Salad rolls are one of my favorite things to eat in the summer: fresh vegetables, delicious peanut sauce, and eating with my hands. I made a big plate of these for dinner and Nate and I ate them all (well, there’s one left). They are that good. If you’re not going to scarf down an entire plate for dinner, they make a great appetizer or potluck food!
I used red pepper, mango, green onions, lightly steamed snow peas, shredded carrots, mint leaves, and imitation crab in these rolls, but you could put basically anything in them: steamed asparagus, bean sprouts, pea shoots, cucumber, avocado, lettuce, cilantro, basil leaves, cooked prawns, shrimp, or scallops, grilled chicken, pork, or beef (leftover steak would be delicious!)… 
The only ingredients that are not up for interpretation are the rice noodles and rice paper wrappers. I always eat salad rolls with peanut sauce and sweet chili sauce, but again, totally up to your own preference. I’ve included my favorite peanut sauce recipe – I could eat this stuff by the bowlful….
Pumpkin, Sausage and Sage Risotto
Do you remember the days before the Food Network? Before Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and Top Chef and Cupcake Wars and Giada Di-Whatshername and Iron Chef, when channels like the Knowledge Network and KCTS9 aired cooking shows of the same calibre as Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting? I loved those shows. I used to sit in front of the TV, watching, with a pen and paper to write down the recipe and ingredients because there was no internet to get it from after the show. This risotto is based on a recipe from a show called Nick Stellino’s Family Kitchen, and believe it or not, the original recipe is now available on the internet!
After making Nick’s recipe several times, I’ve taken those flavours and put them into my basic risotto method. It comes out just as delicious but in a smaller, easier to manage quantity. If you’ve never made risotto, you should give it a try – it takes a while but is not actually difficult to make, and the results are worth it: creamy, flavourful, carbohydrate-laden deliciousness. Risotto is made of simple things – essentially just it’s rice and stock – so it’s important to pay attention to the ingredients. Use a flavourful stock, either homemade or good quality store bought. Don’t use bouillion cubes – your risotto will taste terrible. I know this from unfortunate experience :(. The rice must be specific for making risotto: short-grained round, Italian rice, and it will probably say “risotto” on the package. Arborio rice is the type I can usually find, but Carnaroli is another choice. Other kinds of rice (sushi, long grain, etc) won’t work.
“Arborio Rice – Ideal for Risotto”
And a quality parmesan (Parmegiano-Reggiano, if you can get it) makes a big difference in taste (I’ll admit that I used Canadian Parmesan for this because I’m feeling poor, but normally I’d splurge!).
Also important to note: this recipe calls for canned pumpkin purée, NOT pumpkin pie filling.
This packaging is somewhat misleading because it shows a slice of pumpkin pie, but the label reads “100% Pumpkin”
Make sure you read the ingredients on the package – it should be just pumpkin, no sugar or spices or anything else pie-like.
Nothing but pumpkin
If you are feeling industrious, you could steam some squash and make your own purée (about 1 cup), but I find opening a can to be much easier 😉
And I realize that these flavours might seem more suited to fall cooking, but my sage plant is currently sprouting leaves like mad so I figured this would be a good way to use up some of the bounty!…
Chinese BBQ Pork Spareribs
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!
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Cinco de Mayo Fajitas!
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….
Kale Tops and Spicy Peanut Stir Fry Sauce
I love spring. I love the warmer weather (well, slightly warmer – it’s still pretty darn cold out around here!), the longer days, the crocuses and cherry blossoms, the singing birds… but what I’m really appreciating this spring, more than usual perhaps, is the abundance of gorgeous, fresh, spring vegetables that are available – many of them local. At The Root Cellar, which is a super awesome green grocer in Victoria that you should definitely check out if you have not already, they stock all kinds of fantastic local spring produce, some of it fairly standard – chard, parsley, butter lettuce – and some of it more unusual – sorrel, collard greens, and kale tops. Most of the local greens in stock at the moment are from Vantreight Farms, best known for all those daffodils.
Anyway. The other day I was at The Root Cellar, browsing for dinner ideas, and I saw these kale tops. I am a big fan of brassicas (the broccoli family – my Dad calls them broccolids) so I was intrigued. Essentially, this is kale that is going to seed and is just about to burst into flower – probably not something that most people would think to eat, and definitely the first time I’ve ever seen it in a store – but why not? They looked so beautiful, green and crisp and fresh… so I brought some home to try….
