Archive | May, 2011

Perfect Pancakes with Fruit

29 May

I am constantly on the search for the “best” or “perfect” recipe for certain things – among them, pancakes, pie crust, and chocolate chip cookies. My go-to pancake recipe has been one that I got from TV quite a few years ago, and it has never failed me… however it calls for buttermilk, which is not something I usually have hanging out in my fridge, especially on random weekend mornings when the pancake urge hits. I end up making sour milk with a dash of white vinegar and subbing it for the buttermilk, but the fact that the recipe contains an inconvenient ingredient sort of subtracts from the “perfectness” of the recipe for me (yeah, I’m a weirdo). (Also, I’ve never really understood what makes a buttermilk pancake any better than a regular pancake, so I’ve never really seen the need to use buttermilk.) Anyway, the quest continued…

I came across this recipe, aptly named “Perfect Pancakes”, on a food blog about a year ago, and wrote it down in my little recipe notebook without noting the source, which I though I would never again find in the bowels of teh interwebz. However, through the magic of Google, I found it, so I can give credit where credit is due for what really is the perfect pancake! I finally made them for the first time the other week, and I will definitely be making them again. They were beautifully light and fluffy and they cooked up perfectly, and they didn’t require any ingredients other than those normally found in my kitchen (ie, no buttermilk). I added frozen blueberries and strawberries and bananas and served them with maple syrup (don’t even talk to me about that Aunt Jemima crap!). Please try these. They actually are perfect :) Continue reading 

Daring Bakers: Mexican Chocolate Marquise

27 May

The May 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Emma of CookCraftGrow and Jenny of Purple House Dirt. They chose to challenge everyone to make a Chocolate Marquise. The inspiration for this recipe comes from a dessert they prepared at a restaurant in Seattle. Check out the challenge details and all the other Daring Bakers’ interpretations of it at the Daring Kitchen.

Last week Nate and I agreed that we’d been eating like crap lately – too much sugary junk, not enough vegetables – and we made a pact to eat better. Then the next day I started making this Daring Bakers Challenge, which is definitely sugary and doesn’t contain any vegetables, unless you count cocoa or tequila as a vegetable.

They were both vegetables/plants, once upon a time, right? Right?!

Oh well. Our fridge is overflowing with lettuce right now, so we’ll make up for it in salads ;)

This is a complicated looking dessert that is actually fairly straight forward, once you get your ducks in a row. The original recipe comes from a restaurant in Seattle, and the yield was for 18 servings!! Thank you Audax Artifex for cutting it down to a more reasonable 6 servings – although this could have easily made 8 servings. It was so rich that only Nate and I managed to clean our plates – everyone else tapped out, so next time I’ll definitely serve smaller portions!What you’re doing here is making a flavoured chocolate ganache and mixing it with whipped cream and whipped egg yolks tempered with sugar syrup. You then freeze this magical concoction to make a frozen chocolate pudding-mousse. You cut it into slices, coat it in cocoa powder, and serve it in a semi-frozen state on top of torched meringue (like the topping on a lemon meringue pie) with caramel sauce and spiced almonds.

I stayed true to the original flavoring of tequila in the chocolate marquise and caramel, but I used chipotle powder instead of cayenne because I thought the slightly smoky flavour would compliment both the dark chocolate and the tequila. Next time I might add a bit of cinnamon to round out the Mexican flavours. I can also see how this would be amazing with coffee flavouring or Kahlua for a mocha marquise, and maybe a dark chocolate porter beer in the caramel. Or maybe hazelnut or Frangelico… So many delicious possibilities!

I took a lesson from my last Daring Bakers Challenge and did this over several days: I made and froze the marquise a few days before, and then on the day I was serving it, I made the caramel, nuts, and meringue. Much, much better than trying to cram it all into one day! (Which would be really hard to do anyway, because the marquise needs 6-8 hours to freeze.) Also, there is a LOT of whisking that goes into this recipe. I used my KitchenAid stand mixer, but you could manage just fine with a handheld mixer if you had someone else around to hold it while you do other things. Hats off to the brave Daring Bakers out there who made this whole thing with a hand whisk!

This recipe went off without a hitch, except for the spiced almonds: I must have over-beaten the egg white because I ended up with more of a spiced-almond-meringue-brittle. Thirty minutes was also too long in the oven, and the nuts around the edges got a little burnt, but I just broke them off and chopped the rest up to sprinkle on the plates. So in the end, success! Continue reading 

Second Saturday: Dinner at Pizzeria Prima Strada

23 May

I almost didn’t post about this Second Saturday outing, because the pictures I took are so awful (crappy cell phone camera + dark restaurant = baaaaaaad photos), but the pizza was so good that I can’t not share. So here it is. Please excuse the photos!

