Gazpacho

As a kid, I always hated when my mum would make gaspacho. I didn't like cucumber, and I HATED raw tomatoes.  Now that I've grown up, well at least taller, I've come to love tomatoes, and I have a healthy respect for fresh cucumber (although we're still not best friends).

I went to the Taste of the Food Terminal in Toronto this past weekend, and I came home with a ridiculous amount of fresh fruits and veg. Including 3 cucumbers.  I still don't love cucumbers, but I sure couldn't let them go to waste.  I asked around, and several people (my mum included) suggested I make gazpacho.  So I did.

For those who don't know, gazpacho is a cold soup which is Spanish in origin.  It's main ingredients are tomatoes, (bell) peppers, cucumber and onion, and a brief survey of recipes online show many, many possible additions to those base ingredients.

This recipe is based on my mums, in that it is hers, but it's one of those frustrating recipes where you add "enough" of each ingredient.  I've tried to make it as straightforward as possible.

Gazpacho
1 can no salt added diced tomatoes
3 small brown onions
1 red pepper
1 1/2 cucumber
2 large handfuls baby carrots (~1 - 1 1/2 cups)
2 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp fresh parsley
1 Tbsp fresh basil
1 Tbsp sugar
salt & pepper, to taste 

1. Peel and coarsely chop onion and garlic, coarsely chop red pepper and carrots. Toss into a food processor. (If you don't have a food processor, I suggest you borrow one, it needs to be finely chopped).
2. Peel and seed cucumber, coarsely chop and add to food processor.
3. Throw in canned tomatoes, herbs and sugar.
4. Pulse all ingredients in food processor until finely chopped.  It should appear somewhat liquidy, but not pureed.
5. Add a small amount of salt and pepper, to taste.
6. Transfer to a large bowl, cover with saran and refrigerate for a few hours to allow flavours to combine.  You want the saran wrap to sit on the surface of the soup, to avoid exposure to air which can cause discolouration.
7. Serve cold, especially on a hot day.  Add salt and pepper to taste when serving.

This recipe makes enough to feed a small army, but on the upside it keeps well in the fridge for up to a week.  I've heard mixed responses online as to whether this can be frozen or not.  It depends on how smoothly you blend the soup, I would imagine.

Sriracha Butter

Happy New Year!
(*cough* forgot to hit post)

I'm still on a hot-sauce kick. My fridge is stocked with Nando's peri-peri (in both hot, and mild herb), Frank's Red Hot, and Sriracha!  Yesterday I got a snack fever and instead of eating something, I surfed pinterest for Sriracha recipes. It was super fun, and strangely satisfied my appetite.

I've made blue cheese, and herb and cracked pepper butters before, but when I came across this little gem over at The Endless Meal, I thought to myself that the possibilities are endless.

If you're not familiar with Sriracha, it's a brilliantly flavoured asian-style hot sauce, made with red chillies.  If you can't find it in the asian food section of your local grocery store, plan a trip to the asian markets near you. Much like Franks, you can put this on anything! I've even seen recipes for Sriracha-based sweets, although I'm not sold on those.

Sriracha Butter

from: http://www.theendlessmeal.com/spicy-sriracha-butter/

1/2 cup butter, softened

3-4 Tbsp Sriracha

1. In a small bowl, mix together butter and Sriracha until well combined.
2. Store in the fridge in an air-tight container (such as a small jar) for several weeks

Recommended use:  Grilled Cheese and Apple Sandwiches with Sriracha Butter.  I had these for lunch today actually, oh my goodness. Seriously.

In case you need more ideas about Sriracha, check out the Sriracha cookbook blog (and their book too), and Bon Appetit's post on 25 Ways to Use Sriracha.

Even better, check out The Oatmeal's Ode to Sriracha.

Applesauce

Apple Sauce is maybe one of the easiest things you can learn to make, and trust me, it tastes a million times better homemade than it does store bought.  Of course, when it comes to applesauce there are a million different ways to make it - cinnamon? sugar? lemon? butter?  Do you want a sweet treat or a sauce for a savoury dish?

Well, it all starts with a basic recipe. Here's what I made today, but keep in mind since this is one of those 'season to taste' dishes, it easily scales up.

Applesauce
5 red delicious apples
1 T brown sugar
1 t cinammon

1. Wash, peel, slice (quarter) and core apples.
2. Place apple in a large sauce pan and cover with water.
3. Bring to boil, simmer on med-high ~20 minutes, or until soft (test with a fork).
4. Drain apples and spoon into food processor.
5. Add brown sugar and cinnamon, whiz until smooth.

