perfect because this past week was seriously busy for me and I needed a no-brainer kind of meal.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed, which rarely happens with Canadian Living recipes. I didn't care for the sauce at all; it was not zippy or tangy, and it was way too thick for my liking. Also, I found the pork difficult to shred. The roast came with one of those handy-dandy blue dot devices that pops out when the meat is done, and so I took the roast out when I saw that happen. Apparently, according to my SIL, I needed to overcook the roast in order to facilitate easy shredding. I didn't know that; the recipe only said cook until pork is tender.

Anyway, I am eating this still - it's provided me with at least four meals. I served it with a tomato-y rice and black bean side dish and some nice creamy coleslaw.

Next time, I'll be trying a different recipe, though.

On Facebook

2010-10-09T10:18:00.003-07:00

OK, in an attempt to motivate myself to post more here, I have created a Facebook page for ReTorte: check it. There is also a handy widget thingy on my side bar, though I'm not totally stoked about how it looks...

Herb Muffins

2010-10-03T12:01:00.003-07:00

The menu is changing at work because the seniors are getting bored and, quite frankly, so are us cooks. A whole bunch of new recipes are being tried out, and this one for herb muffins is one of them. Last night, I served these with beef stew, and judging by the lack of muffins coming back & getting chucked, it seemed like a success. Some seniors even wanted more, but I only had enough for one each. After sampling one myself, however, I don't think they are exactly my cup of tea. They were a bit too sweet. But that's just me. If anyone out there makes these, let me know what you think!

I made these pretty small, almost a mini muffin, and I got 39.

Herb Muffins

Dry Mixture:

4.5 cups flour
1.5 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 cup sugar
10.5 tsp baking powder
1.5 tsp salt
6 tbsp fresh basil, chopped (3 tbsp dried)
6 tbsp fresh parsley (3 tbsp dried)

Wet Mixture:

3 eggs
3/4 cup vegetable oil
3 cups milk

You know the drill: mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl; combine wet ingredients in a medium bowl. Add wet to dry. Combine. Scoop.

Bake at 400F for 25 - 30 minutes, or until done.

Sockeye Salmon Three Ways

2010-09-24T00:08:00.002-07:00

At the tail end of August, one of my fellow cooks at the senior's residence came by our work with an offer I could not refuse: he was selling freshly caught sockeye salmon for $10 each. At the same time, I happened to know that the Local Overpriced Grocery Store (aka LOGS) was selling whole sockeyes for about $22 - $24 each. So, I bought one sockeye from my colleague. I should have bought more.

The fish was cleaned and gutted and headless, but needed filleting. So, after work, I went to LOGS, which has an excellent set of butchers, and asked one of the guys there how to fillet the darned thing. He said, "I'll just do it for you. It'll be quicker." I told him I had not purchased the salmon from the store, but he didn't mind. He went a head and filleted the fishy for me while I watched so I could learn. I then went home and cut eight portions from the fish! What a screaming deal! I should have gotten more from my colleague, but at the time I had no idea what I was getting. Oh well.

I have had a few meals from this salmon, and they were all awesome. I took some camping for Shan & me, and that was lovely. But at home, I have prepared this salmon three different ways.

Exhibit #1: Salmon with Key Lime seasoning from World Market (love that stuff!), rice, and Asian coleslaw (coleslaw mix, seasoned rice vinegar, sesame oil).

Totally awesome meal, very easy & quick to prepare, and healthy to boot.

Exhibit #2: Grilled sockeye with maple, soy, and ginger glaze.

Oh, this was absolutely divine! The glaze was easy: maple syrup, soy sauce, and a few drops of ginger oil my dad bought for me at the Nelson Farmer's Market in July. I served this also with rice and the same Asian coleslaw.

Exhibit #3: Salmon & Shrimp Chowder.

Oh, how I love a good seafood chowder, and this was another winner! Very simple to make, and I found some cheap back bacon at LOGS to go in it. I got a huge pot of soup that made me about 8 servings, and for it I used the two tail ends of the sockeye, about half a pound of shrimp, and a couple frozen pieces of chum salmon I had kicking around my freezer that I had purchased at Safeway a while back. God, the difference between the sockeye and the chum is ridiculous! I don't think I'll ever buy chum that way again - it's just pathetic in comparison to the sockeye!

Camping Grub 2010

2010-09-23T10:36:00.006-07:00

My SIL and I went camping recently, as has been our tradition for the last three years. It was a totally awesome trip, and if you want to read more about it, you can go here. The full Flickr set is here.

As usual, we ate like queens! Here is a rundown of some of our food.

On day one, we went to soak in Ainsworth Hot Springs, then drove the short distance from there to Kaslo, where we had one freaking awesome lunch at a place called The Rosewood Cafe. Here are our lunches.

