La fin des tours

This week-end we celebrated the end of two important tours - the Tour de France and the Tour de Whitehorse. It was an opportunity to learn a very important lesson - it's not the size of the Tour, but how you watch it that counts. The Tour de France meant waking in the wee hours of the morning and catching glimpses of the ride while brushing your teeth or making breakfast. The Tour de Whitehorse meant buying a couple bottles of wine, some St. Andre cheese and a loaf of bread and sitting on the side of the Robert Service Way screaming "Vive le Tour" at the top of our lungs. Although I'm not sure our cheering was appreciated by the participants, it was certainly more fun then sitting in front of the television. To celebrate la fin des tours, we cooked up a big French dinner...and by French, I mean we referred to the chicken as poulet. The nice thing about dinner was it was largely supplied by the garden. The best part of the meal was definitely the Tour de France Poulet.

Tour de France Poulet

  • Roasting Chickens
  • Butter or Bacon Fat (don't underestimate the deliciousness of bacon fat)
  • Fresh Garden Herbs (thyme, sage, savory, oregano and unidentified herb like plants)
  • Baby Potatoes
  • Salt and Pepper

Mix the butter/bacon fat with the herbs and mash them all together. Lift up the skin of the roasting chicken and stuff in the herbed butter. Rub extra herb butter all over the chicken skin and put some inside the cavity. Put the chicken on a grill above a roasting pan (if possible) and put the potatoes underneath the chicken, this way all the yummy chicken drippings fall on the potatoes. Salt and pepper the chicken and put it into a pre-heated over that's at 450 degrees. Wait about 15 minutes and then turn the oven down to 325. Cook your chicken for about 1 1/2 hours (or until it's done). When you have 15 minutes left, you can add swiss chard to the potatoes for an iron boost (or if you have a ridiculous amount of extra chard in your garden). ENJOY!!!

The rest of dinner included roasted eggplants and garden zucchini, garden salad and broccoli with gouda. The broccoli sure tasted yummy, but has left a big hole in the ol' vegetable garden. Soon the beets will be ready and I've already been stealing the occasional carrot.

The garden is looking good these days...my favorite section this year is the fuschia zone that features nicotina, petunias, sage, geraniums, snapdragons, pansies and dianthus. Time is running out, I'm going to have to take lots of pictures before the evil Mr. F makes an uninvited appearence.

Sierra posted this on Jul 30, 2007 from the kitchen | | permanent link

Family Breakfast

Every Saturday morning we head to the Talisman restaurant for breakfast with our friends. This leaves Sunday for a family breakfast at home; it may be less glamorous, but it is delicious none the less. A typical Sunday breakfast is coffee (with lots of Bailey's, of course), eggs, mystery meat from the fridge and potatoes. The boy gets a slightly modified meal, with more meat, eggs and no coffee; he's just a little young for the caffeine.

In my humble opinion, it's the potatoes that make or break the meal, so I've spent years trying to perfect breakfast taters. Here is what I've come up with:

Perfect Pan Fried Potatoes

  • Potatoes (Yukon Gold are my favorite)
  • Olive Oil
  • Salt
  • Pepper (I love using the pepper they sell for seasoning steak)

The ingredients are simple enough, so as you might suspect, it's the cooking that makes this dish yummilicious. Take out your cast iron frying pan, or oven friendly skillet and heat it on the stove at medium-high. Add a couple glugs of olive oil and dump in your cut up potatoes. As the potatoes are cooking in the skillet, turn the oven to 450 degrees. Cook the potatoes on the stove until the oven is pre-heated then slip them into the oven for about 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, pull the skillet out of the oven (with your oven mitts...seems obvious, but I've made this mistake before and I have the burn marks to prove it) and put it back on the stove top on high. Crisp up your potatoes for about 5 minutes on the stove top. This is the key to success, breakfast potatoes need to be crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. This can be assisted by remaining distracted throughout the process. Leaving the potatoes a little too long without flipping them will give them a great crispiness...just don't forget them entirely and burn them. Serve them piping hot to your husband and dog and reap the compliments (from the husband, not the dog).

As you can see, everyone is satisfied after breakfast and ready for a lazy day.

Sierra posted this on Apr 29, 2007 from the kitchen | | permanent link

Snagging Rabbits

It's Easter - for millions of people around the world, today is the most important day of their religious calendar. I, celebrate this day as the only day of the year where the random chocolates I find hidden between the couch cushions aren't stale and covered with dog hair. In fact, this Easter, I realized that if chocolates were hidden around the house all year round, I might be more inclined to clean on a regular basis.

In celebration of chocolate day and the collateral cleaning that accompanied it, we threw a dinner party . There is nothing quite like celebrating good food and wine with your closest friends - especially when one of them is a chef. Antonio brought over some truly spectacular appetizers, including the best meat wrapped meat (that isn't a typo - it was indeed meat wrapped with more meat) I've ever had. We followed up the fabulous starters with lamb, risotto and roasted potatoes. A meal that seems to have become the Sierra standard for dinner guests. The most exciting part of the meal, for me at least, were the desserts. I decided to try out an interesting recipe I saw a couple of months ago. It was simple to make and loads of fun to eat:

Wonton Mini-Pies

  • Wonton wrappers (near the oriental noodles at the grocery store)
  • Whipping cream
  • Pie filling (home-made or store bought)

I made these using pumpkin pie filling and the green tomato mincemeat canned this fall (the best use of green tomatos I've ever found). Any pie filling recipe will suffice, although I find that the pumpkin pie is particularly delicious with the whipping cream. Put one Tablespoon of pie filling into the center of the wonton. Fold the wonton into a triangle, using a tiny bit of water to seal the edges. Brush with butter and sprinkle with sugar/cinnamon Pop them into a preheated oven at 400F. Leave them in for about 10 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve on a plate with a bowl of whipping cream. Let the guests dip the wonton pies into the whipping cream and enjoy! Be careful, the pies are piping hot when they come out of the oven. I wish I had pictures, but they were eaten before I had time to get a photo.

Sierra posted this on Apr 09, 2007 from the kitchen | | permanent link

La Cuisine (or is it le)?

This Christmas, Tony and I treated ourselves to a beautiful new buffet for the kitchen. I've been anxiously awaiting an opportunity to show off the new kitchen piece, but didn't want to show of my impeccable cleanliness. Okay, the truth is the kitchen is never clean enough for me to take a picture without alerting biohazard specialists around the world. This week, however, Tony and I were lucky enough to have his Mother for a visit, so I felt the need to pretend (if only for a split second) that I was a good house cleaner. While my shiny, disinfected veneer didn't last long, I did have enough time to grab some pictures of the re-done kitchen. In addition to the awesome new buffet, we took out some of the cupboards to better display the dish obsession.

Our visit with Tony's Mom has been great and we've done a wonderful job in insuring the trip is efficient by putting her to work staining, painting, and drilling in various base boards around the house. Hopefully tomorrow we can go for a ski break and show off some of the gorgeous Whitehorse scenery...of course that will only be possible if all the renovations get done. In all seriousness, having Norma around has done wonders for my decorating skills, it's like having my own personal Debbie Travis.

Sierra posted this on Jan 15, 2007 from the kitchen | | permanent link

Akva-WHAT????

Horrible breaking Christmas news... They have stopped selling Akvavit at liquor stores in the Yukon!!! Akvavit is the traditional scandinavian liquor that is essential to Christmas Eve. I tried to get my sister to bring some up from Vancouver, but there is no more Akvavit in BC either!!! SO....if anyone has relatives coming in from Alberta who want to bring Akvavit OR if anyone has a spare bottle of Akvavit in their closet...let's make a deal...

Sierra posted this on Dec 21, 2006 from the kitchen | | permanent link

A Typical Winter Weekend

When the days are short and the mercury is falling (or fallen) there is still a million ways to fill a weekend. This weekend was practically perfect, the only thing missing was magical housekeeping fairies. I started Saturday with an pre-dawn ski (remember pre-dawn is anything before 10:00 am) going straight out the back gate and up to the Magnusson loop. It was pitch black when I left, but by the time I finished, the sun was up and the sky was bright. Cold winter sunrises are a special treat, that can only truly be enjoyed while hanging out in the cold. It takes a lot longer for the sun to rise on these short days which gives the sunrise a beautiful slow motion affect. While skiing, I got to watch the sky change from a pink grapefruit to a beautiful tangerine orange... the best part is that I got to enjoy the scenery while (hopefully) simultaenously shaving inches off my backside. After our early morning ski, we partook in our favourite weekend activity - breakfast at the Talisman. There's nothing quite as satisfying as two poached eggs, bacon, tomato and hollandaise sauce and a piece of crisp rye bread. After all that we still had time to go "shopping" for our Christmas tree. By shopping, I mean trudging through 2 foot snow looking for the perfect pine or spruce to decorate the living room.

