Grilled Pork Chops with Seasonal Fruit Salad

A couple weeks ago we entered the Maple Leaf Prime Pork Contest. After looking around at our local super markets stores, we were only able to find Maple Leaf Prime Pork at Save-On. There were 3 cuts of pork to choose from at the grocery store, the tenderloin, loin chops, and ribs. We decided to use the pork loin chops because it is the quickest to cook on a bbq.

We are not great cooks, but we wanted to do something simple, fresh, and tasty. We based our recipe on what we think would taste nice together, and our experimentation at the kitchen turned out pretty well. The pork was very tender and for the sides we made a super creamy mashed potato with Gruyere cheese, and a fresh seasonal fruit salad.

This wasn’t a super hard entrée to make, we had fun making this recipe, so hopefully it will encourage you to try it out in your own kitchen. Don’t forget to vote for our recipe on the Maple Leaf Prime Facebook page! You can also get 50% off of a Maple Leaf Prime Pork product for voting. You can vote once a day.

Serving: 3

Cooking Time: 45 minutes

Pork & Marinade
3 Maple leaf prime pork steaks
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 bay leaves
4 sprigs of thyme
fresh ground pepper
lemon zest
1/2 cup dry red wine

Roast Garlic, Gruyere Mashed Potatoes
3 potatoes
1 handful of chives, finely chopped
1 cup whipping cream
2 tbsp butter
100 g grated Gruyere Cheese
1 head of garlic
1/2 bay leaf
1 sprig of thyme
1 tbsp olive oil
fresh ground black pepper, salt

Fruit Salad
10 cherries, halved and pitted
1 nectarine, sliced
1 handful of blackberries
2 mint leaves
1 tsp of cardamom
1/2 lemon juice
lemon zest
1/2 orange juice
orange zest

Sides
green and yellow beans
fresh ground pepper, salt

In a large bowl, prepare the pork marinade by mixing 2 tbsp olive oil, 2 bay leaves, 4 sprigs of thyme, 1/2 cup dry red win, lemon zest, and black pepper. Place the pork steaks in the marinade, and marinade it for a least 4 hours.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F

To roast the garlic, slice the head of garlic in half horizontally. Add olive oil, bay leaf, and thyme, wrap it in aluminum foil and roast for 25 minutes in the 400 degree F oven.

For the mashed potatoes, peel and dice the potatoes into 2 inch cubes, place them in boiling water for 20 minutes or until potatoes are soft when poked with a fork. Drain the cooked potatoes, and mix in the roasted garlic, butter, Gruyere cheese, whipping cream, black pepper, and chives, and mash together. Add in salt to taste.

While waiting for the potatoes to cook, prepare the fruit salad by mixing the cherries, blackberries, and nectarine in a large bowl. Squeeze the juice out of half a lemon and half an orange juice. Also add in lemon zest, orange zest, cardamon, and mint. Mix everything together well, and place it in the fridge until the pork is cooked.

We barbequed the Pork Chops on a medium-high heat for about 12 minutes (6 minutes a side) or until it reaches about 75 deg C using the handy Meat Thermometer Fork that Matchstick sent us. Let the meat rest for about 10 minutes. Plate and serve!

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***½~ (3.5/5)

My first attempt to make Mac and Cheese that was NOT Kraft Dinner (which I now hate oh so much). I’ve actually been pretty disappointed with the Mac & Cheeses that I’ve had. No matter how extravagent it seems it was just never that good. I’m still on my quest to find the Ultimate one. If anyone has any recommendations please let me know!

So, we made the Barefoot Contessa’s mac and cheese with tomatoes. It was actually very simple to do. The thing I was most worried about screwing up was when making the cream sauce, but worked perfectly.

Ingredients, again check the link up there for exact amounts.

So first, we boiled the pasta with a bit of oil and salt. And in the mean time, we grated the Cheddar and Gruyere cheeses. We were doing a bunch of other stuff, so it took us a little bit more time, as we were prepping 3 different dishes at the same time.

Once the pasta was al dente, I drained it, and added a tiny bit more oil to it so  it wouldn’t stick together while we made the sauce.