I had a fantabulous Monte Christo Sandwich with homemade baked fries.

Shan had a huge turkey burger with all the fixings & a side salad that was served with a homemade rosemary vinaigrette.

More to follow on this restaurant as it was absolutely brilliant!

One morning we had Eggs Benny, which is something we usually have while camping. It's just such decadent camping grub!

Dad joined us on Saturday, and he brought a set of really amazing steaks for dinner. We didn't have the BBQ with us this time and the grate on the fire pit was way too filthy to cook anything on directly, so we opted to pan fry them in cast iron skillets on the camp stove. Shan seasoned them with garlic butter and Montreal Steak Spice, and we served them with garlic bread (which she baked over the fire as it was covered in foil) and some rice. The steaks were like butter - completely awesome!

More from this trip upcoming, as we went to the Hills Garlic Festival in New Denver, too.

Magazine Monday #66: Brown Sugar & Chocolate Chip Pound Cake with Maple Espresso Glaze

2010-09-19T16:18:00.003-07:00

So, I was invited to a friend's for dinner last week, and I offered to bring dessert. I have a ton of rhubarb in the freezer, but my friend's husband is not a fan. Plan B involved blueberries, but that was a no-no, too. Plan C kinda fell into my lap during a ransacking of my recipe binder. I just happened upon this recipe from the October 2007 issue of Bon Appetit Magazine, and I had all the ingredients on hand.

This is one frakking fantastic cake, people! It was a huge hit at dinner, and I had some left over to munch on when the urge arose. And arise it did. This makes one awesome midnight snack, I can tell you for sure.

The recipe is here.

I used dark brown sugar, not the golden kind. I actually prefer the darker sugar because it has more flavour and it's a little richer. I really think it makes a difference in the taste & texture of my baking.

When I made the glaze, at my friend's house, I added too much liquid, and it came out more as a sauce. I was totally OK with that and so was everyone else!

Definitely a keeper recipe that I think I'll go back to time & again!

Life Is Good...

2010-09-04T08:38:00.004-07:00

My good friend Pierce, AKA Tina Marie of Life in the Slow Lane at Squirrel Head Manor, gave me a wonderful tribute in a recent post, and bestowed upon me something entitled the "Life is Good" award.

I have met tons of great people through blogging, both this blog and my regular blog, and Tina has become such a great friend to me, such a source of strength and encouragement, that I really feel blessed to have her in my life - even though we have never met! So, thank you, Tina, for being there for me, for your support and for your constant friendship! I do hope we can meet in person one day in the not-too-distant future!

Of this award, Tina says on her blog: "The rules are, to accept this award, I shall answer the 10 questions below and pass the award to six fellow bloggers."

I may not be passing this along...I don't normally do that part of these awards, but I will answer the 10 questions!

1. If you blog anonymously, are you happy doing it that way; if you are not anonymous do you wish you had started out anonymously so you could be anonymous now?

I am only semi-anonymous, though I started out wanting to be completely anonymous. It's easy enough to find my name out if you've been reading this blog (or the other one) for any amount of time. I am happy with this, however, or else I would never give the hints to my real name. It's only been a problem on my other blog, which is why I changed the site over to WordPress & took it off search engine crawling.

2. Describe one incident that shows your inner stubborn side.

Just one? Really? Hmmmmm... I have so many examples it's ridiculous. But let's stick with something simple: putting together furniture. I buy a piece that comes in a flat pack, and I will NOT give up on it until it's up and functional, even if it takes all night, even if the instructions are ridiculous (like Ikea's), even if I can't hammer straight - you name it!

3. What do you see when you really look at yourself in the face in the mirror?

Very complicated question. I see a Plain Jane who is pushing 40 and showing it.

4. What is your favorite summer cold drink?

Simple: iced tea or girly cocktails! And frappuccinos!

5. When you take time for yourself, what do you do?

I go lay down on my super comfy new couch (which came assembled!) and watch TV all day. Or I read & listen to music. I used to take long baths, but in my new place, there is no tub, only a cramped shower stall. :(

6. Is there something you still want to accomplish in your life? What is it?

I have a lot of things I want to accomplish in life, and I feel time is running out with some of them. I want to get married & have a baby. I want to travel. I want to write a novel. That is my starting list.

7. When you attended school, were you the class clown, the class overachiever, the class shy person, or always ditching school? Describe who you were if not one of these.

I was the quiet kid who actually got along with her teachers and was thus labeled a brown-noser. I was also the bullied kid who was drastically marginalized & traumatized.

8. If you close your eyes and want to visualize a very poignant moment in your life, what do you see?

Never mind!

9. Is it easy for you to share your true self in your blog or are you more comfortable writing posts about other people or events?

Both.

10. If you had the choice to sit and read or talk on the phone, which would you do and why?

God, I love a good chin wag on the phone and I don't do it often enough! But I also like to read. Either or.

