Hamburgers.

I love hamburgers.

No. You LIKE hamburgers. But me? I LOVE hamburgers. I love how despite the many different foods I have tried and loved, I always come back to the noble hamburger.

A few nights ago, I picked up the already made sirloin burgers from Cumbraes, and we had purchased some of the skinny buns that we have grown so fond of.

G cooked some mushrooms and onions (you can see them hiding under the tomato slice on the far side), and we used some of the specialty aged cheddar cheese that we got at the St. Lawrence Market (Alex Farms). And to top it off and make it wonderfully wonderful? Some lovely tomato chutney!

Ah. The Baxters Tomato Chutney. Sweet, slightly spicy, and amazing. It really adds some oomph to sandwiches.

This morning, I made a fried egg sandwich much like the hamburger... just flatter...

The buns don't look appetizing, but they totally are. They are like the President's Choice one, but they are actually smaller in diameter, which makes them far more appealing. We toast them under the broiler, and they turn out amazingly.

Provence.

I have never been to Provence, but I am really taken by the food of that region. I had some of the best food I have ever had while in the Loire Valley in France, and I am so keen to go back again.

While in Vancouver, I picked up the Cooking School Provence book and fell in love.

As soon as I could, I made the Tomates Farcies recipe with Riz Pilaf. Lovely.

I modified the tomato recipe a little bit, and it was delicious! The tomatoes were very watery, though, and despite draining them, they really gave off a ton of water when baking. I was going for firm and less ripe, but I think I went too far on the less ripe side...

Anyway, thank goodness for this cookbook. I can't wait to keep making things from it. It's such a lovely book, with really amazing photos and ideas. It's one of the few cookbooks that I have seen in a long time that I thought that I would eat almost every recipe in the book!!!

Tomates Farcies
(modified from Cooking School Provence)

4 large, firm tomatoes
salt
1 tbspn olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
3 sprigs of curly leaf parsley
4 leaves of fresh basil
1 bay leaf
.5 pound of extra lean ground beef
1 medium egg

1. Cut a lid from the tomato. Scoop out the insides, and discard as much of the seeds you can but keep the innards. Sprinkle with salt and place upside down in a colander to let drain.

2. Preheat oven to 400C. Oil on gratin dish that is big enough for your tomatoes.

3. Cook the ground beef with lots of salt and pepper. Set aside. Add olive oil if necessary and brown the onion until softened. Add garlic, parsley, bay leaf, and basil. Stir. Add the reserved tomato. Cook for 5 minutes or so. Add the meat and cook for another 5 minutes or so. Remove from the heat to cool.

4. Discard the bay leaf. Whisk the egg lightly and add to the meat mixture. Season with salt and pepper.

5. Stuff the tomatoes, leaving some room at the top, and put them in the gratin dish.

6. Put the lids on and cover the pan in foil. Bake for one hour. Let cool.

ENJOY!

When the Cat's Away...

G is on a business trip, so it's time for pork. We don't have pork in the house as a general rule because G is Jewish, but when she's away the cat plays with pork. Or something.

After my last failed attempt at making spaghetti carbonara, I vowed that I would make it again, but so far I haven't. Until now.

I was browsing through my cookbooks last night, and ran across Jamie Oliver's 'Classic Penne Carbonara' in Happy Days with the Naked Chef. It sounded very straightforward, but like it made way too much. So I went to the store and bought the ingredients, and decided that I would give it a try today. And I did.

And it was EXCELLENT!!!

Oh yeah. No scrambled egg, just smooth creamy sauce and tasty bacon.

The recipe is simple, and I do recommend it...

Classic Penne Carbonara
(adapted from Happy Days with the Naked Chef)

.5 pound dried penne
3 slices of streaky smoked bacon
2.5 egg yolks
3.5 tbspns whipped cream
2 oz grated parmesan
freshly ground pepper

Cook the penne until it's al dente. Cook the bacon slowly, draining the fat as you go. Stir the egg yolks, cream and half the cheese in a small bowl. When cooked, drain the pasta into a bowl. Stir in the bacon and cheese/egg mixture. Toss like sald. Add pepper and cheese.

ENJOY!

Happy Canada Day!!!

With Canada Day falling on a Tuesday, I was given the opportunity to do some work from home yesterday and not go into the office. Score! Four day weekends rule. Especially when they are on the tail end of a conference away. Canada Day rules. We celebrated Canada Day by continuing the remodel of our bathroom (!) and going to a Toronto FC soccer game. It's been soccer mania around here with the Euro Cup (what happened to my beloved England?!)

