Author: Hilary

Cheddar, onion and pancetta galette (the perfect fireplace fare)

~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

Leftovers. This yields so many delicious leftovers.

I feel as though there is no better place to write this post than sitting in my living room in front of our faux fire. It’s warm, cozy and satisfying, just like this galette. This dinner was the ultimate “curl up in your pyjamas and eat” (not that I ever do that, nope, never) meal.

But before I talk about that, let me discuss the experience of pie crust making. People have told me that making pie dough from scratch is truly a character building experience. They say it can be a daunting task. Perhaps it is my love of kneading things or my meticulous measurements, but my experience was actually a simple and positive one. The crust recipe you’ll find below is courtesy of the Complete Canadian Living Baking Book, and those folks know what they’re talking about. Needless to say, I’m now on a bit of a pie kick. In fact, I am currently plotting a baking extravaganza to make use of my newfound skills. I’m thinking a banana cream pie might be first up…

This galette actually turned out so well. I was very happy. When I first made the filling (the onion and pancetta) and piled it on to the rolled out dough, I was terrified. The thing was stuffed to its very fullest point and was upright and chubby. I was sure that when I put it in the oven it would simply explode out of objection. Luckily the exact opposite happened, and the onion and pancetta continued to cook down, leading to a flat and visually appealing dinner. Whew. Dodged a bullet there.

And gosh, was it ever pretty. But of course (and this can be classified as a first world problem, fyi), daylight savings time once again conspired against me. I finished making this at a reasonable dinner time (6 p.m.), yet it had still been dark outside for a whole hour-and-a-half. Sadness. No patio photography for me. As a result, the  photo shoot for this dinner was held the next afternoon on my dining room table with a galette that retained little of its fresh-out-of-the-oven splendour. So I hope these are still okay photos. I even put the entire galette back in the oven to try and make it look appetizing again!

Anyways, major noms were had and I’m ecstatic that I added pancetta to the recipe. So freakin’ good.

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Beet and goat cheese quiche

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

This post is a lesson into why you shouldn’t let vendors at farmer’s markets sell you two large bunches of beets.

The fateful day was last Sunday and the victim was me. I biked to the market innocently enough, looking to buy just enough of the root vegetable to make a nice, tiny borscht dinner for myself. Since I had forgotten to buy my beets when I was at the market earlier, I went back just when it was closing down. This meant that all the vendors wanted to do was load off their vegetables on last minute buyers like me.

As though armed with psychic powers, the vendor struck me at my weakest point.

“Would you like a deal?” he asked.

There it was. I was sold. I didn’t even know what the bargain was yet and I was already pandering off my money to him. As a student and a sucker for deals, I had no choice but to accept. At least he wasn’t pawning off his entire stock on me, right? Anyways, I ended up with two huge…lets call them bouquets of beets. About 12 of them in total. I think it was a good deal – $7 for two bunches versus the regular $10? Perhaps I was ripped off. I guess my magenta-hued self will never know.

Though beets are an inherently healthy vegetable, these beets put my safety at risk. Both of my bikes happen to only have one brake, and that remaining brake is compressed by the hand that is normally assigned to carry cheesecake, cupcakes, toilet paper and now beets. I had very little stopping power going down Sunnyside towards my house, and was extremely grateful for the lack of Sunday morning traffic. Damn you beets. Damn you to hell.

In other news, this quiche was awesome. I’ve always liked quiche, ever since I was a vegetable-hating child (approximately up until the age 0f 19). My mom used to make a simple ham and cheese version for my family, and so I consider every quiche made after that point to be adaptation of her recipe. Thank you, mom.

Hearty goodness

There were several delicious ingredients contained within this meal, including the beets, red onion and leek. I can’t mention leeks without recalling the time when I was, oh, 12-or-so, and helped out for the morning at my uncle’s leek farm in Ireland alongside my cousins. We were packaging the leeks and emerged from that darkened warehouse with our eyes watering towards the sea. Since then, leeks have always made me cry.

Finally, a special thanks goes out to my lovely roommate, Freya, for letting me use some of her aunt’s gifted-upon-us goat cheese. Seriously, you have no idea how much goat cheese we have in this house. I mean, I think this should be the standard amount of cheese for any household, but I guess it is a bit ridiculous. Three medium-sized tupperware containers. Is this what heaven looks like?

PS: I’m sorry, I cheated again and used pre-made pie crust. I know, I know. Don’t give me that look. I just had no time, okay? Here, have a food pun.

http://twitter.com/#!/glengower/status/133372602533154816

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Good Food Box Ottawa, recipe two: Single-serving chicken pot pies

~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

Words cannot describe the irrational love I have for miniature foods. There is nothing better in the universe than a single-sized meal.

