Panna Cotta Ingredients

1 litre of heavy cream

1/2 cup sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 packets gelatin (worked out to about 4 1/2 tsp)

6 tbsp cold water

Panna Cotta Directions

1.     Bring the cream to a simmer on medium-low heat.

2.     Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

3.     Remove from heat and add vanilla.

4.     Pour the cold water into a small bowl and add the gelatin. Let stand for 5-10 minutes.

5.     Add the gelatin mixture to the warm cream.

6.     Here’s where you can get creative. That recipe will fill about 8 small ramekins or wine glasses. What I did was line a loaf pan with plastic wrap and poured it in there.

7.     Let sit for at least four hours. I let stand over night.

8.     When you’re ready to serve, you can leave it in the container. I unmolded mine onto a serving platter and poured a simple berry sauce over top and garnished with blackberries and raspberries. You can do whatever sauce sounds good.

Cranberry Glaze Ingredients

1 (12-ounce) bag fresh cranberries

1/3 cup chopped ginger

1 tbsp hoisin sauce

1 tbsp soya sauce

2 tsp orange zest

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup orange juice

1 1/4 cups water

1/4 cup white wine

Turkey Brine

3/4 gallon water

2 cups white wine

1 1/2 cups orange juice
1 cup kosher salt
1 cup light brown sugar
3 garlic cloves

1/3 cup chopped ginger

1 tbsp black peppercorns

4 bay leaves

The Bird

2 whole turkey breast (skin on, bone in)

1 tbsp olive oil

2 cloves garlic

salt and pepper

Turkey Directions

1.     I made my glaze the night before Christmas. Basically, add everything to a pot and bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer until it coats the back of a spoon. Strain and refrigerate until needed.

2.     You can brine the turkey a day or half a day before baking. Bring your water to a simmer and dissolve the salt and sugar. Add the rest of the ingredients and then turn off the heat. Once the liquid cools, add the turkey to the water, cover, and refrigerate.

3.     When you’re ready to cook the bird, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

4.     Remove the turkey breast from the water. Dry with paper towels so it will brown up nicely.

5.     Make a pocket under the skin. Stuff in some garlic and whatever other spices you like. A little butter doesn’t hurt either. Drizzle the olive oil over the top and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

6.     Bake turkey for about an hour and a half, then remove and baste liberally with the glaze. Return to the oven for another ten minutes. Baste again when it comes out of the oven.

7.     Let the meat cool for at least ten minutes. I served the breast on a cutting board, so it’s easy to let it cool on the board and then take it right to the table.

Roast Squash Ingredients

1 butternut squash

olive oil

a few pinches of Chinese Five Spice Powder

salt and pepper

Roast Squash Directions

1.     Preheat your oven to 350 degrees

2.     Dice the squash and remove the skin.

3.     Give the squash a nice coating of oil. This will keep it from burning and help the spices stick.

4.    Bake for about 35-40 mins, or until the squash is tender and caramelized.

Yay! The semester is over and I can resume food blogging! It pained me to be away so long, but I had end-of-semester projects to do, as well as a ton of marking (and anybody who has ever marked undergraduate papers knows how odious a burden that is). This blog entry is one of my favourite yet, because this is the first time I’ve ever been able to cook Christmas dinner. My parents never let me do it, and so this year since I’m having two Christmases, I decided I’d take one on myself. Since I’m going to see my family for the first time in over a year, Jeff and I decided to have a little Christmas celebration of our own here in London. I won’t bother including the potatoes or turnips that we had with supper; if you can’t boil a potato at this point in your life, you’re really a write-off and there’s nothing I can do to fix that.

Without further ado, here are my recipes for cornbread stuffing, cranberry-glazed turkey breast, roast squash, and panna cotta. I’m going to do each recipe as a separate entry, just for ease of searching later on.

PS: I got an ice cream maker for Christmas, so you can look forward to some recipes for that soon!

