Que sera sera..... Seafood Pasta

Goodevening food loving friends. I hope that the middle of the week is treating you well.

Working for myself I do not always get the opportunity to enjoy the company of, be inspired by and learn from fabulous chefs in the industry. I think of my peers as mentors and I truly believe that I can learn much from them, their experience and their passion. Today I was in luck as I was asked by a friend and respected Chef to work with him and an incredible Chef that was in town for the day (we chefs like to help eachother out =) ) I said an enthusiastic YES and this had me spending the morning working with two chefs, both whom I greatly look up to. I can't quite explain the sense of excitement I get when I look into someone's eyes and just see pure passion for the industry I am apart of. More than inspiring.. invigorating, exciting, enlightening... It makes me feel alive!

Now my friends before this morning I was thinking about my blog and what I could share with you. After my morning of being a sponge and learning in the kitchen I was PUMPED to share a recipe. Now the base of this recipe and concept was first introduced to me by a good friend two years ago. Since then I have tweaked and played with many different versions. It is simple, delicious and sure to please.

So next time your feeling a bit of weight on your shoulders or are looking for a meal to cheer up the middle of week  perhaps you can try this. As it makes me smile.. much like my day. 

 You will need:

Olive Oil (I use spicy oil because I like heat!)

Your favorite pasta

Zucchini

Smoked Bacon

Artichoke Hearts (canned or fresh)

Garlic

Onion or Scallions

Tomato 

Kale 

Spinach

Shrimps

Scallops

OR 

if you don't want that replace with salmon, chicken or just leave it as is.

I also added White Beans on the side because I felt like more vegetables (not necessary)

 

Dice up your bacon, onions and garlic. Cook on medium heat for 5 minutes so that the bacon begins to crisp and the onions and garlic cook together. 

While you are doing this boil your beans for a 3 minutes until soft, drain and then set aside.

Then add in your tomatoes and cook down for 4 minutes while chopping up the rest of the ingredients. Chop up the ingredients however your heart desires! 

While your sauce is cooking and the flavours are getting to know eachother heat a separate pan on high heat and add 1 tsp oil. Season your shrimp and scallops with salt and pepper. when the oil has heated add the scallops and shrimp carefully in the pan as you don't want to burn yourself. 

While you are cooking your scallops and shrimp boil your pasta until al dente (cooked firm but not hard) 

When your pasta is finished cooking add it into pan that your sauce has been cooking in. When doing this add in a little bit of the pasta water. This will help combine the flavours and coat the pasta with your lovely sauce.

Then plate and eat. Yum yum yum. 

p.s. While writing this blog I had a wonderful time tutoring a lovely friend and former cooking student via skype while he made a Parisian inspired meal for a special someone. He was making Chicken Cordon Bleu (if translated directly means blue ribbon... One of the highest awards a chef can receive in France)  I was typing this while talking him through the process. He may not have been trying out the meal that I have described to you, however the fact that he was cooking, trying a new recipe and sharing his meal with his special someone was the icing on my cake to this invigorating day. 

Eat, drink and enjoy

Beyond the sea.... Mussels and Shrimp

Dear culinary adventurers! Happy Sunday. How was your weekend? I hope just as exciting and flavourful as mine. 

This weekend was really fun. From a tasting and demo afternoon at Clearwater and Harvest wines on Saturday, to a wonderful fresh lamb inspired cooking lesson in the evening with my favorite 12 year old Chef in training. Then tonight finishing off a well rounded food inspired weekend with a lovely paired tasting menu at Atlantica Hotel with Chef Louis Clavel and his culinary team to celebrate the launch of Natalie MacLean a local sommeliers second book: Unquenchable.  Absolutely delectable. 

This evening I am excited to share with you the recipes of Saturday's demo at Clearwater and the wonderful wine paired by Harvest Wines. My friends these recipes are simple and delicious.  The aromas from both dishes will have your tummy growling, lips smacking and I promise you will not be in the kitchen for no more than 10 minutes.

Recipe 1: Thai Mussels

2 lbs Mussels

1 Stock Lemon Grass

1 tsp oil (Red chilli oil if you have it!) I made mine fresh by just drying out red chillies for a few months, and then bottling them with some lovely oil)

1 tbsp Ginger

2 Curry Leaves or Kaffir Lime Leaves

¼ Cup Coconut Milk

Scrub and clean mussels ahead of time in cold water. Peel ginger and roughly chop. Peel off the first layer of the lemon grass stem and then cut into 3 even pieces. Then make a slit down the center of the stem. This will open up the flavours. Heat a large sauté pan on medium and add oil into the pan. Then add ginger, curry leaves and lemon grass. You want to cook the ginger and lemon grass for 2 minutes together and then when the pan is nice and hot add the cleaned mussels and coconut milk. Cover so that the mussels steam. When all the mussels are open (around 4 minutes) remove the mussels from the pot. Let the liquid at the bottom of the pan reduce for 1 minutes and then poor over mussels and enjoy. 

