Student Cooking

Spinach Strawberry and Pear Salad

~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

On a warm, reminiscent of summer day, I rejoiced in the fact that I got to eat at a barbeque.  My attendance at this afternoon event meant that I could resist the delicious outdoor supper smells as I returned from my afternoon journalism story covering.  Since I was full of delicious hot dog and cotton candy goodness (I ate the latter on the bus, which is an extremely difficult task), I wasn’t that hungry for supper, so I decided to just make myself a light salad.

As of the late, I have discovered my favourite types of salad always involve baby spinach and some sort of fruit.  With this knowledge in mind, I decided to use these two key elements to whip up a quick and delicious spinach strawberry and pear salad.  The baby spinach I used was the stuff I had sitting in the fridge after I neglected to include it in my last blog post meal.  As for the strawberries, Britt and I went to the local farmer’s market at Lansdowne Park this morning, and had the most wonderful time browsing through the fresh produce and eating AMAZING macarons (the first time I’ve ever tried them).  The strawberries came fresh from the market (I also got peaches and carrots!) and cast a magical “fresh strawberry” spell over me.  I know I’ve been slacking on posting recipes lately, but here is the one for this salad:

Salad
– 1 cup of trimmed baby spinach
– 1/2 cup of strawberries, pitted and halved
–  Half a pear, thinly sliced
– 1/4 cup almonds, toasted (or not, since I burnt my first batch in the toaster oven and decided to settle with them un-toasted)

Dressing
– 1 tbsp vegetable oil
– 1/2 tbsp white wine vinegar
– 1/2 tsp granulated sugar
– pinch of salt and pepper

Toss and enjoy!

I hope this salad has the same magical effect on you that it had on me!

Oh, one more thing… I took this picture at around 7:17 this evening.  Please note that the sun now sets at 7:05, which meant that this picture was taken in the semi-dark at the end of my street under a streetlight.  People walked by and saw me crouched down beside the sidewalk, photographing my food.  I’m starting to think my entire neighbourhood thinks I’m off my rocker… I may have to think of alternative arrangements for darkened photography.

Gruyere and Ham Pasta (Gruyere = the king of all cheese)

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

The insanity of what is my third year of university has finally begun in full force.  Rushing home from class and work today, Brittany (roomie) and I trekked down to the Byward Market in hunt of leather bracelets (Britt wants to be a rock star) and gruyere cheese.  Unable to find either of these two items (well this is a bit of a lie…the gruyere cheese at the International House of Cheese was, what I thought, super overpriced = not good), we sped off in Britt’s little hatchback and over to the trusty neighbourhood grocery store.

It was at this location that I found out buying a brick of gruyere cheese is nearly as expensive as buying a brick of solid gold.  Apparently the price of gruyere in the Market was actually reasonably priced, and I found myself paying $7.99 for a 195 gram piece of gruyere at the grocery store.  Refusing to accept any sort of cheese alternative for this recipe (although my iPhone tells me a cheaper alternative is emmental), I charged forth with my golden purchase, being sure to appreciate every delicious morsel of that damned cheese brick.

Preparing this Gruyere and Ham Pasta, I was faced with my largest “oh my god I need to cook so quickly” challenge to date.  THANK GOD this recipe was in the “make it in 30 minutes or less” section of my Canadian Living Make it Tonight cookbook.  If I had taken a minute longer to cook this meal, I would have made myself and all of my roommates late fora movie we were seeing.  As is I was forced to pack up my steaming dinner into a tupperware (post-food photographs, obviously) and charge off to the theatre, plastic Ikea fork in hand.  So everyone around me in the theatre could smell onions.. no big deal.

Also, this recipe called for chopped spinach, something I completely forgot to to add in at the last minute.  This being said, everything still tasted great (add lots of pepper though).  Thanks to my forgetful and rushed mind, I can look forward to a delicious baby spinach salad sometime later this week.  Perhaps it will involve strawberries.

Oooo, also this recipe made use of these fun little “Scoobi-doo” noodles, which I was disappointed to see did not resemble the cartoon character whatsoever.  Oh well, life goes on for those of us who are eternally young at heart.

PS: In case you are still rattled by how much I paid for the cheese (yes mom, I’m thinking you), this recipe actually made four servings, making the price for each serving be about $2.50.  Not the best, but not too shabby either.

