Appetizers

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

~ 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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Artichoke chicken flatbread

~ Hilary ~ 6 Comments

I got a new cookbook!

The show "Best Recipes Ever" is basically a culmination of two of my favourite things: Canadian Living and CBC

You can only sort of tell from the photo, but I have already bookmarked several pages using mining exploration post it notes I found around my home last week.  This is what happens when you grow up in northern Ontario.

The past few months have seen me straying from my Canadian Living roots.  This cookbook represents a partial return to my beginnings, and I was eager to try out some new recipes from the people who helped me fall in love with cooking in the first place.

One of the first recipes to catch my eye was for artichoke chicken flatbread.

With my dear friend Ariel having returned from Europe last week, I decided to cook us a celebratory “summer in Ottawa” meal.

Ariel is a great kitchen assistant and a fantastic food modeler.  As you can see, not much has changed since last October…

Part two of our meal (avocado spring rolls!) will be coming up in the next couple of days.

As for this flatbread, I guess it really turned out to be more of a pizza.

My local grocery store apparently finds it unnecessary to carry flatbread of any kind, and I was certainly not up for making it myself, especially considering my newfound lack of bread machine.  So I cheated.  The flatbread is actually a store-bought pizza crust.

Secret’s out.  Whew, glad we got that out of the way.

While the flatbread may have adopted several pizza-like qualities, it was anything but average.  The pureed roasted red peppers added a twist to the base, and crunchy artichokes and red pepper combined blissfully on top.

I chose to make my flatbread/pizza sans olives, because, frankly, who likes olives.  So gross.

In other ingredient news… THIS IS OF CRITICAL IMPORTANCE: the recipe says you can use mozzarella cheese, but you must use goat cheese.  So smooth, so delicious.  Make the right decision.

As it turns out, this meal became a whole little four-person affair out on my porch.  My friend John was walking by, so I invited him up to eat.  Then my roommate Lindsay came home and joined in the festivities.

End of story?  Four fed people and no leftovers.  I was both relieved and heartbroken all at once.

As always, the recipe can be found after the jump.

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Watermelon Salsa (And a Blogger challenge finally completed) (And part one of my dinner party meal)

~ Hilary ~ 3 Comments

Well let me just say that WEEKS and WEEKS ago (JUNE 30) when my friend and fellow blogger Carly (check out her cheerful blog Carly Loves), challenged me to make a recipe “that contains an unexpected, out-of-place ingredient,” I was completed boggled.  Sure I’m creative, but food-wise?  I was just learning the ropes.  Obviously, I had a major case of chef’s block (is that a thing?), and endlessly searched the internet in hopes of finding something both shocking and delicious.  Failure.  The next logical step?  CALL MOM.  Of course, my dearest mother had a solution for me: watermelon salsa, a dish which I had curiously ignored during past home get-togethers.  After asking about half a million people if watermelon in salsa was unusual (I got an overwhelming “yes”), I decided to go forth with this recipe.  So I had the dish, the only question was when I should make it, which leads nicely into the second part of this post…

…I decided to have a dinner party!  Sick of cooking for just myself, and still dreading the thought of leftovers sitting in my fridge for days at a time, I decided to have some of my culinarily spoiled co-workers over for a casual three-course meal.  Not knowing what I should make for an appetizer, it dawned on me that this was the perfect opportunity for me to make the salsa.  Once I got to Loblaws, the Grocery Store Gods confirmed my choice to make this dish: both watermelon and tortilla chips were on sale, a miracle for my student budget.  Strangely enough, the end product hardly tasted like watermelon, and the combination of garlic, onion, soy sauce (weird) and brown sugar somehow made it delicious.  Even my roommate who is allergic to tomatoes could eat salsa for the very first time!  If you’re looking for the recipe, I’ll post it under my Recipes tab sometime in the next few days.

In the end, I think this salsa was a big hit, and it gave me an excuse to use my new 99¢ silver platter from Value Village!  Also, please note the impressive “watermelon bowl.”  I thought it was quite ingenious, and gave me one less dish to wash.  Hilary: 1, Messy Kitchen: 0.

Stay tuned over the next few days as I post course two and three from my very first dinner party!

Artichoke Dip

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

Tonight, I am going to a Cranium/Appetizer party, where my brain will be tested and my body weight in food will be ingested (note: clever rhyme).  Never having played Cranium before nor having made an appetizer, I was 0/2 for the night’s adventures.  Starting out, I was originally going to make these pinwheel-like tortilla appetizer things, using a recipe given to me by Gord (even if I didn’t use his recipe, I still needed to shamelessly plug his blog here).  Still not trusting the broiler on our psychotic, overheating oven, I decided against making the tortilla treats, and instead settled on a happy alternative.

Making a rapid, panicked phone call to my mom earlier this morning, she decided that the best thing for me to make would be an artichoke dip: simple, yet (hopefully) delicious.  It actually took no time at all to make and, even though I sliced my finger while cutting the pita pieces, I think the result was pretty fantastic!  Now to get the artichoke dip to the party…OC Transpo, please be my friend this evening.  PS: artichoke hearts actually smell delicious, turns out my fear of artichokes prior to today was completely unmerited).