Updates on bread, freezing and pie

This is a couple of updates on recipes that I have previously posted, the first is nut bread which is the latest in experimentation of additions to my basic bread recipe.

Unfortunately I did not get a picture of the finished bread, but believe me when I tell you it was beautiful.  The picture above is what it looked like just before placing in the oven. I made my foccacia bread recipe let it raise for 1 hour then added 1 cup of roasted nuts.  I had on hand 1/4 cup pecans and the remainder was pumpkin seeds. I cooked this bread in the same way as the  no knead bread in order to give it a crusty exterior.

The nuts were a great addition, though in fact in this picture you can hardly see any, the flavour of the nuts permiated the whole loaf.  There were 4 couples for dinner and this bread was completely gone before dinner, eaten with some wonderful flavoured olive oil and balsamic vineger.

Update number 2 is Peach pie.  At the end of the day, I believe peach pie is my favourite pie, and as we had some good friends coming down from the Okanagan with some fresh peaches I had to make a pie.

Roast butterflied chicken and potatoes

I have seen recently this method of cooking a whole chicken several times in the last month or so and have been meaning to try it for a while.  I have seen it cooked on top of a bed of vegetables, as well just potatoes and on the barbecue.  Butterflying the chicken in this way allows it to cook much quicker, and my family decided because of this it kept the chicken moister.

The thought of the chicken roasting on a bed of potatoes appealed to me, I recently cooked a roast rack of lamb on potatoes and the potatoes were wonderful.  With all the juices that come out of a chicken this could only be better.

Butterflying (or spatchcocking) is quite easy to do, but you do need a good pair or kitchen shears.  I expect any decent butcher would do it for you.

Feeds 4

1 whole frying chicken
4 medium potatoes sliced
1 onion sliced
sprig of thyme
sprig of sage
Drizzle of olive oil

Crisp refreshing salad

Before going to the movies a good friend invited me down for a quick home made soup dinner. To go with this I made a salad.  The soup was a cream of Brussels sprouts (delicious) and so I wanted a crisp light salad to counterpoint the richness of the soup. I perused my fridge and this is what I came up with.

3 small Lebanese cucumbers chopped
1 bunch of green onions chopped
1/2 container of grape tomatoes cut in half
2 heads of romaine (cos) lettuce cut or torn in to pieces
1/4 cup of grated Parmesan cheese.

Dressing
1 garlic clove grated
Salt and pepper
1 handful of chopped parsley
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon of white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons of olive oil.

First I mixed the dressing ingredients in the bottom of the salad bowl and then added the onion and cucumber.

I mixed thoroughly to coat the cucumber and I then added the tomato and gently stirred them in

Roast rack of pork

The butcher at the Oak Tree market in Pender Harbour had some beautiful racks of pork on sale on the long weeken and Nancy bought an 8 bone rack for dinner.  She searched on epicurious.com for recipe and she came up with Roasted Double Rack of Pork with Morel Mushroom Pan Sauce

Of course we did not have any morel mushrooms, but we did not let that deter us. we bought some other dried mushrooms at the IGA and started to make the sauce, but I am afraid if you want to see how to make this sauce you will have to follow the above link, as instead of taking care it we were doing this.

Perfect Roast potatoes

Roast potatoes in England are a very important component of a roast dinner, and there are many theories and methods of how to make the perfect roast potatoes.  Recently when I was in London James decided he was going  to try a method that his mother had read recently that apparently would impart the perfect crispy coating to the perfect roast potatoes.

The theory was if you tossed the parboiled potatoes in cornmeal before adding them to the fat they would crisp up even more.

First parboil the potatoes, you need floury potatoes for this not waxy ones as you want them to just be breaking down around the edges before you start roasting.

par boiled floury potatoes

Then he tossed them in a little cornmeal and added them to a roasting tin with the hot beef fat in it.  We got a great action shot of this happening.  If potatoes can be said to be in action.

Roasted potatoes and cauliflower

After an extravegant meal on Saturday night and substantial lunch provided by my son for Mothers day I was feeling something simple and uncomplicated for dinner on Sunday night.  There were some good potatoes in the cupboard, some salsa left over from the night before and a cauliflower that really needed to be used.  I added to this some fish I picked up at the fish store as I had a hankering for fish.

4 small potatoes cut in to quarters
1/2 a cauliflower cut in to florets
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
1 teaspoon of ground coriander
1 tablespoon of turmeric.
a pinch of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of chili powder.
a handful of chopped cilantro

Comfort food - beef stew

I needed to use up some beef stew meat that had in the freezer, so on saturday I had been reading Jamie Oliver's website  where he had been talking about not browning meat for stews. So I decided to try out one of his recipes, well kind, of I changed it a fair bit but I used his method and he was right, it tasted great with out that extra step.