5 apples will make you around 1 1/2 cups of apple sauce. I highly recommend making a bigger batch, because fresh applesauce is one of the most delicious things in the world. However, I bought a bag of 99c/kg red delicious apples and ended up using all I had left for this batch.

This is the most basic recipe. You can switch out the apples (although I really do think any variety of red apples is best, but it depends on what's local, what's in season, and what you like).  Adding fresh squeezed lemon juice makes it a little tart, and you can add more sugar to adjust to your preferred level of sweetness. Ginger is a delicious additive to your apple sauce. 

If you have a food mill (who does!) you can skip peeling and coring the apples before you simmer them, when you process them through the food mill, you end up with a beautiful pink colour and it also keeps more of the nutrients since they live just under the skin. 

Easy Pasta Salad

We do meat-free Monday every week, and we get a bit bored of the easy option, which is spaghetti with lots of vegetables, so sometimes we like to try new things.  This week's new thing is... pasta salad. Easy, tasty, and moderately healthy! That's a great choice all around.

Pasta Salad
2 cups pasta (uncooked)
1 red pepper
2 green onions/shallots
1/4 - 1/2 cup italian salad dressing

1. Cook pasta in salted water until desired level of done-ness (I went for al dente).
2. Rinse and then finely chop red pepper and green onion.
3. Drain cooked pasta and tip into a large tupperware dish (or bowl).
4. Add red pepper and onion, pour in salad dressing and toss to coat. 
5. Let cool for 10-15 minutes then refrigerate.
6. Best if refrigerated for several hours or overnight.

I feel like I need one of those Staples buttons. "That was easy!".  We're having this as a side, not sure what to do as a main dish yet.

Also in the kitchen this weekend, we've got banana muffins and sour cream coffee cake. It smells delicious in here!

Ginger Green Beans and Spring Smashed Potatoes

I've had a lot of disappointing adventures in the kitchen recently. I tried making jam, which resulted in me having a strawberry flavoured explosion in the kitchen.  Then I tried to tackle making ravioli. It turns out that pasta is REALLY difficult to make.  Well maybe not so much difficult as finicy? Anyway, it ended up being more like delicious sweet potato filling in a leather wallet. Ick. The recipe for the ravioli and filling is from Petite Kitchenesse and was actually a great recipe. I'm definitely going to try out that filling again. I will be honest, I ended up eating most of it with a spoon :)

So when I finally got something right in the kitchen, even if it's something simple, I wanted to share it with you folks.  Sadly, because I'm horrible at remembering to get photos, there are no photos... but I'm sure you can use your imaginations.

I picked up some big juicy looking Toulouse sausages from the butcher yesterday, and decided to do a lemony potato smash and a green bean dish (thanks to the ladies on Facebook who helped me decide on green beans).

The potatoes were prepared according to this recipe which I posted a few months ago, with a few modifications, see below.

Ginger Green Beans and Spring Smashed Potatoes
Ginger Green Beans
~500g fresh green beans, washed, trimmed and sliced into 1-2" sections
1-2 t fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small red chili pepper
olive oil
sesame oil

Spring Smashed Potatoes
4 desiree potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
2 spring onions
zest of half a lemon
juice of half a lemon
1/2 t hot english mustard (optional)
1-2 T butter 
2 T white wine vinegar
salt
chives

Spring Smashed Potatoes

1. Place peeled, roughly chopped potatoes in a pot of cold water, add a pinch of salt.
2. Place over med-high heat, bringing to a boil and cooking potatoes for 30-40 minutes.
3. Clean and chop green onions.
4. Drain cooked potatoes and toss into a large bowl with butter, lemon juice, vinegar, green onion and lemon zest.
5. Mix well, smashing potatoes slightly with a large spoon but leaving some textured clumps.
6. Add hot English mustard, salt and chives to taste.  If potatoes seem dry, add more lemon juice, vinegar or butter as desired.

Ginger Green Beans

1. Heat a small amount of olive oil in a frying pan. 
2. Add green beans and toss in oil. Cook at medium heat for 5-10 minutes.
3. Add garlic, ginger and chilli, tossing to coat in oil.
4. Cook for further 5 minutes, or until green beans are desired level of 'crunch'.
5. Transfer to a serving bowl and add a small glug (1-2 t) sesame oil for flavour.

I keep forgetting to include this in recipes - but this makes enough green beans for two and enough potatoes for probably 4, but I love leftover potatoes.  These are simple enough that I'm sure you can figure out how to scale these recipes up to feed more people.