But on the Monday, while waiting for the cable guy and busily answering work emails, I decided to make myself some lunch. Wanting Kraft Dinner, but having none to hand, I decided to make some mac from scratch. with sausages



(I feel this photo is very Orangette. Go me.)

We had some all beef sausages in the freezer, and I thawed out two and put them sliced up under the broiler. I then threw the rest together, and had a thoroughly enjoyable lunch for one.

Quick and Easy Mac

1. Boil some gluten-free (or other) pasta until it's al dente.

2. Put the sausages sliced under the broiler.

3. Once the pasta is finished, drain lightly, and then put back in the pan. Mix in some milk and a medley of cheeses. I used an aged cheddar, parmesan, and monterey jack. Let the starch from the gf pasta thicken it. Enjoy!

Breakfast in Vancouver...

I ate an amazing sandwich for breakfast while in Vancouver...

A fresh bagel with egg, cheese, and smoked meat. Oh yeah. It's maybe weird, but it's very good...

It was really nice on the inside...


Yeah, it was so amazing. I really enjoyed it, as did G. We had a great time. Our sandwich location had an amazing view...

Yeah. It's so beautiful. The weather was gorgeous. The conference was very informative. I met a lot of people, and I had a brilliant time. I could totally live there. If I didn't live here. But I do. So there.

(I have posted a few things tonight... keep going for amazing Indian food!)

Lift Off!

We had lunch at a restaurant in (near?) Stanley Park on Saturday, after attending the conference. The restaurant was called Lift and is right on the water.

Because it was such a beautiful day, we opted to sit out on the patio. And because it was Vancouver, we opted to order fish and chips.

Oh baby!

Lightly fried Halibut served with delish pomme frites, tartar sauce and coleslaw. And a cute bunch of condiments... Don't believe me? I warned you!

Ahhhh. Little pots of ketchup and some malt vinegar.

And cocktails... the photo of me below is at this restaurant, where I had a little bubbly. G ordered a martini...



It was so fantastic... The view was beautiful... I can show you... I have the technology...



Vancouver is so ugly. Blech. (tee hee.)

Boneta Loves You Indeed.

G had a business dinner that I was invited to join while in Vancouver, so I could not take photos, though after having met the people we dined with, I don't think they would have cared! But one doesn't know that when going into a situation, so on the Friday night I did not take pictures of the food, despite the earth-shattering goodness of the dinner.

Where did we go? Boneta in Gastown. Wow. The food was absolutely amazing. I am not going to go into what everyone ordered, but I will hit the highlights...

G had another carpaccio, this time made of bison, and rocking the house. Really nice. For my main, I had the roasted lamb loin with ratatouille (rat patootie), spinach, lamb cheek cappelletti, and rosemary jus. It was delicious! The cappelletti was very tender and the lamb cheek (shredded) inside was so savory! The cheek was very tender and very very rich. The loin was perfectly cooked (not too rare, but pink enough to still be tender) and the ratatouille was served on top of the spinach, which ensured that I ate the spinach because it made the whole lot taste lovely.

For dessert, I had the caramel bavaroise with breton sable, caramelised apple and vanilla parfait. You will notice that out of all the heavy dinners we had, this was the only place I had dessert. That happened for a couple of reasons... one) everyone else was ordering and two) the portions weren't huge and I was in the mood for something sweet.

The meal was amazing and the conversation delightful. I entered the evening with a mind-numbing migraine, and after a couple of "two twenty twos" so kindly offered by our guest, I left the restaurant headache free. Needless to say, I went to the pharmacy the next day and got my own. (These miracle pills are over the counter aspirin, caffeine and codeine pills. Amazing. Go Canada.)

While at dinner, we had a celebrity sighting... Gil Bellows was there. He was at a birthday party, it appeared, and seemed in good spirits. I really enjoyed the dinner and would go back there in a second. It's a great place and really comfortable. Oh, and all the waitresses had lovely tattoos. Cool.

Food and Wine Recommends...

I really wanted to try "Italian Kitchen"... I had read about it in Food and Wine magazine, I love Italian food, and I just thought it sounded amazing. But I landed in Vancouver with a killer headache, and after a day of conferencing, I felt completely spent on Thursday (our only available night for this restaurant). I put on jeans and my mary jane crocs (that I love love love) and a cozy shirt, and we set out to do something low key.

