Polenta Mania!

We haven't had polenta for a while. It's such a quick and easy dish, and goes with practically anything. The kids can help, or do the whole thing.

I buy polenta in tubes, just slice it as thin as possible (use a cheese or boning knife if you have one), cover it with olive oil, sprinkle herbs from our garden and bake at about 400-450F. I cut it thin and cook it on a higher temperature because I love crispy slices. Some people prefer theirs sliced thicker, like a steak, but not me.

You can sprinkle it with cheese for a vegetarian delight, or serve it alongside meat for an omnivorous meal.  

Stew in a Flash

What do you get when you add leftover roast beef and potatoes to squash, mushrooms, and green onions? Fabulous Friday Night Stew!

I'd spent the day gardening and was tired and hungry. Not much to eat except for a bit of leftover roast beef and potatoes. I revived it with some of my homemade stock and a cup or two of ginger tea, half a fresh butternut squash, organic mushrooms, and green onions and rosemary from the garden. I left it to simmer while I took a hot bath. The sweet savoury smell greeted me as I returned, clean and relaxed. So good and excellent after a day of physical labour. The kids loved it and even DH came back for a second serving.

Stupidly Easy Chicken Recipe

Like pretty much every family, ours is busy and full of competing schedules. I like to cook prophylactically, and not only because it's a fun word. It means preventively; in other words, I cook so that there's always something in the fridge that's good, nutritious and easy to grab 'n go. Chicken fits the bill nicely. I have a great recipe:

1. Buy chicken legs, thighs, wings or whatever.
2. Arrange skin-side-up in baking pan.
3. Cover with Hy's Seasoning Salt.
4. Bake on 350F til internal temperature is 165F. (Always use a thermometer when cooking meat.)
5. (Optional) Broil for a couple of minutes until skin is as crispy as you like it. (Keep an eye on it—broiling goes wrong quickly!)
6. Feast.

I make mine in the toaster oven, which warms up more quickly, uses less electricity and toasts the skin better. If you cook it on a higher temperature (400-450F) the skin is usually crispy enough that you don't have to broil it.

Kids can help with this recipe. You probably don't want them handling raw chicken, but even little kids can sprinkle the seasoning salt. Older ones can use the thermometer to check for doneness. I mention this because it's important that we teach our children how to cook and eat, so they don't fall for misleading marketing or labelling claims, or buy into the cultural norm of eating crap.

Easy Fish Stew

Remember that curried cauliflower I made the other day? I turned the leftovers into a fish stew. It took exactly two minutes to dump the leftovers in a pot with some leftover potatoes, and add half a cup of broth and three frozen halibut fillets. I heated it gently (medium-low) for about 20 minutes. Easy peasy.

We ate it topped with tamarind-date chutney. The kids loved it! For an extra kick of heat, we paired it with ginger tea. I'm no physician but I swear all that spicy goodness makes sick people healthy and maintains good health.

Vegomania and crispy noodles

One of my favourite things is crispy noodles. It's hard to make them at home, if you don't have one of those crazy-hot wok rings they use in restaurants. But having the wrong equipment never stopped me before...

This was pretty easy to make and the family loved it. I fried cooked noodles on the highest temperature on my stove, which is electric but gets hotter than the gas stove we had a few years back. (Shh, don't tell the cooking snobs that I prefer electric over gas.) I used peanut oil, as it has a fairly high smoke point, although I think we passed it. Added soy sauce, so the sugars burnt a bit and added even more flavour.

The cauliflower and eggplant dish was super easy. I make this one a lot. It was inspired by the delicious Najib’s Special cauliflower dish at Nuba, which was the dish that made me appreciate cauliflower. My recipe is different than Najib's; in fact the only thing in common is probably the cauliflower, but hey, it's good. I just heat some masala in ghee and toss in the cauliflower (and in this case, eggplant). Cook down and stir to coat. Voila.

The peppers, onions and mushrooms were just quickly pan-fried in very hot peanut oil.