Carrot and Red Lentil Soup / The Best Cornbread in the Universe

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

I am currently in the midst of the most strange situation of my life.  Three of my roommates and I are sitting in the dark (our light is 15 feet up in the air and burnt out yesterday) talking to our landlord about how we can give our kitchen more counter space.  He is now hovering over my roommate Brittany‘s shoulder, interrogating her about apps for her iPad.  There are awkward jokes flying left, right and centre and he has started to tell us stories about his wife and children.  Heavenly.

Since the weather here in Ottawa has cooled right down, I decided it was time to make my first warm soup of the chilly season.  I’ve been waiting the entire summer to make this carrot and red lentil soup, one of the very first entries in my Canadian Living Everyday Favourites cookbook.  Contrary to the cookbook, which said I only needed to stew this soup for about 20 minutes, I had this soup on for nearly an hour and a half, as I quickly and messily rushed to make the cornbread which I can so easily describe as the best in the world.  Definitely worth waiting for.

This dinner also marked the start of my “indoor photo season” trials.  For reasons you will see below, I am less than satisfied with the results of this little experiment, and am quite concerned as to how winter foodie pictures are going to turn out.  I took these few pictures in my kitchen as well as my roommate Ariel’s room (only because she has more lamps than any reasonable person should have).  Despite what my roommates said (“soup is a cozy food, you want the lighting to be darker!”),  I was so disappointed with my pictures that I plated a whole other meal the next day and took pictures in the mid-afternoon sun.  I am quite confident I have some strange case of OCD.

And now for the re-plating…

Perhaps next time I will set up a little photo studio in my kitchen.  More to come.

Sour Cream Chocolate Crumb Cake

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

Pre-blog post statement: My roommate Ariel and I just finished a glorious afternoon of “shaking it like a polaroid,” Outkast style.  If anyone is ever looking for some sort of rainy afternoon activity, I highly suggest a dance off.

Okay, cake post…

I must admit, it is certainly nice to have 4 out of my 5 roommates back in the house.  Their arrival meant that I did not have to carry this cake on my bicycle to work nor did I have to sit in my pjs watching Rogers on Demand and eating the entire thing myself.  I made this cake on Friday afternoon and, by the time Saturday morning rolled around, there was hardly any cake left in sight.  Turns out a few of my roommates get quite ravenous after a night out and speedy cake ingestion is the result.

Now, for some inexplicable reason I appear to be drawn to two types of cakes.  Inadvertently, my past two cakes have both involved sour cream and chocolate, ingredients which one would think would be fairly easy to avoid while baking.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am not falling into some sort of rut…it’s just that sour cream chocolate cakes happen to be ridiculously delicious!!  In all fairness, I very easily could have left the chocolate out of this one since it was just mixed in at the last minute (keep that in mind if you’re not a huge chocoholic like myself!).  Also, anything that has “crumb” in the title always seems to attract me, so perhaps that is another thing that drew me to this dessert.  The only thing that potentially could have been improved on this cake was the moistness level – I am a huge fan of moist and undercooked things, so that was my only issue.  No big deal though!

Oh, PS this cake was from the September issue of Canadian Living and, once again, the recipe isn’t yet posted on their website, so I’ll post it on my recipes page as soon as I get a second to breath (school = slightly overwhelming already).

Broccoli Mozzarella Pasta Toss

~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

Prior to this meal, I was absolutely petrified of broccoli.  After frequent verbal prodding by my roommate Natalie, I finally decided that I could avoid this vegetable no longer, and had to include it in one of my upcoming meals.  When I was young, I used to refuse to eat the flower of the broccoli, forcing my mom to chop off the top in favour of me eating only the stalk.  Since I’m a tad older now, I have decided to embrace (or at least try) the things I disliked when I was younger, and carefully cut florets out of my broccoli, leaving only the flower to be eaten.

Like the salad in my last post, this meal was only partially inspired by a Canadian Living recipe.  The inspiring recipe, which was called Orecchiette with Broccoli and Garlic, was the basis for this meal.  I couldn’t find any orecchiette (a cute little pasta that resembles a small ear) in the grocery store, and settled for another cutesy alternative, lumache.  I personally thought the pasta resembled snails, which I thought was absolutely adorable.  Also, I added a diced red pepper, a cup and a half of grated mozzarella cheese and bacon bits (yum!) to the mix to make the dish my own.

The final verdict on the broccoli?  The chewy tops tasted like delicious little cheese balls.  Absolutely glorious.  My 10-year-old self would be shocked at how far I’ve come.