And then we walked by the Italian Kitchen. And we had to stop and go in and eat dinner. And I felt underdressed. And I didn't have my camera. And I enjoyed every single delicious bite of my food.

So, I am going to tell you about it, even though I can't show it to you.

First, we started with a lovely order of the prosciutto bruschetta. It is served on their pizza crust, and was really simple and delicious. G ordered the beef tenderloin carpaccio with gorgonzola polenta... really really nice. The carpaccio was wafer thin and had a beautiful wedge of parmesan with it. The polenta was creamy and a lovely counter to the carpaccio.

For our main courses, we both ordered the handmade gnocchi with wild mushrooms. Wow. The gnocchi were really heavenly, thick and nicely matched by the fantastically creamy goat cheese. The wild mushrooms were amazing, softly sauteed and buttery. I really really enjoyed my dinner and highly recommend this restaurant to anyone looking for an amazing dinner in a comfortable setting. I was thrilled to no end to be eating there!

The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of

I had to go to Vancouver for a conference. It's a several day affair, and I was on the planning committee, so I needed to be there bright and early to help with the set up. G was planning on going to Vancouver sometime in June, and so she decided to go the same time as me, so that we could travel together.

Vancouver offered many tasty meals to us last week. We had been talking about having fancy Indian food, and many people had recommended Vij's to us, so our first night in Vancouver, we grabbed a cab and headed out for a late dinner...

We'd been warned that at Vij's you had to wait for a table. What we were surprised about was that they brought around food the entire time. Delicious food. (And one thing that I think may have had crickets in it, but I am trying not to think about that too much...) So we snacked on cassava fries, chappati's, etc., and had a drink and chit-chatted. Very pleasant.

We also perused the menu. And G of course honed in on two things, shrimp and lamb. I ixnayed the shrimpay but said HELLO to the lamb. So we pretty much narrowed down the menu to a few (maybe too many) choice things and waited patiently. Snacking the whole time.

We were seated after about 20 minutes, which was certainly not interminable by any stretch of the imagination. The restaurant is really modern, with a pretty casual feel despite the (much-deserved, we would discover) hype and hoo-ha.

Our waitress immediately brought us water, and G whipped out the camera and had to take a shot of it...

Ahhh... it was icy cold and wonderful!

And then we ordered. We started with some amazing appetizers (which came with naan).

First up was paneer, eggplant and green bean in a tamarind curry. The paneer was so amazing. Really soft but firm, and just filled with the curry flavour...

It came with some really lovely chappati's that had green onion or something in them. They were grilled and had a really nice, slightly charred taste.

We moved from there to the local mushrooms in creamy potato curry, which was served on a bed of brown rice. Wowie.

I love the bowl, and the curry. I absolutely love curry, love mushrooms, love rice, and loved every mouthful of this dish. It was subtle in it's spice, but really tremendous.

G ordered one spoon of the dungeness crab in coconut and cilantro with candied beets. She said it was amazing, but the beets were HOT! The first bite was very sweet, and then the hot just hit you in the mouth on the finish. Really tasty...


Phew. You can see, we had already fallen in love with the place.

Then came the mains... first up was a chicken dish... Specialty chicken breast in clove, garlic and tomato curry with red bell peppers and shallots in yogurt masala. This was really amazing. The chicken breast was grilled and spiced, and lying on top of the dish, and the curry had pieces of chicken thigh that was amazingly tender and flavourful...

It was so wonderful... I really enjoyed the lightness of the curry, and the grilled chicken was just amazing...

It also came with naan...


And you can see the basmati peeking in the corner of that photo...

We also ordered the house specialty, the Wine marinated lamb popsicles in fenugreek cream curry on turmeric spinach potatoes.

Oh. My. G-d. This is a must eat dish. It's beyond amazing. I bought the Vij's Cookbook JUST so that I can make this recipe at home. It's just unlike anything I have ever tasted...


I mean, honestly. Wow. The sauce is just so rich and light and creamy, with the potatoes (which you can't really see, but trust me, they're in there) were tender and flavourful. The grilled lamb was absolutely perfectly cooked with hardly any game-y flavour. I hope when I try this out at home, it turns out a tenth as good as this... I will let you know.

In addition to all the grub above, I had a beer and G had a ginger lemon drink. Our bill came out to around $75, which was a steal for the amazingness of the whole dinner. I couldn't get over how amazing it was... we raved about it everywhere we went.

But it was just the first of many great dinners. Stay tuned....

Vancouver... I Salute You!

