I was flipping through Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution cook book and the pictures of his fruit scones got me. I wanted to make them because of the pictures, and also I’ve never made scones before. The ingredients and steps looked simple enough, and I made my very first batch of good looking scones with this recipe.

Cooking time: 45 minutes.

Ingredients (See book for exact measurements)

• 1 cup mixture of dried cherries and/or rasins
• orange juice for soaking dried fruits
• self-rising flour
• baking powder
• butter
• eggs
• milk
• salt
• jam (optional)
• whipped cream (optional)

Steps: 

• Preheat over to 400 degrees F.
• Soak dried fruits with orange juice
• Mix self-rising flour, baking powder and butter until mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Either do this by a pulser or by hand.
• Beat eggs and milk together
• Drain dried fruits from orange juice and mix in with beat eggs and milk with pinch of salt
• Pour the eggs, milk and dried fruit mixture into the flour mixture, mix until you have a soft dry dough.
• Roll out the dough un til 3/4 thick
• Use cookie / biscuit cutter to cut out circles of the dough
• Dip a pastry brush into milk and brush the top of each scone
• Bake for 12 – 15 minutes

My scones turned out looking pretty good and they smell amazing. However, they were a bit hard, dense and dry in terms of taste and texture. I think I needed more milk in the dough or more butter because I like moist scones. Also the measurements in the recipe was for 10 scones, I ended up making 21. So it depends on how big you cut your scones.

While I was soaking the dried fruits, I thought would it be such a great idea if I soaked some frozen blueberries in it too? But a few minutes later as I was mixing the flour mixture I remembered I’d need to knead the dough, and all that thawed blueberries would just create little messy explosions everywhere. So I ended up picking the blueberries out from the dried fruits mixture, and luckily before I mixed everything together. Need to research on how to make scones with fresh blueberries, is that even possible?

Overall, it was a really simple recipe. I liked the step by step pictures this cook book provides. The jam and whipped cream are optional if you want to fancy up your scones.

* If you don’t have self-rising flour, you can make your own with these measurements: 1 cup flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt.

Where to get the cook book:

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I made this paella recipe about 4 times and I have not failed it once. It is super easy, with super simple and easy to get ingredients. I love making this dish for my family or for a party because it just looks and tastes amazing.

Cook time: approx. 45mins.

Ingredients: (see book for exact measurements)

• Coriander seeds
• ginger
• chicken thighs
• onion
• bay leaf
• basmati rice
• lemon zest
• chicken broth
• coconut milk
• mint

Steps:

1. coat chicken with salt & pepper, and grounded coriander seeds
2. add olive oil in paella pan, sear chicken down first until skin is crispy (approx 3-4 min each side)
3. Remove chicken from pan, and add in diced onion, bay leaf and minced ginger until onion is soft
4. Add the rice, coat rice with the oil, and stir in lemon zest
5. Add chicken broth and coconut milk, bring it to a simmer
6. Tuck chicken back in, and put the whole thing in the oven, set it and forget it for about 3o minutes.

After the chicken is cooked, I like to put frozen peas on top of the pan, and cover the whole thing with aluminium paper for about 5 – 10 minutes. This way the peas will get heated by the steam, and the rice can ‘rest’ until the right temperature to be served.

Top with some lemon wedges and mint, serve it family style out of the pan, and you got an awesome meal.

This recipe is really forgiving, you can really add anything you like. This time in addition to chicken thighs, I also used chicken drumsticks and tiger prawns.

Where to get the cook book:

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Ingredients:

• 3.5 pound Beef top round for roasting
• onions
• carrots
• celery
• garlic
• fresh herbs – such as thyme, rosemary, bay leaves, sage
• olive oil
• sea salt and pepper

I think I bought a bit of a different roasting meat, which was $17.80 per kg. I think I got something that was about $23 so it was about 3 pounds. Anyway, the steps are really simple. Preheat the oven to 475 deg F. Just chop up the veggies and place them into a roasting pan. He says not to peel them, but I did. I left the garlic cloves in their paper though. For my herbs I chose rosemary, bay, and sage. Add some olive oil to the roasting dish. For the meat, leave it outside of the refrigerator for about 30 minutes. Then massage it with the olive oil, sea salt, and black pepper. Place on top of the vegetables. Once the oven hits 475 put your roast in the oven, and lower the temperature to 400 deg F and bake for just an hour. Baste it half way through, and added water to the veggies if they seem to be getting dry. Take it out of the pan, and let it rest for 15 minutes. Cover it with aluminum foil.

Now this where my timing is way off. I had to cook it for over 30 minutes more at 400 deg F. Luckily I bought a meat thermometer that day, because after an hour, my meat was still room temperature in the middle. Not good. Now, I kind of wish in his cookbook that he told me how thick his roast was, and what the internal temperature should be, because I wouldn’t know if I didn’t have my thermometer which tells me the type of meat, and what the temperature should be for each level of doneness. Would’ve been great for him to add it here.

Now I have a couple of guesses as to why my roast took so much longer

• My roast was too thick
• I didn’t use a proper roasting pan. I used a aluminum foil roasting pan which probably doesn’t keep as much heat as a sturdier metal pan. This was stupid of me because I had just bought a roasting pan that day, but didn’t feel like washing it first. I’m also not sure how good of a pan it was, and was thinking about returning it.
• I didn’t baste it half way through
• I should roast it fat side up. I noticed that when I flipped the roast, the oil started bubbling and liquifying really quickly. The temperature of the meat roast quicker this way too.