On a side note - I actually much prefer my mashed/smashed potatoes with the skin still on, but the potatoes I picked up this week had really dry and scaly looking peels.  Clearly not the best produce is available at the supermarket in the mall.  Not only does leaving the skin on the potatoes give a nice visual effect, it also provides texture and more importantly, I'm told that there is a lot of good vitamins and minerals directly under the skin.

For the green beans, this is a variation on a recipe I've been toying with for a while - the Chinese 5 spice green beans. I'm constantly changing it around. Adding discs of ginger instead of finely chopped bits, adding bacon or water chestnuts, sometimes some toasted sesame seeds.  It's something that's easy to have a lot of fun with and (unless you have 5 spice to add) requires very little effort towards seasoning. Really, green beans are one of the best vegetables.

Is it weird that my grocery store and butcher are in a mall?

Cucumber and Cream Cheese Salad

No photo this post, I ate too quickly.

Last week, I decided to do a 'leftover dump' and eat all the fresh veg in my fridge before it went bad.  So, I made some spaghetti sauce from scratch, which I may post about another day, but oddly, I also found some cucumber and thought "what can I do with cucumber today?".

I had a fair amount of leftover cream cheese from the Red Velvet Cupcakes I made for Valentines day and said 'hey, lets see what Google gives us'. I'll be honest, that's how a lot of meals come about. Without further rambling, here's what I found, based on a bento box recipe from lunchinabox.net. I don't think this qualifies as healthy, sadly, but it did fall under delicious.

Cucumber and Cream Cheese Salad
1 cucumber (telegraph/English)
Half an 8 oz block cream cheese
1 tsp dill
Salt and Pepper

1. Wash the cucumber and chop off the ends.
2. Using the slicing side of a cheese grater, thinly slice the cucumber.
3. Soften cream cheese (either leave out for an hour or so, or microwave on low for 10-20 seconds).
4. Mix cream cheese with cucumber slices and add dill,  fresh cracked pepper and salt (to taste).
5. Serve chilled.

I have two complaints about this meal. The first complaint was from boyfriend who said it wasn't chilled enough, he was probably right. The second complaint was that I was really looking forward to eating the leftovers the next day, but boyfriend ate them all. As a side, one cucumber was just enough for two people who really enjoyed this, so feel free to upscale and add cream cheese to achieve desired 'creaminess'.

I might also recommend adding some lemon juice or seeded mustard.  This was mostly inspired by Jamie Oliver's Evolution Cucumber Salad (online) from his Ministry of Food book, which uses greek or plain low-fat yogurt instead of cream cheese. It's also delicious, but is less... well... Philly.

Baked Onion Rings and Potato Wedges

Here's a funny side to this blogpost - I actually found the recipe for onion rings in the South Beach Diet cookbook.  Don't go getting any funny ideas, I'm not a dieter, but for some reason this cookbook was on sale for $2 so I snatched it up.  The irony being that I find most of the recipes in the cookbook to be too unhealthy for my tastes (salt and oil) - you can tell it's American in origin by many of the ingredients.   Anyways, for a 'healthy' version of a food I love, these onion rings are great! A tiny bit on the dry side, but not enough to be annoying.

Baked Onion Rings and Potato Wedges
Onion Rings
1 Onion (brown or white)
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup breadcrumbs and/or crushed crackers.
olive oil or cooking spray

Potato Wedges
4 potatoes, washed
salt
paprika
olive oil
chili powder

Onion Rings

1. Preheat oven to ~200-210C (my cookbook says max... so hotter works too I suppose)
2. Peel onion and slice into ~0.5-1cm thick rings.
3. Separate individual rings (I set aside the small inner ones to use later)
4. Pour buttermilk into shallow bowl and put breadcrumb/cracker mixture into another shallow bowl or on a plate. I use a mix of Premium crackers (like saltines) and store bought breadcrumbs.
5. Dredge onion rings through butter milk, then coat with breadcrumb mixture.
6. Place on a cookie tray (I put down wax paper so they don't stick).  
7. Recipe says to lightly coat in cooking spray. I don't own any cooking spray so I use a bit of olive oil and just lightly brush them.
8. Bake for ~20 minutes or until golden and tender.

Potato Wedges

1. Preheat oven to 220C
2. Slice potatoes into wedges, and toss into a large bowl.
3. Toss with oil, salt and spices.  Don't use too much oil (a few glugs? I didn't measure, sorry).
4. Spread out evenly on a baking tray (or two, I used two).  Again, I laid down wax paper first to keep it from sticking.  
5. Bake for 30-50 minutes or until crispy and brown.  Check after 30 minutes, depending on thickness of slices, they are usually ready around 40 minutes.
6. Really good with ketchup and Tabasco.

