Category: Food

Spicy Anchovy Eggplant with Ground Pork

Spicy Eggplant with Ground Pork

Print Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 25 minutes
Total Time 40 minutes
Course Main Course
Servings 4 people

Ingredients
  

  • 2 eggplants (long eggplants, quartered length-wise and then cut in 5-7cm/2-3" pieces)
  • 450 g ground pork (~1 lb)
  • 1 Tbsp cornstarch
  • 6 Tbsp vegetable oil
  • 1 Tbsp sesame oil
  • 3 garlic cloves (peeled and minced)
  • 1 cm piece of ginger (peeled and julienned or shredded)
  • 1 Tbsp anchovy paste
  • 1 red bell pepper (cored and sliced thinly)
  • 1 tsp shaoxing wine
  • 1 tsp red wine vinegar
  • 2 tsp soy sauce
  • 1 Tbsp hot chili bean oil
  • 1/2 cup water
  • salt and white pepper (to taste)
  • 4 green onions

Instructions
 

  • Cut the eggplants into quarters length-wise, and then chop them into pieces, around 5-7cm/2-3" long. Core and slice the red pepper thinly. Peel and mince the garlic and ginger. Keep eggplant, pepper, and ginger and garlic separate.
  • Cut the whites of the green onions away from the greens. Chop the whites into small pieces. Cut the green into 2cm pieces. Keep the whites and greens separate.
  • In a medium bowl, mix the ground pork well with the cornstarch and a sprinkle of salt, and set aside.
  • In a small bowl, mix the water, wine, vinegar, soy sauce, and chilli bean oil.
  • Heat a wok or large frying pan on just below high heat and add 2 tablespoons of the of vegetable oil and 1/2 tablespoon of the sesame oil to the pan and heat until just smoking. Add half the eggplant, stirring constantly and cooking until some of the edges and sides have browned and the pieces have started to soften. Remove to a dish and repeat the process with the second half of the eggplant pieces and add the second set of eggplant pieces to the dish with the rest.
  • Reduce the temperature to medium-high heat. In the empty wok, add remaining 2 Tbsps vegetable oil. Add garlic, ginger and whites of onions and cook until fragrant. Next, add the pork, and stir constantly until pork is mostly cooked, about 5 minutes. Add red peppers and anchovies and cook, stirring, for 1 minute.
  • Add the liquid mixture and cook, stirring, until the liquid has fully coated everything and has started to thicken. Add the eggplant back into the wok with everything else and stir all together. Cook until eggplant is soft, but not falling apart. Add the greens of the onion and cook for another 30-60 seconds.
  • Serve immediately with rice.
Keyword Eggplant, Peppers, Pork, Soy Sauce

And now for the details…

Well hello friends. It has been a long time. Like… a really long time. I am so happy to be back with you and I apologize for the hiatus… but… life. *shrugs*

My return back on the scene comes with a dish that is a personal favourite. Delicate, velvety pieces of smoky eggplant, in a salty, umami-rich and slightly spicy sauce. Some strips of barely-cooked red pepper for sweetness and ground pork for both bite and to amp up the umami-ness? Heaven.

This dish is one of my favourites when we go for Peking duck as a side dish. Which is somewhat hilarious that we order it as a side, since it is quite hearty and is easily a meal all on its own. I did my best to recreate it at home with this recipe, but admittedly, it is not quite the same as the bubbling earthenware pot of deliciousness that comes to the table when we are out for dinner. However, when heading to the restaurant just isn’t a possibility, this is a great meal that comes together fairly quickly, and all it needs to wrap it all up is some steamed rice.

Let’s get to cooking, shall we? Now one of the biggest things for this that I found is that you really need to have everything ready BEFORE you start the actual cooking. The beauty of a wok is that things come together quite quickly, with the high temps and fast stir frying. But because of those high temps and the need to have almost constant attention on the food in the pan, there is little time to turn away from the stove and finish chopping that one last piece of veg, or grab that last ingredient from the pantry to mix into the sauce. That is my usual style in the kitchen… so I am definitely speaking from failed experience when I say that prepping and having everything ready first will mitigate burning, drying, or inconsistent cooking of the ingredients.

First first… if you are planning on having this with steamed rice… NOW is the time to get that rice in the cooker! The rest of the cooking process is going to be moving quick, so get the rice rinsed, in the cooker and hit the button now so it’s ready to go when the dish is done! (Am I speaking again from experience and needed to wait 20 minutes for the rice to be ready after the food was done? Maybe. *blushes slightly*)

So let’s prep. I like to get my aromatics prepped and set to the side first. Peel and mince your garlic, and set aside. You have a couple options for your ginger. You can either shred/mince it like you did the garlic, or you can julienne it into small pieces. The julienned ginger will introduce that occasional fruity, pungent hit of ginger in a bite of the finished product, while the shredded will meld more homogeneously throughout the dish, so chef’s choice depending on your taste preferences. For the green onions, you are going to separate the whites from the greens. The whites, you can chop finely and set aside with the ginger and garlic (those three will all be hitting the wok at the same time). The greens, you are going to cut into larger pieces, about 2-3 cm long.

For the eggplants, we are using a long eggplant, sometimes called a Chinese or Japanese eggplant, which is going to give us more surface area of the skin of the eggplant, and less seedy flesh. In a pinch, I have used a globe eggplant for this dish, and just cut it into chunks. It did work out, but had a slightly different result. To cut and prepare the long eggplants, I find it easiest to quarter them lengthwise down the centre into four long pieces, and then cut those into the long bits into smaller pieces about 5-7cm/2-3″ long.

The final step in our veg prep is the bell pepper. Core and quarter the pepper, then slice into long, thin-ish pieces. The pepper I used this time was fairly small, so if you have one of the giant monstrosities I have seen and purchased more recently in the grocery store, a half of a pepper is probably MORE than enough!

In a bowl, mix together the ground pork, cornstarch, and salt. This helps to preseason the meat slightly, and the cornstarch will help the pork crisp up slightly while cooking, and will also be a thickening agent for the sauce once it hits the pan.

Final step before heating up the wok and starting the fry up is to mix together the sauce. The shaoxing wine, red wine vinegar, soy sauce, chilli oil and water all get mixed into a small bowl and set aside. If you don’t have shaoxing wine in the pantry, cooking sherry is a decent replacement. But if you have a chance to pick up some shaoxing wine, I would highly encourage it. I hadn’t understood the missing element to so many Chinese recipes I would try until I came across a post about shaoxing wine on the Woks of Life. I hunted it down in my local asian grocery store and they were not kidding. The taste difference that it makes in those same recipes is mind blowing.