Oh well, 1.5 hours later I had my roast. It bled quite a bit when I took it out of the pan to rest because I stabbed it a bunch of times with my thermometer. I thought I cooked it pretty well though and it was probably a medium. The taste was excellent, and I could really taste the rosemary getting into the meat. The meat was very tender (even as left overs), and could really appreciate the that the vegetables gave it. The roast was only really seasoned with salt and peper but flavours from the herbs definitely seeped in through steam.

I forgot to make the gravy as he suggested, so I faked one using the liquid from the pan. I was suppsoed to add all purpose flour, which I didn’t have, suprisingly. I used corn starch instead and dumby me forgot to melt it in hot water before adding to the liquid leading to clumps! I also added red wine as he suggested. Remarkably the sauce was pretty good, even though it was a half assed (didn’t skim the fat, used corn starch, didn’t strain it, etc.) attempt at what I was supposed to do from his instructions, and it also had clumps. The sauce was very rich and tasty anyway. He also suggestes making horseradish sauce among other things to go with your roast. I ate mine with Tyler’s Velvet Potato Puree, and I loved my meal, and so did my parents!

I bought a Wusthof Classic 8-Inch Carving Knife specifically for this day! I love that knife.

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Ingredients:

• Can of Chick Peas
• Tahini
• Garlic
• Lemon juice and zest
• Olive Oil
• Paprika
• Parsley
• Salt & Pepper

When shopping for the ingredients, findng the tahini was the difficult part. I couldn’t find it at Safeway, but was able to find it at a local produce store. Opening up was quite weird though, it was very pasty and was separated from the liquid or oil. It was very pasty and hard to scoop out the correct amount. This recipe also reminded me that the Magic Bullet sucks, and is not a replacement for a blender or food processor. It’s all I have though, so I had to make do.

So start off by draining and rinsing the chick peas. Cut the garlic, and zest the lemon. Now you basically just put the chick peas, garlic, tahini, lemon juice, lemon zest, and olive oil in a food processor and blend it until it’s combined and a good consistency. If it’s too dry, add more olive oil or water. Then add salt and pepper to taste. Just before serving add paprika and parsley and a bit more olive oil. Serve with toasted pitas! That’s it – simple right?

With the Magic Bullet not so much. At first I thought I’d put half of the ingredients in because I know the Magic Bullet isn’t the best if there isnt enough liquid, and lots of stuff gets stuck on top. But then I saw how much more room there was, so I put everything in. Bad mistake, it only blended what was close to the blade. I  shook it around, and smacked it a couple times, and could hear a few more chick peas get blended. Not a good process. I had to open it and scoop and mix it probably 5 times before I decided to use a potato masher. I then put it back into the Magic Bullet to blend it some more. I probably did this twice. In the end, I probably worked on the blending for 20 minutes – something that would probably take less than 5 minutes in a conventional food processor. I still had chunks of chick peas here and there.

One first taste with the amount of oil he recommended, it was way too thick. I added  alot more, and also quite a bit of salt and pepper so it wasn’t so bland. The paprika helped a lot too. I messed one tme though because I think I got a lemon seed or two in there and that added some bitterness on one of my first tastes. I put it in the fridge to chill, and added a bit more oil to fix the texture. When I tried it again with the pita bread it was delicious. My family loved it too. I think next time I’ll try flavouring it a bit more with other ingredients that he suggests in his Freestyle Variations. I’d gladly make this again, if I had a food processor!

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Ingredients

• Yukon Gold potatoes
• Heavy Cream
• Butter
• Salt & Pepper to taste
• Olive Oil

I went to a grocery store, and a produce store and was unable to find Yukon gold’s. So I settled for a bunch of yellow potatoes. I wasn’t sure what the equivalent of a large potato was, so I just grabbed 6 small-medium sized yellow potatoes.

Peel the potatoes, and cut into quarters. Put the potatoes in a pot of cold water, then bring to a boil. Reduce the heat a bit, and add some salt, and cook the potatoes til you can easily put a fork through them. Drain them. While the potatoes are cooking, slowly melt the butter into the heavy cream. Once you drain the potatoes, put them through a ricer or a food mill to get them into tiny little chunks of potato. I’m guessing this is what will make it really easy to make a puree when mixed with the cream and butter. There will be lots of surface area for the potatoes to suck up the liquids. Put a little bit of the cream mixture into the potatoes, and fold. Continue adding the cream and butter until it’s in puree consistency. That’s it!

So here’s my problem, besides not knowing how much potato to actually have (I wish he told us how many pounds of potatoes to get), I also couldnt’ find my ricer. I know I have one, but was unable to find it because it’s been years since we used it. I instead was going to use a metal steam basket because it had little holes, but found out I couldn’t really press it through. So I just went and did some really hard mashing to get it as broken up as I could. I even added extra cream than the recipe suggested to get it into that super creamy consistency I remembered. That being said, my texture wasn’t the greatest because I did have some chunks in there, but it was pretty creamy. The flavour was delicious. That’s probably because I added a ton more 33% cream, and the butter. It was very buttery, the way I love it. Next time, I’d do a better job mashing it (hopefully find my ricer), and try harder to look for Yukon golds. Atleast the butteriness was there, and that’s what I was mostly looking for.

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So a few months ago, when Beipas and I decided we wanted to cook more, we picked master chef’s. Beipas chose Tyler Florence (I chose Bobby Flay after he beat Michael Smith on Iron Chef) and shortly after we each ordered one our master chefs’ cook books from Amazon. We’ve cooked a few things from the cookbook and they’ve all been delicious. I decided to cook this recipe because it was really simple, and didn’t have very many ingredients. I’ve never actually had carbonara besides the frozen Michelina’s kind, so I was excited to try it out. This was a really simple recipe.

