Dinner Lately…

I have to say, this is the best bruschetta I’ve ever had, or made myself. I’m so glad that we’ve started planting our own herbs and this simple appetizer was using the herbed butter that I made myself using the first harvest of the herbs. I’ll write about making herbed butter in another post. This makes planting your own food so rewarding!

This recipe yields 6 pieces of bruschetta.

Ingredients

• 1 small French baguette, cut to 6 slices at an angle
• 6 garlic cloves, one clove per slice of bread
• Herbed butter
• 1 cup tomatoes, diced to about 1cm square
• 1/2 cup red onions, diced
• 2 pieces basil leaves, chopped
• 2 T olive oil
• 1 t salt
• Black pepper, freshly cracked
• 1 small lemon, juiced

Method

1. Roast whole garlic cloves in the oven at 400F degree for 15 minutes, or until the edges start to brown. Remove from oven, peel the skins off and mash garlic in a small bowl.
2. Spread mashed garlic generously over sliced baguette. Top baguette with a sliver of herbed butter. Broil in the oven at high until edges start to brown, about 3 minutes.
3. In a bowl, combine chopped tomatoes, onions, basil with olive oil, salt, freshly cracked black pepper and lemon juice.
4. Spoon tomato mixture on broiled baguette pieces. Best served with good red wine

Cooking is one thing that Andy and I  love to do together. Although he’s is constantly asking me for directions, we work amazingly well together in our small kitchen. He has gotten used to following my instructions and online recipes to prepare the necessary ingredients for our meals while waiting for me to get home. Today, I can’t help but to realize how blessed I am to have him in my life. Our wedding anniversary is in about 6 weeks and it has been a great year living together thus far. Here’s what we cooked up together this lovely Sunday evening.

I chanced upon this simple and healthy recipe while browsing on one of my favourite daily reads, ApartmentTherapy.com. Their sister site is called The Kitchn, and I love reading it for simple and inspiring ideas in and out of the kitchen.

Ingredients

• 1 pound broccoli
• 2 tablespoons water
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil
• 1/2 small onion or two shallots, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/3 cup chopped flat parsley
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1/2 cup feta cheese (low-fat if you want to be good) - divided
• 1/4 cup water

Method

1. Cut the broccoli into small florets and steam on the stove or in the microwave with the 2 tablespoons of water. Season lightly with salt and pepper.
2. Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a large sauté pan. Cook the onion and garlic until it just begins to soften then add the broccoli. Cook for several minutes or until the onion turns translucent. Add the parsley and cook until it’s well wilted. Pour in the lemon juice and simmer for about two minutes.
3. Transfer to a blender and add 1/4 cup of the feta cheese and the 1/4 cup water. Puree until smooth, adding a drizzle of olive oil and a little more water if it sticks and turns to a lump. Puree until as smooth or chunky as you prefer.w
4. Taste and add any necessary additional salt and pepper. Serve with a good ridged pasta. (I used wholewheat penne instead).
5. Garnish with extra crumbled feta and lemon zest.

Source

We went grocery shopping at Zehr’s today and found some cheese flatbread and naan that were freshly made. We bought them and used the flatbread as our pizza crust. For the toppings, we had put sliced tomatoes, sliced vegetarian Tuscan chicken breast, chopped basil and Bocconcini cheese.

Here are some before and after pictures:

Before

After

This is my first time cooking risotto, and I thought it was quite the same as cooking congee, with the exception of cooking the rice in butter/olive oil first until translucent prior to adding liquid. Anyway, this was supposed to be asparagus and wild mushroom risotto, but I wasn’t able to find wild mushrooms this weekend, and my asparagus had gone bad. Luckily we still had some white and portabello mushrooms lying around.

The initial idea is to use both broth and white wine, but I didn’t want to buy a bottle of wine just to use 1 cup of it, so I resorted to cooking with vegetable broth and water. I would think that it would be much better with wine. Nonetheless, the risotto was amazing and I would make this again with other interesting combination of vegetables.

Ingredients

• 1 half of sweet onion, chopped 
• 1 cup of arborio rice
• 3 cups of vegetable broth
• 1 cup of white wine or water
• 2 cups of chopped mushrooms (any variety except enoki would work I think)
• 4 tbsp butter (you can use half olive oil and half butter if you like, but butter is yummier…)
• 2 tbsp of pasta  or Italian seasoning (use combination of chopped fresh herbs i.e. thyme, Italian parsley, if available, of course) 
• A sprinkle of garlic powder or any amount of chopped garlic (personal preference)
• Zest of 1 lemon
• Salt & pepper to taste
• 1 cup of freshly grated Romano cheese (Parmesan would work too).. I LOVE CHEESE!!

Method

1. Warm broth in a saucepan.
2. Melt 2 tbsp of butter in a large non-reactive saucepan. Caramelize the chopped onions until translucent. Add in chopped garlic and mushrooms and cook until they start to soften. Some recipes called for saving the mushrooms to be added to the risotto later, but I think it is not necessary for mine unless I’m using more “tender” mushrooms, like wild mushrooms. In that case, I would cook the wild mushroom with butter and garlic first, and then cook the onions with the rice, adding the garlic, mushrooms and butter mixture to the risotto later.
3. Melt the remaining butter and add rice. Stir to coat with oil/butter.
4. When the rice turns to a pale gold, add in wine (if using, or else add broth). Stir constantly until it is absorbed. Add 1/2 cup of broth to the rice and stir constantly until the liquid is absorbed. Continue adding broth 1/2 cup at a time, stirring constantly and adding just enough hot water (if not using wine) when the broth is finished to cook the rice until al dente. I think it took us about 20- 25 minutes of constantly adding liquid and stirring. The rice should be slightly firm and creamy, not mushy.
5. Remove from heat. Stir in lemon zest, chopped chives, romano cheese and more butter if desired. Season with salt and pepper.
6. Serve while hot.

I’ve made this pasta salad many times, and every time is quite different.

This has cucumbers, tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, and feta cheese. I just use store bought Greek dressing, but jazzed it up with extra lemon juice for a nice twangy taste I also sprinkle crushed dried chilli peppers in it before eating.
You can pre-toss the cucumbers, tomatoes, sundried tomatoes in extra virgin olive oil before adding in the pasta. Add the feta cheese last so that it doesn’t get melted when you add in the hot cooked pasta.

Garnish with fresh chopped cilantro.

 Simply sprinkle some sea salt and pepper and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice, that’s it!!