Let’s heat up that wok and get cooking! Heat up the wok to medium high heat. Add about 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil (canola, safflower, peanut, corn, or any vegetable oil with a high smoke point will all work here) and 1/2 tablespoon of sesame oil. Once the pan is heated up, and the oils are quite runny, add half the eggplant pieces to the pan. We want to cook them in batches, or else the pan will get crowded and we won’t get the right cook. Stir almost continuously, working to coat all the eggplant pieces with the oils, as well as to maintain a consistent cook through the pieces. Because the primary heat source is at the bottom of the wok, regularly stirring to give all the pieces a little love is important. The eggplant is ready to come out of the pan when it has softened slightly, and there is a light char on the edges of the vegetable. That little bit of char will give that slight smokiness we are looking for, and if we cook for too long, the eggplant will turn into a soggy mess. The flip side of that, though, is not cooking for long enough, which will result in chewy, slightly astringent piece of eggplant, so make sure they have softened, and are not still raw when you take them out. We will have a little more cooking time at the very end for the eggplant, so a slight undercook is better than way too soft. Set the cooked eggplant aside in a dish, then add another 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil and the last 1/2 tablespoon of sesame oil, and cook the second batch of eggplant. Once done, transfer into the same dish with the first batch of cooked eggplant.

Next, add the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil into the pan, and add your aromatics (the ginger, garlic and whites of the green onion). We are going to cook these quick, only until you can catch a good whiff of them cooking, around 30-60 seconds. Add the pork in with the aromatics, and cooking, stirring constantly. You may need to break down pieces if needed as you go; we are trying to keep the ground pork from cooking into large chunks. Continue until the meat is fully cooked through, I find this takes around 5 minutes.

Next, add the anchovy paste, mixing well into the pork, and then the red pepper pieces. Because the red pepper is so long and thin, you will need to be gentle as you stir it in to cook, so you do not break up the pieces too much. We are only cooking the red pepper for about a minute before moving on to the sauce. For the anchovy paste, if you have actual anchovies, and want to cut them into small pieces and add, this will totally work too. The traditional version of this dish uses Chinese salted fish. If you can get your hands on some of that, and rinse, chop, and add that instead, nice work! I bet your dish will taste AMAZING. For me, I have found that the fillets of salted fish are pretty huge for what I can find, and I never manage to use it all within an appropriate amount of time, so I go with the anchovy paste for ease of use.

We are almost at the finish line! Add the pre-mixed sauce in with the meat and red pepper, stirring well. With the cornstarch already in the pork, and the high heat of the wok, this should start to thicken fairly quickly. Once it starts to thicken, add the eggplant back in the dish (and any liquid that may have collected with the eggplant in its dish), stirring well to coat the eggplant with the sauce. Continue stirring and cooking until the eggplant is at just the right level of doneness for your preference. Add the greens of the onion, and stir, cooking for another 30-60 seconds, then immediately transfer to a serving dish. Time to eat! Serve with the steamed rice, and enjoy!

Happy eating.

An Easy No-Cook Protein for Dinner: Tuna Poke

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Tuna Poke

Print Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Course Appetizer, Main Course, Snack
Servings 2 people

Ingredients
  

  • 400 g fresh, sushi-grade tuna (~1lb) chopped in small cubes
  • 3 Tbsps light soy sauce
  • 1 tsp fresh ginger peeled and shredded
  • 1 clove garlic peeled and minced
  • 1 small shallot peeled and sliced thin (or half a sweet onion)
  • 1 tsp sesame oil
  • 1/2 Tbsp sambal olek
  • sesame seeds and green onions (garnish)

Instructions
 

  • Chop tuna into small cubes, around 1-2cm big. Mince or shred the garlic. Peel and shred the ginger. Peel and slice the shallots quite thin. Add all the ingredients into a small bowl, mix well and serve immediately, topping with seeds and sliced green onions for garnish.
Keyword Onions, Poke, Sesame, Tuna

And now for the details…

Hello dear friends. It has been some time since I have posted. Life is definitely busy right now and finding the time to put together a post has been hard pressed. If you follow me on Instagram, you have probably seen all the photos of my food adventures, but I have not been able to take the extra time to share those recipes online. Luckily, I managed to find a little bit of time and will be sharing more food with you in the near future!

This recipe I am sharing today is one of the all-time favourites in our home. We have this quite a bit for dinners, usually at least once a month, more often when the weather starts getting hotter outside and I do not want to heat up the house by turning on the stove or oven. Not only is it fast and easy to put together, but it is also just so flavourful and filling. Options on how to eat this could be to serve it with a side of fresh made rice, or you might jazz it up with a bunch of sauces and accoutrements in a poke bowl, similar to my previous poke bowl recipe, or, my favourite way to eat it, you can scoop it up right out of the bowl with crackers or crisps.

Poke is a Hawaiian dish, and is a marinated fish dish. Tuna poke is definitely one of the more widely known versions of poke, but visit a poke shop in Hawaii and you will have tons of options, all kinds of fish and seafood, like octopus, crab, shrimp, lobster, salmon, and even combinations of these and others. I have visited poke shops in Hawaii, and it can be overwhelming to try and decide what to get, like visiting an ice cream shop and trying to choose only one or two kinds. I can attest that I enjoyed EVERY one that I did try.

For this particular recipe, we are going to just focus on tuna. In regards to the fish, I have talked about “sushi grade” fish in past recipes, but the important thing with this recipe is to ensure you have tuna that has been prepared appropriately to be eaten raw. While we often use the term “sushi grade”, the fun fact about “sushi grade”? It’s not actually a grade at all, at least not in how we think of graded meats. In both the US and Canada, there is not regulating body sending out people to inspect the fish to ensure it is the right “grade”, like what we would see for grades of beef or chicken. What “sushi grade” does mean is that the fish has been held at a particular (cold) temperature for enough time to have killed off any parasites that might exist in the flesh of the fish, so that it is safe to consume without bringing it up to the necessary heated temperature to kill those same elements off. If you are not sure, feel free to ask your local grocer or fishmonger if their fish is sushi grade, and only buy your fish from an establishment that you trust to have handled the fish properly.

Now we get into prep. All you will really need for this recipe is a small bowl, a cutting board, a knife and a spoon. How is that for minimal kitchen effort!

For the cutting board, since we are cutting raw protein, I have a special cutting board that I reserve strictly for cutting meats, fish or poultry. It’s a red coloured cutting board to differentiate it from everything else so both my husband and I know what it was used for and make sure it runs its cleaning cycle through the dishwasher or with high heat water and lots of soap to clean off any uggedy (yes, I said it, uggedy) bits to ensure no cross-contamination of other foods later.

In no particular order, choose what works for you, we will prep the alliums and ginger. Peel the garlic, and mince finely, or you may choose to shred the garlic, and place in the bowl. Peel the shallot and slice it thinly, also placing it in the bowl. For the ginger, a friend of mine gave me a hot tip for peeling the root, which he was taught by his family who make a LOT of ginger beer, so it’s a gooder! Instead of trying to peel the skin off with a knife, use the edge of a spoon and scrape the skin off. It will help release the skin for from all the little knobby bits without running risk of cutting your own fingies. Plus, since its just with a spoon, this might be a good place for kiddos to step in and help if you have any who hover around the kitchen during prep just wanting to be a part of the process! Once peeled, shred the ginger into the bowl, either using a fine grater or a shredding plate.

Cut the tuna into small cubes, about 1-2cm wide. No need to be finicky about exact dimensions here, just cutting the fish to roughly the right size. If your fish is fully thawed, it may be a little… floppy… and it can make this step a challenge. To make it easier, you can put the fish in the freezer for 5-10 minutes to make the fish a little firmer, and then chop. You will also want to make sure that the knife you use it quite sharp. A dull knife will just tear the fish, instead of give you some nice, clean cuts. Place the fish in the bowl with everything else, and give it all a stir.

