Having started my three-week internship at the Ottawa Citizen this past week, I’ve been looking for quick and easy meals that wield lots of lunchtime leftovers. This simple pasta dish was the best.
Also, good news: I’ve started jogging again!
TANGENT: those who know me well will know that I can only run under very specific circumstances. Here is that list, my neuroses in the making:
(a) It must be cold out; below freezing is best. This is because I have these ear bags things (like earmuffs without the over-the-head wire) that I use to simultaneously keep my ears warm and keep my apple earbuds in one place. If it’s not cold enough to wear these, I sometimes masking tape the headphones into place. True and sad story.
(b) It must be nighttime. When you were young, did you ever stare out the window while driving through the dark? Everything seems to go by at hyper-speed. The same phenomena applies to running, and I feel like Sonic the Hedgehog with the darkened world zooming by me.
(c) My music choice is very specific. Unlike the buffed up bods that listen to Top 40, catchy dance hits, I need instrumental, slow tracks. If the tempo of a song is too fast, I feel stressed to run faster and keep up with it. Personal favourites right now include my joint Adele/Regina Spektor playlist, Ratatat, Holy Fuck and old Coldplay songs.
There. Now perhaps if you’re looking to start running, these three strange preferences will change that experience for you. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the closest this blog will ever get to being a fitness site.
Back to the meal – this was healthy and delicious and packed with the nutrients I need to go from zero to seven kilometres all in a week. Ouch, shin splints.
PS: I’ve also made a lot of experimental dishes featuring quinoa (I feel another phase coming on), black beans and zucchini. Keep an eye out for a post involving all three in the upcoming days…
On the second day of Tartmas, my true love gave to me, two chocolate hazelnut ricotta tarts, one lemon tart, and a partridge in a pear tree
This is yet another one of those delicious desserts that I’ve put off blogging. Like the lemon tart I made for the first day of Tartmas, this chocolate hazelnut ricotta tart was originally for the family Christmas party I had with a group of my close friends. For more information on that, see Brittany’s beautiful post.
Also like the lemon tart, we were all too sickeningly full from dinner to even look at dessert. Alert the authorities! After dinner I walked like a caveman up to my room (my back was parallel to the floor and at a 90° angle to my legs, that’s how heavy my stomach was) and put on some stretchy pants. Feeling much better already, I went back downstairs, hid this tart and watched Love Actually for the first time this holiday season. It’s the number one cure to early Christmas food comas, I swear.
The one good thing about not eating this tart at our Christmas party was that I could recycle (there must be a better word for this…) the dessert and bring it into my last radio class on the Wednesday. And so, the tart was promptly frozen and defrosted within three days of making. Radio hunger? Satisfied. I also made a breakfast/dessert pizza for the last class but unfortunately did not get a photo. Will make again. It was delicious.
Just in case you’re wondering, this tart is an excellent choice for those who cower away from overly-sweet desserts. The filling was almost completely ricotta, meaning that it was far more savoury than sugary. The hazelnuts and orange zest were perfect flavour highlights and the homemade chocolate crust wasn’t too shabby either.
Tartmas is turning out to be a wonderful success so far. I can’t wait to see what the next ten tarts have in store!
This was the craving that just wouldn’t quit. Ever since I was gifted a copy of Canadian Living’s Complete Baking Cookbook, I’ve been dying to make this recipe.
Cream pies have always intrigued me (even more recently thanks to this). I think it started when I was in grade four. At the time, I’m almost 100 per cent positive that my mom made some sort of cream pie for the volunteers at my elementary school’s morning snack program. She was insistent that I eat none of said pie, and I was left staring longingly inside the fridge at a dessert that I would never eat. Picture 1o-year-old Hilary pouting. Not a happy sight.
A decade later, I finally decided to take matters into my own hands. Unlike normal people who bake for some sort of occasion, I made this pie on a Wednesday night with no intention to do anything but enjoy it all by myself (possibly in bed). Sometimes you just need to make yourself a pie, right?
In the end, I did end up sharing. For I had experienced pie denial at a young age, and knew that I could never force anyone else to endure such soul-crushing rejection (sorry mom). My roommates got many slices, as did my friend who lives across the street, Lindsay. Lindsay lets us borrow her hand mixer (ours died an unfortunate death). She is very important. Finally, I also shared with my old roommate, Alex. Since we’re not living together anymore, she is not the recipient of random and spontaneous weekday baking spurts. Sharing is nice.
Alex kindly freezing her butt off in order help me take photos on the deck. There was snow.
The layers in this one will blow your mind. Here’s the pie anatomy, check it:
– Graham cracker crust
– Layer of melted, semi-sweet chocolate
– Half the banana cream custard
– Layer of sliced bananas
– Other half of the banana cream custard
– Chocolate chips
– Whipped cream
– Shaved chocolate
BAM. Ten-year-old me is happily jumping about and winning at Chinese baseball right now.
On the first day of Tartmas, my true love gave to me, one lemon tart and a partridge in a pear tree
An introduction Holiday baking always helps get me back in a cooking mood. To freshen things up this year, part of that baking will be tart-themed.
Por quoi?
My one of my best friends Brittany got me a beautiful, nine-inch tart pan as part of my Christmas gift. This particular item was at the top of my Christmas list, since I’ve been finding and bookmarking tart recipes for about a decade now (give or take a few years or so…). Finally, I can make my own.
Hilary Duff: tart ninja (pastry, pre-baking - it's pretty, n'est ce pas?)
