Mediterranian Steamed Mussells

Prime example of random laziness: I cooked these things last week but couldn't find it in myself to blog about them til now. Don't judge me... or do judge me, but don't tell me.

Being that I can be kind of lazy, this is a fancy looking dinner that really isn't that hard to make.

All you need is some tomatoes, mussels, a baguette, some kalamata olives, olive oil, garlic, oregano, white wine, salt and pepper...and maybe some paprika. Apparently I put paprika in everything these days. It's just such a nice colour!

In a saucepan combine:

1/2 cup white wine
2 tsp olive oil
3 tomatoes, chopped
1 large stem of fresh oregano
1 tbsp garlic, minced
1 bag mussels
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup of kalamata olives, pitted and halved

Cover and bring to a boil for 3-5 minutes until mussles open. REMEMBER mussels should be scrubbed before cooking and checked for any unresponsive open mussels. If it's open and you tap it and it doesn't close, don't cook it...unless you want food poisoning. Your call.

Tear the baguette into a few chunks. I like how rough it looks like this... Like you just threw this lovely meal together and couldn't be bothered to cut the bread. In my case, this is exactly what happened. If you want it to look a little more formal, feel free to use a knife. :-)

 

Fish Tacos with Peach Salsa

Tis the season for peaches, my friends, and that means PEACH SALSA! And what better to pair your peach salsa with than fish tacos! Nomnomnom.

Fish tacos are mega easy and well, so is the salsa, so let's boogie.

Fish Tacos

2 basa fillets (or any other white fish, but basa is nummy and cheap. Woot!)

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp salt

1 tsp coriander

1/2 to 1 lime (depending on your preference)

Mix your spices together and sprinkle over the fillets on both sides.

On medium heat add 1-2 tbsp of olive oil to your pan and cook your seasoned fish for a few minutes on each side. While it's cooking, add the juice of half a lime. Cut into the fish to make sure it's cooked all the way through and remove it from the heat. Cut into bite sized pieces.

Peach Salsa

1 peach, peeled and pit removed

1/4 bunch fresh cilantro

1/2 a lime

1/2 a small red onion OR 3 or 4 green onions, coarsely chopped

1 jalapeno pepper

Combine ingredients in a food processor until all ingrediants are minced.

In our fish tacos, we add some plain yogurt and chopped lettuce to the tortillas and wrap them.

Serve!

Sticky Cinnamon Buns with Cream Cheese Icing

Holy fuck. I have to add another day to my workout regime or I am going to get fat. For real.

I may have mentioned this before but this Kitchen Aid stand mixer is the best/worst thing that ever happened to me. No cake mixes here! Rising dough, sticky cinnamon buns? Yeah, I made some. What up?

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.

Dough

One package instant quick-rise yeast
1 1/4 cups warm water

disolve together

add:

3 tbsp softened butter
4 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp cream
1 tsp salt
3 1/4 cups flour

mix on Speed 2 with the kneading attatchment or, just mix that baby up with a wooden spoon. Switch hands or you'll end up with one really sore bicep.

lightly oil or grease the top of the ball of dough, flip it over and do the same to the other side. Cover and let rise for 2 hours in a warm place.

Once it's risen, punch it down and place on floured surface, roll it out with a rolling pin to about 1/2 inch thick rectangle. Smear with a WHOLE BUNCH of softened butter (about half a cup).

Filling

In a bowl, mix 1 cup of packed brown sugar and 3tbsp cinnamon, spread evenly over buttered dough leaving approximately an inch around the edge bare.

Carefully role the dough up and pinch the edge to the roll so it stays together. Flip it so the seam is on the bottom. Set aside.

Sticky Sauce

In a sauce pan, melt 1/4 cup of butter and add 1tsp of flour to make, add 1/2 cup of packed brown sugar, and 1oz of whiskey if you've got it. Bring it to a boil, stirring constantly.

Pour over the bottom of your bakeware.

Cut your roll into 1 1/2 inch to 2 inch thick slices, place cut side down onto the sauce. Place in the over for 20 minutes or until golden.


Cream Cheese Icing

1 tub spreadable cream cheese
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 cups icing sugar

Mix until well blended.


Remove cinnamon buns from the oven, let cool 5-10 minutes. Flip bakeware onto tray or pan, gently tap the bottom of the bakeware to make sure the buns fall onto the tray. Cool 3-5 more minutes, then spread with icing.

I'm making fish tacos for dinner but I'll have to wait a bit before I do. I couldn't wait to have a cinnamon bun and now I'm full!