Sunday was a little bit lazier, but equally as fulfilling. Tony has done a great job keeping his no-drive resolution . While my promise to bake bread on Sundays isn't quite as noble, it defintely is a bit tastier. I'm definietly improving my baking skills, but am still by no means a great bread-maker. Today I made Yogurt bread, that is still rising in the oven, and Pitas. The pita bread was more of an experiment and to be honest, I was shocked that they actually worked. In fact they were much eaiser then I had thought they would be and the recipe is super easy.

Pita Bread

  • 2 teaspoons of yeast
  • 1/2 cup warm water
  • 6 cups whole wheat flour
  • 2 1/2 cups of water
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons of salt
  • 1 Tbl honey
  • 1/4 cup sesame oil

    • Dissolve the yeast in water. Mix flour and salt in a bowl, pour in oil, honey and yeast/water mixture. Mix ingrediants together and then knead well. Let the dough rise until doubled. Deflate, and let it rise again. Preheat the oven to 450 after the second rising is finished. Take the risen dough and flatten it. Divide into around 20 pieces and round them into balls. Let these balls sit for about 10 minutes, cover them with a damp close to ensure they don't dry out. Take your rounded balls and use a rolling pin to roll them into flattened discs that are about 1 cm thick. Put the flattened discs into the oven on the bottom tray (you want the heat from the bottom elements to be close to your baking sheet). Wait for 3 minutes, the pitas should puff up, pull them out and let them cool on a cooling rack. To keep things moving, I would put 3 pitas in the oven at a time. While they cooked, I rolled 3 more. This helped everything move at a good pace. Enjoy!

    Sierra posted this on Dec 17, 2006 from the kitchen | | permanent link

One Dough at a Time

Since the acquisition of my much loved Kitchenaid mixer, I've decided that I need to learn how to properly bake bread. Unfortunately, bread is not my speciality. This should not come as a surprise to anyone who has watched me cook. I don't do well with measuring and I'm not known for my patience. To help me on my bread baking journey I bought The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book: A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking . I hoped that the book would instantly make me a master baker, but unfortunately that did not happen. In fact, my first attempt at bread ended with a sticky ball of goop that ended up in the garbage. Attempt number two resulted in a tasty, but hideous looking loaf of rye bread. It will probably take me all winter to learn how to make a decent loaf, but I'm determined to make it happen. In the mean time, stop by on Sunday for a fresh piece of buttered deliciousness. I may post recipes at some point, but at this point it would be like the unleavened leading the unleavened

Sierra posted this on Oct 30, 2006 from the kitchen | | permanent link

Veggie Delight

There's no denying that I love my meat. I like to eat just about any kind of animal and I'm not ashamed to admit it. However, there are times I like to prepare a meat-free meal for some of my herbivorous friends. Tony and I got a beautiful new kitchen table for the wedding and wanted to break it in with a dinner party. Even more exciting, I had just picked up the object of my obsession- a new Kitchenai Stand-Up Mixer. It was the perfect opportunity to invite someone for dinner. This particular dinner party was particularly stressful because we had our friend the professional chef and his girlfriend the ridiculously clean vegetarian. Cooking for a chef is like playing piano for a concert pianist- failure is inevitable (though comfortably relative). Having someone who respects cleanliness is a much more frightening experience. In the end I decided that a couple bottles of wine were the perfect solution to dulling the tastebuds and blurring the vision. The good news is that I discovered a couple great vegetarian recipes.

Vegetarian Pie

  • Pie Pastry (Just find any recipe you can)
  • 6 small garden leeks
  • 1 medium diced onion
  • 5 medium diced potatoes
  • 4 medium diced carrots
  • 3 stalks of celery
  • 2 tsp of basil
  • 2 tsp of marjoram
  • 2 tsp of paprika
  • A couple leaves of kale
  • 2 Tbl of butter
  • 2 Tbl of flour
  • 1 cup of milk
  • 1 Tbl of dijon mustard
  • 2 cups of aged cheddar cheese (I prefer white)
  • 1 cup of bread crumbs
  • 2 Tbl of butter
  • 1 tsp basil
  • 1 tsp marjoram
  • 1 tsp of paprika

