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Homemade Granola

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My Mum has made homemade granola for almost as long as I can remember. When I was a kid I wasn’t a big fan – too grainy, too healthy – but in recent years I have come to appreciate just how delicious is it. My favorite part is the slightly sweet, toasted pecans, and Mum used to tell me off for picking them out of the freshly made granola cooling on the counter. Ahh, memories 😉 Anyway, I’ve had this recipe in my recipe box for a while now, but I only got around to making it for the first time this past weekend.

The recipe is very flexible and really easy to modify. I had a lot of fun browsing through the bulk food store looking for different ingredients. In addition to changing up some of the grains and seeds, I used honey and brown rice syrup instead of maple syrup, coconut oil instead of vegetable oil, and natural apple juice instead of brown sugar and water. This is the recipe as I made it, but as long as you keep the basic proportions of oats/flakes/grains, seeds, nuts, fruit, and liquid in check, you can be as creative as you want with substitutions and flavours!

The original recipe!

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Hollandaise Sauce

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Pulled pork eggs benedict with chipotle hollandaise

My very favorite restaurant breakfast is eggs benedict, and Nate and I have gotten pretty inventive with making it at home: he comes up with creative flavour combinations and I try my best to whip them up in the kitchen. We had a bunch of pulled pork left over, and Nate suggested a pulled pork benny with chipotle hollandaise. I loooooove hollandaise sauce, but I’ve never been able to find a recipe that turns out the way I want it to.

I did a quick Google search for “hollandaise sauce”, and found a recipe by Daphna Rabinovitch from the show Canadian Living Cooks. Canadian Living has been the source of a good number of my trustiest, most reliable recipes, so I decided to give it a try. And it was great! This recipe yields a thick, fluffy, restaurant-style hollandaise.  Be warned that it is NOT low fat – there is a lot of butter in here.

For the pulled pork bennys, I warmed up some pulled pork and seasoned it with barbeque sauce, piled it on two halves of a toasted English muffin, topped each with a soft poached egg, mixed a few teaspoons of chipotle puree into the hollandaise sauce and then spooned it over. Delish!…

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Pulled Pork Sandwiches

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Real Southern barbeque isn’t something that you get a lot of in Canada, but ever since Pig BBQ Joint opened up in town, I have developed a love for pulled pork sandwiches. I’ve made them a few times at home, and this time I sort of made it up as I went along. The results were really good, so I’m going to share it.

I use a slow cooker for this recipe, but you could just as easily cook the pork in a Dutch oven (see the recipe for details). The barbeque sauce is made from the braising liquid and juices from the pork, and relies on smoked salt and chipotle powder in the Brown Sugar Rub to get a slightly smoky flavour. If you don’t have smoked salt, regular salt is fine. The sauce as I originally made it was kind of ketchup-y, so I’ve modified the recipe here to show what I would do next time.

The buns and coleslaw play just as important a role as does the pork and sauce. The buns should be soft and slightly chewy, and not too grainy. The coleslaw should be creamy, crisp, and a little bit tangy. If you have a favorite coleslaw recipe, feel free to substitute it!

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Leek and Potato Soup

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This recipe originally comes from a friend of my Mum. It’s one of my favorite comfort foods: simple, delicious, satisfying. It is good enough plain, but what makes it extra good is stirring toppings into your bowl of soup. I really like adding shredded cheese and hand-peeled shrimp. Crumbled bacon is also really good.

I don’t worry about exact measurements with this soup – it is very forgiving, and also versatile for substitutions and personal preference. Try adding a sweet potato and a spoonful of chipotle puree and top it with bacon and cheese for a Southwestern-ish version.

Use whatever type of potato you happen to have on hand. My favorite is Yukon Gold, but any kind will work. Look for leeks with as much white as possible, and clean them really well to remove any dirt that gets between the layers. To clean, remove the tough dark green parts, reserving the white and light green parts. Slice in half lengthwise first, the slice into semi circles. Place them in a large bowl of cold water and swish them around with your hands. Let it settle for a minute – the dirt will fall to the bottom of the bowl and the leeks will float on top. Scoop out the leeks, drain in a colander, and proceed with the recipe :)…

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Snow and a Quiche

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Yesterday we unexpectedly received rather a large amount of snow (we measured 21 centimeters at one point!), and in usual snowy Victoria fashion, the roads were terrible, life slowed to a halt, and neither Nate nor myself went to work. Instead, we spent the day on the couch watching season one of Mad Men, and I did some baking. Seeing as I had all day, I made a quiche, which I find inevitably ends up taking about three times as long as I think it will. I also tried to modify my usual fantastic, go-to banana bread recipe to be sugar-free, but it turned out to be not-so-fantastic sans sugar 🙁 Someday I’ll perfect the recipe and share it, but in the meantime, here’s my quiche recipe.