This edition of Second Saturday actually took place on a Monday, because I was out of town for the second Saturday of May. Katheryn, Lynette, and I met for dinner at Pizzeria Prima Strada in Cook St Village for beautiful, thin-crust, oven-fired, Neapolitan-style pizza. We had all eaten there before, so Second Saturday was just a good excuse to eat there again. One thing I really like about this restaurant is that they use fresh, Vancouver Island ingredients wherever possible, including mozzarella di bufala from Natural Pastures (made with milk from Fairburn Farms, home to the only water buffalo herd in Canada!), pepperoni made by Choux Choux Charcuterie, and house made sausage and salumi. I love food even more knowing that something so delicious is produced or grown nearby!

The menu is pretty small, which I usually find is a good thing, because it means the kitchen is not trying to do a hundred different things; instead they are focused on doing one kind of thing very well, and it usually results in a much better meal. In Prima Strada’s case, there are a few Antipasti and Insalata offered, ten different pizzas to choose from, Dolci (desserts), and some daily specials. They also have a succinct wine list and serve local Driftwood Brewery beer and several Italian liquors. The pizzas range from the cheeseless Marinara to the traditional Margherita to the spicy salame Diavola to the cream-based Panna e Pancetta. We ended up going with the Funghi (porcini cream, roasted mushrooms, roasted onions, fresh thyme, mozzarella, pecorino), the Panna e Pancetta (cream, pancetta, parmigiano, mozzarella, ricotta, scallions), and a special pizza with spicy Calabrese salami, roasted red pepper, arugula pesto, bocconcini, and red onion. We also ordered a bottle of wine, Mezzomondo Rosso, which was good but honestly I can’t remember anything specific about how it tasted. I was concentrating more on the pizza ;) Continue reading 

Chinese BBQ Pork Spareribs

21 May

Downtown in Victoria’s Chinatown (the oldest Chinatown in Canada, yo!) (also probably the smallest, as it’s literally only one block long) there are several Chinese BBQ shops with barbequed ducks, chickens, and meat hanging in the window. If you go in and order some barbequed pork, the guy behind the counter will grab a hunk of pork from the window, throw it down onto a worn wooden chopping block, grasp a formidable-looking cleaver, and hack the pork into little bits, which he will then wrap in purple butchers’ paper and hand to you with a little smile, like he knows how much you are going to enjoy those juicy, salty-sweet, porky morsels. Mmm-mmm indeed. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water a little bit.

I stumbled across a recipe for homemade Chinese BBQ pork on someone’s blog, and of course it made me want to try it for myself. I had also recently seen a recipe for Chinese pork spareribs, and I happened to have some ribs in the freezer, so I decided to combine the two to make Chinese BBQ pork spareribs. SO GOOD. I cooked them most of the way in the slow cooker and then finished them on the barbeque, because the Chinese name for barbequed pork means something along the lines of “fork toasted” – as in, the meat is toasted over flames on a fork to finish cooking it. I figured on a grill over flames was close enough!

The only thing I had to purchase for this recipe was the Chinese 5 Spice Powder, the ingredients of which vary but apparently the most common is a combination of cinnamon, star anise, cloves, fennel, and Szechuan pepper. In fact, my Chinese 5 Spice Powder is simply labeled “Chinese Spice Powder” and only has four ingredients! But it still tasted great, so I’m quite sure that whatever five or so spices sold together as Chinese 5 Spice Powder will be just fine in this recipe! Some more authentic recipes call for using maltose as a sweetener, but I couldn’t find any so I just used honey and a touch of brown sugar.

I chose to use this sauce on ribs, but you could also use it on other cuts of pork. Most recipes recommend marinating either pork tenderloin (for leaner BBQ pork) or pork butt (for fattier, juicier BBQ pork) in the sauce before roasting and then grilling it and brushing it with more sauce. I want to try making this with pork butt and rotisserie-ing it on the barbeque! Continue reading 

Churched-up Marshmallow Cereal Bars with Coconut and Pecans

19 May

I was looking through my baking cupboard yesterday and realized I had all of the necessary ingredients for these bars on hand: leftovers from a massive bag of marshmallows from a class camping trip, shredded coconut from making granola, pecans, and cereal. This morning when I actually pulled everything out and started to measure, however, I discovered that I didn’t have quite enough of anything. *Sigh*. By that point I was committed to making them, so half an hour and one trip to the store later, I *actually* had all of the necessary ingredients on hand and in the right amounts!

