I decided to make this recipe after seeing it on the morning news. The recipe comes courtesy of Laura Calder, one of my favourite Food Network Canada hosts. I love the soft, roasted peppers in this recipe, the healthy olive oil and tangy citrus flavour. Make sure you use a good baguette for this…I don’t eat bread often, so the crusty, toasted outside and soft inside of the rustic French baguette we bought was quite a treat. I was quite surprised that there was no cheese in this recipe, and I thought about adding some but after biting into the sandwich, I realized it doesn’t need anything else. This ain’t your mama’s brown bag tuna sandwich!

TUNA AND WHITE BEAN SALAD ON TOASTED BAGUETTE

Recipe Courtesy of Laura Calder – French Cooking at Home

• 2 red peppers
• 1 yellow pepper
• 1 orange pepper
• About 1/2 cup olive oil, more for the baguette
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 3 celery ribs, sliced
• A scant cup (100 g) pitted Kalamata olives, roughly chopped
• A few handfuls of fresh parsley leaves
• 2 cups cooked cannellini beans (use white kidney if you can’t find cannellini)
• Salt and pepper
• Zest and juice of 2 lemons, more to taste
• 14 ounces (390 g) high-quality tuna chunks packed in olive oil, drained (about 3 cans)
• 1 to 1 1/2 baguettes

Heat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Seed and julienne the peppers, toss on a baking sheet with a few tablespoons of olive oil, spread into a single layer, and bake until soft, about half an hour. Remove from the oven and turn the heat up to 400°F (200°C).

Tip the peppers into a large bowl. Add the garlic, celery, olives, parsley, and beans. Season with salt and pepper, and toss with the lemon zest and juice and the remaining olive oil. Add the tuna last and carefully mix it in with your hands so the chunks don’t break up too much. Taste and adjust the seasonings.

Slice the baguette(s) in half lengthwise and then into pieces the length of the palm of your hand. Arrange on the baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Toast until golden and crisp on top but still squishy within, about 5 minutes.

Put a piece of toast on each plate and top with a generous heap of the salad, including the juices.

I was up in Whistler this month, and it was beautiful as always. My family and I had the opportunity to go to a really amazing restaurant. I’ve been coming up to Whistler since I was little and I have seen this restaurant time after time, and always heard great things about it, yet we had never gone. Big mistake!!! The Rimrock features a menu focused on game and seafood, as well as a selection of oysters. I think you all know that while I don’t eat meat, I do love seafood. I was so excited to try this beautifully prepared food. *The pictures were taken on an iphone so they aren’t perfect…but they’ll do!

I started with the “miso roasted sablefish on a nest of vermicelli, cucumber, scallion”. Ohhh sablefish is amazing. It was cooked perfectly and it just tastes like butter. It was great on these noodles and I could have been happy with just this as my whole meal.

For the main course I had the “half lobster and scallop with with roasted squash risotto and almond beurre blanc”. The scallops were probably the best the I’ve had, and of course you can’t go wrong with lobster. The risotto was delicious, and I made sure that it wasn’t made with any chicken stock or anything like that. Delicious.

Both my parents ordered the “salmon, grilled with lobster mashed potatoes, a balsamic reduction and lemon beurre blanc”. It looked wonderful.

For dessert, we went with the sticky toffee pudding, and holy crap, it was to dieeeee for. It was sooooo good. I actually have the recipe for it and I’ll be posting it at some point, so you can taste this creation.

You can take a look at the menu here.

I like coming up with other foods to use in the place of bread or wraps. Using toasted nori sheets as a wrap is one of my favourites. In this case, though, I’m using big lettuce leaves to encase this yummy asian filling.

This is a great meal because you can use all your favourite veggies and your favourite protein, or use up all of those odds-n-ends you have sitting in your fridge. I decided to use prawns as my protein, but you could easily use chicken, beef, tofu, etc.

I made one large pan full of filling, but add in the vegetables and just eyeball how much you want to make.

Hoisin Lettuce Wraps

• olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 onion, diced
• button mushrooms, chopped
• red and yellow bell peppers, diced
• celery, diced
• 1 can baby corn, drained and chopped
• 1 can water chestnuts, drained and chopped
• 1 tbsp fresh ginger, minced
• 3 green onions, chopped
• prawns (I used frozen, pre-cooked prawns, so that all I had to do was thaw, remove the tails, and chop. I used about 15 prawns in total.)
• red chili flakes
• tamari (maybe a tbsp for a big pan)
• rice wine vinegar (1/2 tbsp maybe)
• hoisin (a couple tbsp)
• sesame oil (a tsp maybe)
• 1 head iceberg lettuce, leaves seperated

Heat the oil in a skillet, add the onions and cooking, stirring, until translucent. Add the garlic, and cook until fragrant. Add the mushrooms and cook a minute or two more. Add the celery, bell peppers, ginger, and baby corn. Cook for a couple minutes, and then add the water chestnuts and green onions and chili flakes. Add the prawns, just to heat through. Add a splash of tamari, hoisin, sesame oil, and rice wine vinegar. Just taste, and experiment!! Sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Another seafood post, but it’s a huge part of my diet- I love seafood. I first made this recipe in cooking class, and even all the people who had been saying “ew, I hate fish” were eating this! So I hope that you will try it and like it, too! Worcestershire sauce is essentially a sauce made from the extracts of tamarind seeds. It also contains anchovies, garlic, onions, soy sauce, and molasses, although it is available in a vegetarian version (that omits the anochovies), and you can also find some gluten-free versions.

