Delicious oven tomato sauce

A friend of mine recommended making tomato sauce this way so I thought why not test it out whilst testing out my homemade gnocchi!

First off turn on your oven to 180 degrees

What you do if you’re 3-4 people is take a oven tray put oil in it and cut up the tomatoes into halves or quarters! The skin should be facing upwards and they should be fully oiled!

Then put the tomatoes in for 30 min! The oil should look brownish once it’s taken out! If not pop it back in for a couple of minutes..

In the mean time chop up some garlic and onion.

Take out your tomatoes again and toss the garlic and onion mixture onto it, placing it back into the oven for 5 minutes.

Once that’s done you can take it out of the oven again and mix it all together, you can also take off the tomato skins if you want!

And that’s it! Extremely easy to make, tastes delicious and I will surely make it again!
Also spice as pleased!

Tomatoes in the oven

Tomatoes out of the oven

Adding the onion and garlic and more olive oil

The final outcome! I forgot to take a photo of just the sauce!

Instant Pot Bolognese

Hi everyone,

It is Friday today but feels like it's hard to keep track of the days. I hope you are staying safe, healthy and mentally hanging in there. I think part of what is hard is all the uncertainty. Sure we can hunker down..but until when? how long? what's next? It's the eerie calm before the storm feeling that I find haunting, and really hope that social distancing leads to a less dire outcome. It's hard to plan for the weeks and months ahead so I am trying to let that go and just take things day by day.

You may find you are enjoying the new pace of life, appreciating the extra time with your kids, or spouse one minutes, frustrated and short-tempered the next.. It's okay to have mixed feelings and have highs and lows. There is no "right" way to feel. We are in this together and it's a great time as any to catch up with friends and family near and far! If you are feeling lonely, sad, scared, or just want to talk, please reach out. Lets stay connected and help pick each other up. Send a text, e-mail, call or face-time, I know I would love to hear from you!

Juliet said it might be a good time to revive this little blog and share some recipes. I don't know about you guys but I have been craving comfort food, hard! We are also trying to make sure we eat lots of veggies (while we have them and use them up before they go bad) so I decided to try my hand at making a bolognese sauce . So after days of eating delicious meals prepared by S (he reminds me), I finally got back into the kitchen.

I adapted this recipe and added in spinach and mushrooms. I recently ordered 1kilos of mushrooms from Roots and Shoots - they are doing deliveries if you live in the downtown core and their mushrooms are the local ones and are so good! As part of the delivery we also got eggs, spinach and beets. I was pleasantly surprised to have pretty much all the needed ingredients, including heavy cream and beef brothwhich we don't usually have on hand. We even had parsley for garnish growing in our little aerogarden. If you don't have all the ingredients, you can definitely adapt it and make it with whatever you have on hand. No instant pot? no problem.  This could definitely be made on the stove top, just leave it on low for a few hours to allow the flavours to develop.

I may be biased but I think it turned out delicious. S really liked it too. We froze some of the sauce to have at a later time. 

Beer-Braised Pulled Chicken

It was hard to get a good photo of this dish, mostly because it was so good and I just wanted to eat it right away. I found the recipe in a random magazine- Style At home. Well it's not random, but I didn't know house magazines had recipes in them. I picked it up in the lounge in MTL.. thanks Pat for the passes!

I haven't been cooking too much, mainly because I've been spoiled.  My boyfriend is an amazing cook and makes everything with such ease, faster than I could, with less mess, better presentation, and it tastes better..  so, let me tell you, my motivation to cook was low.

I decided though it was time for me to get back to the kitchen to make casseroles or dishes that last a few days, so that I have some food for lunches or quick dinners. I have started a new fitness regime and find that I am STARVING after the workout. If I don't have something ready to heat up quickly, I will eat everything under the sun defeating the point of the workout. I am also known to get HANGRY.

My favourite way to eat it is in a lettuce wrap with avocado and sour cream. It is also good on top of rice or in a tortilla. (Note: you will not believe the flack I got from my trainer for eating this sour cream. Oh what blasphemy ;) If only he knew what I ate on the weekend !!)

The recipe calls for one chipotle pepper in Adobo sauce. I had to call my friend Kristin and ask her if it meant just 1 pepper or just 1 can. Well good thing I asked!  If I'd put in the whole can it would have been so spicy!!

Enjoy!

Baked Trout

This recipe is a perfect, simple, one pan summer dinner. I made it a few times a while ago and have been meaning to share the recipe. Is it just me or has this summer been especially busy? I feel like I am rushing from one thing to the next trying to soak it all in and take advantage of the nice weather while it's here. I'll admit Ottawa has become a great place to be in the summer. New on my list of favourites: canoeing on the canal :)

I got the recipe inspiration from Fida over the Sweet and Savoury pursuits.  I met Fida last year at the food photography course at SPAO and her recipes are really great. her photography and setups are beautiful! I am looking forward to getting together with my photo buddies in a few weeks to get some motivation: time to dust off my camera and get back in the kitchen!

