Friends are the family you choose:)

This week was fabulous but busy! I decided that last week would be "holiday entertaining week" at our place, and thought it might be fun to run a dinner party marathon just before the holidays. I was right, but a bit more tired than I thought I'd be!

My first evening (Tuesday night) was for my closest friend and her husband. They are always easy to be with and easy to feed. Conversation never stalls, wine never stops flowing, and laughter abounds. A great start to the week!

I decided that puff pastry would be my friend during this hectic week, and decided to open the evening with savoury palmiers. Palmiers are one of the prettiest and easiest things to make, since you simply spread a delicious filling of some sort over a sheet of frozen puff pastry, roll it up in a pinwheel and put it back in the fridge to re-set. Then, you cut the litle dears into slices and bake them at 375 until golden.

I decided to do a huge stuffed palmier with wild mushrooms, fresh thyme, shallot, garlic and rosemary and rolled the whole thing into a large loaf. Baked it off in individual parcels (without Dijon, for Anne Marie) but including it in the rest of ours. They baked up very pretty, like individual presents!


I served these with green beans and lemon, a red wine mushroom stock balsamic reduction, and a new roasted potato recipe I learned from Jamie Oliver. Delicious!

Mel and Jay are a very cool couple to hang out with, but on Thursday as I left work, I wasn't as prepared as I thought I should have been. Invited them for 6:30, but even as I left the store at 5:30, I still had very little idea of what I'd be making for dinner. So- relying on an old standby of fresh pasta, fresh ingredients, I pulled together a nice fettucini, with edamame beans, green beans, slices of zucchini and some roasted baby tomatoes still on the vine.

This is a great little trick to make something look really beautiful and properly garnished. The tomatoes (of course from Canada) are still on the green vine where they grew up, and poach beautifully drizzled with just a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar, with a sprinkle of sea salt. Jay did comment, though, that the addition of shrimp was unnecessary to theirs, and that we should have just gone vegan for the night.

I 'll admit to being slightly more stressed than usual because of the vegan conflict. Maybe in time it will get easier? However, I am trying to lighten up on myself as much as possible, and just serve delicious food. I am confident I can do this, and I am equally confident that if someone is coming for dinner they will give us some leeway, open their minds just a bit, and just enjoy what's offered.


For both of these, I tried out a recipe for vegan caramel. Caramel's main ingredients are sugar, butter and cream, but I made this one with coconut milk to delicious result. I added some bananas, some cinnamon, some pecans and this caramel for a Foster-ish dessert. It was really great flamed with some rum!

Dinner party number 3 was quite delicious, and really represented the way we like to eat as often as possible. I decided that a rainbow of food would be suitable for the four couples we were getting together with.

Having said this, several of the group are serious meat eaters, and I find that offering something which tastes FAMILIAR can go a long way to getting a carnivore to eat more plants. For me, "stuffing" flavour is a great bridge.

In a pan, I sauteed yet another batch of chef's mix mushrooms. These mixes are really easy to find in the supermarket, full of variety, texture, flavour and shape. Mushrooms crave thyme and rosemary as much as I crave coffee at this hour of the morning, so it really is worth grabbing some fresh herbs if you are making a mushroom dish.


Added some chopped carrots, chopped celery and chopped onion (mirepoix) and sauteed those morsels until they were softened. The usual addition of fresh garlic and some finely chopped shallots rounded out this mixture.

In a large bowl, I added a package of stuffing mix (look for the trans-fat free kind), you would be shocked at the preservatives in some traditional mixes! The fewer ingredients the better and I always go for non-meat based ones.

Over the dry stuffing mix, I added the mushroom and veggie saute, and a can of (drained and rinsed) black beans. Then, I simply stirred until combined and let the steam of the mushroom mix soften the bread. I may have added some moisture depending on the texture. What I was going for was a stuffing that could be mounded up, wrapped in yet another sheet of puff pastry and baked off like a log or loaf.