Cornbread Stuffing Ingredients

5 cups cornbread

2 cups chicken stock

2 eggs, beaten

1 onion

3 or 4 celery stalks

2 or 3 garlic cloves (I like a lot of garlic)

1 tbsp sage

1 tbsp cilantro

1 tsp chipotle powder

salt and pepper

Cornbread Stuffing Recipe

1.     Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

2.     Dice the onion and celery and sautee with garlic until translucent.

3.     Mix all of your ingredients together and pack into a baking dish. I noted the spices I used here, but you really can freestyle quite easily; anything from rosemary to ginger would be tasty here.

4.     Bake the stuffing for about 30 to 35 minutes. 

I love a good salad, but I’m not a fan of most bottled salad dressings. They’re not very good for you, which kind of defeats the purpose of eating a salad in the first place, and they’re usually too sweet or too creamy to boot, so they’re not even enjoyable to eat. I’ve been making a nice balsamic vinaigrette for a while now, which I won’t bother posting since it’s very basic and I’m sure everybody and their dog knows how to make one (in fact, my dog makes a wonderful vinaigrette). I decided to try something new, though, since I’m trying to get more greens in my life. For your enjoyment, here is my clementine vinaigrette!

Ingredients

1/4 cup clementine juice (mandarin oranges work too)

1/4 cup oil (a neutral oil, like grapeseed or safflower works best)

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp honey

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

sea salt and pepper

Directions

1.     Combine all ingredients in a bowl or blender. Yeah, that simple.

It’s very good on fennel or spinach salads. I have a feeling it would work as a marinade, but I haven’t tried it…yet!

It’s a little hard for me to think about food right now, as I feel I’m about to explode in a firey cloud of butter chicken and naan bread since I just had lunch at an all-I-can-eat-what-a-dangerous-concept Indian restaurant, but I felt like writing another entry before I got down to work on another essay for school.  It’s not that I haven’t been cooking, I just haven’t had any time to write out any of my recipes, what with the papers and marking I have to get done before the end of the semester. I got a little creative last week and came up with a really nice goat cheese and sundried tomato-stuffed chicken breast, which turned out great. If anybody tries it, be sure to let me know how it turned out!

Ingredients

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

½ cup olive oil

1 tbsp Italian seasoning

2 tsps balsamic vinegar

2 or 3 garlic cloves

½ cup goat cheese

¼ cup finely diced sundried tomatoes

salt and pepper

Directions

1.     Marinate the chicken in garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and Italian seasoning. I only left it for a few hours, but you can let it go overnight if you have the time.

2.     Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Also, rehydrate your tomatoes unless they’re packed in oil or some other liquid.

3.     Remove the chicken and with a sharp knife cut a pocket in the breast for the stuffing. I do this by placing it on the cutting board and lightly holding it in place with my left hand, then taking a small knife and starting about a centimeter or so from the top, cutting down until you’re about the same distance from the bottom. Cut in a little bit deep so you have a nice big pocket for the stuffing.

4.     Combine the cheese and sundried tomatoes, then push the mixture into the pocket you just cut in the chicken breast.

5.     Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the juices run clear from the thickest part of the breast.

I was going to start this off by saying I don’t really cook very fancy things, but my Macbook punched me in the nose when I started typing the sentence. I love fancy things, and after watching an episode of French Food at Home, I was inspired to try this fancy recipe, tilapia en papilotte. They did it with salmon on the show, but when I went to the fishmonger’s, the tilapia was just too good to pass up. I can be touch and go with fish at times, but this is hands down my favorite fish dish that I’ve ever cooked. The recipe is for two people, but it can be easily doubled, tripled, so on. And don’t forget to clean your leeks! They’re little dirt magnets!

Ingredients

2 tilapia fillets

2 leeks

2 carrots

1 medium zucchini

2 tsp fennel seeds

2 tsp garlic

2 pinches chinese five spice

salt and pepper

Directions

1.     Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Clean and prepare your leeks. To do this, slice off the tops and about a quarter inch from the bottom. Slice them down the middle and rince under cool water, then leave on a paper towel to dry.

2.     Julienne the vegetables and sauté lightly in a bit of olive oil and the garlic. You don’t want to cook them through, just give them a bit of color.

