September 4, 2019
There is nothing like a good ripe tomato in the summer. Not much needs to be done to it other then slice and place on top of a delicious slice of grilled bread, perhaps with a drizzle of olive oil, special sea salt and a twist or two of black pepper. Sometimes I brush the grilled bread lightly with a pesto, made with either basil or my garden sage that it threatening to take... View Article
July 18, 2019
Sometimes nothing but a little Asian flavour would do and on those occasions I may make salad rolls, Sushi, Asian soup or a noodle salad. Here is a quick an easy version that you can adapt to what’s in your kitchen or what is in season. Enjoy Ingredients: 8 oz rice stick noodles Toppings: 1 carrot, 3 radishes, 1 celery rib , 3 asparagus, thinly sliced on a mandolin Parsley or cilantro, whole... View Article
July 16, 2019
Butternut squash makes a delicious filling for ravioli and is classically served with brown butter and fried sage leaves. I made some changes to the tradition and combined it here with goat cheese in the filling and walnut crumb as topping for a nice crunchy element. Making the pasta at home is part of the adventure in making this recipe so I encourage you to try. I made egg pasta with 2 1/3... View Article
July 11, 2019
Hello everyone, it’s been a while. We returned from an epic four months stay in Australia and New Zealand earlier this spring and it’s been a whirl wind of activity ever since. I took a bit of a break from blogging but not from cooking and you can find all my new creations on Instagram on the links to the right (@oliveoilandlemons) and Facebook. I have been getting several request to post the recipes and... View Article
January 20, 2019
As soon as we arrived in Sydney (and even before) I was looking for cooking classes teaching Asian cuisine. I was interested in Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Malaysian, whatever I could find. From watching hours of Masterchef Australia I knew that there is a major Asian influence on Australian cooking, likely because of the proximity to South East Asia. From watching the show it seemed like almost everyone knows how to cook Asian food... View Article
November 20, 2018
In late summer I received a bag of heirloom carrots, small, delicate and so fresh that they lasted a while in my fridge. I wanted to do something special with them because they were given to me by a special family that grows produce with love and integrity (sunshine farm seeds) and I wanted to honour their work and extend it to my kitchen. I thought I’d follow the trend of cooking and... View Article
November 2, 2018
Grilling the eggplant over flames gives it a charred smoky flavour that you don’t get by roasting it in the oven. Same thing for the grilled bread. The blackened, caramelized strips on the flatbread are a good accompaniment to this eggplant dish. Having said that, if you do not have access to a grill you can still make this dish successfully roasting the eggplant in the oven and cooking the bread in a... View Article
October 22, 2018
It’s always fun to experiment and change things around a bit. For inspiration I look to cookbooks, restaurant foods, TV food shows and online sources. Recently Masterchef Australia has been a steady source of inspiration. I have been indulging in binge watching of this show for quite sometime and it forms part of my research for our upcoming four months stay in Australia and New Zealand this winter (their summer). In one of the old... View Article
September 1, 2018
Zucchini takes well to grilling and looks beautiful when cut into long ribbons and grilled. I had two yellow zucchini from a recent trip to the market and thought that grilling them would be nice tonight. The smoke has cleared over the valley after settling here for several weeks and we finally see the lake, the sky and can take a breath of fresh air for a change. So it was fun to be on... View Article
August 30, 2018
Radishes and butter is a classic French “thing” but I have never had them with za’atar before. I found this recipe in Alison Roman’s book Dining In from which I have been cooking lately and thought I’d share it here, slightly adapted to my own kitchen. Za’atar is a middle eastern spice blend made with fresh thyme, oregano, sesame seeds, sumac and salt. You can make your own or buy a good za’atar at a middle eastern... View Article
August 28, 2018
One of the recent food trends is serving vegetables in both a cooked and raw form. Sometimes the raw vegetable is quick-pickled and in this recipe it is simply served raw, thinly sliced into ribbons. The combination of crisp and roasted works particularly well with carrots and fennel but slice them very thinly on a mandoline. The beautiful heirloom carrots in this dish are from Sunshine Farm Seeds here in the Okanagan (find them at the... View Article
August 19, 2018
I had a couple of lunches at 50th parallel’s winery Block One restaurant and came back with a few food ideas to make at home. One of the items on the menu is either wings or cauliflower with Korean sauce, which was a nice way to offer a vegetarian version of a dish. I had the cauliflower and enjoyed it so here is my version of this dish. If you have summer fresh cauliflower be... View Article