I figured people would have a slice of something, and that would go a long way to relieving any need for meat. On the side were some balsamic roasted beets, a quick saute of fresh corn kernels, some finely chopped red pepper and cajun spice, sauteed in some coconut oil. I also steamed some heads of broccoli, and garnished with vegan parmesan and lemon zest. Finally, some BBQ sauced sweet potatoes rounded out the rainbow.

Aside from my friend Jay shouting out "I'll take mine medium rare" (ha ha) everyone ate, drank and was pretty merry if I may say so myself!

I'm glad I didn't cave to the huge pressure in my head to have done a side of beef tenderloin, or turkey breast. (And believe me, that voice was really aggessive that day). The final nudge came from the couple on Thursday who said they were disappointed that there was shrimp, and another friend at work who encouraged me to just stay the course. "They're not coming to your house expecting beef. If you serve it, you will just confuse everyone. You're a great cook, just do what you would normally eat, and it will be fine".

And it really was fine - my friend Maria (who is the single greatest gift basket giver on the planet) called recently for the recipe, which is really sweet.

That's what I love about the blog!

Thanks for reading, and have a very happy holiday season!!

Karen

FINALLY! A comment! plus, a great Chocolate Chili recipe...

Tonight, we are going to try to get the house set up for Christmas. My rice cooker is going with organic brown rice, some frozen edamame beans, a few slices of ginger, a garlic clove and a green onion.

Over the weekend I made some chili. I had a great weekend, but am keenly aware that most of the law students didn't get one. They are cramming for exams, finishing off papers due shortly, finalizing projects that they committed to months earlier and TO BE SURE wishing that they had done more, earlier in the term.

So. I thought I'd pull together a chili for some of them, even if just to take the dinner pressure off a meal or two, and rob Subway, Pizza Pizza or the dreaded Mc-Entity of some profits.

Having said this, the holidays are always a budget crunch, whether you're Faith Hill or Josh Groban, or just a regular person trying to survive until January 1st. So - even though my generous spirit is in full gear, the budget just doesn't magically expand to fit my heart's desire. Remember what happened to the Grinch!?? That's my budget right now.

So - as I have preached all year - I go to my cost saving measures once again. Veggie retrieval, a well stocked pantry, some time and some effort. To a delicious result, according to Andy.

Chocolate Chili:
"Some" (I just dumped a bunch in....) dried red kidney beans.

"Some" (ibid) dried black beans

1 diced green pepper

4 stalks diced celery

2 diced red onions

2 or 3 garlic cloves

Cumin, Garlic Powder, Cajun Spice, Paprika, Salt, Pepper, Mustard Powder and Thyme.

The beans boiled in separate pots (since they are different sizes, and cook for different times). For HOURS. This always takes much longer than I think it will.

Then I combined everything in a massive slow cooker and left it on overnight. I adjusted seasoning this morning, with a final addition of a whole grated sweet potato, a good handfull of chopped cilantro, the zest and juice of an entire lime, and about 12 dark chocolate squares.

Dark Chocolate ROCKS chili. It is a heavenly match of complex, deep, core deliciousness. Add it at the end, or you'll ruin this perfection.

Andy and a few others got the first batch. He's already eaten it, and thought it was delicious - and I live for compliments like that.

I have some of my favourite female students next on the list. We talked about something tropical, coconutty, and comforting.

Stay tuned.

THANKS JENN for finally commenting on the blog. It kills me to see so many readers and so few comments, but I am really glad that you are all checking out this cyberspace every once in a while.

K

Jitters...

After an exhaustively long "morning" (it is now 2:18, and I haven't eaten breakfast or lunch), I am taking a quick break to blog about a dinner I'm hosting tonight for some of my students. One of the shifts that has taken place for our house is the "vegan thing". I love having students out to the house - especially as they are getting more stressed as exams loom. Having said that, I am literally nervous because of the distintively non-meaty offerings tonight. I didn't want to completely abandon my ways of eating (which I will Zuber moot till the cows come home is healthier than any other way of eating, bar none!) but I don't want to impose them on everyone either.

