Cricket Cook says... Pea Soup!

Now that my wife and I have moved and mostly settled down, even though there is still lots to do in terms of sorting out where things are going, I am back with more food!

To start this one off though I would like to give you this little bit of a wonderful introduction. Well, it's not really an introduction as much as it is an awesome scene from one of my favorite movies of all time!

I was a little worried that I would not like this soup much at all. This is another recipe from Jamie Oliver, this time from his iPhone app. I followed this one pretty much line for line since I had never made pea soup before and I did not want to mess this one up.

This recipe for a quick and delicious pea soup served five of us pretty well. Here's the ingredients you need:

- 500g of frozen peas (which I believe worked out to about three cups)

- 2 large yukon gold potatoes

- 1 large white onion

- 1 litre of vegetable broth

- 2 sprigs of fresh mint

- 2 sticks of celery

- 1 knob of butter

- 100 ml of heavy cream

- 100g of feta cheese

- 1 fresh ciabatta bun

- salt and pepper to taste

- extra virgin olive oil
- Liquidizer or Immersion Blender

Instead of using soup bowls for this I thought it would be fun to use a half sized tea mug for eating the pea soup out of. You can use whatever you like, but get your oven on to the lowest temperature and put your bowls in there to warm up. Not very nice scooping soup into a cold bowl and having it go lukewarm right aways.

It's always nice to get the finicky things out of the way first, which I didn't do this time but I'm telling you this now hoping it will help you out.

First things first. Put a large deep pan on a lower heat, add a glug of olive oil and a knob of butter. Peel and chop your onion and celery sticks and add to the pan along with a bit of water once the butter has melted all the way. Let this cook with a lid on for around 10 minutes or until your veggies start to soften.

Grab another deep pot and add the vegetable broth and bring to a light simmer over medium heat. Next you want to peel your potatoes and grate them, adding them to the broth once you've finished. Now you can take one of the sprigs of mint and and add only the leaves to the broth.

Now for the topping! This topping is actually really tasty. I love it.

First grab a frying pan and turn it on high. The original recipe says to take the crust off the ready-to-bake ciabatta. All I could find was a freshly baked ciabatta bun. Tear off nickel sized pieces  of ciabatta, including the crust if you want a bit of a crunch in the topping. Use all of the inside of the bun, but not all of the outside, even half a bun makes more than you need. Toss all the pieces in a bowl with a couple lugs of olive oil. Let all the pieces crisp up, tossing them with just the pan if you feel like getting fancy or just use a pair of tongs, which is what I did. Turn off the burner once they're all crisped and put the crisps into a medium sized bowl. 


Once your veggies have softened, you can add your peas. Let your peas cook for about a minute. Now you can carefully pour your broth mixture in with the vegetables and peas, turn the heat up to medium high and bring to a boil. Next stir the cream and after five minutes on the burner, turn the heat off. Now is the fun part! If you have an immersion blender, just stick it in there and whiz it all up, make sure to salt and pepper your soup to your taste. If you don't have an immersion blender, I would hope you have a blender for smoothies or something. If you don't, I highly recommend buying an immersion blender just for the sake of soup. Great device to have in your kitchen.


Anyways, blend it all together really good. Grab your bowls out of your oven, or you can heat your bowls with hot water as well. Set up your kitchen table all fancy like and get ready to taste some awesome soup! As for the topping, mix in about 100g of feta cheese with the ciabatta crisps and throw a sprigs worth of torn up mint leaves in there as well, toss it all up and put a finger full on top of your delicious pea soup. 


I actually loved this soup, one of my favorite things to make. Simple. Awesome flavour. Looks and smells great. Although if you don't fancy peas, then you probably won't like it. I guess you can't please everyone!


Oh! I almost forgot - Coming up next time...

Enjoy!

Hobgoblin Chocolaty Goodness!

First of all, since this is a post on cake, I would like to give a shout out to one of my favorite places to hang out - the Cake Wrecks blog! I am currently reading backwards in the archives and now I am at September 2010. So hilarious! Link will be on your right.

Now for the cake of, well, I admit it's not the most glorious looking cake, but I will vouch for the flavour. Sweet, chocolately, bit of toffee in the background and not dry if you bake it right. The original recipe uses Guinness beer, which when I first tried it, was also as amazing as using Hobgoblin, but I love the Hobgoblin beer so much I wanted to use it instead of Guinness. Also, the original recipe I snagged from the food section in one of the Chatelaine food sections, no I was not reading the magazine, I go straight for the food, even in House & Home magazines!

