Seafood & Sweet Potato Pie

This would be one of the few adventures I've had that involves taking a recipe and turning it into my own creation. Chicken pot pie and shepherd's pie are at the top of my comfort food list so it was safe to assume a seafood pie would give me the warm and fuzzies too. What I didn't want was a lot of fat and little food value, so I upped the vegetable count and replaced some of the butter with yoghurt. In some cases I simply reduced the amount of butter overall. I'm pleased with the results, although I found my first attempt at it was a bit labour intensive.

There are four steps to this casserole: the sauce, the shrimp and veggie mix, the fish and the potatoes. Many pots were dirtied in this experiment, but that's where your dishwasher makes an appearance. Use it, readers. Use it.

It took me about an hour to assemble the pie, plus the baking time, so an hour-and-a-half from start to finish. In the big scheme of things, this isn't a long time, but if you've got hungry families to feed, it might be too long for you. I also find myself multitasking while cooking, so that hour included a load of laundry among other things. Anyways, it was worth it. Creamy comfort food, without any heaviness or guilt and loads of leftovers, which I can handle better than in previous months.







Adapted from: http://www.shrinkingsingle.com/

Serves 8-10

Ingredients 

• 350g white fish
• prawns thawed and tails removed
• 1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed
• 1 clove minced garlic
• 1 Anaheim pepper, chopped
• 1 onion; 1/2 diced and half cut into quarters
• 1 cup spinach leaves
• 1 large yam/sweet potato, peeled and chopped
• 1 large russet potato, peeled and chopped
• 2 T chopped cilantro or parsley
• 1 T olive oil
• 1 T unsalted butter
• 2 T low fat yoghurt
• 1 litre of low fat milk
• juice of half a lemon
• 3 T butter
• 3 T flour
• 10 peppercorns
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 cup shredded white cheddar
• salt and pepper throughout

Method

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9"X13" baking pan and set aside. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the yams and potato. Boil for ten minutes or until soft when poked with a fork. Drain the potatoes and add the unsalted butter and yoghurt. Blend with a hand held blender or potato ricer. Combine two tablespoons of the chopped parsley/cilantro and salt to taste into the mash and set aside.

In a frying pan heat the oil and add the pepper and diced onion, sautéing for one minute. Add the shrimp and stir until they lose their translucency; about 3 minutes. Add the peas and spinach and toss until the spinach begins to wilt. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.

In a saucepan combine the milk, peppercorns, quartered onion, lemon juice and bay leaves and bring
to a boil. Reduce to simmer and add the fish, allowing to simmer for 10 minutes. Remove the fish from the milk and set aside to cool. Once cooled, remove all the bones, pat dry and flake the fish.

In another saucepan, heat the 2 tablespoons of butter on medium heat and add the flour, stirring until combined. Pour the milk through a sieve into the saucepan to drain it of any remaining fish, bay leaves and peppercorns. Bring the sauce to a boil and then reduce to simmer until the sauce has thickened. Remove from heat.

Using the baking pan, begin by layering the bottom of the pan with the shrimp and vegetable mix. Add half of the sauce, follow with the fish and then with the remaining sauce. Top with the blended potato and cheddar cheese and bake the casserole in the oven, uncovered for about 20-30 minutes or until the top is browned.

Oh-So-Wholesome Muesli

Why make muesli? For starters, muesli is just about the easiest kind of food prep there is so you'll be patting yourself on the back for weeks to come over having fed yourself wholesomely.  Second, making bulk batches will save you money over the store bought varieties. And finally, it gives you the freedom and control to choose your ingredients. If you've got nut allergies for example, or other food sensitivities, this is a must. 

Consider the recipe below as your baseline and expand your ingredients list from there. I eventually added dried cherries and hazelnuts to this batch because I found them loitering in the pantry. I top my muesli with chopped or grated apples and bananas as a way of getting fruit into my diet. Fruit typically isn't of interest to me unless it's battered and fried, paired with cheese or coated in chocolate. I have however, found other, less obnoxious ways to enjoy fruit and muesli is one example.