So there you go! Thanks again, Tina!!!

Magazine Monday #65: Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

2010-08-29T18:53:00.002-07:00

When my brother & SIL were moving out of the place next door, I found a copy of Kootenay Woman Magazine, a freebie that comes in our mailboxes every so often. This recipe was on the back cover, and it caught my eye as I was putting it in the recycling bin. I made it the other day, making one significant substitution: I put espresso powder in place of the cinnamon. WIN! It was awesome. I kept about a dozen cookies for myself and took the rest into work, where they were much appreciated.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp espresso powder (original recipe says 1 tsp cinnamon)
1/2 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups quick oats
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped nuts (I used pecans)

350F oven. Cream, combine, scoop, bake. Makes about 3 dozen cookies formed with a #70 cookie scoop.

Delish!

Wedding Feasts, Part 2

2010-08-27T12:46:00.010-07:00

So, the day after the wedding there was a huge family gathering at Shan's parents' place. There were 78 people there altogether. Once again, the food was copious and fantabulicious. There were left over spot prawns, but there was also sockeye salmon, and IMO, the star of dinner, fresh oysters! All this seafood bounty was, again, courtesy of Shan's uncle who is a fisherman on Vancouver Island.

For a run-down of some non-food related incidents around the wedding, you can go here.

But let's get started!

Shan's mom, C, who is also a caterer, BBQed a bunch of roasts, and one of the aunties brought a huge crock pot full of homemade baked beans.

Here is the salmon. It has a brown sugar & soy glaze on it.

Also on offer were some of the leftover appies from the wedding dinner the night before. This was so awesome because the appies were excellent - and, bonus, there were still leftovers after this Sunday meal, so I got to take a whole bunch home & snack on them during the week! The big pretzel you see came from a bakery in Cranbrook and it was part of the midnight snack served during the dancing at the reception (which I wasn't there for; I left at 10pm).

There were tons of salads:

Here are the spot prawns:

And here was the star of the show! The oysters! One of Shan's cousins grilled them, seasoning them with butter, lemon juice, and a tad bit of tobasco sauce. They were huge! I cannot tell you how orgasmically fan-fracking-tastic these were. They were so fresh, so delicious...they were surreal! I was in heaven!
Sigh...Sigh...

Here is one of my plates...I had seconds...Can you blame me?

And, there was dessert. Another auntie brought a chocolate fountain with all kinds of goodies. It was a huge hit, and it was super amazing!
So, that about sums up the wedding eating. I'm pretty sure I gained back all the weight I've lost since January, but I totally think it was worth it!

Wedding Feasts, Part 1

2010-08-24T09:59:00.007-07:00

As promised, some pictures & rundowns of food I experienced & ate during my brother's wedding celebrations at the tail end of July (better late than never, right?). It was a food fest and half, let me tell you! My SIL's family always celebrates events big & small with copious amounts of food - and awesome food at that! So, here we go.

We'll start off with the rehearsal dinner. It was supposed to be pulled pork, but a tragic freezer breakdown just before the wedding put the kybosh on that because the pork butts were ruined! Instead, we had a huge spaghetti dinner!
But the highlight of the evening for me as a foodie was the peeling & steaming of the Vancouver Island spot prawns fished by Shan's uncle, frozen, and brought to the wedding celebration as a gift (more seafood gifts would be on the way, but that is another post!). The spot prawns were so delicious I can't even tell you. I am used to bland frozen shrimp from the grocery store, and so these spot prawns tasted like candy to me! I participated in some of the peeling, but as I had just had my nails done, I bailed early because I didn't want to ruin my lovely manicure. But here are some photos!
The prawns were served at the wedding reception with a homemade cocktail sauce, and they were amazing! We also had them at the family reunion on the day after the wedding.

As for the wedding feast itself, it was fantabulous. I don't have a lot of pictures because it was a buffet setting, which is hard to photograph if you're in a line-up, and I was busy drinking & socializing. The catering was done by a Nelson outfit called Alligator Pie Catering, and Shan made an excellent choice because the food was superb. In fact, everyone was so impressed with it that Shan's sister, who is getting married next summer, is, I believe, planning on using Alligator Pie, too.

The Menu:

Hors d'Oeuvres

Crostini with Green Olive Tapenade, Goats Cheese and Caramelized Onions
Roasted Tomato and Red Pepper Bruschetta with Goat Cheese and Basil Drizzle
Pita triangles baked with brie, roast chicken, and green apple (not on their online menu, for some reason, but my absolute fave of the three!)

