cheese – Stephfood CLONE

Grilled Eggplant and Haloumi Stacks

This summer was full of grilling, fresh veggies and fresh herbs. One of my favourite dishes made good use of a grillable style of cheese called Haloumi, which holds its shape during grilling and even ends up with adorable grill marks!

Grilling makes everything better. I’m pretty convinced that this is true, and so far I haven’t been challenged on it. Eggplant is one of the easiest things to grill up – it gets tender inside, and full of flavour. I was inspired by the caprese salad stacks I often make in the summer, and decided to come up with a grilled version that featured eggplant.

My introduction to Haloumi made the cheese selection simple. It was a revelation! The cheese melts just a little, and even gets the grill marks, but it doesn’t start to get oozy. You just put it straight on the grill and watch the magic happen. I tried a few different brands that were all delicious, but my favourite came from nearby Upper Canada Cheese Company. Their Guernsey Girl grillable cheese is delicious and salty, and just a little squeaky.

made with Grilled Guernsey Girl cheese from Upper Canada Cheese Company

While the cheese and the eggplant are amazing on their own, I felt they needed something to pull the dish together. I made a topping with diced tomatoes mixed with fresh chopped basil. It’s important to make this a couple of hours before you want to eat, to give the mixture some time to be totally infused with basil.

I made this dish at least a dozen times this summer, and as a result ate waay too much cheese for my own good. Yay!

Grilled Eggplant and Haloumi Stacks

It’s best to choose an eggplant that is longer, rather than wider, with a fairly consistent diameter. This ensures your stacks are roughly the same size.

Ingredients:

4-6 tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1 small bunch of basil, chopped
pinch of sea salt
freshly ground pepper
1 eggplant, 2 pounds, sliced into 1-inch rounds
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
500g haloumi cheese, or another grillable cheese, sliced 1/2 inch thick

Preparation:

Mix the tomatoes with the basil, salt and pepper in a medium-sized bowl. Set aside. If your tomatoes are too watery (even after seeding), you may need to strain this mixture later on to remove the liquid.
*Lightly* brush both sides of the eggplant slices with olive oil while the grill is preheating.
Grill the eggplant rounds until tender, and grill the haloumi slices until softened and lightly browned on the outside. The haloumi will not melt entirely.
Stack the ingredients as follows: eggplant round, haloumi slice, a teaspoon of the tomato mixture.

Grilled Pizza, a Revelation

Pizza is one of the few things that I “let” J make for dinner. He’s a pro with the dough – something I have no patience for.

This post is a bit of a cheat because I didn’t do any of the tough work on this dish… I just helped. Also, this isn’t a recipe post. It’s more of a “results of our experiment” post. Hahahaha.

In any case, here it is:

On the grill!

For this experiment, we decided to stick to one of our usual combinations of sauce and toppings, just to keep it simple. J made his usual dough. For the sauce, I took full advantage of the wealth of fresh basil we have right now and made a lightly tomatoey basil sauce with lots of olive oil. For toppings, we used mushrooms, green peppers, thinly sliced smoked sausage and buffalo mozzarella.

A couple of tips that we collected from various sources and took to heart:

oil the grill well
cook your toppings first!

The second tip was the one that made lightbulbs go off for me. I had never heard it before, but it made total sense. On the BBQ (especially a little propane one, like ours), the bottom will cook before the top. Unless you want your crust to burn, you need to cook your veggies and other toppings that need to be cooked. I sautéed the mushrooms and green peppers to release the liquids, and J lightly pan fried the sausage slices to release some of the fat.

The dough goes on the BBQ first, to grill the bottom before any toppings or sauce go on. Once the bottom is cooked nicely, flip the dough and add the toppings to the cooked side. You want to cook it long enough to get a nice crust with grill marks, and to melt the cheese. Since the veggies were already cooked, we don’t have to worry about them!

Ready to eat!

The Verdict

Seriously, J was over the moon. It was so delicious, and he was so proud of himself for finding a way to make pizza in the summer. We kicked ourselves for waiting this long to try it. Do it. You will not regret it!

