Weekly cooking - Filipino style

Ok, to start - why is it Filipino and not Philipino?  Also, why not Filippino? I love English.

So, our good friend Lisa got married last year to Ricky, who's from the Philippines.  After OVER A YEAR of trying to get his permanent residency, he was finally allowed to come and live in Canada.

We decided (or maybe we were asked nicely by Lisa?) to host a little party for people to meet Ricky - a man that they'd only heard about (annoyingly, gushingly, amorously) through Lisa.

Ricky loves calimari, so we decided to make some for him.  This was, by far, the easiest recipe.  It involved opening the box of frozen calimari and shoving it in the oven.  Top with some chopped red onion.  Not really deserving of a picture.

We also made this awesome combo of Pilsbury croissants and chicken salad.  And by chicken salad, I mean cream cheese with a hint of chicken:

We also made a pancit, which is basically like a stir-fry, but with cabbage and egg noodles.  It was ridiculously fun to make, but you get no pictures, because I was too busy stuffing my face with dessert:

Lime tarts, Mars bar squares (thanks Janine) and those peanut butter marshmallow goodnesses.  To make Mars bar squares:

4 Mars Bars
1/2 cup butter or margarine (oleo for you crossword fans)
2 cups rice krispies

Melt the Mars bars and butter together.  Stir constantly.  The nougat will turn into this nasty, stringy, snot-like substance.  Keep melting until it's all smooth.  Remove from heat and stir in the rice krispies.  Pour into a pan and melt chocolate over the top.  So simple!

As an aside, those peanut butter things make me think of the Land of Make Believe from Mr. Rogers.  I think I may have eaten one whilst watching that horrible show as a kid.  Isn't memory fun?  Almost as much fun as English.

Anyway, the piece de resistance was this:

You have probably seen these on Facebook already.  And the ones you saw probably looked a lot better than this.  Ours had vodka in them though, so nyah nyah to you.

They didn't set properly, probably because I used room temperature vodka, and not cold vodka, as I read in the Journal today.  (Thanks for coming out Journal - just a week late!)

Anyway, they were a giant pain to make.  Hollowing out oranges takes a long time.  When you're done, you're so sick of oranges that you throw the insides away, because the thought of eating them makes you want to puke.

They looked pretty fun, and tasted..... meh.  But they did pack a punch.... and made people forget about Filipino vs. Philipino.

Weekly cooking - great friends, great food

Ok, so I've been slacking on blogging in general, and more specifically, blogging about food.  So, today, you (and by you, I mean me, because who are we kidding, I'm writing this for my own ego) get treated to a smorgasbord (if you will) of recent menus.

First off, our besties (BFFs IYW) The Heart-Ds are moving to Australia for a couple of years.  Before Greg left, we decided to do a "best of" meal with them.  As a surprise, we made this cool shrimp cocktail:

Which looked really cool and tasted even better.  The next course was this amazing cold cucumber and avocado soup that you top with red onion, cucumber, avocado, cilantro and yumminess.

The problem with this recipe is that it uses like a tablespoon of plain yogurt.  And plain yogurt only comes in those giant one litre containers - so then you're stuck with a ton of gross, unflavored yogurt in your fridge for a month, until you decide to throw it away... or until this happens:

Let me tell you - that ess was C-O-L-D!

Anyway, next meal....  another friend of ours, Tanya, is also leaving us to move to Saskatoon.  Before that, she was off to Thailand to have an amazing elephant farming (herding?) experience.  We were told that her favourite foods were bacon, cheese and bread.  So we decided to make a meal centered around bacon:

(well, not the salad, cause come on - something had to have no bacon in it).  But the chicken was stuffed with goat cheese and bacon and the little puffs are from this recipe.  You MUST STOP EVERYTHING YOU'RE DOING AND MAKE THESE RIGHT NOW!

For dessert, we had chocolate bread pudding with bacon-infused creme anglaise.  No bigs.  We got the idea (and recipe) from watching an episode of Bobby Flay's Throwdown at my sister's house.  The bread pudding was great - but the chocolate overpowered the bacon in the custard.  Such is life.

Last meal.  Kathryn invited a new friend, Taylene over for dinner.  We decided to try a new recipe for pork loin (read wang) with a cherry salsa on it.  Ok.  So.  Cherries aren't in season anymore.  I experimented by buying dried cherries and soaking them in water overnight.  They puffed up, but looked kind of nasty, so I decided that I needed to cook them up in a Port reduction.  Yeah, that was awesome!  The recipe came from Bon Appetit magazine, which my sister Janine gave me as a gift.  To compliment, we had domino potatoes, which is basically roasted potatoes with bay leaves, but cut into little squares like dominos.  They were seriously delish and super easy peasy.  Basically just rub the pan with butter, put the potatoes in, put bayleaves in, season, top with melted butter and bake until done.