Prep time: >10 minutes
Cook time: >20 minutes

Ingredients(see his book for exact measurements)

• Heavy cream (I used whipping cream because I think it’s the same thing or similar)
• Parmesano Reggiano
• Eggs
• Bacon
• Onion
• Parsley
• Spaghetti
• Olive Oil
• Black Pepper

I usually have most of that stuff lying around the house besides the parmesano reggiano, and parsley. But damn, parmesano reggiano is expensive at Safeway. Cheapest block I could find is $13.45 so I have to make sure I use it all! @LRX350 tweeted that it’s usually cheaper at Costco. Too bad I don’t have a Costco membership under my name though. Now how do you cook it?

1. Boil a pot of water and add the spaghetti, and cook til al dente.
2. Cut up your onions and bacon.
3. Add a “3 second pour” of olive oil to your pan and get it to medium heat. Yes it looks like a lot (at least to my brother it did), and you are getting the bacon fat too, but you have to because this is part of the sauce!
4. Add your bacon first and fry for a bit, then add the onion a few minutes later. I found that by the time my bacon got crispy, my onions started to brown a little too much.
5. In a serving/pasta bowl, add the heavy cream and eggs.
6. Grate the parmesano reggiano and add it to the egg and cream mixture in the bowl. Whisk.
7. Add a bit of the pasta water to your serving bowl.
8. Add all of the bacon, onions and oil to the serving bowl and mix with the eggs, cream, and cheese.
9. Add the drained spaghetti into your serving bowl and toss lightly and coat all of the pasta.. Add some freshly ground black pepper to taste.
10. Cover with a plate or foil and let sit for 5 minutes to set the sauce.
11. Cut up some parsley. Uncover the serving dish and sprinkle some parsley on top.

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It’s really not hard, and not much cooking at all. I basically let the bacon and onion just cook in the oil, and stirred it occasionally, didn’t really have to watch it much. Using the ingredients I used, I found it to be a bit lacking in flavour, and needed a bit more cheese or cream, and a little more salt. I was hoping the saltiness of the bacon, and cheese would be enough, but I think a bit more seasoning would’ve fnished it off nicely. My fault for not tasting as I went. My bacon lost its crispiness, but expected when mixed in a sauce. The caramelized onions added an awesome sweetness to the dish, and the fried smoked bacon was great too. It wasn’t too oily, as there wasn’t a big pool of oil on the bottom, it mixed and set really well with the pasta. I thought the amount of sauce was perfect, and coated the pasta well. The bacon tended to stay on the bottom so toss it well, and evenly distribute the bacon. I think my last bowl was packed with yummy bacon. My brother and family liked it. I’d definitely make this again with a few minor tweaks because it’s so easy. So overall (with what’s left over) I think only about $12 of food went into this dish that fed 4 people. I only used like 1/4-1/3 of my cheese. 2/3 of my pack of bacon. 1/3 of my little heavy cream. Onions and parsley, and egg are pretty negligible in price. And my pasta was about $3.

Keeping on with the simple theme, we tried one of Jamie Oliver’s Parmesan Chicken from his Ministry of Food series. Update: I just noticed it’s also in Jamie’s Food Revolution cookbook that I recently bought.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZfXa8vO8N8

Ingredients:

• Chicken Breasts
• Parmesan Cheese
• Prosciutto de parma (parma ham)
• Lemon Zest
• Olive oil
• Thyme or rose mary
• Pepper

Pretty simple to make. For me, I had bone in chicken thighs lying around, so I just decided to de-bone them and flatten them. I had a bit of a problem because I’m not very good with the knife, but I’m sure this had more flavour. After de-boning the thighs, I pounded it out a bit. From there it’s easy. Season the chicken with pepper, add some thyme, and grate some parmesan cheese directly on top, and some lemon zest. Then put the strips of prosciutto on top. It’s OK if the ham is longer because it will shrink when fried. I had to fry it for about 6 minutes and it was ready. One problem that I had was that when I flipped it sometimes the ham didn’t stick well to the chicken, and it fell apart – maybe I should’ve used a bit more cheese.

It tasted pretty good, and the prep/cooking time was really quick. The ham turned really crispy, and a bit salty when combined with the parmesan.

I think it would be best to use chicken breasts and flatten it out thin so that the cooking time is quick. I made it a couple of other times. I’d suggest staying away from using lemon pepper because when I used it, it gave it a really weird tangy flavour. Maybe I put too much, but it wasn’t as good as using lemon zest. I also noticed I forgot to use the balsamic vinegar on top, so I guess it could have tasted better.

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Serves 6

2 cups water
3 sachets Four O’Clock Lychee Ginger White Tea
6 firm Asian, Barlett or Bosc pears
¾ cup sugar
One 2-inch piece of fresh ginger, thinly sliced
Peel of half lemon and half orange
1 cup whipping cream
2 sachets Four O’Clock Chocolate Spice Tea
1 tsp maple syrup
½ cup low fat French vanilla yogurt (optional)

In a saucepan bring the water to a boil, more from heat and add the Four O’Clock Lychee Ginger White Tea sachets and steep for 5 minutes. Peel the pears. Place the tea, sugar, ginger and peels into a saucepan large enough to hold the pears in a single layer.