I just returned home from a conference in Vancouver, and wow, what can be said? Vancouver? It totally doesn't suck. What a glorious time, and lots of food to boot... coming soon....

A Few Dinners.

We have had a few interesting -ish meals this past week. We tried Good View Restaurant for Chinese takeaway the other night. It was one of those instances where you aren't sure what to order, so you just get a bunch of things. Here's a look at my plate about four bites into it:

We ordered chicken fried rice, tingly beef and black bean, spicy chicken, egg foo young (which was a GIANT omelet), some fried dumplings, and a noodle dish that only G ate. The food was really pretty good, not crazily expensive, and just fine.

We have been having lots of asparagus since it's in season right now, so here's a dish utilizing the asparagus. Or it would have done, had I not roasted it for so long it carmelized, which is nice in a way, but not really. We bought a spatchcocked chicken from Cumbrae's that was marinating away in piri piri sauce, and I made a potato salad. Really good.


The potato salad was a first try for me. Here's a close-up:

I used a few small new potatoes, boiled them until they were softish. While hot, I mixed them with some dijon and olive oil that I blended with salt and pepper and lemon juice. I then added fresh chopped parsley and thinly sliced red onion that had been soaked in cold water for about 30 minutes. I really enjoyed it. I think it was too creamy for G, but I really liked it.

Friday's dinner. Well. It just wasn't right. G wanted to try to make scallops. Now you may have noticed that there is a lack of all things fishy on this blog, and that's because I am really not keen. Really. Not keen. At all. But G wanted to try scallops, and so I saw a recipe in delicious. magazine that we decided to try. It sounded good. Scallops, chickpeas, lemon. But no. It wasn't good. This was my plate.


I ate one and a half scallops, a couple of the asparagus that was too undercooked, and a few chickpeas. Then I threw it away and made a grilled cheese sandwich. Yummy. It's not that G's food was bad. It was just too many things not working on one plate. So scallops, at least for the time being, are better left to the professionals.

(please note that I have a few new entries, so keep scrolling down...)

Cat in the Box.

He loves to hide. Only his tail gives his secret hiding place away!

My villi.

The doctor and lab tech are looking at my villi. I imagine they look something like this drawing above. Who knows. During my procedures the other week, the doctor took several biopsies, some of which were of my villi. The purpose of the villi test was to see if there was any damage that would/could be caused by celiac. When I did the gluten-free trial, my stomach felt much better, but the blood work was borderline, so the doctor wanted to give it a look to see if anything else was going on... So that means looking at the villi.

I should get the results this coming week. Dietary changes are on the horizon. We'll see how it goes. It seems that if it's celiac or IBS, I have been told by several medical professionals that I appear to have a wheat intolerance (which differs from an allergy) so we will see if cutting that out makes any sort of difference. Regardless of what the GI scope and colonoscopy show, I have to do something to make my stomach less upset. I did buy some Hyland's Homeopathic Upset Stomach today. Has anyone tried this? I love their Calm's Forte, so I hope this new one works. I have taken my weight in Gravol this past two weeks, so I am looking for something a little less hardcore.

ANYWAY, let's see what happens. It seems like this has been the slowboat to diagnosis, but we are getting closer!!!

(And for those who may not have spent the last 8 months or so investigating stomach ailments, villi are little things that line the small intestines, and are responsible for food absorption, etc.  When a person has celiac, the villi become damaged, so intestinal biopsies are the final diagnostic step for concluding celiac.) 

Winfield's, not just for old people...

G's parent's love this restaurant in their old neighborhood called Winfield's. It seems to have a Greek theme, but it's one of those places with lots of stuff on the menu. G's dad wanted to have dinner, and we agreed to go somewhere in between their new house and our house. So there we were at Winfield's.

G's dad ordered the French Onion Soup. It was cheeeeeeeeesssssssssssssy.

Whoa. It was really tasty, though. Nice and beefy, lots of onion, the bread was cutable, and the cheese delightfully stringy. He seemed to enjoy it.

G's mom ordered the prime rib. I don't get prime rib, it always seems so fatty and thick and raw. I know it's supposed to be deluxe, but I have never seen an instance where prime rib made me think, 'oh yeah, that's exactly what I want!!!'. At least I don't think it has. Who can say.

Anyway... I took a photo anyway...


I don't now. This piece was incredibly fatty. G's mom wasn't too impressed.

I ordered the chicken souvlaki, which came with rice, potatoes and salad. Oh, and chicken.