The one thing that I want to improve for next time is a way to keep the pizza warm after it’s done cooking. We took it right off the grill, and it did cool off while we were eating. It wasn’t terrible, but I think we can do better. Maybe if we took it off the grill long enough to cut a couple of pieces and let the grill cool a little, we could return it to the grill to keep warm. Hm.

Potatoes au Gratin – Holiday Brunch

It’s great how the holidays can inspire you to cook. Maybe it’s the fear of judgement by the family that makes us strive for the best! The key is to find something that tastes impressive, without being too complicated and frustrating to make. This is one of those dishes…
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Pasta with Smoked Sausage, Fennel and Arugula

This dish was inspired by the combination of fennel and smokey, spicy sausage.

There’s something about the sweet licorice taste of the fennel, mixed with the salty, spicy, smokey, greasiness of the sausage.

Maybe I should have left out the greasiness part.

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Roasted Butternut Squash with Pecans, and Blue Cheese

My mom and I disagree on how to prepare squash.

Over the years, every time I’d tell her I had made a curried squash soup, or a stuffed pumpkin, or anything involving spices, she would tell me I was crazy. Obviously (to her), the best preparation for squash is to bake until soft, and then mash with butter, salt and pepper. Simple and delicious!

We obviously have different motives, in addition to different tastes. So what happens when we need a dish that will satisfy us both?

Butternut Squash - and a tool of violence.

I chose a recipe that retains the spirit of the ‘natural squash’ by not overwhelming it with spices. A simple addition of some Herbes de Provence (a favourite of Mom’s AND mine), along with the s&p, are all it needs… because, for those who need a punch, there is Danish blue cheese!

I’m obsessed with Danish blue cheese this year. I’m not sure how it took me so long… I’ve liked Gorgonzola for a long time, and enjoy the odd nip of Stilton, but never went out of my way to buy a chunk of Danish blue. I ate some at Thanksgiving and realized I’d been missing out… and have had some in my fridge at all times since.

Chopped and Seasoned Squash — Ready for the oven!

Back to the recipe… the squash is roasted in one-inch chunks. I was excited to play with the Mezzaluna my Mom has that cuts in a ridged pattern (see pic two above for a glimpse of the tool itself). Yeah, I like to snoop through other peoples’ kitchen stuff.

The pecans give the dish a fun crunch, and they get nice and toasty in the oven. The cheese gives it a crazy kick. The squash is creamy and mild, mellowing out the whole dish and bringing all of the different flavours and textures together.

Of course, I topped the whole thing with slices of green onion, like I usually do.

I’ve tried this kind of dish before – I’ve winged it, I’ve followed some recipes. I seem to have found a combination of ingredients and steps that do what I need. As you’ll see in the recipe recap, my variation on the dish follows the variations of a number of others. No doubt the original dish was a variation. This is a fairly classic combination of ingredients, done in a way that everyone can enjoy!

Recipe after the jump!

Continue reading Roasted Butternut Squash with Pecans, and Blue Cheese

Cheddar Apple Bundles

This is another in a series of recipes I made to try and use up some apples I had rolling off of my kitchen counter.

Why did I buy so many apples, you ask? Because I’m crazy! First, I bought a bag of MacIntosh apples, and then I heard that Cortlands were good, so I bought a bag of those… and then I bought a bag of my favourite kind, Granny Smith.

I am an applepotamus.

This adorable dish is great for weekend brunch. It sounds like a weird combination to some people – apple and cheddar really isn’t that odd of a pairing! At the same time, it is hard to decide whether this tastes more like a savoury dish or a dessert.

Although sweet from the apple, the dough is not especially sweet, so it’s perfectly fine for a main course!

This sounds weird, but the apple and cheese melted together to make a sort of gravy inside the parcel. It was a tasty mix of sweet and salty, all oozy (but in a good way)!

Cheddar Apple Bundles - ready to eat — Ready to eat...

