Archive for the 'seafood' Category
Since I was 15 and hung out at Earls with my friend J, who had a real job as a busgirl there, back in the day of the giant papier-mâché parrots and green and white umbrellas and Mocha Kahlúa Pie, I have been a fan of their Hot Chicken Caesar Salad. That is, until I discovered that (not really suprisingly) one contains 1120 calories and 77 grams of fat. Only 12 saturated, but still… and then there’s the 1531 mg of sodium. So. I figure for that price, I might as well get a burger and fries out of the deal.
But I still do love Caesar salad, and today it occurred to me that it would make good use of the bag of frozen shrimp that I so often call into service on days like today when I haven’t really planned anything. It would have made good use of a deli roasted chicken, too.
The chunk of leftover baguette I had frozen was chopped, tossed with canola oil and toasted in a 400 degree oven to make croutons, an essential part of any Caesar. (I would have sprinkled them with some garlic powder or salt if I had any. If I wasn’t so lazy, I would have pressed a clove of garlic into the oil that I tossed the bread chunks in.) The shrimp came cooked in a bag, and only needed thawing under running water in a colander.
For the dressing, I consulted my salad binder (I have 14 binders full of recipes I’ve been collecting over the years, plus a yellow milk crate, plus assorted surfaces throughout the house, plus my computer, plus about ten thousand cookbooks - I exaggerate only slightly) and sort of morphed a bunch of Caesar dressing recipes together. I wish I had a tube of anchovy paste - I love anchovies in my Caesars - but it’s not something I normally keep on hand. The dressing was good, if a little lemony… I know a lot of people like it like that, but I’ve never been one to squeeze that wedge of lemon over my salad. Next time I think I’ll try half lemon, half balsamic vinegar, for a creamy but balsamic-y Caesar dressing. A roasted head of garlic would have been fantastic, too.
In fact, next time I think I’ll try grilling whole hearts of Romaine like they used to do at that restaurant over on 4th Street, and grill the shrimp, and maybe even grill oil-brushed and garlic-rubbed bread to tear into croutons, too.
Caesar Dressing
1/4 cup lemon juice (or half lemon juice, half balsamic vinegar)
1/4 cup low fat mayo
1/4 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
2 garlic cloves, finely crushed
2 tsp. grainy (or not) Dijon mustard
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
lots of freshly ground black pepper
Whisk it all together in a bowl or shake it up in a jar.
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June 23 2008 | salads and seafood | 3 Comments »
I’ll tell you straight up, the soup is green, and refreshing in a way that only pure green things are, but I likely wouldn’t make it again. It’s like a pea smoothie; I can’t get past the cold grassiness of it. I’m thinking of throwing the rest on the stovetop tomorrow. Others may enjoy it, though. At least it’s healthy - besides being so green, peas are a crazy high source of fiber.
This morning we talked about no heat dinners on CBC, and so I made it for the occasion. I wasn’t surprised to come home with the whole batch. (Why is it said that something not so great is “nothing to sneeze at”? Is there any occasion that calls for sneezing at something that is particulaly good?)
Minted Pea Soup
Adapted from Real Simple magazine.
4 cups fresh or frozen peas, thawed
a big handful fresh mint, torn into pieces
a small handful fresh chives, torn into pieces
3 cups chicken or veg stock
1 tsp. each salt and sugar
Whiz everything in the food processor or blender until smooth. Makes about 1 1/2 L.
The shrimp fajitas, on the other hand, are great. I made them about a year ago when trying to come up with a way to incorporate guacamole into our dinner, on account of an overabundance of perfectly ripe ones in our fruit bowl. This time it was planned for the aforementioned show. You could throw the cooked shrimp right in there - frozen, even, if you want to keep the fajita innards cool en route to a picnic or bring it in your lunch - but I decided to give them a quick minute in a hot pan with a tiny dab of butter and shake of chili powder, just to fajita things up a bit. Either way.
Shrimp & Black Bean Fajitas
All these measurements are approximate; just wing it.