This recipe is courtesy of my trusted friend Martha, with a few tweaks by yours truly. They are essentially Rice Krispie Squares (cereal mixed with melted marshmallows and butter), however they are “churched-up” by the addition of toasted coconut and pecans. Originally the recipe called for cornflakes, but the first time I made them I used Kellog’s Just Right cereal, which has corn flakes, puffed rice, and toasted oats. They turned out really well and I have never made them with anything else. I also added vanilla, because everything is better with vanilla, right? Especially marshmallows!

Continue reading 

Easy Coconut Rice

13 May

About 5 years ago, I had a meal at a restaurant in California that served up a mean coconut rice. It was creamy and delicious and delicately flavoured, and this is my attempt to duplicate it. Admittedly, I can’t remember with great certainty exactly what the rice at that restaurant tasted like, so I don’t really have anything to compare to, but this tastes pretty good and is super easy to make. I add a touch of brown sugar and a drop of vanilla for a little extra perfume and flavour, and if you want to get fancy, you can stir in some toasted coconut after cooking. This is great served with stirfries or curries, and is especially good beside meat grilled with sweet chili sauce.

Just be careful not to let the rice and coconut milk boil over, or your stove will look like this: Continue reading 

Strawberry Rhubarb Coffee Cake with Ginger

10 May

I’ve been on a rhubarb kick lately. I bought about 4 kilograms of local rhubarb a few weeks ago and it’s now in my freezer, waiting to be used in something delicious. Seeing as the strawberry rhubarb pie I made at Easter didn’t quite satisfy my craving for slightly tart rhubarb-y goodness, I decided to make a coffee cake instead. This is based on a recipe that I’ve had in my little recipe notebook since high school – I think it is from making goodies for the concession at a school concert or something, but I have no idea of the original source. I took some inspiration from this recipe from a baking group called “Tuesdays with Dorie” (they are baking their way through a cookbook by Dorie Greenspan, of Julia Child fame) and modified the coffee cake to use strawberries and rhubarb, with some ground ginger in the cake and candied ginger in the fruit and brown-sugar struesel topping. I also used whole wheat pastry flour, which gives the cake a slightly “toasty” flavour and stands up well to the more assertive rhubarb flavour. You actually wouldn’t even know it was made with whole wheat because the cake was still moist and light.

The candied ginger I used was marked “mild” and I could have easily used twice as much to get a better ginger taste. I could have also used more ground ginger in the cake batter, and the recipe below is how I would make it next time, ie: with more ginger! If ginger isn’t your thing, feel free to omit it, however it is a really nice addition to the classic strawberry rhubarb combination.

One thing to note: you can use fresh or frozen fruit, but don’t mix it together with the sugar and lemon juice until just before you are really to sprinkle it over the batter, otherwise you will end up with a bunch of liquid in the bottom of the bowl that you have to discard because it will make your cake soggy :( Continue reading 

Cinco de Mayo Fajitas!

5 May

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Today I made flank steak fajitas with purple cabbage slaw for dinner. They are so simple that they don’t really require a recipe, so what follows is more of a guideline. The first time I made these was a few years ago during Earth Hour, when you are supposed to turn off all the lights, so I was literally making them in the dark (well, by candlelight) – but they were so easy to make that it didn’t matter. They were also delicious, and have become my favorite Mexican-ish dish to make at home.

If the thought of cabbage in a fajita weirds you out, you just have to trust me. It is tossed with lime juice and salt and pepper, and the fresh crunch of the tangy cabbage slaw is fantastic in the fajita – a nice change from lettuce. Please try these – you will not be sorry!

I like to use flank steak because it is relatively cheap and flavourful and is conducive to being sliced thinly, but obviously you can use whatever kind of steak you like. I upped the ante by making homemade tortillas, seeing as it’s Cinco de Mayo and all. They were really good and added a nice chewy texture to the juicy steak and crunchy cabbage. Click for the recipe

Lemon-tastic: Birthday Cake with Lemon Curd Filling and Candied Lemon Slices

3 May

Yesterday was Nate’s birthday, and I wanted to make him a cake. He suggested something lemony with cream cheese icing, so I came up with a layer cake filled with lemon curd and covered in white chocolate cream cheese icing. Sounds good, right?

In theory, it was good. It looked good. In reality, it could have been better in several ways. One thing is for sure, this cake was SWEET. Holy sugar headache, Batman!

Sometimes I get a little over-enthusiastic about trying something new, in that I start trying to re-invent the wheel. I Googled “lemon layer cake” and came up with several tried and true recipes (many of which used a 1-2-3-4 cake as a base), but did I go for one of them? Nope, I wanted to do it differently – better, I was hoping. Continue reading 

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