Category: Cooking Chronicles

The Cooking Chronicles: Pulled Pork Sandwiches and Affogato

While I can’t take credit for making Christmas dinner, I did plant the idea into my Mum’s head of using the slow cooker this year. A recipe for Pulled Pork Sandwiches in the most recent edition of Inspired by Compliments magazine caught my eye; I loved the idea of minimal effort to produce the evening meal.

As we didn’t have the recommended smoky applewood sauce on hand, my Mum substituted a bottle of barbeque sauce, which worked just as well. To accompany the meat, she made buns with the dough left over from the batch of breadsticks she had made the night prior – yum! Though the meat was a touch on the dry side, a heaping tablespoon of the generated onion-laced sauce flavoured the sandwich nicely. She served the sandwiches with roasted squash and sautéed mushrooms, but any type of roasted vegetables or even tossed salad would have made a fine side dish.

Pulled Pork Sandwich on a Homemade Bun

My Mum asked me to take care of dessert, but due to my lack of pre-planning, we didn’t have any cream in the fridge necessary to make crème brulee, which she was craving. We did, however, have ice cream she had been meaning to get rid of for some time, and after surfing around on the Food Network site, I came across Ina Garten’s simple Affogato recipe.

Easy as pie, I substituted the espresso ingredient for two strong cups of Starbucks’ Christmas Blend (which I figured was as close to espresso as we were going to get that night). Poured over a scoop of vanilla, I was done.

Affogato

There was something about the interaction of the hot coffee and cold ice cream that worked beautifully. And though I was afraid that the coffee would vaporize the ice cream too quickly, it wouldn’t have mattered if it did, as the melding of both in liquid form made a lovely, drinkable dessert.

Who says Christmas dinner has to be something to sweat over?

The Cooking Chronicles: Roasted Salmon with Roasted Tomatoes

I had my eye on Dave Lieberman’s recipe for Roasted Salmon with Roasted Tomatoes for some time, but forgot about it after a bout with a bad cold. I was finally organized enough to buy the ingredients needed earlier this week, and pulled it together in no time at all.

The salmon was flavoured with nothing more than salt, pepper, fresh dill, and a squeeze of lemon, and the roasted tomatoes with olive oil, dried oregano (instead of fresh thyme) and salt and pepper to taste.

For such a simple recipe, the fish tasted great – perfectly cooked, and complemented the sweet roma tomatoes well. I served the fish with some creamy rice to round out a weekday meal, but the recipe would translate well for entertaining as well, jazzed up with some risotto. It’s definitely a keeper!

Roasted Salmon with Roasted Tomatoes

The Cooking Chronicles: Chocolate Truffles

Mack’s Grandma mentioned a while back that she liked chocolate truffles, so I thought this season would be a good time to try out the recipe I picked up at the Truffology 101 session I attended a few weeks back.

I bought milk chocolate callebaut chunks at Save-On-Foods, along with a bulk container of golden syrup. I measured out the ingredients on a small baking scale I have at home, and prepared the ganache as directed. I covered the resulting mixture with saran wrap and placed it in the fridge to cool overnight.

In the morning, I pulled out the glass bowl to discover that the mixture hadn’t really solidified into the clay-like consistency I was expecting – it was more like a thick syrup. As a result, I spread the mixture out onto a sheet pan, and put it in our equivalent of a “blast chiller” – out on our back step, hoping the –25 weather would help matters. Half an hour later, the mixture still hadn’t congealed to the necessary thickness. I did some digging on the internet, and found that the substitution of golden in place of corn syrup may have been the problem, though our scale was another potential point of failure.

My Mum, always quick on her feet, suggested that we mix in Oreo cookie crumbs to serve as a binder. While it helped somewhat, the “truffles” still didn’t quite hold their shape, and the dry crumbs made coating the external layer with cocoa, confectioner’s sugar, coconut, or sprinkles a little difficult. The final product, though less attractive than the truffles I had put together during the session, were a nice treat, as they had the added texture of crushed cookies in the mix. We put together enough to fill a small box, and poured the rest of the ganache into a freezer bag.