1 ripe avocado
1 clove garlic, finely pressed
2 Tbsp. lime juice (or to taste)
pinch salt
about 20 cooked, peeled shrimp, thawed (or not, if you want to keep it cool en route to a picnic)
1/2 cup canned black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2-1 cup crumbled feta
1/4 cup salsa
4 whole wheat flour tortillas
In a small bowl, mash the avocado, garlic, lime juice and salt until smooth. Spread a quarter of it into the middle of each tortilla. Divide the shrimp, beans, feta and salsa among them, and wrap like a burrito.
Serves 4.
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June 17 2008 | sandwiches and seafood and soup and vegetarian | 2 Comments »
Today, I wanted to demonstrate (to myself as much as anyone else) that dinner in under 15 minutes does not have to involve take-out or be previously frozen. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Well, sometimes there is.)
We stopped at the grocery store on the way home from a long meeting with our accountant. Tired, with our heads full of numbers and our car in the shop, I was determined to not give in to the lull of the rain and the security of my baggy sweater and pick up fast food - something perfectly excusable on a day when you find out your car, taxes and dental work are going to cost more than a trip for two to Europe.
So I picked up some fresh wild salmon (I’ve never understood why frozen battered fish sticks were considered convenience food, when they take 25 minutes to cook, and a fresh fillet of salmon takes only 10) and when we got home, I told Mike to time me. I turned the oven on to 425F, put the kettle on, slapped the salmon on a cookie sheet and spread each piece with a spoonful of pesto (sorry for the recurring ingredient, but I know W will eat pesto salmon). Then I rummaged through the fridge and found almost a full pint of wrinkly grape tomatoes, so cranked up the heat under my cast iron skillet and glugged in some olive oil, then dumped in the lot of them. (Had I been in less of a hurry, I might have spread them on a cookie sheet and roasted them, then pulled out the sheet, put the salmon on it and returned it to the oven for 10 minutes.)
The kettle whistled. My plan was to pour boiling water over plain old couscous, which takes under 10 minutes to morph from dried to edible, but discovered that someone (most likely me) had poured cornmeal into the couscous jar. Damn.
So I think the timing stopped at that point as I did some damage control and put a pot of water on instead, thinking I could do up some sort of simple/rustic Italian pasta tossed with olive oil, garlic and tomatoes (this is the way Giada does it, right? and she’s a goddess). When it came to boil, I remembered the package of Israeli couscous I found at Bite in Inglewood on the weekend - big, slippery, pearl-shaped nuggets of pasta that just might work out. I’ve never made Israeli couscous before, but it was easy - you cook it just like pasta, but for a bit longer. The salmon went in and out of the oven (10 minutes per inch of thickness) as it boiled, and when it was finished the tomatoes were soft and starting to blacken. I threw in a few squished cloves of garlic for a minute or two, along with the teeniest pinch of dried red pepper flakes, then drained the couscous and dumped it in and tossed it about to coat it with the garlicky oil and nudge the browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
It looked fantastic as is, to be honest, but when I remembered that there was feta in the fridge, I had to crumble some of it in. If you don’t have Israeli couscous in your cupboard, and I don’t expect you to, this would work equally well with ordinary couscous, or orzo, or probably any shaped pasta.
Yum-O.
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May 22 2008 | seafood and vegetarian | 2 Comments »
I had to go to the Jully Black concert tonight, so wanted to ensure our houseguests were properly subdued on the couch before I left, so that I didn’t miss anything. Remembering how easy it is to make risotto, and with a bag of near-wilted spinach in the fridge, I thought I’d stir up a pot. Their reaction: “risotto?!! That’s so hard to make!” Not really - it requires about the same level of skill as making oatmeal, only you use rice and stock. You don’t need to attend to it religiously; contrary to popular belief, you can walk away from it once in awhile. And it takes on all sorts of additions beautifully.
So I made the same lemon Parmesan risotto I’ve made before, stirring in a few handfuls of torn spinach after the cheese, and then threw in some thawed frozen raw tail-on shrimp, stirred them into the hot risotto and put the lid on the pot until they turned pink. Finish it with the juice of a lemon, and that’s it.