Easy Peasy Avocado Pasta

If there's one food I'm addicted to it's avocados so when I found a recipe for avocado pasta I knew it was love at first sight and I had to make it immediately for my dad and uncle.

We finished the WHOLE bowl of pasta, and it sure as hell was a lot of pasta! 

Look at this beautiful avocado.. mhmmmmm

What you'll need:

1x Avocado

1/2 Lemon

1 Garlic Clove

A handful of basil 

A handful of tomatoes 

and pasta as you please.

Boil the pasta and mix together the lemon, avocado and basil leaves. I used a hand blender, it came out nice and creamy. Once the pasta is ready, drain it put it in a serving bowl mix in the avocado mousse and add the cut up tomatoes.

Here's a photo of the massive avocado pasta portion I made :) Mhmm mhmm mhmmm 

I can highly recommend this if you're home and want something easy and quick to make ;)

Mini Zucchini, Potato cakes

A couple of weeks ago I made some potato, zucchini cakes. I got the recipe off the internet somewhere but I can't find it anymore..

First off preheat the oven to 180 degrees C :)

I used: about 5 potatoes

1 huge zucchini

2 eggs

a bunch of parmesan 

and that's it :) 

So cut the potatoes and zucchini into slim slices, mix together the eggs, cheese some salt and pepper and pour it over the potato and zucchini slices as shown in the photos below.

Once you've mixed the potatoes and zucchini with the egg mixture as good as one can place the pieces into a cupcake form baking tray. 

 Place the tray into the oven and keep it there for 20-25 minutes.

Whilst the food was baking I made a salad, some lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and avocado.

 Tada, once these beautiful babies are out of the oven they look like this (points down)

Bonne Apetite 

Quiche Saturday

So I'm on holiday in the alps surrounded by snow and decided to make a quiche for my family for lunch. I was surprised at how well it turned out although I should've pre-cooked  the quiche dough a bit longer because the bottom was still a bit white but otherwise it was delicious :)

I bought the quiche dough in the shop so that made it easier as well, and I also have to mention that I didn't have a quiche baking tin so I made the quiche in a plain flat baking tin.

I used a recipe from a supermarket magazine, it's actually from one of my favourite supermarkets called "Merkur" and they took it from a Donna Hay Cookbook, so what you'll need is:

15 grams grated parmesan
150 grams goat cheese (here I used 80 grams goat cheese and 70 grams of this thing called Topfen not sure what it is in english..)
3 eggs
60ml milk
80ml sour cream (I used about 100g)
180g tomatoes 

Here are all the ingredients laid out and mixed together (below). Oil the quiche tin and put in the quiche dough (place in oven a pre cook this for about 3-5 minutes). Then mix all the ingredients together excluding the goat cheese and tomatoes. You then pour the liquid mixture into the quiche form and crumble the goat cheese and "Topfen" on top, try spreading it out a bit (perhaps put in the goat cheese mixture first) then drop in the tomatoes and put in the oven for 12 minutes :)

This is what it looks like, I know the tomatoes look a bit silly and it might not so amazing but it was amazing! I ate it with a bit of salad and cucumber :)

Bonne Appetit and happy holidays :)

Meatless Monday- Cauliflower Pizza

I had cooked cauliflower in the fridge,  leftover tomato sauce and mozzarella, and then Juliet sent me the link to a tutorial for cauliflower pizza. I wasn't overly excited about it, as I have made cauliflower pizza a few times and it hasn't always turned out well.  Well this time it turned out a lot better, so I thought I'd share the recipe with you.

It's perfect for when you have cooked cauliflower leftover and ready to use. If you don't,  I recommend following the tutorial. That is, if you can bare watching this video. The recipe is great but the guy just drives me crazy. It is so sing-songy that I found it nearly unbearable. He actually says "press this in-around the outside, around the outside, around the outside.."

Anyway here is what I did- I grated 1 full cauliflower, using my attachment on my food processor. It can be done by hand as well. This makes cauliflower "rice". I then stir fried it with 1 onion. Easy as that. It made a ton! I then put it in Tupperware in the fridge to have to eat with meals throughout the week, instead of traditional rice.  After eating it as rice a few times I used what was left for this pizza. It actually reminded me a bit of the Cauliflower Fritters we made last summer.

Ingredients:
- cooked cauliflower- as described
- 1 egg
- goat cheese
-Parmesan
- tomato sauce
-grated mozzarella
-fresh basil
- toppings of choice

Instructions:
- preheat oven to 400 F
- Combine cauliflower with egg, goat cheese and Parmesan. Flatten down into a patty on a baking sheet or round pizza pan.
- Bake  for about 10 minutes. Flip over
- Add toppings and bake for another 10 minutes or until crispy and cheese is melted.

Enjoy!

Rosemary Bread

Since I got the Kitchen-aid stand mixer, I knew I wanted to make rosemary bread. I really like rosemary- mmm. Since i was house-sitting and my parents rosemary plant looked so good, I decided to give it a go!

So fresh and plentiful!