Finally add the soy sauce, sesame oil, and sambal olek to the bowl, and give the mix one final stir so everything is equally coated. I personally prefer it best if served immediately. If you let it rest a bit before you eat, make sure it is covered and in the fridge. I also find that the longer it rests, the more the fish soaks up the liquids that were added. If you do end up waiting before serving, just before you serve, splash the mix with a little more soy sauce and a little bit of olive oil (maybe about 1 tsp of each) and give it a good stir. Just before serving, top with sesame seeds and sliced green onion for garnish.

Happy eating.

Creamy Mushroom Soup, the Perfect Cold Day Meal

1 Comment

Creamy Mushroom Soup

Print Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Course Main Course, Soup
Servings 4 Servings

Ingredients
  

  • 4 cloves garlic (minced)
  • 1 bunch green onions (chopped, some of the greens separated for garnish)
  • 2 Tbsps butter
  • 900 g mix cremini and oyster mushrooms (32 oz; chopped)
  • 1/2 cup white wine
  • 1/4 tsp oregano
  • 1 Tbsp dried dill
  • 2 cups milk
  • 2 cups broth (beef, chicken, mushroom or vegetable)
  • 1/4 cup cream cheese (cut into small chunks)
  • salt and pepper (to taste)

Instructions
 

  • Place a medium to large pot on medium-high heat. Add butter, garlic and the green onions (except small amount of greens reserved for garnish) to the pot, and sauté until fragrant.
  • Add the mushrooms, and sauté, stirring regularly, until mushrooms are fully cooked. By the time they are fully cooked, they will likely have released quite a bit of liquid in the pot.
  • Add the white wine, oregano and dill, stirring well. Allow the mix to cook for around 5 minutes before turning the heat down to medium heat.
  • Add the milk and broth. Allow the soup to heat up, then remove about a cup to a separate small bowl and add the cream cheese and stir until the cream cheese has mostly melted and become more liquid. Pour this mix into the soup and stir well until fully mixed into the soup
  • Taste-test and add salt and pepper to prefer taste. Cook for another 5 minutes. Remove from heat, and serve immediately, with reserved green onions as garnish.
Keyword Cream Cheese, Cream Soup, Cremini, Mushrooms, Soup

And now for the details…

Hi there friends! I am not sure about you… but comfort food is definitely where my brain and stomach seem to be leading me lately. Not sure if it’s the changing seasons (we are into November and here in Canada, and I am looking out my window right now at a light blanket of snow on the ground), the continued impacts of this pandemic on our work and personal lives, or just a phase of my body wanting and needing familiar food for my soul, but here we are and I wanted to share this with you in case you are feeling similar, and you find mushroom soup equally as comforting as I do.

I love mushrooms. Like. So much. I am pretty sure I’ve mentioned this in previous posts, so I won’t wax poetic too much on the glory that are mushrooms, but dang, they’re good. High in umami, and with a slightly meaty texture when cooked, they provide a savoury bite that is hearty and satisfying. For this soup, I suggested cremini and oyster mushrooms in the recipe, but you can use a mix of whatever mushrooms you have available. Only have button mushrooms? Sounds great, this soup will be delicious. Have access to mushrooms a bit more on the pricey end, like morels, chanterelles or porcini? Toss them into the mix, they will be fantastic.

To get everything started, we are going to be chopping everything up. The garlic, green onions and mushrooms are all going to be chopped up to go into the pot. For the green onions, reserve some of the chopped green parts to the side to garnish the soup at the end. The primary reason I am using green onions in this recipe is I admittedly ran out of regular onions and shallots. So… green onions it was. If you don’t have green onions, you can instead use half of a small white onion or a shallot, minced fairly fine.

Place a medium to large pot on the stove and set it on medium-high heat. Add the butter, allow it to melt, and then add the garlic and the onions (less the greens you reserved to the side). Stir, allowing the onions and garlic to cook until they start releasing their delicious smells and the onions have started to soften. This shouldn’t take very long, a couple minutes at most.

Next, we add the mushrooms. You can add them all in one fell swoop, or add them a bit at a time, allowing them to cook down before adding the next bit. I like doing it the second way because it feels like I’m making better progress, but honestly, I think both methods take the same amount of time in the end.

As mushrooms cook, they release a heck of a lot of moisture. It doesn’t seem like they would when they are raw. They are kinda dry and spongey in texture. But when you cook them down they have a LOT of liquid to release. For this recipe, since our end goal is a soup, we are not as concerned with avoiding the liquid. Some recipes you see for sautéing mushrooms will advise to use a wide pan and not crowd it to avoid boiling the mushrooms. Well… we’re makin’ soup folks, so the liquid stays! When the mushrooms are cooked and there is liquid at the bottom of the pot, do not worry about draining it or cooking it off, that is just mushroom broth that will add to the soup!

The next step will be to add our spices (the oregano and dill), some salt and pepper, and the wine. We are going to keep the heat at medium-high for about five minutes to cook down the wine somewhat. Partially to help reduce it, partially to allow the alcohol to cook off before we add the broth. After five-ish minutes, turn the heat down to medium.

Next, add the milk and broth to the soup. Depending on whether the milk and broth were at room temperature, or if you brought them straight out of the fridge, you might have to wait a bit to have the soup heat back up. Wait for it to come back up to a simmer.

Different cream soups will use different methods of getting a creamy broth. Some will use flour, others will add heavy cream, and some will blend some of the mushrooms to thicken up the broth. In this case, we will not be going too thick with the broth and we will be using cream cheese to help provide a bit of body to liquid.

In order to get the cream cheese to blend well, we are going to try and dissolve most of it outside of the soup before adding it in. Cut the cream cheese into chunks to get it ready. Ladle some of the hot broth out of the pot into a small bowl. Add the cream cheese to the broth, and mash and stir it until the cream cheese has melted down some and the mixture is no longer lumpy. Add the mixture into the soup and stir in. If you want to just add the cut cream cheese right into the pot and skip this step and just wait for it to all melt and have the potential of a couple little lumps of cream cheese, have at ‘er. Admittedly, this is exactly what I did and just wanted to share a different option to you all that has a better result *eep*

Now is a good time to give the soup a quick taste-test and add additional salt to your personal taste (do I almost always add salt at this stage? Yes I do. Am I a borderline saltaholic? You know I am.) Allow the soup to come back up to a simmer after the addition of the cream cheese mixture, about another 5 minutes. Then ladle out the soup, top with the reserved green onions for garnish and serve immediately. I like serving this with a piece of crusty baguette to dip into the rich broth!

Happy eating.