Over medium heat bring the mixture to boiling point, or until the sugar has dissolved. Reduce heat to simmer, add the pears and cook for about 20 to 30 minutes, turning occasionally to evenly cook. Remove from heat then allow pears to cool in syrup, cover and refrigerate.

To make infused cream, in a small saucepan, add the whipping cream and bring to boiling point. Remove from heat and add the Four O’Clock Chocolate Spice tea sachets and steep for 10 to 15 minutes or until fragrant. Squeeze out sachets and discard. Cover and refrigerate until cold. Pour into a chilled mixing bowl, add maple syrup and whip until stiff peaks. Fold in yogurt, if using, until well mixed.

To assemble, remove pears from poaching liquid, drain well, and place one in a chilled serving dish. Drizzle each with some of the poaching liquid and garnish with dollops of the cream.

Option: the poaching liquid can be reduced by simmering, to make a thicker syrup.

Brief Bio:

Nathan has been an award-winning food stylist for print and film advertising for the past 24 years and is an internationally published food and travel journalist. He currently is celebrating his 21st  year on Global BCTV News with his Saturday Chefs and Fong on Food segments, and has been a regular contributor to Canada’s public radio network, CBC Radio One as well as a food columnist for The Vancouver Sun and regular contributor to Taste Magazine and EAT Magazine. In addition he has worked for Enroute, Bon Appetit, Fine Cooking, Cooking Light, Men’s Health UK, Cooking Light and NUVO.

His other television segments have included working with NBC’s The Today Show during the 2010 Winter Olympics, BBC and Sky Television, The Discovery Channel, both from England as well as the Food Network, USA and Canada, and New Zealand and Japan TV. He received the silver medal for the 2009 Food Network Challenge in the Superstar Foodstylist Competition.

In 2002 he was selected as one of the “Top 10 Food Trend-setters of the Future in Canada” by the Canadian national newspaper, The Globe and Mail Newspaper and was the recipient of the inaugural IACP/Julia Child Award of Excellence for food styling in 1998. In 2006 he was nominated for the national Gemini Awards (Humanitarian) for his dedicated work with the Dr. Peter Centre, the Vancouver hospice for people living with HIV and AIDS.

Serves 6

2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
2 tsp fennel seeds
2 sachets Four O’Clock Green Tea or Four O’Clock Green Tea Jasmine & Lotus Flower
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp sugar
4 to 6 black peppercorns

six 6 oz fresh wild spring salmon fillets

Heat a small skillet over medium heat. Add the spices and pan-roast, shaking pan over heat until fragrant and they start to brown, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove and cool down. Cut open tea sachets and pour tea into a mortar and pestle or an electric spice grinder along with the salt, sugar, peppercorns and the spices. Grind until fine.

Rub about 1 tsp of the spice rub onto each of the fillets. Cover and refrigerate to marinate for 1 hour. Barbecue on a greased grill or bake in a 375F oven for 10 to 15 minutes or until desired doneness.

Brief Bio:

Nathan has been an award-winning food stylist for print and film advertising for the past 24 years and is an internationally published food and travel journalist. He currently is celebrating his 21st  year on Global BCTV News with his Saturday Chefs and Fong on Food segments, and has been a regular contributor to Canada’s public radio network, CBC Radio One as well as a food columnist for The Vancouver Sun and regular contributor to Taste Magazine and EAT Magazine. In addition he has worked for Enroute, Bon Appetit, Fine Cooking, Cooking Light, Men’s Health UK, Cooking Light and NUVO.

His other television segments have included working with NBC’s The Today Show during the 2010 Winter Olympics, BBC and Sky Television, The Discovery Channel, both from England as well as the Food Network, USA and Canada, and New Zealand and Japan TV. He received the silver medal for the 2009 Food Network Challenge in the Superstar Foodstylist Competition.

In 2002 he was selected as one of the “Top 10 Food Trend-setters of the Future in Canada” by the Canadian national newspaper, The Globe and Mail Newspaper and was the recipient of the inaugural IACP/Julia Child Award of Excellence for food styling in 1998. In 2006 he was nominated for the national Gemini Awards (Humanitarian) for his dedicated work with the Dr. Peter Centre, the Vancouver hospice for people living with HIV and AIDS.

Serves 4

¼ cup apple juice
¼ cup apple cider
2 sachets Four O’Clock Wild Berry Herbal Tea
2 tsp grainy Dijon mustard
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
½ cup buttermilk
2 Tbsp finely chopped chives
2 Tbsp finely chopped Italian parsley
sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

In a small saucepan, bring the apple juice and cider to a boil. Add the tea sachets and let steep for 5 minutes. Remove and pour into a bowl and allow to cool.

Whisk together the mustard, olive oil and buttermilk, then gradually whisk in the tea infused juice-cider mixture and chopped herbs. Season to taste.

2 cups chicken stock
1 tsp light soy sauce
one thin slice ginger
2 sachets Four O’Clock Lime Ginger Mint Herbal tea
2 skinless chicken breasts, about 1 pound
½ small red onion, finely sliced
¼ lb fresh bean sprouts
2 stalks celery, finely sliced
½ English cucumber, halved lengthwise and cut into 1/8-inch slices
1 carrot, peeled and cut into thin julienne
4 cups chopped Napa cabbage
handful coarsely chopped cilantro
handful coarsely chopped mint
garnish: coarsely chopped roasted almonds, cashews, hazelnuts or peanuts

In a saucepan, bring the chicken stock, soy sauce and ginger to a boil. Add the tea sachets and let steep for 5 minutes. Remove sachets, bring infused stock back to a boil. Add chicken breasts and bring back to boiling. Cover and turn off heat and let sit for 20 to 25 minutes, or until juices run clear when poked in the middle of the breast with a knife. Remove breasts and allow to cool. Reserve infused stock for another use such as soup.
Shred by hand or slice chicken into julienne. Place red onion, bean sprouts, celery, cucumber, cabbage, cilantro and mint into a large mixing bowl. Pour half of the dressing onto the salad and toss, seasoning to taste. Place on serving dishes, garnish with chicken and chopped nuts.

