Fresh Potato Salad

At my local grocery store, I have been able to find tiny new potatoes over the last few weeks, both red and white. They aren't generally in my food budget, but this week I picked up a small package of white potatoes. They were a bit smaller than golf balls. I bought about a pound. I could hardly wait to get home and make the kids one of our favourite potato salads.

I boiled them for about 20 minutes. While they were boiling, I prepared the rest of the salad. I minced a bunch of scallions, I diced about the same amount of celery, I put these ingredients in the bottom of my salad bowl. I added about 1 tblsp of lemon juice, 3 tblsp of canola oil, 1 tsp of Dijon mustard and a couple of shots of hot sauce. I whisked quickly and once the potatoes were cooked, I added them to the sauce. I added salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste. Toss to coat completely.

This salad can be served warm or cold. Either way, it is very yummy and disappears very quickly at a meal! The kids prefer this kind of potato salad to mayonnaise type potato salads.

I hope you and your family enjoy this potato salad as much as my family and I do. :D

The splendor of couscous

In the summer there is one thing that is very nearly always on my dinner table. The kids enjoy it, it offers a lot of variety, it is inexpensive, quick and easy to prepare. I'll admit, I'm not sure if the kids enjoy it because it tastes good, or if it's because Couscous is such a peculiar word. Either way, it's a staple in our summer cooking.

There are purists who do not like the "Minute Couscous". They prefer using a couscousière and fresh stock, and a lot of steam. Yes. I admit it. This does make a superior quality couscous. I've done it and I do it when I really want something extravagant. The "Minute Couscous" though is ready in about 5 minutes vs 30 minutes for the traditional method. For those of us who can't (or don't want to) spend a lot of time in the kitchen though, this is good and quick meal or side dish.

My favourite couscous based meal is couscous chicken salad. A complete meal in and of itself. So easy to make and uses many ingredients on hand or readily available at the store.

Couscous chicken salad

2 cups boiling stock (chicken or vegetable)
2 cups couscous
1 small onion diced finely
1 tomato, seeded and diced finely
2 stalks of celery diced finely
1 small colourful bell pepper, diced finely
1/4 cup vinegrette
1/2 tsp fresh thyme rough chopped
1/2 tsp fresh basil, chiffonade (that means stacking, rolling like a cigar, then cutting the leaves)
1 small roasted chicken, torn apart and rough chopped.
Salt and pepper to taste
Few drops of lemon juice and a bit of lemon zest to give the salad an extra little oumph!

Prepare the vegetables and herbs. Boil the stock, pour the stock into a bowl, then sprinkle the couscous over the stock. Cover and let rest for 5 minutes. Prepare the chicken. Once the couscous has absorbd all of the stock, fluff with a fork and then add the remaining ingredients except the chicken. Mix thoroughly, taste and adjust the seasonings. Lay the couscous on a platter, then top with the chicken and a bit of fresh lemon juice.

Enjoy! :D

Gourmet convenience

Well, even though I know how to do many fancy "gourmet" meals, such as Tarragon Chaud-Froid de Poussin or Oysters Rockerfeller, sometimes I use convenience items to make life super simpler. Especially if it's just for me and the kids.

One of these items that I have on hand at all times is mashed potato flakes. It can easily be used to absorb excess liquid, and allow dishes to bind together... Crumbled ground beef needs to stick together a bit more in your meat pie? Add a tablespoon or two of mashed potato flakes and problem is solved.

Another thing that I like to use potato flakes for is to make a super quick Vichyssoise. I sweat down some leeks or mild onions. Add one litre of vegetable or chicken stock - which ever I have on hand. I heat the mixture up and blend thoroughly. Then I add about 1/2 cup of potato flakes, or until the soup has a good texture. Then presto! A quick 'homemade' Vichyssoise.

So what convenience food item do you like to use?

Magna Cum Laud

Well, I have done it! I have finaly graduated. In Magna Cum Laud no less! I knew I had, but it wasn't real until I received those golden cords. What an amazing day! I am so proud. Not only of the work that I have done and everything that I have accomplished, but also of the work that my children have done, and the sacrifices they faced while I studied for exams, worked on projects and worked late nights at school for special events and suppers.

So I raise a glass to my dear children. Thank you for your support and faith in me. Thank you for your understanding and patience. Thank you for doing as you were told and for listening when you would rather have not done so. It did not go unnoticed.

Seriously Good: Strawberry Gastrique

Seriously Good: Strawberry Gastrique

In reading other food blogs, I came across this blog by Kevin Weeks. It looked really good, so I thought I would link and share. :D Thank you Kevin! I hope everyone else enjoys as much as I do. ;)

Strawberry Festival

Well, I see that Suzanne has started a festival to celebrate the freshest fruit of the season... Strawberries. She and her family picked just a handful of strawberries. If you consider 10 lbs to be a handful! ;) So she gave us a challenge, what to do to prepare, preserve and use this wonderful fruit.