Another quick and satisfying evening meal with leftovers for lunch.

Dinner of Threes

For a family birthday celebration this weekend, I made three salads, each with three varieties of an ingredient. Each dish contained at least one ingredient from our garden. Lots of positive comments on the freshness and flavours!
Three-Tomato Salad
Cherry, grape and beefsteak tomatoes with homegrown basil, parsley, truffle oil, white balsamic, and green onions from our garden.


Green Beans and Nuts
I blanched long green beans, cooled them then tossed in a bit of olive oil and sea salt. Topped with toasted walnuts, almond slivers and sunflower seeds, which provided protein and a blast of crunchy goodness.
Three-Pepper Leafy Greens
Red and yellow bell peppers and long reds were diced and mixed in with three varieties of lettuce (Romaine, green leaf and red leaf). Garnished with homegrown green onions, and topped with a dressing of olive oil, pineapple vinegar with crushed homegrown rosemary, lavender and oregano.

Fabulous (almost-vegan) Dinner!

I feel so full of fresh vitamin goodness! Coming home from a run I stopped in the yard to harvest strawberries and tomatoes. We had a huge storm last night and I'm concerned that the tomatoes may split, so am picking even slightly underripe ones. We have a super-sunny windowsill behind the kitchen sink that's great for storing and ripening fruits and veggies.


Rosemary Croutons
Meanwhile I took the heal of an olive loaf I got at the market last weekend. It was old and dry so yesterday I put it in a plastic bag with a few drops of water to soften it. Today it was soft enough to work with, so I diced it. Meanwhile I sweated rosemary, herbes de provence, and finely-diced onion in butter. Heated some olive oil in a different pan (enough to cover the bread), added it to the onions, and then threw in the bread. Sprinkled salt over top. After cooking off the liquid, I put the mixture in the toaster oven for a toasty finish. Man those were good croutons. Unfortunately they were gone by the time I remembered to photograph them. This shot is the making of.

Tomato Vegetable Soup
For tonight's soup I used vegetable stock with ground herbes de provence, and threw in half an onion, some celery and the last of our bbq'd corn. After letting it combine over medium-low heat for a while, I added eighth'ed beefsteak tomatoes. We garnished with cilantro.

Tomato Basil Salad
Some people ate the croutons in their soup, and some with the tomato salad. I used grape tomatoes, sliced diagonally in thirds. Tossed them with salt, truffle oil, white balsamic, and fresh-picked basil (one of my favourite summer flavours). Those tomatoes are so sweet that you'd swear someone added sugar. They went perfectly with the rosemary croutons.

Baby Carrots and Herbs
I cooked our baby carrots in fresh-picked rosemary, which has loved this summer's dry heat. I sweated the rosemary along with some oregano and lavender (also just-picked) in butter, which was the only non-vegan part of the meal, then threw in the carrots for a slow steam.

Dessert was strawberries, just plain.

My daughter and I reflected as we ate. We're so grateful for the fresh goodness of our dinner, and so lucky to be living in a relatively stable and safe part of the world. Gratitude makes everything taste sweeter.

 

Crispy Fried Noodle

 

Chinese Pancake Spanakopita

I got creative with dinner the other day, and made a sort of Spanakopita, using chinese pancake, cheese, mushrooms and spinach.

I buy chinese pancake at the local grocery – the photo shows the brand I buy. They’re super useful as a pantry item; keep them frozen until you cook them. I usually broil them, flipping once. They are done in five to ten minutes. The kids eat them as after-school snacks, with soup or gyoza, or just on their own.

I thought they might be good for pre-taekwondo dinner – we need a lighter, easily digestible, nutritionally rich meal. I cleaned and stemmed a bunch of fresh spinach, while boiling the water for steaming it. While the spinach was steaming, I broiled the pancakes until they were almost done. Meanwhile, I chopped and sautéed oyster mushrooms.