3.     Get some wax paper and cut out two pieces large enough to have an inch or so border around the edge after you fold it in two over the fish. Martha Stewart recommends making a heart shape, but I found a regular old rectangle easier to fold.

4.     Fold your papers in half. On each piece, spread half of the vegetable mixture. Lay your fish on the veggies and season with the salt, pepper, fennel, and five spice. I recommend grinding the fennel in a mortar and pestle first.

5.     Fold the paper over the fish and veggies, then fold the edges of the paper over as tight as you can.

6.     Cook for 20-25 minutes, or until the fish is flaky and cooked through.

7.     You can serve it in the paper (just open a slit in the top, and watch out for the steam!) or open up the packages and move the contents to a plate.

As a side note, the updates for this blog will be a little sparse over November. This is the busiest month for me school wise, so I won’t have as much time.

The second part of our birthday extravaganza was an antipasti platter, in honour of Jeff’s Italian heritage (and so I could have a wee little break between breakfast and the big supper, which will follow in a later entry). It was meant to be a nice, casual sort of thing, so I got out a nice big platter and added some cherry tomatoes, assorted olives, and bocconcini mozzarella. The two big parts of the tray were the meats and the roasted peppers. You can get good sliced deli meats in a lot of places these days, and you can also get nice variety packs at your local supermarket. I got a nice Italian selection that included Genoa salami, prosciutto, and coppa. The peppers I roasted myself.

Ingredients

4 peppers (I used red and orange. The green ones get bitter when roasted)

olive oil to coat

Directions

1.     Preheat your broiler and move the oven racks so it’s fairly close to the element.

2.     Take your peppers and give them a good coating of olive oil, then lay them on a tray and put them in the oven.

3.     There’s no set time for this, so you should just keep an eye on the peppers. Let them go until the side is starting to look charred, then flip.

4.     After the peppers are nice and black, remove them and put them in a plastic bag or container.

5.     Once the peppers have cooled, pull out the core and remove the skins, which should just peel right off.

You can serve them however you like, I just cut them into ribbons so they’d be easier to eat.

So I decided to roll out all the stops this year for my boyfriend’s birthday. We decided to take the day and just laze around the apartment, wear our jammies, and play video games. The whole affair actually started the day before, when I made the birthday cake. I’m going to post the recipes and pictures for the birthday cake, antipasto platter, and the stuffed chicken we had for supper. Here we go!

-----

Let me preface the birthday cake recipe by saying I have never attempted this before. I did work in a cake shop for a while, but they only let me watch and take care of the register – I never got to so much as stick on a fondant flower! I’m not the biggest fan of cake mixes (I think they taste like the stuffing out of a teddy bear), so I decided to make my own. I consulted Jeff on what sort of cake he wanted, and he said a white cake with some orange flavour, as well as cream cheese icing. After quite a bit of research, I worked out a cake recipe, and with one call to my mother, I got her great icing recipe. Fair warning that this will take quite a bit of time and elbow grease, but it’s gotten rave reviews, so I consider the effort worth it.


Cake Ingredients (Divide them into three parts, one for each layer)

1 cup whole milk
3 tbsps unsalted butter
3 tsps vanilla extract
3 tsps orange extract
3 tbsps orange zest
4 cups cake flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
9 large eggs
4 cups sugar


Cake Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and butter a 12 inch wide, 2 inches high cake pan. Cut a piece of parchment paper to fit the pan and flour it.
2. Bring 1/3 cup milk and 1 tbsp butter to a simmer, then remove from heat. Add vanilla and orange extracts once cooled.
3. Sift together 1/3 of a cup of flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/3 tsp salt and orange zest.
4. Beat 3 eggs in a large bowl until frothy (about one minute). Slowly add 1 1/3 cup sugar while continuing to beat the eggs and sugar until the mixture forms a heavy ribbon when you lift out your beaters (about four minutes).
5. Add the cooled milk mixture to the egg and sugar mixture and slowly fold together with a whisk.
6. Add the dry ingredients in stages, whisking gently.
7. Pour into your prepared pan and bake until a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean (about 20 minutes for me).
8. Run a butter knife around the outside of the pan and flip out the cake onto a cooling rack. Remember to remove the parchment paper!

