There’s been such great weather lately, and with all the daylight it makes for great pictures. I made a nice simple pasta dish for lunch today, composed of

• onion
• mushrooms
• spicy katamala olives
• Classico sweet basil marinara
• rigatoni
• baby spinach
• cayenne pepper
• table cream

Sauteeing Onion, Mushrooms and Olives

Sauteeing the onions and mushrooms and then adding the olives, sauce and table cream creates a creamy chunky concoction that can be placed on top of some rigatoni and baby spinach.

Spicy Rigatoni

The mid-day lightining makes for wonderful naturally lit pictures that can be taken at a low ISO setting. It’s sad to know that I won’t have this type of lighting once I start working from 9-5… Gotta pick up a flash once I get the income…

Tofu Patty with Black Kale

After a long week of assignments, presentations and an incredibly stressful interview, I decided to kick back and cook up something interesting.

I was planning on just making some boring grilled tofu, but decided I was craving something much more… burgery. So I decided to make some tofu patties with whatever I had in the fridge.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the exact proportions for this recipe, but it can be measured to taste.

• 2 pieces of medium firm tofu
• 3-4 cremini mushrooms
• 1 stalk green onion
• bit of flour (or breadcrumbs, I didn’t have any at the moment) to bind
• bit of kale
• 1 chopped walnut (optional, for texture)
• some cooked rice (that I had leftover,  made with vegetable broth instead of water)
• 1 lightly beaten egg
• salt
• pepper

Doesn't look very appealing uncooked...

Mix all the ingredients together and and form 1/2 inch patties. I found that the patties were fairly fragile so making them smaller than I have here should make them much more manageable when cooking. Pan fry the patties on medium heat until both sides are nice and golden and enjoy =)

Hot off the pan!

]]> http://blog.mlee.ca/2010/03/tofu-patties/feed/ 2 http://blog.mlee.ca/2010/01/butternut-squash-star-ravioli-with-butter-thyme-sauce/ http://blog.mlee.ca/2010/01/butternut-squash-star-ravioli-with-butter-thyme-sauce/#comments Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:20:26 +0000 Mike http://blog.mlee.ca/?p=494 It’s pretty hard getting by as a University student living away from home. You never have the tools or ingredients that you need to get …]]>

It’s pretty hard getting by as a University student living away from home. You never have the tools or ingredients that you need to get things done, especially when it comes to cooking and baking.

Yesterday, I finally obtained some Baileys, so that I could make some more sugar cookies to share with everyone on my floor, but realised I didn’t have a electric mixer or even batter. After asking about 5 random people in our building, I still came up empty :(.

Butternut Squash Star Ravioli

Today, I still had the incredible craving to make something, so I googled up a recipe for fresh pasta and grabbed some leftover baked butternut squash in the fridge.

No mixing bowl? Use a plastic tub for washing rice.

No blender? Puree with a spoon/knife.

No pastry wheel? Use a cookie cutter. It’s a much interesting shape than cutting straight lines with a knife. And takes advantage of the cookie cutter I bought recently.

No rolling pin? (wait for it…) Use a mug or a cup. This worked fairly well for the pastry dough that I made a few weeks ago.

Probably due to my inability to mix the ingredients properly, I was left with a tough dough and it was incredibly difficult to flatten out, especially without the right tools. It took me about an hour just to make these 4 pieces of ravioli, I just gave up after that and sliced them up into thick pieces of fettuccine.

Butternut Squash Star Ravioli

I cooked them up and lightly coated them in a butter thyme sauce. The pasta dough itself was really thick and tough, but the centre was still light, sweet and creamy. At least they came out looking great =) .

Leek & Ham Quiche

Quiche is one of my favourite dishes, EVER. The creamy eggy, the strong flavours of cheese and whatever filling is inside, as well as the flaky crust. Irresistable! Since my mom had returned from her vacation, I haven’t had the opportunity to cook. Fueled by the strong desire to cook something up, I dropped by the grocery store and grabbed some leeks and Yves Meatless Ham.

Here’s the recipe I used, based on a recipe from Canadian Living. (The crust recipe is identical, so I’m not going to duplicate it here.)

Ingredients:
1/2 tbsp olive oil
6 slices of Yves Meatless Ham, 1/2 inch pieces
1 large leek, 1/2 inch pieces
1/2 tsp (2 mL) pepper
1/4 tsp (1 mL) salt
4 large eggs
5/8 cup (150 mL) 2% milk
2 tbsp (25 mL) dijon mustard
3/4 cup (175 mL) shredded Gruyère cheese
1 tbsp crumbled Blue Haze cheese

Directions:
In a large skillet on medium heat, add olive oil and fry ham, leek, pepper and salt until softened.

In a large bowl, whisk eggs and milk together. Add ham, leek and bluze haze, mixing all the ingredients together.

Spread mustard over the pastry shell. Sprinkle the Gruyère over the crust and pour in egg mixture.

Bake in oven at 375°F for about 40 minutes, until a knife through the centre comes out clean. Remove from heat, and let cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Enjoy =)

Sorry, now that I don’t have anymore entries in queue, I’ve lost the urgency to finish posting these.

Common in presentations for Belgian endives, they can be used as “boats” or little bowls to place food on. As well as steaming the endives, I took a small bundle of enoki mushroom, dipped in egg spiced with some cumin, tumeric and salt. Once the mushrooms have been dipped, I shallow fried them so that the egg cooked, leaving the appearance that the mushrooms were wrapped in an egg blanket.

