Quick Fennel salad

There's nothing particularly inventive or special about this salad. It is, however, a nice change from the usual lettuce with veggie blah or even fruit/cheese blah. I don't buy Fennel every day, it is a pretty strong flavour and so must be used with purpose. Usually I would combine it with orange and red onion. This time I had neither, so it was time to improvise with what was left in the fridge. That turned out to be green grapes and a few old strawberries.

Fennel and grape salad

So I pulled out the mandolin, mostly because I like to use it more than because I really needed it. Although, with fennel the thin pieces are better than thicker big pieces. Cut the green grapes in half, diced the strawberries, and finally tossed with a generous splash of sherry vinegar, the juice from half a lime, and a sprinkle of sugar.

Next time: would experiment with different fruits

Me: 8/10
SO: 5/10 (she thought the fennel was past its prime, I thought it was still ok)
SSO: 4/10

Our comfort food, part 2: Sausages and Potatoes

No, this isn't fancy home-made sausages. It also isn't roasted garlic and rosemary potato wedges, or Hasselback potatoes. It is breakfast sausages, with boiled potatoes that were going soft and needed to be eaten. And the third key ingredient - a can of creamed corn.  This is 8/10 on the low-brow scale (yes, there is plenty of room left on that scale - think Kraft Dinner with cut up hot dogs, for example). But it is also something we grew up with, and so have a fondness for. It is comfort food, and at the same time somewhat of a guilty pleasure. 

Sausages and Potatoes

Of course when we eat it, it sort of gets all mushed up together but that would make for a pretty gross photo. I would usually throw a rather large pat of butter on the potatoes along with generous salt and pepper. Start to finish in 20 minutes, and could do it while sleep walking. The potatoes can be peeled and cooked in about the same time the sausages take to cook.  Throw the plates on tv dinner trays and watch Jeopardy....Perfect. 

Mr. Noodles Pho

I think most everyone has tried, and possibly consumed, many instant noodle packages - probably through college and into bachelor/bachelorette days. We even have a dish we make once a month or so based on the noodles. Other than that, there isn't much to recommend about them other than cheap price. So much to my surprise, browsing the grocery store the other day I came across a new Mr. Noodles food item - a soup bowl, supposedly instant Pho.

Now, I'm instantly skeptical. There are many good pho restaurants in Ottawa. Over the past 15 years or so, my colleagues and I have regularly tried a large variety of them, one of our number even created a blog dedicated to our amateur reviews of pho. So while not experts exactly, we certainly knew a bad soup from a good one.  But it's all about expectations, right? So I bought a couple of them and one day tried it out.

Mr. Noodles soup bowl with spice packets

First thing to notice, it comes with 4 little packets instead of 1. There is a spice package, one with little bits of dehydrated veggies, and two tiny ones with hoisin and Sriracha. And when I say tiny, I mean probably 1 tsp worth. The instructions actually say to heat in the microwave, but I'm not sure I wanted to try that so i just boiled some water and poured in the bowl. After a few minutes, a good stirring up of the noodles and contents of the packages got it looking ready to eat.

Mr. Noodles Pho soup bowl.
Might as well eat like you do in a restaurant.

To me it tasted exactly like the other regular instant noodle packages, except a bit spicier thanks to the Sriracha. But on the whole, not to bad for $1.49 or whatever it was.

Braised Balinese Pork Chops

Alright, full disclosure right off.  This recipe is probably about as Balinese as maple syrup. I only really threw in the name for two reasons: a) it does have some elements of Balinese flavours, namely lemon grass, cane sugar, and kaffir lime, and b) I used Epicure "Bali Glow" seasoning.  No, I don't sell Epicure products, I am only pestered (in the best way possible) to buy them from a friend. So seeing that I have a decent stock of their spices, I feel compelled to use them once in a while. But you know, they are actually pretty decent - no preservatives, low in sodium and often certified non-GMO. That is not something I generally think much about, but came across it by accident in a search. Here is a list.

Getting some colour on the chops
with some Bali seasoning

Onions, mushroom soup, and
Sherry vinegar

Anyway, I was actually aiming to make one of our family stand-by Sunday dinners, pork chops with mushroom soup (don't judge). Except we had no mushrooms, and I felt like jonesing it up a bit. So I thought I'd start by rubbing both sides with Bali and getting some good colour on them.  After browned, I then sweated some onions and deglazed with Sherry vinegar. Add in the mushroom soup, heat it all through, and then finally in the oven for 30 minutes. Turned out really nicely, the flavours were awesome. It helps that the pork chops were from the butcher - tender and really flavourful. Throw that on some rice, with lots of awesome sauce to pour over the lot.

Braised Balinese Pork Chops

Next Time: nothing.

