A Very Special Post

Hello internet friends! It's been a while!

It's my fault, I know... But I have an excellent excuse: I was a little bummed that I would have to spend Thanksgiving weekend alone, so when my parents offered up a flight home to Ontario, I was all in. Unfortunately that means limited computer access.

Which does not mean that I wasn't thinking of you! I did some cooking (obviously, it's Thanksgiving!) and although I have limited photos, I'll be sharing the recipes with you for the next few days.

The other reason this weekend was special is that it was Hubby's birthday, and our second anniversary!!

What a fox!

I am so incredibly blessed to have met this amazing man. He has shaped me into the person I am today. When I am weak, he is my strength. When I am down, he is my unfailing cheerleader. He makes me so very happy, and I can't wait to spend the next 50+ years doing the same for him. I'll even take the socks left all over the house for it :)

Did you ever have a meal in a restaurant that was so ah-mah-zing you just HAD to recreate it at home? This happens to us a lot, but the place that has given me those warm and fuzzies the most often is The Coastal Cafe.

In our future, there will be a lot of times I'll tell you to eat someplace if you're ever in Halifax. But for The Coastal, you should actually come to Halifax for the express purpose of eating there. I'm not kidding.

If we won the lottery tomorrow, we would both spend at least six months working at The Coastal for free, just so we could learn how they do it and have deliciousness like that in our lives at home every day.

We have attempted to recreate multiple Coastal dishes at home, but last weekend I had to make Hubby's favourite, the fall Breakfast of Champinions. At it's core it's a croque monsieur, but without the ham, and gussied up for breakfast.

I used my go-to light hollandaise because lets be honest, can't nobody eat hollandaise as often as we fake-out The Coastal in this house and still fit into their skinny jeans, but absolutely do it full-fat if you're having it for a special occasion.

Happy Birthday Babe!!

Breakfast of Champinions

Serves: 4

Ingredients:

Hollandaise Sauce:

1 tbsp butter

¾ cup buttermilk

1 tbsp cornstarch

½ tsp salt

Pinch of cayenne pepper

1 large egg

1 tbsp grainy Dijon mustard

1 tsp truffle oil (I use a truffle/olive blend; if you have the real stuff, definitely use less)

To Assemble:

8 eggs

8 slices good sourdough bread, buttered

Sliced Gruyere cheese, or other good Swiss cheese

1lb mushrooms, sliced

olive oil

Directions:

Heat some olive oil in a large pan over med-high heat and saute mushrooms until they no longer release and liquid. Season to taste and set aside.

In a small saucepan, heat butte over med heat until bubbling. Watch carefully, and remove from heat when solids start to brown; set aside in a small dish.

In the same saucepan, whisk a small amount of buttermilk with cornstarch; when well blended whisk in the remaining ingredients except the butter and truffle oil. Heat over med-lo heat, whisking constantly; lower the heat if the egg begins to stick to the bottom, we're not making scrambled eggs here!

Continue whisking until the sauce thickens slightly, or just comes to a simmer; whisk for 15-20 seconds more, then remove from the heat. Pass the sauce through a sieve to remove any cooked egg bits. Stir in the reserved butter and truffle oil.

Grill the croques over med heat using two slices of the sourdough bread and Gruyere cheese. A croque monsieur at it's heart is really just a grilled cheese after all!

Meanwhile, poach the eggs soft.

To assemble: place a croque on a plate, and top with two eggs. Pile 1/4 of the mushrooms on top and drizzle with sauce. Bon appetit!

Pumpkin Spice Latte Cut-Out Cookies; Happy Fall

I love to cook, and especially to eat, but my true love is baking. I've been baking longer than I've been cooking (at least with any discernible effort) in part because the results are much more of a treat. As a kid I wanted the cookies, the cake, the dessert WAY more than I ever wanted the food. Baking turned into a really good excuse to eat more of all those treats (you have to test everything to make sure it's good, right?).

This picture fills me with calm. Until I need to clean up...

I never understand people who find baking and cooking frustrating. For me, baking especially is a form of relaxation; meditation as I measure out ingredients. It's a way I can take control, making substitutions for ingredients, adding new flavours. And if it doesn't turn out? That's what I call a learning experience!