Sweet and Sticky Five-Spice Lacquered Pork Belly

Lacquered Pork Belly

Print Recipe
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 6 hours
Course Main Course
Servings 4 people

Ingredients
  

Pork Belly

  • 400 g pork belly, approx 1 lb (skin off or on)
  • 1 tsp five-spice powder
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp ginger powder
  • 1 tsp salt

Lacquer

  • 2 Tbsp hoisin
  • 1 tsp chili oil
  • 1 tsp five-spice powder
  • 1 Tbsp soy sauce
  • 1 Tbsp rice wine vinegar
  • 1 Tbsp sugar

Instructions
 

  • Preheat over to 200ºF/95ºC
  • Stack a piece of parchment over a piece of aluminum foil (big enough to wrap pork belly). Pat pork belly dry and place on parchment paper. If belly has skin, score the skin in a criss-cross pattern. Sprinkle all surfaces with five-spice, salt, ginger and garlic powder, patting into meat. Wrap pork belly with parchment paper, and then foil. Place in oven on ovenproof dish, fatty side up. Let cook for five hours.
  • Mix together lacquer ingredients. After five hours of cooking, remove pork belly from oven and increase oven temperature to 325ºF/165ºC.
  • Remove pork belly from wrapping and place in ovenproof dish, fatty or skin side up. Spoon some of lacquer on top, and place back in oven.
  • Cook pork belly for one additional hour, removing every 10 minutes to spoon additional lacquer over the pork belly. After one hour of cooking, remove and let sit for 5-10 minutes. Then, move to a cutting board, cut with a sharp knife and serve.
Keyword Five Spice, Lacquered, Pork, Pork Belly, Slow Cooked

And now for the details…

Hello dear friends. I am so very excited to share this recipe with you.

If you have ever been overwhelmed or scared about trying pork belly because it seems too hard or too much, fret not! This recipe is actually very easy. The hardest part? Waiting. Like… a long time. If you thought it was a mistake in the recipe, nope! You read the recipe right. This recipe takes SIX HOURS to cook. BUT the good news about it? The vast majority of that time, you can ignore it altogether. In fact, if you are like me, you may have to set an alarm so you do not forget that it is in the oven! This is very much a “set it and forget it” type recipe. This is a great recipe for when you are going to be home most of the day, but are not going to have time to cook. For me right now in particular, it works well, since we are still working from home in our part of the world, so I throw this in the oven around lunch time and ignore it the rest of the day and BAM. By the end of the day, dinner is pretty much ready to go.

When it comes to the ingredients for this recipe, pretty much everything should be available at your local grocers nowadays. Pork belly was not something that I found was typically carried at our local grocery stores up until the last several years. Well, unless you counted the smoked, salted and sliced pork belly that is American bacon. But more recently, I have noticed the injection of pork belly at a lot of grocers’ meat departments, making it much easier to find. If your local grocery store does not carry pork belly, you might need to find a local butchers. For this recipe you want a whole piece of pork belly, not one that has been sliced or cut into pieces. Pork belly is sold with or without the skin. I have made this recipe with both, and it was worked out great with either, so feel free to use whichever cut you find. We will have a slight change to how we prep it, but more on that in a little bit.

To get this recipe started, let’s preheat the oven to 200ºF/95ºC.

If that feels like a really low temperature, it sure is. We are going for low and slow here to render the fat in the cut, let it seep into every crevice of the meat and result in a succulent, juicy bite when done. If you are worried that 200ºF seems like it would be too low to allow the meat to cook adequately and result in undercooked pork, fret not. The temperature considered “safe” (read: well done) by the Government of Canada is 160ºF. And after spending multiple HOURS in the oven at 200ºF, your pork belly will be cooked all the way through and will most definitely be fully cooked. “But Emily,” you say, “I thought it was okay to eat pork at less than well done??” From what I have read and hear, yes, it is a-okay to eat your pork chop at medium. A lot of the food risk we used to see in the past that required pork to be fully cooked have been minimized through farming and butchering practices. I… still don’t feel fully comfortable with it, if I am being honest, and have the “pork can’t be pink” ingrained in my brain, and still cook all my pork to well done. But, regardless of your acceptable tolerances for pork done-ness, in this particular recipe, we are cooking for the full amount of time to help break down any connective tissue, fully render that fat, and end up with a delectable, tender piece of meat with a very slight chew.

Next step, prepping that belly to be cooked. To start, cut both a piece of parchment paper and a piece of aluminum foil, each big enough to wrap around the belly, and stack parchment on foil. Pat the belly dry of any excess moisture, and place it on top of the parchment, with the foil underneath. The only difference in how we treat skin vs no skin pork belly is right here. If you have a belly with skin, score the skin in a criss-cross pattern, forming little diamonds in the skin. We want to cut through the skin, and can cut a bit into the fat, but want to stop short of cutting too deep that we hit the meat. If you have a belly with no skin, congrats! No additional work required.

Next we season the meat. I estimated about one teaspoon each here of the salt, garlic powder, ginger powder and five-spice powder, but if you use more or less, it is no big deal. Basically, we are sprinkling all four powders onto all sides of the meat, patting them into the pork belly, before turning and getting the next side. Once the pork belly has been seasoned, wrap it in the parchment paper, and the wrap that in the aluminum foil. Before you wrap it, make sure you know which side is the fatty/skin side, because we are going to put the entire package into an oven proof dish with the fatty/skin side facing up, and put that into the oven. And then leave it there. For five hours. You heard that right. No need to touch that sucker for FIVE HOURS. Go live your life. Be free. Well… maybe not totally free. You do have an oven going in your house… so… don’t go too far…

*five hours later*

Next step is where we get that dark, sticky lacquer developing on the belly. We bump the oven up to 325ºF/165ºC and take the belly out of the oven. Before the pork belly goes back into the oven at the higher temperature, unwrap the belly out of the foil and parchment paper, and place it back onto the ovenproof dish, again with fatty/skin side up. If any liquid collected in the the parchment/foil while the belly had been cooking, you can discard it.

Mix together all the lacquer ingredients. Spoon just enough on top of the belly to coat the top surface and place the belly back in the oven. We are going to cook the belly for another hour at this higher temperature, taking it out of the oven every 10 minutes to spoon a bit more lacquer over the top. As it cooks for this last hour, the lacquer will caramelize and cook down into a dark, sticky sweet coating.

Once the hour is up, take the pork belly out of the oven and let it sit for 5-10 minutes in its dish. Transfer it to a cutting board and slice into your desired thickness with a sharp knife. And I mean a really sharp knife. Because that pork belly is so tender from all that low and slow cooking, anything less than a super sharp knife will simply tear that meat up. Seriously, you could probably talk to it a little too harshly and it would fall apart.

Last, but most important, serve and eat! Below, we have the pork belly partnered with some ravioli and a kale caesar salad. Is that kale caesar made from the same caesar dressing as from my Brussel Sprout Caesar Salad? You bet it is. Is that some sparkling rosé to bring it all together? Heck yeah. Enjoy.

Happy eating.