Unfortunately, I forgot that R is allergic to shrimp. (I’m not the greatest host.)As we stood by the pot and stirred, we daydreamed all sorts of risotto possibilities, including a sweet version with caramelized pears and mascarpone, and another with crumbled blue cheese, swirled through so that it only partially melts, served with thinly sliced steak on top.
After the concert, I came home and we assembled the pavlova we made yesterday but were too full to eat. A big one this time, that we cut into crunchy wedges that were filled with sweet whipped cream and topped, again, with tangy passionfruit. (I know, once I do something that works so well, I tend to repeat myself.) And because passionfruit isn’t all that common, people are always interested in trying it out, even though the insides look like something that might be used in a low-budget sci-fi movie.
R summed up the passionfruit perfectly: “it looks like you killed it by cutting it open.”
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May 15 2008 | one dish and seafood and vegetarian | 2 Comments »
It is a good day when I realize it’s 5:45, I have no idea what’s for dinner, and there’s a bowl of leftover rice and peas in the fridge.
As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, my favorite 5 minute dinner is fried rice. You can make it out of anything. (So long as you have rice.)
Here’s what you do:
Heat up a skillet with a drizzle of canola oil (and sesame oil, if you have some).
Throw in the cold rice, some frozen peas if they aren’t already in with the rice, and a little blob of curry paste or powder. Break in an egg and scramble it up off to one side. Toss in some raw or cooked shrimp - I keep a bag in the freezer and run a handful under the tap to thaw. Pork, chicken or tofu also work well (I wish I had a bit of that tenderloin from last night), but the shrimp-curry combo is a good one.
Season with soy sauce or salt (soy sauce is salty) and pepper. Done.
W is not yet a curry fan, so he ate some chicken tortellini I had boiled at lunchtime, tossed with pesto. Hey, at least it’s green.
I had a few bites of each of their dinners to tide me over until 8, when I’m meeting my friend J for cider and wings.
In other news: the Empty Bowl Benefit Online Auction has begun!
Last week I was one of many who had the opportunity to paint a bowl to auction off to benefit the Calgary Interfaith Food Bank. All the bowls are being auctioned off at the Food Bank website, and can be viewed in all their glory at various downtown locations.
You can bid on my fabulous hand-painted fish bowl here! (I’ll deliver it myself if you live anywhere near Calgary, along with a bag of CBC swag, and of course filled with bacon caramel corn!)
It took me about 4 hours to paint. Seriously. (There are little fish swimming around the base of the bowl too, but you can’t see them at this angle!)
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April 30 2008 | leftovers and one dish and seafood and vegetarian | 1 Comment »
Happy Eggs Benedict Day!
Yesterday, being Eggs Benedict Day Eve (I’m not sure who chooses these days, or who makes them official?) we had eggs Benny on the Eyeopener. I made a classic version of hollandaise sauce, which is dead easy to do in the blender; it’s really like mayonnaise - blended egg yolks with melted butter drizzled in, and a bit of lemon juice. Three yolks and a cup of butter to 1 tablespoon of lemon juice is the ratio; you really could not get any more high fat than hollandaise sauce if you tried, which is probably why people don’t generally make it at home. When you order it at a restaurant you don’t witness (nor take part in) the use of cups of melted butter. Not being an accomplice absolves us of at least some of the guilt.
I went to Big Fish this past weekend and had crab eggs Benedict (they also do steak eggs Benedict), which reminded me of the crab cakes Benedict I wrote a recipe for in Homemakers’ magazine years ago. Crispy crab cakes topped with a poached egg and hollandaise. So I made them in the studio yesterday, and when Mike heard what I had done, he (rightly) told me that not making some for him as well would be just grounds for divorce. What judge wouldn’t take his side?