There was way too much salad. But then, I am not a huge salad eater. But everything else was just fine. G had the lamb souvlaki, so it looked exactly like my plate, but with brown bits of meat instead of white bits of meat.

The price is pretty good, the servings are fine, and the food is generally okay. It's full of old people at the hour that we tend to go, but it's all okay when you have good company and nice conversation.

But that being said, I'd never likely eat there of my own will without it being related to G's parents in some manner. Not that it's bad, there's just a lot of better places that are closer to home, etc.

Vegetarian Night -- It's good (honest!)

I am in love with all of the food magazines that I read. Some months, it's a total throw-away and I find nothing that I really want to make. But then other months, pages are dogeared and grocery lists are made as I am reading.

We have been having a Vegetarian Night once a week with our friends from upstairs, and while there have been a few things I would not necessarily eat again, we've had lots of luck. But the May issue of BBC GoodFood really made me smile.

There was a recipe for Roast Veggie Moussaka with Feta that looked pretty delicious, and I was really keen to give it a go. Unfortunately, duty called and I was at work much later than I had anticipated. G stepped up and made the dinner, which turned out absolutely fantastic. I took some not so great photos, but I do what I can...



Can you see it through all the steam?! It was really pretty easy, though not particularly fast. G said that everything took longer to make then the recipe said, but... I am posting it for you anyway, because it's just so good and easy that everyone will love it...

Roast Veggie Moussaka with Feta

2 yellow peppers, cut into chunks
2 red onions, cut into wedges
2 medium courgettes, thickly sliced
1 large eggplant, cut into chunks
1 tbsp olive oil
3 oz feta
1 egg
200 ml tub Greek yogurt
700g bottle of passata
2tbsp chopped fresh oregano or 2 tsp dried

1. Heat oven to 200C. Scatter the vegetables into a large roasting roasting tin. Toss with the oil, season then roast for 25 mins until softened (actually took about 40ish minutes).
2. Break up the feta with a fork, then mix well with the egg, yogurt and seasoning. When the vegetables are ready, tip them into an ovenproof dish, then stir in the passata and oregano. Spoon over the creamy topping, turn up the oven to 220C, then bake for 20-25 mins until the filling is hot and topping is brown and bubbly. (G said that this took about 35 minutes with a quick whack under the broiler).

It's really good, and fairly easy, and a great way to get all your veg in one go! Our sauce wasn't quite as thick, and G used more feta, and it was all just a good dinner!!!!

And what WAS for dinner...

I am sitting here in a bit of post-procedure haze. The tests were fine, but I didn't stay hydrated enough over the course of the "cleansing" and so I am feeling really not-so-great today from the sedatives and everything. But, biopsies were performed and we will know what's going on in ten days. Ten days! I wanted to walk out of there with an action plan, not a 'we'll know better in ten days' lack of an action plan. But such is life, I suppose.

Anyway, I thought I would post about some of last weeks delightful meals. Last week was a bit hectic for me. It was the first one without my assistant, and it had a fair number of stressful moments, but G saw to it that we had some tasty grub...



Case in point. This delightful cheese covered plate of pasta was part of my effort to continue keeping the gluten in me in preparation for my today's tests. And I succeeded on this front. We bought some wonderful fresh pasta at the fresh pasta place at the St. Lawrence Market, along with one of their "mixed" sauces with tomato, alfredo and pesto mixed together. It was spicy and delicious! I don't know the name of that place, but it's not a proper stall, and there are a million kinds of pasta.

I also had a craving for a bean stew. Now you may ask, why in the name of G-d, when it's finally starting to be warm outside would you crave a bean stew? And I say? The stomach wants what it wants. Full stop.

This recipe came from G's Sephardi cookbook from Harare, it's quite simple. You brown the meat, cook the onion, put the beans in, some water, salt and pepper, lemon juice and you cook it until it's done. Wow. That's the best kind of cooking. And a big plate of rice to boot. Yum yum yum!

And then... dinner one night was out of this world. G's work friend had mentioned that she lived in the Polish part of Toronto, and knew of this great store to buy pierogies. G asked if she wouldn't mind picking some up for us, as our love of the pierogie is legendary. (Okay, maybe it's only legendary to us, but still, it's vast). So I came home from work around 8pm, and look what was waiting...


Pierogies and fresh fresh fresh Ontario asparagus. G sauteed some onion to put on top. It was absolutely delicious!!! I love fresh Ontario asparagus. It's so flavorful and really raises the game on what asparagus should taste like. These were fatty asparagus, but they were absolutely lovely.