*If you do not have curry leaves do not fear... your mussels will still taste fantastic without this ingredient*

Pair With: Joel Gott, Chardonnay ( SOOOOOO wondeful! This is a beautiful unoaked chardonnay from Calfiornia. I have to say I am not a huge chardonnay fan and usually stray even farther away from unoaked than I do oaked when drinking it. My mind has been changed I fell in love over the weekend. It was beautiful, and I am head over heels for this wine. ) While writing this blog I have been looking up on unoaked chardonnay and came to this site which you may find fun and also might spark a new interest in the wine!

Recipe 2:  Shrimp In a pancetta garlic cream sauce on Crostini

100 Gr Pancetta sliced ¼ inch thick

2 Cloves Garlic

½ Onion

1tsp Olive oil

1 Pkg Coldwater Shrimp Defrosted or 1 lb fresh shrimp deveined and shelled Shrimp

¼ Cup White Wine

½ Cup Cream

Salt and Pepper

1 Baguette

Take 2 cloves garlic half a small onion, pancetta and dice really small.  Heat a pan with oil and add the garlic, onion and pancetta. Cook them for 3 min on medium heat until they are fully translucent, and the pancetta has started to crisp.  Add in your white wine. When it has evaporated 2/3 of the way add your shrimp to the pan and turn up to medium high heat. Cook shrimp until they begin to turn pink.  When shrimp have turned pink add the quarter cup of cream. Let this cook for 3 minutes, and until you are happy with the consistency of the sauce.

While you are cooking your shrimp heat your oven to 400F. Thinly slice your baguette on an angle and lay on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with olive oil and then toast until crisp in the oven.

Serve the shrimp hot onto crostini and eat right away. 

Pair with: Inniskillin Cab Franc 

 Ready, set go! I have 10 minutes on the clock... 

This week share, a recipe, a few ingredients, your kitchen aroma's.... this in turn will have you sharing in a smile. Guaranteed (a tried and tested theory)

Eat drink and enjoy!!!

Pig meat blues.... (Not for the Faint of heart) Pigs Head

I repeat before continuing on with reading my post this evening I would like to warn you if you are vegetarian or just super sensitive to meat do not read on. 

On the contrary if you are willing to go to the extremes and interested in different and new cuts of meat I beg you to continue reading as I can assure you it will be quite an adventure. This Sunday I went to the Farmers market with a good friend to pick up some lovely local produce.  After picking up some cheese, turnip, parsnips, and butternut squash we headed to the door. On our way I steered us in the direction of a local butcher shop to see what they had in store. Now was I ever excited to see a Pig heads staring back at me from the display case. Now now my friends and fellow readers do not be alarmed. There is nothing wrong with a good ol' fashioned pigs head and this I will prove! 

a) They cost $4.00 or $2.00 for half a pigs head which is what I bought. If you are being charged more tell them that you understand that you are being ripped off and either walk away or barter them down to $1.50. No one deserves to be ripped off when buying a pigs head. 

b) They are super cool. A great way to practice your knife skills fatty, interesting and have just enough meat to make cheek bacon, testina, fried ears or some bacon fat chips to say a few fun pigs head recipes.

c) Talk about a cooking adventure!!! 

Now there is not much I  wanted to do with the snout so I decided to concentrate on utilizing the jaw, back of head and cheek (which  means I cut around the ear)  If you wanted to use the ear you could cut it off, boil for a heck of a long time and then fry. This would make a very crunchy and tasty pigs ear chip for your chewing pleasure.

 Now I had a goal in mind. This was to recreate a dish called Testina which I cooked and ate quite a bit while living in Italy. The process is to take the pigs head, remove the meat and fat from the front jaw, cheek and back of head following along the line of the ear. 

 Once you have done that you are going to butterfly the meat. (This means to cut down the thickness of the meat but slicing it in half 90% of the way) This way the meat and skin ratios will be even. 

Now from here the meat and fat need to cure for a solid day. This is going to begin the cooking process as I used a salt/sugar ratio to begin bringing out some of the water out from the meat. I used course salt at a rations of 5:1 (salt to sugar) the sugar was just there to cut the intensity of the salt. I then took fresh garlic, crushed peppercors, rosemary and thyme and nicely massaged these into the pig meat, fat and skin. 

I then wrapped it very tightly and let the whole head cure for a total of 18 hours. From there I washed off the garlic, herbs and peppercorns, patted the meat dry, tied it tightly with butchers twine into a roll and then poached it for 10 hours. The slow poaching for such a length of time breaks down the meat, fat and skin allowing each element to cook together. It also poaches the meat immersed in it's own fat so the whole roll stays extremely moist. 