Me: 9/10
SO: 9/10
SSO: 7/10

CrunchyWhole Wheat Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

So I was sitting in line at the car wash and got the urge for peanut butter cookies. Yes, a bit random. But it was such a nice day after a really long spell of super cold weather, and the car really needed a wash. But back to the cookies. I think what got me on the idea was my trip to the grocery store before the car wash. Peanut butter was on sale, $2.99 for a 1kg jar, which is close to half price - which is why I got a smooth and a crunchy.  I'm the only one who likes crunchy in the family so had to get both. Incidentally, I almost got a jar of Skippy instead of the usual Kraft, because lately we've been listening to and singing that Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars song "Uptown Funk" featuring the best music lyrical passage for a long time:

Wait a minute
Fill my cup put some liquor in it
Take a sip, sign a check
Julio! Get the stretch!
Ride to Harlem, Hollywood, Jackson, Mississippi
If we show up, we gon’ show out
Smoother than a fresh jar of skippy

We laugh every time we hear it. But the Skippy wasn't half price, so no go.

Now, how to be inventive...let's try crunchy peanut butter instead of smooth, maybe whole wheat flour instead of regular, dark brown sugar, some oats, and maybe some freshly ground nutmeg. As a friend likes to say, "how bad could it be"?  Uttering that sentence is usually prelude to disaster, so we'll see what happens.  Here's what they look like going into the oven:

cookies about to go into the oven

...and....here's what they look like coming out of the oven:

Crunchy Whole Wheat Peanut Butter Oatmeal cookies

Next Time: would try to make them a bit chewier, so a big more brown sugar, maybe an extra egg, and a bit less fat (or a bit more flour instead)

Me: 9/10

SO: 10/10

SSO: 8/10

Two layer whole wheat chocolate cake with creamy chocolate frosting

I felt like something yummy for dessert. I almost made Chef Michael Smith's peanut butter brownies. Why not?  The recipe called for 1 cup of flour, and.....I ran out. Ooops.  Like seriously, who runs out of flour.  I forgot to put it on the list. I had just come from the grocery store too. I did however have whole wheat flour. It got me thinking, what is a dessert better suited to whole wheat flour? Well generally you can just substitute 7/8th of a cup of whole wheat to 1 cup all-purpose. That doesn't mean it will be a good substitute however. While looking around for ideas I thought why not just go for a good old chocolate cake. And if you're going to make a chocolate cake, you need to have a good frosting, and of course two layers. By the way, the hot water helps the cocoa to dissolve and also makes the batter nice and smooth. It will look thinner than you might be used to, but really it works!

Two layers of chocolate cake ready to go

So what's the best thing about a two layer cake? The extra icing in the middle of course! Well that, and I get to use my cake top remover, a.k.a. cake slicer. Not only do you get nice flat layers, but you get to eat the part you cut off.  I like this frosting quite a bit. The slight orange flavour is awesome. Edit: I tried part white flour and part whole wheat, also very good. I was walking by the dairy section at the grocery store, and saw the cream cheese.  So there is an alternate cream cheese icing recipe that also works very well. Notice the icing recipes are almost identical except the milk is replaced with cream cheese.

Next Time: Maybe try a different frosting, although this one is really good

Me: 9/10
SO: 9/10
SSO: 10/10

Shrimp and Clam Risotto with Thyme butter

I love making risotto. It's time consuming, yes.  Also can be quite fussy. It's easy to over or under cook, and when seasoning I find it's never salty enough until suddenly it's way too salty. I think of Gordon Ramsay doing his "angry chef" bit, yelling at some hapless hopeful on many a cooking reality show - "THIS IS INEDIBLE! YOU'RE USELESS! DO IT OVER!". So it could be the challenge, or the fact that it is so creamy and decadent when you hit it right.

I was going to make a shrimp risotto from Martha Stewart, but she calls for a pressure cooker which I don't have. I started looking for variations, and saw one recipe that called for clam juice with the shrimp. Well why not add clams as well I thought. I started by cooking them almost through with the can of clams and fresh thyme.

Shrimp. clams, and thyme

I've seen a few recipes with tarragon, but SO can't eat/doesn't like tarragon so thought I'd try basil and thyme. I cooked the shrimp with thyme, and also made a little herb butter with more thyme and a fair bit of basil. The butter was added at the end to the dish, and also a little pat as garnish.

Shrimp and Clam Risotto with thyme butter

Other than that, it's a pretty standard mushroom risotto with less mushrooms and lots of shrimp and clams. Even though this was shaping up to be a seafood risotto, I can't help but put mushrooms in. Mushrooms and risotto is kind of like pork and apple sauce, or orange and chocolate. The pairing is just too good.

Next Time: maybe try different seafood combinations, maybe different herbs

Me: 9/10
SO: 9.5/10
SSO: 3/10