One of my favourite sources of inspiration for what to blog about next is my friend Marla. She is always trying new recipes and has a real knack for finding delicious ones. She was the one that turned me on to these spiced lamb meatballs from the November 2016 issue of Bon Appetit. I decided to adapt the recipe to create pita pockets.
I started with making a romesco (nut and red pepper) sauce to spread on the pita, alongside some store-bought hummus. It takes some time to make, but I loved the tangy, spicy bright flavour it added to the sandwich. I used a combination of hazelnuts and almonds for the nuts portion of the sauce. For the peppers, I used both jarred roasted red sweet peppers and a dried whole chile pepper.The nuts and bread get toasted. They are used to thicken the sauce.A quick blitz in the blender or food processor finishes the romesco sauce. It can be made a few days ahead and kept in the fridge. It is also delicious on a chicken sandwich or mixed in with some hot pasta.The meatballs come together quickly. Paprika and cumin and coriander seeds add a warm earthy note, while fresh cilantro and parsley add a vibrant freshness.
I don’t really get the appeal of smoothies. Yes, I know they are jam-packed with tons of healthy foods, but honestly, they have no crunch. If I’m going to take in calories, I want to chew my food. (I make an exception for wine, because there are exceptions to every rule).These crackers are ideal for when hunger strikes at 4:00 pm and I want to devour everything in sight. They satisfy my craving for salt and crunch. And, as a bonus, I know that they are densely packed with good- for-me ingredients.
The problem with most packaged crackers is that just a few never satisfy me. Plus, the list of ingredients almost always contains items I can’t pronounce, and probably shouldn’t be eating. The healthy packaged crackers, while packed with fibre, taste like cardboard.
These crackers are the creation of British food stylist and author Anna Jones. Her Instagram account is gorgeous. I just bought her new cookbook, A Modern Way to Cook, and I am so inspired to cook my way through it.
Oats are the main ingredient, the glue that holds all these seeds together. Feel free to play around with the seeds you add. I used pumpkin, sunflower, sesame, poppy, nigella and fennel.Add water, a few teaspoons of vegetable oil and maple syrup, and let it sit for about 10 minutes so that the oats can soak up all the moisture.Divide the batter into 2 and roll each half out between 2 sheets of parchment paper. Once baked, let them cool and break into crackers. You can make them any size you like. I was curious to know the nutrient info for these crackers, so I did the calculations. Each large piece (recipe makes 16 large crackers) contains 85 calories, 1.5 grams of fibre and 3 grams of protein.
They are delicious plain, with butter and salt or with some olive tapenade. My friend Sandy has a great tapenade recipe.
Happy New Year! Hope everyone filled up on lots of cookies and family time over the holidays. Did anyone make any New Year’s resolutions? I must admit, resolutions kind of scare me. I always end up being so disappointed in myself. But, I’m going to go out on a limb here and make two resolutions.
1. I feel like I should probably give up my favourite potato chips for just a little while. (How’s that for a definitive statement?) WAIT! I take that back. Perhaps I should just take baby steps here. OK, I resolve to fill my little portion control bowl to the rim with chips, rather than to overflowing! A much more realistic and achievable goal.
If early January is too soon for you to start pickling your liver, how about pickling apples? I first read about pickling apples over on seriouseats.com. Daniel Gritzer featured a recipe for Beet and Wheat Berry Salad with Pickled Apples and Pecans. To date, I have only pickled onions, shallots, cucumbers and carrots. Pickled apples intrigued me. I love the addition of apples in slaw, but you need to cut them just before serving or they turn brown. Pickling solves that problem.
This slaw packs in a ton of vegetables, which, if you’re like me, I try to do every January to help cleanse my system after my December gluttony. This recipe does not feel like deprivation at all. The choice of vegetables is up to you. These are what looked good to me when I went to the market.
I started with a base of red and green cabbage.I love the crunch and verdant freshness of sugar snap peas, so they went in next. I thought that the flavour of celery would really complement the apples, so I bought some celeriac (also known as celery root). It’s the ugly knoby, hairy root you always see and wonder about. A few stalks of celery would be a good substitute if you can’t find celeriac.Just peel and slice it into a julienne. Put it in a bowl of water with a bit of lemon juice to keep it from turning brown before adding to the salad. I decided to pickle shallots, along with the apples. Combine apple cider vinegar, water, sugar, salt and some mint sprigs in a small pot. Simmer until salt and sugar are dissolved. Pour hot pickling brine over apples and shallots and then place bowl in an ice bath to cool quickly. A simple cider vinaigrette, with a touch of dijon and honey is the perfect dressing for this slaw. Finish with some diced or sliced jalapeños, fresh mint and some toasted pecans for crunch. Your digestive system will thank you.