The sauce was pretty easy too. Just make your basic roux. Melt the butter, and add in the four and mix for a minute or two until it combines. I haven’t made a proper roux since high school (over 10 years), so I was a bit worried because it seemed a bit clumpier than I remembered but my friend said it should be fine. Oh, we also heated up our milk in another pot. We then combined the milk with the roux and whisked it together until it got a little bit thicker and took it off the heat. It smoothed and thickened perfectly. We added our cheeses and it got even more thick and creamy. So that’s how easy it is to make a creamy-cheesy sauce. I had no clue. Then we added a bit of nutmeg, and pepper to taste. We then combined  the macaroni with the sauce in the pot and mixed it all up until it was well combined and every bit of pasta was coated in cheese. Looked really good. Not fluorescent orange like KD.

We combined our bread crumbs with some melted butter and mixed them together. We then put the macaroni and cheese mixture in our baking dish. We lined the top with sliced tomato, bread crumbs, and some extra cheddar cheese that we grated. We baked it for about 40 minutes until the sauce was bubbling and the top browned a bit. We broiled it for a few minutes to help melt the cheese on top and brown it.  The first taste it was really good. The creaminess wasn’t all there anymore, as the pasta and sauce kind of set together. Maybe I cooked it a bit too long but it was still better than the Mac & Cheeses I’ve had at other restaurants.

A few hours, the creaminess was completely gone, and it was actually quite dry when I was eating the left overs. The one thing I would change for next time would be to use fresh bread crumbs as the recipe stated. I just used dried pre-packaged bread crumbs that I had lying around the house, and I didn’t really like the texture it gave to the top. It was definitely a grainy texture. Maybe I’d also put more cheese, so it will have an awesome lasagna like crust on the top. So overall, it was pretty good while it was fresh, but still not “mind-blowingly awesome comfort food”.

I just had some home-made lasagna last night, and that was heaven.

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****~ (4/5)

…with cous cous de blah blah? No. Just fried chicken! This past weekend we had our comfort food weekend which we’ve been planning for a while. For our protein we made fried chicken using Tyler Florence’s (Beipas’ master chef) recipe which can be found on the Food Network’s website. I don’t know if this recipe was the one he used in his Tyler’s Ultimates show, because I swear he used honey somewhere. But nonetheless we tried it anyway.

Ingredients: (check Tyler’s recipe for exact amounts)

We got a bunch of chicken – 12 drumsticks, 15 thighs, a whole breast, and a pound of whole chicken wings. His recipe said to cut a chicken up our selves, but we weren’t too confident with our knife skills.

First we brined the chicken to keep it juicy! Unfortunately, I was supposed to do it over night, but I only was able to keep the chicken in the brine for 3 hours because I was busy until late the night before. When you are ready to start cooking, rinse the chicken, and then put the chicken in a deep bowl(s), and cover the chicken with water until the water is about an inch over it. For each litre of water, put a tablespoon of sea salt.

When you are ready to start cooking it, dry the pieces of chicken with a paper towel. You don’t want the chicken soaking wet before you batter them, or it might not stick properly.

For the dry part of the batter combine all the dry ingredients listed above and mix. For the wet part of the batter, combine the wet parts (the buttermilk and hot sauce). When battering the chicken, put it in the dry mixture first, then the buttermilk mixture and then back in the dry. In each step, try to get rid of any excess batter or flour.

Get the oil ready by filling your pot about 3 inches high. I used vegetable oil, because I’m allergic to peanuts! Put the fresh herbs and garlic in the pot while the oil is cold, and start heating it up to 350-365 degrees Farenheit. Sadly, since I didn’t use an electric deep fryer, or have an oil thermometer I was too hot. I should’ve checked to see if it was done after the first batch. Stupid me.

Anyways, cook the chicken until golden brown. Get ready for the herbs in the oil to make your kitchen smell awesome and get you hungry. It definitely did for us and our friends and family. It should take about 12-15 minutes per batch to get golden brown and crispy – you should probably flip it once in the middle of the cooking time. After it’s done, take off the excess oil. After the first batch is done, you can take out the herbs too because they are done flavouring the oil. You can garnish the chicken with the crispy herbs and also squeeze some lemon on top (which we forgot to do).

Sadly, the bigger thigh pieces didn’t cook all the way through. So we had to finish cooking it in the toaster oven. The wings and some of the drum sticks were cooked though. It’s my fault for not setting the proper temperature and not checking after the first batch. The batter was good though. It had a bit of a kick to it with the hotsauce in the buttermilk, and the cayenne pepper in the flour mixture. It was good, and the herbs added a really good hit to it. Even after cooking them for a bit longer in the toaster oven, the chicken meat was still juicy. My friends loved the flavour.