An Easy, No-Cook Dinner: Deconstructed Shrimp Salad Rolls

Deconstructed Shrimp Salad Rolls

Print Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Course Main Course
Servings 2 people

Ingredients
  

  • 2 tsp soy sauce
  • 2 Tbsp tahini or peanut butter
  • 4 Tbsps sweet chilli sauce
  • 2 tsp red wine vinegar
  • 10-15 shrimp (pre-cooked)
  • 1/2 pkg rice vermicelli (~115g or 4oz)
  • 6 cups kaleslaw or coleslaw vegetable mix (or sliced kale, brussel sprouts, broccoli stalks, etc.)
  • 3 Tbsps roasted peanuts (crushed)
  • handful fresh mint or basil (sliced, for garnish)

Instructions
 

  • Boil some water in a pot or kettle. Place vermicelli in hot water and let sit for 5 minutes, until tender (or per package directions). Drain vermicelli and let cool.
  • Mix together soy sauce, tahini/peanut butter, sweet chilli sauce and red wine vinegar until smooth.
  • In a large, shallow bowl or platter, place the kaleslaw/cole slaw mix. Top with vermicelli. Place shrimp on top of vermicelli, then drizzle the dressing over the bowl. Sprinkle with mint or basil. Serve.
Keyword Peanut Butter, Peanut Satay Sauce, Rice Vermicelli, Salad Rolls, Shrimp, Vietnamese

And now for the details…

Hi there folks! It has been awhile yet again, but I am coming to you with a nice, easy, no-cook recipe for these hot, summer days!

This recipe was born from a discussion I had with my friend Krystal about ideas for meals that require little to no cooking for prep. Krystal is a dietician who specializes in traumatic brain injury (TBI) recovery. A question she had gotten was about meal ideas that required little to no cooking. Fun fact for you folks out there who have never experienced a concussion or TBI: some things that we normally consider as simple as chopping vegetables or multi-tasking in the kitchen (and hoping not to burn something) is a daunting or unmanageable task when the brain is working so hard simply to heal and provide basic function after injury. And so, me and Krystal put our (healing) brains together and came up with some ideas. And as one of our ideas, this recipe was born.

This recipe is nice and simple, with not too many ingredients to manage, and no cooking required, except to boil some water. Now, one could argue that you are technically cooking the noodles, since they are sitting in boiling water. Fair. But you do not need monitor them on the stove, just boil the water, pour it over the noodles, and then let them sit for a few minutes. And the joy of this is you do not even need a stove to do this. A plug-in kettle works just fine for the job!

We are also going sans cooking by using pre-cooked shrimp. If you want to get fancy, you could always purchase the shrimp raw and cook it and cool it yourself. But there are tons of options nowadays, particularly in the frozen aisle, for precooked shrimp. All you need to do is thaw, and it’s ready!

And so, to get started, boil that water! If you are boiling the water in the pot, once the water has boiled, turn the heat off and add the vermicelli straight into the pot. If you are using a kettle, place the vermicelli into some sort of heat resistant dish (I just used a piece of tupperware), and then pour the water over noodles. If any of the noodles are sticking out of the water, use a fork or spoon to gently press them into the water as the rest soften. Let the noodles sit for about 5 minutes or until tender. Double check the package of your vermicelli to make sure there are not some special different directions for prep needed for your particular noodles. Once tender, strain in a fine sieve, and let sit to fully drain and cool slightly.

As the noodles are “cooking”, draining and cooling, mix together the soy sauce, peanut butter or tahini, sweet chilli sauce and red wine vinegar and set aside. If you are using peanut butter, I would recommend either using the processed peanut butter. If you are using a “just peanuts” type of peanut butter, let the peanut butter come right down to room temperature, or you will end up with a fairly solid “sauce”.

If the shrimp is still slightly frozen, run them under cold water until thawed. Ensure the water is drained completely from the shrimp, even drying them on a paper towel before assembling in your dish.

In a large, shallow bowl spread out the pre-chopped mixed kaleslaw. The kaleslaw is completely a suggestion to make this recipe a little easier. Again, between Krystal and I, we discussed ways to make meal prep easier. And one of those ways is to buy your veggies already washed, trimmed and chopped. For some folks recovery from TBI, standing at a counter and chopping vegetables is just a wee bit too much for the brain to handle. Have you ever appreciated the level of concentration it takes your brain to keep you standing, carefully judging the distance to chop the produce to just the right size, all the while avoiding your fingers? I definitely have an appreciation for what my brain is capable of when it is operating at it’s “better”! If you want to chop your own veg, that is completely an option you can choose as well. Feel free to use any or all of kale, broccoli stems, brussel sprouts, carrots and/or cabbage, julienning or shredding the veggies so they are nice and small.

On top of the veg, we will add the drained and cooled noodles. Arrange the shrimp over the noodles. Drizzle the dressing over the entire dish. Sprinkle the crushed peanuts on top and end with the basil or mint. If you want to chop the basil or mint, you can do that before your sprinkle, OR you can simply tear the mint or basil leaves as you sprinkle them over the top of the dish.

Serve and enjoy.

Happy eating.

The Ultimate Sweet Hickory BBQ Rub

Sweet Hickory BBQ Rub

Print Recipe
Prep Time 5 minutes

Ingredients
  

  • 2 Tbsp chili powder
  • 1 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 1 Tbsp paprika
  • 1/2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp rosemary, ground
  • 1/2 tsp dry mustard
  • 1 tsp hickory powder
  • 2 tsp turbinado sugar

Instructions
 

  • Mix all ingredients together and use as a rub on beef, pork or other proteins. Store unused rub in an airtight container in a cool, dark place for up to two months.

And now for the details…

Well folks, it has been a bit since I have posted and I am going for a hella easy recipe to post here. Does it take less than five minutes to make this? Is this only a rub and not a full recipe for a final dish? Will there be a follow up recipe on how and where to use this? The answer to all these questions is definitely yes.

I created this recipe because I tried making beef tongue for the first time last weekend. It was freaking glorious. I used this beef tongue recipe by Jess Pryles to cook the meat initially, but I wanted a spice blend to rub onto the sliced meat with before I pan seared them. So after I had cooked, skinned, and cut the tongue in slices, I applied this spice rub fairly liberally and did a quick sear on high heat in a cast iron pan to get some caramelization going. The flavour I was going for was sweet, smoky BBQ. Thus, this recipe was born.

My typical preference for BBQ flavour is not heavy on the smoke, which is why I am using hickory powder. This powder just screams sweet BBQ. Y’know that very gentle smoky, yet slightly sugary smell that hits your nostrils when opening a bag of BBQ potato chips? This is immediately where my brain goes when I smell hickory powder. It is definitely not the hit to the back of your throat that I find you get from liquid smoke, just an amiable enticement that gets the salivary glands going. If you do not have access to hickory powder (I found it at one of our local specialty grocers, Sunterra, and I have also since found it online from multiple sources), you could trade out some of the paprika for smoked paprika to still get some smokiness. The flavour profile will be a bit different, and lean more into the savoury than the sweet, but would still be tasty. I would not trade out all the paprika, max out at 50/50, depending on how heavily smoked you like things.

What to use this spice rub for besides beef tongue? This spice blend would be great for lighter flavoured meats, like pork ribs, chicken thighs or fish. Remember my Instant Pot Pork Ribs recipe? You can always ditch the spice rub mix listed there and go for this instead 😉 I have also shaken it over some salmon before throwing it on the grill. Because this spice is not too potent, feel free to apply it fairly liberally to whatever protein you are cooking to get those flavours to fully shine.