Strawberry Rhubarb Tarte

As most of you know, I get ridiculous anxiety sometimes. Luckily this past Saturday morning, I had something constructive to do after waking up at 6am - make some pastry!

Kevin's super sweet coworkers bought us a Kitchen Aid stand mixer as a wedding gift and lemme tell ya, I don't think that making pastry gets much easier than with that baby.

I used:

1tbsp white sugar
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup butter, well chilled and cut into small cubes
3/4 tsp salt
8-9 tbsp freezing cold water

Mix the salt, sugar and flour well. Add little butter cubes. Either cut with a pastry cutter or mix at "Stir" speed on your stand mixer until the butter starts to look like little peas in the flour.

Add one tablespoon of cold water at a time, mixing as you go. The dough will start to stick to itself. Hooray!

Form into two balls, wrap in cling wrap and refridgerate for about an hour.

While your pastry is chilling.....


Cut up 2 rhubarb stalks and one 1lb clamshell of strawberries. Mix with 1/3 cup white sugar. Set aside.

Remove the pastry, sprinkle your counter with flour, grab a rolling pin and roll the balls of dough into 1/4" thick circles and place each on a cookie sheet.

Split your fruit mixture between the two circles of pastry and pinch the sides up around it.

Place in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 for another 10. Check periodically. Remove when it's golden brown and fruit juices are bubbling.

Serve with whipped cream. Nommmmmmmm!

Caesar Salad

Ever coddled an egg? Til tonight, me neither.

Coddling is the process of really quickly soft-boiling an egg. Back in the day, you could do it in a container called a "pipkin" that you would break the egg into and then place in a pot of water like a double-boiler.

People don't typically have a pipkin laying around these days, so you can just boil the egg in its shell for about a minute. Don't put it in the water until it's almost boiling and make sure you rinse it under cold water to cool it down right after or it will keep cooking. It's still going to be a fairly runny egg when you crack it open.

You will need:

2 coddled eggs
1-4 to 1/3 cup olive oil
1 head of romaine lettuce, rinsed, dried and chopped or torn into bite sized pieces
1 tsp black pepper
2 cloves garlic, mushed to paste
1 tsp anchovie paste (you can buy this in tubes at the grocery store)
1 tsp sea salt
2-3 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp worchestershire sauce
1/4 cup parmesan cheese

Wisk eggs into olive oil, garlic, anchovie paste, lemon, pepper, salt and worchestershire sauce. Pour over lettuce. Toss. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese. Add croutons*. Serve.

*Making your own croutons is easy. Preheat your oven to 270 degrees F. Cut up half a loaf of french bread into cubes. Set aside. Mix 1/4 cup olive oil with a 2 tbsp garlic powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp black pepper. Add bread cubes and toss quickly with hands to avoid soggy cubes at the bottom.

Spread in a single layer onto a cookie sheet, cook for 10 minutes and check, if they're dry, golden brown and crispy take them out. Best way to find out is try one. If not cook for another 2 minutes and check again.

Enjoy!

Easy Poutine!

Sooo I wanted to make poutine, came home to semi-messy kitchen and thought "EFF THAT NOISE". I also had forgotten to get cheese curds. I ripped to the grocery store to get some and returned to find that sweet Kevin had washed the potatoes for me. What a champ. Unfortunately, I was too lazy to make my own fries last night.

When I was getting the cheese curds I was feeling increasingly restricted for time, so I picked up some low-fat oven fries (transfat free!).

I made some chicken gravy from scratch, chopped up some green onions and broke up the Natural Pastures cheese curds.

Once the fries were done I layered them with gravy, cheese and put the chopped green onions on top.

Nom!

Sukiyaki

Suki - as you like it

Yaki - grill

Cool. So I grilled it as I like it... with a bunch of different kinds of mushrooms (Oyster mushrooms are still my fave) but the other mushrooms came in the cutest bags imaginable.

I used:

half a green cabbage

1 pkg enoki mushrooms

1 pkg bunapi mushrooms

2 king oyster mushrooms

a bag (two handfuls) of bean sprouts

1 bunch of green onions

1 pkg of udon noodles

1 (or two!) grilling steak sliced super thin "against the grain"

Sukiyaki sauce:

1 cup soya sauce

1/2 cup white sugar

1 cup water

1/2 cup sake

Break up the bunches of mushrooms and slice the oyster mushrooms into bite sized pieces. Slice the bunch of green onions into 3 inch pieces. Slice the cabbage into bite sized pieces or strips.

Combine sake, soya sauce, sugar, water and sake. Set aside.

