Chicken and rice

This is a dish that we had in Amazon down in Ecuador last fall, it is simple down home food and I am sure that there are versions of this all over the world.  You could use almost any vegetables and some beans could also have been added for more protein. I used the vegetables that I had on hand, but actually in a pinch you could use frozen mixed vegetables, but then you would have to add them at the end. It is really a one dish meal, and we just had a green salad to complete the meal.

This fed 5 for dinner plus two lunches during the week.

4 whole chicken legs
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 yellow onion chopped
2 cups of rice
5 carrots chopped
5 ribs of celery chopped
1 can of corn
Small bunch of chopped parsley
1 cup of frozen peas

In a large pot place the chicken legs 2 carrots, 2 ribs of celery and 1/2 onion roughly chopped. Cover with water and add the bay leaves and salt and pepper.

Simmer for 1/2 an hour and then turn off the heat and leave to sit for 1/2 an hour with the lid on.

The chicken should be falling off the bone, and you have a delicious rich chicken stock.  Remove the chicken and vegetables and simmer the stock until you have 4 cups.  Discard the vegetables and shred the chicken and set aside Refrigerate if you are not going to make the dish right away.

Roast carrots and parsnips

To go along with my wonderful baked ham for Easter dinner, I wanted to use in season vegetables as much as possible. This early in Spring in Vancouver we still have to be relying on the root vegetables of the winter and asparagus. So I made a warm asparagus and almond salad and roasted some carrots and parsnips.

I often roast vegetables, but this was the first time that I had done just these two together and they were a match made in heaven.

vegetable biryani

I have always loved Indian food, but I have come to biryani's late in life.  I am not sure if I never had them when I was younger, or if I never had a good one.  A friend used to own a small Indian restaurant here in Vancouver and biryani was the special one day, so I decided to try it.  It was a revelation, a soft fluffy rice studded with intensely flavoured morsels including nuts and dried fruit. Since then I often order it when going to an Indian restaurant and have been experimenting with making it myself.

This Sunday evening a neighbourhood friend invited us over, along with a few others, for a Texas hold em game and potluck dinner.  So I decided to make a vegetarian biryani to take along as I know they like  Indian food and I thought it would travel well.  I found the basis for this recipe at vegrecipesofindia.com
But I simplified it a little and had to substitute a couple of items.

First partialy cook the rice.


1 and half cup basmati rice
2 green cardamoms
2 cloves
1 small sliver of cinnamon
1 bay leaf
3 cups water
salt

All the recipes that I found for biryani say to rinse and soak the rice, I assume to remove a lot of the starch, so I rinsed the rice in a colander then soaked in a bowl of cold water for 1/2 an hour, drained it and put in to a pot with the remaining ingredients.

Cook the rice with the lid on until all the water is absorbed and it still a little el dente, about 15 minutes then fluff with a fork and set aside with the lid on.

1/2 medium sized cauliflower, florets removed

1 medium sized carrot, diced

1 medium sized potato, cubed

1 cup of chopped greeen beans

1  onion, finely sliced

1 green chili, chopped

2 tbsp julienned ginger

1 tbsp chopped garlic

2 green cardamom

2 black cardamoms

2 cloves

small piece of cinnamon 

1/2 cup of plain yogurt

1/4 tsp turmeric powder

1/2 tsp red chili powder/cayenne pepper

2 tbsp cashewnuts or whole almonds

1 tbsp sultanas/raisins/dates

3 tbsp olive oil

Whole spices in the vegetable mixture

German style red cabbage

My father's favourite vegetable is red cabbage. So when I was cooking roast pork the other evening I decided to cook some to go with the dinner, with enough left over for a meal later in the week for him.  I also really enjoy the sweet and sour tangy flavours of this dish with the rich goodness of roast pork and crackling. It is easy to make and can be made ahead and then warmed up just before serving, and it makes good use of one of the few vegetables that are in season around here at this time of year.

1/2 medium head red cabbage, chopped
1 apple, peeled and chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
6 whole peppercorns
2 whole cloves
1 bay leaf

Add all the ingredients to a large pot on the stove.

Hearty ground turkey and vegetable soup

We are now in the deep dark depths of winter, the Christmas celebrations behind us, long nights, short days, drab gray weather, and the summer far in the future.  It really is my least favourite time of year, if it wasn't for my birthday this month, I am not sure how I would make it through.

The drab view from my house in early January

It is also one of my busiest months of the year at work and therefore I have been working long days, leaving in the dark and getting home long after the sun has set, really not feeling like doing much cooking.  In an effort to not breakdown and buy take out, I made a large batch of hearty warming soup that I can heat up quickly when I get home.