Any leftovers will keep well for a day or two in the fridge. I added some diced hardboiled eggs and julienned gruyere cheese the next day for a lunch salad. It was bonkers good!
Restraint can wait. Let’s usher out 2016 with decadence. This is a time-honoured Southern Caramel Cake. If anyone knows how to bake a Southern classic it is the Lee Brothers, Matt and Ted, from Charleston. This recipe hails from their book The Lee Brothers Charleston Kitchen.
Admittedly, this cake is a labour of love. But, if you can read and follow instructions, the Lee Brothers will take you by the hand and guide you, step by step, through this challenging but fun to make cake. The tricky part is the caramel icing. A candy thermometer and an instant read thermometer are critical to success.
The cake layers are rich and buttery, and come together quickly.It never ceases to amaze me how simple ingredients like milk, sugar and butter are transformed into a fluffy caramel frosting. The gossamer light caramel icing, dissolves almost instantly on your tongue. It has a perfect salty-sweet balance that keeps you coming back for bite after bite.I found some leftover Callebaut Dark Chocolate Pearls in the cupboard and decided to decorate to top of the cake with them.
Wishing you all a sweet, happy and healthy new year.
On the 6th night of Chanukah I made Sweet Potato and Brussels Sprouts Latkes. I could never make these on the first night of Chanukah. They would not be well received by my family. On the first night our family insists on traditional latkes. (I think it might actually written in Jewish Law somewhere!!). But feel free to let your freak flag fly and make these unorthodox latkes when Chanukah is almost over and everyone has had their fill of classic potato latkes.These latkes are based on a Japanese savory pancake called Okonomiyaki. I learned about them in the November 2016 issue of Bon Appetit magazine. As I read the recipe I was inspired to adapt it and create latkes using these ingredients.The Brussels sprouts must be thinly sliced. The thin slicing blade of the food processor will do the job quickly. A sharp knife will also work. The sweet potatoes need to be cut into 1/8 inch thin matchstick pieces. A mandoline will do this quickly. If you don’t have one, cut the potatoes to fit the feed tube of the food processor and thinly slice potatoes first. Then stack them up and cut across with a sharp knife into matchsticks.
Eggs and flour act as the glue to hold everything together. Fry until deeply golden brown and crispy. Serve them with some chipotle mayo and a squeeze of lime or go traditional and top with applesauce. Savory, deeply crispy and very delicious, these latkes are sure to please even the most die-hard traditionalists.
At some point over the holidays you know it’s time to rein it in. Eating a sleeve of Dark Chocolate Covered Peppermint Joe Joes (insiders tip: they are even better frozen!) with a chaser of prosecco and calling it dinner can’t go on for too many days in a row. I find it’s best to do it before January 1st. Everyone knows that New Years resolutions don’t last.
I’m not talking about a kale and quinoa salad or an almond milk-frozen banana- spinach smoothie level reining it in. That’s hard core and way too severe for late December. I’m just suggesting that you prepare a meal that contains some protein, complex carbs and perhaps something green, and that requires you to actually sit down and use a knife and fork to eat it.
This recipe was inspired by NYT Cooking editor, Sam Sifton. Every Wednesday he writes about cooking without a recipe. On October 12 2016, he suggested roasting chicken thighs with sweet potato fries and jalapeños. I have made it several times, tweaking the procedure and quantities so you don’t have to cook without a recipe!
This sheet-pan chicken dinner is the perfect way to ease you back into a healthy routine. Start with cutting some sweet potatoes into a julienne shoestring fries shape. A glug of olive oil and a judicious sprinkle of Kosher salt and coarse black pepper to coat the fries is all that is required for seasoning.Season some boneless skinless chicken things with more salt and pepper and a light dusting of smoked paprika (mild or hot, your choice). Roast for about 40 minutes in a hot (425°F) oven. Squeeze some fresh time juice over the chicken, scatter with thinly sliced jalapeño peppers (pickled jalalpenos are really good too!) and some cilantro and call it dinner. One frozen dark chocolate covered peppermint joe joe is a sensible dessert. It’s too soon to go cold turkey. Save that for January 1st!
I suppose the last thing anyone needs 3 days before Christmas is another holiday cookie blog post or cookie recipe. I am sure that by now you have all put up and decorated your tree, bought and wrapped your gifts and mailed your holiday cards. All your desserts are baked and wrapped well, tucked away in the freezer for the weekend. I know that some of you keeners have even set the table for the big feast on the 25th!
If you’re all set for the holidays, then just put your feet up, enjoy the photos and file this recipe away for mid-January, when your resolve to stay away from butter and sugar crumbles like a… well, like a peanut butter cookie! If you are scrambling for some last minute cookies to share, this one is perfect. The dough comes together very quickly. Julia Moskin over at New York Times Cooking created these cookies. She was trying to recreate the beloved peanut butter cookie from City Bakery in Manhattan. These cookies are far from the typical peanut butter cookie you may be familiar with.