Recipe after the jump!
Continue reading Cheddar Apple Bundles

Holiday Brunch: Drunken Mushroom, Spinach and Gruyere Strata

For years and years – as far back as I can remember (all the way to last week?), we went out for brunch on Christmas Day. It was something I always looked forward to as a kid, and we usually went to the same place. Things changed, the places to go were limited, our little group dwindled, and we decided it was time for a change.

Last year, we decided to make brunch at home, “just us” (meaning my parents, sister and myself… and sometimes Grandma).

Drunken Mushroom, Spinach and Gruyere Strata - ingredients — LOTS of mushrooms, bread, spinach, green onions.

The key was that we didn’t really have time to make anything really involved or fancy – but it did have to be good. We decided to make a strata, only roughly following a recipe my mom found. It was our idea to add the drunken mushrooms.

We love drunken mushrooms. We love them so much that we decided to do it again this year.

Drunken Mushroom, Spinach & Gruyere Strata - Assembled — The assembled strata, before it hit the oven.

The great thing about strata is that you can basically throw in anything you like. It’s a great way to use up some ingredients from the fridge – use up some ends of cheese, day old bread, veggies. Just layer it all into a baking dish, and pour some egg and milk mixture over top – kind of like a savoury french toast casserole. You could even make a sweet version – sans drunken mushrooms, of course!

Drunken Mushroom, Spinach & Gruyere Strata - devoured — Too hungry to take a pic of the completed dish... oops!

Add a mimosa, and some tea in my Kermit & Piggy Christmas mug, and our new Christmas Day tradition is perfect!

How was your holiday? Any memorable meals?

My view of Christmas brunch, with my Mimosa and my Piggy & Kermit mug

Continue reading Holiday Brunch: Drunken Mushroom, Spinach and Gruyere Strata

Sweet Potato Poutine with Mushroom Gravy

To end my little tour of Prince Edward county, I want to share a recipe that I cobbled together that was inspired by the spirit of the PEC.

This dish is made up of seasonal, local ingredients – the cheese actually migrated back to Toronto with us, from Black River Cheese Company in Prince Edward County.

The idea for the recipe came from a combination of two things: the fancy pants poutine we had in Wellington, and the fact that I had bought some cheese curds and couldn’t think of anything better to do with them than make poutine. Since I had never made poutine before, this was a perfect opportunity. J suggested we do sweet potato, to change things up a bit – and it was a fantastic suggestion.

A shameful admission from this proud Canadian girl, I haven’t really had much poutine in my life. Being a strict vegetarian for a good number of my adult years, I didn’t try poutine. To be honest, some of the poutines I saw weren’t even trying to change my mind – gloopy “gravy”, greasy fries and fake mozzarella doesn’t appeal to me. I guess it really isn’t that big of a surprise that it hasn’t been on my ‘to do’ list.

Not long ago, J and I went to a fun tapas restaurant that focused on local ingredients, and we tried a really good unusual poutine. So when we saw it on the menu in Wellington – another poutine that stretched the boundaries – we happily ordered it.

To be honest, I really should have tried to make it sooner.

Not to rain on anyone’s grease parade, but making poutine at home can actually be healthy. The most fattening thing in the whole dish is the oozy cheese – and it’s oozy melty goodness is used to its full advantage when layered this way. The sweet potato ‘fries’ are baked with a little bit of oil, and some smart seasoning, and the gravy is vegetarian with only a bit of oil and some milk to add to the fat content. Compare this to the usual “heart attack in a bowl” that is traditional poutine.

The verdict? It was amazing, if I do say so myself! The gravy was probably the biggest question mark, because I used a new recipe. I probably would use less milk next time – it tasted amazing, but am I wrong to think a milky coloured gravy just seems weird? It didn’t thicken as much as I thought – but it was thick enough for this, and not gloopy like you get when you thicken with corn starch.

Finally – I try making some Canadian food on this blog!!! It only took nearly a year!!

… and with this, I end my yammering about Prince Edward County (for a little while, anyway).

Continue reading Sweet Potato Poutine with Mushroom Gravy

Eating My Way Through the PEC (Day 3)

The third, and final, day of our Prince Edward County weekend was all about taking risks. In the first few days, we made it to most of the places we had “on the list”. From there, it was all a bonus, so we went a little more off the beaten path to find gems.