Try a Terrine Tonight! Duck, Pork and Hazelnut Terrine

Duck and Hazelnut Terrine

Print Recipe
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Time in Oven 2 hours
Course Appetizer, Main Course, Snack
Servings 1 Terrine

Ingredients
  

  • 2 duck breasts
  • 1 set duck giblets (organs from 1 whole duck)
  • 450 g ground pork
  • 2 garlic cloves (peeled and shredded)
  • 10 peppercorns
  • 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
  • 3 whole cloves
  • 2 shallots (peeled and minced)
  • 1/2 cup whole hazelnuts
  • 1 cup fresh parsley (chopped)
  • 1 egg
  • 3 Tbsps panko crumbs
  • 3 Tbsps sour cherry preserves
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 Tbsps duck fat
  • 2 Tbsps cognac (or other brandy)

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 400ºF/205ºC. Separate skin from the duck breasts. Lay the skins along the bottom of the terrine mold/loaf tin.
  • Add the ducks breasts, giblets and pork to a food processor and pulse until mostly broken down and mixed, leave some of the pieces of meat intact.
  • Using a mortar and pestle, grind the peppercorns, mustard seeds and cloves together.
  • Mix together the meat mixture, spices, garlic, shallots, parsley, egg, panko crumbs, salt, duck fat, and cognac. Fold in the hazelnuts and cherry preserves. Spoon this mixture over the skins in the terrine mold, press it down and smooth out. Cover with foil, place in a water bath in the oven and bake for 1 hour.
  • Turn off oven, but leave terrine in the oven for 2 hours without opening the door. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely. Slice the terrine and serve with crusty bread. Remaining terrine can be re-covered and stored in the fridge.
Keyword Duck, Duck Breast, Duck Giblets, Hazelnut, Pork

And now for the details…

I am sure I am not the only one, but I have been dreaming and reminiscing of travelling a LOT lately. One of the ways I have been trying to feed my travel bug is through food. I have been doing this a number of ways, like finding new and imported foods (I tried Spanish Lomo for the first time that I got from our local Italian grocer, soooo yummy), getting takeaway from different restaurants (for those in Calgary, I would be remiss to not recommend Bar Von Der Fels, UNA Pizza or Myung Ga), and the last way I have been feeding my travel bug is through trying to recreate foods that we have had when we have been travelling. That last case is where this recipe came from. I was reminiscing of our trip to France several years ago; in particular the spread we would set up for ourselves in the late morning from the goodies we picked up at the local marchés. One of the items I fell in love with there were the terrines. There would be a selection of different terrines, and could including a wide variety of meats, like duck, pork or rabbit. I would simply tell the vendor how thick of a slice I would like and they would cut off the generous slab of terrine and wrap it in thick butcher paper, and hand it over for us to take home. We would pick up baguettes on the way back to where we were staying and then have the terrine with the fresh, crusty bread and a generous dollop of mustard. Oh boy. I am drooling.

If you have never had a terrine before and are looking at the ingredients and thinking “this looks a lot like a meatloaf”… yep! Think of a terrine as a cousin to the traditional North American meatloaf. After all, they are both meat dishes made in a loaf pan and baked in the oven. But the terrine differs in a few ways, one of them being the type of meat used. Terrines often use a mix of different meats, and often use organ meat. In this case, we are using duck and pork, which leaves the delicacy in flavour profile to allow the spices and nuts to also shine. Another way that the terrine often differs is in the fat content. The terrine is usually higher in fat, which is one of the reason why it has some spreadability when smushing it over a piece of crusty bread, or scooping it up with crackers. In our case, we are getting some of the fat content from the pork, but also from the duck skin and the duck fat that is being added to the mix. Finally, terrines are usually served cold or at room temperature. I like to serve it on a plate with other delicious charcuterie bits with mustard and fresh bread, trying to mimic the experience we had (which seems so long ago) in France.

So let’s get to making this thing.

First things first: preheat the oven! Always a good first step, so we do not get to the end of preparation, and then need to wait for the oven to catch up. We are going surprisingly high heat here, 400ºF/205ºC.

Next step, let’s get to the ingredients. The good news: since we have a decent amount of fat here, there is no need to grease the pan! We start by separating the duck skin from the duck breast. The easiest way to do this is to start at an end that the skin is already “floppy” off the meat. You should be able to pinch the meat with one hand, and pinch the skin in the other and start to pull them apart. There will be some connective tissue, so when it starts to pull at the skin a bit too much and you see the skin tearing, use a small knife and cut through the piece connecting the skin to the meat, and then continue to pull apart. Place the skins in your loaf pan and spread them out so they are covering most of the bottom of the pan.

The next step will be to get our spices ready. If you have a spice grinder, feel free to use that, I have an ol’ fashioned mortar and pestle, so that is what I went with. Grind the mustard seeds, peppercorns and cloves until mostly broken down, but leaving a couple little chunks. I feel they add some character and make the dish a bit more charmingly unrefined.

Our next step is to get the meat ready. I got my pork ground so I did not have to mess with a grinder. For the duck, I threw the giblets and duck breasts all together in a food processor and gave them a few whirs to break them down mostly, but leaving a few chunky bits, to try and get that coarse element to the terrine.

The last step is to mix all the ingredients together. I left the hazelnuts and cherry preserves for last, and mixed everything else quite well with my hands. Then, I folded the nuts and preserves in so the preserves did not fully mix in with the rest and you could get occasional bites where the cherries shone through. Pout the entire mixture into the pan over the skins, and press it down.

Finally, it is time to cover the loaf with foil and place in the oven. We will be placing it into a water bath, or bain-marie, to keep the cooking consistent. Place the loaf pan in a larger pan, and fill the outer pan with boiling water until it comes at least halfway up the pan with the terrine. Make sure you do not overfill, we do not want water coming into the terrine pan! Bake the terrine for one hour, then, NO PEEKING, turn off the oven and let the terrine rest for another two hours without opening the oven door.

If you want to go really traditional, this last step is for you! Take the terrine out of the oven, and place a heavy weight directly onto the meat while it cools to room temperature. Some terrine pans have the press included, but there are other DIY options. You could use another loaf pan that is the same size, placing it on top and adding in some weight. You could wrap some cardboard in tin foil and put the weight on top. Or, I have even seen a suggestion to use a brick! What to use as the weight? You could use canned goods, literal hand weights or anything you can find that weighs a few pounds (Julia Child recommends up to 5 pounds!) and you can balance on top of the terrine and press while it cools. The purpose of this step is to compress the terrine as it cools to keep it from forming air bubbles, contracting, and losing its consistency.

Once the terrine has cooled, you can either cut it right out of the pan (this is what we did, no dinner parties for us right now, so let’s just eat!) or flip the terrine onto a plate to serve.