So all in all, G made sure that for most of last week, we had good home-cooked meals. She's good like that. Me? I love to cook, but honestly, the thought of doing dishes just makes me want to scream and run for the covers. But the goal is to keep eating at home more than we eat out.

Now I say this as I have just made a delivery order from the Thai place around the corner. I made the order though because my new favorite comfort food when I am sick is Tom Yum Kai soup. And I have tried, but I can't seem to make it. My stomach is a little upset from the procedures this morning, and I really want that soup. So there. Tomorrow is a new day.

Welcome to My Fun Weekend.

As mentioned numerous times, my stomach gives me woe. Lots of woe. Lots and lots and lots and lots of woe. Stress, food, living, breathing, all these things seem to cause my stomach to turn on end. So, I've been going to a specialist to figure out what's going on with my stomach and what can be done so that I can go two days without taking some sort of stomach medicine. Diet is looking like the culprit (some sort of gluten/wheat thing is looking possible), and on Monday I am having some "procedures" to look inside and see what's what.

So what does that mean for the next 48 hours?


That's it! Life is sweet.

In honour of my 48 hours or so of liquids and ick, G and I went out for a big breakfast. I had to have my beloved chicken club sandwich and fries, just in case the doctor takes me off wheat on Monday. We went to Daybreak for breakfast, which is at Church and Carlton here in lovely downtown Toronto. My sandwich was lovely...



Really really good. The chicken was pounded really thin, the bread was super toasty but not too crisp, the fries were beautifully cooked, crunchy and soft at the same time. All in all, a good last lunch. Plus, the price was right at under $10, and I couldn't eat it all, which is unheard of for me. :)

So, we'll just see what happens with the stomach. I mean, I can't even begin to predict what's going to happen, but I am excited to have it checked out and to maybe be on a path to a solution. Even if it is that I need to learn to manage stress better.

AND IF THAT'S THE CASE....

Then what better thing to own than a brand spankin' new WII FIT!!!



(Yes, I am wearing Simpson's pj's.)

This is to give you an idea of the size of the Wii Fit Board. It rules. Honestly, it's just about the most fun a girl can have in her home with a plastic board and wii game console. More on that later....

Lucien. Run don't walk there for dinner tonight.

We had our foodie friends visiting from Ottawa this past weekend, and I experienced about a 6 hour window of good health after work ended on Friday night before the massive migraine moved in. Fortunately, that time was spent at Lucien.

The migraine was starting to move in, so I forgot to even bring my camera, but fortunately, our dining companions had gamely brought theirs! So we have a few photos to share.

But sorry, back to Lucien. The dinner was absolutely amazing. We've read some fairly mixed reviews, but it was voted one of the ten best restaurants last year by Toronto Life, so were game to give it a go. I am so glad we did, and I can't wait to go back.

For a starter, I began with roasted Ontario asparagus. It was amazing. Gently roasted, with a balsamic reduction and goat cheese, rolled in flax seed. I am sorry I can't give you a better description, or a photo, but believe me, it was amazingly good. G had the king crab and scallop with heirloom carrots, coconut powder, black bean, and toasted corn. She said it was amazing. Our friends ordered the grilled octopus with fingerling potato, house-made chorizo, pimento and olive. The chorizo was phenomenal. Spicy and meaty, some of the best I have ever had.

For my main, I had the fried organic hen with buttermilk croquette, creamed collards, and roast onion gravy. I will confess that I ordered this because it sounded so good in the review on Toronto Life... It was amazing...



That's a weird version, but I cut myself out of the photo (oh really? you couldn't tell?). The bit in the middle is the chicken breast which is lightly coated and fried and on amazing potato-y bread-y cake. To the right of it is the chicken leg confit with onions. That little purple onion looks quite gross, but the meal was amazing. On the other side is the greens with the buttermilk croquette. The croquette was great, when you broke into it, it was filled with buttermilk. Really really nice.

G had the Alberta bison striploin. It came out very rare, not at all medium, but the kitchen graciously took it back and browned it up...



You can sorta see it... Anyway... we had red wine. Hee hee. Really, though, G's dinner was quite nice. She greatly enjoyed it.

Our friends both ordered the pickerel with spiced chickpea, broccoli "marrow", serrano ham, and idiazabal. They said it was really nice.

The food had some molecular gastronomy touches, but wasn't over the top. Everything just had amazing layers of flavour. It was some of the best food I have had in forever.

