Watermelon, Avocado and Feta Salad

For a luncheon one weekend at the cottage, I served the Empanadas because I wanted something reasonably fast as we were leaving to get back to the city. While the Empanadas were warming in the oven, I put this simple, yet tasty salad together. The salad really should have been entitled The Kitchen Sink Salad because in all honesty I was just trying to use up some ingredients we had left on our cottage weekend. It’s a delightful combination of salty, sweet and peppery. If you don’t like feta, add some crispy fried bacon. But don’t leave out the watermelon or avocado!

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 1 cup cubed watermelon
• 2 ounces feta
• 1 avocado, cubed
• a handful or two of arugula and spinach mix
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 4 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
• t tsp Dijon mustard

Directions:

1. Combine all of the ingredients to the arugula mix.
2. In a small glass jar, combine the olive oil, white balsamic vinegar and Dijon and shake vigorously to combine.
3. Toss salad just before serving.

 

A really tasty lunch.

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A new Shrimp and Scallop Ceviche with WW points

Spring has been slowly emerging, taking its dear sweet time, but today, it’s finally going to be 17°C (62.6°F). Even on Tuesday, the sun was shining and it was actually warm enough to sit outside in the sun with a cup of hot coffee. We’re cautiously hopeful for spring, although there is still some ice in our backyard believe it or not. Stubborn ice that just won’t give up. One of our radio stations has a repeating ad that goes something like this: “April, you have just one job: melt the GD ice so spring can finally show up.” Seriously, just one job! Can it be THAT hard? Yes, we are frustrated! But at least it’s starting…

I’m beginning to think about summer foods, lighter fare and this is a quick and delicious recipe I came up with for lunch about a month ago; I think it may have even been snowing at the time (a month ago). The bright, fresh flavours contrasted against the peppery arugula will make a sensational meal on a super hot, humid day (soon, please be soon). Definitely making this lovely dish for the cottage, it’ll be perfect for eating on the dock, wearing shorts and a light T!

A delightful combination of shrimps and scallops cooked in lime juice

Shrimp and Scallop Ceviche

Makes 1 small serving (to make a meal of it, increase the weight of shrimp and scallop to 100 g in total).

Ingredients:

• 30 g shrimp*, cubed rather small
• 20 g scallop*, cubed rather small (similar size to shrimp)
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 1/4 tsp non-calorie sweetener of your choice
• 1 tbsp cilantro, minced
• 1 green onion, minced
• 1 stalk celery, cubed
• 5 cm (2 inches) English cucumber, cubed
• 1/4 apple (or Jicama)
• 5 cm (2 inches) English cucumber, cubed
• 100 g Arugula

Directions:

1. Combine the lime juice and the non-calorie sweetener of your choice and mix well.
2. Make sure you cube your seafood into equal sized cubes so that they ‘cook’ at the same rate. Combine the cubed shrimp, scallop, cilantro and green onion with lime dressing and toss well. Set aside in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to one hour.
3. When the seafood has become opaque, add the celery, cucumber and apple and toss well. Serve over arugula or lettuce of choice

The apple adds the sweetness that the jicama would have.

*’cooking’ seafood in citrus does not kill off any parasites, so you should be very careful with the choice of seafood — it should be fresh, or boil in water until done and prepare the salad just prior to serving.

Based on 1 small serving

Based on 1 small serving.

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Fresh Figs with Goats Cheese, Proscuitto and Arugula

This is an exciting week for me! I’m doing some recipe testing. Yes, that sounds exactly like it is — we test recipes developed by trained chefs (or home economists) to make sure the instructions work, the tastes work and it’s basically fool proof. It’s another skill I want on my resumé and through some lovely and generous connections in the biz, I was hired for this job! How cool is that? I cook, I love to cook, and now I get paid to cook!!! I’m really over the top on this one. Thank you lucky stars!

The holiday season is upon us and like you, I am on the lookout for some very tasty and elegant hors d’œuvres to serve at get-togethers. I posted photos of this deliciously easy hors d’œuvres in 2009 but I thought it was lovely enough to post again. The first time I saw this was on Food Network Canada but I can’t recall the chef or the name of the show (a search turned up neither). The recipe, which really isn’t a recipe, is so easy and so incredibly tasty you and your guests will wonder how you lived without this incredible treat. I know figs can be expensive this time of year in North America, but it’s well worth it; it’s an incredible combo of salty, sweet, tangy, savoury, chewy and creamy all in one.

A delightful combination of salty, sweet, earthy and tangy.