As I've gotten older, I actually don't want to eat the results of my baking... at least not as much! Now I actually want the other food even more. So generally I try to bake things that I can give to other people. Having a party? Great, I'll bring something along! I can't count the number of times I've had someone say "don't worry about bringing anything" and it goes in one ear and out the other. If you've invited me, you can expect something baked as a given. I'm not bringing it for you, I'm bringing it for me!

Nowadays my baking is more a way for me to try out new things. Hubby loves chocolate chip cookies; I could take or leave them, but I'm constantly trying new recipes in order to find The Perfect cookie, according to him (so far he says the closest is actually the cookies made on his ship, which frustrates me to no end!). The other half of my baking is making things that look really awesome. I've gotten really into decorating cookies recently, which is a ton of fun and again it's like a form of meditation. As long as I've planned out my design ahead of time, cookie decorating is like a little assembly line, no brain power necessary!

And basic cut-out cookies are really flavour adaptable; everyone knows the standard sugar cookie and shortbread roll-outs, but with a few substitutions, gingerbread, coconut, lemon are all easy. The possibilities are endless with a bit of imagination! This time around, since it's so close to Thanksgiving, I was craving some fall flavours.

Fall has always been my favourite time of year. Aside from the fact that my birthday is in the fall (and I LOVE my birthday) there's just something about it. The days get crisp so you can start wearing sweaters, and layers, and oh the boots!! The leaves all turn such amazing colours and it just feels like the world comes alive, while also feeling more cozy and comforting.

For a lot of people the "official" start of fall has become the ubiquitous pumpkin spice latte returning, to which my friend Adam quipped "I get that it's the season, but I don't understand the obsession". As much as I find the latte itself and the importance given to it mildly irritating, I do truly love all those flavours: pumpkin, warm spices, and especially coffee (oh my!). So clearly I had to try and put them into something baked. But the internet abounds with pumpkin spice latte flavoured muffins, and cupcakes, and cakes, and pies, and pillowy-soft cookies. I wanted to try a rolled, cut out cookie. Something toothsome and solid.

The pumpkin in these cookies does prove to be mildly problematic; the high moisture content tends to over-develop the gluten, which can lead to a chewier cookie than you may be expecting, so this may be a love it or hate it kind of recipe. But in my world that's the best part, it's all about the adventure of trying!

Pumpkin Spice Latte Cookies

If you are in fact anti-chewy texture, but you love the flavours of these cookies, there are a couple of things you can do to limit the gluten development: make sure you handle to dough as little as possible, only stirring in the flour until it is just barely combined; try to get as many cookies as possible out of the initial rolling, as kneading and re-rolling the scraps will overwork the dough; and finally, if you're crazy and obsessed like me you can sweat out the pumpkin puree in a small saucepan to evaporate as much water as possible. There are pumpkin flavour extracts available out there which you could use instead, but most you have to order off the internet, and ain't nobody got patience enough for that! Plus I always feel better about "real" food whenever possible.

Adding the coffee granules to the butter mixture will result in a slightly speckled appearance to the final cookies (which I think is quite pretty). If you prefer a more uniform latte-like colour, mix the coffee into the pumpkin first until so it has a chance to dissolve fully.

Finally, if you're going to decorate your cookies with royal icing like I did, omit the baking soda and powder to prevent the cookies from spreading and puffing up, which distorts the shape.

Yield: about 75x2.5” cookies

Ingredients:

6 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons ground ginger

2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt

1 ½ cups unsalted butter (at room temperature)

1/4 cup instant coffee granules

1 ¾ cup sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup pumpkin puree (not pie filling!)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

1.       Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, spices and salt in a large bowl and set aside.

2.       Beat butter, coffee powder, and sugar together in a large bowl with an electric mixer.

3.       Mix in eggs, pumpkin, and vanilla.

4.       Add flour mixture, mixing on low until just combined. Divide dough into thirds and wrap each in plastic. Refrigerate until cold and firm, about one hour or up to two days.

5.       Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll out dough on a lightly floured work surface to 1/4-inch thick. Cut into shapes. Place cookies two inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper, and refrigerate until the cookies firm up again, about 15 minutes.

6.       Bake cookies until firm but not dark, about 10 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks.

8.       Store cookies between layers of parchment or waxed paper in an airtight container for up to a week (closer to 2 weeks when fully iced).

Thai Coconut Shrimp Soup, and Some Beautiful Women!

In the world I live in, there are two groups of people: my friends and family, and then everyone else.