Adapted from: http://www.gatheranddine.com

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

• 1 cup rolled oats 
• 1/2 cup barley flakes
• 1/2 cup rye flakes
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 1/4 cup sliced almonds (I used whole)
• 2 T sunflower seeds
• 2 T pumpkin seeds

For Serving

• 2-3 cups of yoghurt (1/2 cup per serving)
• fresh fruit of choice
• honey or jam to top

Method

Combine dry ingredients and store in an airtight container. To prepare, combine the yoghurt and muesli in a bowl and mix well to ensure the yoghurt coats all of the muesli. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Serve the following morning with fruit. and top with either jam or honey as desired.

Jamón Ibérico aka Iberian Ham

When Ruedi and I visited Spain last summer, we were introduced to jamón ibérico or Iberian ham, a Spanish and Portuguese delicacy that is a popular favorite among anyone who digs a good cut of meat. Both Ruedi and I had been to Spain in our single days and hadn't come across it, but we had much leaner travel budgets at the time. As far as I'm aware, acorn-fed jamón ibérico is as good as it gets in the Spanish ham community. Once weened, piglets are fed a diet of maize and barley and then released into fields where they graze on grass, acorns, roots and other available vegetation. Pigs that only feed on olives and acorns have a richer meat and become the chosen few. The pork is salted and air-dried for anywhere from twelve to forty-eight months before various parts are sold. A leg of jamón can retail from anywhere between one-hundred to one-thousand euros a pop. Bite on that meaty investment!

Ruedi's now living in Barcelona temporarily and his relocation presented an opportunity of sorts. Not one to pass up good eats, he was directed to El Charro a jamón retailer where he purchased the leg he's so proudly displayed to me on my arrival. He and his roommate and friend will be eating this for eons. 

  

Of course, one needs a carving stand and knife for their ham. Enter El Corte Inglés with a wide array of equipment selections that range in quality and price, depending on your requirements. 

When we've had it at restaurants it's been thinly sliced and served neat. Jamón ibérico has so many earthy, nutty dimensions, there isn't a need for any other ingredients, although wine is a fantastic idea!

La Tienda offers Spanish eats to North Americans, including Canadians! Yeah! Man, I get bummed when sites like these ship everywhere but my homeland. Of course, you pay a premium for an import like this, but I may succumb to the temptation in a year's time after a long jamón hiatus.

Post Script (March 15th) : Just found Lola & Miguel, an online retailer selling Spanish delicacies to Canadians. Bliss.

Salted Caramel Pots de Creme

I had a lovely little Valentine's Day meal with a few lady friends this past weekend and was reminded of how lucky I am to have great lady friends. What does one pair with great lady friends? Dessert, of course.  That's after a lot of good wine and two or three other courses. Consider these pots de creme your new creme caramels, ladies. I can't chat them up enough. They have a hint of milk chocolate that enhances the richness of the caramel and the addition of good sea salt adds an interesting dimension to an old favorite.

I made these a night in advance to ensure I got results I could use. My prep time was about 40 minutes, but I suspect I'd be able to trim that down a bit now that I've made it once. I like the idea that I can make it in advance, since that gives me time to do other food prep on the day of. For me and likely many others, forty minutes of preparation for a dessert seems like an investment, but these are so, so worth it. Dig in!


From: http://www.foodnetwork.com

Serves 6

Ingredients

• 2 cups whipping cream
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 1/2 t vanilla extract
• 1/2 t sea salt 
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup of water
• 30 g milk chocolate
• 6 egg yolks

Method

Preheat the oven to 325 F. In a small saucepan combine the cream, milk, vanilla and salt and heat until the mixture begins to bubble. Set aside and cover to keep warm.

To make the caramel, combine the sugar and water in another saucepan and stir under medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Let the sugar water simmer for about 12 minutes until it turns a light amber color. Add the caramel to the cream mixture, stirring until combined. Finally, add the chocolate and stir until melted into the sauce.

Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl and then add half of the cream mixture, stirring until blended. Follow with the remaining cream mixture and then transfer the ingredients into a pitcher.

Do those servings look evenly divided to you?

Divide the mix evenly among six ramekins and place the ramekins in a baking dish filled with water that reaches halfway up each of the ramekins.  Bake, covered with tin foil for 45-50 mins, or until the mixture settles. Refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight.

I opted to broil the pots au creme on high heat with a little dusting of sugar before the items were served, to brown the surface a little; about 5 minutes. Once cooled, sprinkle the pots with a little sea salt.