Brief Bio:
Nathan has been an award-winning food stylist for print and film advertising for the past 24 years and is an internationally published food and travel journalist. He currently is celebrating his 21st  year on Global BCTV News with his Saturday Chefs and Fong on Food segments, and has been a regular contributor to Canada’s public radio network, CBC Radio One as well as a food columnist for The Vancouver Sun and regular contributor to Taste Magazine and EAT Magazine. In addition he has worked for Enroute, Bon Appetit, Fine Cooking, Cooking Light, Men’s Health UK, Cooking Light and NUVO.

His other television segments have included working with NBC’s The Today Show during the 2010 Winter Olympics, BBC and Sky Television, The Discovery Channel, both from England as well as the Food Network, USA and Canada, and New Zealand and Japan TV. He received the silver medal for the 2009 Food Network Challenge in the Superstar Foodstylist Competition.

In 2002 he was selected as one of the “Top 10 Food Trend-setters of the Future in Canada” by the Canadian national newspaper, The Globe and Mail Newspaper and was the recipient of the inaugural IACP/Julia Child Award of Excellence for food styling in 1998. In 2006 he was nominated for the national Gemini Awards (Humanitarian) for his dedicated work with the Dr. Peter Centre, the Vancouver hospice for people living with HIV and AIDS.

Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 50 minutes

Last month, the MePlusFood team spent a couple of days cooking some recipes that we’ve been wanting to try out for a while. Beipas found this recipe on the Food Network under their 30 quick holiday side dishes. Check out their site for exact amounts.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/corn-pudding-recipe/index.html

Ingredients:

This is a really simple recipe, and that’s why it’s so awesome. The only work you really need to do is to chop the onion, and grate some cheese. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. After you get all the ingredients all you have to do is mix it all together in a bowl. Once it is all nicely incorporated, place in a buttered baking dish and into the oven for 50 minutes. After the 50 minutes check the pudding with a tooth pick and check if it comes out clean. Let it rest for 10 minutes. That’s it!

This dish is delicious and so simple. The texture isn’t really runny but definitely isn’t as stiff as say a bread pudding. But there’s nothing really solid in it, so don’t expect it to be. Whoever has tried it said it was really good, and I strongly agree. It has a strong corn flavour, and it has just enough cheese. The cheese doesn’t melt and become stringy. I’ll be making this again tomorrow for my third time in a month, this time as a side dish for dinner on Christmas Eve.

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Prep Time: about 15 mins
Cooking Time: about 45 mins

Iron Chef Michael Symon has a series of recipes showcasing Wisconsin Cheese. We tried a couple of the recipes and we are for surely going to try more. This is a really simple Macaroni and Cheese recipe.

http://favoritefoods.eatwisconsincheese.com/episodes/7 – for the video and recipe

Another really simple dish with very little ingredients:

• Macaroni
• Gruyere Cheese
• Bacon
• Heavy Cream
• Rose mary
• Chives

That’s it!

Cut the bacon into smaller pieces, and fry until crispy. Put the heavy cream in a pot and reduce to half. In the mean time boil the macaroni in a pot of water. Chop the rose mary and add to the cream. Grate the cheese. When the cream and macaroni are ready add the pasta and bacon into the cream sauce. Mix and then add in the cheese and stir until the cheese is melted then serve.

I was a bit skeptical about this dish because it’s actually not baked, and the ingredients are so simple. It’s basically reduce the cream, cook pasta, add pasta, and mix. No need to make a roux or make a cheese sauce. Just mix everything together.

When grocery shopping the store ran out of heavy cream! So we had to use half and half. So I’m sure it will be even better with heavy cream and thicker. Regardless it was still really delicious and I think the difference really came from the chunks of bacon. We used a thicker bacon so it would stand up more in the Macaroni & Cheese. It’s best to eat this immediately because the cheese isn’t properly melted in the sauce, so it will get stringy when you reheat it. Truly yummy and happiness in a bowl.

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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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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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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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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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…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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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I made this salad without a recipe, but it was kinda influenced by my meal at the Edge. I really like this salad a lot, and I’ve actually made it for my parents this week and they liked it also. It may seem a little bit weird, but I think everyone who has tried has liked it.

Difficulty: Very Easy
Preparation Time: 15-20 minutes

Ingredients:

Baby Spinach or Baby Lettuce/Spring Mix Salad
Craisins
Couscous
Feta Cheese
Olive Oil
Balsamic Vinegar

1. Clean your baby greens if they aren’t already washed, or if you are paranoid with how clean they are.
2. Boil a cup of water with a little bit of olive oil and salt.
3. Measure out 2/3 cup of couscous (Note: you will have a lot of extra couscous, so adjust the proportion to how much salad you need. Also, different brands have different cooking methods, so follow those instructions!)
4. Once the water is boiling take off the heat, and add the couscous. Stir and then cover. Let stand for 5 minutes. Then fluff with a fork.
5. Fry the couscous in a pan with a little bit of olive oil until browned and toasted. Don’t add too much at once, just have a thin layer and do a couple batches if you need to. Don’t add too much oil also.
6. Make a vinaigrette (olive oil and balsamic vinegar, maybe some lemon)
7. Add baby greens to a salad bowl. Add craisins, and crumbled feta cheese. Add vinaigrette and toss.
8. Sprinkle the couscous on top for some crunch.