And I am always looking for ways to add people to the former. Food is usually a pretty good way.

I love cooking (who starts a food blog without that element?) but I'll let you in on a dirty secret: I hate cooking for myself. When I have to cook for one, the thought of all those dishes usually leads me to default to my juicer (to get my veggies in) and a bowl of cereal. I grocery shop maybe every 10 days (although I ran out of food at day six) and contemplate take-out nightly, although I can't afford it. I'm super awesome!

But really, even for those of us who like to cook, love it even, at the end of the day a large portion of the enjoyment comes from all the people making the yummy noises. In part that's why I started this blog; to share my cooking adventures with invisible internet friends (who I can pretend are making yummy noises, even if they aren't for real).

I have a truly lovely friend, Kate, who loves soup. Really loves it. Contemplated joining the Navy when she found out they break every morning at 10 for soup (seriously). Recently Kate suggested to a group of her friends the idea of a "soup exchange" - think cookie exchange, but better for your waistline. And for all the reasons above, not least of all the increase in people I can call friends, I thought it was a fantastic idea.

All the women in our group made enough soup to give away one litre per person. That's a lot of soup! I thought it would be a great way to share some of my cooking, and get a huge amount of food to eat until Hubby comes home so I don't have to do any more chopping!! (And I write this while enjoying a delicious bowl of Jamaican spinach soup)

You're looking at 81 litres of soup. No joke.

I got a lot more out of the deal though. I got to share the evening (and wine!) with some lovely ladies, learn about their lives and why this exchange was a good idea for them, and understand why they are important parts of Kate's life. All in all, a very successful evening.

The soup I brought along to our exchange was a Thai coconut shrimp. This recipe is really versatile, because you can sub in pretty much any veggies that tickle your particular fancy. I used butternut squash for the fall, but it's equally good with red bell pepper (although I'd only use about 1/2 cup so the pepper flavour doesn't overpower). You can garnish with cilantro, if you like that kind of thing (I don't), or chives, or nothing. The shrimp can easily be exchanged for chicken with a little more cooking time, or left out completely for an equally hearty vegetarian dish.

Thai Coconut Shrimp Soup

Yield: 2L (at least 4-5 servings, depending who you're feeding)

Ingredients:

2 tbsp red curry paste

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1” piece of ginger, finely chopped or grated

1 can coconut milk

3 ¼ cups vegetable/chicken broth

8 oz baby bella mushrooms, chopped roughly

1 cup chopped butternut squash

1 cup chopped sugar snap peas

1 cup corn (frozen or fresh)

½ cup uncooked quinoa, rinsed

12 oz uncooked shrimp

1 tbsp lime juice (about 1/2 lime)

1 tbsp fish sauce

Salt and pepper to taste

Chopped cilantro or chives (optional, for serving)

Directions:

1.       Heat a soup pot or dutch oven over med-high heat; sear curry paste for about one minute.

2.       Add garlic and ginger with just enough of the coconut milk to loosen everything, and cook for

              another minute, until fragrant.

3.       Add remaining coconut milk and broth; stir and bring to a boil.

4.       Once boiling, reduce heat to simmer and add quinoa and butternut squash; cover and cook 10

              minutes.

5.       Add remaining veggies and simmer another 5 minutes.

6.       Add shrimp (and cilantro/chives, if using) and simmer until they are just opaque, 2-3 minutes.

7.       Remove from heat and stir in fish sauce and lime juice. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed. If

              too tart for your taste, add about 1 tbsp honey and taste again.

8.       Serve with additional lime wedges and and cilantro/chives to garnish.

 

Pear and Prosciutto Pizza

mmmmmm pizza... Is there anyone out there who does not like pizza? If there is, I'm not friends with them.

I am a pizza non-discriminator. I take pizza of all shapes, sizes, toppings, and quality.
As a kid, pizza day was the bee's knees because my school ordered it from Brick Oven who must have used equal parts sugar and tomatoes in their sauce, an obvious draw for the under-ten crowd.
My parents, on the occasions my mom gave in to take out pizza (or was out of town!) ordered pizza from Pizza Hut, which has always had the best re-heat flavour and texture - crispy, without attaining that weird chewiness some get if microwaved.
Panago won me over late in university as I began discovering roasted garlic as a topping (shockingly late in the game considering how garlic is basically an adopted member of my family).

