My Life as Salad & Pie

Two outstanding recipes that I made recently include simple ingredients with minimal prep.  The food represents what I love about life: deliciousness.  I named the recipes for two people very close to me - I cannot separate the person from the dish in my mind.  Jessy's salad is vibrant with a special sweetness and perfectly composed; Rebecca's dessert is elegant, decadent and undeniably a good friend.  In other news, I started watching Masterchef Junior.  The kids are inspiring and ridiculously confident young cooks - and the judges are obviously having a lot of fun with them. I wish I was 12 years old and on this show.

Jessy's Salade Nicoise
Serves 4

8-10 new potatoes, cut in half or quarters and boiled
a large handful of green beans, steamed
4 eggs, hard boiled and served at room temperature
enough mixed greens for four people
8-10 black olives, sliced (Kalamata are good)
2 tomatoes, cut into wedges
fresh herbs such as basil or dill (optional)
sea salt and pepper
2 seared fresh tuna steaks, sliced, or 20 seared scallops (optional)

For the dressing, use this one from River Cottage Veg cookbook:

1/2 small garlic clove, crushed with a little salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
A squirt/pinch of sweet (agave, sugar etc)

Gently toss the greens with a little of the dressing.  Compose all of the ingredients on a large platter or individual plates starting with the greens in the center and the other ingredients in groups around the outside. 

This was dessert from my first visit to enVie Vegan Kitchen.  It tastes very similar to the recipe below and was so lovingly plated I was smitten with their kitchen immediately.

Rebecca's Chocolate Pie

First make the salty-sweet pecan oat crust:

1 cup oat four or processed oats

2 cups pecans

2 tbsp sugar

3 tbsp ground flax

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp fleur de sel

1/4 cup brown rice syrup or honey

1 tbsp earth balance, melted

Combine all the ingredients and press/shape into large pie plate.  Score the crust by poking holes with a fork and bake until lightly browned, ten mins approximately.  Le cool before filling.

Next make the filling:

300 grams dark chocolate 

300 gram package of silken tofu (Rebecca says: "accept no tofu substitutes! it must be the softest kind")

vanilla and / or liqueur to tast (1tsp - 1 tbsp)

Melt the chocolate and then blend along with tofu and vanilla / liqueur in a food processor until silky smooth. Pour into prepared pie crust and let set for several hours in the fridge.

Serve with unsweetened whipped cream.  

Bittersweet Summer Days

When life gives you lemons... 

Lawrencetown beach, Nova Scotia

We're leaving Toronto in a week - back to Halifax and the ocean stones and sand, maybe a lake or two for refreshing dips. I'm definitely sad to be leaving my amazing foodie city of Toronto, in particular my corner greenmarkets with six lemons for $2 or organic avocados 2/$3.  Those are not Halifax prices.

This morning I couldn't sleep so there I was prepping fruit salads and an eggwhite omelette for when Nick wakes up in a couple hours.  I even considered baking brioche (see why below) but I used all the eggs in a lemon bar recipe, something I'm bringing to a family BBQ in Niagra Saturday.

I'm crossing tastebuds and provinces already, preparing a special lobster roll backyard picnic for three tonight. All lobster rolls are not created equal and I haven't found a recipe that I like yet so I will come up with my own (I will share after the reviews are in!).  I'm going to bike down the street to Harbord Bakery after breakfast and pick up sweet challah rolls instead of using brioche or a foolishly inferior white bread product.

The lemon bars were spontaneous craving for curd and I found a decent recipe on Pinterest but I'm told by a master home chef in my neighbourhood that Martha Stewart's recipe is all you need.  I screwed up the sugar component - I had a bag of coconut sugar from the health food store, claiming to replace 1:1 for sugar in baking. That's fine except when color is important... my carefully tended lemony & zesty curd immediately turned a caramel brown.  I finished it off with drizzles of coconut flakes to disguise the ugly shade of brown.  They have been in the fridge for two days now and taste amazing - small mercies.

Here's the video about making lemonade with all those life lemonades...from the good people at Food52.

Also, I'm still hunting for interesting popsicle molds to add to my collection.  I already have plastic fourtop so I think I'll look for mini baking cups and do a little DIY on the next batch... cute, no?

Get some apple pie!

As I approach a mini milestone as a blogger (two months!) I would like to say thank you for reading my posts. With time, Sweet Julienne will only get better and better ... so let's bake an apple pie to celebrate!

Meet Tamar

Tamar E. Adler is a chef and author.  She worked at Chez Panisse.  I like Chez Panisse.  I also like this video about prepping market veg - more of her musings here.

How to Stride Ahead - Part Two from CJ Richter on Vimeo.

Post-Christmas Little Italy lunch & Homemade Ricotta

Left to my own devices I would probably not have eaten meatballs two days after Christmas, but I wasn't alone.  Nick and I were checking out Little Italy and it was lunchtime.  We didn't see any other choices that were calling out to us, and we couldn't get the taste of an Italian sandwich out of our heads, so we popped into Hey Meatball! to order a taste.  

A market fresh holiday meal

A.Y. Jackson, Red Barn in winter

Happy Christmas eve!

I'm sipping rum (and eggnog) near my wee xmas tree.  There's a few presents waiting for us to find them, our kitchen is full with market shopping, and the bread is rising.

Knife skills & a simple bread technique

Secrets from a food stylist: