While local strawberries are still at least a month off, I admit to thoroughly enjoying the juicy red California-grown gems that have been showing up at the green grocer lately. I can’t help myself – this winter felt SO LONG and strawberries are like the breath of fresh air and ray of sunlight that I’m craving right now. And while they might not be local, they are at least in season, and for that I am grateful!
…
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.)
…
This is the only cornbread I’ve ever made, but it’s so awesome I’ve never felt the need to try another recipe, so it automatically gets the “favorite” label. Plus it’s made in a cast iron skillet, which is my favorite pan.
…
Nate and I had a pretty quiet Easter weekend at home, so instead of a big Easter Sunday dinner, I made a quiche with leek and bacon, a dish of scalloped potatoes, and a green salad (and dessert, of course – that post is coming!). I was lucky enough to have dinner with my parents on Salt Spring on Good Friday, which included not only the traditional baked ham but also a huge pile of fresh crab, caught by a family friend. It was amazing, but after all that food I was quite happy to keep it lighter for the rest of the weekend.
…
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.
…
Almost two years ago, I made a wedding cake for my good friend and frosted it with cream cheese Swiss meringue buttercream. The cake turned out great, but the frosting was another story. Turns out that cream cheese doesn’t work so well as a replacement for butter, which I realized after having made two giant batches of frosting, posting about it, and then having it go all weird and curdled when I actually tried to frost the cake with it. It was so unsuccessful that I wouldn’t recommend the recipe to anyone, but it is obviously a topic of interest to many because that post generates a lot of traffic for my blog….
Every couple Fridays, Nate and I make homemade pizza for dinner. This is one of the rare times we are actually in the kitchen making dinner together (something I would like to do more often), me stretching out the dough, Nate shredding cheese and slicing toppings, deciding together what to put on each pie. We always do one Blue Hawaiian, and the second is usually a mish-mash of whatever else we have on hand – salami, olives, sautéed mushrooms and onions, chopped bell peppers… Last week at Aaron’s birthday pizza dinner, Nate and I shared the pizza special of the day, which was topped with crumbled homemade Italian sausage, fresh sliced Anaheim peppers, and cherry tomatoes on a creamy, cheesy base. It was such a good, simple combination of flavours that I knew I wanted to add it to our homemade pizza topping arsenal. I feel a bit silly posting an actual “recipe” for a pizza because I never follow one myself, so instead here’s the basic rundown for this cheesy sausage, jalapeño and fresh tomato pie.
Stretch out your favorite pizza dough onto a lightly oiled baking sheet (I love this pizza dough – I use a little bit of whole wheat flour and freeze half the dough for our next pizza night). Drizzle it with a few tablespoons of heavy cream (spread it around) and shower it with a good amount of freshly grated parmesan cheese and a few shreds of mozzarella.
Scatter it with some cooked and crumbled homemade Italian sausage, some sliced fresh jalapeños (or Anaheim peppers, if you can find them), and a few quartered grape or cherry tomatoes.
Sprinkle with a bit more mozzarella (less is more in this case – I find too much cheese keeps the crust from cooking properly) and bake in a hot oven until the crust is golden and the cheese melted and browned. Let it rest for a few minutes, then sprinkle with more parmesan and some black pepper before cutting into wedges.
This Christmas I asked Santa for a waffle iron (mainly so I could make Belgian Liège waffles, which I plan on doing soon), and he delivered! I christened it by making a totally wonderful waffle recipe that yielded over a dozen gigantic waffles – luckily they froze well! These are not those waffles (that recipe is coming though, I promise!), but they are just as good. I’ve been collecting lemon ricotta pancake recipes for years – ever since having some of the lightest, most delicate and delicious pancakes at a bed and breakfast – and a week or so ago I happened to have both lemons and ricotta on hand… and a new waffle iron! A quick Google search revealed this lemon ricotta cornmeal waffle recipe, and I was on my way…
…
I can now officially cross an item off my list: homemade nut butter! It literally is as simple as roasting some nuts (in this case, almonds) and grinding them in a food processor until they turn into nut butter. The only reason it’s taken me this long to make it is because my former food processor was such a disappointment: it could barely purée cooked squash, let alone pulverize whole nuts. BUT, I now have a powerful new Cuisinart food processor and nut butter is fully within my realm of possibility. Yay!
…
The following “to make” list has been floating around in my head for a long time. I figured I’d put it in writing and then it can act sort of like a New Year’s resolution, even though I’m not making any (other than more cheesecake) and I don’t intend on getting through all of these in 2013. In fact, I fully intend on adding to this list.
What’s on your list?