Using crab cakes as a base instead of the English muffin-back bacon combo was a stroke of genius, if I do say so myself. Use any crab cakes you like, top with a poached egg and drizzle of hollandaise. I used a can of crabmeat, drained and bound together with a bit of minced yellow pepper, about a handful of breadcrumbs, one of the egg whites left over from the sauce, a squirt of grainy mustard and spoonful of light mayo. I wish I had some panko to fry them in, but I just doused them with flour and fried them in a skiff of canola oil. Here’s a link to the original Homemakers’ recipe. (One of my very first assignments. I was completely ecstatic.)
Hollandaise is a room-temperature sauce, since it’s made with melted butter that would congeal if it was too cold and egg yolks that would scramble if they got too hot. Some recipes heat it gently in a double boiler, but the easiest method I find is to whiz 3 egg yolks (and if you have it, a tablespoon of half & half) in a blender until it’s foamy; then with the motor running drizzle in a cup of melted butter that has been heated until it’s bubbling (I do this in the microwave) but not browned. About halfway through, dribble in a tablespoon of lemon juice. The mixture will thicken to the consistency of slightly runny mayonnaise. Serve it just as is. People tend to get funny about the use of heated but not necessarily cooked through egg yolks in their hollandaise, which I think is funny considering no one thinks twice about the runny yolk of the poached egg underneath it.
But this is the recipe I think you should have - a lightened version of hollandaise sauce that was one of my biggest food challenges ever. In this hollandaise, white bread is soaked in water and lemon juice and whizzed until smooth with the other ingredients, acting as an emulsifier and giving the sauce body in place of the traditional egg yolks and large quantity of butter, for a savings of more than 50 grams of fat (mostly saturated) and about 450 calories!
Lightened Lemon Basil Hollandaise Sauce
1/4 cup water or milk
1 to 2 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 slice of white sandwich bread, torn into pieces, or about 3/4 cup fresh bread crumbs
1/4 cup butter, melted
Salt to taste
2-3 fresh basil leaves
Pour water and lemon juice over the bread crumbs; let stand for about 5 minutes until the bread absorbs all the liquid and becomes mushy. In a blender or food processor, mix the soaked bread until it turns into a paste. With the motor running, drizzle in warm melted butter as thin a stream as possible and process until mixture thickens slightly. Taste and add salt if necessary. Add basil leaves and pulse a few times until the basil is chopped and incorporated.
This is what full-fat hollandaise looks like after cooling in the fridge - it has the spreadable consistency of frosting and the texture of soft, whipped butter. (When it has congealed the fat content becomes obvious.)
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April 16 2008 | eggs and seafood and vegetarian | 4 Comments »
And finally, a new website! And it only took me a year or so. (Seriously. Remember my old domain actually ran through its lifetime and extinguished itself while waiting for me to set it up already?) So, yay me. I think I may have pulled something trying to pat myself on the back.
Mike’s playing a show up in Canmore tonight, and so seeing as a) it’s winter, and b) snowy, and c) he gets so nervous before a gig that he never eats, and if they do get a free food and booze tab, you can guess which category it’s spent on, I decided to feed him proper before sending him off this afternoon.
Now, you’d think by the ripe old age of somewhere between 30 and 40, I might have learned that when working with hot peppers, rubber gloves are a good idea. I’m pretty sure I mentioned that fact in the article I just finished for City Palate. In fact, I deliberated including it or not, thinking the advice was just too obvious. And yet each and every time I work with fresh hot peppers, I think I’m somehow exempt from this rule; that if I work fast and wash my hands immediately, the capsaicin isn’t going to have time to seep into my dried-out skin to burn me all night long. (And then after spending all evening slathering tingly-cool peppermint foot lotion on my hands, I’m not going to be reminded again of my mistake when I take my contacts out.)