Honey-Balsamic Roasted Strawberry Parfait

My smoothies, while delightful, look like dirty snow blended with compost, thanks to less-than-perfect blending technology. I have a decent blender, but it doesn't pulverize my ingredients like our nation's most coveted blender, the Vitamix Pro Series 300 (one day....one day).  I end up with bits of green and seeds floating in a purple-grey fog. I drink these little numbers at the office almost daily, but get odd looks and a number of questions from passers by. I also get all sorts of stuff in my teeth.

This weekend, as I was perusing through my favorite recipe resource, Tastespotting, I found a delightful looking snack that became a contender as an alternative to my compost smoothy. I put these into jars so they were portable and had one today following my cardio-intensive, morning email review. Two words: Deeee-lish.  Wait..just one: Yum.

From: http://www.2teaspoons.com

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 1 lb fresh strawberries, sliced
• 2 T honey
• 2 T balsamic vinegar
• 2 cups plain, Greek yoghurt
• handful of oats and/or chopped nuts to top

Method

Preheat oven to 350 F. Toss the strawberries in honey and balsamic vinegar and pour onto a baking sheet. Roast for 25 minutes, remove from the oven and allow the strawberries to cool completely. Layer bowls or jars with a few dollops of yoghurt, then the strawberries and repeat with both ingredients. Top each serving with chopped nuts, oats or a combination of your choosing.

Deliciously Easy Pad Thai

I'm really excited about this recipe and the results it produced after only one attempt. Over the years I've tried making a number of my favorite restaurant dishes and have had mixed success. This particular recipe however, produced restaurant-quality results. It's exciting to think that the next time I crave Pad Thai, I will have to debate whether to eat it at a nearby Thai restaurant or make it myself.

Asian noodle dishes, particularly Vietnamese and Thai, have been this mythical creature I can sort of mimic, but can't quite figure out. While the recipes are straight forward, it's the rice noodles that trip me up the most. I've had really poor luck getting noodles to the consistency I've had in restaurants. I think I treat them much like I would egg noodles, which just doesn't work for the rice variety. This recipe I used gives some basic tips for getting your noodles right and I managed to nail it the first time. From start to finish, it took me 40 minutes to prepare. It's a pretty straight forward one pot dish and all things considered, inexpensive to make. While you can swap out tamarind paste for vinegar, if you have access to an Asian market, I'd make the effort to get the paste. The original recipe calls for a banana flower and preserved turnip. I actually did go looking for these items but not surprisingly, couldn't find them in Edmonton, Alberta. I omitted them from my own version of this recipe as a result.









Adapted from: http://www.thaitable.com/

Serves 6-8

Ingredients

• 2 T vegetable oil
• 2/3 cup peanuts or cashews
• 2 shallots, minced
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 red chilis, minced
• 1 package extra firm tofu, patted dry
• 1 package (454g) Thai rice noodles
• 12 t fish sauce
• 4 T sugar
• 6 T tamarind paste
• 3 cups bean sprouts
• 1 cup chives
• 1 package frozen shrimp, thawed (454g)
• 2 eggs
• 2 limes 

Method

To start, soak the noodles in a pot of lukewarm water while you prepare the other ingredients.  Make sure the noodles are completely submerged in water. Mince the garlic, chilis and shallots together and set aside. Cut the tofu and chives into matchstick-size pieces and set aside in separate bowls. Mix the sugar, fish sauce and tamarind past in a bowl and set aside. Rinse the bean sprouts and shell the shrimp for later use.

Heat the oil on medium in a wok or large saucepan (I don't have a wok, so I used a large pot). Add the nuts, tossing well to coat with the oil. Once slightly browned, add the shallots, chilis and garlic, sautéing for about 3 minutes. Brown the tofu pieces over the course of 5-10 minutes. Drain and add the noodles tossing well to blend well with all the other ingredients. Test the noodles to ensure they are a soft, but firm consistency. If you prefer them softer at this point, add a little water to the pot. Add the sauce and again, toss well to coat with all the ingredients. Push the noodles to one side of the pot and crack the eggs into the remaining space. Let the eggs fry for about 1 minute and then blend them in with the noodle mixture. Add the shrimp and continue to toss the noodles until the shrimp have lost their translucency. Add two thirds of the sprouts and chives, combining them well with the noodles and set aside for 2 minutes. Serve the dish with lime wedges and top each serving with the remaining fresh chives and sprouts.