Our first gem we sought out close to ‘home’. We hit Black Prince winery, which is right in Picton. I had to ask about the smell of the Cabernet Franc, which I had with dinner the night before. For some reason, I couldn’t stop smelling the wine as I was drinking it. I told J it smelled like a lavender crème brûlée, with a hit of chocolate. I think I would wear it as a perfume. (Hear that Vera Wang? Maybe call it Black Princess? Cabernet Princess?). When I mentioned this to the guy at the winery, he sort of just humoured me. He probably thought I was nuts – or one of those pretentious people that make up all of the things they smell and taste in wines.

There were wineries left in all directions. Just to give us somewhere to start, we decided to head out to Black River, in search of more cheese.

Black River cheese is ever-present in the county – we had it at every restaurant we went to, and it was being sampled at many of the wineries we went to. I wanted to pick up some old white chedder, and ended up with some pepper jack and cheese curds as well. I think that brought our cheese purchase count to around 8. Eep!

Here’s where the adventure part comes in… J had seen some wineries listed out towards Long Point, so we drove allllll the way out there, only to find out that the one winery wasn’t even open yet (but on the wineries map, tsk tsk!). We drove that far, so we decided to try to make it all the way to the end of the point… which I think we did.

While there wasn’t much to do out this way, it was a lovely drive. We enjoyed the quiet drive, and hopped out when we got near the end. From there, we went to Milford to visit a couple more wineries — just a recommendation, don’t try to pop in to these on the off-season. We’ll have to visit again in the summer, when they’re sure to be open.

We did manage to hit Barley Days brewery one last time… I had been dreaming of the Cherry Porter, and decided that if it was open when we drove by I would get some. And I did (and I’m drinking one right now as I type this… mmmm Black Forest Cake beer).

We had but two spots left in our box, and only a few left on the map that we hadn’t hit yet. I won’t lie – Karlo Estates was absolutely FREEZING!! Their tasting room is in a really large barn that is being converted into galleries, and is currently only being heated by some propane heaters (see pic above). We enjoyed a nip of cheese as we tried different wines, and finally settled on a Frontenac Gris Rosé. This is strange for me, because I generally do not like rosé wine, but I was curious to try wine made from a ‘grey’ grape. I was surprised that I liked it, and decided to get a bottle to give it a real chance (when we’re not freezing). This spot is going to be incredible in the summer, so it’s on our list of places to return to.

Time for lunch. East & Main Bistro was another name that came up in almost every article I read about PEC, so I thought we should hit it up before we left town.

We were happy to see a variety of comfort food on the menu. I got an incredibly rich macaroni and cheese, made with – you guessed it – Black River cheddar. J got an insane wellington mushroom poutine, with cheese curds, and rabbit confit. Both dishes were amazing, and just what we needed. Sadly, I didn’t have room for dessert.

Just one winery left to hit – By Chadsey’s Cairns. This was a really neat spot, with a pioneer cemetery and a whole collection of barns that looked like a little village. If you’re wondering what a ‘chadsey’s cairn’ is, you can read about it in the history section of the winery’s website. While you’re at it, take a look at the ‘wine politics‘ page – it offers a really interesting (and reasonable) viewpoint on grape growing, wine making, and more.

That’s about it for our weekend getaway. We finally made it up to the PEC, and it was everything we were looking for. The food and drink were great, the people were friendly, the accommodations were comfortable and I don’t think I heard a siren once!

I think we’ll be going back…

Eating My Way Through the PEC (Day 2)

There’s nothing better than waking up at leisure, and strolling down to breakfast without having to leave the building.

Our second day exploring Prince Edward County started in the perfect way – with lemon blueberry waffles shaped like farm stuff!! My waffle was shaped like a barn, while J had a rooster and a cow. They were so adorable I almost didn’t want to eat them. It’s probably a good thing I ended up with the barn.