Then we moved to Halifax and I discovered Morris East...

If you live in Halifax, or at any point in your life visit Halifax (and I highly recommend it), you must go to Morris East for pizza.

It's the brainchild of a childhood friend of my lovely friend Kate. The wood fire oven was brought back from Italy and takes up about a sixth of the entire floor space of the original location downtown. And they cook everything in it! Seriously, right down to dessert (and how does a giant s'more tickle your fancy?).

The menu changes seasonally, but my absolute favourite is the pear pizza (in winter) which becomes peach in the summer. Sweet fruit, salty prosciutto, tangy goat cheese and balsamic drizzle... Pardon the drool.

A second location of deliciousness recently opened in our neighbourhood (and I squealed when it happened), but since I tend to not go to restaurants when Hubby is out of town, I decided when a craving came on a couple of days ago that I had to make my own at home.

We started making a lot of really delicious pizza at home when I discovered Smitten Kitchen's pizza crust. The recipe is available on her website, but it's also in her cookbook which I can whole-heartedly recommend you purchase. Every recipe I've ever made in it is absolutely fabulous, it's in my top three cookbooks of all time! However, if you prefer you can use store-bought pizza dough/crust, or go wild and use a pita; heck, just throw everything on top of some lettuce, anything goes!

This pizza does take a little bit of effort in the preparation of ingredients (steps 1-4), however, this can be done days ahead of time and the results can be kept in the fridge for a week or so, and used in a myriad of dishes. The balsamic syrup alone can top most things, especially vanilla ice cream with strawberries. Trust...

Pear Prosciutto Pizza

This pizza "recipe" is obviously very adjustable. Want more cheese? Use it. Rather have bacon? Props. This is merely a delicious starting point. If you're looking for a drippy, cheesy, guilty pizza though, this isn't it.

Yield: one pizza, enough to serve 2-4 people depending on appetite

Ingredients:

One pizza crust

Roasted garlic:

      One head of garlic

      Olive oil

One pear (I use bosc)

Red wine

3-4 slices of prosciutto or Serrano ham, chopped or torn into pieces

1/3 cup shredded Romano or parmesan cheese

1/4 cup chevre

12-14 grape tomatoes

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 300F; remove the papery outer skin and slice top off of the head of garlic and place it in a small baking dish (ie a ramekin). Pour in enough olive oil to just cover all the cloves and cover with a piece of tinfoil. Bake for 45 minutes. When finished, allow to cool, then gently squeeze out the cloves. Store garlic and oil in an airtight container in the fridge for about a week.
2. On a separate, parchment-lined pan scatter the tomatoes; drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and roast with garlic until tomatoes burst and get soft and sweet... mmmmm...
3. While garlic and tomatoes are roasting, pour 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar into a small saucepan and heat over med-hi until simmering. Allow to simmer until reduced by about 1/2 (roughly 10 minutes); remember that it will be much thicker once cooled, so don't expect a syrupy consistency right away. Transfer to a small bowl and set aside (optional: make a larger amount of syrup and store in a squeeze bottle in the fridge for 1-2 weeks).
4. Rinse out saucepan and return to the stove; peel the pear, halve and core it, and add it to the pot, with enough red wine to cover. Bring to a simmer and poach until soft, about 10 minutes. When cool enough to handle, slice.
5. Once all your toppings are ready, preheat the over to 475F. If you have a pizza stone, put it in the oven while warming up, if not, use a large cookie sheet. Either way, sprinkle with cornmeal.
6. I highly recommend doing an initial cooking of the pizza crust for 2-3 minutes, especially as all the toppings are pre-cooked. This helps it cook all the way through quickly, and also makes it easier to transfer the dressed pizza to the oven. After the 2-3 minutes, flip the crust over to dress it.
7. Spread a few cloves of roasted garlic out on the pizza crust and drizzle on some of the oil.
8. Scatter the Romano cheese over, followed by the pears, prosciutto, and tomatoes. Lastly, crumble the chevre over everything.
9. Transfer the pizza to the oven and roast for about 8-10 minutes, until the cheeses are melted and the crust is golden and crunchy. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before slicing.
10. Just before slicing the pizza, drizzle on the balsamic syrup. If desired, top with a bit of arugula or spring mix tossed in olive oil and salt.

mmmmmmmmmmmmm.........