Sides

Roasted New Potatoes with Dill Butter
Balsamic Marinated Grilled Vegetables
2 Salads

Mains

Baked Chicken with a Garlic Pesto Crust
Grilled Salmon with Hazelnut Lime Butter (totally awesome)

Here is my plate:
Dessert was wedding cake, made by Shan's mom, C. It was vanilla cake with chocolate ganache in the middle, and it was delish! They kept the design of the cake simple and used a fresh flower topper in keeping with the wedding colours.
Part two will follow...sometime!

Magazine Monday #64: Sour Cream Chocolate Crumb Cake

2010-08-22T13:07:00.004-07:00

This recipe comes from the latest issue of Canadian Living Magazine. I made it the other day because I was in a serious PMS state and I needed cake NOW! I had the ingredients on hand, except the 3oz of dark chocolate, but I saw that there was a handy variation at the bottom of the recipe using chocolate chunks instead of chocolate, and since I had some chocolate chips on hand, I used those in addition to a small amount of Skor bits I had hanging around my freezer! This cake totally hit the spot!

Sour Cream Chocolate Crumb Cake

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup sour cream
3oz bittersweet chocolate, melted (or 1/3 cup chocolate chunks or chips)

Topping:

1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
pinch of salt
1/2 cup butter, melted & warm
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup ground almonds

1. For the topping, in a bowl stir together sugars, cinnamon, salt; stir in butter. Stir in four and ground almonds, using hands to press the mixture together.

2. For the cake, in a large bowl beat butter & sugar until combined. Beat in egg & egg yolk. In a separate bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. Stir into butter mixture alternately with sour cream, making 3 additions of flour mixture and 2 of sour cream. Stir in chocolate (or chips/chunks).

3. Spread in parchment-lined 8" square cake pan. Crumble topping evenly over batter. Bake at 350F until done. Cool & serve.

This was delicious, but two caveats I found for you: one is that I needed a 9" pan for this as 8" was not going to be big enough. Second, there was a lot of crumble topping - almost too much. But it was crunchy & tasty & I'd definitely make this recipe again!

Az's Marinated Potatoes

2010-08-17T18:18:00.003-07:00

I just wanted to give a shout-out to my friend Azahar, who has a great food blog, Azahar's Kitchen. Recently, she posted a great recipe for marinated potatoes that I made for some company I had over for the wedding craziness. This recipe rocked and it was a huge hit! I couldn't find the sherry vinegar, so I substituted it with apple cider vinegar and it worked out very well. I also used red-skinned nugget potatoes - my favourite! I am still on the hunt for some oak-aged sherry vinegar and I have one more place to check (that would be LOGS, so keep your fingers crossed that if they do actually have it it won't cost me $3289+++).

This dish was a really refreshing change from your typical potato salad, so I will for sure keep this recipe around!

Recipe here.

Thanks, Az!

Magazine Monday #63: Pasta With Shrimp & Cilantro-Lime Pesto

2010-08-08T21:10:00.003-07:00

This recipe comes from the July 2010 issue of Bon Appetit, my subscription for which has just run out. As mentioned previously, I will not be renewing. Anyway, the recipe came from the RSVP section, where readers request recipes they've tasted at various restaurants around and about, and in this case, the reader who requested the recipe tried the original dish at Tejas Texas Grill & Saloon in Hermantown, Minnesota. It caught my eye because I love cilantro and an entire pesto made from this ingredient was just too good to pass up! I was not disappointed! This was a fantastic dish. I even invested in a mini of tequila!

Pasta With Shrimp & Cilantro-Lime Pesto

1 1/4 cups, packed, fresh cilantro leaves, plus more chopped for garnish
1/4 cup green onions
3 tbsp fresh lime juice
2 garlic cloves
1 tbsp chopped seeded jalapeno (which I skipped because I don't like them)
1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp olive oil
1 lb linguine
1 lb uncooked medium shrimp, peeled & deveined
3 tbsp tequila
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese (original recipe calls for Cotija cheese, but this is the boonies, man - good luck finding that anywhere around here)

1. Blend 1 1/4 cups cilantro & next 4 ingredients in a food processor until a course puree forms. Gradually add oil as machine runs. Season with salt. (NB: I did not use the full amount of oil.)

2. Cook linguine & drain.

3. Meanwhile, heat 1 tbsp oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add shrimp & cook until almost opaque in the centre, about 3 minutes. Remove the skillet from heat; add tequila. Return skillet to heat and stir until sauce is syrupy, about 30 seconds. Add pesto; stir to coat. Remove from heat.

4. Add sauce to pasta & gently combine. Serve with extra cilantro & sprinkled with feta. Should serve 4.

Awesome, tasty, and easy. I'll definitely be making this again, next time with a margarita, perhaps!

Enjoy!

Saturday Laughs

2010-08-07T08:27:00.005-07:00

Sorry for the long absence...Life got extremely busy in July with my brother's wedding and the ton of company & hectic social schedule that involved, plus I took on some extra work and am now also doing a regular reporting gig for the local online paper, The Rossland Telegraph. Foodblogging has definitely sunk down several notches on my list of priorities.

