Friday February 7th, 2014

Dinner for 2

Curry Coconut Shrimp with Jasmine Rice
Fennel and Pink Grapefruit Salad

It has been a busy week and a busy day so dinner tonight is super easy and tastes fanatstic.

I made curry coconut shrimp over jasmine rice.   The rice was made as directed on the package.  The shrimp dish is super easy.  I pealed and deveined the shrimp.  More than enough for two but this is always eaten if there is any left over.  I heat a couple of tablespoons of red Thai curry paste, 2 cloves of garlic minced and a little fresh grated ginger in a frying pan over medium heat with a little oil.  Then I add in a can of coconut milk and warm it to a simmer.  I toss in the shrimp to cook them through.  Serve over rice topped with plenty of fresh chopped coriander (cilantro).  

 My salad is made with grapefruit segments, finely sliced fennel, finely sliced red onion and sunflower sprouts.  The dressing is a vinaigrette made using grapefruit juice, olive oil, grainy mustard and white wine vinegar.  Fresh and delicious.

Friday January 31st, 2014

Dinner for 4

Star Anise Spiced Peanuts
Chinese Style Snapper
Stir Fried Bok Choy
Firecracker Corn
Hot and Sour Cucumber Salad
Fried Rice 

I love 'celebrating' Chinese New Year with a wonderful feast of food and this year it fell on a Friday Night.  I should have planned this better and had a big group over but it looks like it is just us minus our boy.  

I started with these Star Anise Spiced Peanuts.  I found the recipe here.  They were easy to make and rather addictive.  I love peanuts.

Baking this whole snapper in the oven then pouring hot oil over it at the end is such a great way to eat a whole fish.  Topped with plenty of coriander (cilantro) and green onions.  This recipe was used to make the fish. 

I often make stir fried bok choy as it is a favourite in our house.  I cleaned and trimmed the baby bok choy and then left it in the colander until I was ready to stir fry.  It only takes a few minutes to cook.  I heat the wok with a little peanut oil and sesame oil then add garlic to taste.  One or two cloves is good for a serving for four in our house but add more if you like.  Then I toss in the bok choy and fry until it is just wilted tender.  I usually add a little soy but I decided to leave it off today.

Firecracker corn was found in the Complete Chinese Cookbook by Ken Hom.  I recommend this cookbook if you like cooking Chinese food.  Everything I have made out of this book has been fairly straight forward and very tasty.  I used frozen corn for this dish.

The hot and sour cucumber was also from Ken Hom's book.  It was everything I love about quick pickles and then has the crispy fried garlic too.  Nice.

Fried rice is also a staple in our house, often sent in a thermos for lunch.  There are many ways to make fried rice.  I keep mine extremely simple because my girls, especially the youngest, like it this way.  I always start with cold cooked rice. I heat some canola oil and sesame oil in my large frying pan over medium high heat.  I add in the rice and stir fry adding a little soy sauce as I do.  When the rice is heated through I add two to three beaten eggs and stir fry them in.  It is a simple as that. Of course you could add garlic before the rice and of course vegetables and or meat with the rice.  It all depends on your tastes.

Friday January 24th, 2014

Dinner for 4

 Salad with Sunflower Sprouts and Grapefruit

Lobster Mac & Cheese
Cheesecake Pops

It is cold and blowing outside but inside tonight we are having a wonderful bright salad and comforting lobster macaroni and cheese.  Just a quiet night with four of the five family home members for dinner tonight.

The salad is spinach, sunflower sprouts, red onion, and grapefruit with a dressing that included grapefruit juice, thai chillies, green onion, oil, salt, pepper and a little rice wine vinegar.

The lobster Macaroni and cheese was made based on this recipe by Barefoot Contessa.  However, I just used panko bead crumbs for the topping instead of the butter infused crumbs from the recipe.  My husband has been asking me to make this dish and he loved it.  I made a couple without lobster for the girls but our youngest preferred the lobster.  I had enough to prepare a few extra small dishes which I froze for quick easy meals.

