Friday, July 16, 2010

List

I would like to post more. I certainly don't post every thing I cook, or every thing I intend to post, or every thing I think about posting.

For those who don't know, V and I were in a car accident in April. It's been a long road to recovery, and I still feel weak and not-fully-recovered sometimes. But I'm getting there. And while unable to move much in those first few weeks I read a lot. Ok, the reading part doesn't have much to do with where I'm going - but I do read a lot of food blogs and I love it. Anyway, I'm finally starting to feel more whole, and I don't want to waste the rest of the summer, so this is something quick and easy for me to post. This is a list of things I want to cook or eat in the next few months. Hopefully it will inspire me to post more.

- Pizza at pizza libretto
- corn chowder (I have jaw problems and the dental appliance I have post-accident doesn't let my front teeth meet - so I can't have corn on the cob. I will, instead, learn to make corn chowder)
- chick peas from dried
- a cobbler or a slump
- my first ever lobster roll (V and I leave for Cape Breton on Tuesday!)
- vegetable stock (my vegetarian brother is moving back to Canada this fall/winter!)
- oatmeal pancakes (though V might protest - he loves my beer pancakes and resists change)
- heirloom tomato salad
- sweet potato gnocchi with sage butter
- something new with the pears from our backyard (we ate a lot of peach-pear crisps last summer. I'm not complaining but I'd like to mix it up. If you have a favourite recipe, let me know!)
- something new to be canned (in the past few years V and I have done strawberry jam, peach-pear chili sauce and canned pears in syrup and I did fantastic meyer lemon marmalade with the lemons from my brother's backyard in California.)

I'm glad to have this to keep me on target. Since starting this blog, I have already tried cooking two new things that I'd always wanted to try. Beet greens and salsa verde. Last weekend when V was out, I made creamy beet greens pasta. I managed to keep from eating it long enough to take pictures and I will post those and the recipe eventually. I made salsa verde for my birthday, and of course I didn't take pictures... I was too busy eating! But by popular request (at least two people at dinner wanted it) I will post the recipe/general guidelines here. This is not a mexican salsa. I think it's Italian, and the only things every one seems to have is capers, parsley and garlic. Some add anchovies (I'm not a fan), some lemon juice, many have dill or mint or basil or some other herbs. If you want my advice, start with the basics, then add the herbs or other flavours you like and the ones that will go best with what you're eating (we had ours with boiled potatoes). That's basically what I did, and I think it turned out pretty well. I loosely based it off this recipe in case you want something firmer.

Salsa Verda
2 cups loosely packed fresh parsley
most of a bunch of dill - probably 1/2 to 3/4 cups - I added some, wanted the dill to be more prevalent, then added more so I lost track of exactly how much went in.
around 1/2 cup fresh mint
4-5 sprigs fresh rosemary, off stems
handful of fresh basil
2 tbsp capers
2-3 cloves garlic
juice of half a lemon
3-4 tsp dijon mustard
1/3 cup olive oil (while I was basically doubling the recipe, I found the single quantity of olive oil to be sufficient)

Roughly chop garlic, then put in food processor and blend until finely minced. Add herbs, capers, lemon juice and dijon mustard. Pulse several times to blend. With blender running, pour in olive oil and blend just to combine.

I guess I'm on a roll here, cause I think I'll go ahead and tell you about the rest of my delicious birthday dinner:

Shrimp and chorizo skewers, same ones as for the SS&C party. We also experimented with grilling halloumi cheese (inspired by the fantastic meal we had for V's mom's birthday in Cobourg at the Northside Grill). The cheese was incredible, salty and just a tiny bit charred... perfect with the grilled tomatoes and of course the spiciness of the smoked paprika glaze. I made a mistake though, in cubing it and putting it on skewers - the first few melted too much and fell into the grill. Next time I will do separate skewers of tomatoes to go with the cheese and then grill the cheese in larger slabs so it can hopefully get a better char without falling into the grill.
Greek salad. My family has always made a horiatiki style Greek salad without the lettuce (though not presented with the feta on top like in restaurants). It's so simple and so delicious: big chunks of cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes, mixed together with feta, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, lots of oregano and black olives. My moms get their feta and olives from Ararat (1800 Avenue Rd.) and the feta is by far the best we've found in the city. When I get lesser-quality feta, I let it soak in the garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and oregano while I chop the rest of the vegetables and it imparts a great flavour. With the Ararat feta this is entirely unnecessary.
And then of course we had grilled asparagus and the potatoes with salsa verde. I'm hungry now just thinking back on it, but what really made the meal/evening fantastic was the company (as I think is true with most great meals.)

For my birthday dessert, V always makes me strawberry shortcake. We spent the morning on a strawberry hunt guided by a Blackberry (anyone else find that amusing?). After a bit of a wild goose chase through my new favourite market here (is it still a wild goose chase when you come out with a bag of beautiful produce - beets, cherries, green garlic, rhubarb...), and an even more fruitless (heh) trip to a place in Whitby, we found Watson Farms and got two flats! They smelled incredible and I'm not sure how I resisted going through a few baskets in the car on the way to the cottage. Oh right, V put them in the trunk away from my greedy little fingers. They were perfect - bright red, juicy, flavourful. Ontario strawberries in June and July are the way strawberries are meant to taste. And I confess that I love strawberries so much I will buy the crappy California ones in the winter, but they really don't compare. He mashed half of them with some sugar, I whipped cream, and made homemade biscuits. I like a light and fluffy biscuit, so I made the Amateur Gourmet's buttermilk biscuit recipe found here. They were fantastic! And easy enough that I will not hesitate to make them again. I did all the steps up to adding the butter and blending, then transferred that mixture to the bowl and let it sit in the fridge until dinner was done. At the last moment I added the buttermilk, formed and baked, so we got our dessert on perfectly warm, just-out-of-the-oven biscuits. Amazing. Though I suppose you could also do it all in advance then reheat, this also gave us a nice break to clean and digest between dinner and dessert.

And I really do recommend the Amateur Gourmet blog... it's the only one that makes me laugh out loud and drool. Sometimes at the same time, but maybe that's because of my dental appliance...

No comments:

Post a Comment