Power-necessary caprese bruschetta

July 20, 2011December 31, 2011 ~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

Oh man, words cannot begin to express how much I love my new camera.

Seriously, seriously love. The pictures. They’re stunning (I think). I love, love, love, love, LOVE it. It will accompany me around Europe, photographing many a pastry, pizza and bowl of pasta. Oh the things that camera will see in the upcoming month. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, check out part two of my bruschetta making extravaganza: caprese bruschetta.

This was the second type of bruschetta I was supposed to make on Sunday night, before Mother Nature swooped in and kicked Hydro Ottawa’s ass. I was so concerned on Monday evening when I got home from work – the electricity was still out, and my Art-is-in Bakery baguette wasn’t getting any fresher.

My worrisome bruschetta fate led to me attempting desperate measures:
http://twitter.com/#!/hilaryduffcu/status/93064400503717888

To my great relief, the power came on before I was forced to bring my cheese to another location. My friend Ben was kind enough to offer his fridge, however, and so I brought him and his girlfriend Sara the leftovers.

Anyways, back to the actual bruschetta. I discovered that this appetizer is actually the only way I like eating uncooked tomatoes. Normally I hate them, but there was something about the combination of high quality mozzarella, basil and oregano that made it all okay.

In the recipe I adapted my version from, the cheese wasn’t supposed to be melted. To that, I say all cheese is better melted. I let it broil on top of the garlic oil-soaked bread and scattered the leftover cheese on top. Omnomnoms were achieved.

PS: Bruschetta is the most unladylike appetizer to eat. I thank my lucky stars that I was sitting on the porch alone wearing biking clothes when I ate this. A mess was made.

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No-power-necessary strawberry, goat cheese and pesto bruschetta

July 18, 2011December 31, 2011 ~ Hilary ~ 7 Comments

Apparently Mother Nature does not like bruschetta.

Defying Mother Nature's wishes, I went ahead with dinner (and I'm certainly glad I did)

In the course of 15 minutes, yesterday night changed from a fairly sunny paradise to a Hollywood-action-flick worthy hellhole. Most of you out-of-towners probably heard about the freak weather in the form of news reports about a little incident that happened at Bluesfest.

Anyways, the storm that wreaked havoc to the Bluesfest stage was the same one that kindly decided to knock the power out on my small, Old Ottawa South street block. This put a kink in my evening plans. All day long I had been planning to make two types of bruschetta, using this amazing Parisian baguette I bought earlier in the day at Art-is-in Bakery (post to come in a few days).

I arrived home from a photo shoot with Anne from Hello Ottawa, only to find my kitchen engulfed in darkness. I could have cried. My bread was at its optimum freshness and needed to be used.

Then I made a decision: no man, beast or freak power outage was going to keep me from my bruschetta.

The oven was still warm from when my roommate and her boyfriend cooked a huge pot roast, so I decided to heat my bread in there. It wasn’t toasted, but I figured the baguette was chewy and crusty enough already that it would suffice.

After about 10 minutes in the oven I took it out and, by the glow of a small tea light, spread pesto and goat cheese over my barely-visible pieces of baguette. Thank heavens my strawberries were pre-cut, otherwise it’s highly likely I would have lost a digit. I tossed the strawberries with a bit of balsamic vinegar and carefully added them on top of the goat cheese.

Taking the bruschetta outside into the 8:30 p.m. light, I could finally see the fruits of my labour. Yes, the end product looked a little messy, but it was completely delicious. I ate six pieces. In minutes. It was that good.

Our power just went back on a few hours ago. To celebrate, I made my second type of bruschetta. My life = officially made.

PS: since my power had been off for 12+ hours this morning when I left for work, I packed up all my cheese and frozen meat and biked them into the office to put in the fridge. Take that unholy lack-of-refrigeration diseases!
PPS: Even though I saw the original recipe that inspired this bruschetta on Tastespotting, it was also partially inspired by this amazing flatbread I had at the Ottawa restaurant Mambo the other week when I reviewed their patio scene for Local Tourist Ottawa.
PPPS: My new camera is leading to me taking even more pictures than before. I’m averaging about 50 per meal. This is bad news.

Depth of field - you do exist! (even though you're looking a little sharp right here...)

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Creamy macaroni with sun-dried tomatoes and Kettleman’s cream cheese

July 16, 2011December 31, 2011 ~ Hilary ~ 7 Comments

At this point you’ve probably guessed that this pasta was kind of creamy, huh?

With the combination of melted provolone and Parmesan cheese, whipping cream and cream cheese, I had no other choice but to include the adjective twice in the title of this post.

Oh, and speaking of cream cheese, this wasn’t just any old Philadelphia stuff. Nope, this cream cheese was of the light vegetable spread variety, and came to my kitchen from the infamous Kettleman’s Bagel Company located not too far from my house. Since I never buy bagels (I love them, but I would eat half a dozen in an hour*), I needed to find another way to use up the rest of the cream cheese. Matt had very kindly bought it for me one morning when he went to get us bagels, back when I was sick a few weeks ago (yes, I do happen to crave bagels when I’m sick, deal with it). What a dear he is. I’m not 100% sure what vegetables are in said spread, but I’m thinking there were possibly peppers and carrots, as well as some unidentifiable green item. Mystery ingredients, ftw.

