Veal picante/piccata

I am lucky enough to be London visiting old friends and attending an old school friends, daughters wedding.  The first few days I am staying in central London with the woman who used to baby sit me when I was little, so really we are more like family.  When I come to stay with her it is a pleasure to gather local food and cook dinners for the family.

I love veal and this is something that is hard to get in Vancouver, so when I saw some lovely looking veal at the local butchers I had to get some. At home I often use chicken breast or pork to replace the veal, but what a treat to find the real thing. I cooked it the way I like it best which is somewhere in between Veal Picante and Veal Piccata.

To feed 4
4 veal escalopes (or 2 large cut in half which is what we did)
2 tablespoons of flour
1 tablespoon of olive oil
4 green onions
1/3 cup of white wine
juice of one lemon
2 heaped tablespoons of capers
hand full of chopped parsley.

Beat out the escalopes until they are nice and thin and season well with salt and pepper.

Dredge in the flour so that they have a light dusting all over.

Meanwhile heat the olive oil in a frying pan and when it is hot add the veal.

Moroccan Preserved lemons

Moroccan preserved lemons are pickled in brine and have a salty taste and texture which is difficult to describe.  The peel loses its bitterness and adds a very distinctive flavour to many dishes like chicken and lemon tagine

Preserved lemons are widely used in Moroccan cooking, and essential if your dishes are to taste authentic.  You can buy them, but they are hard to find in Canada and rather expensive.

Preserving your own lemons is not difficult, though you have to think about doing it 3 weeks before you need them.  But having a jar of home preserved lemons in your fridge to use any time is a good thng.  The recipe below comes from Robert Carrier's A Taste Of Morocco, unfortunately now out of print.

Enough for one jar

4 small ripe lemons, thin skinned if possible
Coarse salt
Lemon juice

Scrub lemons with a stiff brush, then place in a large glass container.  Cover with cold water and allow the lemons to soak for 3-5 days, changing the water daily.

Drain lemons.  Then using the point of a sharp knife, insert knife 1/4 inch from the bud end of each lemon and make four incisions length ways to within 1/4 inch of the other end.  Then cut through incisions in each lemon so that the lemons are cut completely through both sides, but still held together at both ends. Insert 1/4 tsp coarse salt into centre of each lemon, squeezing them open.

Rosemary, lemon, garlic barbecued chicken

It is only the end of March, but we are enjoying summer like weather and it is a 4 day weekend, it does not get much better than that.  Friends had just arrived home from a trip to Rome and we invited them over for kind of Italian meal on the deck.

I had some chicken legs in my freezer from Hopcott's and as it was such a beautiful day, I decided to break out the barbecue for the first time in 2013.  This I am afraid required quite a bit of cleaning as there had been critters under that cover!

Feeds 6

6 chicken legs cut in half
1 lemon cut in half
4 cloves of garlic sliced very thinly
2 sprigs of Rosemary with the leaves pulled off
4 tablespoons of olive oil
salt and pepper

Place the chicken in a container to marinate and squeeze the juice out of one half of the lemon and cut the remaining half in to small pieces.  Add the lemon juice, lemon pieces and the remaining ingredients and marinate the chicken.

Chicken lemon fennel tagine

Tagine is the name not only of a dish from Morocco it also the name of the cooking vessel that it is cooked in.  But you do not have to own a tagine to make a tagine.  I do actually have one, but I was cooking up in Whistler and surprisingly did not bring mine with me, so a cast iron pot worked just fine. My good friend Nancy had made and brought with her preserved lemons and ras el hanout. both essential ingredients for Moroccan food, obviously she came with a vision to be fulfilled.

You can buy ras el hanout, which is a mixture of spices.  I think that there are as many recipes for this spice mix as there are for garam masala.  I am not sure exactly what was in Nancy's mix but I found this recipe at moroccanfood.about.com and it contains all the spices that were in hers.


2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cardamon
2 teaspoons ground mace
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon ground coriander seeds
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground anise seeds
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Or of course you could buy one pre made which would work just as well.

• 1 whole chicken cut up or equivalent in pieces
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 bulb of fennel
• 2 onions, peeled and roughly chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
• 1 preserved lemon, chopped or you could also use a fresh one.
• 1 cup of black and green olives, stoned
• handful of chopped cilantro
• 2 cups of chicken stock

Put your chicken pieces into a large bowl, massage them with the spice rub, cover and put into the fridge to marinate for a couple of hours or, even better, overnight.

When you're ready to cook, heat the olive oil in a tagine or casserole-type pan and fry the chicken pieces over a medium to high heat, skin side down first, for about 5 to 10 minutes until golden brown.

Lemon olives and rosemary almonds

One more party before the holiday season grinds to a halt, so here are a couple of ideas for New Years eve. Both these are quick and easy to make and put out when company is coming. They both take very little time, but look and taste so much better than opening up a package of pre made snack.

You could use any type of olives with the exception of those tasteless canned black olive slices that are put on pizza. This time I used large pitted green, but I have used mixed olives, black olives and even sun dried Moroccan olives.

Lemon marinated olives

2 cups of drained olives.
1 lemon
Handful of parsley finely chopped
1/4 cup of good extra virgin olive oil.

Place the drained olives in a bowl Grate the lemon zest on top and then cut the lemon in half.  Slice half the lemon in to thin slices and add to the olives.  Squeeze the juice of the remaining lemon half on top.  Add the parsley and olive oil and stir in. Sometimes I add crushed coriander seeds and finely chopped chili.

Marinate in the fridge for a couple of hours and serve at room temperature.

Quick easy and taste like you spent hours preparing.

Green and white salad for dinner on the deck

The first day of the July long weekend dawned with torrential rain and low clouds and I am ashamed to admit that we had breakfast at about 11:00 and did not get dressed until after noon.  We finally set out to the teeming metropolis of Maderia Park to hunt and gather for dinner and rent a movie for later.  At the liquor store they assured us that by 6:00 we would be able to enjoy a glass of wine outside on the deck.  Though at the time that seemed impossible her prediction came true.

At 6:00 we were indeed sitting out on the deck enjoying a glass of wine before dinner.  We had picked up some lovely baby back ribs from The Oaktree market and cooked them in a dry rub and finished them off on the barbecue.

Nancy made a delicious light salad with some spectacular local oak leaf lettuce also picked up at the Oakstreet market.

This made a salad for two.

Lemon Canada Cup cakes

When Nancy and I went go buy cup cake papers to use for the graduation cup cakes I spied Canada Day Cup Cake papers which came with little Canada flags.  Having made Jubilee Cup cakes in England, I thought it only fair that I should make Canada Cup Cakes for Canada's Birthday.

I like lemon cupcakes as the lemon flavour helps to counter the sweetness of cup cakes, and I really do not have a sweet tooth.  I made these to share with my department at work and so I made 18 exactly the right amount to give one to everybody and exactly what this recipe made.


1/2 cup butter, room temperature
2/3 cup granulated white sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Zest of 1 large lemon (outer yellow skin)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup milk

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

Lemon roast chicken

If I have to feed a crowd and I do not have a lot of time or inspiration Lemon roast chicken is my fall back dish.

Nothing could be simpler and is always a crowd pleaser.

On Sunday night there were 8 of us for dinner, so I used two whole chickens cut up, but you could use already cut up chicken pieces, allowing 2 per person.