Ideally, with both of these recipes, you would cook them on a silpat or similar, I don't own one of those, so I used wax paper on baking sheets.  I've recently been informed that we should use parchment paper instead of wax paper in baking, so I'll be trying that in the future. 

The recipe for potato wedges can also be applied for sweet potato fries as well. In this case, I'd add some brown sugar and cumin along with the paprika.  Sweet Hungarian paprika is best for sweet potato, while a smoked paprika is better on the potato wedges. It's not a huge difference, however, and I use whatever is handy.

If you are wary of buying buttermilk because you're thinking to yourself 'what the heck am I going to do with the rest of this?'.  Well, it can be used in breading chicken, or you can make Buttermilk Biscuits,  or there are a multitude of other recipes that call for it - why not plan ahead?

I think the next blog post will be pickled vegetables. Either that or the slow cooker chili I plan on making this weekend along with some no-knead bread.

Spiced Beef Fajitas with Salsa and Guacamole

I love guacamole, and I love mexican food.  Or faux-mexican food.  Or anything that involves cheese.  So, on Friday when I was searching my brain for something fun to cook, I came across a recipe in boyfriend's Barbecue cookbook (Barbecue by Eric Treuille & Birgit Erath).  This doesn't seem to be available in the US (going by the fact that it's only on amazon.co.uk, and not on amazon.com), but it's a great cookbook since there is a wide range of recipes for the grill and sides to go with it.  Most recipes also include instructions for indoor grilling too, which is nice.

So here's their recipe with my own modifications.

Spiced Beef Fajitas with Salsa and Guacamole
Marinade
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 t crushed chili (recipe called for flakes, but I used hot chili powder)
1/2 t ground cumin
1/2 t dried thyme (recipe called for oregano, but I didn't have any)
1/4 t ground allspice (I used garam masala instead. I'd recommend allspice)
2 T Mexican beer, or lager (I used XXXX Summer Bright Ale)
1 T olive oil

Meat
2 thick (2.5 cm/1" thick) steaks (recipe calls for rump steak, I used porterhouse)

Guacamole
1 ripe avocado
2-3 t chili paste (fresh chilies would probably be better)
2 t dried coriander (fresh would be better)
fresh lemon or lime juice ( ~2T)
1-2 T fresh chili paste
1 green onion, finely chopped
1 T olive oil
salt & black pepper

Salsa
2 fresh (field) tomatoes, chopped
1/2 large red onion
1-2 T lemon or lime juice
white balsamic vinegar (a splash or two)
olive oil

Fajita
Flour tortillas
Sour Cream
Grated Cheese
(Shredded lettuce)

Marinating the Steaks

1. Combine all ingredients for marinade in a shallow bowl.
2. Add steaks, turn to coat.
3. Cover (with saran wrap) and refrigerate for ~1 hour.

Guacamole

1. Place roughly chopped garlic and green onion into a bowl, add a glug of olive oil and stir to combine.  Microwave on HIGH for 15-30 seconds.
2. Add all other ingredients and mash to desired texture (recommend adding lemon/lime juice last).
3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
4. Cover in saran wrap, pressing directly onto mixture to avoid contact with air (oxidized avocado looks unpleasant).
5. Refrigerate for 30+ minutes (can be made well in advance and left in fridge).

Salsa

1. Combine tomato, onion, vinegar, oil and lemon/lime juice in a small bowl, stir well to combine. 
2. Cover in saran wrap and refrigerate.

Preparing the Fajitas

1. Grill steaks to desired 'doneness' (I prefer medium-rare), then slice on the diagonal into stips (~1cm thick or as preferred).
2. Warm tortillas on grill , ~30 second per side.  Alternately, place tortillas on a microwave safe plate and cover with a damp paper towel (cheesecloth works too), microwave on high 10-15 seconds.
3. Put steak, guacamole, sour cream, cheese and salsa on tortillas  and season with S&P if desired.  Roll and serve hot.

Recommended additional ingredients - some people like lettuce on their fajitas (I don't).  Sauteed onions and peppers (capsicum) are also a favourite of mine on fajitas.

This is actually the first time I have ever made tacos or fajitas without using the Old El Paso spice packets. I was hugely impressed. I love the Taco seasonings, but I often find they are too salty. This had very little salt - only as much as I wanted to add, which was maybe 1/4 t in the marinade and another 1/2 t in the guacamole.  A much healthier alternative.

We made this recipe for two people, but there is actually probably enough marinade for four steaks.  We had two fajitas each from this and had a little meat leftover. Lots of leftover guacamole and a little leftover salsa too. I had the leftover salsa on toast with scrambled eggs for breakfast the next morning. It had a hugely strong flavour after sitting all night. I highly recommend.  

