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 (4.5/5)

Level: Easy

This recipe post all started with a single question from my sister, ‘hey, do you want green tea cake?’ Cake, of course I’d say yes to cake. I thought she was referring to a cake she bought from a store, until I asked her why she’s reaching for butter and eggs from the fridge. Cool! Fresh cake.

I’m not a big matcha fan, so I didn’t have high expectation for the cake, but it turned out to be pretty tasty. It was moist, sweet, with just enough matcha flavor. It was really good with coffee. The 1 loaf of cake that she made was gone pretty quickly, so I convinced her to make a couple more later that day. Luckily she did, and here’s the recipe for this awesome matcha cake!

Cooking Time: 45 mins including prep.

Serving: 1 loaf

2 large eggs
1 cup flour
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 tbs matcha powder
1/2 tsp baking powder

Method:

Preheat oven to 340 degrees F.

Cream the butter in a mixing bowl, add sugar and mix well. Beat eggs in a separate bowl. Gradually add the beaten egg into the butter and sugar mix. Sift flour, baking powder and matcha together. Add the dry ingredients into the egg mixture and mix well.

Put the mixed cake batter in a cake pan, and bake for approximately 30 minutes.

Note: I thought the cake was yummy, however it was a tad too sweet for me. If you don’t have a sweet tooth, it’d be a good idea to adjust the amount of sugar for the recipe.

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We made Giada De Laurentiis’ Bread Pudding with Amaretto Sauce for dessert for our comfort food day. First off, I have to say that we made a bit of change because we didn’t have Panettone bread, I don’t even know what that was, and I couldn’t find it. So, we settled for Pane Di Casa bread that we found at Cobb’s bread. I thought it would be similar, but I’m not too sure. I picked something that looked like it had a good crust to it. But maybe I was wrong in my choice? Last time I’ve just used a loaf of French bread and the actual bread pudding was better (might have been a combination of things though). Anyways the Amaertto sauce was awesome for sure. I’m not going to provide a rating for this one, because a couple of things went wrong, and we changed the recipe a little bit.

Ingredients:

Pretty simple eh? Yup it is. We also got a few tips from Swiss Bakery, but we only used one of their tips.

Anyways I bought the bread the day before because the bread should be a little bit harder. Not too fresh, but I forgot to remove it from the plastic bag, so the moisture didn’t escape. Oh well, after cubing the bread, which I think were a little bit too big, we used Swiss Bakery tip #1: We placed it in on a baking sheet and toasted the bread in the oven to dry it out a bit.

While toasting we started making the “pudding” part. It was pretty simple. We cracked the eggs and put it into a bowl, and added the whip cream, milk, and sugar. We whisked it together until it was smooth and the sugar was mixed in with the milk and eggs. We modified the recipe a bit too by using 1% milk instead of whole milk, which I think is 3.25%. After the bread was slightly toasted it we put it in a baking dish. We also added some raisins, which weren’t in the original recipe. We should’ve put more. The milk and egg mixture was then poured on top. We let the bread soak for a few minutes, and then rotated and mixed the bread around so that they were all able to soak in the milk and eggs. After one turn, we covered it in saran wrap and then placed it in the fridge for an hour.

After letting it sit an hour, we took it out and again mixed the pudding, and also pressed down on the bread so that it was for surely covered.  We then placed it in the oven and baked it for 40 minutes. Swiss Bakery tip #2 was to place the baking dish in a water bath. Unfortunately I didn’t have another ovensafe dish that was high enough to put water in and place the bread pudding in. While baking we made the sauce, which was really easy too. Just combine all the ingredients and let it simmer. Keep stirring so that the corn starch doesn’t clump up.

Now here’s where the problem begins. My oven seemed to have crapped out because it wasn’t that hot. It turned it on for a bit, but when I tried to broil the top, it wouldn’t turn on. Now the bread pudding was cooked, and I tested it with a tooth pick and it came out clean. But I wanted to broil the top so that it would be nice and crispy.

The bread pudding was pretty good, though it was all pretty soft. Even though it was just a small list of ingredients, the milk, sugar, egg, and bread was really good. I’m sure it would be a lot better if we could ‘ve had a crispy topping. I also think it would be better with a bit of vanilla extract and vanilla bean. The amaretto sauce was also excellent. The one thing I didn’t like was the crust, it was a bit too hard for me. A bit hard to chew. Although good fresh, it unfortunately wasn’t very good a day after. The pieces with crust were very tough to chew.

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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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****~ (4/5)

This is the second recipe from my friend’s dinner party this past weekend. I want to thank my friend again for sharing her recipes. She made a Spinach and Ham Quiche and we had Butternut Squash Soup for appetizer. The soup was a really good appetizer. It was not a boring butternut squash soup, and to my surprise, it had a blend of different spices. Nice soup to start off the meal.

Level: Medium

Cook Time: 1 hour
Serving: 6 – 8

1 butternut squash
1 acorn squash
1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic
1 table spoon minced ginger
1 tea spoon curry powder
2 green apples, corded, peeled and diced
2/3 cup sherry wine
1 pinch of cayenne pepper
3 tablespoon olive oil
5 cups of vegetable stock
salt & black pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Cut the butternut squash and acorn squash in half. Take the seeds out, and put them face down on a roasting pan. Roast in 400F oven for 45 minutes until soft. Scoop out the roasted squash, blend it with 5 cups of vegetable stock.

In a pan on medium heat, add olive oil, and sauté onion, garlic and ginger together until onion is soft. Add curry powder, cayenne pepper, stir and cook for about a minute. Add in apples, and 2/3 cup sherry wine. Simmer the ingredients for 10minutes until the apples are soft. Scoop the ingredients out of the pan into a blender, to purée.

In a separate pot, add the squash and apple purée. Mix, and add salt and black pepper to taste, simmer for 5 minutes and serve.

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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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***~~ (3/5)
Made this for Dinner Thursdays. Read full post here.

This was a good refreshing drink. I was a little skeptical at first when I saw the basil in the mix but after it was all blended together, the taste wasn’t as overpowering as I thought it would be. I think this would be a great drink to have on a hot summer day, but since we live here in the Seattle area, that’s just asking too much haha.

Prosecco Strawberry Lemonade
Recipe by Television once upon a time and modified by Vivian S.

Ingredients:
10 Strawberries
2 Lemons
6 basil leaves
1 bottle of Prosecco Brut wine
sugar

Directions:
Chill the wine.

Slice strawberries and lemons in half. Place the strawberries in a bowl and squeeze the juice from the lemon halves into the bowl. Rip up the basil leaves and place into bowl and sprinkle a few table spoons of sugar into the bowl. Let sit for ~10 mins. Taste the juice at the bottom of the bowl and make sure that it tastes more on the sweet side than sour, if it is sour tasting rather than sweet/tangy add more sugar.

Place the contents of the bowl into a blender and blend it all together into a slushy consistency. Pour the contents into a cup filling it just below half way mark. Pour the Prosecco wine into the cup and mix with a straw. Serve cold.

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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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