Vietnamese Fried Spring Rolls {Chả Giò}

June 30, 2017 By Korena in the Kitchen 6 Comments

There is a certain local Asian noodle bar that has built an entire business model on its take-out boxes of delicious noodle dishes, but what keeps me coming back are their spring rolls. Piping hot and crisp, full of savoury pork, carrots, bean thread noodles, and general umami-ness, they are served with crunchy green lettuce leaves and sprigs of fresh cilantro to wrap around them and salty-spicy-sweet nước chấm for dipping. They are insanely delicious and I could easily eat half a dozen in one sitting, but sadly each order only contains two rolls.

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Thanksgiving Turchetta, Etc – aka The Best Turkey Ever

October 19, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 7 Comments

Turchetta, Etc | Korena in the Kitchen Thanksgiving here in Canada has come and gone, and with it came time with family and lots and lots of food. After the success of last year’s de-boned, rolled, and stuffed turkey, I knew wanted to try something equally – if not more – amazing. Enter the turchetta: a rolled turkey breast prepared in the style of porchetta, which is a roasted pork loin of infinite deliciousness. I’ve got to say, the turkey version is also pretty infinitely delicious, and less work than removing all the bones from a turkey!…

Tarte Flambée

June 2, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 6 Comments

Tarte flambée, also known as flammekueche in Alsatian or flammekuchen in German, is a regional specialty of Alsace in the eastern-most corner of France bordering Germany and Switzerland. It is essentially a pizza topped with bacon and thinly sliced onions, and as such is totally something I can get behind. I first came across it at a local bakery/vineyard – I can’t actually remember if we tried it, but it stuck in my mind nonetheless, and soon after when I saw a recipe for tarte flambée appear on the Homesick Texan blog (with jalapenos added to Texan-ify it) I knew that I would eventually be making it myself.

Tarte Flambée | Korena in the Kitchen …

Porchetta-style Roast Pork Shoulder with Salsa Verde

April 24, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 8 Comments

Porchetta-style Roast Pork Shoulder with Salsa Verde | Korena in the Kitchen

I’ve had porchetta on the brain ever since watching the episode of Diners, Drive-ins and Dive that featured the porchetta sandwich at Meat and Bread in Vancouver (I’m pretty sure Guy Fieri pronounced it as some combination of “too legit to quit”/”winner-winner-chicken-dinner”/”Flavourtown”). I’ve never been to Meat and Bread to sample their porchetta, but on Saturday of Easter weekend Nate and I checked out Roast Carvery in Victoria, which is a similar concept: big joints of beautifully roasted meat, sliced to order and piled on a soft and crusty artisan roll with minimal fuss for a truly transcendent sandwich experience. I had Roast’s version of the porchetta sandwich, featuring crispy crackling, provolone cheese, sautéed broccoli raab, and a good dose of salsa verde along with the succulent porchetta, and man oh man, I think it might have been the best sandwich I’ve ever had. So. Good.

(Also – the new Victoria Public Market at The Hudson where Roast is located is pretty rad! I could have spent an hour alone just tasting olive oils and vinegars (apricot white balsamic! cinnamon pear dark balsamic!) and definitely need to go back to browse through the whole place more thoroughly.)

Porchetta-style Roast Pork Shoulder with Salsa Verde | Korena in the Kitchen …

Samuel Adams Winter Lager Roasted Chicken with Orange, Fennel, and Chili

March 13, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 10 Comments

Nothing says comfort food like roast chicken, and although we are finally crawling out of the depths of winter (it felt like this one lasted forever), comfort is still what I’m after. I’ve seen lots of recipes for roast chicken with wine, but I’m more of a beer girl myself so I wanted to experiment with a beer roasted chicken (similar to beer-can chicken, but classier!).

One good thing about winter is the variety of seasonal brews available, often with a slightly spicy character. I used Samuel Adams Winter Lager, which is a hoppy, bock-style beer with notes of orange, cinnamon, and ginger, although any slightly hoppy beer with citrus flavours could be used. (Samuel Adams is available in Canada at the LCBO or The Beer Store in Ontario, BCLDB in British Columbia or Liquor Depot in Alberta. I only wish I’d been able to find this Samuel Adams beer!). To compliment the beer, I smeared a flavoured butter of orange zest, fennel seeds, and chili flakes under the the skin of the chicken, stuffed the cavity with orange and a clove of garlic, and basted it with beer while it roasted. The pan juices, full of flavoured butter and slightly reduced caramelized beer, were turned into a delicious, drunken gravy with a little extra beer and a squeeze of orange juice.

