Daring Bakers: Ukrainian Easter Paska

April 27, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 41 Comments

The April Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf’s Den. She challenged us to Spring into our kitchens and make Easter breads reflecting cultures around the world.

While I don’t personally celebrate Easter in a religious sense, I do look forward to any holiday that has a food tradition to go with it (see: Christmas baking). Paska, a special Eastern European Easter bread, is one such food tradition, and the egg-rich Ukrainian version with its intricately decorated top is one that I’ve been wanting to try for a while now. This month’s challenge was the perfect opportunity to do it.

Ukrainian Paska | 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 …

Sourdough Cider Hot Cross Buns with Chocolate Chunks

April 20, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 19 Comments

Sourdough Cider Hot Cross Buns with Chocolate Chunks | Korena in the Kitchen As I pointed out last month, Christmas cookies and hot cross buns are about the only seasonal things I manage to post about with any punctuality… and seeing as today is Easter Sunday, hot cross buns are most definitely on the menu. This month’s Sourdough Surprises project was sourdough hot cross buns, which I also tackled last year with a chocolate porter version. I decided to go a similar route this time around, adapting a recipe that used hard apple cider to make an overnight sourdough levain. And, because for me, Easter is all about chocolate, I added a generous amount of dark chocolate chunks to the dough.

Sourdough Cider Hot Cross Buns with Chocolate Chunks | Korena in the Kitchen …

Lemon Caper Cream Cheese with Smoked Salmon

April 14, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 7 Comments

Lemon Caper Cream Cheese with SeaChange Smoked Salmon - perfect for Easter brunch | Korena in the Kitchen Some of you may remember that I did a few few guest posts a while back for SeaChange Seafoods, featuring their delicious smoked salmon (my personal favorites include recipes for fettuccine alfredo with smoked salmon, smoked salmon and corn chowder, and smoked salmon and roasted tomato quiche). Over the last six or so months, SeaChange has completely re-launched their brand, which includes all new packaging and a whole new website, and I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in the process as their food stylist on several photoshoots, one of which took place in my dining room!

SeaChange photoshoot |Korena in the Kitchen

It’s been a blast working with a professional photographer (John Cameron) and taking cues from a real design company (Carter Hales Design Lab) to try to evoke a certain feeling or story with something as simple as a beautiful piece of smoked salmon, and I feel totally privileged that I’ve been getting paid to do something I love so much. Here are just a few of the images we’ve created so far:

SeaChange smoked salmon | Korena in the Kitchen

SeaChange pâté | Korena in the Kitchen

Smoked Salmon Salad | Korena in the Kitchen

SeaChange smoked salmon | Korena in the Kitchen (these four photos by John Cameron for SeaChange Seafoods)

Back in November, I also had the opportunity to cater SeaChange’s re-launch party. I traveled to Salt Spring Island, cooked my butt off all day, and served up a whole bunch of “small bites” featuring smoked salmon to about thirty people (and of course, wildly over-estimated how much food I’d need to make – but it’s better to have too much than not enough when it comes to feeding people, right?). I was so busy all day that the only thing I managed to take a picture of myself was this gigantic veggie platter – but it’s pretty, right?

veggie platter | Korena in the Kitchen

For the party, I made a few of the dishes that already appear on the SeaChange website (the aforementioned quiche, roast potato canapés with smoked salmon, and smoked salmon devilled eggs), along with a few new ones, including a delicious lemon caper cream cheese you can easily whip up to serve with smoked salmon – a perfect addition to an Easter brunch. I’m sharing the recipe today on SeaChange’s blog, so head on over to read it there. 🙂 (And watch this space for another guest post coming up in mid-June!)

Lemon Caper Cream Cheese with SeaChange Smoked Salmon - perfect for Easter brunch | Korena in the Kitchen

Salted Caramel & Chocolate Rice Crispy Squares

April 7, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 10 Comments

Salted Caramel & Chocolate Rice Crispy Squares | Korena in the Kitchen

Two weekends ago I went on a canoeing/camping trip in the Gulf Islands, where I was specifically tasked with bringing dessert for one of the evenings. My plan was to make “campfire fondue”, which consists of melting a handful of chocolate chips in a little package of foil beside a campfire, and then dipping fruit (oranges and banana chips in this case), squares of pound cake, and toasted marshmallows in it. Alas, we ended up waiting out high winds for two nights on Portland Island where fires are not allowed, and then had to cut the trip short by a day because the wind was only supposed to get worse (it was a very exciting journey home!), so unfortunately my campfire dessert never happened. Which meant that I had a whole bunch of marshmallows and chocolate chips on my hands after the trip.