After 10 hours I removed it from the cooking liquid and saran wrapped it again very tightly. You have to press it for a second time after cooking so that the fat, meat, and skin can once again congeal. I am not lying when I say that this process is actually so cool and interesting. You see all three elements of the head take many different shapes throughout. I then let my my saran wrapped meat sit for at least another 10 hours. At this time It has turned pretty much into a log of fat wrapped around meat. But the most tasty, devine, smooth fat wrapped meat you will even taste as the skin just melts into the fat at and secures itself tightly around the meat. To serve you heat a pan at really high heat and then  cut off a 1/2 inch log from the round of testina. You then sear the testina quickly on both sides and serve. It is amazing!!!! I will take many photo's of the cooking tomorrow and write a recipe to go with the final plating. For now I just had to share in the actual adventure on how to get to the point of eating it. 

Quite possibly the best time in the kitchen I 've had in a while. Making this reminded me of the past and just how adventurous eating and drinking can be. Check in tomorrow for a full scale view of what "Testina" looks like when it's all said and done.. and a recipe of course that will only add to the experience. 

Eat, drink and enjoy!!!

All the things you are.. Sausage

Ah it is Sunday eve in November. The air is crisp, the leaves have all tumbled to the ground, and it feels as though this is an evening where fires should be lit to accompany the scent of mulled wine brewing on the stove.

Last week I received a recipe by post. I jumped for joy and reread the recipe a few times trying to understand the flavour idea's and preparation method.  Twas a wonderful gift as:

a) I am rarely given new recipes to try unless it's through my own act of reading through cookbooks, and even then I usually change much of the flavouring so that it is more suited to my cooking style.

b) This inspired me to have a new culinary adventure in the kitchen and try out another cooks creative flavours.

c) The recipe provided a perfect excuse to get in the kitchen, have some fun and share in my culinary adventure with you! 

So my dears let's get cooking. Tonight my blog is dedicated to a wonderful friend and penpal. This recipe is sure provide tantilizing flavours, sweet kitchen scents and smiles from full tummies after a wonderful meal. 

Squash with Sas... aka The Sasquash

1 Medium Onion

1 Large Butternut Squash

2 Large Sausages (your favorite local ones of course)

1 or 2 Avocados

1/2 Cup Rice (white or brown)

Olive Oil

Rosemary

Cinnamon

Salt and Pepper

Honey 

Butter

Place a dollp of olive oil in a frying pan with some salt and pepeer. Slice the sausages into pieces of the size you want. I sliced them thinner because they taste so good and I wanted more in every bite =) Put the sliced sausages in the pan with oil on medium heat so that 

they begin to cook. Slice the onion and add this into the pan as well. While the sausages cook peel your butternut squash, cut it in half and clean out the seeds. Make sure to save the seeds.. bake later... yum! Then I was told to cut the squash no smaller than the hedgehog on the front of the card... As you can see I followed the recipe in great detail.

Now you can either steam the squash or boil it until soft but not falling apart. Choose whichever method most excites you.  While that is cooking in a separate pot cook your rice. Remember rice is a 1:2 ratio so 1/2 cup water to 1 cup rice. Cover the pot, and bring your rice to a boil on high heat. Once the water is boiling turn down the heat to low and let your rice cook with the cover on for 10 minutes. Take rice off heat and let your rice finish cooking naturally for a few minutes so that it doesn't burn but has time to take in any extra moisture.

Slice your avocado while rice is cooking and add with the rosemary to your sausages. Your sausages should be well on their way to being cooked at this point. Perhaps nicely browning and singing the song of wonderful scents.. the sign of a happily cooking sausage. Turn down to low heat.

When the rice is done add it to the sausage pan with a small spoonful of butter and stir to mix it all together.

When the squash is cooked add a spoonful of honey and a pinch of cinnamon and mix just well enough (that means mix it so that all the flavours have combined but you don't mash the butternut squash in the process) 

To serve, make a little bed of the squash on a plate and spoon the rice-sausage-avocado mixture on top.  C'est Fini!

There we have it a tasty recipe received by post. I think the best way to end off this blog is by sharing the ending message of the card "I simply want to share some tastes I find comforting and tasty. Enjoy with some wine and a song or two et Bon Apetit!"

Eat, drink and enjoy!!

Three little fishes... Crab Cakes and Calamarie

Good Saturday evening to you! Are you cooking up a storm? Diving into a new culinary wonder? Eating toast and cheese. Either way I hope that you are having a nice relaxing weekend and enjoying some good eats and drinks.

Today as all Saturdays I had the pleasure of presenting two different recipes at Clearwater here in Halifax and with the paired two palate pleasing wines from Harvest Wines next door. Ah for the love of Saturday mornings where fresh flavours and lovely tasting wine have the chance to meet.

Here we go! Recipes and wine pairings from todays adventure. 

