EASY SWEET PICKLES is a divine pickle recipe you can almost eat-right-away. It’s perfect when you have a craving for a sweet/sour flavor. It gives a wonderful lift to your favorite deli meat sandwich. It is positively addictive on a grilled hamburger. Add it to chopped salads. Plus the jars look so beautiful in your refrigerator. It only takes 15 minutes to make. It’s ready to go in eight hours, and it will last, refrigerated, for up to 5 days.
There as many ways of making Pollo Agrodolce as there are good Sicilian cooks. What makes this dish so delicious is the ying and the yang of sweet and sour flavours. You can add almonds or pine nuts, some basil or mint instead of parsley. You can make it with red wine and red-wine vinegar. Some recipes for this dish are spiked with saffron or anchovy, and some contain hints of orange-flower water. The constant through all of them is the cooking down of vinegar and sugar until they infuse the meat and vegetables with their combined sweet but slightly sharp flavor. With all these tantalizing options this recipe for SICILIAN BRAISED CHICKEN should be tucked in your apron pocket.
This is a stellar one dish wonder. It takes chicken pot pie to delicious new heights. The secret is roasting the ingredients before assembling the pie. You can assemble the pie (except for the crust) ahead of time. This makes it the perfect dish to entertaining. The puff pastry is courtesy the frozen food counter so how deliciously easy is that. Comfort food at its finest ROAST CHICKEN POT PIE.
Back when Good Husband and I were courting our favorite restaurant was a takeout Chinese hole-in-the-wall. The menu featured the usual dried ribs, chicken balls and stir-fries. But there was a second menu. Exquisite food prepared for a discerning clientele. Late night mah-jong players. Andy Chan was a brilliant chef. His dishes were sublime. We ordered off this menu. It influenced our cooking forever.
We hung out in Andy’s kitchen, sitting on what Andy called Chinese Chesterfield’s (rice bags). This amazing man shared his recipes and his knowledge with us. He told how he started out sweeping floors and scrubbing pots in restaurants in Hong Kong. How secretive their chefs would be. Hitting him if they thought he was watching how they cooked. Andy moved his Chinese take-out restaurant to a new location on Hill Avenue, in Regina, Saskatchewan. He called it PEARL RIVER.
More than thirty years ago our restaurant, ROXY’S BISTRO, served French cuisine with a decided Asian flavour. Today they call it fusion. We called it “Andy’ style” or chinoise. It made our reputation. We will be forever grateful to Andy Chan for dishes like “fish in the sink” and “fish cooked three times”, and for filling our courtship days with the flavours of ginger, star anise, sesame oil and exotic vegetables.
This is not a complicated recipe. The secret to irresistible, tender and succulent ribs is braising the ribs first and then the slow, low temperature cooking in the oven. You can use any type of pork ribs when you make ASIAN PORK RIBS .
“And men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper.” – William Shakespeare.
When it is a rainy January night and you live half way up a mountain one craves warming, simple comfort food. Our nephew Brett and his wife Fiona were entertaining us. What a delight to walk into their new home and smell the rich aroma of dinner cooking. Perfectly grilled lamb sausages served on mashed potatoes with a fresh tomato sauce. A supper so delicious I repeated a slightly different version on this dreary winter day.
This recipe is composed of several parts. Each quite simple, but the sum total of their parts is an outstanding dish perfect for a family supper or casual entertaining. You can vary the recipe by your choice of sausages. We are fortunate that our local Ladner village grocery store, Budget Foods, carries several varieties of Italian pork sausages from A. BOSA (a class act Italian grocery store in Vancouver).
Polenta is a staple of northern Italy and its hearty character is best accented by the robust flavours of the savory ragout. SAUSAGES WITH TOMATO-OLIVE RAGOUT AND POLENTA is indeed nourishment which is called supper.
Hold a plump, silk-skinned Meyer lemon in your hand.
Caress it.
Close you eyes and breathe its intoxicating perfume.
Imagine its sweet tart taste of honey and thyme on your tongue.
A Mother’s Day gift from my son this sturdy little tree spent the summer in the sun.
Now it grows in a corner window catching the sunlight.
Today I began to harvest my Meyer Lemon Tree. I’m anticipating what I shall do with this precious fruit.
Perhaps I’ll candy the peel, dust it with superfine sugar and serve it with a glass of sherry.
Or rub a little of peel around the rim of a delicate demitasse of espresso.
Then again I could arrange thin slices of Meyer Lemon on to a pizza crust, top it with goat cheese and just the smallest amount of fine chopped rosemary.
I’m thinking sweet thoughts about my very own Meyer Lemons. Pure bliss would be to use them in lemon curd or custard.
