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Kingfisher Salmon

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 18:24:28 -0700

Just recently my dear hubby and I had dinner at the Kingfisher Resort and Spa on Vancouver Island just an hour north of us. Our son and daughter in law had given us a gift certificate as a Christmas present and we just hadn’t found the right time to go. Hubby had lamb tenders and I ordered the special which was salmon with a mango honey beurre blanc sauce and veggies including purple potatoes. It was amazing. The photo below is of my meal at the Kingfisher

I have often written about what wonderful neighbours we have on our little street; yesterday one of our newest neighbours who is a fisherman by trade brought us over a huge sockeye salmon filet so we put aside the dinner planned and decided instead to try to recreate the meal I had at the Kingfisher. My Mom and her fella were here for a few days and they are both food lovers so they were in.
My first stop was the web of course and I found a recipe for a mango beurre blanc. I discovered that beurre blanc is French for white butter and boy oh boy do they mean butter! I figured that I could add some honey into the sauce but was not certain how much to add or at which point to add it. I decided to just wing it and added it at the very end with the mango puree (which I will never never do from fresh mangos again - look for me cruising in the baby food isle at the grocers!). The result was amazing. I would guess that it is partly the fact that the salmon was so fresh but also the sauce perfectly complemented the fish. I recreated the purple potatoes and other veggies but forgot to add the red pepper which I will include the next time as much for the pop of colour as for the taste.
Find the recipe for the salmon with beurre blanc here

Our dessert at the Kingfisher,which we shared, was a Pavlova made up of two meringue nests with fresh fruit and blackberry lemon curd, with amoretti ice cream. Outstanding! Our blackberries are just about ready for picking so you can bet there will be blackberry sauce on the menu for months to come. It should all come in under the $10.00 we paid for the Kingfisher dessert. Can’t wait to try it and will keep you posted.

Be fabulous.

But Wait - There’s More!

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Two for the price of one today (and no shipping costs either!). Don’t you love those late night ads and NO I don’t mean the ones with the scantily clad young women purring about finding “friends” on the phone! I’m talking about the ones that offer you some device or another to make your everyday life so much easier. First the information and then the inevitable “but wait ...) And all you have to pay is one low price and here’s the sneaky bit, “plus shipping and handling” for each additional bit they are sending to you. Well today you’re getting two recipes for the price of one and no shipping and handling at all.

We’ve been waiting for summer here on the Wet Coast for months now. We so often brag about our beautiful summers, cool, sunny and loads of sunshine. Not so much this year. Instead we’ve had so much rain that the flowers, such as they are, have been rotting on their stalks, the greenery is magnificent but the produce limited which is fine if you’re growing lettuce. We daren’t because Jasper the golden loves the spines of the lettuce and will climb, cross, dig anything to get to it. In the long run it’s cheaper and way more sensible to buy the darned stuff. All that said, summer has arrived this week and it was worth the wait.

The recipes today are for an outdoor dinner that will leave you wanting summer to last forever. A barbecue ribs recipe followed by a fresh raspberry cake. As a side dish I served fresh tomatoes with goat cheese, fresh basil and a balsamic glaze. There was also a new potato salad. I hope you will enjoy them and I also hope that your summer is exactly what you want it to be. A nice gin and tonic was the perfect start. You can find the ribs recipe here and the raspberry cake recipe here.

Be Fabulous and enjoy the rest of your summer. We sure intend to do just that hopefully into the fall since we’ve been shortchanged.

Bacon and Leek Soufflé

Mon, 6 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Most people run the other way when a recipe for a soufflé rears its head. You might be surprised to know that most soufflés are really quite easy and not as fragile as you might think. I’ve been making a cream corn soufflé for years. It is one of our favourites. Served with a salad a soufflé makes a lovely lunch or dinner. When I saw this recipe in my new Fine Cooking magazine I was determined to give it a try. Our dear daughter-in-law was staying with us along with our precious 3 month old granddaughter so making sure that DIL was eating well was important as she is breast feeding. I served it with a strawberry, spinach and candied almond salad. I can’t believe I’ve never blogged this salad but will add it here.

One of the things I most enjoy about cooking is going through the steps and seeing a dish take shape. Each step has it’s own beauty - sauteing the leeks after the bacon has cooked and watching them become translucent and the mild onion smell that wafts up from the pan. Combining the bacon and leeks and then warming the milk and adding the cheeses to the pan. The egg yolks get added and the mixture gets shiny and has some body to it.