Recipe 1: Cornmeal Crusted Crab Cakes 

1Package Acadian Supreme – North Atlantic Crab Meat

1 Red Pepper Diced very small

¼ Cup Diced Cooked Sweet Potato

2 Tsp Dijon Mustard

1 Tsp Chives finely chopped

1 Egg Yolk

¼ Lemon

Salt and Pepper

1 Cup Cornmeal

2 Tbsp Oil

Take the package of ‘North Atlantic Crab Meat’ out to thaw over night. Make sure that you put this in a bowl as there will be liquid that comes out of it as it defrosts. Strain the liquid out and press the crab meat so that it is fairly dry. Add into a large bowl. Add peeled, diced and roasted sweet potato (You want this to be in quarter inch squares, and roasted so that the sweet potato is tender) Then add diced red pepper, chives, lemon juice, egg yolk and salt and pepper to taste.  Once the ingredients are well mixed shape crab cakes using your hands to form patties about 2 ½ inches across and ¾ inch thick.

 

Place cornmeal on a plate and then cover the crabcake lightly with the cornmeal. Heat sauté pan with oil on medium. Cook crabcakes on both sides for 3-5 minutes each and until golden brown.

Pair With: Quintay Clava Syrah 

Recipe 2: Flash Fried Calamarie with Arugula and Roasted Red

Pepper Slaw

Seawave Calmari 2.2lbs Defrosted and rinsed

1 Cup Flour

1 Lemon Zested

1 tsp Salt

2 Roasted Red Peppers

1 Cup Arugula

1 Tbsp Olive Oil

1 Squeeze Lemon Juice

Salt and Pepper

Slice Calamari either ¾ way into each tube or fully through. Mix flour, lemon zest and salt together. Shake the flour mixture onto the calamari. Make sure the Calamari is nicely coated with the mixture. Heat sauté pan on medium-high  heat and when the oil is heated add calamari.

Dice Roasted Red Peppers and thrown into the pan with calamari.  Add arugula to a small bowl, when calamari is browned and has cooked with the roasted red pepper for at 5 minutes add to bowl with arugula, squeeze in lemon, salt and pepper and toss together.

Pair with: Michel Torino Sauvignon Blanc 

There we have it. Two new fun fresh seafood recipes to try out con vino! Bellisima! Don't be scared go for it.. next time your craving some calamari or tasty crab cakes head to your favorite seafood store instead of a restaurant and try your hand. Gauranteed you will have fun, make some great tasting food and be proud of the new dish you have created.

Eat, drink and enjoy!

 

I'm a believer...

Hello, hello and Happy Wednesday to you. I hope that you are having a fantastic week and not shying away from trying some new recipes in the kitchen.

Now if when I said New Recipes your gut reaction was to comment back with "yeah right" or "how could I" or "Impossible" Think again my friends. This week has been one that has me thinking about the idea of trying out new recipes and building comfort and confidence in the kitchen. Over the past week I have had many people express that when in the kitchen they just get to worried to try new things in fear that they might mess up.  To me as a "chef" there are no real mistakes in the kitchen only great learning. Much like life,  working with and cooking food is a constant learning experience.

 Working as a caterer and teaching cooking lessons I am always writing menu's. Sometimes the menu's have options on them that I have never cooked before. However, it is important to continue to develop new menu's and understand what my potential client will enjoy. My fellow cooks just remember when there is a will there is a way, and making mistakes is all part of the process.

If you think i'm lying about myself learning from kitchen mishaps let me give you a few examples:

1) Once I was making 8 cheese cakes and instead of corn starch I put baking soda. An incredible lack of detail ... what did I learn: Read the recipe and take note of proper ingrediants...

2) This morning I was making toast. How simple is that. Not very simple I say because this morning is the 3rd time this week I have managed to eat charcoal for breakfast. However that is okay we will try again tomorrow.

3) A few months ago I was trying out my beer bread recipes and ended up adding far to much yeast, then overcompensating with flour and spent a good couple hours trying to massage my dough into something edible.

All these lessons would not have happened if I had been afraid to try out the 8 cheesecakes, or toast, or bread recipe in the first place. And from each of these experiences I learned a lesson and gained knowledge as a cook. (The toast I am still working on!)

Today I had to make a dessert that I had never tried before. A Maple infused Dark Chocolate Ganache Tart with Toasted almonds and a Pumpkin Spice Glaze. Did this ever frighten me at the start. Instead of running away I gave myself time and slowly made a recipe. From the dough to the chocolate ganache and then the glaze everything came together. I did learn a few things along the way, however the biggest part of this coming together was overcoming the fear of trying out a new recipe.

So fellow cooks, get out there put those fears, questions or ideas of cooking mistakes out of your mind and have some fun. Get out of your comfort zone and have an adventure in the kitchen.

Eat drink and enjoy!!!