Oven Roasted Broccoli 

Broccoli from the Italian for little arms sometimes gets a bad wrap. It was even band from Air Force One during George Bush Sr.'s presidency. What is the reason for all this barbaric broccoli bashing (don't you just love alliterations?), I agree with Alton Brown on this one, overcooking and parties. If broccoli is boiled for too long, not only do many of its valuable nutrients escape into the water but it can take on a less than appealing grey colour. You may be wondering how parties have lead to broccoli's downfall, two words: vegetable platter. How many times have we all seen the barely touched vegetable tray at some family reunion? Broccoli is at its best when cooked for a short time under high heat. Although not terrible raw I certainly find it dry without some kind of dressing on it. Also there is a special group called super tasters that have more taste buds then your average person. For these people the bitter notes in broccoli's flavour can be overbearing. Don't worry, there are ways around this problem. Roasting broccoli brings out an incredible nutty flavour that can convert even the most hardcore broccoli hater. I usually just roast broccoli in oil and salt and pepper but the addition of panko breadcrumbs, garlic and cheese was really nice. This goes into the oven at 425F so careful monitoring is necessary. It will go slow at first but once the browning starts don't leave the kitchen, it can go from brown to black fast. I chickened out and pulled mine out a little early, but it was still delicious! What else could you want from a dish, fast (about 15 minutes total to make) and extremely nutritious. A serving of broccoli contains almost as much calcium as milk and more vitamin C then an orange. So give broccoli a chance and you will be rewarded! And broccoli took flight on Air Force One again in 1992 with the election of Bill Clinton.


Oven Roasted Broccoli Recipe

Hot Cross Buns

I thought I would be back in my routine of making at least one recipe a week but that really has not happened, mainly due to Sci Formal at Queen's University. I will not go into much detail but I have had a lot of work to do for it. If you're at all interested here is the website Sci Formal that will give all the information you need. The past years have been pretty cool!

This picture doesn't really do it justice

Hot cross buns have quite a history behind them. They modern notion of the buns were originally made for Good Friday with the cross being a symbol of the crucifixion of Christ. This version was not seen until 1773 while the origin of this bun could date as far back as the ancient Greeks. Saxons were believed to have eaten crossed  in honour of the goddess Eostre of which the word Easter is most likely derived. In the late 1500s it was illegal to sell hot cross buns unless there was a burial, it was Good Friday or Christmas. One final tidbit, English folklore says that a hot cross bun baked on Good Friday will not go stale or mouldy for the upcoming year. Whither you believe that one or not is up to you.

Hot cross buns are not much more than a sweetened and spiced bread with icing. If you have ever made a loaf of bread before this is no different. My recipe comes from the Joy of Cooking and the recipe is good overall, although I needed a lot more flour than the recipe said in order to bring the dough together. Flour is a tricky thing especially when measuring by volume and not weight. Depending on how much the flour is packed in the measuring cup you could end up with a very different result. I say this but I still don't measure by weight, I have never got around to getting a scale. Also depending on the humidity of the day the flour can absorb more or less water. Crossing the buns was a little harder than I thought, my icing was not really the right consistancy. I also had a lot left over so I just decided to pretty much dump the remaining icing on top of the buns. Did not look as nice but tasted so much better!

Verdict: would make again.

Broiled Salmon with Citrus Glaze

Well folks I am back, the craziness of getting back into university mode has past and now I can settle into my routine for the next 11 weeks or so. Speaking of being back to university I am returning to my student grocery budget, no more care free days of grocery shopping with my Mom's money in hand. Needless to say when the recipe required wild salmon which is pretty pricy I turned to my freezer and found some salmon fillets of origin unknown. I don't think I have ever eaten wild salmon before and I am curious about the differences between it and its farmed cousin. While on the subject of buying salmon it is important to note that frozen is many times better than fresh, depending on where you live. If you reside in a place like Vancouver the fresh seafood should be plentiful but for those of us in places like Ontario fresh seafood has a long journey ahead of it. Apparently grocery stores will even thaw frozen fish and pass it off as fresh, so be weary. Where frozen seafood is usually flash frozen on the boat it was caught on. All this said I am no connoisseur of salmon and the difference may be minimal, in the long run I just find frozen seafood a lot more convenient.

