Top 5 recipes from 2012: Mel and Lor's Picks

My sister Melody and I thought a fun way to sum up the year would be to each post our 5 favourite recipes of the year. While not necessarily from 2012, these are the recipes we made over and over - the ones we love and look forward to eating and making.  I cannot wait to try some of her recommendations!

Lorelei's Picks

1. Salmon Hash - I just love this recipe. It requires very few ingredients which I usually have on hand - mostly just potatoes and canned salmon, which I'm very lucky to always have a plentiful supply of thanks to my fisherman dad Richard Wey. This dish is true west coast comfort food.

2. Mexican Rice from Rick Bayless Mexican Everyday. I found a link to it here. This recipe takes me back to when my hubby and I were carefree and more importantly child free on vacation in La Paz, Mexico and stuffing our faces with amazing mexican food and lime margaritas every day. What a dream.

3. Garlic shrimp and white beans from here. This is actually my favourite find of the year. So tasty.

4. Swiss chard tacos from Rick Bayless Mexican Everyday, I found a link to it here. Looking back I think this was my favourite cookbook find of the year. Fabulous and easy to cook mexican recipes that are quick enough for weeknights. Love it.

5. No Knead bread - I feel so smug whenever I whip up a loaf of artisan quality bread. Lovely with a nice bowl of steaming hot soup.

Melody's Picks 

1. Glory Bowl from a fellow Canadian food blogger, Dollop of Cream. The dressing is so unbelievably tasty, you'll be tempted to bathe in it.

http://www.dollopofcream.com/2012/01/glory-bowl.html 

2. Creamy corn polenta with roasted tomatoes and asparagus. Again, amazing and this recipes is vegan. During the summer, I made this almost once a week using freshly shaved corn of a cob.

http://www.katiekannen.com/recipes/creamy-corn-polenta-with-tomatoes-and-roasted-asparagus/

3. Made this recipe for Chinese New Year earlier this year and have been making it ever since. Great quick side dish.

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2007/02/baby_bok_choy_with_braised_shiitake_sauce

4. Roast chicken with chickpeas, tomatoes and paprika.  This recipe is one my sister blogged about a year ago, this dressing (the first five ingredients listed) is amazing and has become my go to dressing for roasting vegetables. My favorite combination is squash, tomatoes, chickpeas - roast for 20 minutes - then add feta cheese and chopped kale and bake for another 5-10 minutes. The perfect side to anything!   

http://purplekale.blogspot.ca/2011/12/cheers-to-2011-you-treated-me-well-and.html 

5. Chopped salad with feta, lime and mint. Great recipes using loads of crunchy raw veggies and (my favorite) feta!

http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2012/06/chopped-salad-with-feta-lime-and-mint/

My Favourite Tomato Sauce

Over the years I've tried countless grocery store varieties of tomato sauces in an attempt to throw together a quick weeknight meal but I'm always left feeling disappointed and quite unsatisfied. They always taste a little too heavy and a little too sweet for my liking. Then many years ago I was lucky enough to stumble upon this fabulous recipe from the concise gastronomy of Italy. It looks deceptively simple but I promise you that it tastes amazing. 

The first time I made it I wondered why on earth I would be adding celery of all things, but you wont even be able to taste the celery in the finished sauce. It simply adds a light fresh taste to the sauce as if you are sitting out on a patio in Italy on a beautiful spring day enjoying a fresh bowl of pasta. 

Throw this beautiful sauce on your favourite pasta, grate on some fresh parmesan cheese and enjoy.

PS. I usually double the recipe so I can freeze the leftover sauce. 

Tomato Sauce 

from the concise gastronomy of Italy

Makes 600 ML

800g canned plum tomatoes

2 tsp tomato paste

1 tsp sugar

2 onions, chopped

2 celery sticks, chopped

5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

4 tbsp red wine

25 g/2 tbsp unsalted butter

Chop tomatoes coarsely and then put tomatoes into a saucepan with their liquid with the tomato paste, sugar, onions, celery, onions, olive oil and salt and pepper. Cook for 15 minutes or so and then puree in a food processor. Return to the saucepan and add the wine and continue cooking for another 40 minutes. Mix in the butter.

Breakfast for Dinner: Salmon Hash

A few years ago, my husband and I had a weekend away to beautiful Bowen Island. We stayed at a very cute B&B that served up an amazing homemade meal every morning right to your cottage doorstep. Sadly I cannot recall the name of this place but I seem to recall one of the owners was a former chef. So the night that we arrived the two friendly owners asked if we had any dietary restrictions for our breakfast the next morning. Unfortunately for them we are probably the most annoying people possible to cook breakfast for...I don't eat meat (except fish) and my hubby wont eat eggs. So we presented them with a real challenge..we fully expected granola and yoghurt in the morning or maybe waffles or pancakes but we were delighted when a beautiful spread of salmon hashbrowns arrived on our doorstep! I love salmon and I love hashbrowns who doesn't? and so this was an absolutely fabulous breakfast. Not to mention much better for keeping my blood sugar even (hypoglycemia) than pancakes and syrup would have been.

So here is my version of this breakfast although I like to make it for a hearty dinner. There is a lot of room for improvising but here is the basis of what I do. Let me know if you can think of any other additions to this recipe that would be good. 

Ingredients

1 can of very good quality salmon (thanks sister Ashley for the can from Alaska!)

3-4 potatoes, chopped into cubes

handful of chopped dill

about 1 tablespoon capers

1 onion, thinly sliced 

1 bulb fennel, very thinly sliced (use a mandolin if you have one)

tablespoon or more of olive oil

pepper to taste

Sauce

about 1/2 cup plain unsweetened yoghurt

1 tbsp chopped dill

1 teaspoon horseradish

ground pepper to taste

Turn oven to 400F. Toss cubed potatoes in olive oil and spread on parchment paper. Bake for about 30 min or until golden brown. 