My positive conception of individual portion sizes can likely be blamed on one of three things:
1. My obsession with shamelessly showing off my homemade meals in class – meals that are neatly baked into a cute little Pyrex containers.
2. My childhood love of airplane food and the neat little single meals served up on a just-the-right-size plastic tray. 3. My OCD. Admit it, single-servings just look more organized and clean. Don’t believe my obsessiveness is accurate? My new favourite Tumblr blog shows evidence to the contrary.

Beautiful organization (my new desktop background)

Anyways, to say these chicken pot pies were an impulsive dinner decision would be an understatement. Besides the preemptive purchasing of a roast chicken, all prior planning was lost in the heat of a post-Wednesday class panic. Like I said in my previous post, I made these pot pies for my friend Jessey and I. Like I also said in that post, I have a completely unwarranted fear of cooking for people (can likely be blamed on the need-to-impress issues that took root as a child). Before deciding to make these for dinner, Jessey and I had been flirting with the idea of take out. Jessey said she was starving and was experiencing a violent craving for chow mein noodles.

In the end, it was my need to impress guests and the fear of a crippling post-Chinese-food coma that won, and I decided a dinner quickie (gutter, remove your head) was in order.

Luckily I just happened to have everything I needed thanks to my Good Food Box. Like I mentioned before, the box provided me with a bounty of vegetables to use and, unless I planned on making minestrone soup for a million armies, I needed to use it fast. These pot pies were the perfect veggie-users, and the meal guts contained onion, celery, mushrooms and red pepper. Unrelated to the good food box offerings, but can we just mention how half roast chickens from the grocery store are the Food God’s gift to student kind?

Seriously, fellow students. Buy a pre-roasted chicken. Your life will be changed; your meal-making time minimized.

But really, this was actually a very student-friendly meal. It took me about 40 minutes to prepare and involved several food cheats. Whatever do I mean? Well, my timesaver cheats came in the form of a can of peas/carrots and frozen puff pastry. Remember when Todd got called out on Top Chef Canada for not making his own puff pastry? Well I am not Todd. I am a student and will cheat at dinner as much as I possibly can. So there.

End result: these were pretty awesome. This recipe made two, baby Pyrex pot pies and one tiny Ramekin one. In an act of ultimate sacrifice, I only ate the tiny Ramekin worth of pot pie the night of in order to take pictures in daylight the next day. The things I do for food photography.

PS: IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT EVERYONE OWN A SET OF PYREX DISHES.

My food photography sets just keep getting more and more ridiculous. I had to reheat the pot pie after this one.

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Pumpkin molasses whoopie cookie pies and Halloween candy bark: embracing seasonal potlucks with Jessey

~ Hilary ~ 10 Comments

And here I thought I would have no time for Halloween baking. I was happily proven wrong.

Last week, my friend Jessey (and founder of the blog I help edit, Local Tourist Ottawa, GO CHECK IT OUT) sent me an email request. Her office was having a Halloween potluck on Thursday and she wanted to know if I could help her make some spooky treats. Of course, I had to make time for a friend. Enabling myself to bake for an entire night wasn’t a bad thing either.

http://twitter.com/#!/jescbird/status/129322588659912704

After I got Jessey’s message, I spent the next few hours searching the Internet for perfect, not-too-difficult-but-still-impressive-looking recipes. I finally decided on the Halloween candy bark from Annie’s Eats and some super huge variation on this whoopie pie recipe in order to not use cake mix.

When Wednesday evening rolled around, it was time to ingredient shop. After a trip to the grocery store in which half of the world’s chocolate supply was carried home on my bike (seriously, I looked like a girl scorned by a terrible, broken relationship), Jessey came over to my place and we started the baking. But not before eating some mini chicken pot pies. Recipe to come.

Secret: I’m absolutely terrified to bake/cook with or for other people. Things could happen. My oven could explode, chocolate could burn, stovetop fires could occur or, heaven forbid, something could even taste bad. This isn’t me lying to you or exaggerating in any way. I’m scared that either A through D will happen and that the friend, family member and/or roommate that I’m with at the time will harshly judge me, comment all over my blog, and thereby destroy any sort of little community I’ve built for myself here. Luckily none of these things happened. I know, you were really holding your breath for a moment.