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****½ (4.5/5)

This weekend I was invited to a dinner party and had a friend to cook for us. I had a really nice light meal with salad, quiche and home made butternut squash soup. I was pretty impressed with my friend’s cooking, the quiche and the soup were yummy! So I asked for her permission to share her recipe with us, and luckily she said yes. So here is the Spinach and Ham Quiche recipe.

Difficulty: Easy

Cook Time: 45 minutes including prep.

1 frozen pie crust
1/2 medium onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic
1 cup spinach
150 g ham, diced
1/2 cup grated monterey jack cheese
1/2 cup grated gouda cheese
3 eggs
1/3 heavy cream
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp of thyme
sale & black pepper
olive oil

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Take the frozen pie crust, poke the dough with fork and bake it in the oven for 8 minutes. Meanwhile, in a medium heated pan, sauté the onion, garlic, and spinach until the onion is soft and spinach is cooked.

Take out the pie crust, and pour sautéed spinach into to the pie crust. Also add into the pie crust, diced ham, monterey jack, and gouda cheese. Mix all ingredients together.

Mix 3 eggs, and 1/3 cup of heavy cream, add cayenne pepper, thyme, and a pinch of salt and black pepper. Add the liquid mixture  into the pie crust, baked for 25mins in 375 degrees F until the egg mixture is set and the top is nice and golden.

To check if the quiche is done, take a toothpick, poke the center of the pie, if there is no liquid on the toothpick, the pie is ready to go.

Tip: This was a great dish to eat in the spring or in the summer. If you are looking for a healthier version, you can substitute the heavy cream with milk.

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****~ (4/5)

Level: Easy

This is a recipe for a quick and somewhat fancy cooking breakfast on a lazy Sunday. This recipe was made up spontaneously while I was shopping at the grocery store, and turned out really well and it was really tasty. It was really easy to make and it’s a good recipe to impress whoever you are cooking for. It is also perfect breakfast to make if you are running late, because you can just take it with you with no mess.

Cooking Time: 15 minutes

Serving: 4 Burritos

4 large flour tortillas
1/2 tomato
1/2 red onion
1/2 green pepper
1/2 red pepper
6 large eggs
100g Mexican salami
100g turkey kolbassa
8 slices of chedder cheese
few sprigs of cilantro
extra virgin olive oil
salt, black pepper

Method:

Dice tomato, red onion, green pepper, red pepper, Mexican salami and turkey kolbassa. Break eggs in a large bowl, add in a few cilantro leaves (as much as you like), add salt, freshly ground pepper and mix.

In a medium heat pan, add extra virgin olive oil, add eggs, stir constantly to make scrambled eggs. Keep the scrambled eggs a little under cooked, as they will get cooked again in the grill. After the eggs are cooked, remove from pan. Add a bit more extra virgin olive oil and sautée the red onions until they are a little brown and soft. After the onions are cooked, remove them from the pan. Turn to low heat, add diced Mexican salami and turkey kolbassa, sautée until the meat is warm.

Pre heat panini press to 425 degrees

Layer cheese, eggs, Mexican salami, turkey kolbassa, onion, red & green pepper, tomato on the tortilla, wrap it, and send it to the panini press for 5 minutes or until the wrap is crispy.

Let it cool for 1 minutes before serving.

Tip: If you don’t have a panini grill, use a non stick pan. Put the burrito on the pan on medium low heat, place a plate on top of a burrito, and put something heavy on the plate to press the burrito down. Turn the burrito around after 2 minutes or until the wrap is golden and crispy.

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****~ (4/5)
Made this for Dinner Thursdays. Read full post here.

The ingredients for the stir-fry were chosen on the fly at the local Asian super market (Uwajimaya in our case because it was the most likely place to carry the Black Bean sauce). So if you feel like it, you may choose the vegetables to your liking, but we found these went well together. The sauce itself is vague for a reason haha, Jeff made the sauce up on the spot and is the result of his last few years of cooking for himself. I’m glad I was able to reap the benefits. Very tasty.

Freestyle Stir-fry Chicken
Recipe by Jeff L.

Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts (suggest organic and whore-moan free breasts! hahaha)
3 garlic cloves
1 onion
a bag of bean sprouts
1 red bell pepper
1 green bell pepper
2 handfuls of broccoli
6 white button mushrooms
salt
pepper
olive oil/canola oil
1C of water
2 tablespoons of cornstarch
~2 tablespoons of soy sauce
Lee Kum Kee Black Bean Garlic sauce
Huy Fong Foods Chili Garlic Sauce
steamed white rice

Cooking Time: 15 mins

Directions:
Slice up the onion, red bell pepper and green bell pepper into medium sized pieces and chop the 3 cloves of garlic. Cut off the stems of the broccoli and break up the remainder into small chunks. Slice mushrooms into medium sized pieces. Cut chicken breasts into medium sized strips or cubes.