Anyway, there are posts coming up because the food over the wedding events was beyond ridiculous and beyond amazing, so I'll be filling you in on that. I will say that I am now planning on going on a watermelon diet because I have eaten so much in the last 2 weeks I'm pretty sure all the weight I lost since January is back. Sigh...

So, for now, here are some things for you to giggle at until I get my act together.

But before we get to the giggles, I just want to give a brief shout out to Mary-Lou & Rod, who are my most excellent friend, S's, parents in law, and when S and her husband M came to visit me this week (which was awesome as I don't get to see them very much!), they were telling me what huge fans of ReTorte Mary-Lou and Rod are, and that Mary-Lou very faithfully makes a lot of the recipes I post here. So, THANK YOU Mary-Lou and Rod! Hearing that feedback made me so happy! I'm glad you are enjoying the site so much, and hopefully this will motivate me to post more frequently.

Also, when my mom was visiting this last week, she was telling me how much my aunt Lyn loves the site and uses the recipes, especially the cookie recipes, and so I want to thank Lyn for her support and her frequent visits! Again, hearing this made me very happy, and again, now that I have heard this feedback, hopefully it will spur me on to more frequent posting! Thank you, Aunt Lyn!

Latest Coyote's Kitchen Article

2010-07-16T21:45:00.003-07:00

Here is my most recent article appearing in Bread 'n Molasses Magazine.

Funny thing is, I forgot to put celery in the recipe when I sent it to the editor! Oops! Yeah, just add a couple stalks of celery to the pot and you'll be good!

Chocolate Fudge Cookies with Toffee & Dried Cherries

2010-07-12T15:41:00.000-07:00

The contractors are still here building our new deck/porch thingy, and the other day I had the time to do some baking for them, which is something they always appreciate. After my review of In the Sweet Kitchen, I was really inspired to make these cookies from page 503 of that book, and I still had some dried cherries leftover from Jodi's amazing parcel. I am now down to a precious few dried cherries, so I am totally hoarding them until I can find another source! I would use cranberries if you can't get hold of the cherries.

Chocolate Fudge Cookies with Toffee & Dried Cherries, from In the Sweet Kitchen by Regan Daley

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup butter, at room temperature
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup dried cherries
8 oz bittersweet chocolate chips or chocolate chunks
1 cup Skor bits

1. Preheat oven to 350F Line to cookie sheets with parchment paper.

2. Do the whole cookie dough thing: cream, sift, combine, scoop.

3. Bake for 15 or so minutes, but underbake for sure to get a fudgier cookie.

There were totally excellent! I loved them! I kept a few for myself and gave the rest away, and the contractors were really grateful. I can't believe I put off making this recipe for so long.

I forgot to take a picture of the full batch of the recipe, so I only got a shot of the last two I had on hand when I finally remembered to take a photo.

Magazine Monday #62: Roasted Lemon Cake

2010-07-11T14:46:00.006-07:00

I rarely go to the liquor store, but other people I know go regularly, and one of those someones brought back a recent copy of Taste Magazine, which is put out by the BC Liquor Stores. This is the first time I've made a recipe from the magazine, and the occasion was Father's Day. Lemons, as it happened, were on sale at the time! The original recipe involved a lavender syrup, but as I didn't have any access to lavender, I skipped it altogether.

Roasted Lemon Cake, adapted Taste Magazine Spring 2010, page 129

4 large lemons, washed well & dried
6 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup ground almonds
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
4 eggs, beaten

1. Preheat oven to 375C. Grease sides of a 9" round cake pan and line the bottom with parchment.

2. Slice lemons thinly & remove seeds. Place them in a layer on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper & sprinkle with the 6tbsp of sugar. Roast for about 15 minutes or until lightly caramelized on the edges. Let cool.

3. Arrange 3/4 of the lemon slices on the bottom of the cake pan. Chop the remaining lemons & set aside. Sift flour & baking powder into a bowl & stir in almonds. In a separate bowl, beat butter & sugar together until light & fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until well mixed. Fold in flour mixture, and add chopped lemons & accumulated juices. Spread batter over roasted lemons. Bake for about 40 minutes, or until done in the centre. Allow to cool for about 15 minutes at least before turning out of the pan. Serve with whipped cream.

This was a hit with my family. The cake was so moist it was pretty much pudding-like. The lemony flavour was over the top. Unfortunately, the cake was so moist that it was hard to serve nicely because it kept breaking up. Also, the lemons I got were particularly thick-skinned, which was kind of annoying: more skin than fruit really, and it got pretty chewy at times. Still, a really worthwhile and adaptable recipe that I can see going well with other citrus fruits like oranges or even grapefruit.