Endive Boats

Before dinner, on my way home I decided to drop by Whole Foods in Yorkville one of the only two Whole Foods in Ontario. Whole Foods is a large chain of supermarkets from the US, and is always seen on the tv show Top Chef, which is where I heard about the store. I grabbed some Gruyère and Blue Haze cheese as well as some fresh lemon & pepper fettucini.

The second I got home, I set the pot to boil and prepared some fresh alfredo sauce, substituting some of the Parmesan with Gruyère and Blue Haze. Throwing in some sage and portobello mushrooms. It was, the most delicious dish I had ever made.

Fettuccine Alfredo

Fettuccine Alfredo

On my first grocery outing at the beginning of my 28 days, I grabbed a Carnival squash, unfortunately I don’t have any “before” pictures of the squash.

I needed about half the squash for the risotto, which meant I had the other half to use for something else. With plenty of sage left that was starting to go bad, I decided to make some carnival squash chips with sage. After cutting the squash in half and removing the seeds, I thinly sliced the squash with a peeler. I placed the chips on a tray with a baking sheet and brushed them all lightly with some olive oil and sprinkled finely chopped sage and salt on top. I let the squash slices bake until they were dry (probably left them in a little too long). Regardless, the chips were great and I finished them all while I was preparing the squash risotto.

Baked Carnival Squash Chips

I sliced the other half of the squash, removed all the seeds, placed it face down in pan filled with 2 cm of water and baked it at 190°C for about 20 minutes. Once the squash is soft and tender, I cut it up into 1.5 cm cubes and started to make the risotto. I prepared my risotto differently from my usual recipe by sauteing half an onion (diced) and the squash and putting it to the side once the onions have turned clear. I then followed the recipe and added the onions and squash back in when I started to add the broth to the risotto.

Carnival Squash Risotto

This made the risotto flavour much more intense. With the addition of the squash, it made the risotto extremely creamy and buttery and so much more irresistable. I’m definitely making both these dishes again.

Burdock root is part of a plant that can be prepared similar to carrots. It’s common in Japanese cuisine and is known as gobō. You might recognize the plant as those purple fuzzy things that sometimes get caught on your clothing when you’re hiking through the woods.

I usually eat this as a side dish, it’s quick and simple to make and has a crunchy texture that I love. My mom also makes burdock root soup, but I’m not too fond of it prepared that way.

Preparing the Burdock root

The recipe that I loosely follow is Kinpira Gobo. I usually add a bit more sugar and replace the sake with white wine if it’s not available.

Stir-fried Burdock Root

Most of the flavour comes from the seasoning, but the burdock root also provides some flavour and a wonderful crisp crunchy texture.

After the disappointing bowl of Creamy Tomato soup from Panera, I was in the mood for a real cream soup and decided to make some of my own mushroom soup. Since I still had some white asparagus to finish off, I decided to make a cream of white asparagus and mushroom soup. I used a recipe for asparagus cream soup and mushroom soup, combined and modified them by not blending and adding portobello and brown mushrooms and omitting some of the herbs. The soup turned out ok, a little too fatty tasting for me, which tends to be a problem with all the cream soups I make, I’ll need to find some foolproof recipes for cream soup.

Cream of Asparagus and Mushroom Soup

After dinner, it’s not dessert but instead I usually have some fruits. Today, my dad and I had made some almond tofu. Almond tofu, is ground up almond powder that is then mixed with some other ingredients and water which solidifies and creates an almond flavoured jelly. The way we serve almond tofu at home is that the tofu is sliced into large cubes and mixed with a can of mixed fruits. Usually, I add some of my own fruits to top it off or add juice to add more flair to the dessert. My favourite is adding champagne or Sprite which gives the dessert a nice bubbly effect as well.

Almond Tofu

After being served Pan-Seared Polenta for the first time two weeks ago at Le Select Bistro, I was really interested in making some of my own. Polenta is made with cornmeal and mixed with water, a little butter and some salt. When it is freshly made, it is basically a mush of cornmeal, but once it sets it becomes a solid form that you can cut and cook in many other ways.

I used this basic recipe to get the proportions correct, and added a little tumeric for more flavour. Apparently if you replace some of the water with milk, it makes the polenta fluffier and lighter too (I wanted to do that but didn’t have any milk left).

I seared the polenta and placed it ontop of some tomato paste (should be sauce, but was too lazy to make some) and then added some grilled portobello, fresh yellow tomatoes and some dill on top.

With the exception of the tomato paste, the rest of the meal tasted great, although I made a small portion, it was quite filling. The yellow tomatoes taste really good, they’re flavourful and much less acidic than regular tomatoes so it tastes much mush refreshing.

Eggs in the Basket

Unsure of what to have for breakfast this morning, I asked Jamie and she suggested that I make eggs in the basket, but the way that she usually makes it. Normally, eggs in a basket is a slice of bread with a hole punched out of it. The slice is then placed on a frying pan with some butter, lightly toasted, flipped and then an egg is cracked in the middle of it and is cooked sunny side up.

Jamie’s method is to simply press an indent in the centre of the bread (so that no bread is wasted), spread butter around the indent, crack the egg in the indent and bake. This method gives you baked eggs, which are much softer and fluffier than a fried egg. Just remember to keep track of the yolk so that it doesn’t get overcooked and solidify!