Made with unsalted peanut butter, cultured butter and brown sugar, they amp up the traditional peanut butter cookie. The texture is crunchy on the outside and sandy and crumbly in the middle. They just melt in your mouth. They are topped with a combo of coarse sea salt and coarse sanding sugar for that perfect sweet-salt balance. Leave these cookies nice and round. No need to flatten and cross hatch with a fork.
As the aroma of butter and sugar filled the kitchen, my husband magically appeared to find out what was going on. When I revealed that I was baking blondies he looked puzzled. He had no idea what a blondie was. I explained that a blondie is essentially a brownie without the chocolate. His response was “what’s the point of that?”
His response was understandable. There are times when only a deep dark fudgy brownie will satisfy you. But have you considered the fact that without the distraction of chocolate, butter and brown sugar get to be the star? Once the blondies hit the oven, the brown sugar takes on an undertone of butterscotch, with rich caramel notes. The flavours of a blondie are subtle and complex.The golden top, slightly crispy, gives way to a chewy interior. Studded with white chocolate, macadamia nuts, toffee bits and coconut, these blondies are chock-full of goodness.These blondies are adapted from Daphna Rabinovitch’s blondie recipe in her comprehensive new cookbook, “The Baker in Me.”It is from Daphna that I first learned about the freakishly delicious combination of white chocolate and macadamia nuts. She was the pastry chef at the take-out food shop I worked in many years ago. I would have happily accepted her white chocolate macadamia nut cookies or skor bar cookies in lieu of a paycheque.
I have been making these treats for many years now. I don’t even remember where the original recipe came from. Essentially, instead of marshmallows, you use melted Mars Bars (they are called Milky Way Bars in the U.S.) as the glue to hold everything together. I glammed them up with a blanket of bittersweet chocolate and a drizzle of milk chocolate to create a gorgeous marble patter . A sprinkling of coarse sea salt finishes off these addictive treats.I made a video showing how quickly these bars come together. I have been wanting to learn how to incorporate “stop motion animation” into my videos. Essentially, stop motion animation involves taking a photograph of your objects or characters, moving them slightly, and taking another photograph. When you play back the images consecutively, the objects or characters appear to move on their own. For each second of video footage, you need to shoot about 10 still photos. Check out the video I created. I used stop motion animation for the last 5 seconds of the video. I get so excited when I learn a new skill.
They are very fast to make and require no baking which is always a bonus at this time of year. They are a perfect hostess gift. Just be sure to tell your hosts that they don’t have to serve them if they have other desserts planned. Some folks are prickly about that. They would not appreciate an addition to their perfectly planned meal. Suggest they tuck them into the freezer for another day.
On the subject of perfect gifts to bring when you are a guest, I just got these fantastic new oven mitts. My old ones were terrycloth and had a hole burned in them. These are silicone on the outside but lined with padded cotton on the inside so they are so comfortable to wear. New oven mitts are something everyone can use but never remembers to buy.
I was introduced to these cookies last summer by my friend Lanie. At first I thought it was kind of strange that she made ginger cookies in August. I have always associated cinnamon and ginger with winter. But that was before I sandwiched two cookies around a scoop of salted caramel ice-cream. Home run!!These ginger crinkle cookies are rolled in coarse sanding sugar before baking to give them a crunch. The crispy exterior yields to a chewy center thanks to a judicious amount of molasses. This recipe comes from The Kosher Palette Cookbook. The original recipe calls for rolling the balls of dough in granulated sugar. I wondered if coarse sanding sugar would be better so I tested both. I really preferred the look and more pronounced crunch of the coarse sugar.I have made these cookies several times since this summer. The last time I made them I used chilled coconut oil in place of the butter, for a dairy-free cookie. I used a refined coconut oil (also called expeller pressed) which is almost flavourless. This is what you want for such a highly spiced cookie. You would not want the flavour of coconut to compete.
One of my favourite sources of inspiration for what to blog about next is my friend Marla. She is always trying new recipes and has a real knack for finding delicious ones. She was the one that turned me on to these spiced lamb meatballs from the November 2016 issue of Bon Appetit. I decided to adapt the recipe to create pita pockets.
The nuts and bread get toasted. They are used to thicken the sauce.
A quick blitz in the blender or food processor finishes the romesco sauce. It can be made a few days ahead and kept in the fridge. It is also delicious on a chicken sandwich or mixed in with some hot pasta.
The meatballs come together quickly. Paprika and cumin and coriander seeds add a warm earthy note, while fresh cilantro and parsley add a vibrant freshness. 