Happy eating

Easy, Rich Tomato Bisque with Boursin Cheese

Tomato Bisque with Boursin Cheese

Print Recipe
Prep Time 30 minutes
Course Main Course, Soup
Servings 10 cups

Ingredients
  

  • 2 cans Italian tomatoes (796ml, 28oz)
  • 1 zucchini chopped in medallions
  • 2 garlic cloves peeled and minced (or 1 Tbsp freeze-dried garlic)
  • 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 1 cup fresh basil loosely chopped
  • 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
  • 3 Tbsps Garlic and Fine Herbs Boursin cheese (or preferred flavour cream cheese)

Instructions
 

  • Add all the ingredients except basil, cream and cheese into a large sauce pan over medium high heat. Bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to medium-low, cover the pot and cook for 20-25 minutes, or until zucchini are fully cooked and very tender. Add basil and cook for another 5 minutes.
  • Remove the soup from heat, and blend until smooth either with an immersion blender in the pot, or by transferring to a blender in batches. Return the blended soup to the pot and place over low heat, stirring in the cream and cheese until the cheese has fully melted into the soup. Serve immediately.
Keyword Basil, Cheese, Soup, Tomatoes

And now for the details…

Tomato soup is one of my favourite lunches. Pair it up with a grilled cheese sandwich, and for a few moments, while eating, I am in heaven. In this recipe I have paired up the tangy, umami-ness of tomatoes with the freshness of basil, the richness of cream and the salty, creaminess of Boursin cheese. The use of the pre-seasoned garlic and herbs cheese adds its flavour, eliminating the need to add much else in the way of herbs or spices. If Boursin is not readily available, using a flavoured cream cheese like herb and garlic would do in a pinch, and if you could even just go with plain cream cheese or marscapone, as the basil and tomatoes do not need much seasoning, as they do so well just on their own! I have also added some zucchini to the soup to provide some added veg content and to “beef up” the soup, so to speak.

The best part of this soup is how quickly it comes together. We are using canned tomatoes, and only loosely chopping the zucchini and basil. No need for meticulous preparation (aka high knife skills) of the different ingredients, since we will just be blending it all together at the end anyhow. I even took the let’s-make-it-easy approach a step further and ended up using freeze-dried garlic pieces rather than peeling and chopping.

So to get this soup started, place all the ingredients except the basil, cream and cheese into a large saucepan and put it over medium-high heat. Make sure to add the tomatoes with their liquid!

We are not going to be cooking at this higher temperature the whole time, just until we heat the soup up enough that it starts to bubble. Then, turn the heat down to medium-low. Here is where the magic happens, since we are just going to cover it up and can leave it to cook to get all soft. After about 20-25 minutes, we will add the basil in. You can just tear the leaves off and toss them in, or even loosely chop the leaves and the stalks together and throw everything in, as long as the stalks are not too woody. Cook the soup for another 5 minutes, just until the basil has wilted and spread its lovely scent into the soup.

Now its time to go on a blender. Remove the pot from the heat. There are two options for blending. If you have an immersion blender, you can do this right in the pot, stirring it regularly to make sure we get all the bits so that the soup is smooth. The second option is to transfer the soup to a blender to get a smooth soup. If using a blender, you will also need a second container, since the soup will likely not all fit into the blender at once, and we will need to blend in parts. As discussed in other soup recipes that needed blending, be careful in this step, as the hot soup might burst from the blender container if you overfill it or go to high speed right away. Fill the blender no more that halfway and start on low speed before increasing. When done blending, transfer the soup back into the pot.

Put the pot with the smooth soup over low heat. Add the cream and cheese (breaking the cheese up into pieces/chunks to allow it to melt faster) and stir, heating until it is at your desired temperature and the cheese is fully melted and mixed into the soup.

Serve immediately. If there are leftovers, allow them to cool fully, then transfer to a freezable container. This soup keeps in the freezer for several months and reheats really well. A great meal to keep handy for a quick defrost and reheat!

Happy eating.

Lightly Spiced Butternut Squash Soup

Butternut Squash Soup

Print Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Course Soup
Servings 6 Servings

Ingredients
  

  • 1 medium onion peeled and diced
  • 2 garlic cloves peeled and minced
  • 1 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 butternut squash peeled, cored and cut into chunks
  • 1 medium sweet potato (yam) peeled and cut into chunks
  • 1 large apple peeled, cored and cut into chunks
  • 1/2 cup white wine
  • 4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
  • 1/2 Tbsp ground cumin
  • dash cayenne pepper
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp ground pepper
  • 1/2 cup half and half cream

Instructions
 

  • Put a large pot over medium-high heat and add oil, onions and garlic. Cook for 3-5 minutes, or until onions become translucent. Add the wine and cook down until reduced by half.
  • Add all the rest of the ingredients except the cream. Stir well, pushing the veggies and fruit to be mostly under the liquid. Reduce the heat to just below medium, cover the pot, and cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until the veggies are fully cooked and starting to fall apart.
  • Blend the soup, either using an immersion blender in the pot, or transferring the soup to a regular blender in batches. Transfer back to pot once all the soup is blended and smooth. Place pot on low heat, add the cream to the soup, stirring well and heat to desired temperature. Serve.
Keyword Apple, Butternut Squash, Soup, Yam

And now for the details…

Hi there friends! Here comes a new soup recipe your way, this time using butternut squash. Does anyone else call butternut squash “buttnut squash” for short, is that just me and some of my friends? And yes, we giggle like 11-year-olds after we say it. I may technically be an adult, but that does not mean I have matured, people.

I love this soup because it is so easy. Seriously. The most difficult part of making the soup is peeling and removing the guts from the squash. And being a teensy bit patient while waiting for it to cook.

This particular recipe is one that I have been making for years. It is actually roughly based off a recipe I found online a long time ago. I went a-hunting to find that recipe to credit it, but could not find it anywhere. So here is my version; I hope you enjoy!

Butternut squash is one of my favourites. It is a great vegetable that keeps extremely well, even at room temperature. While it is technically spring, here in Canada, we are not quite seeing the spring veg roll in, so using a winter squash like butternut is still in full force. Why are they considered winter squash? It is definitely not because they grow in the snow! Winter squash have that name because they get harvested in late fall, and last through the winter while they are stored away in a cool, dark place. Rich, sweet and satisfying, butternut squash is great cut in pieces and roasted in the oven or made up into a mash. In this particular recipe, though, we are going to add a few more ingredients and turn it into soup!

One element I like about this recipe is the addition of the sweet potato. It gives the soup that bright, orangey colour, as well as adding sweetness. The apple balances out the flavour by providing a little tartness. Finally, we are not going to be adding a sweet spice like cinnamon or nutmeg, oh no! We will be spicing lightly with some cumin to get a hint of earthiness to round this dish off, and a lil dash of cayenne to elevate the heat-from-inside feeling, perfect for a chilly, slushy spring day.

To start off, we peel and chop all the veg. Like I said earlier, prepping the butternut squash is the hardest part of this recipe. The squash, though very soft once cooked, is quite firm when raw, and its skin is thick and hard as well. There a quite a few different tips and tricks out there on how to peel the squash, find one that works for you! Don’t forget to scoop and toss the guts 🙂 Cut the different veg into large chunks, maybe about 2-3cm in size.

I am extra cautious at this step of cutting the squash… A few years ago, I was cutting butternut squash and a piece fell on the ground. Our Scottie swooped in, grabbed the piece of veg, and raced off with his prize. I usually do not think twice when he does something like this. He eats raw veg all the time (fun fact: kale stalks are one of his favourite treats) and so when he ran off, I continued on with my cooking. Then, a few minutes later, I heard this soft, mournful croon from the other room that I had never heard him make before. When I went to check on him, he was lifting his little nose in the air, making the crooning sound, then would bring his head down and pant quickly, as if he could not breathe. I am not proud to say that I panicked. I was so worried he was allergic to the squash and his little airway was closing. Long story short… a bit of panic, a sleepover at the vets, and an expensive vet bill later, Moz got sent home in great spirits, with the unchewed piece of raw butternut squash that they had pulled out (it had lodged itself into his esophagus, just before his tummy). Thanks bud. CHEW YOUR FOOD.