 

Chocolate Truffles

Other failed attempts as reported on the internet resulted in people having a ready-made fondue base, or at the very least, frosting for a future cake. So the bag I now have in the freezer will serve some concrete purpose at some point, in addition to reminding me never to use golden syrup in place of its corn-based counterpart.

The Cooking Chronicles: Toasted Party Nuts and Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies

I usually stick with tried and true recipes for my holiday baking regime (I’m partial to the festive appearance of Mini Linzer Cookies), but for one couple, I had to cater the recipe to their dietary needs. Thankfully, a trip to the library wasn’t in vain, and I found two recipes that would work well – Toasted Party Nuts and Oatmeal Raisin Cookies.

The first recipe was quick to execute, and made my kitchen smell absolutely divine – I heated oil and a spice mixture containing cumin, cayenne pepper, ginger powder, cinnamon and onion salt over the stove, then tossed it with a cup each of pecans and almonds. After fifteen minutes in the oven, topped with some kosher salt, they were done. While the spices aren’t immediately discernable, they kick in as an aftertaste. More than anything, I’d be likely to pop these in the oven before guests arrive just for the aroma; “essential oil” air fresheners don’t hold a candle to the real thing, heh.

Toasted Party Nuts

As for the cookies, I didn’t have raisins on hand, but the cranberry substitution I used worked nicely with the applesauce added to decrease the overall amount of sugar needed. The recipe asked for the oats to be toasted (and cooled) prior to incorporation with the batter, which was an extra step that I wasn’t sure I could taste in the final product. Overall, they were a lighter, less saccharine cookie than I am used to – the only downside was that the reduced fat and sugar content meant the cookies keep for a very short period of time.

Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies

The preliminary comments from the gift receivers were positive ones, so I may end up making up more batches of both recipes.

The Cooking Chronicles: Vegetable Tortellini Bowl

Darn, another recipe that was great to eat but I can’t locate on the internet…

On a day when I was feeling under the weather and craving something warm with vegetables, I turned to a trusty Company’s Coming cookbook for Vegetable Tortellini soup. I figured the filled pasta would give the soup that extra filler, and if nothing else, the tricolore tortellini provided some nice color.

Instead of diced tomatoes, I used a can of whole tomatoes, which, by the time we were ready to eat the soup, lent the chicken stock a lovely red hue. Along with the tomatoes, I threw in the recommended carrot, zucchini, bell pepper, and substituted celery for spinach, and the recipe turned out wonderfully. I remember Jane saying that she was in a “soup phase” at one point – if all soups are this easy and tasty to boot, I may be in one soon too.

Vegetable Tortellini Bowl

The Cooking Chronicles: Chicken and Vegetable Stir-fry

I am ashamed that it took me this long to make a stir-fry. It’s a dish I quite enjoy, but I typically don’t look to recreate Chinese dishes. On a day where I was craving vegetables, however, stir-fry seemed to be the easiest way to satisfy that hunger.

I used some of the directions in a Martin Yan recipe, though we added a sliced chicken breast to the mix, which I pan fried first. After that, I added the vegetables we had on hand – red bell pepper, bean sprouts, broccoli, white mushrooms, and half an onion. We didn’t have any oyster sauce, so I phoned my Mum for some emergency advice. She told me to use some chicken broth, soy sauce, and sugar for good measure, which we did, and it turned out nicely.

I’m glad I finally took the plunge into the land of stir-fry – I can’t wait to try out other vegetable and meat combinations!

Chicken and Vegetatable Stir-fry over rice

The Cooking Chronicles: Lemon Oregano Sole En Papillote

I first saw the idea of cooking “en papillote” during an episode of French Food at Home, and it seemed so appealing to me. A little packet of fish and vegetables to wrap, then open and eat? Irresistible.

Of course, like most recipes I see, it got stored away for a rainy day. Luckily, a High Liner flyer with a similar recipe popped up in the mail, and reminded me that I had yet to try this cooking method. So I finally did last week.

I can’t locate the actual recipe I used on the High Liner website (this is the closest), but Laura Calder’s recipe is very close to what we did. We used sole, by far one of the most inexpensive types of fish I have bought ($5 for 3 fresh fillets). In terms of cooking, we substituted dried oregano for fresh thyme, poured the mustard/honey/lemon juice/herb/olive oil dressing over the fish and vegetables, wrapped up the packets, and put them in the oven. We wondered why the parchment was advised to be a heart shape – wouldn’t an oval work just as well?