Tip: If you want, we added some of the left over Pesto Chicken breast from our Paninis into the salad.

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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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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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Level: Easy

I made this when we were making fajitas along with the MePlusFood Salsa. I never made guacamole from scratch, so I went on a searched for the recipe on the Food Network website. I decided on Tyler Florence’s Chunky Guacamole. After having such a success at making Tyler’s Chicken with Orange, I knew I can trust his recipe.

This recipe is really easy, but the prep time could take a while. There is a lot of cutting. I first started with dicing the onions and serrano chilies, then I started chopping the cilantro, and mincing the garlic. I purposely left the avocado last because I was afraid of it browning while I chop the rest of the ingredients. I also squeezed the lime juice on top of the avocado as soon as I scooped the flesh out, which I think it helped stop browning the avocado.

You are basically done after you chopped and cut everything, because the only step left is to just mix everything together, and add on salt and pepper to taste. Mash the avocado with a fork, but not too much, you want it to be chunky.

This guacamole was magical. It was fresh, it was creamy and it was REALLY GOOD! We ate it with our fajitas and chips, and it got high praises from everyone.

Make this for your friends at your next party. I’m going to make it again soon!

Note: Adjust the amount of any of the ingredients to your taste. One of my friend cannot eat spicy food, so I used 1 serrano chili instead of 2 listed in the recipe. I also didn’t add the olive oil, because I forgot about it. It still tasted really good.

Tyler Florence
Chunky Guacamole
Recipe as written by Tyler Florence on foodnetwork website:

Cooking time: 15 minutes

4 ripe avocados
3 limes, juiced
1/2 Red onion
1 clove garlic, minced
2 serrano chilies
1 big handful fresh cilantro, finely chopped
Extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and Freshly ground pepper

Halve and pit the avocados. Scoop out the flesh with a tablespoon into a mixing bowl. Mash the avocados with a fork, leaving them somewhat chunky. Add the remaining ingredients, and fold everything together to gently mix. Lay a piece of plastic wrap right on the surface of the guacamole so it doesn’t brown and refrigerate 1 hour before serving.

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Level: Super Easy

We made this salsa on the fly while we were cooking ourselves some Fajitas (recipe coming soon). I was pretty proud of this salsa because it was SO TASTY. I will never buy pre-made salsa ever again. Here’s how to make it:

Preparation Time: 15 minutes

3 vine ripened tomatoes
1 medium yellow onion
2 jalapeño peppers, very finely diced
3 green onions
3 limes, juiced
2 gloves of garlic, minced
1 big handful of cilantro
kosher salt & fresh ground pepper

Dice tomatoes, and onion. Finely chop jalapeños, green onions, and cilantro. In a mixing bowl, add in all the ingredients, and mix everything together. Add kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Once all the ingredients are mixed, put a plastic wrap over the bowl and refrigerate for at least 30mins.

Boom! That’s it! Eat it with tortilla chips, tacos, fajitas, nachos, etc. Freshest salsa you’ll ever taste, guaranteed.

Tip: Squeeze out some of the tomato juice in the bowl before you start dicing it. It will give some liquid to the salsa and help all the flavors bind together.

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Difficulty: Easy

This weekend I made Tyler Florence’s Chicken breasts with orange, olives and potatoes for the MePlusFood team at our visit here in Washington. I decided to make this dish because I love Tyler and the picture of the recipe looked good on Tyler Florence’s website and in his book Stirring the Pot.

Since I decided on the recipe based on the picture, I didn’t really read the cooking instructions of this recipe. But, lucky me, it turned out this recipe is super easy. Awesome!

The only preparation was slicing the potatoes, and oranges. I coated the chicken breasts with a fair amount of kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, which I think helped sear up the chicken nicely. As I started putting the potatoes in the pan, I realized I got too much sliced potatoes to fit the pan. I should have sliced 3 potatoes instead of 4, but if you have a bigger pan, or like potatoes, you can use 4 or more. If you have made it to this point, your work is almost done, because you basically just throw the rest of the ingredients in, cook for few more minutes with more olive oil, salt and pepper, and send it to the oven for 15 more minutes. This step took me a while to do because I got too many potatoes in the small pan to brown all my potatoes.

When we’re finally about to eat it, I was praying that the chicken would be fully cooked, because they were quite thick. A few pokes at it with the cooking thermometer didn’t really help, so my fingers were crossed. It turned out they are still slightly under cooked, but 2 minutes of magic cooking in the microwave saved everything.

Honestly, I didn’t really expect what this would taste like, but OMG this was sooo tasty. The chicken breasts were so juicy(fantastic) even after 2 minutes in the microwave. The potatoes soaked up all the chicken juice and olive oil really nicely. So, good.

I highly recommend this recipe.

Note: For the quantity of parsley, I wasn’t quite too sure what 1/4 bunch meant. But since it was only for garnish, I end up only using a couple sprigs of it.

Video Note: The cooking video also includes the cooking of Minestrone soup (recipe coming soon).