Our youngest requested cheese cake for tonight because her brother (our resident cheesecake expert) had made one for the event he was going to but left none for us.  Since I had no time to get a cheesecake made we settled on President Choice Cheese Cake Pops.  The salted toffee were better than the triple chocolate  but I think we all prefer the creations made by our own expert.

Friday January 17th, 2014

Dinner for 6

Spinach Salad with Blue Cheese
Hamburgers with choice of toppings, grilled peppers, grilled onions, tomatoes, lettuce, pears, mustard, pickles, ketchup, blue cheese, cheddar, havarti, etc.
Bourbon Glazed Peaches with Ice Cream. 

I was feeling like imparting a little summer into this winter. This has been the coldest winter since our return to Canada 4 years ago.  It has been a little hard to take after 6 years of South Australian winters, which we would escape for five weeks each year and return to Canadian summer.  So I was in the mood for a great burger and peaches.  Luckily I froze a baskets of peaches when they were at the peak of their season.

My son's girlfriend does not eat meat so I was working out an alternative burger for her when a friend suggested I pick up a quinoa patty from Paisley Fine Foods.  That is what I decided to do and it got great reviews from my guest.  The rest of us ate beef burgers that I prepared adding egg, garlic power, onion powder, worcestershire, salt and pepper then cooked on my grill pan.  I roasted some whole red peppers in the oven, then placed them in a plastic bag so I could easily peal them.  I grilled the onions in a frying pan and all of the remaining topping were found in the fridge.

The spinach salad was just baby spinach, chopped red onion, crumbled blue cheese and a homemade balsamic vinegrette.

The recipe for the bourbon glaze was found on line here but I didn't have any whole fruit only cut frozen fruit.  My solutuon, make the glaze as directed and add 2 cups of chopped frozen peaches.  Cook until warmed through.  Top over icecream.

This was tasty and loved by those that ate it, but I would change it in the future if I was using frozen peaches again.  I found it too sweet so I feel a little less sugar but more peaches, maybe 4 cups would be better.  Also I believe it could have used a little more bourbon.  The left overs, it made a lot of glaze, were used on waffles the next day. Of course I will also try grilling the peaches when summer finally rolls around again. 

Friday January 10th, 2014

Dinner for 1

Mushroom Risotto

The first week back to school after the Christmas break here in Southern Ontario has been a little dodgy to say the least.  Monday the buses were cancelled in our area and Tuesday all the schools were closed due to the extreme cold.  A little extra Christmas vacation was a bonus for the kids but set me behind on all my work.  My husband was traveling this week and happily managed to drive and catch all his planes without any dire incidents.  Thank goodness.  It was a very late return on Friday for him so I planned dinner for 1.  More practice on my much loved mushroom risotto.

This time I am using Jamie Oliver's recipe from his book Jamie's Italy.  I made the base risotto and added chopped roasted mushrooms and garlic in.

I still need practice.  Tonight I thought the rice was a little under cooked and I may have added too much cheese.  I am going to keep on practicing this until I have mastered my favourite dish.

Friday January 3rd, 2014

Dinner for 4

Turmeric and Saffron Curry
Ruby Grapefruit, Lime and Scallop Salad
Stir Fried Bok Choy
Pretzels with Hersey Kisses and Peanut Butter M&M's

Wow it is the start of 2014 already.  Times flies sometimes.  The Friday night dinners are off to a quite start.  Tonight it is my husband, my son, his girlfriend and myself.  Our two daughters are also hear but not interested in scallops so they are having some pasta.

We are starting off with a favourite broth.  This recipe is from Vij’s: Elegant & Inspired Indian Cuisine . I've been making it a lot lately.  It is simple to make, the colour is beautiful and we all think it is so tasty.  I doubled the recipe so that we could have some leftover but it is just too popular with my son and his girlfriend, they ate it all up.