Even easier would be to grate my Meyer lemon into a bowl full of sweetened whipped cream.
I could celebrate my harvest of lemons with a lemon gimlet. I would squeeze one of the little darlings, add it with a touch of zest, soda water and a goodly amount of vodka to a sparkling cut- glass tumbler.
I always have Prosecco in my refrigerator. For a treat I would take the lemon juice, add some simple syrup and a strip of peel and top my champagne glass with Prosecco
To go with my cocktail or Bellini I would cut pumpernickel bread into the thinnest of slices, spread a little sour cream on the bread some smoked salmon, thinly sliced lemon and a sprinkle of capers.
Of course I could make lemonade, stuff a duck, make preserved lemons, put it on poached salmon, make lemon gelato.
Or just put these treasures in a blue bowl and enjoy.
This is the Caesar Salad recipe we served in our artisan pizzeria, PASSIONATE PIZZA. We tossed every salad to order. Health concerns dictated we use mayonnaise in the dressing. I still make my dressing the Passionate Pizza way. My clever and talented Toronto granddaughter Cait loves my Caesar Salads. (I’ve dressed my sewing dress form in one of our Passionate Pizza T Shirts.)
GARLICKY CAESAR SALAD … serves six
1/4 cup Hellman’s Mayonnaise (it’s irreverent, but it works)
3 tablespoons freshly grated parmigiano reggiano, pecorino, or grana cheese (plus thin shavings of cheese for serving – optional)
2-3 anchovy fillets, drained, plus more fillets for garnishing if you wish
2 generous tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2-3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 – 3 garlic cloves, smashed
a good dash of Worcestershire sauce
a good dash of a Tabasco
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard and 2 tablespoons of capers
Freshly ground white pepper
One very large head of romaine or 3 chilled large hearts of romaine
Freshly ground black pepper and garlic croutons (recipe follows)
1. In a blender, combine the mayonnaise with the cheese, anchovies, lemon juice, garlic, Worcestershire and Tabasco sauce and Dijon Mustard. process until smooth. Season with white pepper.
2. In a large salad bowl toss the roughly chopped romaine with the dressing, capers, croutons and season with black pepper. Garnish with cheese shavings and anchovy fillets (if desired) and serve right away.
garlic croutons
In our pizzeria we would bake enormous trays of garlic croutons. You could do the same but I prefer to saute the bread. Slice country-style bread in thick slices then roughly tear into large croutons. Pour a generous amount of olive oil into a large skillet, toss in a few crushed garlic cloves, and over a low heat let the garlic cloves brown and flavour the oil. Remove the garlic. Increase the heat under your pan then add your croutons. Brown quickly on one side, then turn them over and continue browning. It is this heady aroma of garlic and the rich olive oil flavoured croutons that make this an outstanding salad. The croutons taste best made fresh so indulge and nibble on any croutons left over.
Life becomes very, very good when you take delivery of a box full of peaches. Peaches picked just hours ago. Perfect, big, juicy peaches. My dear friend and neighbor Angela shared this incredible bounty with me. We thought all these peaches, so little time.
Peach cobbler
Peach pie
Peach ice cream
Peach crisp
Peach up-side-down cake
Vanilla poached peaches
Peaches eaten over the kitchen sink. The juice running joyfully down your arms.
Peaches grilled on the barbecue and served with French vanilla ice cream.
Peach chutney
Brandied peaches
Peach Melba
Or … the most sublime dish to come out of ROXY’S BISTRO’S kitchen. Peach chicken with sweet red peppers and sweet red onions, laced through with brandy and indulged with cream. Grown men would swoon over this decadent dish.
Life is just a bowl of peaches!
When I crave something exotic with intense flavour my thoughts turn to Thai food. This dish fulfills my craving. It is at once sweet and sour, hot and spicy. It is a simple recipe with just a few easily obtainable ingredients. The wonderful thing about this Thai Style Ground Pork is that it can be an appetizer or a main course. I share this recipe on my food blog MRS BUTTERFINGERS.
I don’t always go to the market with a specific menu in mind. I look around to see what looks good. What’s new on the shelves. I spotted these jalapeno peppers. They were a generous size, and so very fresh. They whispered, with their hot, little breath – chili, make chili. I picked the fattest, greenest peppers. I added the biggest red pepper to the basket. Smoking Two Meat Chili was going on the plate tonight. My chili recipe has a long history that dates back more than fifty years. The recipe has evolved through the years. I seldom make it the exact way twice, and that’s what you should do too. The recipe is on my food blog.
Bel’ Occhio’s Blog
