Student Cooking

Chicken Noodle Stir Fry

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

Well I have finally gotten sick of all the salads I’ve been making.

Even though all the salad main dishes I’ve made over the past two weeks have been delicious and healthy, I was craving something a little more substantial for last night’s dinner.  Searching through pages and pages of chicken recipes on Canadian Living’s website, I finally stumbled on this one for a chicken noodle stir fry.  Since this recipe was only the second stir fry I have ever made, I wasn’t 100% sure of how well it would work out.  All the ingredients were really simple, EXCEPT for baby bok choy.  Waltzing through the produce section of the grocery store, I found a tag for normal adult bok choy.  Alas, the adult’s baby was nowhere to be found, and I had to settle for using defrosted spinach as a disappointingly wilted alternative.

With the chicken marinated in a tasty soy sauce/sesame seed oil/garlicy mixture, and the added honey hoisin sauce at the end, this dish satisfied my every dinner desire.

Gord’s Dinner, Part Three: Chocolate Volcano Cake

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

BY FAR THE MOST DELICIOUS, DELICATE AND DIFFICULT THING I HAVE EVER MADE.  I am so proud.

I’ll keep this short and sweet.  In my mind, these chocolate volcano cakes are the Holy Grail of dessert and, being a self-proclaimed chocoholic, I knew I would go to extreme measures to ensure that they were completed perfectly.  The recipe was from Canadian Living, obviously, and the preparation instructions originally scared me to death.

Here are a few things I learned from these cakes/morsels from heaven:

1. How to separate the yolk from the egg white
1a. When you continuously blend egg whites, a heavenly, peaked mixture comes into existence.  I knew this happened, I have just never experienced the magic before.
2. These cakes are called volcano cakes for a reason.  One of them blew up as I tried to pick it up.  My counter consequently suffered a chocolate flash flood.
3. A set of six ramekin dishes for $9 is the best investment a girl can make.
3a. I need a second job to afford all the extra dishes I am buying to make my food plating a pretty process.
4. The picture below DOES NOT do this cake justice.  If I could include a scratch-and-eat feature on wordpress, I swear you would all love me.

Gord’s Dinner, Part Two: Mini Quiches

~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

At approximately 5:30 p.m. on Sunday evening, I decided that a salad could not possibly be enough for dinner (despite what Canadian Living said about it being a “main course dish”).  With such thought, I promptly began to mildly freak out, whipping open every cookbook in sight in an attempt to find something else to make.  Gord was due for dinner an exact hour after this breakdown occurred.

Since I am writing this post, I’m sure you have all guessed that I successfully managed to make a supplementary dish for dinner.  Inspired by a recipe for mini quiche lorraines in one of our house cookbooks, I quickly went to work creating my own spinoff of the classic recipe.  It was easy-peasy, and basically consisted of me lining greased muffin tins with pre-made pie crust, shoving some sandwich meat (ham) and mozzarella cheese in the base, and filling the rest of the tin up with an egg and milk mixture.  Sprinkle fresh chives on the top, and voila – an appetizer!  For once, I am extremely grateful for my overheated, possessed student oven, as it cooked these quiches in a record breaking 20 minutes.

And they were GOOD.  Quiche is probably one of my favourite foods, and the fact that I whipped these up in an hour makes me giddy with delight.  Nom, nom, nom, nom!

Gord’s Dinner, Part One: Chickpea Tabbouleh Salad

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

(Eeeee, it has been a week since I last posted, apologies!)

……..

To celebrate the completion of my tofu challenge a few weeks ago, my good friend and fellow blogger Gord made me a delicious dinner of quinoa salad, gazpacho and creme brule (see a few posts back for the scrumptious results).  This meal started a pattern of what I now call “reward dinners,” where each of us cooks for the other when a challenge is completed.  Gord’s very first challenge was to make a pie from scratch, and the result was an amazing strawberry rhubarb pie, a dish whose tastes boggled my mind one afternoon after a long day in the office (I ate it in a record-breaking two minutes).  To honour the completion of his challenge, I knew I had to make Gord a dinner that was just as, if not more delicious than the dinner he made for me.

Knowing that Gord is way more into vegetables than I am, I knew this supper had to incorporate a fair share of legumes.  I also happen to know that Gord likes chickpeas.  With these two checkpoints in mind, I flipped through my Canadian Living Everyday Favourites cookbook, and found the perfect recipe: chickpea tabbouleh salad.  The salad is apparently a Lebanese delicacy, and used bulgur, something that I have been curious to cook with for sometime now.  Since I obviously didn’t know what bulgur was before making this recipe (I simply liked that it rhymed with “vulgur”), I have decided to include the Bulk Barn definition below, should anyone also be confused as to what this strange sounding food is:

Bulgur (noun) – bulgur is made from soft wheat kernels that have been cooked, dried and then cracked; thus “cooking” it is simply a matter of rehydration…

Now that we all know what bulgur is, let me just sum up this post by saying that the salad was great, with a lemon dressing and crunchy cucumber (even if there were a few too many vegetables for my liking).  The only thing I didn’t like were the tomatoes (raw tomatoes are my greatest enemy, next to tofu), but I simply included them for Gord’s benefit.  Alas, they added a gorgeous red colour, which I must admit to loving.

Stay tuned in the next few days as I post parts two and three of Gord’s dinner (appetizer and DESSERT).  It just gets better from here!!!

Mediterranean Barley Rice Salad

~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

Is it sad that I start brainstorming what I am going to say for these posts before I even return home from the grocery store?

Since it is absolutely scorching here in Ottawa, and because of the fact that I am sitting in a giant house-sauna, it is not necessary to explain why I decided to stay away from any baked/oven-prepared meal today.  Since even just starting to type this very small segment of text, my fingertips and palms have begun to sweat (how ladylike of me), and I find myself wondering how in the world it is that I have not yet passed out due to heat stroke.  This week at work has been incredibly insane so far – we have officially finished 1/3 of the Summer O marathon, with every upcoming session making me fear I may go hysterical.  I know I am whining; please forgive me, I love my job, I really do!!  </whining> Let the positivity and tales of salad cooking begin! ……….

Through today’s cooking adventure, I have discovered several things about myself:

ONE. I adore cucumber, especially that of the English variety.  Cucumber is also incredibly fun to slice (I got a similar satisfaction when I sliced tofu for the first time).
TWO. If planning on using mangoes, said fruit must be bought days in advance, to allow sufficient time for ripening.  I discovered this during a phone call to my mom whilst in the grocery store today (“mom, when they say ‘firm mangoes’ what do they mean?”)
THREE. When your dinner plans for the evening have been completely thrown off by non-ripe mangoes, the best you can do is locate the nearest copy of a Canadian Living magazine and run around the grocery store hysterically trying to collect ingredients for a new meal.
THREE A. This meal is the result of this hysteria.

On that note, this salad could not have turned out any better!  The recipe was from the June issue of Canadian Living, and the recipe can be found right here.  The dish had a perfect balance of grain and vegetables, and the spinach made a really great base for the rest of the salad.  The dressing was light and lemon-flavoured, and was a perfect cool down after a tiring, hot day.  The salad was also super colourful, which I obviously LOVE, so the pictures turned out magnificently!  Even the name sounds exotic!  What more can a little food blogger ask for?  I definitely recommend this salad to anyone and everyone.  Mom, if you’re reading this post, let me tell you that I am making this salad next time I come home.

Thanks again Canadian Living, you’re a lifesaver!