The only thing I've changed in the recipe is which beer to used and I left out the beer nuts. So here it goes.

Hobgoblin Chocolate Cake

Two round 8" pans needed
Cake Ingredients:
11/2 cups (375 mL) all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (175 mL) dutch cocoa
11/2 tsp (7 mL) baking powder
1 tsp (5 mL) baking soda
1/2 tsp (2 mL) salt
3/4 cup (175 mL) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup (250 mL) lightly packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla
1 cup (250 mL) Hobgoblin
For the icing:
3 cups (750 mL) icing sugar
1/2 cup (125 mL) cocoa powder
1/2 cup (125 mL) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/3 cup (75 mL) Hobgoblin
1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla
Generous pinch of salt

Preheat your oven to 350F. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a large bowl, mix it all together after sifting. Get your electric mixer ready and beat the butter and brown sugar for 3 minutes on medium speed. Add your eggs one at a time, making sure each egg is mixed well before you crack the next one in. Add the vanilla and about 1/3 of the cocoa-flour mixture. Now add half a cup of the Hobgoblin, making sure to mix well before the next step, next add in another 1/3rd of the cocoa-flour mixture, add the rest of the Hobgoblin and finish with the rest of the cocoa-flour mixture. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides of your electric mixer. Make sure everything is mixed as well as possible. For the pans, I sprayed them with Pam, wiped all inside with a paper towel then put a teaspoon of cocoa and covered the bottom and sides with the cocoa. Pour your cake mixture into your two pans evenly, slip them into the oven on the middle rack for 25 minutes. If you use a toothpick to test if your cake is done and it's not, put it back in for a minute at a time, checking after each minute.

For the icing, sift together the icing sugar and cocoa into a medium bowl. Beat just the butter in the electric mixer for about 2 minutes until creamy. Add half of the icing sugar mixture, vanilla, salt and Hobgoblin, mix well and then add the rest of the icing sugar mixture. Your icing is done!

Take your cakes out of the oven and cool for 10 minutes on a cooling rack. Run a knife along the outside of the cake, flip it upside down on the cooling rack (after it's cooled) and then flip it back so the dome is face up. Do this for both layers.

Grab a large plate or whatever you want to put the cake on, take four medium square sized pieces of parchment paper and line them up on the plate so they converge in the middle. Take one layer of cake and put it dome side down on the plate, take your icing and spread it on the top of the first layer, not the sides yet, we'll do that after the next layer. Now put your second layer on top of the first, but this time dome side up. Spread your icing all over the top and sides evenly. The parchment paper helps to not get the icing all over the plate, now you can take each piece out, if the cake starts to go with it, use a spatula to stop the cake from moving so you can take the parchment paper out.

Now your cake is ready to eat!
Enjoy and don't forget to drink the rest of the Hobgoblin in the bottle!

p.s. I love baking, but I love cooking more. Baking is so particular... I love just throwing things together to make something wonderful. 

And Caesar Wins Again!

Yesterday I did a post on a simple home made salad, quick and easy to whip up whenever you're feeling the need for a salad. I also mentioned a few times how much I love caesar salad. Well, since then I had been craving a tasty caesar salad and so today I made one. I am borrowing this idea from a couple different places, first and foremost, the idea came from Jamie Oliver's website. Secondly, the dressing recipe came from the food network website. Now, I've combined the two and made changes to them both.

This is not just your regular everyday throw-everything-together-and-chow-down kind of salad. I agree it is a chow down kind of salad, but it's not the throw everything together kind. Let me explain. I love caesar salad, all kinds of caesar salad, but I wanted something different, a different way of eating caesar salad, so I did some research and sure enough Jamie Oliver has exactly what I'm looking for: Caesar Salad Bites. It's the same concept as your everyday caesar salad, but it's more of a finger-food appetizer. It's easy, it's fun and most importantly it's delicious!

Caesar Salad Appetizer

Romaine Lettuce
6 slices of bacon (I used a wonderfully flavoured apple smoked bacon, maple is also amazing)
Freshly grated parmesan cheese
8 Anchovy fillets (in oil and sea salt)
6 cloves of garlic
1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar (I used a real wine vinegar, I want to try white wine vinegar next)
3 tablespoons Hellman's mayonnaise
salt and fresh ground pepper to taste (anchovy fillets almost have enough salt to begin with)
Fresh lemon juice

Start by getting your oven on to 450F or if you prefer frying your bacon you can do that as well, need the bacon to be mostly crispy, but not burnt. A lot of these recipes need a blender or a mortar and pestle, as a quick fix I use my blender, you can also get a bowl out and a wide spoon and mash all the ingredients together, but I highly recommend investing in both a mortar and pestle and blender. It will make your life much easier!