Considering my lack of adorable photos of Merrill Inn, these waffles will have to illustrate this part of my story. It’s pretty fitting, actually, because Merill Inn was perfectly adorable but with the comfort of the bigger hotels. It was really the perfect place to stay for us, and it was right in the heart of Picton, which itself was the centre point of everything we wanted to see in Prince Edward County. Our package even included a bagged picnic lunch, which we brought on the road with us.

Once we got rolling, we started headed right to Copper Kettle Chocolate Company. We had our first taste of things to come the night before, when we practically inhaled the goat cheese truffles that I bought at Fifth Town. To back it up a little, this is just one example of the county working together – the goat cheese was made by Fifth Town and the chocolate was done by Copper Kettle. Both companies carry and advertise the product, and both companies get business. Symbiosis!

Of course, we got more of them, along with a number of other fun truffles. They also had some chocolate ‘shots’ full of different wines and things, so we got a couple ice wine shots and a couple of Pinot Noir.

Down the Loyalist Parkway we went, to another bunch of wineries and fun.

At Huff Estates, we bought a really interesting unoaked Merlot, which was pretty novel for me. Next, we ended up at Sugarbush Vineyards, which is a self-proclaimed ‘garagiste‘ winery. There, aside from buying some wine, we enjoyed a chat with the owner about the area’s history.

Sugarbush Vineyards ‘Not Red’ wine — oddly, we didn’t buy this particular wine. I just thought the name was funny.

Another part of our package at Merrill Inn was a complimentary wine tasting at Closson Chase, a winery that focuses on producing Chardonnay. We aren’t big white wine drinkers, and to be totally honest, the price points were a little higher than we were looking for here. Nonetheless, we took the opportunity to try some wines we wouldn’t have thought to try.

The Closson Chase tasting room was inside a large and lovely barn, with stained glass, local art and lots of ambiance.

Similarly, The Grange of Prince Edward is also situated in an incredible barn, overlooking a fantastic lot where it seems people book picnics in the summer. Yeah, I think we’ll be going back to do that sometime. We politely asked if we could enjoy our packed lunches in their tasting room, overlooking the farm, since it was too windy and cold to eat outside.

We hit a few more wineries before we called it a day, including Lacey, Casa Dea and Sandbanks. By this time, I was slowing down and started playing this game where I was only allowed to pick one wine to try, and only try another if I wasn’t convinced by the first one. This was a change from the start of the day, where we tried 3-4 different wines at each location.

At Sandbanks, for example, I saw that they had a Foch Reserve and chose to try that because we hadn’t seen Marechal Foch at the other wineries we had been to, and I like to have a variety. We got to try pairing it with both cheese and chocolate and in the end, ended up buying a bottle. The prices there were very reasonable, too, so I think we’ll go back again.

I just couldn’t do any more that day – so we stopped at Tall Poppy Café in Wellington for some “Not Wine”.

There was but one last stop before ‘home’ – Barley Days Brewery. After a day of wine sipping, it was nice to switch to beer. We had already tried two of their beers at dinner the night before – Harvest Gold Pale Ale and Loyalist Lager – and I was excited to try their holiday Yuletide Cherry Porter. The Cherry Porter tasted like Black Forest Cake – all chocolate and cherries. I just wasn’t sure I could drink 6 of them, so we got a pack with the Harvest Gold, Loyalist and Wind & Sail Dark Ale. But I couldn’t stop thinking about that Cherry Porter…

From there, we headed back to the hotel for a nap before dinner. I was really looking forward to this dinner, conveniently at the restaurant at the Merrill Inn, having read many glowing reviews of the food there. They didn’t disappoint – but I did, with my photo taking.

My sad photo of the gnocchi appetizer looks oddly pink. Boo! It tasted like clouds of lemony heaven.

The meal was as incredible as I had hoped. I started with a soft lemony gnocchi appetizer that melted in my mouth. The main course was a rack of lamb – a new adventure for me – with tabbouleh. For dessert, I had “Baked Alaska” for the first time. Unlike my usual choice of “something dark chocolatey”, I enjoyed the mix of meringue and gelato and cake. Yummy!