Sole is a very nice and light fish and it goes well with this recipe. It also contains less mercury than many other fish. I actually remove the heavy metals and mercury from my body with a twice weekly dosage of pills from my naturopath!

Worcestershire Sole

• several fillets of sole
• worcestershire sauce
• fresh lemon juice
• lemon zest
• salt and pepper
• butter
• olive oil

Take a bowl large enough to fit all of your sole fillets, and fill it with a mixture of worcestershire sauce and lemon juice, to taste. Season your sole with salt and pepper on either side. Let them marinade in the worcestershire mixture in the fridge for at least 10 minutes. Heat a large saute pan and coat the bottom with a mixture of olive oil and butter. Remove the sole from the marinade, but reserve it. Dredge the sole in flour and pan-fry the sole on either side. They can be cooked very quickly, depending on the thickness of your fillets- mine were done with less than a minute on each side. Remove the fish to a plate and add about 2 oz of butter to your hot pan, add the reserved marinade and let it reduce and thicken slightly. Pour over your sole. Add plenty of lemon zest, and enjoy!

I think a lot of people will agree with me when I say I am ready to get back to my regular eating routine after the holidays. This year for my blog I really want to put an emphasis on healthy foods, using my holistic nutrition knowledge. I am also going to be posting more of my own recipes, rather than adapted recipes.

To start the week off, I chose to make some scallops- one of my favourite choices for a lighter meal. Scallops are in low in calories and fat, but contain a fair amount of quality protein. They also contain a high amount of vitamin B12, which is important for me as a vegetarian….although a seafood eating one

These scallops are very easy to make and take only a couple of minutes. If you are using frozen scallops, just thaw them out in the fridge. Fresh or frozen, make sure you dry your scallops thoroughly. If they are wet, they will not pan-fry properly.

Balsamic Glazed Scallops

• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• a tablespoon or so of butter
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• fresh or frozen scallops- I used a 1lb bag of frozen, well thawed and dried
• zest of one lemon
• lemon juice to taste
• olive oil for searing

In a small sauce pan, combine your balsamic vinegar and butter. Let this reduce several minutes, until you have about half of what you started with.

Heat the oil in a saute pan big enough to hold all of your scallops. Salt and pepper your scallops. On medium high heat, add your scallops to the pan and sear for about a minute on each side, depending on the size of your scallops. Once cooked, remove your scallops to drain on paper towels. In a clean, hot pan, add your balsamic reduction and add your scallops to it, let them sizzle together for a few seconds as the glaze sticks. Remove, add a squeeze of lemon juice, and plenty of lemon zest. Enjoy!

I love Japanese food and I go out for Japanese food almost weekly. There are some great local sushi places that are super cheap and produce great food- I’m addicted. Some of my favourites are the crab miso soup, gomae (spinach in a peanut dressing), sunomono salad, california rolls, spider rolls (sushi with deep fried soft shell crab in it) and sesame broccoli salad. Instead of going out tonight (the Canucks are playing, I can’t miss that!) I decided to stay in and create a Japanese inspired meal of my own. I started with a Sunomono Salad straight out of the Cookbook of the Month, “Rebar”. It did not dissapoint! Though a different style than the ones I usually have, it was fantastic. I got to dust off the ol’ bottle of sake and use some ingredients I don’t use often. I realize that I love making Japanese food because the aesthetics of it are so key. It’s so much fun to make food and work extra hard to make it look beautiful.

Sunomono Salad (Adapted from Rebar Cookbook) Serves 2

• 1/4 cup sake
• 2 tbsp honey (or use mirin if you want it completely vegan)
• 1/4 cup tamari
• 1/4 cup mirin
• 1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
• fresh lemon juice to taste
• 100 g rice vermicelli (the really skinny ones)

Bring the sake to a boil in a small pot. Remove from the heat and quickly stir in the honey. Allow to cool a bit, and then add the rest of the liquid ingredients. Chill. When ready to use, add lemon juice to taste.

Cook the rice noodles according to the package. Drain and rinse very well under cold water. Split between two serving bowls.

Add the liquid until the noodles are almost submerged. Garnish the dish with avocados, thinly sliced lemon, cucumber, julienne carrots and white sesame seeds.

