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Lemon Caper Cream Cheese with Smoked Salmon

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

Baklava Sticky Buns

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I often get a craving for baklava, but very rarely does it actually get satisfied. Unless you are in the vicinity of a decent Greek restaurant or willing to make it yourself, good baklava is hard to come by. Honestly, I think the last time I had some was when I made it with homemade phyllo (which was a project-and-a-half, let me tell you!) so it is long overdue. I made these sticky buns to serve along with the Montreal bagels I made for brunch last month, and as I couldn’t get baklava out of my head, I made them according to that flavour profile: a finely chopped nut filling of almonds, walnuts, and pistachios, and a sticky honey goo flavoured with cinnamon, cloves, and orange zest. These sticky buns might be missing the crunchy phyllo element, but they really do taste like baklava!

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Buckwheat Dutch Baby with Brown Butter Pears

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On rushed weekday mornings, breakfast is by necessity a simple affair consisting of whatever takes less than five minutes to throw together that I can wolf down before rushing out the door to work. So on weekends, I take advantage of those long, lazy mornings to make things like pancakes, waffles, bacon, eggs, or homemade bagels. Conveniently, those long, lazy mornings also have good light for photos, which is more than I can say for the dark, early, winter afternoons that currently follow…

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Montreal-Style Bagels

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Montreal bagels in a basket

In the summer we started a little brunch tradition with friends, but in recent months have let it slide a bit. Now that another set of our friends have recently moved into the neighbourhood, January seemed the perfect opportunity to resurrect our brunch dates and put into action the homemade bagels I’ve have in my head ever since seeing this picture of a brunch starring the New York bagel. Only because I’m Canadian, my bagels would be of the Montreal variety, which, of course, meant looking up a million recipes in order to begin the agonizing process of picking the best one. I eventually came across a recipe on The Fresh Loaf posted by an alumnus of Vancouver Island University’s culinary arts program, who claimed that the formula was from the famed St Viateur Bagel bakery in Montreal, whose bagels are supposed to be the real deal.

brunch on the table…

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Cranberry Orange White Chocolate {Sourdough} Loaf

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I have become recently obsessed with The Great British Bake Off. As in, I spent most of Sunday watching episodes on the internet and searching through my cookbooks for the recipes that I would make if I was on the show. I know, get a hobby, right? (Wait, this is my hobby…) In the words of one Season 3 contestant whenever things got heated, oh my giddy aunt! I just love it – great baking combined with the typical British stiff upper lip and self-deprecating attitude, which is such a refreshing difference from the ridiculously ego-driven and sob-story-laden world of North American “reality” TV.

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Colossal Sourdough Cinnamon Buns

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You know those absolutely huge cinnamon buns – the ones the size of your face – that you find at hotbeds of food culture like the mall food court? These are like those in size only – they taste a million times better (that’s a mathematical fact, I can assure you).

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Sourdough English Pancakes with Lemon and Sugar

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I’ve been making crêpes since I was a kid – they were one of the things along with cheese sauce (for macaroni) and chocolate sauce (for ice cream) that I learned to make without a recipe. My mum called them “leathery pancakes“, which is a pretty apt description, and I remember sometimes eating them with a squeeze of lemon and sprinkle of sugar. As a kid I think I preferred them with lots of butter and syrup (or much more sugar than lemon, anyway), but now that my taste buds have matured (ha) I absolutely love pretty much anything lemon flavoured (anything, that is, except for fake lemon. Yech.)

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Whole Grain & Flax Buttermilk Pancakes

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Whole Grain & Flax Buttermilk Pancakes

I’ve ordered buttermilk pancakes in restaurants many times and I’ve never really been able to taste the difference between them and regular pancakes. But once again I had a carton of buttermilk in the fridge leftover from a baking project, and buttermilk pancakes seemed like a good way to use it up. When my aunt came to visit at Thanksgiving, she brought me a copy of the Cook’s Illustrated 20th Anniversary All-Time Best Recipes, which contains a recipe for the Best Buttermilk Pancakes. This is where the Ultimate Chocolate Cupcakes recipe came from, and they certainly weren’t exaggerating about that one, so I figured that these pancakes would be pretty good.

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Buttermilk Scones

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Buttermilk SconesI almost never buy buttermilk, but a few weeks ago I had some in the fridge (leftover from making these) and was looking for ways to use it up. Scones jumped into my head because I also happened to have some lemon curd to use up, and there is practically nothing I like better than scones with lemon curd.

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Lemon Heart Danishes

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Lemon Heart DanishesValentine’s Day. An excuse for heart-shaped baking. I’m in!

Lemon is my favorite sweet/dessert flavour second only to chocolate, but it’s hard to buy decent lemon baked goods. I hate fake lemon even more than I love real lemon, and unfortunately most of the time, store-bought lemon-flavoured things are pretty dreadful. So in the case of lemon, it’s best to take matters into your own hands.

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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.