Also, we had spinach and goat cheese souffles.  We didn't have enough little ramekins, so I decided to make them in cappuccino cups.  I was super nervous that they wouldn't rise and I forbid anyone from opening the oven.  Luckily, they turned out great:

For dessert, angel food cake (store bought, cuz really - have you ever made an angel food cake from scratch?  It takes, like, a whole carton of eggs).

Ok.  Caught up!

Bonus:  Strawberries

Weekly cooking - things in a pie

This installment of weekly cooking involves two things we make in a springform pan that aren't cheesecake.  (P.S., I have yet to use the pan for a cheesecake).

The first is Gordon Ramsay's Fish Pie.  I don't generally go for fish, especially in pie form, but this one has a cup of wine, a cup of vermouth and a cup of heavy cream in it.  How can you go wrong with that?  It was delicious.

Bubbling fishy goodness  I tried to draw a fish with fork holes on top, but it didn't really work out.

The second one is far more interesting (and has a much more interesting story).  A few months ago, we were visiting my sister in Calgary and they took us to a Moroccan restaurant.  The food was great, and what's better is that you eat it with your hands.  It was a lot of rolling up couscous into a sticky ball and cramming it in your pie hole.  Janine and I had no problems with this.  James and Kathryn, however, being first-born children, had a real hard time accepting the Moroccan lifestyle and had to use forks.  Haha, I laughed at them through a food-covered face.

Anyway, we ordered B'Stilla, which is a chicken dish in pastry garnished with cinnamon and icing sugar.  Yes, icing sugar!!  Desert and entrée all in one!

A few months later, we had a package of pastry left over from something else, so I decided to make our own version.  I had to combine two recipes - something new for me - but it turned out really great.  We've made it a few times now and I think our guests have enjoyed it.

More bubbling goodness

Here's the first recipe and here's the second.

Basically, follow steps 1-5 of the first recipe, except use one or two onions instead of four.  Don't buy Phillo pastry, instead get puff pastry.  Once the chicken is all ready, start with step 4 of recipe #2.  When making the layer of pastry in the middle, top it with cinnamon and sugar - be generous.  Top the last pastry layer in the same way.  Serve it with icing sugar dusted over the top.  Or, if you're me, coat the entire slice with icing sugar and add more as you eat.

Weekly cooking - Australian special

In honour of Greg's birthday, we're doing an all-Australian cooking special today.  This past weekend, the Heart-Ds had a Christmas party at their house.  As a special surprise, Dani asked Kathryn and I to put together a spread of Australian food to surprise Greg.

No problem!

We got some pointers from Dani and went to school researching some recipes.  In the end, here's what we made:

Mini Meat Pies - How can you possibly go wrong here.  Meat, onions, gravy - cooked inside pastry.

Peppered Camembert Dampers - Again - totally good.  Think Australian bannock, plus pepper, plus Camembert.  Whilst making the dough, I didn't think that there was enough pepper.  When it came time to knead the dough, I realized that, yes indeed, there was enough before I added a ton more.

Cranberry and White Chocolate Anzac biscuits - These are like coconut oatmeal cookies, with white chocolate on the top (or rather, bottom).  Excellent because the chocolate covers the burnt bits.

Cheese and Vegemite Scrolls - These used the quintessential Australian ingredient.  It was thick, brown and smelled nasty.  But, when combined with cheese and pastry, it tasted really good.

And finally, the kicker:

Fairy Bread - And yes, I printed this recipe.  If you're like me, and the thought of Battenburg cake makes you salivate and not nauseate.  (Sorry, it rhymed) - then you will probably like this.  Otherwise, give it a pass.

Anyway, here's the spread.  I think Greg was appreciative.

Weekly cooking - crepes Suzette

The girls wanted crepes for dinner as part of their fun week off school, so, as the good parents we are, we made them for them.

Then I decided to try making crepes Suzette.  I was seriously impressed with myself with this one.

We'll start with a recipe for crepe batter:

4 eggs
2 cups flour,
2 1/4 cups milk
1/4 cup margarine, melted

Blend, refrigerate for 1 hour.  Or, if you're our family, you're in too much of a rush to refrigerate:  use immediately.

I based the Suzette part on this recipe - but really, who has the time to make the orange butter beforehand.  Screw that.  Here's what I did:

Melt some margarine in a pan on high-ish heat.  Add some orange juice and a few tablespoons of sugar.  Combine all of that and boil it up, stirring constantly until it thickens a bit and turns a little syrupy.

Then, add the crepes.  You'll probably only be able to fit a couple in the pan.  Fold them up into quarters, making sure they're saturated with the syrup.