Salted Caramel & Chocolate Rice Crispy Squares | Korena in the Kitchen …

Daring Bakers: Nougat Torrone

March 27, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 22 Comments

Nougat Torrone with Almonds, Pistachios and Cocoa Nibs | Korena in the Kitchen

The March 2014 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Rebecca of BakeNQuilt. She challenged us to learn to make classic nougat and to make it our own with our choice of flavors and add-ins.

Nougat is not something I’d ever contemplated making before this month – the only real experience I’ve ever had eating it is inside a Toblerone bar, so I wasn’t exactly sure what I was in for. Nougat is, in our host Rebecca’s words, “an aerated candy made from sugar, honey, egg whites, and nuts”, which can range in texture from “chewy, soft, and tender to hard and brittle”. It’s a mostly European confection (nougat torrone is the Italian kind), although it seems similar to divinity or divinity fudge in the Southern US, and if you’ve ever eaten a Mars or Snickers bar, you’ve had the watered-down industrial production version. When soft and chewy, traditional nougat is sort of like gourmet marshmallow for grown-ups. When hard and brittle, it’s rock-solid enough to break a tooth on but still very satisfying when chiseled into small bits to savor (and it would be so good mixed into chocolate, à la Toblerone!).

Nougat Torrone with Almonds, Pistachios and Cocoa Nibs | Korena in the Kitchen

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{Sourdough} Irish Soda Bread

March 20, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 20 Comments

I’m not so good with the holiday themed recipes here – the only things I manage to post about with any seasonal timeliness and regularity are Christmas cookies and hot cross buns – so it didn’t even occur to me until a week ago that the Irish soda bread chosen for this month’s Sourdough Surprises coincides with St Patrick’s Day. I know it’s a few days late, but that doesn’t make it any less delicious.

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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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How to Eat Popcorn Like a Salt Springer

March 10, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 33 Comments

The Salt Spring Island movie theatre opened when I was about ten – I remember because one of the first films shown was the digitally re-mastered, re-released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which was probably only the third film I’d ever seen in a theatre. [Edit: Apparently my memory is faulty, because Nate remembers the movie theatre being open waaaaaay earlier, and unfortunately for me, it turns out he’s right. It changed hands in the early 1990s so I must be remembering the re-opening, because I swear I never saw any movies there when I was really young…! Anyway, back to the story.] Community hall by day and movie theatre by night, when I was twelve it was also the scene of my very first ever date with a boy (I wasn’t allowed to see Dangerous Minds so we watched Babe), where we sat on folding chairs because only the first few rows were proper theatre seats. Instead of the celebrity gossip and pop culture “entertainment” that precedes movies these days, they would show slide shows featuring community events, and more often than not you’d see yourself or someone you knew on the screen while you waited in line at the concession, which brings me to the best part of the Salt Spring movie theatre: the popcorn. Real popcorn with real butter instead of a coating of yellow “butter flavour”, it only cost a few dollars a bag rather than upwards of $15 for popcorn and a drink. And to season it, instead of dill pickle or cheese flavouring, there were big shakers of nutritional yeast – because on Salt Spring, we eat our popcorn yeasted. And it’s delicious.

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Daring Bakers: Beautiful Bread

February 27, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 27 Comments

Beauty surrounded the Daring Bakers this month as our host, Sawsan, of chef in disguise, challenged us to make beautiful, filled breads. Who knew breads could look as great as they taste?

This month’s posting date snuck right up on me so I’ll keep this brief! I was delighted with my friend Sawsan’s challenge this month to make beautiful twisty bread in the style of the very talented bread artist Valentina Zurkan. I’ve made sticky buns similar to this before filled with lemon and rosemary, so I opted for a savoury pizza bread version and a slightly more complicated shape this time.

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