Tyler Florence
Chicken breasts with orange, olives and new potatoes
Recipe as written by Tyler Florence on his website:

Cooking time: 45 minutes

2 large chicken breasts, split in half down the middle – skin on
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup medium black olives, pitted
1/2 orange, sliced into round circles
4 large new potatoes, skin-on, ¼-inch thick-sliced
1/4 bunch flat leaf parsley, for garnish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Heat pan over medium heat, add olive oil and cook the chicken breast skin side down for 7 minutes. When the skin is golden, turn the breasts over, and add potatoes, olives and oranges over and around the pan. Add more olive oil if need to. Make sure all potatoes are coated with the chicken juice inside the pan. Cook for about 5-7 minutes more until the potatoes have colors on them. Add salt and fresh ground pepper. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes.

Garnish with parsley, and voilà! Juicy fantastic.

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Selecting ingredients for making meatballs from meplusfood on Vimeo.

So here’s what we came home with from the grocery store.

Making meatballs from meplusfood on Vimeo.

MePlusFood Meatballs (about 20 meatballs)

500 grams of Lean Ground Beef
500 grams of Ground Lamb
1 egg
Pecorino romano cheese & Pecorino romano cheese - grated
few sprigs of rosemary
some fresh oregano
bread crumbs
salt and pepper
olive oil

1. Pluck the leaves off of the rosemary sprigs, and oregano. And give it a rough chop.
2. Put all of the ingredients (except the olive oil) into a bowl and mix with your hands until all of the ingredients are well combined
3. Roll them into golf-ball sized balls. Our recipe made about 20.
4. Heat a pan to medium-high and add some olive oil.
5. Preheat your oven to 400 deg F.
6. Line a baking dish with aluminum foil to reduce clean up later.
7. Quickly brown the meatballs for about a minute on each side.
8. Place the meatballs on your baking dish.
9. Place into the oven for about 15 minutes.

1 Jar of Prego Tomato Sauce
2 stalks of celery lettuce
button mushrooms
1/2 red onion
1 medium tomato
1 Tbsp Sugar
some oregano
1 tsp Garlic Powder

1. Chop up the vegetables
2. Saute the vegetables in pot for a bit.
3. Add the tomato sauce
4. Add the sugar, oregano, and garlic powder.
5. Let simmer for 10 minutes.
6. Serve with the meatballs and some pasta (in our case Vermicelli)

Check the gallery for our final plated dishes…3 ways. Which one wins?

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In the end the meatballs were pretty good, and I’m sure if it wasn’t past midnight when we grocery shopped they would be better. These are actually the first meatballs that I ever made from scratch, and it wasn’t very hard at all. I’d probably do it again, and really use two different cheeses instead of Romano & Romano. Hope you enjoy the recipe!

Let the Viviani madness continue! I know I’ve been making a lot of food by this guy in the last little while, I should switch it up soon.. and I will, as soon as I buy another cookbook or go scour the internets for recipes.

The soup du jour, or yester-jour was Sweet Onion and Legumes Soup. First question: Legumes? First thing that comes to my mind are beans, but what kind of beans? I took the suggestion of a fellow fan to use Sugar Snap Peas, Snow Peas, and Baby Limas. For the White Wine, I chose a Sauvignon Blanc which was suggested as the wine to use for beginner cooks. Cooking the soup was a breeze in comparison to other recipes. It seemed that all I had to do was chop vegetables and throw things in a pot, then wait. Super easy.

End product soup I got was served in a bowl on top of a piece of crunchy toasted bread. It.. was.. awesome. I was skeptical because I wasn’t sure that I’d like to have a soggy piece of bread in my soup, but was pleasantly surprised when I tasted it. I like my soups more brothy than stew-like, so I added a little more vegetable broth and water than suggested, which I guess worked out for me. Every spoonful seemed like there was a little something else that hit my taste buds starting with the broth itself, to the legumes/onions, and then the flavour drenched slice of bread.

Overall, a give this recipe a full score because it was super tastey and ultra easy to make. An added bonus for me was that I was skeptical of how much I’d like it since I kind of like my soups to have meat in them, but I didn’t feel like I needed it here. Great soup!

Video!

Fabio Viviani
Carabaccia Fiorentina – Sweet Onion and Legumes Soup

Recipe as written by Fabio Viviani on his Facebook page:

5 tbsp ExtraVirgin Olive Oil
2 carrot, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
2 large Sprig of Basil, roughly chopped
2 lbs medium Onion, finely chopped
4 cup of Vegetable broth
1 cup of White Wine
1/2 lbs mixed fresh Legumes
4 tbsp of grated Parmigiano Reggiano
6 Sliced of toasted very crunchy Bread
Salt and Pepper to taste

Heat the Olive Oil in a Pot big enough to fit all the ingredients, add the Celery, Carrots and the Basil and cook for 5 minutes on High. Add the Onion and 1/3 of the Broth and cook on Low heat till the liquid is completely gone ( about 1 hour ). Bring the heat up and add the Wine and reduce it completely, add now the Legumes, and the rest of the broth and simmer until the legumes are tender. Add Salt and pepper to taste. Place the bread in 6 bowl, pour the soup on the bread and sprinkle with the Parmesan.

This recipes and many more are part of the regional cooking of Italy.

Enjoy and Buon Appetito.

Hahaha I realized today that the title’s of the dishes in this cookbook are all Italian and that’s the reason why I don’t know what they are.

Note: There’s a video this time, so just go watch that if you don’t want to read through my ramblings.

Afterwork today, my fellow me’s went to get their plusfood on at a pho joint in Surrey to review, so I thought I’d do something too. Two mins into my cookbook, I found something I’m not sure if I liked or not, but the ingredient list was small, and it seemed easy to cook. Yeah.. no.