• 1 tablespoon of olive oil

• 1 onion chopped and 2 cloves garlic chopped
• a handful of fresh sage leaves
• 1 lb of beef stewing meat cut in to chunks

• flour, to dust
• 2 parsnips, peeled and chopped
• 4 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 2 tablespoons tomato purée
• 1/4 a bottle of red wine
• 1 cup beef  stock

 Put a little oil into an appropriately sized pot. Add the onion, garlic and the sage leaves and fry for 3 or 4 minutes. Toss the meat in a little seasoned flour, then add it to the pot with all the vegetables.

Stewed rhubarb

Rhubarb is a much underrated fruit, and it is one of the few that is still for the most part seasonal.  You only see it in the stores in the spring and early summer and it grows very well here in south west Canada as well as in my home County of Yorkshire.  As a little girl I would visit my Grandparents in Tingley Yorkshire (the rhubarb capital of the world) where there house backed on to a rhubarb field.  we would climb over the stone wall, steal rhubarb and eat it raw dipping the ends into sugar cradled in our hands.

On Sunday morning before the rains came my husband and I went for a walk and bumped into some neighbours who said they had a surfeit of rhubarb and was I interested.  Oh yes I was interested and told them I would take as much as they could spare. I was dreaming of stewed rhubarb on plain yogurt for breakfast.

Indian spiced cauliflower soup

Friday morning was spent in the garden digging over our new vegetable garden and planting out some vegetables.  After all this labour I felt like a good home made soup.  I looked into my fridge and there was a cauliflower that had seen better days, so cauliflower soup it would be.

Cauliflower has a very mild flavour which lends itself well to Indian spices.  If you did not want to bother with grinding the whole spices, then two tablespoons of curry powder and omit the turmeric or one tablespoon of garam masala would suffice. Also If I had had some fresh chilli's  or some frozen ginger/garlic/chili paste then I would have used that, but I didn't so chili flakes would have to do.

This made 4 bowls of soup.

• 1 whole cauliflower cut in to chunks
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 1 clove of garlic chopped
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 teaspoon of grated fresh ginger
• 1 tablespoon of turmeric
• 3 cups of chicken stock
• 1 potato (optional)
• Handful of chopped cilantro

Spice mixture

• 1 teaspoon of whole coriander
• 1 teaspoon of whole cumin
• 1 whole star anise
• 1'' piece of cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of hot pepper flakes

Sweat the onion and garlic in the olive oil until just starting to brown. Wizz the spices up in a spice grinder (or coffee grinder which is what I use)

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.

Salmon Salad sandwich

I am not a big sandwich eater, I never pack one for lunch and on the weekend I would be more likely to make a quick soup than a sandwich.  But there is one sandwich I like salmon salad sandwich.  For me this has to be made with canned sockeye salmon and made on a good wholewheat bread.

The left over filling worked well on crackers with a couple more capers as a little pre dinner appetizer.

1 can of sockeye salmon
3 green onions chopped
Juice of one lemon
2 tablespoons of mayonnaise
1 teaspoon of dried dill (or fresh if you have it)
1 tablespoon of capers (sometimes)

Mix all the ingredients together in a small bowl.

Tenderloin with red wine sauce

On Sunday Nancy and I were both feeling like rack of lamb with fresh mint and maybe some mohitos.  Unfortunately IGA did not share our dream, there was no fresh mint anywhere in Madeira Park, so visions had to be changed.  We found two very nice tenderloin steaks and tried to put our disappointment behind us.

A little research was required and I found versions of this recipe in several different places, all assuring me that they were wonderful.  It requires a full bottle of wine! This makes way more sauce than we needed, but we had a disappointing bottle of red wine from Friday night that we did not know what to do with it.  "Life is too short to drink bad wine" is one of my favourite sayings, this bottle was sacrificed to make a very good sauce.

Ingredients

1 bottle of red wine
2 cups of chicken stock
1 cup of beef stock
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 onion finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic finely chopped.
Beurre Manier
2 tablespoons of butter and  tablespoons of flour mixed together to make a soft paste

Pour the wine and two stocks in to a pot, and put them to simmer for about an hour.  Though you do not have to watch it all the time you want to stay close by to ensure it does not boil away.

Blood orange and mango salad

To go along with our ribs and potatoes on Saturday we wanted something light and fresh.  When we were out shopping, or as we like to call it hunting and gathering, we found some blood oranges and small yellow mangoes, so this became the basis for the salad.

Blood orange

I made a simple vinegerette using white wine vinegar, olive oil, honey, salt and pepper. I made this in a
small bowl then added in the chopped mango, segmented orange.  I also added chopped green onion and flat leaf parsley.

Potatoes with caramelized onions

To go along with the ribs on Saturday night we decided to cook an old favourite potato dish, this is one of Nancy's signature dishes and goes very well with pork.

This a simple dish to make tastes delicious and easy to cook for a crowd, in fact in some ways it was hard to cut down for just the two of us.

2 russet potatoes thinly sliced

1 onion thinly sliced

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 cup of grated Swiss cheese.