Hey look! It's me! I look super happy and about five-years-old. Photo by Jessey

In fact, there was only one thing that happened throughout our entire baking time that could be ranked on the “I’m judging you, Hilary” scale. Here’s the story:

It was the end of the evening and Jessey and I were making the filling for the whoopie pie cookies. During my trip to the grocery store, I had put both the all purpose flour bag and the icing sugar bag in one spot. Both were clear, since baking supplies are best bought at the Bulk Barn. Both looked pretty darn similar.

Poor hindsight. Can you spot my error?

The icing for the cookies required a cup-and-a-half of icing sugar. Guess what cup-and-a-half went into the mixing bowl instead? You guessed it. Along with the orange gel food colouring, the filling started to resemble more of a magic potion (like the ones I stored in film canisters in my closet when I was 10) than an actual edible frosting (or anything for that matter). The mistake was spotted and we laughed. I was only flush red for a few minutes.

Other than that, everything was super. Realistically, the whoopie pies were more like delicious, soft pumpkin-molasses cookies with icing smushed in between them. My evening ended with me piping leftover frosting onto cookies and, when those were all gone, piping it straight into my mouth. Attractive, I know.

Jessey and I at the end of the evening (Photo by Jeremy)
Instagram, you take pretty cookie pictures

Moral of the story: you always have time to bake (and icing makes your stomach sore). Jessey said our dessert plate was a hit!

Food photo shoots are always better when your pretty roommates join in!

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Good Food Box Ottawa, recipe one: Pumpkin apple soup

~ Hilary ~ 3 Comments

Yes, I know, I know, enough with the pumpkin already.

Before you continue with your inaudible web whining, you should know that this one was for a good cause. Last month I saw a tweet from Ryan asking if any food bloggers were interested in receiving a food box from Good Food Box Ottawa.

Here’s an excerpt from their website to tell you more about the program:

We are a non-profit community-based initiative bringing neighbours together to buy a variety of delicious and nutritious fresh fruits and vegetables at wholesale prices. Our goal is to purchase food that is in season and is grown as close to home as possible.

Pretty rad, huh? Good Food Box is an especially good program for students, and I’ve heard of people splitting one of the large boxes with their roommates. The program has pick-up locations on both the Carleton and University of Ottawa campuses, which means you can avoid a produce run to the grocery store. Does it get much better than that?

A sample Good Food Box

Why yes, yes it does. The boxes can be easily bought online and the produce contained within each varies based on the time of year. Access to fresh food has never been easier. The normal boxes run from $10 to $20 and there’s a $5 fruit bag and $25 organic box as well.

Now, as you can imagine, I quickly messaged Ryan back and requested a Good Food Box of my own. After a slight mishap in which I picked up the box a few days late (I have scattered mind/scattered calendar syndrome), I made it home and examined my options. Since I plan on making a few more recipes with what was in my box, I won’t reveal all the goodies just yet.

I will, however, tell you that I made quick use of the pumpkin and apples (speaking of which, I looked only slightly ridiculous carrying a baby pumpkin across campus last night). I have been wanting to make a recipe like this since last October and had just never gotten around to it, so my Good Food Box gave me the perfect opportunity. After searching a few of my favourite recipe source sites (Canadian Living, Tastespotting) to get inspired, I decided to create a soup of my own.

But first, the preparation. Like I said in my previous blog post, it is completely against a pumpkin’s nature to want to be peeled. You think I would have learned better, but alas I did not. The difficulty it gave me was worth it, and the roasted pumpkin came out smelling and looking like a delicious cross between butternut squash and sweet potatoes.

The soup turned out great and I garnished it with a few seasoned pumpkin seeds that my roommate had made earlier in the week. They had cinnamon, salt and nutmeg on them, and added a crunchy surprise to the top of the soup. A pie in soup form. Awesome.

The sunny afternoon meant that I needed to crane my body over my meal setting in order to take pictures that weren’t harshly lit. I was out on the front patio for so long that (a) I had to reheat my soup after the photo shoot, and (b) I attracted the most annoying cat EVER. The little grey feline refused to leave, and insisted on brushing coyly up against my leg, eyes flickering towards my open dish of pumpkin seeds. You shall not induce my allergies today, punk. After much shooing and jumping about on the deck as though there was an earthquake, kitty retreated, choosing to sit instead at the end of our front path.

He may look cute, but this neighbourhood cat is NOTHING BUT TROUBLE (okay, so I'm not a cat person...)

Back to the soup: Of course, it is required that you serve such a meal in a pumpkin. Even if you cheat and keep the actual liquid in a bowl (I won’t tell if you don’t).

I can’t wait to decide what to make next with my Good Food Box finds. Hint: it will likely involve cranberries.

PS: don’t you just love it when your house has random planks of wood and bricks lying around that are perfect for food photo shoots?

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