In any event, tonight's dinner is stuffed baby peppers with a jalapeno corn polenta, a maquechoux (which is a delicious New-Orleanian corn tomato and green pepper dish, which I augmented with some brown rice for both heft and cost savings), an herb and garlic roasted filet of salmon, some sauteed lemon garlic rainbow swiss chard, and some carmellized sweet potato wedges with the most delicious sweet and spicy BBQ sauce imaginable. I may do an apple and pecan spinach salad if I get out of the office on time. To open, I'm serving a steaming bowl of coconut tomato soup, which I developed on the weekend and made a second batch of last night.

Finally, I'm making classic Beignets for dessert because - for all the health merits of 8-9 servings of veggies over the course of dinner, something deep fried SHOULD be a treat.

Photos to follow, and I sure hope everything comes out OK...

Creamy Coconut Tomato Lentil Soup

Here's another recipe where the title is the directions! I love those.

This soup was something that came together out of a weekend of fast and furious housecleaning. We are almost up on the holiday season, and there was some final cleaning and unpacking that just needed to get done.

I had a can of San Marzano tomatoes and was reaching to make a soup with some leftover leek stock that I had in the fridge. I didn't really want to slow down, but I was hungry. Right next to this can was some coconut milk.

If you've never tried coconut milk, or coconut oil in your cooking, you should. It is one of the most beautiful flavours, for sure! In addition, consuming it (in my experience) actually has a slimming effect. It is really quite amazing, since it is a saturated fat, but true. Plus, my skin always brightens, hydrates and clears within a day or two of coconutting.

So, feeling a bit too chunky from my work related indulgences recently, I dumped both cans into a soup pot with the leek stock (which is so mild that I really could have used water).

Did you know that tomato is a fruit? It made perfect sense as the lighter qualities were complimented by the coconut milk. It goes with pineapple, with mango, with everything tropical, really. So why not the fruity tomato?

I added salt and a bit of pepper, and a cup of red lentils for some body and their heartier flavour.

Not since I combined roasted beets with chocolate cupcakes have I felt such a zing of inspiration in the kitchen. I like being inspired by TV and cookbooks, but I really love coming up with something on my own that tastes this good. The coconut gave the soup that creamy texture that is often missing in vegan cuisine. The lentils steamed beautifully, added nice protein and heft, and the tomatoes were just gorgeous! I took them out once the cooking had started and pureed them in the magic bullet, but could just as easily have left them to mash up with a fork or potato masher for some chunks of tomato. Either way, this combo of ingredients was extraordinary!

Bob Blumer's Shredded Tomato

I've been out of town on business for the past two days, worked late into the evenings M T W of this week, and had business entertaining all last weekend. Suffice it to say that I am exhausted!

It is Saturday morning, and there will only be leftover bits of building blocks in my fridge. Today is one of those opportunities to plan meals for the week with a list, shop for what is in season and actually looks good in the store, and maybe do a little long-term preparation as I go about my Saturday to-do list.

I went to see Jamie Oliver in Toronto on Thursday night. He was nicely introduced by Bob Blumer (my culinary crush). What a fun evening! Bob is one of the only men who shows up in my dreams, but I am quite sure that it is probably because I've fallen asleep watching one of his shows! In any event, both men were really great to see live.

Bob did a cooking demo with a quick pasta, interestingly enough, something I often pull together at home. It takes a lot to surprise me, but he did it. He took a huge beefsteak tomato for a quick sauce and after sauteeing some garlic and shallots SHREDDED it into the pan! Now, I have grated and shredded a lot of things in my life - even a few hearts - but NEVER a tomato!!! Talk about a quick cooking trick. Seriously, it made me wonder - why didn't I think of that before!

I tried to download a number of photos of what's been cooking for the past month, but didn't quite make it. More soon.

Risotto Tuesday and Marilyn Monroe

I am really loving risottos right now, with the change in weather turning cooler. Even if you enjoy meat, or chicken or seafood, the basics are the basics - so add what you want.

Risotto Tuesdays have become a "thing" in our house. It is a great antedote to the proverbial question "what's for dinner".

Mushroom risotto was on the menu last week, but yesterday I had some beautiful red peppers and some red onions. Harrison wanted to help (mostly to make 'tofu calamari', but I talked him into helping with both) which was great.

