May 20, 2018
Israeli couscous is not really a couscous. Real couscous is made with crushed grains of durum wheat and what is known as Israeli couscous are tiny little toasted pasta balls developed in Israel in the 1950s to replace rice which was then unavailable. Israeli couscous is easy to cook and good on its own or combined with other vegetables in salads or warm dishes. I like to brown the couscous in a little olive... View Article
May 18, 2018
A good lunch salad is an art and takes a little imagination but it doesn’t have to be complicated. I was leafing through a Donna Hay cookbook last night when saw a fennel and chicken salad and decided to translate it to a vegetarian version and change the dressing. I liked the croutons idea so went with that. The fennel has to be sliced thinly, like they do in Italy, and then marinated for... View Article
April 17, 2018
So, we just returned from 4 months of travel, two of which were in South America. I can’t even begin to tell you how much fun, interesting and educational this experience was. I wrote about the trip as we went along but there is so much more to share and since I compile these posts and images into travel book for our family, I will continue to write and document our experience. It took me... View Article
January 21, 2018
For some reason I am not cooking this year on the Mayan Riviera. Other than a couple of simple pasta dishes and grilling a few vegetables I haven’t even messed up the kitchen once. This means, since we need to eat, that we are exploring the culinary treasures of Tulum and the Mayan coast with, happy to say, a great deal of success. I have gotten to know the Tulum hotels and their respective food... 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 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
August 23, 2017
I am cleaning the fridges after having company on and off for a few weeks. There are odds and ends of beautiful local produce that I’d like to use and create room on the shelves for my next market outing, which in the summer can be every day. These delicious fritters were the result of fridge clean-up. I had a few florets of white, purple and orange cauliflower that I used as crudites (hence the... View Article
August 17, 2017
We eat a lot of corn now that it is in season, locally grown and so sweet and tender. Occasionally we have a cob or two leftover, cooked or uncooked, and that’s when I like to make corn fritters. The simplest sauce to serve with it is a tangy yogurt with dill and a sprinkling of good salt. It’s fragrant, tangy and refreshing with the fried fritters. I took the pics outside and had to... View Article
August 16, 2017
There is nothing like new potatoes lightly coated with creme fraiche and liberally sprinkled with fresh dill and it’s even better with buttery yellow beans fresh from the garden or your local farmers market. It’s one of my favourite summer dishes. I steam the potatoes whole and unpeeled, cook the beans separately in salted water (sometime in the water I steamed the potatoes in) and then combine them in a pot with either homemade or... View Article
July 31, 2017
We are lucky in the Okanagan to have winery restaurant chefs that pride themselves on creating dishes using local produce that are beautiful to look at and packed with flavour. One of my favourite is the Terrace Restaurant at Mission Hill winery. Not only the Tuscan architecture, the bell tower, the view and the beautiful wines, but the food at their Terrace restaurant is always outstanding. My gal friends were visiting from Calgary last week... 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
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
