This month’s Daring Cooks’ Challenge digs into the cuisine of South India and Sri Lanka – something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now! What most restaurants offer up as Indian food usually represents dishes from northern India. The flavours of South India and Sri Lanka are quite different, and really fun to explore!
Continue reading Daring Hoppers
I’ve become addicted to getting eBooks from the library. One thing I never expected was to find cookbooks!! Yes, it’s true – you can borrow cookbook ebooks from the Toronto Public Library.
The first dish I made is a delicious combo of soba noodles and almond butter sauce. So easy and so tasty!
Continue reading Soba Noodle, Tofu, and Vegetable Stir-Fry
A while back, I was asked to host the July challenge for the Daring Kitchen. It was hard to decide what kind of challenge to propose to the group, but in the end I chose something that has been a favourite of mine for my whole life – noodles.
I have always been a bit of a noodle fiend, growing up with Italian and German noodles and venturing into other cultures’ versions of “noodle” as an adult. The challenge I proposed was to make noodles from scratch – without the use of motorized equipment – and pair with an appropriate accompaniment (sauce, or whatever would go best). As an added bonus, I challenged the group to look into their own cultural backgrounds for recipes that were “noodly” (being VERY loose with the term).
Here is one of the recipes I offered… Egg Fettuccine with Aglio, Olio, Peperoncino e Basilico.
It’s amazing when a recipe inspires you to come up with another recipe…
It’s not that the inspiration recipe isn’t worthy in and of itself, but it helps to get the wheels turning in your head and it turns into something else!
This month’s Daring Cooks’ challenge is “Healthy Potato Salads from Around the World!”, and the timing couldn’t be better!
This gave me a perfect opportunity to morph the classic Indian “Aloo Gobi” into a fresh potato salad! Instead of drowning the potatoes in mayonnaise, I’ve made a spicy and bright dressing with yogurt. If you like potato salad, and don’t shy away from fun spices, you will love this!
Now that the ‘good weather’ is here, I’m on the hunt for new and fun salads. There are so many rice and grain options to try, and I thought I had found a fun new rice to try out at my bulk store. This rice looked bigger than most rice, and was labelled “Cavena Nuda – Rice of the Prairies”.
Sounded pretty good to me! Little did I know that this “rice” was not rice at all…
Continue reading Cavena Nuda Salad with Tangy Mustard Dressing
Good day, eh, and welcome to the Great White North. I’m Bob, and this is my brother Doug.
Our topic today, is, like, Great Northern beans and some great wild leeks, or ramps.
Don’t be a total hoser and take off without reading the rest of the post! (I promise I’ll stop it now…)
Continue reading Great Northern Ramp Pasta
Time for another Jamaica Discovery!!
This time, we’re taking the more obvious route, and killing it with some JERK! Instead of the standard jerk chicken, we played with some nice white fish. Continue reading Jerk Fish, with Rice & Peas (Jamaica Discoveries Pt.2)
This month’s Daring Kitchen challenge is Gumbo!
Gumbo is a stew from Louisiana that is often made up of meat or shellfish, and is thickened with a dark roux, okra and/or filé powder. I was already excited to try cooking a dark roux again (for the second time ever), but things got even more exciting when I realized I had to get a new seasoning – filé.
Continue reading Daring Seafood Gumbo
Baloney!
This is another word that rhymes with macaroni, and expresses my disappointment with my first attempt at homemade macaroni and cheese.
I kinda thought this would be an easy one. I mean, who can’t make macaroni and cheese? If you can make it with bizarre ingredients from a box, you should be able to make it amazing from scratch. That wasn’t quite what happened.