Pre-heat the oven to 375 F. Use your brand new Empire Red kitchenaid to make pie pastry. If you don't have a stand mixer, spend a few minutes feeling sorry for yourself, then go buy a frozen pie pastry...or I guess if you are feeling really brave you could try to make the pie pastry by hand. Place the pastry into a pie pan. Put some olive oil in the bottom of a saucepan and add the onions and leeks. When the onions go clear; add potatoes, carrots and celery. Then add basil, marjoram and paprika. Put a tiny bit of water in the pan, so nothing burns, and cover the sauce pan. Cook until the vegetables get tender. Meanwhile make a white sauce by putting butter into a small saucepan. When the butter melts, add flour and stir. Slowly add the milk and dijon, stirring the entire time. When your white sauce thickens take it off the stove and add the cheese. Now it's time to make your pie. Drain out any liquid that's at the bottom of the vegetable pan, and put the vegetables into the pie pan. Pour your white sauce over the vegetables and use a fork to make sure that it gets through all your veggies. Now take your 2 Tbl of butter and put it into a frying pan. Add the bread crumbs, basil, marjoram and paprika and fry until the bread crumbs are crisp. Put the bread crumbs on top of your pie and pop it into the oven. Cook for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Let it sit for about 15 minutes before serving. I don't have a photo of my veggie pie because there weren't any batteries in my camera. Dang.

Cranberry Cake

  • 2 cups of cranberries
  • 1 cup of sliced almonds
  • 1/2 cup of brown sugar
  • 1 tsp of nutmeg
  • 1 Tbl of cinnamon
  • 1/2 cup of butter
  • 1 cup of sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2 tsp of cardamon
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 pint of sour cream (240 ml)
  • 2 cups of flour
  • 1 tsp of baking soda
  • 1 tsp of baking powder

    • This is a great way to use some of those fabulous low bush cranberries I know you've been picking. Put the cranberries, almonds, sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon into a food processor and blend them together. In your beautiful Empire Red Kitchenaid cream your butter and sugar together. Add vanilla, cardamon, eggs and sour cream. Whip together for a few minutes before adding the flour, baking soda and baking powder. Butter a bundt pan, then add half the cake batter. Cover it with 1/2 of the cranberry mixture. Pour the rest of the batter on top and spread the remaining cranberry mixture. Bake in an over at 350 F for 50-60 minutes. Serve with Baileys and coffe.

    Sierra posted this on Sep 23, 2006 from the kitchen | | permanent link

Big Bad BBQ

This week-end Tony and I celebrated our wedding (for the umpteenth time...), this time having a party for our wonderful Whitehorse friends. We decided to make a BBQ themed dinner and the food ended up surprisingly delicious. I'd have photos to show off, but the food dissapeared before I could get a picture. So, I'm going to post some of the nice pictures from the wedding that our photographer just sent.

Roast Beef (Yummily Delicious)

  • Sirloin Tip Roast (The Deli in Whitehorse has delicious beef)
  • Steak Seasoning (I used pepper I had picked up at Schwartz' Deli in Montreal, but all you really need is black pepper, salt, coriander, dried garlic and red pepper flakes)
  • Olive Oil

Season the sirloin tip roast with your steak seasoning. Let it sit at room temperature for 1-2 hours before cooking. Heat oil in a frying pan at medium-high temperature. Sear the roast by frying from about 3 minutes on each side. Meanwhile heat your oven to 250 F (I used a convection oven). Put seared beef into the oven in a roasting pan (cook on a wire rack, so that it isn't sitting in its own juices). If you like your beef on the rare side (like yours truly), cook it for about 2.5 hours for a 4 lb raost. Add about 20 minutes per pound for a bigger piece of meat. When finished cooking, wrap the meat in aluminium foil and let it sit for 20 minutes. Slice the beef thinly and serve with horseradish. This was the juciest, tastiest meat I have ever eaten in my life, I highly recommend it.