Folding the bacon mixture into the egg yolks changes it yet again. Finally pouring it into the glass dish it goes into the oven and about 45 minutes later you have a luscious cheesy main dish that will take your breath away.

I have to add though that the recipe as it was written in Fine Cooking specified a cooking time of only 22 to 25 minutes. That was really much too short a time. As I said above, it was closer to 45 minutes for mine to be right. Keep an eye on the colour of the soufflé - once it is golden brown and relatively firm to the touch it is ready. The middle will be soft so don’t feel as if you’ve done something wrong if it isn’t set all the way through. It isn’t supposed to be. Do serve it immediately as it will deflate to some degree. Find the recipe here.
The salad with its fresh, sweet and crunchy flavour served along the egg and cheesy tastes of the soufflé will have your taste buds dancing.

Our week with our DIL and granddaughter was pure heaven. How we wished they lived closer but we’ll take whatever time we can. It is astonishing how quickly you can fall in love with a wee face filled with smiles. Indulge me - I have to include a photo.

Sticky but Delicious Hoisin Chicken

Fri, 6 May 2011 11:43:34 -0700

My Mom has been after me for some time now to make this chicken dish. Now I know why! I decided that last night was the night because spring just refuses to come and any chicken dish with mashed potatoes on such a cool evening has to be a good thing. And good it was. I will make this again and again. Although there was none left over I would hazard a guess that this would be a great dish to take along on a picnic in the summer (if summer ever comes) and be eaten cold with potato salad and raw veggies. There is not a lot of clean up either because you use tinfoil on a baking pan so there is nothing to stick (except your fingers). Thanks Mom you were right again.

Find the recipe here.

The days and nights have been so cool and quite rainy for the past couple of months. We have had a few lovely days but the temperature has not reached much higher than 13 degrees. We have however not been suffering through floods, fires, tornados or earthquakes so count ourselves as among the lucky ones - cool weather is a minor inconvenience in comparison. The warm sunny days will come and we will enjoy them doubly.

Look forward to hearing how you like this one.
Be fabulous

Who Doesn’t love a French Tart?!

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 19:24:08 -0700

My dear friend, Carol, turned 60 yesterday. I’m sure she’ll be delighted that I’m telling everyone just how old she is. The fact of the matter is that she is still younger than the rest of us. We invited them for a casual dinner this evening to celebrate. Hubby made a family favourite, ribs and rice, but for dessert I struggled to decide what to make. Carol makes an incredible chocolate cake so there was no point in my making one for her. I settled on a lemon tart but couldn’t find a recipe I liked so I sent an email to Ellen, my BFF, knowing full well that she would have the perfect “tarte au citron” recipe to save the day. Oh my, it was magnifique!!!!! I will make this forever. Thank you Ellen!

The base is a shortbread of flour, sugar and butter, whirred in the food processor and pressed into the bottom and sides of a 10 inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Into the oven it went for about 25 minutes. Once out of the oven, no cooling necessary, I filled it with a mixture of sugar, lemon juice and zest, eggs, a bit of flour, some baking powder and salt. It was dead easy and so flavourful. Find the recipe here.

I hope you will enjoy this as much as we all did. A little goes a long way because it is so rich but that just means there will be seconds tomorrow.

Be fabulous.

Café Mocha Cupcakes

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 10:01:16 -0800

I am thrilled to tell you that we have a new baby granddaughter born on February 16th at 7 pm Edmonton time. We were delighted to get the news we had been so anxiously awaiting. Mom and daughter fine, Dad, a little shellshocked; grandparents, elated!
We had much to celebrate this fine day so it turned out to be the perfect day to bake chocolate espresso/coffee laden cupcakes. This recipe came from My Baking Addiction blog. It is an amazing blog written by a woman named Jamie. Take the time to visit her site; it is beautiful and filled with the most tantalizing recipes. These cupcakes satisfy your chocolate cravings with a hit of caffeine to satisfy even the most diehard chocolate and coffee addicts. Find the recipe here

I think the next time I make them I’d add a little bit more flour because the batter was very runny and I think it might firm up the cupcakes a touch. Nevertheless, they were spectacular and very much enjoyed with coffee yesterday afternoon by us and our friends as well.