Enjoy!

Sunday Smile

2010-07-04T08:25:00.000-07:00

I just HAD to post this!

Magazine Monday #61: Everyday Granola

2010-06-27T18:35:00.002-07:00

I am really enjoying making my own granola. I can't remember the last time I purchased boxed cereal, and I kind of think that's a good thing. I have a few granola recipes I've amalgamated into something of my own, but I did take some time to make a new recipe that came out in the June 2010 issue of Bon Appetit.

A word about Bon Appetit. I used to subscribe to both it and Gourmet, but I let my subscription to BA slide because I didn't feel I was getting my money's worth from it, and I thought Gourmet was better bang for my buck. But, as you might know, Gourmet went belly up, and those of us with outstanding subscriptions to it had those subscriptions switched over to BA. I would rather have had a refund, personally, since I had cancelled BA for a reason. Now, my subscription is almost up and I have been bombarded with mail begging me to renew. I won't be. Although I have seen a marked improvement in the content of BA, I am over it and I don't want to spend my money on it anymore. I might, however, consider getting a subscription to the Food Network Magazine, but we'll see.

Anyway, the granola recipe I tried is here. I liked it, but I didn't love it. The spices were nice and it made a larger quantity than my other recipes, but it lacked punch and texture, and though it had nice flavourings in it, I found it a bit bland. I guess the other recipes I use are sweeter and contain a bit more oil, giving them that punchiness I think was missing here. Still, it filled the bill for me and with some yogurt it made a great breakfast, but I think I'll be sticking to my regular recipes.

Cooking with Kylie: Pork Fried Rice

2010-06-26T17:00:00.001-07:00

Yes, two Kylie recipes in a row! This is because I made two Kylie recipes this week!

There is just something so comforting about fried rice, and I have tried Kylie's Chicken Fried Rice and her Prawn Fried Rice. I'm not a huge fan of pork, but I was feeling like I wanted to try something new, so I got some nice pork loin for a decent price and made this dish.

Hoisin sauce and pork are just made for each other, I think. And again, malt vinegar makes an appearance! I actually think this sauce would make a nice glaze for BBQ pork loin, which I might try over the summer since I'll be babysitting my brother's BBQ for a while.

Pork Fried Rice, from Kylie Kwong's Simple Chinese Cooking, page 260

400g pork fillets (I used pork tenderloin)
1/2 cup vegetable oil (OK, I never use the amount of oil Kylie calls for! I used about 2 tbsp in total for this recipe)
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1 small red onion, finely sliced
1 tbsp chopped ginger (I never remember to buy this so, um, I used dried)
2 tsp white sugar
2 tbsp hoisin sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp malt vinegar
1/4 tsp sesame oil
4 cups steamed rice
a few finely sliced green onions

1. Slice pork into strips and set aside.

2. Heat half the oil in wok until the surface begins to shimmer slightly. Pour eggs in and scramble; remove.

3. Heat remaining oil in wok and stirfry onion & ginger for 30 seconds. Add sugar and stirfry for 30 seconds. Add pork and stirfry for another 30 seconds. Stir in hoisin sauce, soy sauce, vinegar, and sesame oil, stirring for one minute. Toss in rice and reserved eggs and stirfry, using a spatula to break up egg & any rice clumps. Lastly, add spring onions and stirfry another 30 seconds until well-combined and rice is heated through. Serve.

I loved this! I chose well with the pork, too, because it was so nice & tender. Another great recipe from Kylie!

Cooking with Kylie; Prawn & Mint Salad

2010-06-25T17:00:00.000-07:00

Kylie Kwong's Simple Chinese Cooking is rapidly becoming my most frequently used cookbook these days. The food is simple, delicious, and it really fits my budget. The recipes make enough for me to have leftovers if I want them, which is convenient for my work schedule. I am completely addicted to the Prawn Wontons with Spring Onion, Ginger, and Vinegar Dressing; it's just so amazing and I am really getting quick and adept at putting wontons together.

Two nights ago, after indulging in a pre-menstrual grease-filled pig-out, I decided I needed to eat something light, and I decided to make Kylie's Prawn & Mint Salad. I substituted some of the ingredients for ones I liked (cucumber and celery were out, yellow pepper was in, and I used romaine lettuce instead of iceberg), threw this together, and totally loved it! The mint was so nice & fresh and the dressing was light and tasty. I am really digging Kylie's use of malt vinegar in some of her recipes; it's so flavourful and rich.

The recipe for the salad is here.

Pad Thai

2010-06-24T17:28:00.003-07:00

I've blogged before about my SIL's mom, C, who compiled some of her favourite catering recipes (she & my SIL run a catering business on top of their busy day jobs) into a cookbook she distributed to friends & family two Christmases ago. C called the cookbook "Tried & True" and one night recently I was inspired to tackle the Pad Thai recipe in it.