Dessert. I don't have a picture of P & M's dessert. I don't even remember what it was, really, some sort of parfait or something.

I had the chocolate complex which is a chocolate selection from around the globe with individual items to dip the chocolate in. It was so unusual.


It was so amazing, and I just wanted to close my eyes and keep trying. Under the balsamic vinegar is an olive oil. I really enjoyed the chocolate dipped in the olive oil. Really interesting.

G had the cheese platter and she said that all in all it was good, but that she didn't have any idea what the cheeses were because they go through it so quickly.


Yep. That's a bunch of cheese.

Really a great dinner, and I totally enjoyed every second of it. G raved, as well and P&M seemed a-okay with it all.

All in all, for the price, the restaurant was a complete steal. I can't wait to go back.

Random.

Life has been a bit hectic of late. My assistant at work gave her notice (and her last day was yesterday), so there's been an enormous amount of stress at work that has led to me being quite headachey and really fairly immobile when not at the office. Which doesn't lend well to keeping up with a blog, a relationship, fitness, or life.

But, we've spent a lovely day playing with our new Wii Fit (which rules!), reading magazines, watching soccer, and going to the St. Lawrence market this morning. Last weekend, we had friends over, and I was sick the entire time AND it rained. Double krap.

Anyway, here's a few things I have been meaning to post about, just lying around in their "post me" folders on my desktop.

Late nights have led to quickie dinners. The other night, a pasta with chili and oil... really a favorite of mine.

How can you not want to eat that big ol' lovely bowl of pasta. (This was a gluten-free, for those keeping track. Since I mentioned it, my tests are in a week, so hopefully we will have some decisions made on the stomach at that point... of course, I will let you know!)

I don't know if you have food cravings like this, but I knew that the only thing I really wanted to have for dinner was tzatziki I mean, that was the taste I wanted, with some sort of red meat and rice. So on my way home from work, I stopped in at Cumbrae's and bought some beautiful kabobs and tzatziki!



Yum yum yum. Simple but satisfying.  No sauce in that pic, but it was truly the reason for the season.

I had been told that Hair of the Dog had a lovely brunch, and looking for something rich and satisfying on a cool Sunday morning, G and I wandered in for a taste. 

I had this 'thing'. I don't know how else to describe it, though I am sure it was described differently on the menu. It was a scalloped potato, ham, veg, cheese, eggs, hollandaise, all dumped in a bowl.

Don't believe me?



See? I told you so! It wasn't bad, it just... well, it just tasted like a big ass bowl of too many different types of food. I wouldn't order it again. But I left full and geared for our long walk up to the Cookbook Store to spend my raise.

Good times. I love the Cookbook Store.

So yeah, just a bunch of random stuff.

Italian Gluten-Free Pasta.

We went to the Grande Cheese Factory and had a quick whirl through the pasta section.

They had some Italian brands of gluten-free pasta, so we picked up a bag of Farabella Sapori Della Majella Pasta. It's corn and rice based, and really had a different nature from the regular rice pasta that we can buy at the grocery store. The pasta cooked up very nicely, really tender, really delicious. Even G liked it, so good times on that front.

We cooked the pasta, stirred in a little vodka sauce, grilled chicken breast, freshly grated parmesan...

I highly recommend it. It's definitely more expensive than the stuff at the store, it cost $4.50 or something, but it didn't give me heartburn, which most rice pastas seem to. It's a keeper save for one strange thing...

It made a ton, and it's very filling, so we had leftovers for lunch. Always good because it's so hard to eat non-gluten things when I am at work... Anyway, I heated up the leftovers and sat down to eat. It has a very familiar taste... corn tortillas! The flavour was very similar to the corn tortillas taste in enchiladas. It wasn't unpleasant, it just really would have benefited from more sauce in the leftovers.

All in all though, really good. We bought a few different sorts of gluten-free pasta and will be trying them out over the next couple of weeks... lots to report as each item is tried and tested. I'll keep you posted!!!

One Pot, Many Plates.

I made a great dinner tonight. No. Seriously. Really good. Don't believe me? See this weird shot for yourself...


I found this recipe in Food & Wine magazine (March 2008) for Chicken Goulash with Biscuit Dumplings. The recipe seemed really straightforward, and we had almost everything required to make it, so I thought, why not?

Wow.

It was really rich, and one of the first times I have ever made anything from a magazine that had a sauce that looked as rich as the picture!