Snow is falling here this morning. Just a little but a reminder that we are not immune to bad weather out here on the Wet Coast (yes “Wet”). Thankfully it is melting rapidly.

I have too many projects these days so I made a ‘Honey Do” list for myself. Found that writing things down made it less daunting. I’ve even been able to cross a few things off the list. Stella’s baby quilt is in being machine quilted. Our grandson’s scrapbooks are pretty much up to date. There are still several sewing projects to tackle and a major photo project is on the horizon. Best of all though, are the kitchen projects and the blogs that grow out of them. Life is good indeed.

Be Fabulous

Maple Mustard Pork for Valentines Day

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

I love Valentine’s Day, not because of all the chocolate and roses; don’t get me wrong - chocolate and roses are incredible - but because my dear hubby cooks a meal for us. We decided that Sunday worked better than tomorrow because we want to go out and do some photography weather permitting. He finds a recipe that neither of us has used before and makes a wonderful meal. Tonight he is making pork tenderloin with maple syrup and mustard, steamed carrots and broccoli and honeyed acorn squash. Can’t wait. It’s a weird feeling though and not dissimilar to what I’m like when I’m on a plane - a total lack of control! A small price to pay however because he is a good cook and it’s such a treat.
He found his recipes online so I will point you to them that way rather than repeating them in the recipe section.
Maple Mustard Pork Tenderloin from Eating Well’s website

Honeyed Acorn Squash from Canadian Living’s website

Baby has not yet arrived. She was due earlier this week but our son says that they’re holding out until tomorrow so they can call her Honey Valentine. Please let it be his exceptionally unique sense of humour. By the time I write my next blog I should have news on the baby front. I think she must know how cold it is in Edmonton in February and she’s so nice and cozy where she is she’s determined to stay as long as possible. Honey Valentine or Flipper or Bump will arrive when she’s good and ready.

Cheater Chowder

Wed, 9 Feb 2011 13:12:58 -0800

Some days are more stressful than others and last Friday was particularly difficult for some close friends of ours. With that in mind I decided that perhaps we could offer some solace even if it was in a hot supper and some company. Had they not come over we’d have sent it to them to eat at home. As it turned out they came to us. I made halibut chowder which I call, as you can see in the title, Cheater Chowder. “Cheater” because I use two tins of Cream of Potato soup so it is very easy to whip up a batch. That, a green salad with a nice Italian style dressing and a loaf of warm French bread with cold butter was the extent of the meal but it was enough.

Halibut tends to be quite expensive even out here on the west coast. Our local dockside fish shop offers one pound bags of fresh halibut chunks for half of what you pay for a pound of fillets so it makes the chowder much less expensive to prepare. It is fast and easy and it warms you top to bottom. You can find the recipe for Cheater Chowder here.

Chowder by definition is a thick soup or stew made with milk and bacon and onions and potatoes. While I don’t use milk, the cream of potato soup fills that requirement. If you find it too thick and prefer it to be more souplike it is easy enough to add a bit more liquid. You will be cooking the chopped vegetables in water so you can retain a cup of that liquid to add to the mix. I wouldn’t add more than one soup can’s worth of the veggie liquid rather, if you want it to be less thick you could thin it down with a bit of milk. For us, we like it thicker.

We sent our friends home with hugs all around knowing that we’d been able to help even in a small way which is all you can do in this world. If you can help to lessen someone else’s burden it also makes your own burdens easier to carry.

Sunshine Muffins and Happy New Year (Kind of!)

Thu, 3 Feb 2011 16:52:12 -0800

Wow, Happy New Year on February 3rd seems odd. How about - well we’re part way into February and we don’t want to talk about January so have a Happy Whatever is Left of the Year! I meant to blog about the empanaditas right after Christmas but we picked up either airport or kid germs over the holidays and once New Years Eve hit so did the germs. We were both sick for the first part of January and then our poor old Jasper had a tough couple of weeks. I am happy to report that we are all back in fighting form.

It seemed to be a good plan to bring some sunshine into our lives and what could be better than Sunshine Muffins. They are easy to make and are delicious. The empanaditas haven’t been forgotten just moved off to the side for the next little while. Given the dreadful weather that a good portion of the world has had to endure we have to soothe the weather weary souls. A batch of these muffins goes a long way to let us forget the rain, snow and whatever else plagues us, even if only for a brief time.