While potatoes are cooking start frying the onion, the longer it cooks the more caramelized it will be become. After about 10 minutes of the onions frying add the fennel. Once the fennel is cooked and the potatoes golden brown add the canned salmon, dill and capers. Salmon hash is done!

To make the sauce just mix all sauce ingredients together. 

Serve a big bowl of salmon hash with a dollop of sauce on top. 

This was a very good quality can of salmon that my sister Ashley brought me from her trip to Alaska

Here are some old pics I found of our trip to Bowen Island about 2 years ago!

Me, pregnant with baby #1

Kale Caesar Salad

My sister Ashley is many things and one of those many things is an incredible gifted piano player... jazz piano to be exact, and her fantastic album can be found here. She is also somewhat of a free spirit, a constant world traveler, a "health nut", a yogi, a night owl and anyone who has crossed her path would agree she is an incredibly positive and kind hearted person.

At this very moment she is playing piano on a cruise ship which sails from Vancouver to Alaska every week. Most of the time she floats around Europe and so to have her on the west coast or "fresh coast" as she calls it is a real treat. Yesterday, she had a few hours off the boat and she jumped onto the sky train, with 2 broken toes after dropping a keyboard on her foot, and headed out to Burnaby to see me and her new nephew for a few blessed hours. Knowing that my sister has VERY strict food requirements...she's mostly a raw veganist but lately will eat some wild meat, I decided to make us an extremely healthy salad. I figured I couldn't go wrong with kale.

I've actually been making this salad fairly regularly now for a few months now and even the biggest kale haters will love it. My own mother could not believe she was actually eating raw kale when I told her as she was devouring a bowl of it. I like to make it when I feel the need to detox or just feel like eating something that will make me feel good.

Kale Caesar Salad
adapted slightly from here

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 garlic clove
1/2 cup lemon juice
8 whole anchovies
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
1 large bowl of shredded kale (about 8 cups)
1/4 cup parmesan cheese for the dressing
1/4 cup parmesan cheese for garnish
salt and pepper to taste

Optional: add any other chopped vegetables or protein to the finished salad. I added a few cherry tomatoes and cucumbers here. Sometimes I like to add good quality canned smoked salmon or smoked tofu.

Toss all ingredients into the blender, saving 1/4 cup parmesan for a garnish. Place kale in a large bowl and toss with dressing. Garnish with parmesan and serve.

Mushroom Salad

A few weeks ago my sister Melody came to stay with us for a few days from Victoria. Her extra set of hands around here were much appreciated with my 2 month old and almost 2 year old boys, hence the lack of blogging lately. To be honest it's mostly just been pasta and take out lately and I'm embarrassed to admit we've sort of become regulars at the local Mucho Burrito.  But hey, kids eat free and it's as healthy as semi-fast food can get so I don't let myself feel guilty about it.

As almost vegetarians, Melody and I have both been eying this beautiful cookbook for quite a while with its beautiful food photography and totally mouth watering looking vegetarian dishes. So before we both buy yet another cookbook, it we decided to give it a test run by borrowing it from the library first and trying out a few recipes. Here is one recipe we made and it was a success. Chef Yotam uses herbs and ingredients in ways I would never think would taste good together i.e. mushrooms and dill? but it works just right.

I'm going to test drive a few more recipes from this book but I will probably end of purchasing it. There's only so many times the library will allow me to renew books after all:)

Marinated Mushrooms with Walnut and Tahini Yoghurt
adapted slightly from PLENTY by Yotam Ottolenghi

Serves 4
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar (the original recipe calls for white wine vinegar. I've since made it with apple cider vinegar and that works really well)
1 tbsp maple syrup
juice of 1 lemon
salt and pepper
3 cups sliced beech muchroons
2 cups other mushrooms
3 cups chick peas (recipe calls for lava beans)
2/3 cups walnuts
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp chopped dill
1 tbsp chopped oregano

Sauce

1/2 cup plain yoghurt (recipe recommends greek yoghurt)

21/2 tbsp tahini

1 garlic clove

juice of 1 lemon

My New Favourite Salad

I haven't had much time lately for adventurous cooking in between changing two set of diapers and running after a 21 month old, breastfeeding a newborn, changing more diapers and then oh, trying to sleep once in a while, and I use the term "sleep" very loosely here. However I have somehow managed to make this Kale Market Salad fairly regularly from the fabulous 101 Cookbooks blog. This salad is so tasty and so healthy that I must admit I feel pretty smug whenever I eat it.

The only time consuming part of this recipe is soaking and then cooking the wheat berries which does in fact require some planning ahead. Speaking of wheat berries...I never realized what a cheap grain it is! I marched into Whole Foods a few weeks ago determined to find this elusive grain and was shocked when I got to the register with a massive bag and it came to only 4 bucks! I thought there surely must have been a mistake and so I smiled and politely thanked the cashier and then promptly ran out of the store clutching my massive bag of wheat berries feeling like I had just robbed a bank. Later, upon closer inspection of my receipt I was actually charged correctly. It turns out that wheat berries are just a very cheap grain. Who'd have thought? It certainly sounds fancy...the same sized bag of quinoa would have cost $20 at least. 

I follow 101 Cookbooks recipe pretty much to a tee, so out of shear laziness and fatigue I don't think I'll bother typing out the recipe myself, just click the link to find the recipe. Enjoy!

Baby Boy

Sorry for the delay in posts! Things have been a little crazy around here. Here is a pic of what I've been up to:) xox Lorelei