Pork Tenderloin with Honeyed Butter and Sage and Perfect Roast Potatoes
This pork tenderloin is delicious. Honey-y and butter-y and sage-y and delicious. The recipe is adapted from my trusted friend Martha (I added the sage – rosemary or thyme would probably be really good as well), and as usual, she did not disappoint. This is easy enough for a weeknight but tasty enough for company. I can’t think of anything else to say, other than DELICIOUS.
The roast potatoes are adapted from Clothilde’s roast potatoes on Chocolate & Zucchini. I think her original recipe has the oven temperature a bit higher, but I find that they roast better at 375˚ F. The trick is parboiling the spuds, then draining them and giving them a good shake (with the lid on!) to bash them around a bit and create a soft, slightly mashed layer on the outside of each potato piece that gets nice and crunchy in the oven. Preheating the oil (I hear duck fat makes the best roast potatoes!) in the oven ensures that the spuds don’t soak up too much oil. It might sound complicated, but it’s really not, and it’s definitely worth the extra steps of parboiling and shaking! (Actually the shaking part is pretty fun 😉 )
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Ancho Chicken Quesadillas with Homemade Flour Tortillas and Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Last Thursday I had the day off work, so I decided to cross something off my “things to make” list: homemade flour tortillas. I’ve had a hankering for quesadillas ever since I read a post on the Frugal Flambé about chicken quesadillas with roasted red pepper sauce, so I figured this would be a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and make tortillas for quesadillas.
Apparently there are two main camps when it comes to flour tortillas: thicker, chewy, smaller Texas-style, or thin, crispy, larger Sonoran (Mexican)-style. After reading a post about the difficulties of trying to make the Sonoran-style, I opted for the Texas tortillas, using a recipe from the Homesick Texan blog. I also found a recipe there for Ancho-Chili Shrimp Quesadillas, which sounded so delicious that I ended up using the marinade for the chicken in my quesadillas.
Making these tortillas filled me with the same sense of accomplishment that I get when I make homemade scones – that feeling of having made something out of nothing. When the cupboards are bare of ready-to-eat foods, it’s great to be able to take basic, staple ingredients – flour, baking powder, fat or oil – and make something delicious out of them, rather than just saying that there’s no food in the house :D…
Grilled Pizza: a story in pictures
We just got a really nice, new-to-us barbeque from Nate’s parents, and today I christened it with grilled pizzas. I’ve done this before with moderate success (minus the charred bits 😉 ). My technique needs refining, but this is the basic idea!
For some reason I made four pizzas for only two of us. I get over-zealous with cooking sometimes. (OK, often.)
First, grill the veg for toppings (everything has been doused in olive oil, salt and pepper). This nifty veggie grilling rack is awesome. Look at those grill marks! I’m so proud.
Grill the tomatoes until they’re nice and soft and bursty – you then sort of smear them on the pizza base to make the “sauce”, but we’ll get to that later.
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Beef Stroganoff
I was craving something rich, creamy, and savoury the other evening, and this hit the spot. I’m quite sure that this is not “authentic” beef stroganoff, but then I’m not really sure what is – as far as I can tell, there’s no “traditional” recipe: it’s just beef and mushrooms in a sour cream sauce over noodles, and the variations are pretty endless. I’ve never had it made for me by anyone else, so I have nothing to compare to, but this tasted pretty darn good. I looked at a few recipes online for inspiration, and this is what I came up with 🙂 I used flank steak, but I’m sure any kind of steak would be fine – probably ground beef would work too! Shiitake mushrooms would be a great addition to this dish….
Things I made this week
I got the April issue of Bon Appetit in the mail last week, and it is full of delicious recipes that I wanted to try immediately. So, I did, and we ate quite well this week! I made three recipes from the April issue and one from the March issue. I was fairly happy with the way they all turned out, but with the exception of one (which I will share in this post), I want to do some tweaking to get them to taste the way *I* want them to before I post the recipes. But I took pictures so I’m going to share them anyway 😉 The recipes are all available at bonappetit.com and I’ve included links to the original recipes, just in case you don’t want to wait for me to post my versions here!…
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