Winter Panzanella & Roasted Red Pepper & Lentil Soup

A belated happy new year to you! May your pots not stick and your belly be full. That is as wise a saying as I could come up with.

I am, like everybody else, back on the good-for-you-food bandwagon. I have traded my party shoes for runners and swapped trips to the wine bar with trips to the yoga studio. Actually I still hit the bar, but after yoga.

This year however, my partner in crime, Ruedi has gone walkabout for six months and while I'm excited for him,  I am missing my food Hoover. Nobody can suck back leftovers like Ruedi. In my haste to get groceries this week, I neglected to downsize these first recipes of the year in consideration of his absence. I should have known when the original recipe for the salad below called for six, count 'em, six freaking beets that I would wind up with way too much food!

So...while I was able to freeze the soup, I will never make the panzanella again. I ate this dish a total of eight times this week. It was great the first time, lovely the second time and doable the third time. After that, I felt like I was just choking it down to rid myself of the leftovers. I know Ruedi will be surprised that I ate all of the leftovers, because I rarely eat an item more than three times after I've made it. Well Ruedi, I did it. 

So, enjoy these lovely dishes, because despite the fact that I'm over them, they are great recipes and healthy ones at that. The panzanella has so many options for variation. If I was to make it again, I'd play around with different kind of vegetables, throw in some roasted cashews or seeds and cheese would of course make a good addition too. When doesn't it?

As for the soup, the tanginess of the peppers combined with pesto gives it a zing I really enjoyed. The original recipe calls for basil, but I couldn't find any nearby. I had loads of pesto on hand, so I opted to throw that into the soup instead.

Winter Panzanella

From: http://blog.kj.com


Ingredients

• 6 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
• 6 medium beets. peeled and cubed
• 2 fennel bulbs, chopped
• 2 cups butternut squash chopped
• 1 shallot minced
• 4 cups bread, cubed
• 2 cups kale, finely chopped
• 1 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped
• 1 apple, thinly sliced
• balsamic vinegar
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

Method

Preheat oven to 350F. Toss the bread cubes with a generous amount of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Place them on a cookie sheet and bake them for about 10 minutes or until golden brown. Combine the carrots, fennel, beets and squash in a bowl and toss with more olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Place the vegetables on another baking sheet and roast them for about 30 minutes or until the edges are browned.

In a large bowl, combine the bread and roasted vegetables with the kale, shallots, parsley and apple and pour a generous amount of balsamic vinegar and olive oil over the mix. Add some coarse salt and fresh ground pepper and toss the salad well. Serve immediately.





Roasted Red Pepper & Lentil Soup

Note that you'll need to prepare the roasted red pepper sauce as part of this soup recipe. It can be made a day in advance if needed.

Adapted From: http://cali-zona.com


Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

• 4 large bell peppers
• 2 large tomatoes
• 1/2 white onion, diced
• 1 small shallot, diced
• 1/4 cup red wine
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 T pesto
• 2 T lemon juice
• 1/4 t cayenne pepper
• 1/2 t paprika

Method

Preheat oven to 400F. Cut the peppers in half and remove their seeds. Place them face down on a baking sheet and roast in the oven for about 25 minutes or until the skin begins to blacken and bubble. When cooled, peel the skin off of the peppers.

Blanch the tomatoes by dropping them in a pot of boiling water for about a minute. Once removed and cooled, peel the skins from the flesh.

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a saucepan on medium heat. Add the garlic and let it flavour the oil for a few seconds. Follow with the onion and shallots, sautéing until translucent. Add the wine and simmer until reduced and syrupy in texture.

In a food processor or blender, combine the peppers, tomatoes, onion mixture and pesto and puree the ingredients. Pour the mixture back into the pan and add the lemon juice, pepper and paprika. Allow the sauce to simmer for about ten minutes and season to taste with coarse salt.

The Soup

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups red lentils
• 1 batch roasted pepper sauce (recipe above) 
• 8 cups water
• 2 large tomatoes, diced
• 1 T balsamic vinegar
• 1 T Worcestershire sauce
• 1 t hot paprika
• salt and pepper to taste

Method

In a strainer, rinse the lentils well. Add them to a large pot with the eight cups of water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium to allow the lentils to cook for 25 minutes. Once the lentils are soft add the remaining ingredients and allow to cook on medium heat for another 5-10 minutes.