This recipe came from my Mom who found it somewhere long forgotten and has photocopied it so many times (yes I know about copyright laws!) that it is almost unreadable. I see that as a sign of a really good recipe. I know many people have variations on these muffins but having recipes doesn’t always mean things get made so I’m just acting as stimulus for you. I love the ease of putting these together and find that I prefer to use paper muffin/cupcake cups. No messy muffin pans to clean up after (well maybe the occasional drip or two). The muffins are just cool enough now for us to do the taste test and I can tell you that they are very very good. There is a very light sugary crust on top. Hubby said “Yes Please” in record time when I offered him a second one. Find the recipe here.

I hope you all had a great holiday and were able to spend time with people who are important to you. We certainly enjoyed our week long visit with our son and his wife and our son’s almost 6 year old son. It is a magical time for children of that age and so it brings a special kind of magic to the adults as well. Christmas Eve eve decorated gingerbread cookies to leave out for Santa and carrots for the reindeer and then our son read the Night Before Christmas to all of us and we put a very tired and excited boy to bed. It was a special time. I had to include a photo of our little guy watching his Daddy sprinkling Magic Reindeer Food on the snow in front of the house so Santa would be sure to find us . Our son and his wife are expecting a baby in mid February so you can imagine how excited we are about that.

So that’s it - happy what’s left of the year. I will be back in full blogging mode over the next while with ideas of all sorts of healthy and maybe not so healthy (but wickedly good) recipes to share with you.

It’s nice to be back. Get cooking and be fabulous.

More Christmas Sweeties

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 11:39:04 -0800

It seems to me that more people are eager to share their recipes at this time of year more than any other. Now that people know that I cook and blog I am starting to receive large numbers of wonderful recipes - sadly at this time of year I find it more difficult to try out everything that is sent. I have made an exception for two cookie recipes however because they embody the Christmas season of my youth and likely yours as well; not complex but ordinary in the best way. They are Sugar Cookies (yes plain old sugar cookies) and Gingerbread/snaps. There is something so wonderful to seeing the glittering sanding sugar when I turn on the oven light and look through the glass at the cookie trays on three racks. I feel as if Santa might be real after all but if there really was a Santa he would find a way to remove the calories from all the really good stuff don’t you think?!

I can’t say enough about the smell of gingerbread and all it promises not the least of which is the opportunity to mess around with icing and adornments. Who amongst us hasn’t loved gingerbread shapes particularly when they are beautifully decorated and are ready for the taking.

The first recipe came from my friend, Roberta, and is incredibly simple - how thin you roll the dough will determine how long to cook the cookies. It is impossible to say how many cookies you will get from this recipe simply because it all depends on what type of cookie cutters you use. I am big on snowflakes and stars this year for the sugar cookies. I have made a few trees and hearts but I especially love the snowflakes. Some of the cookies I have left plain with the intention of using icing to decorate them later. You can find the recipe here.

The ginger cookies came from another friend, Sue, who calls them Swedish Ginger Snaps. Unlike regular gingerbread cookies these are rolled out to be very thin hence the “snap”. I will be making these later in the week along with some more traditional gingerbread cookies. Sue brought some over for taste testing last week. You can find her recipe here. While I will certainly decorate some of these, I will be leaving more undecorated so that I can decorate them with our almost six year old grandson. My favourite cookie cutter for the traditional gingerbread is a moose. I’ll upload photos later in the week.

In a perfect world with more waking hours every day I would also be making empanaditas - the most incredibly tasty morsels you will ever eat. I will certainly be making them after Christmas and promise to blog them then. An old Filipino family friend (an by old I mean long standing as well as old, she is now 97) let me help her make them years ago as I furiously wrote down the instructions so as not to miss anything important. It is a good thing I have it written down because her memory of her recipes has been dwindling for quite a long time and I was able to pass the recipe to her granddaughter who otherwise wouldn’t have had it.

So stay tuned for Tita’s Empanaditas and get out there and make some more Christmas cookies. You will find yourself filled with the fun of the season and maybe you can share the experience with some youngsters in your life too. If you really want to experience the joy of Christmas bake enough to take to a friend or neighbour who might not have the time or the ability to bake for themselves.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year just in case I don’t get back to the blog before January 1, 2011