Time for the recipe, and it is a simple one. Only 5 ingredients: salmon (I'm sure you figured as much), salt, pepper, brown sugar and lemon zest. Everything but the salmon its mixed and put on top of the fish. 45 minutes should be allowed from the glaze to rest. I didn't have quite that long and it still turned out really good. I would say you could get away with as little as 10 minutes. Then just plop it under the broiler (or toaster oven) for about 8 minutes and that's it. The 1/2 teaspoon of pepper made it a lot spicier than I was expecting, so I would maybe drop that down to about 1/4 teaspoons. My favourite thing about the glaze is that all the ingredients blend together nicely and no flavour really dominants the palette, I should note some of this flavour blending my be lost if the rest period is too short.

Verdict: would make again. Fast and delicious, what else could you ask for?

Broiled Sockeye Salmon with Citrus Glaze

Chocolate Filled Pocket Pies

This is the type of recipe I really like, now that I have made it once the sky is the limit on different variations. I hate being confined to a recipe and that is the reason I started this blog, to force myself to follow recipes, in order to expand my culinary knowledge. Now down to business a pocket pie is exactly what it sounds like, a pie that could fit in your pocket. Many cultures around the world have their own variations some sweet, some savoury and some both, but the key is that this pie can be eaten on the go. One of the most famous varieties comes from Cornwall in the south of England. Miners would take pocket pies wrapped in newspaper down into the mines with them, so when lunch time came all they had to do was unwrap it and enjoy. Often one end of the pie would be filled with a savoury filling, basically like a stew, and the other end would be a sweet filling. Lunch and dessert all in one, what an idea! I hope I am not the only one who didn't make the connection between Cornish and Cornwall, Cornish being something from Cornwall. The Cornish "pasty" was some popular it was said the devil would never come to Cornwall for fear of being cooked into a pie.

This particular pie crust comes together via the biscuit method. Incorporating a fat into flour until it creates a crumbly texture and then stirring in some liquid. In this case the fat was shortening which gives the dough its flakiness and the liquid was milk. The filing was made from mainly butter sugar and cocoa powder, and this recipe makes a lot of filling! Once the dough is rolled out into rounds and the filling is complete we enter the danger zone: filling the pies. The recipe warns not to over fill or you will be sorry and of course I was sorry. I though I could crimp down the edges enough that I would be fine with a nice amount of filling... nope. Before we open that can of worms there are three cooking methods: baking, deep frying and pan frying. I went with pan frying because it is fastest. Now back to the filling dilemma, after a few minutes in the pan my crimp was pushed right out of the way by the chocolaty volcano that was oozing its way out of the pie. The recipe even warned that filling usually contain a good deal of water which turns to steam and increases in volume my about 1700 times. There was a reason steam used to power trains. Despite all the smoke from the burning filling left in the pan the pies turned out really good still. I think if all the filling had stayed inside the pie it would be overwhelmingly sweet, so maybe it was a good thing after all. Pan frying was fast but I think I would have preferred that more flaky pastry that comes from baking.

Verdict: would make again. There are so many options for fillings once you have the dough down pat you could have a different filling for each day of the year. Take my advice though for filling, when you think you have a good amount take about half of it away and you should be good.

Pocket Pie with Chocolate or Curried Mango Filling

Fried Okra

Raw okra pods (from the internet)

Okra is a green pod vegetable and is a member of the mallow family. Another famous member of that family is the cacao plant from which we get cocoa and then of course chocolate. Okra's flavour is a lot different from its chocolatey cousin (although in its raw form the cacao plant would not taste much like the chocolate we consume today, roasting and many other steps are needed to produce chocolate. That will have to wait for a later blog). Describing the flavour of something in words is in my opinion an exercise in futility but I will try anyways. The flavour is similar to that of many other green vegetables, think of combining the flavours of green peppers, broccoli and green beans and then turning down the flavour a few notches; okra's flavour is pretty subtle.

Okra is prized for its thickening abilities in Louisiana where gumbo is king. Okra pods contain a sweet mucilaginous sap that is a great thickener for soups and stews but it can also make the pods slimy. The amount of noticeable "slime" is dependent on the cooking technique, chopping and stewing produces a good deal where pan frying there is little noticeable "slime." My particular recipe called for whole pods breaded in seasoned corn meal and pan fried. With keeping the pods whole I barley even noticed the sticky sap, it was really only noticeable when the cutting off the stems. The seasoning of the breading was a nice addition to the subtle flavour of the okra and the corn meal crust got nice and crispy. One thing I would mention is that pods of the same size would work best although okra selection is generally not huge (here in Ontario anyways). The smaller pieces had a more tender texture while the larger pods retained much of their crunchiness. Its a hard call between the two textures I think I would look for smaller pods next time.