Thai Green Curry with Tomatoes, Spinach and Shrimp
2 fresh jalapeño or bird’s eye chiles, seeded and chopped
1 stalk lemongrass, the meaty parts chopped
a handful of fresh cilantro
3 cloves garlic, peeled and cut into chunks
2 Tbsp. lime juice
1 Tbsp. canola oil
1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger, or about a 1” knob, cut into chunks
Canola, olive or sesame oil, for cooking
1/2 pint cherry or strawberry tomatoes, halved
1/2 can light or regular coconut milk
1 lb. large raw shrimp or prawns, peeled with the tails left on
1/2 bag of pre-washed baby spinach leaves, torn into pieces
salt, to taste
steamed rice, to serve over
Combine the jalapeño peppers, lemongrass, cilantro, garlic, lime juice, oil and ginger in a blender and pulse until you have a sort of paste.
Add a drizzle of oil to a large skillet and set it over medium-high heat. Add the tomatoes and cook for a few minutes, until they release some of their juices and start to brown and soften. Add about half of the green spice paste and cook for another minute. (The rest can be set on the table as a condiment, kept in the fridge or frozen for another meal.)
Pour in the coconut milk and bring to a simmer. Cook for a minute or two, to allow it to thicken a bit. Add the shrimp and spinach and cook for about 2 minutes, until the spinach wilts and the shrimp turn opaque. Remove the pan from the heat immediately, so that you don’t overcook the shrimp. Season with salt to taste and serve immediately over rice. Serves 4.
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January 19 2008 | one dish and seafood and vegetarian | 3 Comments »
You would think, given that this website acts as a sort of mealtime confessional, I may be tempted to advise the world that I served my family a wonderfully balanced, seasonal meal tonight. Given the fact that W and I spent most of the afternoon at a playdate, perhaps I should have been more on the ball, stopping to buy a frozen steak on the way home before running for my bottle of valium. (Did you know that the term mother’s little helper referred to valium? Or executive excedrine among corporate types and dolls in the ’60s novel Valley of the Dolls. From 1969 to 1982 it was the nation’s most prescribed drug, earning La Roche pharmaceutical $600 million annually. In 1978, nearly 2.3 billion tabs of valium were downed. Perhaps I’m in the wrong business.)
So at 6 o’clock the news came on, and suddenly we were all starving and started rummaging through the fridge and freezer in search of some form of dinner. To deflect some less-healthy filler Mike grabbed to ease his stomach rumbling while we figured it out, I opened a jar of the antipasto we made at Christmas, and a box of Wheat Thins. We make a giant pot of antipasto every year, eat more than our fill of it, and then don’t have the urge to eat antipasto until November rolls around again. This is the recipe my Grandma and great aunts made, from the Uncommon Cookbook, published as a fundraiser by The Art Gallery of Windsor. It is the only antipasto that works for me - every other variety tastes weird.
I’d like to know who first thought to combine tuna, ketchup, cauliflower and shrimp. Perhaps some stressed-out mom trying to come up with dinner out of the sad contents of her fridge? So after the frenzy had calmed down, most of the jar was gone, along with half the box of Wheat Thins. (For some reason I love those things. Could be the quantity of sugar they contain.) We determined that we had probably eaten enough to count as dinner, calorie-wise, and so had some oranges and chunks of dark chocolate and called dinner out of the way.
And we did, by the way, feed W a normal dinner. (Thank any gods out there for poached eggs on toast.)
Antipasto
Antipasto isn’t hard, but does require a lot of chopping. Don’t be tempted to use a food processor - the texture just won’t be the same. This recipe will make a lot. It freezes well, and people are always grateful to be on the receiving end of a jar.
1/2-1 cup olive or canola oil, or half of each
1 small head cauliflower, separated into small florets
1 large or 2 medium purple onions, peeled and chopped
2 - 375 mL cans or jars pitted, sliced black olives
2 - 375 mL cans or jars manzanilla olives, sliced
2 small red or yellow bell peppers, seeded and chopped (the original recipe calls for green peppers, but I’m not a fan)
3 - 106 g cans small cocktail shrimp, or an equivalent amount of frozen shrimp (you can even use larger ones and chop them up)
3 cans tuna in water, drained
3 1/2 cups ketchup
1 cup white vinegar
2 - 10 oz. (284 mL) cans mushroom slices or pieces, drained
In a very large pot, combine the oil, cauliflower, onions and olives and bring it all to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring often, for 5 minutes. (This is how it’s worded in the original book - it sounds as if the veg are boiling in oil, but really the ratio is so great that it’s a lot of cauliflower, onions and olives sort of glistening in the oil - it’s hard to tell if it’s actually “boiling”, so just make sure it’s cooking to the point where any juices you see are bubbling.)