The guacamole and salsa recipes were mostly my own idea, somewhat inspired by the book.  I have difficulty following instructions, I like to go my own way :).  The green onions added a really nice extra bit of texture to the guacamole, and the salsa was a first for me - I really liked it and I think I'll try it again.  If made in a larger batch, I think a food processor would be the way to go. I hate cutting tomatoes.

I also think something like Corona or Sol would be good beers to use in the marinade but a) they're expensive and b) I don't like them and I knew I would be making the great sacrifice of drinking the leftover beer (how horrible) so I picked one that had a similar flavour that I actually enjoyed.   I think a spicy lager would have been good too.

Enjoy :D

Scotch Fillet with Salsa Verde Surprise and Fresh Spring Mashed Potatoes

Hi Folks,
I've been meaning all week to cook something worth putting up on the blog, but it's been a lazy cooking week.  Chicken salad and sweet potato fries are not exactly the most exciting of recipes to create or share (even if they are quite delicious).  So, today being Friday I decided it was time to create something fun and new.

To provide a setting for this meal I'll tell you that in Australia winter begins in June, and no, it's not quite as harsh as Canadian winters, but it's still cold, and instead of snow we get rain and hail and wind, and it calls for comfort foods.  Now, at the end of August, the weather is turning beautiful and it's feeling very much like spring time is just around the corner.  Or well, it feels like a Canadian summer :)  So I wanted to make something fresh and light that made me feel like springtime, and here you have it.

Scotch Fillet with Salsa Verde Surprise and Fresh Spring Mashed Potatoes
Salsa Verde Surprise
3-5 Fresh Strawberries
1 Avocado
1 Red Onion
Olive Oil
Balsamic Vinegar
a pinch white sugar
a pinch salt


Fresh Spring Mashed Potatoes
3 potatoes, peeled and chopped in large chunks
2-3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
2 green onions, washed and roughly chopped
2 T butter
Lemon Juice - 1/4 lemon or maybe 1-2 T lemon juice
Salt


Steak

1. Place 2 steaks on a plate and splash liberally with balsamic vinegar and sprinkle with brown sugar, both sides.
2. Allow steaks to sit at room temperature 10-15 minutes to absorb flavours.
3. Barbecue steaks to desired level of 'done'ness.

Salsa Verde Surprise

1. Heat frying pan to med-high with a splash of olive oil.
2. Finely chop red onion and add to pan.
3. Wash, hull and chop strawberries and place in a small bowl with 1-2T balsamic vinegar and 1/4 teaspoon white sugar, stir to combine.
4. When onion is softened and beginning t change colour, add strawberry mixture to frying pan.
5. Chop avocado into pieces similar in size to onion and strawberry.
6. Remove strawberry and onion mixture from heat after ~5 minutes, combine in bowl with avocado, stir and add salt to taste.

Fresh Spring Mashed Potatoes

1. Add peeled chopped potato to a large pot of cold water, add salt and bring to the boil.
2. Boil potatoes for 15-20 or until soft.
3. Heat oil in a pan, add garlic and green onion, cook until soft.
4. Drain potatoes and put into a bowl, add butter in small chunks.
5. Mash potatoes, add garlic, green onion, lemon juice and salt to taste.

Serve the avocado, strawberry and onion mixture on top of the steak.

Strawberries and avocadoes are both on sale here, which is awesome, because I love them and am always looking for excuses to buy them when they are in season.  The other day at the grocery store I saw scotch fillet steak on sale and I had a serious aha moment. While getting things ready for dinner I had some potatoes that needed eating and I was trying to figure out a way to make mashed potatoes that would suit the more fruity flavour of the steak and I remembered a clip from Masterchef a few years ago where they put spring onions into mashed potatoes and figured "Hey, I can maybe make something like that.... only less awesome."  So this is a completely original idea, that has been inspired by a whole bunch of other things.. so maybe not so original. I also found that we had a lot of leftover salsa verde... so these proportions could easily be used for 4 people. Or you could just eat the extra with a spoon :)  Also, I'm not entirely sure what salsa verde is, but it seemed the closest and easiest way to describe the 'mix of awesome' that I created.

The additional kick to this meal was two zucchini that I had chopped diagonally into ~1/4" thick slices and coated in olive oil and sprinkles with fresh sea salt and ground pepper and thrown on the barbecue. 

Turns out the whole meal was pretty awesome. The only complaint I have is that I tried to take pictures but the damn flash on my camera is broken so they look really unappealing.