In a small bowl, add 1 C of water and the cornstarch and mix well with a spoon. Add about 2 tablespoons of soy sauce (more or less is up to you) to the mixture.

Place the olive oil in a wok on high until oil is hot. Add the chopped garlic and onion slices and saute until onions begin to soften. Add the sliced chicken breasts and cook until chicken is nearly cooked all the way through sprinkling some salt and pepper on a few times to taste. Once the chicken is almost cooked through, add in the broccoli, mushrooms and the sliced red and green bell peppers. Add the cornstarch mixture to the wok, after cooking for a moment, add a spoonful of the Black Bean Sauce and a spoonful of the Chili Garlic Sauce. Sautee everything together until vegetables are thoroughly cooked and add some salt to taste (or more black bean/chili sauce depending on how you’re feeling). If you notice that the sauce for the stir-fry is too thick, add some water to dilute it a little. On a large plate or bowl, cover the bottom with a few handfuls of bean sprouts and serve the chicken stir-fry on top.

Service with steamed white rice.

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****~ (4/5)
Made this for Dinner Thursdays. Read full post here.

This was Vivian’s creation and is not as ’saucy’ as the traditional Ma Po Tofu dishes that you will find in a restaurant. Like her beau, Vivian is a natural in the kitchen and kind of magic’d the thing together. From watching Kyle do the cooking, it’s a good idea to taste the dish midway through after the pork has cooked before adding in the tofu. It will taste a little over-salty before adding in the tofu, but once that is in the mix, everything evens out nicely. Personally, I’m a fan-boy for spicy foods and this had the right amount of heat to it.

Homemade Ma Po Tofu
Recipe by Vivian S.

Ingredients:
12 oz soft tofu (medium soft will do as well)
olive oil/canola oil
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 onion
2 green onions
8 oz ground pork
salt
Lee Kum Kee Black Bean Garlic sauce
Huy Fong Foods Chili Garlic Sauce
soy sauce
2 dried chili peppers (more if you like it to be more spicy)
steamed white rice

Cooking Time: 15 mins

Directions:

Chop dried chili peppers, green onions and 1/2 an onion. Cut tofu into medium sized cubes.

Heat a pan with olive oil/canola oil until on high until oil is hot. Add the chopped garlic and 1/4 of the chopped onions and saute for until garlic is golden brown. Add ground pork with some soy sauce (approx 2-3 tablespoons) and break it up into chunks. Sprinkle some salt on as the meat cooks. Add chopped chili peppers, a spoonful of black bean sauce and chili garlic sauce and stir when the pork is nearly cooked. Add the tofu cubes and chopped green onions along with another spoonful of black bean sauce and cook until tofu is ready.

Serve with steamed rice.

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***½~ (3.5/5)

Level: Easy

For the team lunch, I made the Californian Pesto Chicken Panini.

Preparation Time: 1 hour
Cooking time: 30 mins

Serving: 2 paninis

Ingredients:
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 roasted red pepper sliced
roasted garlic cloves
1 avocado sliced
1 vine ripened tomato
4 pitted medium black olives
1 loaf of focaccia bread
smoked gouda cheese
balsamic vinegar
extra virgin olive oil
premade pesto (or you can make your own)
salt and pepper

Preparation:
1. Clean your chicken breasts and separate the chicken tenders from the breast. Slice the chicken breasts thinner if you can.
2. Spoon a couple table spoons of your pesto sauce onto the chicken and massage it in. Let it marinate for about an hour in the fridge. Longer would be preferable.
3. Peel some garlic cloves.
4. Cut some red peppers into strips.
5. Put the garlic and red peppers into a baking pan and coat with extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper.
6. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes.
7. Fry the chicken breasts in a little bit of olive oil.
8. Cut up the tomatoes into slices
9. Peel and slice the avocado into 1/4 inch thick pieces. Do this just before you prepare your paninis so that they don’t turn brown.
10. Cut the gouda into thin slices.
11. Cut up some black olives.
12. Combine a tablespoon each of balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil and mix.
13. Preheat the Panini press

Panini-Making:
1. Put some of the oil and vinegar mixture on the inside of the bread. Apply a thin layer of pesto sauce also.
2. On the bottom part of your bread, layer your chicken, red pepper, garlic, avocado, tomato and cheese. Top with the black olives.
3. Top it with the other piece of bread and put it in the panini press until crispy and flattened. On the Hamilton Beach Panini Press it took about 4 minutes.