I always find it cute to see newbies holding knives. Harrison has been able to hold a knife - and I mean a "that's a nIIIIIIfe" knife (insert Australian accent here) - since he was young. I want him to respect the sharpness and the safety issues for sure, but I also trust him and want him to be comfortable around cooking utensils. (A person I know actually locks up their cheese grater for fear that one of their little people in the house will scrape themselves. Really? When I was a kid, I didn't go around accidentally grating my fingers, but I digress...)

So he slowly took apart a red pepper, discarding the stem and seeds after slicing the whole thing in half. Then he took down the onion, taking off the top and bottom, peeling off the outer layer and cubing both into manageable chunks (the size of toonies). We added some olive oil to a big soup pot instead of a shallower pan.

When I cook with my son, I do like to build in some splatter protection when working with hot oil, hence the deeper pan.

We sauteed both till soft after salting them slightly, and then blended the mushy mixture in the magic bullet blender with some water.

Olive oil goes back in the pan, with some ARBORIO rice, enough oil to coat the kernels. Then add stock in batches, and stir with a flat utensil of some kind, slowly adding stock for about 18 minutes.

After the rice was getting nice and creamy, after approximately 10 minutes, I added the red pepper and onion mixture back into the pan.

Finished the cooking/stirring process for the next 8 muinutes, grabbed plates, some Frank's Red Hot and some sea salt.

Checked the risotto to see how it tasted, and as Julia Child would say "corrected" the seasoning. All this means is that you check to see if it needs more salt;)

When Bill walked in the door, I was on the couch, happily watching Chef At Home. Harrison was at the island nibbling his potato chip crusted fried tofu, which he thinks are better than Calamari, dunked in toasted sesame oil, soy sauce and hot sauce, and watching Spongebob.

I was able to hand him a red pepper risotto for dinner after a long hard day at the office...

Marilyn Monroe said once that she didn't mind being in a man's world, as long as she could be a woman in it. Truth be told, and as non-PC as this may sound, I LIKE being able to pull a satisfying dinner together for him, EVEN if I have worked as many hours as he has that day.

Whether dinner was easy or not is our little secret....

IKEA risotto in plain language instructions...

We are very close to finishing our IKEA closets - and MAN are they gorgeous. However, we've had to contend with two broken panels on the last door, and that means that the entire unfinished project is spread all over our closet. I literally had to move a hammer, a fat orange screwdriver and a set of IKEA instructions just to get to the keyboard.

And it makes me think again about tools.

You need the right tools to put things together, of course. But sometimes you just need some instructions that have easy to follow pictures. IKEA's instructions do not even have words. They are all visual instructions, with just arrows, guides and pictures. It is genius.

Why don't they make a cookbook for guys like this? Seriously - this is my inspired thought for the evening. IKEA needs to get into the cookbook business. Now that I think about it, it's not just the guys. We could ALL use a cookbook like this.

When I get into the office (that is if I remember, if I can still locate my other computer because I've never loaded the scanner info onto my new laptop, if I can find the magazine page, and IF I get in early....) I would like to scan in a magazine article that food network magazine runs. It isn't a recipe, actually but a collection of pictures! It will show a picture of 3 eggs, a picture of a tablespoon of oil, a picture of 15 spears of asparagus...

This idea is really smart for people who are just learning, because often the combinations of food and flavours are intimidating.

My friend Melanie said once that people always make a recipe look so easy because they LIE about what is in there. They say "Oh, I just added this, and this and a bit of that and some this" but what they don't tell you is that there are 10 other things that they added and don't tell you about. And she may be right.

Tonight, I just "threw together" a risotto for Harrison and I.

So here - in exhaustive detail - is his favourite mushroom risotto recipe. And I will try to put it into realistic terms for fun.

Take a saucepan (the size of a hubcap )
Turn one large burner onto the number 6 (already this is harder than I thought...)
Pour 3 tablespoons of olive oil (one shot glass... yes, I just measured it:)
Take a half cup of ARBORIO rice
Cut up half an onion (the size of a baseball) into little pieces (about the size of dice?)
Pulverize one clove of garlic into tiny pieces (the size of a nail head).
MIx all this in the pan until the oil coats everything including the rice, garlic and onions and keep stirring everything around.