Anyways, I basically built the rest of the pasta dish around everything else that I had in the fridge, including half a red pepper, two types of onion, provolone cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach and a garlic-infused olive oil (the latter was not in the fridge). Toss ’em all together and you have a sinfully delicious, heart-stoppingly creamy (possibly from all the fat) pasta dish. So delicious.

This is what happens when I half-hazardly decide to create my own recipe. Yes, this is a piece of Rogers junkmail (this is why you didn't get this, Ariel) from our old house.

PS (!!!!!!!!!): I GOT A NEW CAMERA!!!!! It is a Canon Rebel T3i and I already love it to death! Depth of field! In my food photography! EXCITEMENT!!!!!

*Almost a true story. I once bought Montreal-style bagels in Westboro and walked down the street in the middle of winter stuffing pieces of delicious warm bread into my mouth. I went through three bagels in 20 minutes. I am not proud of this (translation: this was the most proud moment of my life).

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Portobello mushroom burgers with provolone cheese and red pepper mayonnaise

July 12, 2011December 31, 2011 ~ Hilary ~ 16 Comments

It should be illegal for something to taste this good.

Here’s a hint to all you readers (hello, anyone out there? Mom, is that you?): if I post something the day I made it, then you know it was just so incredible that I needed to share it with the world right away. This was one of those meals – the type that makes you lean back in your chair and emit “oohhh” and “ahhh” sounds with every bite.

This meal was also good enough to make me actually consider vegetarianism as a plausible lifestyle. I’m serious – the only thing that was holding me back from kicking the cow (forgive me) all together was the fact that I love, adore and live for beef burgers. Today, July 12, 2011, an alternative was found. Portobello mushroom caps have a naturally meaty texture and are way more flavourful than the traditional burger. And god knows I eat enough quinoa that I don’t need the protein…

Anyways, these burgers were unreal, and perfectly in sync with my current portobello mushroom phase. The recipe was inspired by the August issue of Canadian Living (which I managed to rescue from the piles of mail at my old house…I really need to get my address changed). As an aside, you can always tell which recipes I’ve made in books or magazines, since the page is absolutely destroyed with oil stains and food residue by the time I’m done. Oh the memories.

Now, if you’ve been reading for awhile, you’ll notice that I frequently express my love for preparing certain foods. In the past, I’ve said I love slicing zucchini, peeling avocados and cutting bouncy eggplants, among many other equally as strange things.

I can now add another neurotic food preparation love to that list: de-gilling a portobello mushroom cap. It really is a whole lot of fun (this may speak a lot to the type of life I have). You gently snap off the mushroom stem and use the side of a spoon to hull out the gills (you know, the fun underside of a mushroom that you always want to run your fingers against).

Hey, don’t judge my strange obsessions. You don’t truly love food unless you love every part of it – gills included. There’s a life lesson for you, kids.

PS: The broil feature on my oven has changed my life. It’s like a BBQ without the aesthetically-pleasing grill lines.
PPS: The texture of a grilled portobello mushroom is what I imagine the skin of a dinosaur would feel/look like.

And of course, the more delicious a food, the messier it is to eat…

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Tie-dye cookies

July 9, 2011December 31, 2011 ~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

Please forgive me for what I’m about to do:

These cookies were absolutely tie-dye for.

See? I told you it was going to be bad. Now, if you can move on from this disastrous display of attempted wit, please continue to read about these colourful cookies.

I figured such colourful cookies warranted the use of my homemade placemats as an appropriate backdrop.

The rekindling of my creative cooking self was partly inspired by my passionate love of colour.

These cookies saw me, once again, utilizing the ever-strong powers of my gel food colouring (well technically, it’s Brittany’s food colouring, but she was kind enough to let me use it for the summer). The recipe for these cookies was inspired by two different blog postings, one by The Cooking Photographer, and the other by my new favourite baking blog, Diamonds for Dessert. I’ve only made “icebox cookies” once before. To make icebox cookies, all you do is refrigerate the dough and slice it to make the cookies. For me, this refrigeration time lasted for two days, since I had absolutely no time to make them earlier in the week. I finally got around to baking them while I waited for my portobello pesto pizza to rise.

Due to poor planning on my part, I decided to knead the gel food colouring into the cookie dough, rather than mix it in pre-flour when it would have actually been easy. As a result, the dough wasn’t completely dyed, creating this sort of cool tie-dye effect. It also meant that my hands were dyed with pink, green, yellow and purple dye for three straight days.

Gel food colouring – it’s powerful stuff. (PS: in my recipe below I’ve changed around the instructions so you can get solid cookie colours…unless you want to make them look tie-dye, that is, in which case add in the food colouring last).

My favourite part of photographing these cookies, was that a little girl strolling along the street with her mom stopped and stared for a bit. Something about rainbow-coloured cookies make kids coming running. I gave her a her mom a cookie and snapped their picture just because the kid was so damn cute. I also happened to be a fan of her pink colour scheme.

I already have a few tricks up my sleeves for the next time I make cookies like this. I’m thinking of making two layers mint green and adding in peppermint extract instead of vanilla. The other two layers will then somehow have oreo crumbs mixed in, making them either (a) like a girl guide cookie or (b) like the best Dairy Queen blizzard in existence. Stay tuned.