In any case, we took out the packets after the recommended twenty-five minutes and opened them up. Steaming, the fish had been beautifully cooked (the paper wasn’t as spotlessly brown as in the photo, but no matter). Cooking en papillote made for a relatively easy and quick dinner (the parchment made cleanup a cinch too).

I figured this would be a great dish for dinner parties – the packets could be assembled ahead of time, refrigerated, then popped in the oven after guests arrive. I will be making this again!

Sole En Papillote

And given the relatively healthy dinner, we allowed ourselves to indulge in a little dessert – a slice of tiramisu from Save On. It was remarkably good.

Tiramisu

The Cooking Chronicles: Mushroom Soup and Little Stars with Butter and Parmesan

Comfort food was the name of the game on a cool Sunday, and I had two recipes on the backburner I’d been wanting to try for some time.

The first was a Ruth Reichl recipe for Mushroom Soup that I found in Comfort Me with Apples. It seemed easy enough on paper, with just a few more steps than it would take to simply open up a can of Campbells to heat, and I was glad to find out that it was fairly simple in practice.

We ended up not having any nutmeg on hand, so the flavour was perhaps not as rich as it could have been, but the half pound of cremini mushrooms resulted in a soup chock full of mushroom-y goodness. Mack also enjoyed the onions, as canned mushroom soup typically doesn’t include other vegetable varieties.

Mushroom Soup

As the soup probably wouldn’t have been filling enough, I opted to make an accompanying pasta dish, a four-ingredient gem by Giada de Laurentiis.  I was able to whip up her recipe for Little Stars with Butter and Parmesan while the soup was simmering. The only downside was the purchase of pre-shredded parmesan that had been grated too large to be easily melted into the hot pasta. While simple (Laurentiis described it as an “Italian mac and cheese”), it was satisfying, and would be a great dish for children.

Little Stars with Butter and Parmesan

The Cooking Chronicles: Fastest Cinnamon Buns

Second to flaky biscuit sandwiches, my favourite thing to wake up to are cinnamon buns, hot out of the oven. I’ve been meaning to try a recipe I cut out of the Journal a while back for no-yeast cinnamon buns, and I finally had the opportunity to make them over the weekend.

The only negative point about this recipe was the need to use a food processor to pulse the cottage cheese (resulting in more dishes to wash in the end), but besides that, everything was pretty straightforward. I eliminated the allspice and ground cloves for ease, and opted to nix the glaze as well – who needs unnecessary steps in the morning?

The final product was quite good, better than the Cinnamon Sticky Biscuits I had tried a while back. The texture was quite a bit different from yeast-made buns (they were more crunchy and similar to biscuit dough), but they were satisfying and great with a cup of coffee.

This recipe will go in the plus pile, though perhaps for afternoon tea or dessert. It seems I have less energy in the mornings to make something other than cereal or eggs for breakfast these days.

 

Fastest Cinnamon Buns

The Cooking Chronicles: Friendship Cookies

The cookbook I most remember from my childhood was a dog-eared, coil-bound Company’s Coming edition. I knew at some point I’d start my own collection of these seemingly indispensable books, and last year, I did. My first, Christmas Gifts from the Kitchen, supplied the recipe for Mack’s absolute favourite cookies, and on Wednesday, I turned to it again for an intriguing recipe for Friendship Cookies.

Calling for cake mix, water, oil, 1 egg, and white chocolate chips, it was the simplest chocolate cookie recipe I had ever come across. I was interested to see how the final product would turn out (and wondered how many experimental batches were made before the version made it to print).

I should have sifted the cake mix (it would have saved a lot of time trying to pound out the lumps), but other than that, it was a straightforward dump-and-combine recipe. I did only end up with about half of the four dozen that the recipe claims to make, but that was fine, as I couldn’t complain about having to put in much effort at all.

The cookies were soft out of the oven, and remained so the day after baking. The off-classic combination of dark cocoa with white chocolate was nice as well.

I just wonder about the name – one would assume that friends would be worth more trouble than a cleverly-developed secondary use of prepared cake mix.

Friendship Cookies