Month: February 2011

Pear, Ham, and Gruyere Melt with Pesto

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

I unfortunately did not get to eat this sandwich.

It has now been three days since I got my wisdom teeth removed, but I am still unable to open my mouth properly.  The only way I can eat is by taking the tiniest baby bites of food, chewing them carefully with my front teeth like I’m a rodent nibbling on a seed, and mushing that food around in my mouth until I eventually swallow the entire thing, still partially whole.  It takes me approximately an hour to eat a single meal.

With this dilemma in mind, it probably would have taken me an entire afternoon to eat this sandwich.  Instead of wasting away at the kitchen table listening to David Suzuki talk about decomposing bodies (seriously, this was what was on CBC  at lunch time), I decided to instead make this sandwich for my mom.  This sandwich was inspired by the leftover gruyere we had sitting in our fridge from the mac and cheese I made earlier this week.  The pear, gruyere, ham combination came flitting into my mind one day, and a quick googling told me that the three together would produce wonderful flavours.  My mom’s verdict of the sandwich was that it was really good, so I’ll have to take her word for it until I can eat solid foods again and make myself a duplicate of this sandwich back in Ottawa.

Anatomy of the sandwich:

Bread: focaccia or ciabatta bun
Layer 1: Two slices of black forest ham
Layer 2: Approximately six thin slices of gruyere cheese
Layer 3: One pear, sliced thinly
Layer 4: Pepper, to the max
Layer 5: Arugula
Layer 6: a dabbling of pesto

Voila! A delicious and quick lunchtime melt that is suitable for feeding mothers, significant others or, most importantly, yourself.  Grill all these things together and you have a savoury and filling sandwich.  I made my mom’s sandwich in our fancy convection microwave since it has a special “grill” button.  If you don’t have one of these high tech devices, you can always just melt everything in your toaster oven or oven.  Gosh I wish I had tried a bite.

PS: This whole wisdom teeth thing isn’t all bad.  Case in point: I’m currently eating a homemade chocolate milkshake with a spoon.  Life is grand.

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Carrot Pineapple Cake with Cream Cheese Icing

~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

Note: I wrote this entry Tuesday morning, and not on whatever day I decided to post this.  Just wanted to make that clear so you didn’t think I took some sort of LOST-esque journey through time and space.  Although that would be beyond cool.

….

Who knew the secret ingredient in a carrot cake would be pineapple?

I, for one, most certainly did not, so thank heavens the folks over at Canadian Living set me straight.  As of this post I am officially rediscovering pineapple, it’s delicious.

In preparation for my wisdom teeth removal tomorrow morning, I decided to make a dessert that I might actually be able to eat post-operation.  After all, what is more soft and capable of being gummed-to-death than carrot cake?  I also have been craving vegetable-infused cakes ever since I made my chocolate zucchini cake, so here we are.  Two birds, one cake.

I’m actually typing this post as my cake is in the oven.  It’s morning time in Sudbury, and my parents are at work and my brother is at school.  Our fabulous convection oven is whurring softly, as if reassuringly saying “don’t worry, I’m so much more reliable than your oven in Ottawa, I won’t burn things in a matter of five minutes.”  It’s so strange to be able to trust your kitchen appliances for a change.

Since I’ve been rambling quite a bit in my previous posts (yes, I’m very much aware that I go off on tangents, I’m an admitted word-aholic) let me, instead of talking more, just share a beautiful picture with you.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is the dream (and also, as it happens, my desktop background):

Now, did that not improve your day by a tenfold?  Ah well, it makes me feel swell.

But of course, I just need to quickly say what I thought of this cake.  It was very, very moist and full of taste.  I halved the amount of pecans CL told me to put in the cake, since I’m not a huge fan of nuts in baking, and it still turned out dandy.  If you’re wondering whether you need pineapple, you do.  It adds the most surprising subtle flavour and creates an unexpected (in a good way) texture.  Just do it.

One more thing, I’ve posted a link to the Canadian Living recipe below my pictures, but I didn’t use their cream cheese icing recipe.  The recipe I used for that was adapted from Annie’s Eats and was perfectly sweet.

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Gruyere Mac and Cheese

~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

WARNING: If you do not like copious amounts of wonderful butter, cheese and heavy cream in your main dishes, then you probably won’t enjoy this post.

For the rest of you, welcome to my incredibly satisfying, highly fattening Tuesday night supper.