Verdict: Okra will not be a weekly addition to my shopping list I would definitely make this again.

Boiled Peanut Soup

Boiled and shelled peanuts

If I had to pick one favourite food, I think it would have to be peanut butter. I suppose it is more of a condiment then a food but that's besides the point. When I came upon the peanut episode of Good Eats I was excited to make something awesome out of peanut butter, after all it goes with everything and I have tried it with just about everything. One of the recipes was for a delicious looking peanut butter pie with chocolate and an Oreo crust but in the spirit of culinary adventure I decided to go for something I had never heard of. I had never heard of boiling peanuts let alone making soup out of them but I am always up for the adventure. All the steps are pretty straight forward but this is not something you can make in a hurry. Depending on the freshness of the peanuts they can take anywhere from 3 to 4 hours of boiling to reach the desired tenderness. I only boiled mine for about an hour and a half due to some fridge repairs but I don't think it hurt the results. Once boiled the nuts are very similar to the texture of a cooked bean. This makes a lot of sense since peanuts are not really nuts at all they are legumes. the legumes family includes other culinary staples like peas, soybeans and lentils. The worst part of the recipe is getting about a pound and a half of peanuts of of their shells, like I said if you're in a hurry find a different recipe. Once the peanuts are ready, the recipe calls for cooking bacon and onions, adding chicken stock, then seasoning. Once that is simmered for about half an hour blend and that's it. One thing I should have mentioned, the bacon is reserved for garnishing the soup. The bacons really makes the soup, it is a little bland on its own but the saltiness of the bacon plays well with the peanut's flavour. I was expecting a lot of peanut taste but it is more subtle then I was expecting.

Now for a little about the peanut and how it saved the South. In 1910 the Southern Unites State's cotton crop was devastated by boll weevils, a beetle that feeds on cotton. With farmers down and out in steps our hero George Washington Carver, a scientist at the Tuskegee Institute. He published a pamphlet detailing how to grow peanuts and 105 ways to prepare them. Some of the more interesting were: peanut milk, peanut sausage, peanut orange punch and the list goes on and on. Now a days Southern states produce a great deal of the world's peanuts, with Georgia producing almost half of the US crop. America ranks third in global production, behind China and India. Another interesting factoid: once fertilized the peanut plants' flowers droop down and push themselves underground. Being underground protects the young peanuts and allows them to mature without being disturbed.

Bacon garnish

I am adding something new to the blog, a final verdict. I thing the true test of a recipe is would you make it again? Some recipes that taste good are just not practical because of time to make, strange apparatus or ingredients that you will use once and then will sit in the back of the cupboard until the next ice age. Hopefully this section gives the overall feeling I had towards the dish and if it is worth making.

Verdict: would not make again.

Boiling and shelling just takes too long for a soup that is good but not amazing.

Boiled Peanut Soup Recipe

Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheel Cookies


Merry 151 days until Christmas, that's right only 4 months and 30 days left to finish your Christmas shopping. So why am I making Christmas cookies in July? Well that's what my random recipe generator told me to do and I figure I will have a leg up come the holiday season. This cookie looks impressive and will sure get you some nods at the various Christmas events we all attend. Though this recipe is not super difficult I would say if you have not made sugar cookies before this is not the one to start with.

The recipe starts off with a typical sugar cookie dough which is then divided in half to become the chocolate portion and the peppermint portion. The chocolate half gets melted chocolate and vanilla, while the peppermint half gets peppermint extract and candy canes. Since it is July candy canes are in short supply, although I did find a couple kicking around the house. For the rest mint candies have to play the part. Once the doughs have been mixed up and allowed time to rest comes the challenge, rolling the doughs together. The peppermint dough is placed on top of the chocolate and the fun begins. In the episode of Good Eats Alton Brown uses a flexible cutting board to assist in rolling. I don't have one such cutting board so I just went for broke and starting rolling. This produced a lot of cracks in the dough and bits falling off, it was not a pretty sight. I did manage to complete the roll and stick on all the pieces that had fallen off. To my surprise when I cut the cookies the insides looked a lot better than the outsides and I ended up with something similar to the pictures in the book. Some practice I'm sure would help, good thing it is only July. As for the taste it is a solid sugar cookies that will fill you with Christmas cheer.

Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheel Cookie Recipe