Category Archives: Recipes

Recipes

Leeky Pasta

Leeky Pasta

This dish was inspired by something I had at a restaurant many years ago. I had never had rosemary or leeks in a pasta like this. While often considered ‘fall’ flavours, the combination of the woody rosemary and leeks with the fresh tomatoes and light olive oil sauce is really interesting. Topping it off is some crumbled chèvre that melts into the hot pasta. This dish is best when you can get fresh local tomatoes.

This is an olive oil sauce, the flavour of which is balanced with salt. This is more salt than I usually add to a dish, but it is actually important.

Since I usually make this dish from the top of my head, I decided to try to flesh out an actual recipe. I laugh at myself, because I actually bought too few tomatoes for the dish. Had I figured out a recipe years ago, I would have known how much to get. I also had a hard time guesstimating how much pasta to make. I found this neat page, on the Barilla website, to help you figure out how much pasta to cook (based on a 2oz serving size). In the end, I just estimated based on the amount in the package – I used half of a 900g package, so it’s just about a pound of dried pasta (or a 6-inch bunch, when you measure the circumference).

This recipe will feed 4-6.

Ingredients:

  • 1LB Fettuccine or Linguine
  • 3-5 Tbsp olive oil
  • 2 Tbsp chopped shallot or onion
  • 1 Tbsp chopped fresh garlic (appx 1-2 cloves)
  • 1 Tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped (plus some for garnish, optional)
  • 2-3 cup chopped mushrooms
  • appx 3 tbsp white wine
  • 1 medium leek, green part separated from white, halved and thinly sliced crosswise
  • 1LB cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
  • appx 4 Tbsp chèvre (goat cheese)
  • 1 Tbsp sea salt
  • pepper, to taste

Preparation:

  1. Cook pasta in a large pot. Drain, toss with 1 Tbsp of olive oil, and keep hot (this is important).
  2. In the meantime, heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in a deep sauté pan, or large sauce pan. Sauté shallot/onion until translucent, for approximately 1 minute.
  3. Add garlic, rosemary, and mushrooms. Sauté until mushrooms reduce in size and begin to brown.
  4. Add the white part of the leek, and saute for another minute or two. Add a couple of tablespoons of the pasta cooking water, if it’s looking dry.
  5. Add the tomatoes, and about 1/2 of the green part of the leeks.
  6. Add the rest of the olive oil, the salt and stir.
  7. Add the pasta and toss.
  8. Serve hot, topping each plate with some crumbled chèvre, freshly ground black pepper, and some of the green leek.
Found Favourites

Rice Noodles with Shrimp and Cilantro

Rice Noodles with Shrimp & Cilantro

This recipe, pulled from the April/May 2010 issue of Fine Cooking magazine,was fast, simple and delicious!

I’ve always been a fan of the broader rice noodles found in dishes like Pad Thai, but I’ve always been terrible at preparing them. Just ask my husband – I always make him cook the rice noodles, to avoid ending up with mush. It isn’t normal to be afraid of a rice noodle, so I decided to overcome my fear with this recipe.

Like some of the other recipes I’ve tried recently, this dish is not stuffed to the brim with veggies, and isn’t overwhelmed by a mix of spices. It’s simple, with seasonings that nicely accentuate the natural flavours in the main ingredients; shrimp, rice noodles, red pepper and cilantro. I think the dish could stand a little more heat – some Sriracha chili sauce would have been amazing on it.

The one weird ingredient that you might not have in your pantry is fish sauce… Fish sauce is a very stinky condiment used in various Asian cuisines, including Thai and Vietnamese. I was told a long time ago to get the Three Crabs brand fish sauce, so I did. Some of the articles online argue about the quality of this brand, because of the additives in it and the way it’s made. Honestly, I don’t really know the difference, and I’m not about to buy another bottle of fish sauce – a bottle lasts a LONG time, as a little goes a long way. Anyone that lives near Chinatown should go there to find some at a good price.

This makes a great light summer meal – not too heavy and saucey, and makes use of some fresh flavours. Would go really well with a side avocado salad, or mango salad.

The full recipe can be found here, on the Fine Cooking Magazine website!

Challenges, Recipes

Daring (New) Brunswick Stew

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(New) Brunswick Stew

The 2010 April Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf’s Den. She chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make Brunswick Stew. Wolf chose recipes for her challenge from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt Lee and Ted Lee, and from the Callaway, Virginia Ruritan Club.

I opted to make a variation on the first recipe given. I usually don’t eat meat, so this dish posed quite a challenge for me. I think there were three or four different kinds of meat in the recipe… I replaced all of the meat with shrimps and seitan, the broth with a vegetable/shrimp broth. Since this likely changed the flavour quite a bit, I’ve jokingly labelled my variation of the recipe (New) Brunswick Stew. Any Canadians reading this will get the New Brunswick/seafood reference… right? (I’m sure there is nothing specifically New Brunswick about it. I just wanted a cute title).

I started by making a broth, which I based on one I got from a Seafood Gumbo recipe I plan to try eventually. I also had to make some seitan, a vegetarian meat substitute made with wheat gluten (sorry, GF folks!). Both of these things added to the cooking time, since I had to make them from scratch.

Next, I fried up some chile peppers. I got some fun dried chiles called Chilhuacle Negro that have a medium heat (5/10). I’m pretty new to chiles, so I didn’t want to get any that were too hot. That said, I should have kept some of the seeds in for a little more heat. This was where the excitement starts – the smell of the peppers and the oil in the pan are heavenly!

Chilhuacle Negro

Chilhuacle Negro

Here is what the stew looked like in the early stages – the seitan is still in large chunks (to be sliced into thin strips in a later stage). While the broth started off looking quite red (from the chile peppers and the smoked paprika), it mellowed into a nice warm golden colour by the end.

(New) Brunswick Stew - in progress

(New) Brunswick Stew – in progress

Here is the final product, and the shot that everyone on Daring Cooks seems to be doing – the standing spoon shot. This came from the original recipe. To describe the texture of the finished stew, they said that Brunswick stew is not done properly “until the paddle stands up in the middle.”. Everyone has been doing their version of this shot, so I felt obliged to do the same. It was a hearty hearty stew, but the broth was not too thick and gloopy.

(New) Brunswick Stew - Standing Spoon

(New) Brunswick Stew – Standing Spoon

In the end, the stew turned out great! It was a bit of a challenge deciding what to use instead of meat, but I think the seitan worked wonderfully! This is definitely something I wouldn’t have known to seek out, and there’s no doubt I’ll be making this again.

Recipe after the jump.

Continue reading Daring (New) Brunswick Stew →

Cookbook Diving, Recipes

Vegetable Toad-in-the-Hole

Toad-in-the-Hole - plated

This is another episode in the ‘Cookbook Diving’ series. Today’s recipe comes from “Classic Vegetarian Recipes” cookbook by Sue Ashworth et al. (p.186)

Toad-in-the-hole is traditionally NOT a vegetarian dish, and is generally not considered a meal in itself. This dish, however, is both. The addition of a variety of vegetables and fresh herbs makes it a hearty and flavourful light meal. We ate this with an avocado and tomato salad on the side.

This can also be eaten as a side dish for fish – a simple grilled salmon filet would be a nice pairing.

One thing that makes this recipe is the use of mustard to flavour both the bread batter and the vegetables. The result is not a strong mustard taste, but a nice tangy hit that helps to bring out the flavour of the vegetables. To mix it up, you can always add other root vegetables (turnip would be really great with the mustard), or substitute pesto for the mustard.

Toad-in-the-Hole - casserole