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Breakfast Pizza

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Quite a while ago I stumbled across a recipe for a breakfast pizza topped with bacon, eggs, and cheese. Of course I can’t remember where I originally saw it, but I filed it away in my brain for later. I’ve been craving pizza lately, and as Nate and I went out for breakfast yesterday, I figured I would make something at home this morning, and breakfast pizza fit the bill.

The pizza dough recipe comes from my trusted friend Martha’s Everyday Food magazine. I mixed it up the night before and let it rise overnight in the fridge, rather than delaying breakfast by waiting for it to rise in the morning. Originally it was for grilled barbequed pizza, but I’ve figured out how to bake it very successfully in the oven. The trick is high heat (500˚ F) and baking the pizza on parchment paper rather than on a baking sheet (I’m sure a pizza stone would also work, but I don’t have one). As this makes a thin crust pizza, it’s best not to overload it with toppings – I adhere to the same principle of less is more for pizza as I do for burritos 😉

This recipe makes two 10-inch oval pizzas topped with two eggs each, enough for two pretty generous servings. If you are not so hungry, you could shape the dough into a slightly smaller circle (8 or 9 inches in diameter) and use only one egg in the centre of each pizza. The variations are pretty infinite: you could divide the dough into 3 or 4 pieces and make small little pizzas (5-6 inches in diameter, 1 egg each) to serve alongside fruit or hashbrowns or something, or you could make one giant pizza and top it with 4 or more eggs to feed a crowd (if you are going to double the recipe, I would still recommend making two pizzas, as it might start getting out of control size-wise). If you are in the habit of having guests for breakfast or feeding a large number of family members, this would be a good recipe to try because it’s ready all at once (unlike pancakes or waffles or omelettes which cook one or two at a time) and can be eaten with your hands….

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Pizza Dough

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This recipe was posted to go along with the Breakfast Pizza, but obviously it can be used as a base for any kind of pizza!

Pizza Dough

Originally this dough was for grilled barbequed pizza, but I’ve modified it to bake in the oven. This version is half of the original recipe, so feel free to double it (FYI, 1 cup + 2 tbsp doubled is 2 1/4 cups). Makes 1/2 lb of dough, enough for tw0 8 to 10-inch pizzas. Adapted from Everyday Food magazine, July/August 2010, Issue 74, page 96. Original recipe available here.

1/2 cup warm tap water

1/2 tsp honey

1 1/8 tsp instant dry yeast

1 tsp olive oil

1/2 tsp coarse salt

1 cup + 2 tbsp bread flour or all purpose flour (I usually sub in 1/2 cup whole wheat flour)

Pour warm tap water into a medium bowl (water should be quite warm – almost bath water warm). Stir in the honey and sprinkle with yeast. Let sit for 5 minutes, until foamy (my yeast usually ends up looking more sludgey than foamy, but it still works fine!).

Whisk olive oil and salt into the yeast mixture. Add flour and mix with a wooden spoon until it comes together in a ball. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead a few times until it comes together in an elastic ball. Transfer to an oiled medium bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm place for 45 minutes, or until doubled in size. Punch down, cover, and let rise another 30 minutes while you prepare the pizza toppings. (Alternatively, let rise overnight in the refrigerator, remove from the fridge, punch down, then allow to sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes before proceeding.)

Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide into 2 equal pieces. Let rest for a few minutes before using.

Stretch and roll dough to desired shape, add toppings, and bake on parchment paper in a preheated 500˚ F oven for about 10 minutes, until bottom of dough is golden brown.

Sunday Roast Chicken & Gravy

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Last weekend, Nate bought me a car stereo as an early Valentine’s present, and he and Sam installed in on Sunday. I made a roast chicken dinner for them to show my appreciation – nothing like comfort food to say “thank you”!

There are a bazillion different methods for roasting a chicken, and this one is a pretty standard variation: start with a high heat, turn it down slightly when the bird goes is, rub the skin with oil to make it crispy, season the outside and stuff the cavity with aromatics. I have found that best roasting vessel is a large cast iron frying pan with the chicken on a circular rack, because that way you can simply remove the chicken and rack from the pan and use it to make gravy, without losing any of the drippings or pan juices.