If you’re anything like me, then you will have wondered just how it is that tarts come to be. I always thought that tart pans were just like their cake pan cousins, and that you had to find some way to strategically dump out the finished product in a way that didn’t disturb the appearance. In reality, tart pans have a removable bottom. This makes total sense, of course (which is why I didn’t think of it before), and means that my newly beloved tart pan is like a cross between a springform pan and a normal cake pan. Does any of this make sense?
If not, just appreciate the final product.
In honour of my new tart pan, I’ve decided to create 12 different tarts over the upcoming weeks. I will chronicle my choices here, each time accompanied with a line from our favourite sing-songy Christmas story. Don’t roll your eyes at me. I know you secretly love it.
For the first day of Tartmas, I decided to make a refreshing zinger of a dessert: a lemon tart.
Since this is my first time ever making a tart, I didn’t want to get too adventurous and decided that this classic flavour was my best bet. I was ecstatic with how well everything turned out and, would like to shamelessly boast about my uncanny ability to produce a decent tart shell from scratch. I attribute part (okay, most) of my success to Smitten Kitchen’s fabulous “great unshrinkable sweet tart shell.” Any recipe that has such a confident blog post title has got to be good. And it was. Glory.
One thing I will note: tarts are insanely time consuming. Case in point: I spent five hours in the kitchen (/at the dining room table which I transformed into my mixing and rolling station) preparing three desserts. Not even baking them – that couldn’t happen until the next day. I blame the heavy chilling time required of pastry. As in 2 hours after making it (pre-rolling), 30 minutes once moulded in tart pan and about two hours once the tart itself was actually done. Not to mention all the baking, mixing and bowl licking time you also have to throw in.
Moral of the story: T is for tart. T is for time-consuming. But T is also for Totally awesome, which is what this tart was. All is well.
What will the next 11 days have in store? You’ll just have to wait and see…
Since I’ve been incredibly, insanely bad with keeping up my blog this month, I decided to write a post sharing with you some of the other things I’ve been doing. I’ve been keeping busy. Very busy, in fact. Back in October I was yearning for November. November would be a breeze, I told myself. I have so few assignments due in November.
October Hilary was naïve. She was half right when it came to the school-related aspect – she only had one thing due weekly for awhile and now has a culmination of three things due today and tomorrow – but what she failed to consider was all the outside of school writing she’d be doing. What stuff? Here, see for yourself. (also: third-person narrative is underrated fun).
I was asked to be the new, bi-weekly restaurant critic for the arts and entertainment weekly,Ottawa XPress (it just got a new website, which is wicked cool). I will now be using my undercover research skills (seriously, I used a fake name! How cool and spy-like is that?) to write about the city’s food scene. My first review was of The Manx, a pub-turned-brunch-destination that was voted the best in Ottawa in the paper’s annual survey. You can click on the photo below (which was taken by the very talented Ben Welland of Byfield Pitman Photography) to access the review. If you’re in Ottawa, you can check the paper for my next review this Thursday!
Next up, I’ve also been doing a lot of work for Local Tourist Ottawa, the fun, live-like-a-tourist-in-your-own-city blog that I help edit. I’ve written four posts this month, all of which, I hope, show off the amazing city and people that are all around me.
The first post was about a unique Movember fundraiser that one local chocolatier started. Jen Winter is the owner of koko chocolates. She developed a line of “manly” flavoured chocolate flavours and is selling boxes for $18 a pop, with proceeds going to raise money for prostate cancer research. The flavours are – get ready to drool – double smoked bacon, espresso, scotch and “the koko” – a 75 per cent Venezuelan dark chocolate ganache. Read more about this delicious fundraiser by clicking the photo below.
The other post I’ll link to is a multimedia-driven small business profile that I created about Chinatown’s newest shop, Purple Urchin soap. This is part of a series of profiles I’m hoping to do over the next several months, creating a montage of stories highlighting the city’s hard-working entrepreneurs. The owners, Sarah and Rebecca, were kind enough to let me chat with them several times and even showed me how to make a bar of soap (spoiler: I took pictures/recorded audio, so you can find out too). Click the picture below to read about their soapy success story.
The third post on Local Tourist has to do with the Ottawa Foodie Challenge – a city-wide photo scavenger hunt that my roommate Britt and I WON! The event raised $1,500 for the Ottawa Food Bank, and put our food knowledge to the test. The post goes more into detail, but I will say that it was an amazing day of silly photo taking and fun adventures. Plus, we were the only team to do the challenge on our bikes. Biking > driving, any day, any time. We won some amazing gift certificates (not to mention quite a bit of wine…) for local restaurants, and will be doing our best to use them before Britt leaves for Paris in the winter. #Sadface. Click the photo below to access the LT Ottawa post, or go directly to my flickr album to see the hilarious things we got up to.
FINALLY (see, I have been busy!), I’ve been doing a bit of writing for the Ottawa Citizen lately. I wrote a piece for the business section about the city’s first incubator kitchen – a business model that gives small food businesses the space and resources they need to grow their product line and company. I talk quite a bit about how much I love the Ottawa food community, and this is just a unique look into why. Everyone is so friendly and willing to help each other grow. The four businesses mentioned in this story are run by some of the most talented people I know. Keep an eye out for them. Once again, the story is linked through a photo click.
Photo by Bruno Schlumberger for the Ottawa Citizen
And there you have it – my November in out-of-school writing. Once again, sorry I’ve been so neglectful. As soon as I’m home for more than two seconds I’ll start cooking and blogging again.
Also, it’s almost December, and who am I to resist Christmas baking?
Hilary Makes 