View in my kitchen in early January

Puree of white winter vegetables with Roast beef

When ever I make a turkey dinner  I always cook Trio of root vegetables which is carrot, turnip and sweet potato mashed together.  This dish is similar and comes from a book by John Hadamuscin  as well.

I love both parsnip and celery root and at this time of year they are some of the few vegetables that can be bought that are grown locally.  I had 18 people for dinner on Sunday, I was serving roast beef and I thought that this dish would complement the beef.

A beautiful and very large prime rib roast

Puree of white winter vegetables

Equal portions of:
Parsnip
celery root
rutabaga
1 pear
butter to taste.

Peel and slice the vegetables and chop in to equal size pieces then place in a large pot of cold salted water.

Sunchokes or Jerusalem artichokes

A good friend from work who shares my passion for food came for dinner on Saturday. She hunted and gathered the  vegetables to go with roast pork that I was cooking At the winter market in Vancouver.  She came with the largest and most amazing sunchokes that I had ever seen.

I have cooked these before but not too often and have usually made soup with them.  I did a little research and found that these are indigenous to North America and were cultivated by the Native North Americans long before the Europeans arrived.  It is the root of a particular specious of sunflower.

We washed them and then cut up in to equal size pieces and boiled until they were tender. Then I mashed like a potato with a little butter and salt.

They have a distinct artichoke flavour, but we decided to serve them with 2/3 mashed sunchoke and 1/3 mashed German butter potatoes.

These were served along with roasted Brussels sprouts which had also been picked up at the winter market still attached to their stalk.

Roasted Parsnips

Parsnips are a much underrated vegetable here in North America, I am not sure why, but at this time of year along with the potatoes, carrots, beets and other root vegetables they are the kings of the farmers markets. My favourite way to cook parsnips is the same as many other vegetables, roasted.

This is dead easy.  Peel and cut the parsnips in to equal sized pieces place in a roasting tin, drizzle over olive oil and grated Parmesan cheese.

Asparagus and pine nut salad

This salad was made by my friend from England Jacky, she had it a friend of hers' over there and thought it would go well with our Italian dinner.  And she was right it was the hit of the night.

Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of her making it as she did not take any and I was otherwise engaged. But anyway here goes.

1 bunch of Asparagus
3/4  cup of pine nuts (she said that she thoughts walnuts or pecans would work as well)
3 tablespoons of olive oil
Container of baby arugula
Juice of one lemon.

Roasted potatoes and Brussels sprouts

Roasting vegetables that are usually steamed or boiled seems to be every where these days and for good reason.  Asparagus, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts all seem to improve with a little caramelising.  Brussels sprouts are actually in my opinion the king of the green vegetable kingdom, and I would eat them much more often if it was up to me.  I am afraid the rest of my family does not necessarily agree, they are willing to put up with them with a Sunday roast but that is about it.

But with my husband and father in Chicago for a few days I find my self on my own for dinners, so I can cook what ever I want.  This will often be eggplant or liver but it is the season of the Brussels sprout and I had one last potato from my garden to eat so I decided to roast them together.

This could hardly be called a recipe really just a suggestion.  Toss Brussels sprouts and chopped potato together with a little olive oil and some salt . I used about 2/3 sprouts to 1/3 potato.

The potatoes need to be cut quite small so that the sprouts do not get over cooked before the potatoes are ready.

Rosemary roasted potatoes

On Sunday my husband dug out one of our potato plants to see how the potatoes were doing. Finally they have grown large enough to really use.

They are not quite as large as they look next to those carrots, those carrots are mini carrots really too small to be taken away from their mother.  But the potatoes were spectacular and enough to feed five for dinner and a couple of small ones for two of us another evening.

Roast yellow zucchini

At the Farmers Market on Sunday my friends daughter bought some beautiful yellow squash and since she and her parents were coming for dinner she asked if I would cook them for her. I had intended to roast them with parmesan but unfortunately I was completely out of parmesan cheese.  Plan b make a mixture of breadcrumbs and fresh herbs to top them with, but I was completely out of breadcrumbs and no spare bread to make any with.  Plan C it would have to be.

Plan C was a handful of stoned wheat thin crackers wizzed in a small food processor with fresh basil, parsley and some course salt.

I sprinkled this over the top of the zucchini then drizzled with olive oil.

Pickled red cabbage

Pickled red cabbage is something that I remember from my childhood in England.  This was something we had mostly at Christmas as it goes very well with cold meat, left over turkey or ham perhaps. Any way My husband bought this beautiful big red cabbage at the farmers Market in Penticton.

 The only thing to do was make pickled red cabbage.