Repeat twice more and you have your layers! To make sure everything stayed nice and moist, I brushed the layers with orange juice, a step I recommend.


Cream Cheese Icing Ingredients

4 8-ounce packs of cream cheese
1 cup butter
4 cups confectioners sugar
2 tsps vanilla extract
2 tbsps orange juice
1 large orange, zested


Cream Cheese Icing Directions

1. Make sure the cream cheese and butter are room temperature (I just left them out on the counter for a few hours).
2. Cream the cream cheese and butter together.
3. Add the sugar, vanilla and orange.


Now you’re ready to ice your cake. I used an icing spatula. The thing to remember is to make sure your levels are even, which isn’t hard to do. Don’t press too hard or you can damage the cake. I also decorated the cake with coconut on the sides and mandarin oranges on top. To apply the coconut to the sides of the cake, just spread some on your hand and apply a very slight amount of pressure, turning the cake tray as you work your way around. For the mandarins, just get a few tins from the store (it took me just about three of the small tins from Loblaws, but it may take you less if you can refrain from eating them while you work). I started on the outside and worked my way in. Et voila, you have the tastiest birthday cake you ever did see!

Almond cookies are one of my all-time favorites. I used to crank them out by the dozen for bake sales and such, but got away from making them for a while since I didn’t have any decent baking equipment. Now that I’m all settled in and fully armed, I’ve started baking again. The original recipe that I found for these claimed that they made four dozen cookies. I personally like them large and crispy, so I usually get about half that. You can make them as big as you like, which is why I’m not going to say anything about how many this recipe should make. Go nuts! (See what I did there, it was an almond pun…my comedy is wasted on you people…)

Ingrediants

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup white sugar

2 eggs

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup ground almonds

2 teaspoons almond extract

blanched almonds

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in one egg, almond extract, and ground almonds. Gradually mix in the flour until everything is well blended.
3. Garnish each cookie with a blanched almond, then beat the remaining egg with a bit of water. Brush on the cookies.
4. Bake 5 to 8 minutes in the preheated oven, or until cookies are a nice golden brown. 

I. Love. Risotto. This classic Italian dish is comfort food at its the absolute finest. I first made it a few years for a Valentine’s Day dinner and it’s since entered regular rotation as a special meal when the weather starts to get just a bit chillier outside. It’s the favorite dish that I make for several people, and so I thought I’d share the recipe with everybody. It’s not nearly as hard to make as everybody seems to think. Contrary to popular opinion, you can actually step away from the stove and leave it for a few moments. I would recommend using a high-sided sauté pan, which gives good surface area, but keeps everything in the pan. If you don’t have one, you can actually use a wok (I’ve done it, it works) or anything else that’s got a wide base and high sides (like a big pot).

Ingredients

1 cup Arborio rice

4 cups chicken stock

1 cup white wine

1 sausage (anything not too sweet)

1 1/2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms (I like cremini)

1/2 cup peas

1 clove garlic, crushed

2 tsp Italian seasoning

1 tbsp butter

1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1.     Fry up your sausage and mushrooms and put them aside for later.

2.     In a frying pan, heat a little bit of olive oil on a medium-low  heat and add the rice, Italian seasoning, and garlic. Sautee until the rice becomes just slightly translucent, about three minutes.

3.     Bring your stock to a simmer in a separate pot.

4.     Add the cup of wine and enough stock to just cover the rice. You can add your meat, mushrooms, and peas here.

5.     Add more stock as the liquid in the pan become mostly absorbed by the rice. Stir regularly.

6.     Check the rice periodically and when it’s just about done, add the cheese and butter and stir into the rice. When the liquid is absorbed, but it’s still creamy, and the rice is al dente, it’s finished!

Variations on a Theme: You can do a lot of things with risotto. Use vegetable stock instead of chicken if you’re cooking for vegetarians. You can use any cheese you like, really, provided its not too salty and it melts well. Red wine can also be used instead of white, and the matter of veggies is really up to you. I’ve used asparagus, squash, shallots, whatever I feel like, really.