Category Archives: Recipes

Challenges

The thing about challenges is that they are, well, challenging.

Part of the reason I started this blog is to challenge myself to try new things, learn some new dishes and have fun. I was told about a site called the Daring Kitchen, where challenges are issued each month and members are required to follow the same recipe (with few alterations permitted). This was just the kick start I needed, so I signed up for an account. I won’t actually hear back about starting the challenges for a couple of weeks, however.

I decided to try one of their prior challenges to get warmed up, jumping right into an area that I have never tried before – pastry. I started with the recipe for Salmon en Croute.

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Salmon en Croute – fresh out of the oven!

I’m not really much of a baker, so I enlisted the help of my husband, who helped by making the short crust and rolling it out. Neither of us have worked with pastry crusts before, so we found it to be pretty tricky to work with. It did not turn out exactly as described in the recipe, or the helpful video tutorials. After much work, and a little creativity, we managed to wrap the salmon in the pastry dough and get it into the oven.

Imperfect, yes, but still a success! It was a fun learning experience, and it tasted great!

Complete! Salmon en croute for dinner.

Complete! Salmon en croute for dinner.

Squid!

Squid may be a little scary, but it’s one of the simplest, tastiest and least expensive seafood options out there.

On our recent trip to St. Lawrence Market, we picked up some nice cleaned squid and made a simple, but delicious meal.

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Market Squids!

For those of you who are not fans of squid, or like to pretend that they don’t have tentacles, you may want to skip the next couple of paragraphs. I’m about to discuss “squid parts”.

Cleaned squid is really a great thing, for those of us that are not fond of guts. Many moons ago, I picked up a box of frozen mini squid from Chinatown, and quickly found out that they were not just nice clean white tubes, ready for cooking! After thawing, I had to do some gross things like pulling off heads, pulling out guts, and dealing with ink. Squids have a couple of places that contain ink sacs – one is in the tube part, and the other is around the single staring eye. The preparing of these squids was kinda gross, lots of work… and, in the end, the squids just weren’t that good.

I did not prepare squid on my own again until recently when I discovered the glory that is cleaned squid!! For the most part, the icky work is done for you – guts and ink sacs are removed (sweet!), along with the creepy eye. The plastic spine may or may not be completely gone, and the first time I got these there were still beaks in the head (did you know squids have beaks!??!) Also, you have to pull off the heads and deal with tentacles. This is really not a big deal. I even pulled off the beaks with no trouble. Other than that, all you really need to do is rinse them off and prepare them for cooking!

This time around, we opted to prepare the squids with tubes intact (not cut into rings) using our grill pan.
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We found that it fit four small squids just perfectly.

Squid has a very delicate flavour, and a texture that can range from perfectly chewy to rough rubber-bandy; so you will need to handle with care.

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For seasoning, I keep it basic: garlic, wine, butter, lemon and a light dusting of herbs & spices (dill & cayenne, usually). You want to be careful not to over cook the squid, otherwise you end up with the rubber bands. I found that the grill pan was perfect for this.

Combined with some veggies, baked sweet potatoes and a healthy glass of wine, it was the perfect meal!

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Our Dinner… still working on my presentation skills. 🙂

Snake Oil & Ginger Juice

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Come up to the front of the stage – yes you! I have a cure for the common cold that will drive you wild!

OK, so I haven’t actually found a cure for the common cold, and I’m not charismatic enough to be a snake oil salesman. I have, however, come up with a sweet and spicy concoction that can help to soothe sore throats, loosen chest congestion a little… and all without chemicals or drugs.

Let me back this up a bit.

For a while now, I’ve been trying to slowly change parts of my life that are wasteful and I’ve been trying to weed out foods that aren’t healthy, or are full of chemicals or… just aren’t food. Here in Canada, many of us reach for a packet of Neo Citran when we feel the effects of a cold (yes, fellow Canadians, you will get strange looks if you ask for it in the USA). I’ve always liked it, but it’s also creeped me out. It’s a weirdly lemon-pledgey powdered mixture that tastes like there’s a ground up aspirin in it (because there kind of IS one).

Add to that, the fact that the acetaminophen in it doesn’t mix with other cold medications I may take.

I decided to make my own hot lemony drink. I know I’m not the only one, and I’m sure many others have magically come up with the same concoction that I use. I know this must be true, because of its simplicity — there are but four ingredients: water, grated fresh ginger, honey and freshly squeezed lemon.

The result is a sweet, spicy and lemony hot drink that is very soothing.

Get yourself a really big piece of fresh ginger – the chubbier the better, and look for a smooth skin with some shine to it — if it is wrinkly and dull, it is old and not as useful.

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 c of grated fresh ginger
  • 2tbsp honey (this is a good way to use up any honey that has started to crystallize)
  • 1-3 tbsp fresh lemon juice
  • 1/2 c water

I’ve made this a couple of different ways now, and we’ve found a method that seems to work well, except that I’m not sure if boiling the crap out of ginger will kill some of the good-for-you properties of it. I need to figure this out, but am not a scientician.

Here’s how I’ve been making it up lately:

  1. Grate the ginger into a bowl, trying to keep as much of the liquid as possible.
  2. Put the ginger and water into a pot on the stove, and simmer it for about 1/2 hour.
  3. Strain the mixture through a fine mesh colander/strainer, pressing on the pulp of the ginger to get more liquid out. Get as much of the liquid out as you can.
  4. Put the strained mixture back on the stove. The liquid should be opaque and a brownish colour. If the mixture is too transparent or light in colour, put the stove on high and boil off some of the water. Taste it – it should be a very very strong, bitter, gingery taste. It should taste terrible.
  5. Once you have the perfect awful ginger juice, turn the stove down to a low-med temperature. Add the honey, and make sure it dissolves completely.
  6. Add the lemon juice, stir it in. Take the mixture off of the stove now, and let it cool. Put it in a container in the fridge, where you can access it as needed.

To drink: Put 3 tbsp of the ginger mixture into a mug, top with hot/boiling water (doesn’t need to be boiling, as it doesn’t need to steep). Ejoy!

Found Favourites: Playgroup Granola Bars

Playgroup Granola Bars

To start things off, I’d like to share a recipe from my now defunct recipe database, that I found many years ago. I’ve pretty much stuck to the original recipe, except that I use dried cranberries instead of raisins, and I often add things like quinoa flakes, hemp seeds, flax seeds, etc. to the mix.

I can’t say I’ve ever been able to cut them into 24, as the recipe suggests, but I probably make them too big.

These are yummy and filling, so go easy!

Original Source: Allrecipes.com – Playgroup Granola Bars
(actually, I first got this from someone on Live Journal, but I can’t seem to find the original recipe… It’s basically the same, except the wheatgerm wasn’t in the first one I tried.)

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups rolled oats
  • 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
  • 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup wheat germ
  • 3/4 cup dried cranberries or raisins
  • 1/2 cup chocolate chips
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup honey
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Generously grease a 9×13 inch baking pan.

2. In a large bowl, mix together the oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, flour, wheat germ, cranberries (or raisins), chocolate chips and salt. Make a well in the center, and pour in the honey, egg, oil and vanilla. Mix well using your hands. Pat the mixture evenly into the prepared pan.

3. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes in the preheated oven, until the bars begin to turn golden at the edges.

4. Cool for 5 minutes, then cut into bars while still warm. Do not allow the bars to cool completely before cutting, or they will be to hard to cut.

Servings: 24 (depends how you cut them)