Soba noodles in soup with mushroom onion and yellow pepper

I put soba noodles on to boil, while heating chicken stock, mushroom and fried onions. When the noodles were cooked and the broth was ready, I assembled it and topped it off with sliced yellow peppers and green onions.

It was delicious. The kids had it for after-school snack and finished it. We ate the rest of the noodles for dinner, with sauteed smoked tofu. Ice cream with vanilla yogurt and whipped cream for dessert.

Mushroom Burgers

Darn! I forgot to photograph them. I often do because they smell so good that we're always anxious to eat, then we get distracted with condimentization. (It is so a word)

We get those big mushrooms that are essentially overgrown button mushrooms, dab a bit of olive or grapeseed oil on, and broil them until juicy, about five or ten minutes.

Meanwhile, I sauteed half a large sweet onion. We ate our burgers in portuguese buns fresh from the local bakery. Sides included baby gherkins, calamata olives, raita, and a salad of celery apple carrot and roasted almonds.

What a great meal; easily digestible by our evening taekwondo workout, and pretty healthy.

Curried Shrimp & Couscous

Some of my favorite flavours with one of my favorite words. (The food so good they named it twice.)

I made this last night with my twelve-year-old daughter. We sauteed an onion, then added curry powder, paprika, salt & pepper, diced potatoes, japanese eggplant, cilantro, and a can of coconut milk, with a bit of stock to thin the mixture. Simmered it about half an hour then added about a pound of shrimp and a couple tablespoons of lemon juice. Cooked that another few minutes while we made the couscous (easiest recipe ever - 1 cup couscous and 1 cup boiling water. Stir, fluff, and cover for five minutes or more), and I steamed fresh spinach.

The youngest child, who is still getting used to hotter foods, found it a bit spicy-hot but still quite enjoyable. She liked it enough to have multiple servings. There were no leftovers.

It was another great meal - easy to prepare; easy to clean up. It's a good meal for someone learning to cook because it doesn't require special skills or knowledge, its not time-consuming to prepare or cook, and substitutions are easy if you're out of specific ingredients. And it's pretty healthy.

Baked potato with Chorizo & Tzatziki

Wow, what a success, both in taste and in popularity. I par-boiled large baking potatoes, then baked them for half an hour at 450f. Cranked up the heat to 500f for the last ten minutes to crisp the skin. Meanwhile, I opened the casing on two chorizo sausages and pan-fried the meat. We topped our potatoes with the meat,  tzatziki, and green onions. Added sides of green leaf lettuce salad and broccoli-leak soup. Delicious!  And fairly healthy; lots of saturated greens and protein. Kind of hi-fat, but not too bad since the meat was more of a condiment than the bulk of the meal.

Pizza - pesto, basil, capers and white cheddar

We made pizza tonight. My youngest daughter, aged ten, made the dough. After rising it, she worked it and stretched it to shape. Her topping choices were cheese and salami, with a bit of pesto. For the other pizza, we chose white cheddar cheese, pesto, capers and basil.

The dough was really good tonight. It may be due to using much less sauce than usual. Often we use more sauce and the middle of the pizza crust gets soggy. This time with less sauce it was much firmer, although next time I would add more toppings - maybe onion or a meat. The capers & basil pizza was good but a little bland. But still, not bad for a last-minute out-of-the-pantry meal. (By out of the pantry, I mean we did not plan ahead and get ingredients - we used whatever was in the cupboard, fridge & indoor herb garden).

Great leftover idea

I didn't photograph it, because it sort of looks like the dog's dinner (if you're unfamiliar with that phrase, think on this: dogs are notorious for "re-enjoying" their meals) but it was delicious, fast and easy. (I always resent that holiday mode doesn't extend to those who have to cook all the meals.)

We had leftovers from christmas dinner and after boxing day the kids' delight was starting to turn to grimaces as they saw the chicken being hauled out for a third time. So I got a bottle of Sherwood's Masala and dumped it on top of the deboned chicken, mixed it in with all the leftover vegetables in a large frying pan and simmered it for twenty minutes. Ha! The kids didn't know what they were eating - actually they did and still enjoyed it. Even the youngest, who is more sensitive to spice heat, gobbled it up and had seconds.