I’ve said it once, but I’ll say it again.  GRUYERE.  My GOODNESS.  How can one small ingredient wield such amazing flavours?  It’s miraculous and fantastic.  If gruyere and brie had a love child I would either marry it or eat it.

I wanted to make one main course dinner meal for my family before leaving for Ottawa this weekend.  Since I’m getting my wisdom teeth out tomorrow and will likely be unable to do anything but drool deliriously and be fed jello through a straw, I figured today was a good day to make it.  I also made dessert, which I’m scheduling to post in a few days, so stay tuned for that.

While Annie’s Eats is my absolute favourite blog for getting dessert recipes and ideas, I’d never made any of her main courses before.  I changed two little things from her original recipe.  The first was buying gruyere cheese instead of fontina cheese (I’ve never heard of this type of cheese before, what is it?!) and the second was using normal bread crumbs versus these special panko ones.  This recipe was one that I had inadvertently bookmarked on three separate occasions (sadly true, I counted), so I decided I finally had to make it.  Something that’s wonderful about cooking for your family?  Your mom buys all the ingredients.  That’s right, say hello to $15 worth of gruyere cheese!  And fresh parmesan.  Grocery shopping is a glorious experience when you’re not paying for it.

This was also just a really fast dinner to make.  At approximately 4:54 p.m. this evening, my mom strolled into the living room to find me curled up on the arm chair reading, a position which I had held for approximately five hours that day.  She informed me that supper needed to be ready for 5:30 at the very latest, since everyone would be absolutely famished.  Mission accomplished.  At around 5:27 p.m., the casserole dish of bubbling pasta was rushed up to my bedroom to be photographed.  Why my bedroom?  Well I’m the only room on the west side of the house and the winter light was fading fast.  Also, I had already prepared a mini photo studio for this meal by my window, involving a charming wicker table from the spare bedroom and an old folded apron.  ‘Nuff said.

Verdict: THIS WAS AWESOME.  So creamy.  So cheesy.  I have such a stomach ache now from mac and cheese and the dessert that shall not yet be named.  I need to fast as of 10 p.m. tonight, so it best be on a full stomach!

PS: I’m kind of really fond of these pictures.  Not so much the one of the entire casserole dish, but I love the ones of my plate.  Perhaps that wasn’t a very modest comment.  Oh well.

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Family Day Breakfast: Eggs Benedict with Heavenly Hollandaise Sauce

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

Woah, eggs benedict. Where have you been all my life?

Since today is Family Day in Ontario, I decided to spoil my family and attempt once more to show off my new found cooking abilities (ones that still shock the socks off of them at times).  When my mom suggested I make breakfast today, I spent endless hours browsing the Internet (the modern day cookbook, as my dad calls it), in search of the perfect recipe.

And then I found eggs benedict.

My egg, pre-hollandaise hat.

My decision to make these rich towers of deliciousness wasn’t as impulsive as you may think.  You see, my desire to make these eggs began this past Thursday when I was frantically studying for my art history exam, which was to take place the very next morning.  My roommate Ariel and I were desperately trying to think of weird word associations to help me remember the dates, artist’s name and photo name for 30 assigned key works.  One of these photos was taken by this dude named F. Holland Day.  He created this Sacred Art Series, where he starved himself and paraded around in pictures pretending to be Jesus.  As you can probably imagine, the mind trick we created for Mr. Day was something clever to do with hollandaise and Jesus liking eggs (kind of lame, but it worked!).  As a side note, I also remembered the year of the photo (1896) due to this suggestion from Ariel: “Boy needs to eat and sandwich. He’s so emaciated.  Kate Moss was super skinny and popular in the 90s, just remember that.”  Aced it.

BUT ANYWAYS, I found this dreamy eggs benedict recipe from Pioneer Woman Cooks.  Her step-by-step picture guide worked wonders, and I frequently found myself scrolling like a crazy woman through her images, trying to find out what the hell I was doing.  Poached eggs have held some sort of strange allure to me ever since I watched this scene from my favourite movie, Julie & Julia.  Luckily, unlike Julie Powell, my mom had these little silicon pod things that I could poach the eggs in.  This, in and of itself, was not done without challenge.  I initially filled up my pot with too much liquid, and boiling water slopped over the side of the pods, sinking the poor little guys to the bottom.  Although my motto is normally “leave no egg behind,” I regretfully inform you that we lost a brave comrade to the compost.