Ingredients:

1 large fig will make 4-6 pieces, so count on 1 fig per person. Serves 4

• 1 large fig, per person
• 1 tbsp goats cheese, at room temperature
• 4-6 stems of beautiful specimens of baby arugula
• 1 slice of prosciutto, sliced into 4 (1 1/2 slices of prosciutto, sliced into 6)

Directions:

1. Gently clean the figs and slice into 4 or 6 portions (this will depend entirely on the girth of your figs, remember you want them one-bite sized).
2. Gently spread a thinnish layer of goats cheese over each slice of the prosciutto (that has been sliced into portions already(
3. Add one beautiful, fresh stem of baby arugula to one end of the goat cheese covered slice of prosciutto, then add a fig wedge and begin to roll up.
4. Present on a platter or store in an air tight container until ready to serve. I would let them get to room temperature for serving as the goats cheese and figs will be MUCH tastier.
5. Watch them vanish like magic.

It’s worth the ridiculous prices of figs off season

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Fresh Figs, Goats Cheese, Caramelized Onion and Walnuts on Arugula and Spinach

We’re still on vacation, and on our last night in Lyon we tool a wonderful cooking class; our chef-host had a beautiful fig tree in the back yard, and we ate fresh figs right from the tree! Although I prepared this post well before we left, I thought it appropriate to post before I return. I do hope you’re all doing well, know that You know that I miss reading about what you’re cooking and that I’ll be back next week with lots of stories!!

One of our dear friends brought us a package of fresh, beautiful figs as a hostess gift (I love my friends!). Coincidentally I had taken out a portion of goats cheese from the deep freeze, so this salad was literally staring me in the face. A quick weeknight meal. There are no directions or quantities, do what your heart dictates, you can even throw in some crispy prosciutto or don’t make it crispy. It’s simple and wonderful. I sautéed the onions until they were soft and then I poured in about 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar and cooked it down until it was the consistency of syrup. You can use this to dress the salad…it doesn’t need much.

My salad has fresh figs, quartered, toasted sliced almonds, goats cheese, caramelized onion, balsamic dressing, arugula (rocket) and spinach.

It’s kinda like the kitchen sink salad

I’m posting this from our little apartment in Paris in the Le Marais … Correction: Montmatre district. Here is a little peak. Cheers!

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Curried Cauliflower and Chickpeas for a Meatless Day

Every so often we like a meal without meat. Indian flavours are always so welcome particularly on these bitterly cold winter nights. I saw one of our celebrity chefs, Chef Michael Smith, made this recipe on his show Chef at Home, and I’ll be darned if I can find it. It’s a really easy recipe and comes together quite quickly. It also serves up lunch very well the next day. And if you tire of it, just add bit of vegetable stock and purée into a lovely creamed soup.

There

Curried Cauliflower and Chickpeas

Ingredients:

• 450 g cauliflower cut into small florets
• 300 g rehyrdated chick peas (if using canned, drain and rinse)
• 160 g onion roughly chopped
• 75 g raisins
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp corriander
• 2 tsp curry
• 1 cup water
• 2 tbsp coconut milk powder*
• splash of EVOO

Directions:

1. Heat the oil in a large dutch oven and sauté the onions until translucent.
2. Add the cauliflower and sauté for a couple of minutes. Add the chick peas.
3. Sprinkle the spices over the hot cauliflower and stir until you can smell their wonderful aroma. Add the raisins.
4. Add water and mix in the coconut milk powder. Cover and allow to simmer until the cauliflower is tender.
5. Serve over a bed of mixed greens.

* In Toronto, they sell coconut milk in cans in our grocery stores, but I usually find I need only about 1/2 of a can. It doesn’t freeze well so I end up keeping in the fridge until it grows something weird and then it gets tossed. I found the coconut milk powder in the ethnic section in our large grocery retailer and thought it’s the perfect solution for me. You can do a search on line, I’m sure you will be able to find it in your local ethnic store.

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Rustic Fig, Goats Cheese & Prosciutto Pizza with Honey

Today would have been my parents 51 Wedding Anniversary. Sadly they are both gone now, but I needed to remember.

Éva and Gustáv Hársfai, 1960

Autumn is definitely here and winter is following closely on her heels. Our grand old maple in the front yard finally released the last of her stubborn leaves this week and the temperatures have plummeted to the minus side most nights. We’re still very fortunate not to hit the minus (Celsius) temperatures during the day, yet. We’ve had wood fires burning every night this weekend to take the chill off; ok, I’m exaggerating, the house is toasty warm, and the fire is just for coziness and ambiance. 🙂
Work has been crazy busy since I’ve returned, but I’m not complaining – it’s better too busy than not enough. Even working late nights and on the weekend, which is why I have been unable to post and for that I do apologize, dear reader.
We’ve been cooking really healthy all week, no fat, small portions and low sodium trying to rid ourselves the few extra pounds the fine cooks and chefs in Morocco gifted us. But on Friday night we felt like a bit of a treat and decided on pizza! Pizza, of course is JTs domain; he makes his deliciously thin and crispy dough from Jim Lahey (of the New York Times). We cannot take credit for the toppings either! There is a very nice restaurant in BWV called Villa, and they serve this pizza (and it’s delicious, but of course, our’s is better!)

