Apparently This Recipe Makes Me a Great Husband

This picture is making me hungry!

The day before valentines day I was trying to impressing my blushing bride and whipped up for her this batch of chewy chocolate chip cookies. It also happened to be the day she had her friends over prior to going out for dinner. Upon return from their meal out the women walked in and sniffed at the air desperatley trying to pinpoint the delectable scent. Much to their joy there were fresh cookies cooling for their consumption.

The following week, the story still persisted with Katie's friends, of how great a husband I was to have fresh baked cookies waiting for her when she got home, while all their husbands did was play Call of Duty.

Mmmm! Cookie dough...

Baking away, transforming into deliciousness!
*Deliciousness is purley technical term.

Notes on the recipe: As always seems to happen with cookies, I take them out of the oven and think they couldn't possibly cooked enough and pop them back in for a few extra minutes. And as always it is a mistake and I end up over cooking the cookies, resulting in a crunchy texture instead of a chewy one. Be sure to mind the recipe on this one!

Recipe: Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chef Boyardee This is Not

Leftover wonton wrappers were the inspiration for this concoction of my own design. The only time I see ravioli is when one of the resident bachelors at work is emptying them into a 1 litre measuring cup and heating it up in microwave. Mostly the slop from the can does not look that appealing (this is turning into an odd analogy), but some how I turned this vision of canned noodles and meat into a delicious idea for dinner!

Lemon Basil Ravioli

300 g Ricotta Cheese
1 Bunch Fresh Basil, chopped
Zest of 1 Lemon
50 g grated parmesan
Pepper, to taste
40 Wonton Wrappers

Method:
In a bowl mix together cheeses, basil, lemon and pepper. Place 1 tsp of mixture onto a wonton wrapper. Wet edges and place a second wrapper over top. Squeeze edges to seal. Press fork tongs around edge of wrapper to create a design.
Heat a pot of boiling water. Carefully place wontons in water and cook for 2-3 minutes or until they rise to the top.

Tomato Sauce

2 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 28oz (798ml) tin of chopped tomatoes
1 medium onion, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, seeds removed, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 small bunch fresh basil, chopped
A splash of heavy cream

Method:
Heat oil in a large pan over medium heat. Add onions and cook for 5 minutes or until translucent. Add finely chopped stalks of basil, garlic and jalapeno, cook for 1 minute. Add tomatoes, bring to boil and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in cream and basil leaves.

The ricotta mixture. I am not sure why I put the oven mit in this picture, no heat was applied at this point, but I think it makes it look more chef-y.

The workstation

Bon Appetit!

Trying to be artsy close up. Did it work?

Inspiration from the Grocery Flyer!

After highlighting my first attempt at pasta making, I figured I would put my new found skill to work this weekend and concoct a delicious pasta dish that would be completely made from scratch. Upon scanning the flyers on Thursday I came up with the idea for making Tomato-Asparagus Carbonara. This dish utilized this weeks sales of grape tomatoes and asparagus.

For the tomatoes I was trying to utilize a technique in David Rocco's new book "Made in Italy." He says to roast cherry tomatoes in a 400 degree oven for 90 minutes on a baking sheet. Seemed easy enough, just halve the tomatoes and pop them in the oven for 90 minutes. However, checking in on the tomatoes after 30 minutes the bottoms were starting to turn a bit dark, I removed them at this point for fear of completely burning them if left any longer. I think if I tried this again I would use a glass baking dish or try to elevate the tomatoes on a cooling rack so they were not in direct contact with the pan.

All lined up ready to be baked.

Slightly charred but still edible.

For the asparagus I used a peeler to make ribbons, roughly the same thickness of the pasta and separated the spears tops to be tossed in throughout.

Healthy Asparagus ribbons.

The type of pasta I chose to make was fettucine. The long wide ribbons would get nicely coated in the carbonara sauce and could easily be slurrped up!

Long strands of Fettucine.

Recipe: Tomato-Asparagus Carbonara

1 lb fettucine
8 Spears of Asparagus, tips removed and shaved with peeler
1 pint grage tomatoes, halved
7 tbsp 35% cream
1 egg
1 cup grated parmesan
8 Slices Turkey Bacon, cut into bite sized pieces
Pepper

Method:
Pre-heat oven to 400. Bake Tomatoes on a single layer for 90 minutes (Or use store bought sun dried tomatoes)
Heat a large skillet over medium heat, add turkey bacon and cook until golden brown and crisp.
Combine cream and egg, stirring to combine.
Meanwhile in a large pot of boiling water, cook asparagus and pasta for 3 minutes if using fresh pasta.
Toss tomatoes in with turkey bacon.
Drain pasta/asparagus and toss into skillet. Pour over cream mixture and toss with pasta to evenly coat. Sprinkle on parmesan stirring to combine.
Enjoy!