Paninis from meplusfood on Vimeo.

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****~ (4/5)

Level: Easy

Last weekend, we had a team lunch, and I made Roasted Vegetable Paninis. The paninis were fairly easy to make, and it is really quick if you already have left over roasted vegetables. I sort of started everything from scratch, and got the ingredients by thinking what would taste good together, and it turned out to be pretty delicious. Hope you’ll enjoy this recipe as well.

Cook time excluding roasting vegetables: 5 mins
Cook time including roasting vegetables: 45mins

Serving: 2 Paninis

1/2 Eggplant sliced 1 inch thick
3 Zucchinis, sliced
2 Red peppers, seeded, sliced
1/2 tomatoes, sliced
4 pitted medium black olives
6 big sweet basil leaves
1 loaf of Focaccia bread
6 cloves of garlic
Feta Cheese
Balsamic Vineger
Extra virgin olive oil
salt & freshly ground pepper

Roasted Veggies
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees while prepping for the vegetables. Slice the eggplants, zucchinis and red peppers; coat the vegetables and garlic with a generous amount of extra virgin olive oil, salt and freshly ground pepper. Spread them on a thin baking sheet, bake in the oven, turn the vegetables, and garlic over after 15mins and bake for another 15mins, until the red peppers are nice and wiggly.

<Panini
Take 1 table spoons of extra virgin olive oil and 1 tea spoon of balsamic vineger and mix them in a little bowl together. Brush the olive oil and balsamic vineger mix onto the inside of the Focaccia bread. On half of the focaccia bread, layer roasted garlic, zucchinis, eggplants, and red peppers. Add on olives, freshly sliced tomatoes and basil leaves. Finally, put feta cheese, and some freshly ground pepper on top of the layered vegetables. Put the other half of the focaccia bread on top and send it to the panini press for 5 minutes or until the cheese are melted and the bread is a little cripsy on the outside with nice grill marks on them.

Tip: You can roast a lot of vegetables in advance, for more paninis later on. I tried this recipe with 2 different types of breads, Ciabatta and Focaccia. I liked the panini with Focaccia because it was softer, but you can also use Ciabatta if you like.

Paninis from meplusfood on Vimeo.

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****½ (4.5/5)

Level: Easy

Fajitas! We had a party in the USA last weekend, and we made Fajitas. We quickly searched for a fajitas recipe, and we came across Tyler Florence’s fajitas recipe on foodnetwork’s website. His recipes never fail.

I didn’t really read the instructions of this recipe (again), so I didn’t realize I should prep and marinate the meat the night before. I only had the meat marinated for an hour, and without the cumin (because I didn’t have it). I also used extra virgin olive oil instead of canola, because I didn’t have canola oil. lol. The meat in the end still turned out really juicy and tender.

Prep time is kind of long if you are slow at chopping like me.

Our fajitas was served with MePlusFood Salsa and Chunky Guacamole. mmm that was one delicious meal. 4.5/5 for this recipe.

Tyler Florence
Fajitas
Recipe as written by Tyler Florence on foodnetwork website:

Cooking time: 45 minutes

1 orange, juiced
2 limes, juiced
3 tablespoons canola oil
2 clove garlic, minced
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced
1 tablespoon fresh cilantro, finely chopped
1 teaspoon cumin
2 1/4 pounds skirt or flank steak, trimmed of fat
1 green bell pepper, thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1 yellow bell pepper, thinly sliced
1 red onion, thinly sliced
12 flour tortillas, warm
Guacamole
Salsa
Kosher salt and Freshly ground pepper

In a small bowl, whisk together marinade ingredients. Place steak in a shallow container, and pour marinade over it. Refrigerate, covered, 8 hours or overnight to tenderize meat.

Drain the marinade from the meat. Grill the steak in a ridged grill pan over medium-high heat for 4 minutes each side. Transfer the steak to a cutting board and let stand.

In the same pan with the steak juices, add the bell peppers and onions. Saute the mixture for 3 minutes until the vegetables are limp. Thinly slice the steak against the grain on a diagonal.

Spread some guacamole on a tortilla, top with a few slices of steak, peppers and onions and salsa fresca. Roll up the tortilla to enclose the filling.

May also serve with sour cream and shredded cheese.

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