Get a FLAT spatula so that you can scrape the entire bottom of the pan or something is going to start burning (the very blackish brown colour... NOT GOOD!)

Once you have this oily coated oniony-garlicky-rice, you can add some vegetable stock.

Vegetable stock comes in tetra-paks in the soup aisle. It can also come in a can, but it can be concentrated, so read the directions on the can. It can also come in a cube, or a packet. Make the entire packaged recipe before you start. It does not need to be hot - you can leave it cold.

[The cheapest and best way to get vegetable stock is to make your own from a large chopped up carrot (the size of a big orange screwdriver) and an equal amount of chopped up celery and one chopped up (baseball sized) onion that you have peeled to get rid of the papery surrounding layers, and just keep the wet crisp part. Cut off the hairy bearded part and the pointy top too. Add 1 teaspoon of salt (1/4 of a shot glass) and some pepper. Add 4 cups of water and leave it on the stove with the burner on 4 for 40 minutes until the veggies are soft. Since I really believe in waste not, want not, I would put the whole thing into the blender to use all the veggies....]

OK - back to our risotto.....

You will need about 6 cups of the stock OR 6 cups of liquid of some kind. If you are adventurous, you could add 1/2 cup of wine. If you have a leftover soup from the day before, you could add that. OR you could just add water.

As the oily rice is sitting there frying, grab a soup ladle and add two ladlefuls of liquid. It will sizzle and steam up.

Use the flat spoon or spatula to keep stirring everything. You will need to keep stirring for the next 18 minutes.

IT IS WORTH IT.

Let everything keep evapourating as you stir every 30 seconds to a minute and a half.

Grab a pack of whole mushrooms. (The size of golf balls)

Rinse them in a clean sink.

Cut them into slices with a knife. (The slices should be the size of a head of a wrench that says 3/4 on the head....Yes, I just looked this up too.)

Add another two spoonfulls of liquid. Add however many mushrooms you have managed to cut up.

Keep doing this every 45 seconds - 1.5 minutes or until all the mushrooms are added to the risotto.

OK. This part is for Melanie.

Add some grainy dijon mustard. (To measure this, use a big spoon you would use to eat soup with.)

Add some fresh rosemary if you have it. (One twig)

If you have laughed at the thought of fresh rosemary being in your house, smack your forehead and do not pass go, because you really should. It is delicious.

However, you could use one half of a coffee spoon of dried rosemary from your cupboard.

Use one half of the same coffee spoon to add some steak spice because STEAK SPICE GOES BEAUTIFULLY WITH MUSHROOMS.

Are you still stirring? Stirring this way is what makes risotto, risotto. It is what encourages that creamy starchy deliciousness to come out and play!

By now (I'll assume you've had about 10-15 mushrooms and have added liquid and stirring about the same number of times...) it will be thickening up, smelling delicious and making you feel pretty darn proud of yourself now.

Almost done...

Take a bite of one of the rice kernels using the spoon you were using to measure out the spices. Is it smushy, or is is still hard? It should be smushy when you stop adding liquid.

If you have used up all the stock, water is just perfectly fine at this point. There is a lot of flavour in the pan, and you are just now trying to cook the rice through.

Grab a plate, not a bowl. I prefer a plate because of how hot this risotto will be when you try to eat it.

*Believe me on this one - it will be hot - you will want to start devouring it - so use a plate.*

Grab a ladle, and finally dunk it into the risotto. Give yourself 3 good scoops on your plate.

Grab some sea salt and pinch it between your fingers, and then sprinkle it over the risotto to finish it.

Grab the olive oil and another dessert spoon and pour some olive oil onto the spoon.

Spoon the olive oil over the salted risotto. This is the good, uncooked olive oil application which is good for your heart, and adds a delicious olive-y flavour. Don't skip this step because of the fat. There is no meat in this dish, so a bit of flavour and fat will make you feel rewarded, satisfied and full.

Eat what you made.
Congratulations!