Bachelor Party Pulled Pork

  • Pork Shoulder (aka Pork Butt)
  • 2 1/2 Tbl Paprika
  • 2 tsp Cayenne
  • 2 tsp Salt
  • 2 tsp Pepper
  • 1 1/2 Tbl Dried Mustard
  • 1 cup vinegar
  • 1 cup cider vinegar
  • 1 Tbl red peppers
  • 2 Tbl brown sugar
  • 2 Tbl molasses
  • 1 cup cider vinegar
  • 1 cup of ketchup
  • 3 Tbl brown sugar
  • 1 Tbl mustard
  • 1 Tbl molasses
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp red pepper
  • 1 cup of chopped onions
  • 3 chopped garlic cloves

Combine paprika, cayenne, mustard, salt and pepper. Rub it all over the pork and put in the fridge overnight. Mix the cider vinegar, vinegar, red pepper, sugar and molasses; put it into an air tight container and leave it overnight. Preheat oven to 250 F, put the prok in a roasting pan. Every hour pour a little bit of the vinegar mixture on top. Cook the pork for 7-9 hours. With about 1 hour left, mix all the BBQ sauce ingredients together and heat on the stove until it boils, then turn it down to simmer. Let it simmer for 20 minutes or so. Pull the pork with 2 forks until it is in very small pieces, add 1/2 of the BBQ sauce. Serve on buns, leaving extra sauce for people who like it. Please note: this BBQ sauce isn't my favourite and I'm still tweaking with the recipe, so if you have a better recipe for homemade sauce feel free to use it.

Not From A Can Baked Beans

  • 1 or more pounds of bacon
  • 4 medium onions
  • 6 garlic cloves
  • 2 packages of navy beans (8 cups of dried navy beans)
  • 1 cup of maple syrup
  • 1 cup of brown sugar
  • 5 cups of ketchup
  • 1/4 cup of mustard
  • 1/4 cup of dijon mustard
  • 1 tetra-pack of chicken broth (I think it's 5 cups)
  • Salt and Pepper

Follow the directions that came with the navy beans, or soak the beans in lukewarm water overnight (use about 8 cups of water). Cut up the bacon into 1/2 inch pieces and cook in a giant stock pot. After the bacon gets crispy, add finely chopped onion/garlic. Add the navy beans and everything else on the list. Bring it all to boil, turn the temperature to low and let it cook for as long as possible (minimum 6 hours). If you need to add more stock or water...do it. If you are making the roast beef or pulled pork, you can put the stockpot in the oven with the meat. I'm sure you can also make this in a crockpot over the course of the entire day. The beans are delicious after 10 hours of cooking, BUT are even better the next day.

Sierra posted this on Sep 18, 2006 from the kitchen | | permanent link

Aunt Kiki's Kick-Arse Chowder and Sierra's Can't Beat'em Beets

The winter is fast approaching, so it's time to buckle down and get the pantry stocked with fabulous food for the cold days ahead. I decided to do a double whammy of the most amazingly delicious chowder of all time and the best tasting beets known to man (and beast). For all you skeptics out there, you are only skeptical because you haven't eaten them yet and if you do try out these recipes and don't agree they are the most fabulous foods in the universe...you made them wrong.

Aunt Kiki's Kick-Arse Chowder

  • 1 pound of bacon
  • 4 tablespoons of butter
  • 2 medium onions
  • 4 celery stalks
  • 6 small garden leeks OR 2 big store leeks
  • 4 garlic cloves
  • Sprigs of thyme
  • Salt and pepper
  • 15 small potatoes or 8 bigger potatoes
  • Diced halibut and salmon or other kinds of good fish
  • 4 cups of clams
  • Other assorted seafood (scallops, shrimps, octopus or anything else you want)
  • Approximately 12 cups of broth (clam juice, chicken stock or any other kind of tasty broth)
  • 2 cups of heavy cream

Please note: if you have a heart condition, are on a diet or don't like to butter your bacon...PLEASE do not try this recipe. It is designed to tickle your taste buds while clogging your arteries. Start off by getting a really big pot, you'll need it! Chop up your bacon into 1/2 inch sections. Fry the bacon in your sauce pan. When it gets fairly brown and crispy add the butter (don't drain the bacon fat). Chop up onions, celery, leeks and garlic and add to the bacon. After the vegetables get soft, add thyme, salt and pepper. Cook the vegetables for 5 more minutes and then add chopped up potatoes. Stir in the potatoes and add your tasty broth. Just keep adding the broth until it seems like there is enough. The vegetables and potatos are really tasty, so if you want to add some chicken broth make sure it is very diluted. Cook the potatoes for about 30 minutes or until they get soft . Use a fork to smash up about 1/3 of the potatoes...this will make your broth nice and thick. By the time your potatoes are cooking, the broth should be boiling and you can add your fish. Cook for about 5 minutes then add whatever other seafood you are using. Add the clams LAST, they will only need 2 minutes to cook. After 2 minutes, take the soup off the stove. Add your 2 cups of cream and serve with parsley and sourdough bread. I like to make a lot of this soup (hence the huge portions) and freeze or can the extras. If you are doing this, do not add the cream. Wait until you are warming up the soup and then add in the cream.