(photo by Suzanne Temple - June 2007)

Here are a few ways that I use strawberries... (I can hardly wait for the season to start here! :D )

Strawberry coulis - pronounced cool-ee (Strawberry sauce)

1 cup simple syrup (see recipe to follow)
4 cups cleaned and trimmed strawberries - roughly chopped
Juice of 1/2 lemon

Prepare simple syrup as per recipe and heat 1 cup of the simple syrup. Add the strawberries and the juice of the 1/2 lemon. Simmer for 5-10 minutes on medium heat, or until the strawberries can easily be crushed. Blend the mixture and place in a jar and reserve in the refrigerator for up to a week. Or you can even place the cooled sauce in a re-sealable bag (like Ziplock) and freeze.

This sauce can be used to top ice-cream, decorate a dessert plate, or as a sauce for a pound cake. You can double the recipe easily enough, place in a lasagna pan, and place in the freezer. Stir with a fork every 30 minutes for 6+ hours to make a nice strawberry sorbet. Once the sorbet is made, it only needs to be stirred once or twice a day.

Simple syrup:

Equal parts water & sugar ( 1 cup : 1 cup, 2:2...)

Stir the sugar and water together in a small saucepan. Heat over medium heat until the mixture starts to boil lightly. Let boil 1 minute. Cool and use to sweeten homemade lemonade or to create a simple fruit sauce, or even to create a lovely granité or sorbet.

Returning to strawberries...

Strawberry rumpot (most certainly not for kids...)

Equal weight sugar and clean/trimmed/blemish free berries
Enough rum to cover

Cut the fruit into small bits. Cover with the sugar and stir. Put in a jar and cover with rum. Store in the refrigerator for a minimum of a month. Use the "juice" as a lovely hard sauce for ice cream, pound cake or other such dessert - you can use the fruit too, but I find that they become little hard. Sometimes I like to take just a small bit as a dessert drink. Yummy! :D This is a traditional way to preserve fruits for the holidays, and as you use the rumpot you can top it off with new fruit that's in season, sugar and rum. This can last a very long time. Keep out of reach of children for obvious reasons.

WARNING: Rumpot has a very strong kick to it - I suspect that it has a higher alcohol content than the rum on its own - so use with care!

Be sure to check out The Virtual Kitchen on June 27th to read up on more great strawberry recipes! :D

Cooking on a hot day

So what do you do when the day is so warm that it already feels as if you've spent a few hours in a hot kitchen. The best thing you can do is keep it simple. This is where a little planning comes in awfully handy.

When the summer hits, I tend to do most of my heavy cooking at night. That way, the house stays nice and cool throughout the day, and I have easy to prepare meals for a few days to come. I tend to prepare a couple of roast chickens, maybe a pork loin roast, and most certainly a beautiful roast beef. How do I prepare these meats in the same oven? My first secret is low. My second secret is slow. I set my oven to about 250-275F, I season my meat, and I let it cook throughout the evening.

Once the meat is ready, I store it and I have some great meat to serve over the next few hot days. I can make a delicious chicken couscous salad, or a nice roast beef sandwich. Better yet, I can make a nice picnic platter... All kinds of crudités, cheese and a bit of meat. Most people have a smaller appetite on hot days anyway. We tend to nibble throughout the day. So to help maintain a healthy weight or create good eating habits, we should be prepared.

So how do you deal with cooking on those hot and humid summer days?

Summer is finally on it's way!

We've had a cool spring. It's been so cool that we still have frost in the morning. It makes it hard to put in our tomatoes and know that they will survive the night! Even with protection... Ah well!

I can hardly wait though... fresh "local" greens are starting to show up at the grocery store though. So fresh salads are on the horizon. What I most look forard to is throwing in some fresh edible flowers into my salad. The lovely pinks of rose petals, the warm yellow petals of pansies, the cool purples of violets and the piquant of nasturtiums... MMMMmmmm!

So as I look forward to planting my tomatoes, here is a simple home vinaigrette:

2 tblsp fresh lemon juice
6 tblsp vegetable oil (Good EVOO, or a nice grapeseed oil -although a canola oil will do)
Zest of 1 well washed lemon
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 pinch salt
1 pinch fresh ground pepper

Put all ingredients in a small jar with a cover. Mix, taste with a bit of salad and adjust seasoning. Dress the salad at the last moment before service.

I like adding onions, garlic and all herbs & spices into the salad itself. That way the extra dressing can be safely be kept in the refrigerator for a week.

Enjoy! ;)