Hilary makes food

Grilled Chicken and Red Pepper Sandwich with Brie

~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

I finally got sick of eating sesame seed bagels with strawberry cream cheese.  After a day of March Break tour guiding yesterday, I was famished and knew I needed to make myself something delicious and nutritious for supper. I haven’t cooked in a little while and it seemed as though I was a little out of practice with this whole meal decision thing. Because of this, I wandered around the grocery store for a torturous amount of time, pondering what it was that I wanted to eat.  Now that I look back, the answer was so simple.

I wanted a sandwich.

I’ve been craving a gourmet sandwich ever since I made my mom the pear, ham and gruyere sandwich over reading week. As I walked up and down the deli aisle of the grocery store, I was practically drooling in anticipation.  But what would I put on my sandwich?  Since I’m not a fan of duplicate blog posts, I needed to make something dramatically different than my mom’s fruity fare.  So I improvised.  I was getting a huge chunk of brie anyways (because I eat an unhealthy amount of cheese), and decided to build my sandwich around this.  Add some grilled chicken, red pepper and leftover red onion and voila!  I’m a master sandwich maker (no sexist jokes, please).  Also, the only protein I’ve eaten in what seems like weeks has been cheese, so it was nice to have some chicken in there.  Finally, I had some parsley leftover in the fridge, so I decided to throw that in for fun.  I popped the entire sandwich in the toaster oven for a bit and everything got heated, melty and ultra flavourful.  I’m almost salivating just thinking about it.

The recipe is under the pictures, ch-ch-check it out!

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Salmon Kedgeree

~ Hilary ~ 3 Comments

The best leftovers in the universe.

As you can probably tell by the massive gaps between recent posts, I’ve had a crazy busy March so far.  I seem to have started off my 21st year of life with a bang, and in the past weeks have managed to plan a six week trip to Europe (more to come on this later), meet some journalism idols while working at the Genie Awards, and do a variety of other extra curricular activities.  At the same time, the upcoming weeks will be a challenge.  There are huge assignments due, a March break tour guiding schedule at school, and television newsroom days.  I’m tired, I’m really, really tired.  I have gotten involved in way too many things this year and they’ve finally started to catch up with me.  I hate to say this, but I think I might be taking a bit of a blogging hiatus, or at the very least I won’t be able to post more than twice a week.  Summer, where are you?

On a positive note: daylight savings time was early this year, which means the season of outdoor food photography is upon us!  My poor patio has been neglected from photos for months now, and is begging for a little attention.  Also, I am interning at the National Post in Toronto for all of April so I’ll be getting the chance to have an amazing journalism experience, explore a new city, and hopefully cook loads.  I can’t wait.  AND Britt, my other friend Freya and I found the GREATEST house for next year that is so close to school.  There’s lots to look forward to post-March.

Anyways, here’s this salmon kedgeree dish I made a few days ago.  It’s great for anyone who loves curry and spice (warning: you and your kitchen will smell for days afterwards).  My craving for salmon lined up perfectly with it going on sale at the grocery store.  Don’t you just love it when things just work?

PS: Wikipedia tells me that kegeree is supposed to have egg. I disagree/didn’t have time to hard boil eggs before class.

Source: Canadian Living

Roasted Red Pepper and Sweet Potato Soup

~ Hilary ~ 5 Comments

This soup was my lifesaver early last week when I wasn’t able to chew anything.  Although I am (thankfully) now fully recovered from my wisdom teeth operation, this soup was a delicious way to enjoy my liquid diet meals.  Also, the only reason I decided to stop relying solely on mushy foods was because I really wanted chicken wings on my birthday…is this bad?

I’m typing this post right before I have to rush off to class, so I’ll be fairly quick about it.  Ever since I discovered that I love sweet potatoes, I have been looking for an excuse to include them in everything I make.  This soup was the perfect way to do this and, although I ate probably 1/4 of the potato before it even made it in the soup pot (roasted sweet potato = heaven), what was included added a lot of flavour and contributed to the overall consistency.

This might be the last hot soup I make for awhile, since the winter months are speeding towards the end.  Who knows though, if Ottawa weather keeps acting the way it is I might just have to extend my winter cooking until the end of March.  Fingers crossed that this is not the case, I want to start taking food pictures outside again!!!

PS: Ha! Just realized that the first picture looks like a soupy sunset.

Source: Canadian Living

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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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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