Next comes the fun part.  Add some orange liqueur.  I poured it over the back of a spoon without really understanding why this is necessary.  This tastes way better if you've stolen it from a friend's house.  (yeah, shout out Lovedays).  Depending on the heat in the pan, and if you have a gas stove or not, you may or may not need a barbecue lighter to ignite the alcohol.

Once it's flaming away, spoon some of the sauce over the crepes.  Wait until that bad boy stops burning and serve - drizzling the yumminess over the crepes.

Next step, text your wife to tell her how awesome you are.

It's my turk in a box!

Step 1 - get a turk in the box
Step 2 - umm... no junk in the box?
Step 3 - get her to open the box - and put it in the oven.

Yes - this year, we ate boxed turkey for Thanksgiving.  Let me tell you - there's no going back now.

Due to some shopping issues, there were no cook-from-frozen 18 lb turkeys left at the store when Kathryn went shopping for our Thanksgiving dinner.  Both she and I have huge nastiness issues with having a turkey sitting in a pool of salmonella, defrosting for a few days.  The thought of that makes my toes curl with the chuddiness.

So, we were left with Butterball's boxed turkey selections.  K bought one semi-reconstituted turkey "loaf", which was white on top, dark on the bottom, and looked like a ham, and one on-the-bone breast, but without the legs, wasteful bits, and nasty gibblies inside.

Super easy to make.  Open oven, insert turkey, cook.

Super easy to carve, which let me tell you, if you've never carved a turkey, is a GIGANTIC plus.  Especially the loaf - it was all slice, slice, slice, done.

I think that we're stuck with the turk in a box for the foreseeable future.

Mother's Day Gluttony

For mother's day, Greg and I decided that we would cook a gourmet meal for our wives (read our baby mammas).  Here's what was on the menu:

For an amuse bouche, we had tuna tartare - (recipe here) - this was amazing!  Some diced ahi tuna in a soy / lime / wasabi sauce.  I decided to serve it on a spoon, like this:

This was so good, that we broke the amuse bouche rule and had to have a second helping.

For the appetizer, I wanted to make a pan-seared foie gras with caramelized apples (recipe here).  So, at Sobey's Urban Fresh, across the street from where I work, they used to sell foie gras.  (at least, they did in March).  Turns out that they don't anymore.  Woops.  So, with some scrambling (and phone calls by Kathryn, because I hate the phone), we found mousse de foie gras.  I thought that we'd give it a try.

Served with this dish was a home-made brioche.  This recipe is from the French Laundry cookbook.  I was really impressed that I could cook something from that book.  The brioche and apples were amazing, the mousse, not so much.  But, live and learn.  The brioche recipe is here.  And here's a link to a really funny blog of someone who cooked her way through the French Laundry book.

By the way, making the brioche dough with a hand mixer was a bit troublesome... I had to keep re-attaching the dough hooks after they got bogged down in the buttery dough.

A picture of the brioche (before / after).

And the finished appetizer:

Next, a palate cleanser of cranberry sorbet (recipe here).  This was helped by Donvier, my good friend and ice-cream maker.

For the main course, we had Beef Wellington.  Note to anyone wanting to make this - please be sure to buy/make puff pastry - Phyllo pastry is NOT the same thing.... (requiring a second trip to the grocery store).  With this, we served creamed spinach and a Gorgonzolla and pear risotto.  The risotto was absolutely amazing (and probably the only thing on the menu that a vegetarian could eat).

The Wellington recipe is here, and the risotto recipe is here - from an interesting cooking blog.

Finally, for dessert, we had lime panna cotta with mint and tequila.  This was like an amazing creamy lime-y jello.  We had to eat it out of the ramekins, because we couldn't tease it out (despite calling it names).  It was a nice, light, awesome end to a wonderful meal.

Side note - the meal was even better because Greg and I served it all wearing chip-n-dale outfits, I mean just aprons, no wait, shirts and ties.

Pink and Yellow yumminess

Growing up, one of my absolute favourite things to eat was Battenburg cake.  I used to have it all the time at my grandma's house.  She used to get it at Marks & Spencer's, when it was still open at Heritage Mall (when Heritage Mall still existed).

For those who don't know, it looks like this:

And it's basically pink and yellow cake with some jammish filling, wrapped in marzipan and then dusted in sugar.

When you eat it, you can actually feel your teeth falling out with the sweetness of it.  A lot of people hate it, but I really love it.

Living as we do in Canada, we can't get it here anymore (see above, re: Heritage Mall).  So I decided that I would make one myself.  With Google in hand, I found this recipe, which didn't really look all that hard.  I thought that the hardest part would be making the almond paste, since you can only buy it here around Christmas time.