I took inspiration from the food network's recipe and adapted it to take into account some of the comments it received on how to improve it. The bread is so light and airy! It feels almost hollow. I cut the bread into slices at first and then realized I could easily just rip off pieces and dunk them into oil and vinegar. A nice little appetizer or after-work snack to hold you over until dinner.  Like the other breads I have made so far, this one was easy, but you do need some time. For these loaves you don't need  bread pans, just a baking sheet. It makes 2 decent/small sized loaves.

Ingredients
1  packet active dry yeast
2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing and serving
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
2 tablespoons dried rosemary
1 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper

Instructions

1. Stir the yeast, sugar and 1/4 cup warm water in the bowl of a stand mixer. Let sit until foamy, about 5 minutes. << I realized that last time i didn't let it sit long enough. This time it really foamed, so now I know what to look for. 
2. Add 1 tablespoon olive oil, the flour, 1 1/2 tablespoons rosemary, the fine salt and 3/4 cup warm water; stir with the dough hook  until a dough forms. Continue kneading with hook on medium until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes.
3. Brush a large bowl with olive oil. Add the dough, cover with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature until more than doubled, about 2 hours.
4. Brush a baking sheets with olive oil. Generously flour a work surface. Punch down dough and divde into 2 pieces. Working with one piece at a time, sprinkle some flour on the dough, then fold the top and bottom portions into the middle. Fold in the sides to make a free-form square. Use a spatula to turn the dough over, then tuck the corners under to form a ball. Place seam-side down on the prepared baking sheet. Let stand, uncovered, until more than doubled, about 2 hours.
5. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Bake the loaves 10 minutes; brush with the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil and sprinkle with the kosher salt and the remaining 1/2 tablespoon rosemary. Continue baking until golden brown, about 10 more minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool. Serve with olive oil and vinegar or whatever you choose. 

Enjoy!

Red lentil curry

Today for lunch I cooked a red lentil curry, one of the few things I can cook which turn out great! I got this recipe from  allrecipes.com, I didn't have all the ingredients so I used what I had and made it my own.

What you'll need is;

2 cups of red lentils

1 large onion chopped up

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 tablespoons curry paste

1 tablespoon curry powder

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

2 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon chili powder (didn't add this to my curry)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon white sugar

1 teaspoon minced garlic (I used one garlic clove)

1 teaspoon minced ginger root (didn't have this either)

1 can tomato purée 

I also added two carrots, which fit in quite well!

First what I think is the most important step is to wash the lentils! If you don't wash them they'll just be gross..

Secondly measure out all the ingredients and put all the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl with the garlic

Then when cooking the lentils caramalize the onions in a big pot (you'll be adding everything into there later..) once the onion's caramalized add the dry ingredients and garlic and mix on a high heat for 1-2 minutes

Add the tomato purée and the carrots and let simmer, once the lentils are cooked mix them into the pot of goodies and you're done :)

I served the curry with rice and a side salad, you could also serve it with other things.. 

Enjoy :)

Quinoa veggie burgers

 El found this great recipe online on Martha Stewart living, seeing as I'm vegetarian I couldn't wait to try this recipe so we made them straight away (through out my stay we made them a couple of times and they kept on getting better). 

What you'll need is; 

2 portobello mushrooms

1 zucchini

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup minces shallot

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

1/4 cup grated Parmesan

3/4 cup cooked quinoa

2 tsp salt

Freshly ground pepper

1 large egg slightly beaten

1 1/2 cups fresh whole wheat breadcrumbs (I used pinko crumbs) and

6 whole wheat buns (we didn't end up using any buns because the burger itself is so filling) 

To spice things up we ate the burgers with some sour cream and salad!

What needs to be done;

Firstly pulse the mushrooms in a food processor and place into a mixing bowl. Grate the zucchini onto a paper towel to soak up the liquid then add to the mushrooms.

Moving on, heat up two tbsp of oil in a large pan over medium heat and add the shallot and red pepper flakes till softened, add the mushrooms and zucchini, cook till tender. Place this all into a mixing bowl, add the Parmesan, quinoa, salt and pepper. Let cool and then stir in the egg and breadcrumbs (in my case the pinko crumbs), place into the fridge and let cool for an hour.

Lastly heat up the remaining olive oil and start frying the burgers until golden brown and cooked through.

Below are a couple of photos I took whilst making these delicious things.. 

The zucchini and mushrooms mixed together

Everything in the pan

The burgers before frying 

The end product..

A close up of the burgers! 

They were delicious and I highly recommend any veggie out there to make these!

The recipe says it makes 6 burgers but we got more out of it! 

Enjoy :)

Butternut Squash Lasagne with Goat Cheese, Sage and Breadcrumbs

A couple of weeks ago we had bought a couple of butternut squashes and didn't really know what to do with them so we searched and searched for a recipe till we found this one on finecooking.com and modified slightly.

It's not very hard to make but takes quite a bit of preparing and patients. So far we've made this recipe twice the first time it took us a while and the second time we were more organized and got everything prepared a couple of days before wanting to eat the lasagne.

It's delicious and worth the hard work and time..

The ingredients you'll need are;