The sauce was really rich, the chicken was soft and tender, and the biscuits, well, were my first ever and pretty darn good. Now I know this probably doesn't seem like the most springtime meal, but I do think that this might constitute a do-over.

I halved the recipe and made a few changes... see below:

1 pound skinless boneless chicken thigh, cut into 1-inch pieces
salt/pepper
3/4 cup flour, plus more for dredging the chicken
2.5 tbspns cold butter
olive oil
1 tspn baking powder
1.25 cups of chicken stock
1/2 cup sour cream
1 onion diced mid-sized1/2 red bell pepper diced mid-sized
1 garlic glove, minced
1 tbspn Hungarian paprika
.5 tspn thyme

Preheat oven to 425. Season chicken and dredge in flour. Get a large skillet that can go in the oven and fry the chicken, turning only once so it gets good and brown. Put on a plate.

In a food processor (we have an amazing Braun hand-mixer and food processor), you mix the flour, baking powder, salt and pepper, then add the butter a little at a time, pulsing. Then you add in 1/4 cup of stock with 1/4 cup of sour cream that you've mixed in a little bowl.

You add the onion, bell pepper, and garlic to a skillet and the cook until soft. Return the chicken to the pan, stir in the paprika, war, then add remaining stock, 1/4 sour cream and stir until smooth. Add the thyme and bring to a boil.

Scoop the biscuit batter into little mounds on top of the chicken. Put in the oven and cook for 20 minutes. Put under broiler for 2 minutes and let them brown up. ENJOY!!!!

Honestly, this was absolutely amazing. I enjoyed it no end. And it's pretty fast, an easy clean-up, and so tasty, everyone will love you for it!!!

Stomach -- How's Yours?

I have received a few comments asking about my stomach... well... we're in a holding pattern. The doctor said the blood-work was inconclusive and we needed to move forward with the GI Scope and colonoscopy. Blech. I don't want to and haven't quite decided if I am going to. In order to do these tests, I have to be eating gluten, so I am eating it here and there. I want the tests to be accurate. Blech. Did I already say that?

I am really not sure what to do. The doctor says we need to go through all the channels and rule everything serious out, but since I have had these problems since I was a kid, I would think that I would be dead if it was something serious.


But whatever. The tests are the first of June, if I do them, and until then, it's a mix of gluten-free and gluten-heavy, and we'll just sort it out at that point. Blech. Did I mention that?

Delicious Homemade Italian Food.

Discovering a new restaurant in your own (expanded) neighborhood is a wonderful thing. Discovering that it has wonderful handmade Italian food while your in the midst of a gluten-free trial? Murder. But exceptions are made for everything, so we invited G's parents there for a pre-Passover dinner. Where's there? Ohhhhh... it's here. It's called Romagna Mia, and it's near Jarvis and Front. The menu is amazing, the pastas are home-made, and the servers are good fun. But the food... oh! The food! Our main courses were fantastic... G ordered the risotto in pheasant broth.
It was so rich, and creamy. The parsley/tomato is resting on a parmesan crisp bowl. To be honest, and I know this is a bit sacrilege coming from me, but it was almost too rich. But really really nice.

G's mom ordered a very nice lamb chops with mashed potato. It seemed an odd choice, really, but the stomach wants what it wants, eh?

The sauce it was in was really lovely, deep and lamb-y. The meat was slightly underdone for my taste, but the mash was super creamy and lovely. It's hard to go wrong with well seasoned grilled meat and creamy mashed potato.

Now I know what you are thinking, I raved about the pasta and no one's ordered the pasta... well no worries. I ordered pasta. And G's Dad ordered pasta. See?

This pasta is called strozapretti, or Strangle the Priest, and is a fresh made pasta with sausage ragu, swiss chard and parmesan. G had raved about this from her lunch there a few days ago, and she was not exaggerating. The pasta was amazing. The greens just add a little bit of peppery flavour, and they weren't overpowering at all. Lovely.

G's dad ordered the lasagna...we are always a little anxious when we go out for dinner with G's dad. He's very picky, but he seemed to really enjoy dinner.

Look at that good looking lasagna! The waiter said that it's one of their most popular dishes. It has a rich bechamel, and the meat was really soft and delicious. G's dad said it needed more cheese, was given a whack of parmesan, and was a happy man.

Which made for a happy table of diners.

I highly recommend Romagna Mia. Go there, but on Friday nights, make a reservation!!!

Engage!

That's me on the Enterprise. And it totally ruled.

This is a picture of a picture, so forgive the quality.