Peel and cut the hard end off the garlic cloves, take out your anchovy fillets and throw in the blender with the dijon, white wine vinegar, mayonnaise and a pinch of ground pepper. Blend all of this until there are a minimal amount of chunks, there will be a few small ones, but that's natural. Give it a taste, everyones palate is different, add a bit of salt if it needs some. Salad dressing should always be just a hint too acidic and salty, that way when it's on the salad, the water from the lettuce leaves (or whatever other salad mix you're using) will tone down the acidity and saltiness. Add your lemon juice as well, I recommend half a lemon to start then go from there, add more if you want more lemony flavour. That's the great thing about cooking, add or take away whatever you want for the flavour you desire!

Let's get started on the romaine leaves now. Rip or cut about an inch off the bottom stalks, take off the outside layers until you get to the more pale coloured leaves, these are the ones you want, smaller but not too small, and not too big too handle either. You can save the other leaves for something else, or do an extra large salad bite if you wanted. Wash them up and dry them either with paper towel or use a salad spinner if you've got one. Grab your croutons and place a few on each leaf after placing them on your plate of choice. By now the bacon should be done, dry the grease off with paper towel and roll each slice up and chop it up into tiny pieces. They don't need to be the tiniest pieces ever, but a rough chop will do. Take your dressing and lightly drizzle each leaf, don't over do it or there will be too much flavour from the dressing and you won't taste anything else. Also, don't dress your salads until a few moments before eating, otherwise your salad will wilt and not taste very good at all.

After you get your romaine leaves dressed up, grab your parmesan and grate away! Don't need much, some parmesans are saltier than others I find, you don't need to completely cover the bites either.

I love caesar salad, and these take it just that much further with flavour and fun factor. Amazing!

Enjoy!

Always Green on Your Side

I used to despise any kind of salad there was. I don't know what happened, but one day I tried some sort of salad and I loved it. I know I'm being pretty vague here with details, but I'm going to guess it was a caesar salad. I love caesar salad, I order a plate almost every time I go out to eat. Now that's changed of course with my mentality of wanting to try everything else, but I still stand by my favorite.

Today I am not giving you a fancy salad or a caesar salad, it's something simple. Something I have been wanting to try ever since I saw Jamie Oliver do it on his 30 minute meals show.

Cucumber Ribbon Salad

1 English cucumber or field cucumber

About a handful or two of baby arugula

Any dressing that you desire (today I did the creamy french dressing again, but added some lemon to the mix, quite good, but I put too much pepper in there)

What I did was sprinkle the dressing on the plate first, laid out a bit of baby arugula, and then came the fun part. Take your cucumber and cut the ends off, take a potato peeler and start peeling your cucumber from end to end, don't worry about the skin being on there, it's good flavour. Stop peeling just before you hit the core with the seeds, rotate and start again. I put a little bit more arugula on top and then sprinkled a little more dressing on top. It was quite good, and much better than the last time I tried it, last time it was slimey, this time it had a good crunch to it, which I like, and it reminds me of the good crunchiness that caesar salad has.

Enjoy!

Burgers!

I love burgers. You can do so much with them, doesn't have to be beef. You can use chicken, pork, fish or any kind of seafood. Like I've said before, the possibilities are endless with food!

I want to share with you something amazing. Well, I've been told it was amazing and I agree. We had a family gathering with a couple friends added in and I made these burgers which didn't fall apart when you handled them yet were so juicy and flavourful that I wanted a third one but was too stuffed to have!

I started out with this recipe from Jamie's Food Revolution cookbook. I wanted to add more and see where that led, so here's the recipe that I used:

My Twist on "A Cracking Burger"

12 Jacob's Crackers (can find these at any supermarket)

8 sprigs of italian parsley (not regular parsley)

Few sprigs of fresh oregano, leaves only

3 cloves of garlic

2 heaped teaspoons Dijon mustard

2 lbs good quality ground beef, not frozen (if in abbotsford go to Lepp Farm Market!)

1 large egg

sea or kosher salt, although I prefer Kosher salt

ground black pepper

olive oil

You'll want to make these the night before.