A few days ago my mom bought me a lovely piece of tuna and I was eager to use it. I did a bit of searching to find something fun that would go with my sunomono salad, and I decided on a dish from….”Dish”. I don’t know if any of you are familiar with the show Dish on the food network, hosted by Trish Magwood, but she makes really simple and fun foods for various events for her clients. The tuna was originally supposed to be raw, but I thought a quick sear would make it better, as my tuna had spent some time in the freezer and I wanted to perk it up. I also used Vegenaise instead of mayonnaise, because frankly, I prefer the flavour and the fact there are no egg yolks in it.

Cucumber Tuna Rolls (Adapted from Dish)

• 1 English cucumber
• Enough tuna for how many rolls you need (about 1 lb  should do)
• 2 Tbsp black sesame seeds
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• Wasabi
• 1/4 cup Vegenaise (or mayonnaise)
• 1/4 tsp Sambal Oelek (or hot chili paste)

Mix together the black sesame seeds, sesame oil, and freshly cracked pepper in a bowl.

Lightly oil a saute pan and heat to medium high heat. Season your tuna with salt and pepper, and place into pan. Sear for about 30 seconds one side and remove.

Dice tuna into a 1-inch dice and toss into sesame oil mixture. Reserve.

Use a mandolin or vegetable peeler to cut long strips from the cucumber.

Take a strip of cucumber, add a couple of pieces of diced tuna at one end, and a small dot of wasabi at the other end. Roll up the roll like sushi, and use the wasabi to secure the end. Repeat with the rest of tuna and cucumber.

Mix the Vegenaise and Sambal Oelek together and place a small dollop on top of each roll. Add black sesame seeds to garnish. Serve and enjoy!

All in all, this meal was a total winner, and I would love to recreate it sometime for friends. Try it yourself!

Kaeng Khiaw-Waan Kai…or Green Curry with Chicken for those of us who are struggling with their Thai language skills is an absolute must-try meal. When I first arrived in Thailand, I ate a lot of Pad-Thai and stir-fried vegetables or seafood until I discovered this winner. I can’t count how many times I ate this dish over the course of my five weeks in Thailand- I couldn’t get enough! This curry varied from restaurant to restaurant and I tried some with purely vegetable ingredients, and others that had seafood from prawns and squid and fish to a combination of them all. The first time I made this recipe at home I replaced the chicken with prawns and squid, as I don’t eat meat. The second time I made it, I added zuchini, pineapple and pistachios and a couple of scallops. Serve this over rice and experience this divine dish from February’s Cookbook of the Month.

Green Curry with Chicken

• 60ml (1/4 cup) coconut cream
• 2 tablespoons green curry paste (**I always add extra!)
• 350g (12 oz) skinless chicken thigh fillets, sliced (** or an equal amount of prawns, squid, scallops, etc. If you want this dish to be vegan, add extra eggplant or some zuchini and pineapple. Tender steak can also be used.))
• 440ml (1 3/4 cups) coconut milk
• 2 1/2 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 tbsp palm sugar
• 350g (12 oz) mixed Thai eggplants (aubergines), cut into quarters, and pea eggplants (aubergines) (**When I don’t have these Thai eggplants on hand, I simply use regular or japanese eggplant, and zuchini. Adding pineapple is a wonderful touch and a handful of pistachios is great, too.)
• 50g (2 oz) galangal, julienned (** I have never had this ingredient on hand and therefore I just omit it. Galangal is a rhizome with a hot, peppery flavour.)
• 7 makrut (kaffir) lime leaves, torn in half (** This is so key in this dish that I often add several extra leaves.)
• a handful of Thai sweet basil leaves, for garnish (**As you can see, I used regular basil)
• 1 long red chilli, seeded and finely sliced, for garnish (**I added red pepper flakes for that extra spice as I didn’t have a hot chilli on hand this time)

Put the coconut cream in a wok or saucepan and simmer over a medium heat for about 5 minutes, or until the cream seperates and a layer of oil forms on the surface. Stir the cream if it starts to brown around the edges. Add the curry paste, stir well to combine and cook until fragrant.

Add the chicken (or seafood) and stir for a few minutes. Add nearly all of the coconut milk, the fish sauce and palm sugar and simmer over a medium heat for another 5 minutes.

Add the eggplants (and zuchini, pineapple and pistachios) and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes or until the eggplants are cooked. Add the galangal and makrut lime leaves. Taste, then adjust the seasoning if necessary. Spoon into a serving bowl and sprinkle with the last bit of coconut milk, as well as the basil leaves and chilli slices (or flakes). Serve over rice.

This was an absolutely delicious recipe from the Cookbook of the Month (Giada’s latest). It seems like several things to make but it’s quite easy. The pea puree is one of the best flavours I have tasted recently. It was an extremely refreshing flavour, especially for the middle of winter and I would definately use it in other dishes. The lemon brodetto was nice, but I felt the salmon and the pea puree were all that were needed for a great dish. I served these with Orzo Stuffed Peppers (which I will be posting soon) and it made for a delicious, filling meal!