Rustic Fig, Goats Cheese & Prosciutto Pizza with Honey

Ingredients for the dough
Makes one very thin 12″-15″ inch pizza

• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface ( about 1/2 cup more!)
• 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 warm water
• 1/8 teaspoon active dry yeast
• Fine corn meal
• Coarse salt
• 4-5 dried figs (or if in season, please use fresh)
• 100 grams goats cheese
• 3 slices prosciutto, roughly torn into smaller pieces (remove excess fat)
• 1-2 tbsp honey

Directions:

1. Soak the figs in warm water for 2-3 hours; you just want to take the chewiness out of them, you don’t want them pulpy. When done, remove from water, dry and slice into bite-sized pieces.
2. In a large bowl, combine flour, 1/8 teaspoon salt, yeast, and water, stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and rough. Let dough rest in a warm place (about 72 degrees) until doubled in volume, about 3 hours.
3. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and cover with a clean, damp kitchen towel. Let stand until doubled in size, 30 minutes to 1 hour.
4. Place a pizza stone (we use our trusty Chicago-land cast iron pizza pan) on the lowest rack of oven and preheat to 550°F for 25 minutes (you want your stone really hot)
5. Roll out the dough into a 12″-15″ round or to fit your particular pizza pan. We prefer our pizza crust to be wafer thin.
6. Carefully transfer dough to hot pizza stone. Working quickly, top dough with Goats Cheese, Prosciutto, and Figs. Drizzle lightly with honey.
7. Bake pizza until until dough is cooked through and golden brown, about 10 minutes.
8. We topped our pizza with a little arugula and spinach because we just love the peppery taste – I didn’t shoot it because you would not have been able to see the gorgeous toppings!

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Salmon Spinach Souffléed Omlete

Another tip of the hat to Laura Calder’s Soufféed Omelet. We had BBQ’d a couple of gorgeous BC wild salmon fillets late last week but then didn’t have the opportunity to use them as left-overs (we always make two extra servings so we can each take a delicious lunch to work – saves money and allows you to know exactly what you are eating!) Did you know that the pink-ness of Salmon is determined by how much shrimp they eat? The pinker the colour, the more shrimp they ate (one of our clients is a seafood canner)!  So, back to the story. On Saturday as we sat reading the paper at our beautiful Soapstone island, I pondered what to make for breakfast…and then it came to me: Salmon Spinach Souffléed Omlette! I threw in the greens to use them up…they were slowly wilting away. I love this recipe because it makes more than you think it should, using only two eggs! It’s light and airy, and the BBQ’d salmon added such a lovely smoked flavour. (I wasn’t going to post this, but it was so damn tasty, so I took this photo with my lowly iPhone 3GS)

Salmon Spinach Souffléed Omlette

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs, separated
• 2-3 oz BBQ’d Salmon, flaked
• 3 shallots finely chopped
• a handful of greens
• 1/4 cup non-fat yogurt (for the omlette)
• 1/4 cup non-fat yogurt (for the sauce; I haven’t had a chance to try PC’s non-fat Greek Yogurt, but I’m certain it would be amazing in this)
• 1 tbsp finely chopped chives
• Non-stock cooking spray
• 2-3 tbsp LS stock (I used chicken)
• Sea Salt

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 375°F.
2. Sauté shallots in a small cast iron pan until translucent. I find the cooking spray doesn’t really give you enough moisture to do this, so I usually splash a bit of LS Chicken Stock to help it along).
3. Add the greens and allow to wilt.
4. While this is going on, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form (not dry).
5. Then, beat the egg yolks until significantly lighter in colour and thick. Add the yogurt and beat in well.
6. Mix a little bit of the egg white into the yolk cream. The fold in the rest, carefully so that you don’t deflate it.
7. Lightly fold in the sautéed greens and shallots, and lastly the flaked salmon. Season to taste.
8. Carefully pour this mixture into the hot cast iron pan, spreading evenly in the pan so it reaches all sides.
9. Place into the hot oven for 15-20 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean.
10. In the meantime, mix the yogurt and the chives.
11. Serve with the yogurt chive sauce and a bit of whole grain toast.

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