-Grab a large bowl and set that aside

-You can blend the crackers in a food processor if you have one, if you don't have one, take a kitchen towel and wrap the crackers in it and bash them on the counter top, or you can take a rolling pin and bash the crackers that way. Great stress reliever if you're stressed, but who's stressed when they're about to taste awesome burgers? Break any larger pieces up, you want the crackers to be as fine as you can get, with a few chunks here and there (which is why I prefer using the towel method, that, and it's a lot more fun!)

-Finely chop or blend your parsley, including stalks, oregano, and garlic

-Add the crackers, parsley, oregano, garlic, mustard and beef to your large bowl

-Crack in your egg and add a good pinch of salt and pepper

-Mix everything up well

-Now, the size of your burgers all depends on, well, how large or small you want them. What I do is take some of the mix, roll it into a ball in your hand then squish it, using the palm of my hand as a guide for the size. I also like my burgers between 3/4 and 1 inch thick, what can I say, I love beef. With this recipe I stretched it out to nine burgers.

-Set your newly formed burgers on a pan with parchment paper and drizzle both sides of each burger with olive oil. You may have to do two layers.

-Stick them in the fridge the day before to let the flavours spread and this also helps firm the burgers so that they don't fall apart on you when you cook them.

Next Day:

-Preheat your barbeque thirty minutes before you want to cook your burgers

-Turn the heat down to medium

-Put your burgers on the grill and watch them closely. Do not, I repeat, do not walk away or close the lid because there are a lot of flames coming!

-Don't let the burgers sit in flames at all, I had to keep moving mine about, this helps to not make your burgers into solid burnt pucks.

-Cook your burgers until the temperature is 160F, flipping them every 3-4 minutes, if you don't have a meat thermometer, then take one off the grill and cut it open. I encourage all of you to invest in a meat thermometer though.

*if you don't have a bbq then heat up a frying pan or grill pan on the stove to high for five minutes then turn it down to medium, don't put any oil in the pan, there's already olive oil on the burgers. Cook about 3-4 minutes per side.

Now they're done! What you do with them afterwards is up to you, we cut up some red onion and green leaf lettuce, added some ketchup and mustard to the bun. You can toast your bun or not, that's up to you. As for the mix beforehand, you can see in the picture above that I have parmesan cheese and rosemary leaves there. I tried this recipe again and added these two things, I love the parmesan cheese in the mix! The rosemary I wasn't sold on, I would add less next time. You can add anything to your burgers though, but I recommend trying these first and going from there, adding or taking away, it's all up to you!

We also had a salad made up to go with the burgers, some green leaf lettuce, radicchio and spinach leaves. Mix it all up in even portions and don't dress your salad until you want to eat it. I made Jamie's Creamy French Dressing, so good!

Enjoy!

Simply Desserts

I love simple recipes. Anytime I am in the mood for something sweet I whip out these quick tricks just from the things I have in my house. Simple ingredients and simple recipes make for simple treats. I usually have these items in my house at all times. Especially marshmallows. I have a passionate, close to obsessive, love for marshmallows.

Rocky Road Bars:

1/2 cup of butter

2 cups chocolate chips

1 cup butterscotch chips

1 cup peanut-butter

4 cups rice crispies

3 cups marshmallows

-Melt the butter and chips in a sauce pan then add the peanut butter. I used chunky but it would probably be better smooth. 

-Once that is all melted leave it to cool for about 10 mins. You still want it to be spreadable but not hot. 

-Then mix the rice crispies and marshmallows together and pour the choco-peanut-butter mixture on to it. 

-Mix it up and put it into a deep pan. 

-Place into a refrigerator to cool. You don't want it to harden rock solid.

Make sure to not add the marshmallows to the chocolate mix until the mix is cool enough, that way the marshmallows will hold their shape better.

Perfect for snacks, children, and spontaneous get-togethers.  Or... to hide in the corner and keep them all to yourself!


Enjoy!

Dragons and their Dragon Fruit

I bet you are wanting me to talk about dragons now that I mentioned them in the title of this post. Although I love dragons and the look of them and everything, I am here for the food.

Dragon fruit, or Pitaya as it is originally named, is a funny fruit. Honestly, if I was wandering around and found one of these bad boys hanging off a cactus, I would not go up to it and cut it open and start chomping away. Now that it's not near a cactus and doesn't actually have sharp spikes on it, I'm willing to eat it. Although, now that I know it's edible and tastes pretty good I would go back to wandering in the night and take that fruit.