I've had the Pad Thai before; my SIL has made it for family dinners and it was always delicious. Also, one year my SIL & C and a few other people had a stall at Shambhala, a big giant music festival held in the area, and the Pad Thai was on their menu.

The recipe is simple and quick and it made tons - enough for several meals for me. It's also great cold! I skipped the chili flakes because I don't like spice.

C's Pad Thai

8oz flat rice noodles
1 tbsp oil
2 tbsp minced garlic
2 cups thinly sliced cabbage (I used coleslaw mix, one of my favourite kitchen allies)
1 medium carrot, julienned (skip if you decide to use the coleslaw mix)
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup firm tofu
1 cup of chicken, cut into strips, or an equal amount of cooked peeled shrimp
3 cups bean sprouts
1 cup sliced green onions
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1/4 cup peanuts

Sauce:

3 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp chili flakes
1/4 cup water or chicken broth
2 tbsp fresh lime juice

1. Cover noodles in hot water & soak for 20 minutes. Drain well.

2. Combine sauce ingredients and set aside.

3. In a wok, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add garlic, tofu, and chicken (or shrimp, if using - or live on the edge & use both!). Stirfry until the chicken is done. Add cabbage & carrot. Stirfry until cabbage is tender-crisp.

4. Push veggies to the side of the pan and pour in eggs. Stir to scramble.

5. Add drained noodles and sauce. Heat until noodles are soft & warm, about 4 minutes. Remove from heat and add bean sprouts, green onion, and cilantro. Transfer to platter & sprinkle with peanuts. Serve!

Enjoy!

Cookbook Review: In the Sweet Kitchen

2010-06-07T20:32:00.004-07:00

Back in 2004, when I was working at Crapters and on the cusp of deciding to go to culinary school, I used my 30% staff discount to purchase a whole bunch of cookbooks. Regan Daley's In the Sweet Kitchen was one of them. It was a $60 beautiful hard cover and I immediately fell in love with it because half of the book was devoted to information about baking: ingredients, techniques, equipment, and all kinds of stuff I was previously oblivious to - including a section on high altitude baking, which would come in handy later on in my life when I moved back to the mountains. The recipes were also lovely, and I embarked upon making several of them.

Recently, In the Sweet Kitchen has been re-released for the book's 10th anniversary with an updated trade paperback cover. Yours truly was interested to see if there were any updates to the book that might tantalize me, and I got a review copy. Recently I sat down to compare the two editions, and there are very few changes. The subtitle is different, and a minor word or two has changed (mind you, I didn't go through it with a fine toothed comb), and there fewer photos (and the photos are not new either), but other than that, except for a new preface, the books are the same. And there were no new recipes!

I am not complaining, though, because the recipes the book does contain are excellent. The information on baking, which is extremely comprehensive, is still well worth the large chunk of space on my small cookbook shelving unit this volume takes up.

I have made several recipes. Of course, I have made Regan's Ultimate Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chunk Cookies (page 501) several times, and it's a recipe I still go back to, even though I have had to tweak it slightly to get it to work for me. There is a post way back in my archives about them here.

I also have made the Roasted Clementine and Chocolate Tart with a Macadamia Nut Crust (page 461). Actually, I've made this more than once. The first time was for a dinner party I threw when I still lived in Ottawa, and the second time was when I was on the dessert station at culinary school. The chef instructor had me adjust the recipe a bit; we didn't use clementies but rather just the regular oranges the school kept around, and I had to use hazelnuts instead of macadamia nuts, but it turned out great.

Additionally, I have made Regan's Flaky Tart Pastry (page 653), her blueberry pie (alas, not with wild blueberries because they are not always available to me), her Damn Fine Apple Pie (page 472), and today I made the blueberry muffin recipe on page 608, only using huckleberries I had in the freezer from last year. They were delicious!

The recipes in this book vary between very sophisticated and very simple & "down home," which is something I really like about this book. There is something for everyone and ever skill level. That element, combined with the 300+ pages of instructional information, makes this an excellent book for both the beginner and the seasoned baker! A definite recommend!

Clam Chowder for a Crowd

2010-06-01T12:55:00.004-07:00

Here is another work recipe that I have made a few times now. When I first looked at the recipe, I nearly had a heart attack! Bacon! Butter! Whipping cream! I thought, You want me to feed this to seniors? Seriously? I was a little shocked. But apparently, this is one of the most popular soups on the menu. And after I made it, I had a bowl myself, and it was sooooo gooooood. Sinfully good. No wonder it's popular!

