Lima beans, squash and sausage stew~

Ingredients:

1 handfull Lima beans aka butter beans
50 gm of panchetta or bacon, or whatever salted pork is on sale
1 medium carrot, chopped in large pieces
1 onion
5 cloves of garlic
1/2 of a small kabocha squash (or favourite squash of your choosing)
1 bunch of kale
fresh rosemary
7 whole black
peppercorns
5 bay leaves
1 bottle of bean of your choosing
1/2 can of chicken stock
salt and pepper to taste

4 oyama sausages for eating!



Preparation:

1. If you remember, you can soak the beans overnight.... if you're like me you don't have the foresight to do that so you soak them while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

2. Have you butcher slice the panchetta nice and thin like proscuitto, then roll up and slice into thin chiffonade like pieces. Heat up the pressure cooker on medium heat and add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and fry up the panchetta until it is nice and crispy. Remove the panchetta from the pressure cooker with chopsticks so that the oil remains in the pot and reserve for garnish later (and snacking).

3. Skin and quarter the onion and skin and smash the garlic and add to the pot. Add the 6 sprigs of fresh rosemary. Saute until aromatic and slightly browned.

4. Add the beer and stock and deglaze the pot. Drain the beans and add to the cooking liquid. Add approximately 1 cup of water, or until there is about 2 cm of liquid over the beans. Place the bay leaves and peppercorns in a large tea infuser and place into the pot. Put the pressure cooker lid on and cook for 1 hour.

5. After checking the doneness of the beans, season the beans. If the beans are not done yet, cook for a little longer. Add the salt and pepper to taste. Also add the squash that has been peeled and sliced into large pieces and the carrot. Pressure cook for 10 - 15 minutes or until desired texture is achieved.

6. Slice and fry up the sausage, drain.

7. Add kale to the pressure cooker and allow to come up to pressure. Release pressure ,the steam should have cooked the kale.

8. Serve up the beans and squash and kale on a plate, top with sausage and garnish with delicious panchetta. Enjoy!

Okonomiyaki 2.0

Okonomiyaki 1.0 didn't go quite as planned, so we had to give it a second try, with some advice Vicky. This makes about 3 medium or 5 small pancakes














Ingredients:
Okonomiyaki flour 180g
Water + dashi ~1 cup
Shredded cabbage (we used napa coz we had leftovers)
Shredded small zucchini
Shredded small carrot
Chopped green onion
Bonito flakes
Okonomiyaki sauce
Soba noodles (cooked)
Eggs 3
Bacon

1. Prep the vegetables. I got this sweet vegetable shredded from Vietnam so it only took a few minutes rather than hours to julienne the zucchini and carrot

2. Crisp the soba noodles. Apparently the addition of soba noodles is unique to some part of Japan and not the traditional way. But it was so good - so it's a keeper. Mix soba noodles with some okonomiyaki sauce and dashi. Heat a skillet with oil and form noodle patties about the size of your planned okoniyaki. We had some problems getting it to stick together so we added a little egg in the pan to stick them all together. Make sure the noodles get nice and crispy. Set aside.

3. Make the batter. Combine flour, water, dashi, 2 eggs and veggies. Add enough water to get the right consistency (should be quite thin). Add enough veggies so that everything is coated and there is still some loose batter in the bowl. Add the bacon to the bowl so that it is coated with batter as well (will help it stick to the okonomiyaki when you flip it over).

4. Fry it up. In the hot skillet, flatten out about 1 ladleful of batter. Place bacon over top. When bottom has browned, flip over (using 2 spatulas or Kim's crazy pan flipping) to brown the other side. Then remove from pan.

5. Combining the soba. Spread thin layer of batter over top of soba patty. Put back in pan and top with okonomiyaki with bacon on top. This ensures that the soba gets crispy and some bacon-y goodness too.

6. Topping. Remove from pan. Top with sauce, green onion and bonito flakes. Japanese mayo optional. Enjoy.

Pot Roast Pork Ragu pasta

After multiple attempts with Thomas Kellar's pasta recipe I decided to give an Italian recipe a try. Mario Batali's recipe for fresh pasta was used here. Essentially it is 3 cups of flour and 5 eggs.

3 cups of flour
5 large eggs



Make a well in the flour. Break the eggs up and pour into the well. Incorporate into flour until a dough forms. Knead until smooth, about 10 minutes, then let the dough rest for 30 minutes. Roll out the dough and cut into pasta shapes, in this case I used our hand crank pasta maker to make fettucine.



The Pot Roast Pork Ragu, you need your dad to make it for you! This was already made and all I had to do was add spinach to it. The pork ragu was made from pork shoulder and had delicious parsnips, onions and carrots in it. Cook the fresh pasta in lots of boiling salted water, and in the meantime heat up the pork ragu in a sauce pan and add the gravy from the pot roast. Once the pasta is cooked add to the sauce pan and toss with pork ragu. Add spinach and allow to wilt. Season to taste with salt and pepper.


Then you eat it.

Cambodiana #1

So, Jeremy always talks about Cambodiana which unfortunately turns out to be a fake Cambodian restaurant that is in Kingston (but it is Kingston so I guess that's ok). Regardless, he has always loved the food there so here is our replication of it.