Pasta Making: A Photographic Timeline

I have tried making my own pasta a few times in the pasta, most of my attempts have not been that successful, mostly due to the fact that the dough did not hold together well enough. I undertook a new effort today, once again trying to best the finnicky dough, but this time I used the pasta roller attachment for our standing mixer. The pasta roller really seemed to compress the dough and force it to take on a more solid structure before you lowered the thickness setting to get it to the desired thickness. This made for a sturdy solid pasta the withheld the process unlike most of my previous attempts.

Recipe:

100g Flour
1 Large Egg

Method: From Jamie Oliver

After some time in the food processor

The kneaded dough, wrapped up and ready to sit in the fridge for 1/2 hour

The pasta roller in all its glory!

The dough stretched out a little ready to make its first run through the roller.

It survived the first roll! Maybe I am getting better at this.

Having been through all 8 thickness settings, I folded up the pasta sheet ready to be cut.

I decided to make fettucine like pasta

The final product. You may think it doesn't look like that much, and you would be correct! Half of it got shredded when I tried to skip a thickness step on the roller. Getting lazy was a bad idea!

Pavlova? I thought that was a city in Spain...

Having made fresh pumpkin ice cream, I finished washing up the dishes and came to find that I had a bowl full of egg whites left over. I though long and hard about what to do with them, not wanting to be wasteful. Then inspiration struck as I remember an episode of Chuck’s Day Off I watched on the Food Network earlier in the week. Chuck’s Day Off is one of my favourite cooking shows of late, it follows a chef out of Montreal who cooks meals on his day off for staff, friends or suppliers using recipes and ingredients that tie into their background. Chuck is a laid back chef who makes delicious comfort food, and explains it in a simple way to make elaborate dishes seem doable. Getting back to the recipe, on this weeks episode he was making White Chocolate Pavlovas. These decadent little desserts are meringues with a cream mixture topped off with a jam. I took the base recipe and utilized ingredients we had around the house to make it my own.

For starters, I replaced the white chocolate with milk chocolate chips. White chocolate is fine and all but just not my style. I prefer the bolder flavours of milk and dark chocolate. Second, Chuck made a fresh marmalade from ground cherries. Having never used ground cherries, I substituted some fresh strawberries.

My biggest gripe with this recipe were the meringues. The recipe called for cooking the meringues in the oven for 3 hours! This was way too long and completely dried out the meringues making them crunchy all the way through, not soft and marshmallowy as the recipe describes. Overall my favorite part of this dish was the chocolate cream. It tastes like a denser chocolate mousse.

Recipe: White Chocolate Pavlovas

We All Scream for Ice Cream!

One of the wedding gifts that I have been looking forward to cracking open is the ice cream maker we got. Something about fresh ice cream just sounded delicious. I went looking around for a unique flavour for my first try at making ice cream, not wanting anything that I could just go to the store and buy. In my search I came across this recipe for Pumpkin Ice Cream. Given Katie’s love for pumpkin pie I knew I had found the perfect match!

Overall the process took a bit longer than I expected, having to make the custard, strain it out, adding the pumpkin and spices and then letting it cool before putting it in the ice cream maker.

However, the ice cream maker itself only had to be run for 20 minutes and the it turn out a smooth and creamy ice cream. As the instruction manual warns, the ice cream fresh form the maker was a bit more akin to soft serve than usual store bought ice cream, but after some time in the freezer it transformed into the ice cream we know and love.

We even got to use our fancy ice cream bowls!



The recipe calls for fresh butternut squash but we just used a can of pureed pumpkin which was much easier than baking the fresh pumpkin and pureeing ourselves. Also we did not have any maple syrup in the house so I substituted honey. Lastly the recipe adds an additional sweet note to the ice cream with a caramel crumble dipped in chocolate. I personally think that the ice cream was decadent enough without this addition, and enough work without it as well! The end result was a rich ice cream that tasted just like pumpkin pie filling.

Recipe: Pumpkin Ice Cream

Awash in a Sea of Vegetables

Continuing on our quest for healthier meals and incorporating more fish into our diet, I came across this fish on vegetables recipe on the Delicious. Magazine website. I figured if anyone knows how to cook fish, it must be the Aussies! This simple dish wash very easy to prepare only asking you to quarter the vegetables add a splash of oil and pop in the oven. The main source of flavour comes from a dressing that you pour over the finished meal.

The recipe calls for any white fish, we used tilapia for its mild fish flavour (and also because it was on sale).

Recipe: Baked Fish on Vegetables (Low Fat)

Simple Pasta Dish

Fresh Tomato and Bacon Pasta Sauce

Fresh tomatoes, bacon, and garlic - this is a very basic recipe for pasta sauce that has lots of flavour. Simply cut 12 roma tomatoes in half, place them cut side up in a 8x12 glass dish, chop up 8 slices of bacon, one onion, and three cloves of garlic and sprinkle in amongst the tomatoes. Drizzle with olive oil. Bake this in a 350 degree oven for an hour. With ten minutes left, use a potato masher to mash up the tomatoes. Serve over your choice of pasta and sprinkle with parmesan cheese. I loved this recipe because I was able to throw it together in minutes and leave it to bake while I did other things, and who doesn't love bacon with their pasta!?