Salt and pepper

Add the olive oil and onion to a frying pan and cook slowly until the onion is caramelized but not too dark as it is going to cook in the oven.

caramelized onions

Dry rubbed ribs

This weekend I was lucky enough to go up to Pender Harbour and relax with my close friend Nancy. We spent a very relaxing (lazy) day on Saturday, we had planned to do some painting but unfortunately or is that fortunately it was too cold.  So we spent a good deal of the day researching an upcoming trip to Europe and playing quiddler, a favourite word game.

We decided to make one of our guilty pleasures for dinner, dry rubbed baby back ribs.  I know these are not good for you but they do taste so darned good.

First make the rub.

Mix together the following

• 1 teaspoon of smoked paprika
• 1 teaspoon of regular paprika
• 1 tablespoon of cumin
• 1 tablespoon of coriander
• 1 teaspoon of ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of chili
• 2 teaspoon of salt

Rub this over both sides of the ribs.

A night of tropical food

Still feeling tropical after our trip to Puerto Rico, on Saturday night I decided to host a tropical dinner.  Within the next few weeks a couple of friends are going down to the British Virgin Islands and then another couple to Hawaii so we were all feeling tropical.

The menu came together at the last minute (as they usually do) I was inspired by the pig roast in Rincon, but the best I could come up with, was some belly pork from the Superstore that still had the skin on it.  So before going out shopping for couches and food I rubbed the skin with some course salt scored it heavily and placed it in a 300 oven.  It was in there for about 3 hours until a lot of the fat had melted away and the skin was crisp.

Cooked pork

I realize this is really no substitute for a whole roasted pig but it was the best I could come up with on short notice and that skin was wonderful. Obviously this was not enough to feed 9 and one person doesn't eat pork so I decided to cook jerk chicken.  We did not have this in Puerto Rico and I did not even see it on a menu, but it is big in Jamaica.  I cobbled together a recipe from what I could find on the Internet and what I had in the house.

Eggplant (aubergine) and potato curry

This dish is my go to dish if no one else is home for dinner, I love eggplant, potatoes and Indian food so how can I go wrong.  It is quick and easy to make for one, often I will have it on its own with some chutney and yogurt, but this night I had some broccoli rabe that need using up so I cooked that too.

2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tablespoon of garlic ginger and chili see this link to Rogon josh for details on this
1 small onion chopped
1 teaspoon of cumin seeds
1 teaspoon of ground coriander
1 teaspoon of turmeric
On small eggplant preferably the Asian type chopped up
1 medium potato
1 cup of chicken stock (or vegetable if you want to keep it vegetarian)

Coconut lamb curry

This is another of the delicious Indian dishes that we had on Saturday night.  Both Connie and I were craving lamb curry, so we picked up a boneless lamb shoulder at the big TNT shop, then searched for a recipe when we got back, which we almost followed.

We used one whole shoulder and it fed 9 with a spoonful for dinner on Monday night.

1 small boneless shoulder of lamb chopped in to small chunks
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 cloves
4 whole black peppercorns
1 small stick of cinnamon
1 star anise
2 medium onions chopped
2 large garlic cloves crated or finely chopped
1 teaspoon of ginger finely chopped
1 tablespoon of ground coriander
1 teaspoon of garam masala
1 teaspoon of salt
1/4 cup of cashew nuts whizzed in a spice grinder
1 can of coconut milk
2 green chillies very finely chopped.
Garnish with fresh coriander

Place the oil and the first 4 whole spices in a large pot, cook them for a couple of minutes until they are fragrant.

Chicken biryani

To go with our prawns in coconut milk I decided to make chicken Biryani, I have seen several different ways of making this dish, and I wanted to try this one out.  This recipe was also from my Around the World Cook Book. I have never been a big rice lover especially plain boiled or steamed rice so this is a nice dish that makes the rice much tastier.

The recipe says this serves 4, it would if they were big eaters and if you were not serving a seperate meat dish we served 9 with enough for lunch left over. But we also had prawns, lamb and green beans.

1 1/2 cups basmati rice
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion finely chopped
2 garlic cloves crushed
1 green chili finely chopped
1 inch piece of ginger finely chopped
1 1/2 lb chicken cut in to small pieces.  (we used thighs but breast would work as well)
1 teaspoon garam masala
2 tomatoes cut into wedges
1/4 teaspoon turmeric.
2 bay leaves
4 green cardamom pods
4 cloves

Curried prawns in coconut milk

On Friday night I went to see the Canadian film Cooking with Stella at the Port Moody Canadian film festival.  The film was OK and had a few problems but the scenes of cooking Indian Food were inspirational. (To me and Connie anyway.) So as we left the theatre we said "we have to cook Indian food tomorrow"

Curried prawns in coconut milk

As the next day I was helping my son move out there was little research or thought put in to recipes or ingredients needed when we went shopping.  Undeterred Kathy, Connie and I headed out to TNT to get some ingredients to make "Some Indian food"

At TNT they had some beautiful looking tiger prawns for only 6.99 lb, So we picked 1 1/2 lbs up and that was the inspiration for the first dish.

Tiger prawns waiting to be curried