Now before I shut up, I must comment on the hollandaise sauce.  I LOVE IT.  I just want to pour it into a pool and drown in it, that’s how good it was.  All that’s in the sauce is a cup of melted butter blended up with egg yolk, lemon juice and cayenne pepper.  Goooooosh, butter.  So wonderful.  My 17-year-old brother was so critical of its smooth, velvet-like consistency, and refused to have the it drizzled on top of his egg.  What a grave mistake, young one.  After my eggs benedict were done, I ate half an english muffin just with hollandaise sauce.  No shame, gluttony reigns supreme.

A poor illustration of how creamy, heart attack-inducingly delicious this hollandaise sauce was.

Alright, but I feel like I’m rambling a little here because of all the adventures associated with this morning’s breakfast.  Basically, all you need to know is that this was delicious and rich, albeit a tad bit time consuming.  I went through a few little panicked moments trying to co-ordinate the cooking, blending, and poaching of everything, but in the end it turned out alright (thanks for a helping hand from my mom)!  Kudos again to the Pioneer Woman for another stellar success.

PS: Okay, I’ll admit it. I overcooked the egg yolks a wee bit which is why they don’t look as runny as they should, but I’m still a newbie with this whole poached egg thing.
PPS: If you’re wondering what this “Canadian bacon” thing is mentioned in PWC’s recipe, it is back bacon. Yum!

Homemade Ice Cream Cake

~ Hilary ~ 9 Comments

Although it has only been four days since my last post, I feel like its been weeks.  It has been an incredibly busy week for me and, as per usual, I’m using blogging as a way to procrastinate from schoolwork, namely my art history midterm tomorrow morning.  While I’ve had a jam packed schedule, I’ve gotten to do some AMAZING things this week.  I don’t usually plug all my other blogs here, but if you go to the blog I made for my multimedia class, you can see a photo essay on my adventures going up in a Cessna-172 at the Rockcliffe Flying Club.  SO COOL AND SCARY.  That was one journalism adventure (a second was filming a flash mob, but that’s another story…).  Another wonderful thing that happened this week was meeting with Shakira, the co-owner/baker of Little Cakes. She drove in all the way from Stittsville to feed me cupcakes (and six of them with that!) so that I could judge them as part of my search for Ottawa’s perfect cupcake on the Local Tourist Ottawa blog.  You can check out that review this Monday :).

Alright, made it through hyperlink central?  Good.  Now on to the actual post…

This was by far the second most awesome cake I’ve ever made, losing out only to the pool party cake I made in the summer (it is my ultimate challenge to make a cake more impressive than that).  It all started when I was bored in class last week thinking about how much I was craving birthday cake.  From this boredom sprung the insane idea to make my very own ice cream cake.  Grabbing a piece of paper, I quickly sketched out the cake diagram you see below, detailing my plans for each intricate iced layer.  Some people doodle their name in multi-coloured ink, I doodle cakes.

Now you need to understand that I very rarely know what I’m doing.  Making this cake was no exception to this rule, and I figured I ought to do some research on said cake type before attempting to smush together dairy in a disastrous way.  I decided to make the cake in my beloved spring form pan, so I wouldn’t have to experience any sort of removal-from-pan challenges.  I lined it with plastic wrap and just sort of went from there.  My recipe can be found below the gadgillions of pictures, but in the meantime, let me break down the anatomy of this cake for you:

Layer 1: Chopped brownie
Layer 2: Strawberry ice cream
Layer 3: A homemade fudge thing, basically oreo crumbs and white chocolate chips mixed with chocolate sauce
Layer 4: Vanilla ice cream
Layer 5: Whipped cream

Now, since I’m speculating that many of you have never made an ice cream cake before, let me warn you that it is a time consuming process.  In preparation for our house Valentine’s Day party on Sunday night, I started making this cake on Friday.  Albeit it was so that I could take my sweet sluggish time making it, each layer does need to be frozen solid before you add the next.  For those of you hoping to make this cake in one day, it means that you’re going to have to wake up pretty damn early, unless you have some sort of state-of-the-art instant free liquid nitrogen machine.

The cake turned out awesome and I’m so proud I can finally check this one off my foodie bucket list.  It was a hit with the roommates and was the first of THREE dessert courses we had for dinner that night.  By the end I didn’t know whether to jump around in a sugar buzz euphoria or fall down in a food coma.  It turns out that latter won.

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