Typically a sukiyaki recipe calls for suet to brown the meat. I just used a bit of butter.

Heat a LARGE pan and melt the butter til it's sizzling. Add the meat and stir until browned.

Push all the meat together and move it to it's own spot on the pan. Add sauce.

Place each ingredient in it's own part of the pan (think pie chart). Bring to boil. Cook for 2 or 3 minutes.

Serve!

It's my understanding that sukiyaki is traditionally served with a beaten egg as a dipping sauce. A friend suggested that though it might sound weird, it's really, really good and to leave the white out of it and just use the yoke.

Kevin and I didn't try the egg dip but maybe next time! Don't want to make it yourself but still want to try it? 1063 Fort Street is home to Posh restaurant. Victoria's Sukiyaki hot spot.

Bruschetta

Okay, so I've had bruschetta before but obviously whoever made that bruschetta didn't fry the bakery fresh ciabatta bread (oh, hey Wild Fire Bakery!) in salted butter first.

This bruschetta is super simple and super yummy.

You'll need:

a bunch of fresh oregano - I used half a stem from my herb patch, finely chopped (or coarsely, your call)
a bunch of fresh basil - (ditto)
2-3 medium tomatoes
a dash of salt
2 - 3 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp minced garlic
1 fresh loaf ciabatta bread, sliced into 1 inch slices (if it's not fresh, it'll be really, really hard and ouchy to eat)
1/4 butter, cut into 3 or 4 squares.

Bring a small pot to a boil, carefully place in a tomato for about 20 seconds. Remove. Do this to all the tomatoes. Once they've cooled, pierce the tomato skin and get peeling! You'll be shocked how quickly that skin will come off. Once you've peeled the tomatoes, remove the seeds and liquid - discard.  (Seriously, if you don't remove the seed etc. those will be some soggy little pieces of toast!) Chop into small pieces.

Combine olive oil, garlic, herbs and tomato. Add salt. Mix (you can even squish it a little with the spoon). Set aside.

In a frying pan over medium heat, melt the butter. Place the slices of bread in the pan until slightly toasted, flip. When both sides are toasted remove and move on to the next pieces. Add more butter as necessary. Careful not to burn it! <--I'm not going to lie, we had a casualty.

Once all your bread is done, spoon the tomato mixture over your buttery toasted ciabatta slices. Eat.

Freaking delicious.

Brazilian Seafood Stew

This was originally Brazillian Fish Stew but I added some sea creatures that don't really qualify as fish (clams and shrimp). Also, it's more of a soup than a stew.

Thrify's just started carrying this company's shellfish that's run by the Comox (K'omoks) First Nations people. They strive for sustainability and quality, so I was pumped to purchase some Manilla clams from the Komo Gway company.

We also used Basa, Snapper and Coho salmon in this nummy soup. Kevin helped prepare the fish!

Also. I may have spilled about half a bag of paprika. Oooooops!

It goes a little something like this:

Marinade

2 limes - juiced, keep rinds for marinade
2 tsp minced garlic
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp cumin
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper

Cut fish into 1 - 1 1/2 inch pieces and coat in the marinade. Cover and refridgerate for a few hours (up to 24 hours)

You will also need:

1 medium can of diced tomatoes, drained
2 medium yellow onions, diced
1 red pepper, diced
1 orange pepper, diced
1/2 bunch of cilantro, chopped
1 can coconut milk
1 bag of clams
200g wild, peeled shrimp

In approx 2 tbsp of olive oil on medium-high heat, quickly fry the onions for about a minute. Add the diced peppers, then the fish mixture (this does not include the shrimp or the clams).

Put the diced tomatoes on top of the fish and the coconut milk on top of the tomatoes. Cover and cook on medium high heat for 5 minutes. Stir. Cook for another 5 minutes. Stir again and cook for another 5.

Now add the clams. You should have already gone through and rinsed the clams, as well as removed any that are open and that do not close when you tap them. Make sure when you add them they're covered by the broth. Cook for 5 more minutes. Add the chopped cilantro and the shrimp. Cook for 5 more minutes. Remove lime rinds. Serve with slices of french bread to soak up the yummy broth.

Enjoy!

The Perfect Pot of Coffee

Do you measure your coffee before you grind it? What about after? Do you buy pre-ground? Fair-trade?