Add the remaining ingredients and heat just until it boils. If you are using jars, pour the hot antipasto into hot, sterilized jars; seal and cool. Otherwise, remove the pot from the heat and let the antipasto cool, then transfer to containers to store in the fridge or freeze.
Makes about 4 L.
Contents per 1/4 cup: 76 calories, 3.5 g fat (0.5 g saturated fat, 2.6 g monounsaturated fat, 0.4 g polyunsaturated fat), 3.6 g protein, 8.3 g carbohydrates, 8.7 mg cholesterol, 1.2 g fiber.
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January 17 2008 | appetizers and seafood and snacks | 2 Comments »
Does this count as a same-day post? I haven’t been to bed yet. I don’t want to slip up and miss a day before January is even finished. I say this with the bold assumption that anyone is even going to notice. (Ha - I just noticed this thing is posting 11:50, when it’s actually 12:50. So it would at least appear that I’m ahead of the game!)
I have a class on Monday at the Cookbook Company, which I’ve been trying to plan today. The topic: healthy everyday meals. Although it’s a ridiculously broad subject, for some reason everything I come up with seems so obvious.
So one of my favorites, that seems to be different and popular and I’ve had several email requests for since mentioning it on the radio, is this curried shrimp I make using marmalade and peanut butter. It sounds reminiscent of those meatballs you make with ketchup and grape jelly, or chicken baked in Coca Cola. But really, it’s not that trashy. And I have a bunch of homemade marmalade in the fridge I’ll tell you about when it’s not 1 o’clock in the morning.
Curried Peanut Shrimp
Throw the shrimp and marinade into a baggie in the morning and you’ll have dinner almost ready when you come home from work. Sometimes I simmer the whole lot, sauce and all, in a large sauté pan and serve it over rice to catch the sauce.
1/4 cup orange marmalade
1/4 cup orange juice
2 Tbsp-1/4 cup peanut butter
1 tsp. curry paste
1 tsp. sesame or canola oil
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp. chili sauce or sambal olek
1/4 tsp. salt
Pinch red pepper flakes
1/2 lb. large shrimp, peeled and deveined, with the tails left on
Combine everything but the shrimp in a bowl or jar and whisk or shake until smooth. Pour over the shrimp in a container or zip lock bag and marinate in the fridge for an hour or overnight.
When ready to cook, spray a large nonstick sauté pan with nonstick spray and set over medium heat. Add the shrimp and cook for a few minutes on each side, just until they turn pink. (If you want, you could thread the shrimp onto bamboo skewers that have been soaked in water. Place on a grill rack or broiler pan that has been sprayed with nonstick spray and cook for about 3 minutes on each side.) Simmer the reserved marinade in a small saucepan for a few minutes and serve alongside the shrimp for dipping. Serves 4.
Per serving: 159 calories, 5 g total fat (0.8 g saturated fat, 1.8 g monounsaturated fat, 1.8 g polyunsaturated fat), 13.2 g protein, 16.5 g carbohydrate, 86.2 mg cholesterol, 0.4 g fiber. 27% calories from fat.
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January 16 2008 | seafood and vegetarian | 1 Comment »
Since I was 15 and hung out at Earls with my friend J, who had a real job as a busgirl there, back in the day of the giant papier-mâché parrots and green and white umbrellas and Mocha Kahlúa Pie, I have been a fan of their Hot Chicken Caesar Salad. That is, until I discovered that (not really suprisingly) one contains 1120 calories and 77 grams of fat. Only 12 saturated, but still… and then there’s the 1531 mg of sodium. So. I figure for that price, I might as well get a burger and fries out of the deal.
