Top Chef Finale Dinner!

For the first course, we decided to go with Jennifer. We made her potato broth mussels.. but since Whole Foods had some shady looking mussels, we made an executive decision to make clams instead. The clams were served on a bed of pea tips and the potato broth was flavoured with shallots, ginger, garlic and lemongrass. The clams were steamed/sauted open with butter and white wine. The clams were topped with yukon gold potato batons. So delicious!!

For the second course we went with Kevin. How can you go wrong with halibut filet witha ragout of vegetables, bacon and porcini mushroom reduction and a deconstructed deviled egg. After some equipment issues, we eventually got a hot saute pan to sear the halibut... sort of. Pretty darn good considering the equipment issues.
For dessert, we kind of cheated... using Dr. Oetker lava cakes... which were ok.. but a little too sweet and lacking in intense dark chocolate flavour. We put the cakes on a bed of sour cherry reduction and topped with vanilla ice cream.

Sweet Melissa's Fallen Chocolate Souffle

A recipe from the book Meagan Nui Jai gave to me. Super yummy and surprisingly, super easy to make. Only required 6 ingredients !!! May, Ben and I each had two pieces at one sitting = )

Savory Sweet Melissa

For lunch today I made savory muffins from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book (courtesy of Meagan !) The variation I chose was sun dried tomato, mozarella & oregano. Also for lunch I continued the Italian theme and made spaghetti squash with veggies in tomato sauce. Both were yummy. I kind of over baked the muffins so they were a little dry. I kind of made too much sauce for the spaghetti squash. Therefore the only solution I saw was to dip the savory muffin into the tomato sauce which was super yummy.

Apple Pie Cake

Brown & Green Amish Friendship Bread

HAVE NO FEAR MEAGAN !!!

I figured out how to get the "graduation" cake = )

Somehow, when I combine the Amish Friendship recipe with banana, the bottom turns kind of green. This is my third attempt and all three times the bottom has been green. When I do not use banana it is all one colour, boring.

Banana Almond Butter Yeast Rolls

Well, I was going to take a picture because they looked really cute. Instead of the 12 rolls it was supposed to make, I rolled the dough along the long edge making 24 rolls. However my camera was out of batteries. By the time the batteries were charged, all the rolls had disappeared. Half into my stomach the other half I traded for some home grown zucchini and tomaotes. Maybe next time I will be able to wait until the batteries charge. I doubt it though. I cannot resist warm bread that has just come out of the oven.

Schwartz's Smoked Meat in Montréal