Clam Chowder

8 slices of bacon, chopped
4 stalks celery, chopped
2 onions, diced
4 potatoes, diced
3 cans baby clams, with nectar
1 lb butter
2 cups flour
1 liter water
2 tsp chicken base
2 liters whipping cream
2 tsp each basil, parsley, and ground pepper

Cook the first five ingredients in a large pot until veggies are just tender. In a separate, smaller pot, melt the butter. Add flour and make a smooth paste. Add this to the veggies and combine. Add liquids, and the rest of the ingredients. Bring to a simmer to thicken. Serve.

OK, we don't use whipping cream where I work, but rather a mixture of 10% and milk. It works just fine and tastes great!

Local Grocery Shopping on a Budget

2010-05-31T13:51:00.002-07:00

If you are interested, here is my latest column in The Rossland Telegraph, where I kind of give LOGS a hard time! Let the controversy begin!

Ambrosia Salad for a Crowd

2010-05-28T10:07:00.005-07:00

This is one of those dishes you find at church potlucks, in delis, and at my work! And, to be honest, I kinda like ambrosia. I mean, marshmallows, coconut, and mandarin oranges? That is a pretty delicious combination! This recipe makes a huge amount and will provide dessert for about 25 - 30 people, though I'm not sure this is an "authentic" ambrosia like you'd find at the deli, because mandarin segments in a can are pricier than fruit cocktail, but when I make it, I often just use the mandarin oranges anyway because I think it's better that way. But even with the fruit cocktail, it's good stuff, and the diabetics at work like it because they can have it, too.

Ambrosia for a Crowd

6 cups mixed fruit or fruit cocktail
3 cups mandarin orange slices
3 cups pineapple tidbits
3 cups miniature marshmallows
1 bag coconut
4 1/2 cups sour cream (we use light)

It's as easy as this: drain all the fruit very well. Combine all the ingredients in a big bowl, mixing lightly. Chill thoroughly. Serve.

Lingonberry Bread...From Ikea

2010-05-26T09:22:00.004-07:00

A couple of months ago, my dad went to Vancouver and spent a whole day in Coquitlam's gigantic - and I mean GIGANTIC - Ikea store. He was very impressed with the cafeteria there, and he also really enjoyed the food selection for sale that you could bring home & prepare yourself. He bought three copies of the Ikea cookbook - one for me, him, and my SIL, and he also brought me back a package of Lingonberry bread mix. He was attracted to this item because the ingredients were right up his alley: no white flour whatsoever, full of seeds, and nice and wholesome-looking.

I finally got around to making this bread on the weekend for a family dinner. Basically, it was a just add water deal, with the yeast in a separate package attached to the bag of mix. All I did was chuck everything in my mixer, develop the dough, let it rise, shape, rise, and bake.

Incidentally, this bread mix is Danish, not Swedish!

Anyway, this is what I got:

I was a very tasty, crusty loaf, actually, but I thought the mix was pretty chintzy on the lingonberry angle; there were barely any berries in it and they didn't add anything to the flavour at all, which was disappointing. But it was a nice loaf and Dad was pretty happy. The mix made two loaves, so he got one and so did I.

I have yet to use any recipes from the Ikea cookbook...

Magazine Monday #61: Chocolate-Orange Brownines

2010-05-23T15:00:00.004-07:00

For once, a non-Canadian Living recipe!

We have having some serious renovations done around here and I have baked a few things for the contractors, who appear to all have sweet tooths. This works for me! I get to bake and not have to have any sweet stuff hanging around my place tempting me, and they get to have nice treats after a day's hard work.

This recipe for Chocolate-Orange Brownies comes from the March 2010 issue of Bon Appetit. Apparently, the recipe originated at Homepage Cafe in Bozeman, Montana, and it was included in the RSVP section of the magazine, where readers write in asking for recipes from restaurants and other eateries - hence it's not included in the recipe database on Epicurious.com. Gr!!!

Anyway, here it is.

Chocolate-Orange Brownies

non-stick vegetable spray
1/2 cup boiling water
6 tbsp natural unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/4 cups packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup pecans, chopped
2 large eggs
10 tbsp (1 1/4 sticks...God I hate how US recipes do this! This is 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp for you Canadians out there!) butter, melted & cooled
1 tbsp grated orange zest
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Spray 9x9x2" metal baking pan with spray. Whisk 1/2 cup boiling water with cocoa powder in a small bowl to blend. Whisk sugar, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl to blend. Stir in pecans. Whisk eggs in a large bowl. Add butter, vanilla, and orange zest. Whisk cocoa mixture into egg mixture. Add flour mixture, stir just to blend. Transfer to prepared pan.

2. Bake until tester inserted into the centre comes out with a few moist crumbs attached, about 30 minutes. Let cool completely in pan on rack. Cut & serve.

These were a huge hit with both the contractors (we took them out on a big platter & my SIL provided them with cold beer!) and with my family. They were perfectly-textured and delicious! Definitely a keeper recipe!