What makes a roast chicken special is the gravy, and I can confidently say that I make a mean gravy. Mostly I owe this to my Dad, whose secret ingredient in chicken and turkey gravy used to be finely chopped dried, salted, Chinese blackbeans. I know that sounds totally weird and gross, but the salty, umami flavour that they imparted to the gravy was SO GOOD. I’ve taken that idea and run with it, only now my secret ingredients are soy sauce, Marmite, Worchestershire sauce, and balsamic vinegar instead of black beans. The soy sauce adds saltiness and umami and more flavour than just salt would. It also adds colour, which I think is just as important as flavour – a nice, rich, brown gravy is way more appetizing to me than a pale, thin-looking one. The Marmite also adds a bit of salt and a meaty, almost yeasty flavour. Even if you don’t like Marmite, you will like what it does for gravy. Worchestershire is a pretty standard ingredient and adds good flavour, but be careful not to add too much, as it can be overpowering. My uncle Mike gave me the idea of adding a small amount of balsamic vinegar to the gravy at the end, to brighten the flavours and cut through the richness with a touch of acidity.

The most important thing to remember when making gravy is to keep tasting it and to add liquid and seasonings in small amounts, as it is always easier to add more than it is to subtract!…

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Macarons from Paris

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My aunt recently spent a month in Paris (lucky!), and she sent me a box of culinary goodies, the contents of which included some crystallized sugar, sea salt “pearls” (which apparently form naturally into these large, pea-sized balls – I’m not too sure what to do with them, but they’re cool!), green tea “dust” for sprinkling on baked goods, and – drumroll! – French macarons.

For those of you unfamiliar with the macaron, it is essentially an almond meringue petit four sandwich cookie, made of ground almonds, icing sugar, egg whites, and a delicious filling. The outside is crunchy, the inside is slightly soft and moist, and it all melts deliciously on the tongue. Macarons come in as many flavour and filling combinations as you could possibly think of, from ketchup (yes, ketchup!) to pistachio to chocolate. They are an essential French pastry, and I don’t think I have had one since I was in Paris myself 9 years ago. They were pretty much my favorite part of the trip, and as I mentioned, they come in almost every flavour imaginable, so there is no way you can get tired of them. Or, at least, I can’t.

Anyway. The macarons sent by my aunt were from Ladurée, a French tea salon that also has stores in London, Switzerland, Monaco, and Tokyo (just in case you are ever in those areas of the world and are craving a French macaron). The flavours in the box were Chocolate, Caramel with Salted Butter, Rose, and either Raspberry or Blackcurrant Violet – I’m not sure which. Despite the fact that they were a tiny bit stale and a tiny bit crumbly from being mailed, they were delicious. The Caramel was devine – the salted butter was just the right note against the sweet and toasty caramel flavour – and I also really liked the Raspberry/Blackcurrant Violet one – it was the most amazing purple colour. The Rose was interesting – I bit into it thinking it would be strawberry, and then got this floral aroma on my tongue that took me a minute to place, as rose isn’t usually something you taste. And the Chocolate… well, I love chocolate. That’s about all that needs to be said.

Oh, and did I mention that I’m still doing this 30 days of no refined sugar thing? Yeah, that went out the window for the macarons. They wouldn’t keep for another week (when the 30 day challenge ends), and there was no way I wasn’t going to eat them!

There are tons of websites and blog posts dedicated to perfecting the art of the macaron, which apparently can be quite tricky. David Lebovitz has an extensive resource list for macaron making on his blog, along with a delicious-sounding recipe for chocolate macarons. My trusted friend Martha also has a basic recipe with several flavour variations (such as saffron with chocolate ganache, black tea with sweet mango filling, pistachio with orange floswer cream, and chocolate with lavendar ganache) in the 2010 Martha Stewart Holiday Cookies magazine. So there is lots of inspiration floating around…

I’m planning on making them myself some day. Stay tuned.

Christmas Baking 2010 – Part II

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Hazelnut Shortbread – triangular cookie on the left

As promised is Part I, here is the recipe for Hazelnut Shortbread. As I said previously, this cookie has a beautiful crumbly texture, great hazelnut flavour, and is not overly sweet at all. It may have been my favorite cookie this year.

Again, when baking shortbread, using real unsalted butter is a must. Because there are so few ingredients, butter really plays a starring role, and the flavour will be worth it.

The original recipe directs you to press the dough into two 8-inch cake pans and then score into wedges. I wanted to yield more, smaller cookies, so I shaped the dough into a triangular log, stuck it in the fridge until firm, cut it into slices, and sprinkled each one with raw sugar. The baking time was shorter as well, but I can’t remember exactly how long I baked them for. I would start checking for doneness after about 10 minutes.

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All content © Korena Vezerian and Korena in the Kitchen, 2011 – 2021. Please contact me before duplicating any content, including pictures. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Korena Vezerian and Korena in the Kitchen with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.