Mafatti Ricotta E Spinachi is Naked Ravioli – Riccota and Spinach with Brown Butter Sage and Shaved Parmesan. I’m normally not a fan of ravioli in general because in restaurants, they only come in like 3 or 4 and they never look like they’re filling. I hate going to eat some place, dropping 20 dollars for something, then feeling like I need to order more. Yes, I know I’m not built for fine dining.

The end result looked alright, but I think I may have screwed up the recipe. I made a few guesses here and there because the book is detailed but a little vague for me since I’m not an everyday cookster (yet). First there was the issue of what the hell a C was… it’s Cup.. I think lol. Then there was this thing of “1 Nutmeg grated” and for the life of me, I couldn’t find Nutmeg i could buy that i could grate myself.. in fact, I don’t know what Nutmeg looks like. The last major issue I had was making the Brown Butter Sage to go with my raviolii. I have officially made a mental note to practice making sauce, or at least butter sauce. I don’t know what I did wrong, i kept it on low heat and the butter never melted.. cranked it up a bit and then it kept getting these brown bits in it rather than thickening up like the book said. Added the water and stuff and the end product.. loads of crud floating at the bottom of my pan of melted butter. Sigh, I’ve failed my cooking mentor.

“Mi dispiace, Fabio!” yay for google translation.

The end product was a little on the salty side for me, I have a feeling this was my fault. I had to estimate the portions since I cut everything down by half since I didn’t want to make a serving for 4. And yes, i know dividing by 2 isn’t all that difficult, but you try to get exactly 1.5lbs of spinach from a giant bag of spinach.. and if you do you know, please email me or comment below cause I have no idea. =D Other than that, I think I would have liked it more if I had not turned my Sage butter into just butter.

Again, not normally a fan of this dish in any form really, but it was a good try. I’ll have to rate this a 3.5/5.. I’d like to try it again, but not bork the sauce up *sigh*

Notes for the video:
- I bought 2 boxes of baby spinach, Ricotta cheese, Parmesan, Nutmeg, and Baking Soda.. i had the rest at home.
- One of the steps for the spinach is to boil it, then de-water it by squeezing it dry, and let me tell you.. 15 mins after i let it drain, it was still stupid hot when I tried to squeeze it out. Sigh.

Cafe Firenze Cookbook
Food and Drink Recipes from the Tuscan Sons
Mafatti Ricotta E Spinaci

I used the Microsoft HD Cinema Webcam to film.

So who watches Top Chef? No? Bite me. Well I watch it on occasion after a long day at work while eating a hot bowl of instant noodles because I’m way too lazy to make something and looking at delicious food is usually enough. Season 5 had Chef Fabio Viviani on it and that guy cracks me up.

“This is Top Chef, not Top Scallops!”

Hahaha, so good. Anyway since I can’t afford to eat out everyday both for financial and health..nancial reasons, I hit up the local bookstore today here in Ameritown and bought his book: Cafe Firenze Cookbook – Food and Recipes from the Tuscan Sons (the other son being Jacopo Falleni).

*Ikimasho! La Biscetta Perfetta , I assume means The Perfect Rib Eye from the sub text in the book, and I gotta say, I’ve never made a steak at home that tasted this good. The dish is mainly two parts: 1 part Rib Eye, and the other is the Rosemary and Garlic infused Olive Oil (extra virginal.. haha no, I’m not 15.. seriously). The steak itself required two herbs, Sage and Thyme, that I’m not entirely familiar with. Sure I’ve had it before and I’ve thrown their dried, spice rack counterparts in my own version of pasta sauce in an attempt to make it more Italiano, but doing that every “Monday, Tuesday, Thursday” doesn’t really mean I know what it tastes like in food.

I chopped up a bunch of these two green, leafy plants and sensually rubbed that into the raw meat along with some freshly ground black pepper. Erotic, I know. Now I let that sit until it reaches room temperature, which before reading this recipe, I didn’t know you should let meat do. While the meat warmed up, I got started with the extra virginal Olive Oil. This involved cooking garlic and Rosemary (another one of those plant things again) in the oil until the Garlic Cloves were soft enough to smash into a paste. Once mashed, you drain the now less virginal Olive Oil from the Rosemary and Garlic and cool it down in the fridge.

Here’s where I had to take a tangent from the instructions in the book and had to improvise a bit. **I don’t own a grill in my apartment for 1, so I grabbed a pan, heated it up and let my meat have it for 3 minutes. Sprinkled some Kosher salt on it and flipped it over for another couple minutes. Sear, Salt and SFlip! It’s like Recycling but better.

End result a slightly rare steak. Hahaha. I do like raw steak, but I was going for medium rare. Bah-well, I will leave it on the pan for longer next time. The dish itself tasted great to me, and that infused olive oil with the grilled lemon squeezed all around it made the dish for me. Each bite was awesome and blasted my senses with the crazy aromatic Sage and Thyme combo, who knew?

You might be wondering what I ate it with, since the pictures just look like a slab of meat on a plate.. well being 2 parts Asia, I ate it with… rice. Yup, if this was an item in my restaurant, it would read: La Biscetta Perfetta served on… a plate.. with rice and paired with.. orange juice. So F. King delicious, you don’t even know.

*I’m not Japanese, but Janet is.. and I needed a new way of getting into this paragraph instead of using “So..”

** It’s not a poor choice of words, you perv =)

Cafe Firenze Cookbook
Food and Drink Recipes from the Tuscan Sons
La Biscetta Perfetta