Anyhow… back to the soup. Once the squash, sweet potato, and apple have been peeled and cut into chunks, it is time to start cooking. Start by adding the oil, onion and garlic to a large pot on medium-high heat. Cook until the onion has softened. Add the wine and cook until the wine has reduced by about half. Add all the rest of the ingredients except the cream, stirring to mix fully. Lower the heat to medium, cover the pot and cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until the veggies are cooked through and soft.

To finish this soup off, we will be blending it to get that nice, velvety texture. If you have one, you can blend the soup right in the pot using an immersion blender. If you do not have an immersion blender, you can blend in a regular blender as well. You will likely need to do the soup in batches if using a regular blender, as it is a lot of soup! Also, be careful when blending in a regular blender, starting off on a low speed and gearing up, or you and your kitchen may end up wearing more soup than you eat! (Speaking from experience? I don’t wanna talk about it…)

Once blended, add the soup back to the pot and put over medium-low heat. Add the cream, stirring in completely and bringing the soup back up to temperature. Serve immediately. I like garnishing using nuts of some kind, like walnuts, pecans or hazelnuts, and drizzling with sour cream or an infused olive oil.

Happy Eating.

A Sugary-Sweet Afternoon Treat: Root Beer Layer Cake

Root Beer Layer Cake

Print Recipe
Prep Time 40 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Cooling Time 2 hours
Total Time 3 hours
Course Dessert
Servings 1 layer cake

Ingredients
  

Cake

  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 Tbsp baking powder
  • 3/4 tsp kosher salt
  • 1 + 1/3 cups butter
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/3 cup Root Beer Syrup (concentrated syrup for making drinks, like Soda Stream)
  • 4 eggs
  • 1/2 cup whole milk

Frosting

  • 1 cup butter (softened to room temperature)
  • 4 cups icing sugar
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 3 Tbsp boiling water
  • 1/4 cup Root Beer Syrup
  • 1/2 tsp salt

Instructions
 

Cake

  • Cream butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the root beer syrup and blend well. Add eggs one at a time, blending fully between each egg.
  • Mix flour, baking powder and salt together. Alternate adding the flour mixture and the milk into the butter mixture, in approximately three separate parts. Mix until the batter is just mixed.
  • Split the batter into prepared cake tins (2 or 3, 9" cake rounds) and bake at 350ºF/175ºC until toothpick comes out clean (18-20 minutes if split into 3 tins, 22-25 minutes if split into 2 tins). Let cool 5 minutes, then remove from tins and allow to cool fully.

Frosting

  • Beat butter until pale and fluffy. Add 1 cup of icing sugar, vanilla and salt and beat well. Add remaining icing sugar, mixing until mostly mixed. Will be dry. Add boiling water one tablespoon at a time, mixing in between additions. Add the root beer syrup and mix well. Once mixed, turn the speed up to high and beat until smooth and fluffy.
  • Frost the cake, adding a generous amount of frosting between each layer of cake.
  • Serve.
Keyword Cake, Dessert, Layer Cake, Root Beer

And now for the details…

I love root beer. Always have. It is probably my favourite of the sodas. Having a frothy, cold root beer in a frosty mug (tip of the hat to you, A&W) is such a treat, between the candy-like taste and the slushy, frozen bits of the drink formed from hitting the cold glass and floating in the icy liquid. It is very sweet? You bet it is. It it rich and satisfying? Heck yes.

And those descriptors of very sweet, rich and satisfying are definitely applicable to this cake as well. Particularly the sweet. For serious, this one is not for the faint of heart; if you like really sweet sweets, then this is the cake for you!

Root beer is very much a North American invention. The “root” part of root beer is literal. The drink was originally made with a selection of roots, bark and other flavours which were brewed and then fermented into either an alcoholic and soft beverage.

The predominant flavour is sassafras, which, honestly, I just like because it’s super fun to say. C’mon. Say it with me now: sassafras. But root beer was not the first drink to use sassafras. Indigenous nations had been using the entire sassafras tree long before the colonists came through, in everything from teas to tinctures to poultices. The tree is thought to have medicinal properties, but the oil from the roots, safrole, is on the list of the FDA as a mild carcinogen, which has resulted in a number of producers to use artificial flavours to mimic the sassafras taste.

But enough about the origins of this tasty drink, let’s get to turning it into a delicious, sweet dessert!

We start out by making the cake. We are going to be essentially making a plain butter cake, cutting down a wee bit on the sugar, and adding the already sweet root beer syrup to give our flavour.

Now, you could always make your favourite butter cake recipe and add a root beer extract instead. But I wanted to create something that used an ingredient that seems to be much more prevalent right now, and since I seem to see Soda Stream, or similar, syrups all over the place, it only made sense to go with one of these.

To start us off, we will be beating the hell out of… I mean… creaming… the butter and sugar. I am not sure if everyone is aware of the #buttergate fiasco that happened up in Canada recently, but I have to agree with Julie Van Rosendaal on this one, we do not seem to get the creaminess one expects out of butter. Even softened, the butter was a bit on the waxy side, and I needed to put in a bit more elbow grease to get the result I wanted. For this recipe, it meant a lot of stopping, scraping and beating to try and get the butter and sugar to mesh in a fluffy way. Once it appears a pale yellow and is nice and fluffy, blend in the root beer syrup, then add the eggs, one at a time, mixing each in completely before adding the next.

Next, in a separate bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder, then stir in the salt. With the mixer set on low speed, alternate adding the powder mix with adding the milk, in about three parts. When everything is mixed, it is time to split the batter between prepared cake tins. I used three 9″ round tins, but you could use two, it will just require a slightly longer cooking time. The batter will be fairly thick, so smooth and even it out in the cake tins, because it will not settle the same way as thinner batters. Place the tins in a preheated 350ºF/175ºC oven, in the middle of the oven, and bake for 18-20 minutes if you have used three tins. Or 22-25 minutes if you have used two tins. Bake them until a toothpick comes out clean from the cake centre.

Once baked, remove the cakes from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes. Then run a knife around the edges, and turn the cakes out onto a cooling rack and allow to cool completely.

Once the cakes are cooled, it’s time to frost!

To make the frosting, mix the butter with one cup of icing sugar, salt and vanilla until fully mixed, then beat on high speed until the mix becomes fluffy. Mix in the remaining icing sugar under low speed. The mix will be quite dry, so do not worry about fully mixing, just mostly brought together. Add the boiling water, one tablespoon at a time, mixing each in before adding the next. Finally, add the root beer syrup and mix in completely. The icing should be a little too liquidy at this point. This is right where you want it to be. Bring the speed up to high and beat for several minutes until the frosting is light and fluffy.

Finally, frost the cake, with a generous amount of frosting between each cake layer, then frosting the outside, smoothing the frosting across the surface. Decorate to your heart’s desire! I went with maraschino cherries and chocolate sprinkles 🙂 Serve immediately.

Happy eating