Because a bunch of us are sick, the spicings (and chicken and garlic) helped with our colds. On the side we had super-fresh whole wheat dinner rolls from a local bakery. (Greek Bakery, in Richmond - good breads & rolls, very fresh.)

Super-easy christmas dinner

We usually go out for lunch on christmas day, but just in case, I had a chicken brining in the fridge, and bought some winter vegetables. Sure enough, we couldn't muster up the energy to go out of the house, so I made the chicken.


The prep took maybe twenty minutes, including wine breaks. I had bought two bags of pre-washed mini-potatoes that were mixed in color; some yellow, some red and some purple. The potatoes were small enough to use whole without pre-boiling. I chopped some kabocha squash, a couple of beets, enoki & oyster mushrooms, onion, celery, carrot, and sweet potato, put them all in the bottom of a roasting pan and added a cup or so of chicken stock.

The chicken was stuffed only with seven garlic cloves and I patted a bunch of sea salt on the skin.

Cooked it at 450, rotated it after forty minutes and cooked another twenty. Meanwhile, we made red rice in the rice cooker. Easy peasy.

Plating the chicken, I sprinkled it with a touch of 5-spice. Oh man, what a great dinner. We couldn't eat fast enough. I love those meals that are so delicious they taste bad for you!For desert we had a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream (Haagen Dazs), with equal amounts vanilla yogurt, vanilla soy milk and eggnog. What a finish. Then we lay around for the rest of the evening, stuffed and happy.

ready to serve

the raw ingedients

Roasted vegetables in Yorkshire pudding

Two of my favorites: roasted vegetables in yorkshire puddings. A new way to serve old favorites, keeping our meals a little more interesting.

Noodles, soup, beans mushroom and chicken

Spicy Italian Sausage

From Columbus Meat Market. Yum!

Perfect fall Sunday afternoon, and dinner

I had a lovely Sunday, enjoying fall weather and eating. I'd already bought a chicken on Saturday and today walked up to the local groceries for veg and wine. Got a nice red - although I was expecting to drink white, it was this red that caught my eye. So I got that and went in search of beets, sweet potatoes and onions.

I came home with pearl onions, a couple of sweet yellows, two beets, a white and an orange sweet potato, green beans, oyster mushrooms, and a parsnip.

I salted the chicken, rubbing coarse salt into the skin creating a bit of a crust on the breasts and legs. (Not too much or it gets salty). Sprinkled dried herbs such as herbes de province and ground cumin. I placed several garlic cloves in body cavity and put the whole thing in a pot in the fridge.

Washed and chopped the veg - beet, carrot, potato, sweet potato, turnip, green beans, pearl onions, sweet onion, and mushroom - placing it in a roasting pan with a bit of salt. Let it sit on the counter, loosely covered with saran wrap, while I went outside and raked leaves.

I raked the front yard and then came in. After opening the wine to let it breathe, I pre-heated the oven to 425f, then started a fire in the living room fireplace.

As the fire built, I drained the bit of water from the vegetables, added two tablespoons of red rice, about half a cup of chicken stock and then drizzled them with olive oil and salt. I threw about a dozen hazelnuts on the chicken. Placed the chicken on top of the veg, then covered it loosely in tinfoil and popped it in the oven.

Pour a glass of wine, plop down in front of the roaring fire, with the Sunday Times. Ahh.

After 25 minutes, I removed the foil, and let it cook for another 25 minutes. Finally, I dropped the temp to 395f for the final 25 minutes.

Wow - it was so juicy! And flavorful. The beets were sweet, the carrot and potato were soft without being mushy. The beans were still a little crunchy. The rice was still hard inside but had a cooked quality to it, and because there was so little it was like a ground nut garnish. Very pleasant.