The main course of ruby grapefruit, lime and scallop salad was inspired by this recipe however I changed a few things to adapt it to what I had on hand.  With no watercress I used a combination of baby spinach and rocket (arugula) for the salad base.  I also thought I had macadamia nuts in my pantry but it turns out I didn't, so for the nuts I used some blanched slivered almonds.  The fish market hear never has scallops with roe attached so I just used frozen Nova Scotia scallops, some days I really miss living near the ocean.  Well maybe most days.

Stir fried bok choy is often enjoyed in our house.  My eldest daughter and husband love it.  I trim and clean the baby bok choy, today it was what they call the Shanghai variety, and leave it in the colander until I need it.  In the wok I use a little peanut oil and toasted sesame oil.  I heat it to almost smoking, toss in about a tbsp of finely chopped garlic then almost immediately toss it the bok choy.  I stir fry it until it wilts, add a splash of soy and rice vinegar and them plate it up.  Simple goodness.

Dessert today wasn't really a dessert.  I got no Christmas baking done this year for many reasons, so I was pleasing the children with a sweet salty favourite.  You can find variations of these all over the internet so I am not sure who should get the credit for them here.  They are supper easy.  Lay pretzels out on a cookie sheet. Top with a Hersey Kiss and put them in a 180C oven for about 3 minutes.  Take them out and put the M&M on top.  Let cool completely.  My eldest daughter helped make them, it was fun in the kitchen with her.  Unfortunately no pictures were taken before the 3 and 1/2  trays of them were gobbled up.
 

Friday December 27, 2013

Dinner for 10

Christmas #3

Pork Loin stuffed with Couscous and Feta
Trout Stuffed with Lemon and Thyme with Prosciutto and Cornichon Sauce
Roasted Brussel Spouts
Mashed Potatoes
Spinach Salad with Blue Cheese and Dried Cranberries
Christmas Baking by Family

Christmas is that busy time of year when you are rushing around doing way too much.  I try not to get to caught up in it all. My husband and I don't usually end up with a lot of social obligations during this festive season which helps us not to be overly booked. We do have family gatherings though, which to me is what Christmas is all about.  Spending time with those you love.  The first is my family.  We have traditionally gathered at one of the sisters' houses the weekend before Christmas.  We eat a traditional dinner of turkey and all the trimmings we grew up with.  It is nice.  

Then comes the actual Christmas day.  For the years we lived in Australia we did various things, nothing traditional, a favourite being a pot luck gathering of expats we knew living there.  On the return to Canada we have kept the day low key and I have cooked less traditional dinners as my children were not use to the traditional turkey and didn't miss it.  However for the last couple of years we have had my husbands mother staying with us for Christmas so we have gone back to the traditional dinner on Christmas day too.  My mother in law is simply not someone who will try anything outside of her tastes.

The third Christmas gathering is with my husband's brother and his family, which happens between Christmas and New years and includes their Mum. We rotate the hosting and this year is our year.  Knowing it is a tough crowd, 5 kids and a picky mother-in-law I tried to keep it fairly simple but I wanted to try some new things.  I just wasn't eating turkey again.

This beautiful pork loin from Thatcher Farms was stuffed with feta and couscous then roasted with pears.  The recipe used can be found here. It turned out beautiful and very tasty.  My Mother-in-law loved the pear and pork, although I am pretty sure she ate around the couscous stuffing. New and different is not her thing.

The trout was more for me as I love having fish for Christmas after spending 6 years near the ocean.  This recipe was delicious.  So tasty stuffed with lemon and thyme and of course who wouldn't love a prosciutto parsley sauce.

The sides to round out the meal included mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts roasted with olive oil salt and pepper and a spinach salad.

I added red onion, dried cranberries and blue cheese to spinach leaves and mad a balsamic vinaigrette with some grainy mustard in it. Next time I think I will add mandarin orange segments too.

Dessert was all the Christmas baking in the house brought and made by various visitors and myself.