Recipe for Cambodiana #1 aka. Red Curry Chicken with coconut milk

Ingredients:
Arroy D Red Curry Paste
Coconut milk
Fish Sauce
Brown Sugar
Kaffir Lime leaves
Limes
Chicken breasts and thighs
Prawns
Fresh Basil
Red Peppers
Vegetable oil

Heat oil in pan, saute curry paste, add chicken and saute. Fry until fragrant (or causes Jeremy to cough and Kim to sneeze). Add kaffir lime leaves. Add Coconut milk (about one cup), fish sauce, brown sugar to taste. Add peppers and cook until softened. Add lime juice to taste. Add prawns and cook until opaque. Finally, add fresh basil and serve over jasmine rice and garnish with sliced tomato and cucumber.

Notes:
We forgot to add ground peanuts to this, even though we bought them. In retrospect we could have put far more veggies in like eggplant, green beans, squash, etc. Next time we will also fry ginger, garlic and shallots with the curry paste in the beginning.

Monkey? or Bear?

Hello ! So it was Joanne's 18th birthday, we are both monkeys so we thought it would be fitting to make a monkey cake. We did "Baked"s white out cake, choclate ganache, and marshmallow fondant from the web. Cocoa definitely did the trick with making the fondant brown. Food colouring WAS NOT doing the trick. We still haven't tried the cake yet so don't know how yummy or yucky it is. Looks super cute regardless though!

White Out cake w/ Dark chocolate frosting and Pistachio Crumble

Props to Kim Kim for taking a FANTASTIC picture.

Natural Sunlight baby !

White out cake from "Baked".

Dark chocolate frosting left over from the chocolate cake two 1/2 weeks ago.

Pistachio crumble from Pie day one 1/2 weeks ago.

Looks impressive.

Cut out 1/4 cup butter and 1/4 sugar from the cake. Can't do that with this recipe. Cake ends up a little dry even though I only baked for 38 mins with two custard cups full of ice.

After tasting Mom asked me to frost the outside so I did.

I did not frost the underside of the layers. Mistake. Layers won't stick together due to pistachio crumble. Bothered me a lot so I separated the layers (after frosting the outside like mom requested), defrosted the remainder of the frosting and put it between the layers.

Meagan and I figured out what else I messed up on. I thought it was 1 Tbsp of baking powder and 1Tbsp of baking soda. Ha ha ha should be only be 1 Tsp of baking soda !!!

Did not stop Meagan, nor Kim, nor me from eating a 2nd slice.

Malteser Cake

Joanne's 1/2 birthday cake was a SUCCESS !!!

Recipe

• 4 ounces unsweetened chocolate (I used semi-sweet chocolate chips)
  
• 1/2 cup hot water

• 1 3/4 cups cake flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 3/4 cups sugar (I used 1 cup)
  
• 3 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup whole milk (I used 1%)
• 1 tsp instant coffee (Meagan's suggestion )
  

Frosting

• 1 1/4 cups whipping cream
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 pound milk chocolate, chopped (I used 12oz dark chocolate chips)
  

Assembly

• 4 1.4-ounce chocolate-covered English toffee bars (such as Heath Bars or Skor), cut into 1/4-inch dice (I used crushed Maltesers)
  

• 7 ounces milk chocolate (such as one Hershey's bar or two 3- to 3.5-ounce milk chocolate bars) (I did not do this)
  

Preparation

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 350°F. Butter two 9-inch-diameter cake pans with 1 3/4-inch-high sides. Line bottoms of pans with waxed paper; butter paper. Dust pans with flour; tap out excess. Combine chocolate and 1/2 cup hot water in small saucepan. Stir over low heat until melted and smooth. Cool to lukewarm, stirring often.

Whisk flour, baking soda and salt in medium bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl until fluffy. Gradually beat in sugar. Beat in eggs 1 at a time, then vanilla extract. Beat in chocolate mixture. Add flour mixture in 3 additions alternately with milk in 2 additions, beating just to blend after each addition. Divide batter equally beween pans. Bake cakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean and cake just begins to pull away from sides of pan, about 35 minutes. (I baked for 32 mins with a bowl of water) Cool cakes in pans on racks 5 minutes. Cut around pan sides. Turn cakes out onto racks; peel off waxed paper. Cool cakes completely.

Combine cream, corn syrup and butter in heavy large saucepan. Whisk over medium heat until mixture begins to simmer. Add chopped chocolate. Reduce heat to low and whisk until frosting is smooth, about 1 minute; transfer to large bowl.

Fill another large bowl with ice. Set bottom of bowl with frosting atop ice. Whisk until frosting is cool and begins to thicken, about 8 minutes. Place bowl of frosting on work surface. Using electric mixer, beat until color lightens and just until frosting becomes thick enough to hold peaks when beaters are lifted, (frosting will continue to thicken as it stands).

Place 1 cake layer, flat side up, on 8-inch-diameter tart pan bottom or cardboard round. If desired, place pan bottom with cake atop 8-inch-diameter cake pan to make simple decorating stand. Top layer with 1 1/2 cups frosting, spreading to edge. ( I only did a thin layer) Sprinkle evenly with diced toffee. Top with second cake layer, flat side down; press slightly to adhere. Spread thin layer of frosting over top and sides of cake to seal and set crumbs. Spread remaining frosting over top and sides of cake (if frosting becomes stiff, stir gently with spatula to loosen).

Stand chocolate bar on 1 short end. Using vegetable peeler and starting at top edge of 1 side, run peeler down length of bar (chocolate will come away from side of chocolate bar in curls). Pile chocolate curls atop cake. (I just topped with whole maltesers)

Chill at least 2 hours. (Can be made 2 days ahead. Cover with cake dome and keep chilled. Let stand at room temperature 1 hour before serving.)