It is an interesting fruit for sure. On the outside it looks like no other fruit I've seen before.

On the inside though it reminds me of a kiwi. To me, it smells and tastes more like a kiwi than anything else, the texture is close to a kiwi, but I would say the texture is in between a watermelon and a kiwi. You've got the kind of slippery feel of the kiwi and the juiciness of a watermelon, and all in this one amazing fruit!

I wish I had a recipe for you to try out with this dragon of a fruit, but valentine's day weekend has been a non-stop weekend it seems. I also have to apologize that I do not have any valentine's day recipes for you either. Next year for sure!

For now, go out and buy yourself a dragon fruit. They come in a few different sizes and colours and the different coloured ones have a different flavour to them. If you come across a Pitaya Agria, or Sour Dragon Fruit, buy it. Apparently it has loads of flavour, alot more than the one I bought. That's what I will be looking for next!

Enjoy!

Oh Mushrooms, where have you been all my life?

I want to start you off with a couple definitions from the trustworthy Merriam-Webster dictionary:

mush·room

noun
\ˈməsh-ˌrüm, -ˌru̇m; chiefly Northern & Midland -ˌrün; dialect ˈmə-shə-ˌrüm, -ˌru̇m, -ˌrün\
1. an enlarged complex aboveground fleshy fruiting body of a fungus

fun·gus

noun, often attributive \ˈfəŋ-gəs\
: any of a kingdom (Fungi) of saprophytic and parasitic spore-producing eukaryotic typically filamentous organisms formerly classified as plants that lack chlorophyll and include molds, rusts, mildews, smuts, mushrooms, and yeasts

I cannot believe people eat mushrooms. I mean, they are fungi, grown in the wild or farmed, usually involving manure, with remnants of that manure on the mushroom when you buy them most of the time. They look pretty amazing though. Up until last week I had thought mushrooms were the most disgusting things ever. It's the texture that got me, the flavour is there for sure, but the texture...

Everywhere I have gone and mushrooms have been involved in the dish, they seem soggy. When something looks soggy or waterlogged, sure I'll try it, I may not eat all of it, but it is rather repulsive having a plate in front of you with mushrooms that look soggy and taste like rubber.

This train of thought ended last week when I acquired some free mushrooms.
I thought to myself, I don't really like mushrooms at all, at least I don't think I do. Let's kick this in a different direction - Mushrooms that I've tasted are usually slippery and rubbery, so how can I counter that?

Crunchy Mushrooms? Is it possible? I got to doing some research and sure enough I came across a recipe that involved mushrooms and a bit of crunch - this got me pretty excited.

This was a pretty simple recipe - and it has actually got me into the realm of mushrooms and now I'm excited to try all different kinds! The above picture was my first attempt, my second attempt I took it a step further with flavour. I will give you my revised recipe though - try it out, comment if you like or don't or if you would change anything. One thing I would change would be the size of mushroom I used. The ones I used were way too big for this.

Crunchy Garlicky Herbed Mushrooms

1 pack small closed cup mushrooms

2 thick slices of bread (your choice on what kind of bread)

1 large egg

2 garlic cloves

Handful of parsley leaves

3 sprigs of fresh oregano

Vegetable oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Get your food processor out for a quick fix on this easy appetizer.

I recommend prepping ingredients before going into anything - this includes getting any pans or cutting boards or anything else that you need out on the counter right aways.

-Get a small pan on the stove on high heat (I'm tempted to say "Full Whack") with about an inch of vegetable oil.

-Brush the dirt off the mushrooms with a paper towel and cut the stems off

-Crush the garlic, taking the paper-like skin off of course, rip the bread into smaller cubes and throw into the food processor along with the parsley, without the stalks, and the oregano leaves. -Whiz that up to a fine grind

-Next beat the egg in a medium bowl and add your pinch of salt and pepper, then add the bread crumb mixture.

-Mix the two up really well, it tends to get a bit sticky when it's all mixed in.

-Take each mushroom and coat with the mixture, set aside on a paper towel or plate

-Now that the oil is heated in the pan, take a pair of tongs (because using your fingers will get you hurt, trust me) and put each bread crumb covered mushroom into the oil

-Cook each side until golden brown, take them out and let them rest on a paper towel

You can add anything you want. Red Chile for a kick, rosemary or thyme, anything! Possibilities are endless. 

Enjoy!