Turns out making the almond paste wasn't really all that bad.  The rest of the recipe, however.......

I made the cakes, and froze them so I could work with them easier (I thought "how smart of me").  Then came the time to glue them all together with warm apricot jam.

Yeah, it sucks when your gluing material has chunks of fruit in it.  I should have known better, but I needed to maximize my jam usage, since I only had a small jar.

Ok - cakes glued, nice little checkerboard pattern.  Then came the time to roll out the almond paste.

That was terrible

It would either

1) stick to the rolling pin (which, by the way, has lost its handles, so you have to kind of grab it with your palms and avoid the dough)

2) stick to the counter - I didn't want to put flour down, because I don't want flour-y cake

3) both - and at the same time.

So, in my best immitation of my mom - who never really had the patience for detail, I crammed the paste in flaky, jammy chunks all around the cake.  Then I had to "roll it in sugar" - which really meant mashing the sugar into the paste, which was doing its best job of not letting it stick.

I wish that I had taken a picture of my franken-burg cake for your amusement.  In the end, it was horrible to look at, but was twice the size of the M&S cake (and the recipe made 2!!) - and tasted wonderful.

Green onion cakes

We (and by we I mean I) made a big batch of green onion cakes for some parties on the weekend. We got so many great reviews that I was asked for the recipe, so here it is:

2 cups flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp oil
1 cup boiling water
a few green onions, finely diced
a little oil in a bowl
coarse salt

1. Mix flour, baking powder, 2 tsp oil and 1/4 tsp salt in a bowl.
2. Pour boiling water into the bowl, stir with a spoon until it's cool enough to use your hands. Knead the dough until well combined.
3. Put the dough in a grease bowl, cover with a tea towel and let rest for 1 hour.
4. Divide the dough into 12 pieces
5. Roal each piece into a circle, about 1/8 inch thick.
6. Brush with oil, sprinkle coarse salt and green onions on top.
7. Roll it up like a playdough snake.
8. Coil the rolled-up dough.
9. Squish it flat with your hand.
10. Roll the dough a little flatter with the rolling pin. It's ok if the green onions ooze out.
11. Add some oil to a pan, heat it up on medium-high heat.
12. Cook cakes on both sides, a few minutes on each side - until they have a nice brownish colour.
13. Burn your hands while ripping them apart.
14. Burn your mouth as you stuff them into your pie hole to save your burning hands.

This recipe was pretty much copied from here. It has pictures for some of the "crazier" steps.

Weekly cooking - Part 2

We got back to watching the F-Word again (after digressing with SYTYCD, Weeds and Big Love). This week, we made an awesome beef tenderloin with wild mushroom gratin topping.

Basically, Kathryn bought a hugely expensive fillet of beef, which was portioned and then sealed. By the way, searing the meat with nothing in the pan makes a lot of smoke.

On top, a mixture of wild mushrooms that had been sauteed and the liquid reduced. Mix in some egg yolk, cream and then top it all with grated parmesan cheese.

We had to substitute some generic mushrooms in the recipe that called for Shiitake, Oyster mushrooms and chestnut mushrooms. Also, we used whipping cream since you can't get double cream here. (and too bad!)

Despite the meat being a little on the blue-rare side, I think this one turned out well... You can ask Georgina, Matthew and Ali what they thought.

Weekly cooking - Part 1

A little history:

We got hooked on watching Gordon Ramsay's "The F Word". It's basically a show where he encourages people to cook proper food instead of buying ready-made meals and eating junk. After watching a season and a half (or, if you're British, a series and a half) we decided that we both like cooking, and we could probably make better food than the pre-packaged stuff at Costco.

ANYWAY, I decided it would be fun to blog about the food choices we make each week - which ones worked, and which ones didn't.

So, this week, our first food choice was Pan Fried Hake with Tomato Relish, from Gordon's Fast Food book (my wonderful father's day present).

Turns out that the dudes at Safeway have never heard of Hake. Instead of trucking down to Billingsgate market and paying a snotload of money, Kathryn picked up some snapper fillets instead.

The recipe was super simple - just pan-fry the seasoned fish in olive oil, then remove the fish and toss in some cherry tomatos, white wine vinegar, cilantro, green onion and seasoning. The recipe called for Hake with the skin on - and you were supposed to make the skin all crispy and golden as you cooked it.

Turns out that snapper doesn't come with the skin on from Safeway. So, our fish crumbled a little bit.

In any event, this one was a definite winner. It didn't even taste like fish (that was for Janine). It was so good that we almost didn't have restraint to save some for the next day.

Today's bonus:

We had a roast chicken last week, so we decided to make our own chicken stock. In all, we now have 7 cups of stock frozen away, just waiting on a recipe to use it. I can't wait - it smelled wonderful while simmering.