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Daring Bakers: Thanksgiving Turkey Pot Pie

October 27, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 13 Comments

Hannah of Rise and Shine was our October 2013 Daring Bakers’ hostess and she challenged us to bake our own double crusted savory pot pies. Using any from-scratch crust and filling we choose, we were allowed to get completely creative with our recipe, showing off the savory flavors and fillings from our own home or region.

A few days after Thanksgiving, I found myself with an abundance of two things in the kitchen: leftover turkey and green tomatoes, salvaged from my weather-beaten-and-dying tomato plants. I kicked off Operation Leftover Turkey with a batch of turkey enchiladas with green tomato salsa (I used this recipe, doubling the salsa and subbing the tomatillos for green tomatoes – it was extremely delicious), but I still had more turkey to use up. Thanksgiving: the meal that keeps on giving.

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A New Kind of Thanksgiving Turkey

October 18, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 22 Comments

Last weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving, which meant turkey, turkey, turkey (I finally froze the leftovers because I just couldn’t face them any more!). We hosted my parents for dinner and again, I cooked the turkey… but not just any turkey. This year, I took the opportunity cross an item off The List by de-boning*, stuffing, and rolling the turkey. The results were amazing!

While the prep for a de-boned, stuffed, and rolled turkey is a little more time consuming than a regular stuffed bird (it took me forty-five minutes to de-bone it, and another thirty minutes to stuff, roll, and truss it), it pays off in ease of cooking. No estimating cooking times based on weight/stuffed/unstuffed/previously frozen/fresh, etc – just two to two-and-a-half hours! No basting! No specialty gigantic unwieldy roasting pan!

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Chanterelles and Power Outages

October 2, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 9 Comments

On Saturday I went to the Duncan Farmers Market with $20 and came home with this:

That’s $10 worth of fresh, locally-grown veggies and $10 worth of wild chanterelle mushrooms. Yes, a bit of a splurge at a dollar per ounce for the mushrooms, but when you get an entire tree of brussels sprouts for $2.50, you can be spendy in other categories! (The brussels sprouts have already gone into this pasta with bacon and feta and will undoubtedly be skillet roasted as well.)

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The Canadian Food Experience Project: BC Spot Prawn Cioppino

July 7, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 19 Comments

{A Regional Canadian Food from the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island}

The Canadian Food Experience Project began June 7 2013. As we share our collective stories across the vastness of our Canadian landscape through our regional food experiences, we hope to bring global clarity to our Canadian culinary identity through the cadence of our concerted Canadian voice. Please join us.

What comes to mind when you think of Canadian food? Maple syrup and poutine? Canadian bacon? (Known as back bacon here, but everyone I know eats regular bacon.) Tim Horton’s coffee and doughnuts? Patriotic beer? (Just for the record, decidedly NOT the best this land has to offer.) Of course there is much more to Canadian food than that, but it’s a tough one to answer. Canada is a HUGE place and it includes people of so many different cultural backgrounds. Other than First Nations people, we are all immigrants from somewhere (some more recent than others), so naturally the way we prepare and eat food is influenced by whatever culture we came from. Discovering what “Canadian food” is, exactly, is kind of exciting to a food geek like me, so I am thrilled to be participating in The Canadian Food Experience Project, which was started last month by Valerie Lujonga of A Canadian Foodie in an attempt to explore and help answer the question, “What is Canadian food?“

Poutine: the most Canadian food? (photo credit: Huffingtonpost.ca)

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Tomato Basil Risotto

July 4, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 2 Comments

Summer is finally here. After a long, wet June, July has brought the sunshine: five straight days (and counting!) of temperatures in the high 20s, plus over the weekend I a) went swimming in the lake, and b) bought a pint of fresh raspberries. That pretty much settles it.

It also means that it’s prime tomato growing season. This weekend in addition to a) and b) above, I planted some tomato plants in a very sunny spot beside the house, and hopefully towards the end of August, I will be rewarded with juicy, red, succulent fruit (says the girl who doesn’t usually like tomatoes all that much). In the meantime, I’ll be brushing up on my best tomato recipes.

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