I had never made this before but it fit in to my eating local and in season as advocated by Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal Vegetable Miracle". In order to eat seasonally all year round, you have to preserve some things to be consumed in the long cold days of winter when there is very little grown locally.  So armed with my computer and google I searched the Internet for recipes for pickled red cabbage.  I found quite a few and the one I liked the sound of the most was on BBC.co.uk this seemed simple and I followed the instructions. There were very few measurements, I guess it really depends on the size of your cabbage.

Cooking in Florence - antipasto pizza artichokes

One of the main reasons for wanting an apartment in Florence was so that I could cook with all those wonderful Italian ingredients.  As it turned out there were many reasons having an apartment it was better than a hotel, and I got a stinking cold as I arrived which meant I could not taste or smell almost the entire time.  This took some of the pleasure out of cooking (and eating too I am afraid).  Never the less cook we would.

There was a supermarket just around the corner from our apartment and hunting and gathering there was a treat.

Wonderful looking artichokes in the market

The first day that we went I saw these artichokes and I had to cook them.  I cooked them my favourite way  served in a light lemony vinaigrette.

Artichoke hearts

There was of course an abundance of antipasto fixings, hams, salamis and cheeses.  So it was easy to put out platters of these and nibble as we had our pre dinner prosseco.

Root Vegetable Soup

My husband and I took advantage of the spring like weather on the weekend and did a lot of work in the garden.  I planted out tomatoes and some herbs, while he did some heavy work of shoring up some retaining walls.  I thought we deserved a healthy lunch and checked out the fridge to see what there was to make a soup out of.

I found some carrots, parsnip, cabbage and few small tomatoes.  So this was what my soup would be made of.

1 small onion chopped
1 garlic clove finely chopped
1 tablespoon of olive oil
4 carrots peeled and chopped
2 parsnips peeled and chopped
4 campari tomatoes
Small handful of fresh thyme
2 cups of chicken stock
6 nugget potatoes quartered
1/4 cabbage shredded

Feeding hungry men - steak, dinner

Friday of the Easter weekend dawned bright and sunny and almost warm for the first time this year so good friends of ours chose this day to stucco a large wall along their property line.  They phoned my husband to see if he would help and of course he jumped at the chance to help a friend.  They had solicited other friends and relatives and it was hands on hard work all day.

Of course I could not help with the physical labour, (my back and all) so the best I could do to help with the proceedings is to work with Nancy to pull off a dinner to feed the workers.  We decided steak would be an appropriate choice for manual labourers

The workers

This is not so much recipes as a menu and some ideas should you find your self having to feed some hard working men.

Roasted Asparagus

It is asparagus time of year, and I do think that we should eat more seasonally, in the past spring was the only time you could get asparagus and late spring/early summer was the only time you could get strawberries. Having said that I am as bad as the next person for buying food when I want it rather than when it is in season.  But I am going to try to do better, and as it is asparagus season Nancy and I had roasted asparagus with our steaks.

Hardly a recipe really just a method of cooking.  Roasting asparagus like roasting most vegetables intensifies their flavour and really is my preferred way to cook them.  With asparagus you want to make sure not to over cook them unlike other vegetables that are roasted these are really better if sill bright green and still with a little bite to them.

Roast parmesan fennel

As I think I may have said before fennel is a vegetable that I think is much underused.  This method of cooking it is trying to replicate how I had it cooked in Italy a couple of years ago and is now a regular accompaniment to our Sunday dinner.

Very simple like a lot of Italian food it all depends on good ingredients.

1 medium fennel bulb sliced
1/2 cup of freshly grated Parmesan
3 tablespoons of good fruity olive oil
Juice of one lemon.

Cut the top of the fennel bulb

Decapitated fennel bulb

Chana dal

Sunday night we had some people over for dinner that the rest of my family had met, but I had not. They were a family originally from India and the Mother was vegetarian, so (quite bravely I thought) I decided to make one of my favourite Indian vegetarian dishes Chana Dal.

This is a dish that comes together quickly, especially if you use canned chickpeas like I did.

Rice and beans

This weekend was my birthday weekend and I spent it with 10 girl friends at a beautiful house up on the sunshine coast. As you can imagine there was a lot of talking and laughing, which is pretty much how we spent our time along with playing quiddler, walking, watching movies, dancing and of course the odd glass of wine was drunk. I also got to indulge my love for cooking and eating.

The first night I made the Cuban style pork roast but this time we used a butt roast and cooked it for about 3 hours.  I had a vision of rice and beans to go with it, so this is what I threw together.

2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 cups of rice
1 bunch of green onion chopped
1 garlic clove thinly sliced
1 yellow (or orange or red or green) bell pepper chopped
2 stalks of celery chopped
1 tablespoon of cumin
1 teaspoon of hot smoked paprika
2 1/2 cups of chicken stock
1 can of drained red beans
Handful of chopped cilantro.