November 15, 2017
Once fall arrives soup season begins in my kitchen. I make a soup in a large le Creuset pot and then store it in 2-3 mason jars in the fridge so it’s ready to warm up or play with as I wish. Lentil soups are regulars here and I usually mix 2-3 types of lentils together to make it more interesting. Soup for me is second nature and I don ‘t need a recipe to... View Article
November 13, 2017
A fragrant dish of delicious herb-roasted potatoes is always a welcome sight at dinner and this is an easy way to make them. The secret to this recipe is steaming the potatoes until partially cooked before roasting. You can do this step earlier in the day and finish the roasting before dinner. Use whatever herbs you have available fresh but potatoes and rosemary is a classic combination, you can’t go wrong with that. I use... View Article
September 9, 2017
Tomatoes are ripe and juicy now and one fun thing to make with them is tomato water. Making tomato water became trendy a while back but I am slow to jump on the bandwagon. However, we had a flavour packed chilled tomato water soup at a recent multi course dinner at the #chefmeetsBCgrape that inspired me to make this soup now. To make tomato water you blend ripe, juicy tomatoes with basil, garlic, shallots and... View Article
September 1, 2017
Sleepless nights are great for leafing through cookbooks and last night in the wee hours of the morning I got up and picked up Yotam Ottolenghi cookbook “Plenty” off my cookbooks shelves. I had to laugh because I saw that I had tagged almost every page with a sticker meaning there is a recipe that I would like to try. Practically the entire book was tagged. This morning I checked the fridge to see what... View Article
July 19, 2017
Lentils are versatile and I use them all year, for soups and stews in the winter and salads in the summer. I often have cooked lentils in the fridge to pull out on the spur of the moment to make a lunch or dinner salad. In this salad I used leftover beets and carrots from my new sous vide experiment, more on that later, but you can make this without a sous vide by boiling... View Article
July 2, 2017
This spring was not a good season for artichokes locally. I barely saw an artichoke once or twice at the local grocery store and nothing at the markets. That’s unfortunate because I love cooking with them. On my last trip to the store though I found a few reasonable looking specimen and thought I’d take them. Instead of cooking the artichokes whole, I cut the outer leaves down almost to the heart and then into... View Article
June 26, 2017
So I had the pickled beets from another recipe and wanted to use them with the rest of the Quinoa that I had cooked the day before. Since I sliced the beets very thin I thought they would be good as carpaccio layer under the quinoa, and then topped it with roasted asparagus and beautiful green Onion I got at the market the other day. I wasn’t quite sure how to plate it so tried... View Article
June 22, 2017
Just to vary the theme a bit from pasta and potato salads I thought I’d pull out the quinoa from the pantry and see what I can do with it. I had the Bob’s red Mill tri-coloured quinoa variety, meaning red, white and black little grains (seeds, actually) and I thought they’d make a nice background for roasted cauliflower. Since the weather improved here (not by much), lighter dishes are appropriate and this salad-like plate... View Article
June 10, 2017
My trip to the local market today did not yield much. A couple of bunches of garlic scapes, a few small new carrots and local walnuts was almost all there was. However, thanks to our local professional forager Scott Moran I also got wild watercress, cattails all peeled and ready to use and a pound or so of wild morel mushrooms. I know what to do with the morels and wild watercress, check upcoming posts.... View Article
June 7, 2017
Whether you cook vegetarian or not, well cooked beans from scratch are good to have in your cooking repertoire. This simple bean dish using fresh thyme from my garden is an easy way to cook them and yields a dish that has lot of flavour. True, beans are not a quick fix because they require soaking. To soak or not to soak, that is the question. I have heard and read that you can do... View Article
May 27, 2017
I may have mentioned before that I am addicted to Master Chef Australia. I am watching the 2014 season and have totally bonded with the home cooks and judges on that show. It’s a stellar season in terms of personalities and the show is so well done that I don’t miss an episode. Surprisingly, I have learned a lot from watching this and other reality TV food shows. It’s not necessarily recipes but you get... View Article
May 15, 2017
When vegetables are fresh and tender in the spring I like to combine them with lentils to make different salads. The idea here is to build a few layers of flavours and textures so every bite has a surprise. This salad is good served warm or at room temperature. Today I had crisp white baby turnips fresh from the market and thick local spring asparagus from Osoyoos in the south Okanagan. For a tangy note I... View Article