Ps. if you don't buy fair-trade coffee, don't even try to justify it. You're a bad person...or at least an ignorant jerk. Straight up. So start buying fair-trade if you aren't already and regain some of the respect you've lost from those who know you don't buy fair-trade coffee... It's not like buying a shirt from a store that says "Made in China", when all the other shirts in all the other stores say "Made in China" and you can't find any alternative except maybe "Made in Indonesia". Fair-trade coffee is readily available everywhere and not that much more expensive than the stuff that isn't fair-trade. Just sayin'....

*Ahem* ANYWAYS

Coffee. The perfect pot of coffee. The perfect cup of coffee. Coffee can be such a personal thing. I discovered that when I stopped putting sugar in my coffee and used a lower fat content milk, I lost a little extra from around the middle (who would have thought?) but does my coffee really do it for me like it did before?? Nope. Do I still enjoy it? Sure.

Here's why:

a) Good coffee. I really like Level Ground Trading Company coffees, but right now since we just came back from Hawaii, 100% French Roast Kona coffee is what we're rocking. It's nice. I think good coffee needs less sweetener than cheap coffee. Sometimes no added sweetener is needed. Just a dash of cinnamon. Nom.

b) Water to coffee ratio. Do you make weak coffee? Don't give me any if you do. I won't like it. I like my coffee like I like my man: STRONG, YO!

c) Good quality reduced fat milk and I'm not talking "skim". Skim milk? Why bother? Coffee cream is typically either 10% or 18% milk fat. For real. So if you're like me and like a lot of milk, that's a lot of fat. Homogenized milk is only 3.25% milk fat. Just enough to still taste creamy but not so much that you have to feel bad for putting it in your coffee every morning. Sweet deal.

d) Sweetener. Splenda and I have a love/hate relationship. It's man made. Ick....but calorie free! Yay! I also, however, have a love/hate relationship with sugar because sugar is in EVERYTHING. It's even already in your milk (oh hey there, lactose, what's up?) so it seems unfortunate to add sugar to something that didn't have it already and doesn't necessarily need it. (Holla cinnamon!)

Now I'm going to throw out some info that I learned on Oprah:

excess sugar in the blood begins to cut into the veins and as these cuts heal, they create scars which produce hardening of the arteries.

Not so sweet.

Happy alternative that is not calorie free, but not a man made concoction of chemicals: honey. And obviously take this sugar cutting your veins-info with a grain of salt (HA!) because everything in moderation right? It's a teaspoon of sugar, you're not going to have a stroke.

e) Brewing method. French press or regular drip coffee? For me, drip unless it's a special occasion. I need my coffee to be completely ready by 7:15am. I start brewing at 7:00am. I don't have time to boil water, stir it, stir it, stir it, wait and then press.

Hmmm am I missing anything? Suggestions? Weird things you do to your coffee? Please share!

Anyway, my coffee is done brewing now.

Deviled Eggs with Tarragon and Chives

Sooooooooo it's raining and we're supposed to be going to a BBQ this afternoon at Kevin's co-workers place. Hmmm. So far, no call to say that the BBQ is off, and it's a "we're providing food but also bring something" kind of BBQ.


WHAT TO BRING?


I decided on my way home from the gym this morning that deviled eggs are usually a welcome addition at a potluck...but I didn't want to bring plain ol' deviled eggs.


I remember an episode of Ace of Cakes (far superior to Cake Boss) where the receptionist talks about her "Tarragon Deviled Eggs" and how they're the best ever.


Wicked. Sold.


For those of you that might be reluctant to hard boil eggs, you're missing out. I found this great article on how to make the best hard boiled eggs and it's fairly fool proof.


http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_make_perfect_hard_boiled_eggs/

Alright.

I did it.

However, not without a bit of mess. What makes your average deviled egg look more than average is piping the yoke filling into the white with a piping bag and a star-tip. I had the bright idea to use my vintage piping bag (as opposed to my newer one). Bad choice. The sides promptly split. Awesome.

I did however manage to finish with the piping bag by removing the tip and just squooshing the mixture into the whites. Woot! The look like average deviled eggs...but lemme tell ya, much tastier.

And anyway, like they say, it's all the same in your stomach.

Tarragon and Green Onion Devilled Eggs = Nom.

Weird, I Can't Believe I Didn't Think of This Before...

So, I get really gung-ho about things for awhile and then my enthusiams wains and I find something else. Or not. Depends on the day.

One consistant feeling I have is that, given the right conditions (clean kitchen, most of the required ingredients etc.) I really like to cook. If I had a professional critique my food, I don't know that I would like what they would have to say but to me, I think I'm pretty okay at it.

This is the very first post in my very first blog that I have decided to dedicate to my efforts to be a good cook.