Sierra's Can't Beat'em Beets

Ever wonder what 50 lbs of beets looks like?

  • 15 lbs of beets
  • 4 cups of white vinegar
  • 2 cups of water
  • 15 cloves
  • 2 teaspoons of salt
  • 2 cups of white sugar
  • 2 cinnamon sticks
  • 2 Tbl of orange peel
  • Juice squeezed from 1 orange or 3 Tbl of orange juice

Pickled beets are one of my favorite treats. This year, Lisa and I canned about 65 lbs of beets which gave us around 40 litres of pickled beets. It's hard to figure out how much brine you will need, so my strategy is to keep making brine as needed. To start, boil water in a giant pot and add beets. Boil for around 15 minutes. Then strain out water and put beets in the coldest water that you can. This will make the beet skin super easy to peel off (either with your fingers or a knife). Cut up your peeled beets into bite size portions. Prepare the brine by pouring water, vinegar, salt, sugar, orange peel and orange juice into a sauce pan. Add the cinnamon sticks and cloves (I put the cloves in a tea ball so that they don't get acidentally eaten with the beets). Boil the brine for 3 minutes and remove from heat. Take out your jars for canning and sterilize in boiling water for 10 minutes. Now add the beets to the finger-burning cans, leaving about 3/4 inch at the top. Pour brine on top (still leaving about 3/4 inch). Wipe the tops of the cans clean and seal with lids (which have, of course, been sterilizing in 85 degree water). Screw on the lids and process in a water-boiler for 35 minutes. Hope and pray that all your cans seal (listen for the happy pop of the lids) and store until your friends come and raid your pantry. Guess what everyone's getting for Christmas '07 (and possibly '08)...

Sierra posted this on Sep 12, 2006 from the kitchen | | permanent link

Saturday Night Sushi

The weather in Whitehorse has not been ideal this summer, so while I would love to spend sunny Saturdays lounging on the deck, it just hasn't been possible. I also got the nasty diagnosis from my Doctor that I have a mild case of pneumonia. I'm taking cortisone, and it should be fine in the next two weeks, but I can't run or bik for the next couple days. While I am tempted to spend the next 7 days watching reality television, Lisa and I came up with a slightly more productive way to spend our Saturday....a sushi party!!! Luckily, Tony and I had been the recent recipients of some Japanese gifts from our friend Sean. This was the perfect opportunity to try out our funky new chopsticks and veggie-inspired chopstick holders. Lisa and I are no sushi masters, but we managed to make some damn fine looking rolls! Sushi is surprisingly easy, all you need for a rockin' sushi party is: nori, sushi rice, toasted sesame seeds, sushi grade fish (salmon and tuna is my favorite), avocados, cucumbers, crab meat and wasabi.

Sushi Rice

  • 3 cups of water
  • 2 cups of sushi rice
  • Pinch of salt
  • Rice Vinegar
  • Sugar

Making the sushi is pretty easy. Here's how you make california rolls.

California Rolls

  • Sushi Rice
  • Nori
  • Avocado
  • Cucumber
  • Crab meat
  • Wasabi
  • Seaseme seeds (toasted)

Chop the avocado, cucumber and crab meat into thin slices. Put a thin layer of sushi rice onto the sheet of nori, sprinkle with sesame seeds. Flip the entire sheet over (so the rice is now on the bottom of the sheet. Place the strips of avocado, cucumber and crab meat across the sheet of nori. Roll the sheet (rice is on the outside). Cover roll with saran wrap and use a bamboo sushi mat to roll it tight.

Making the other sushi is easy...just put the rice on the nori, add your fillings and roll. In the end our sushi party was excellent, although we only finished about 1/3 of our sushi.

Sierra posted this on Aug 13, 2006 from the kitchen | | permanent link

Tomatorama

It has been a week of sweetly acidic, delicious tasting tomatos and for the first time in 3 years, I actually had enough tomatos to ask the question: "What can I do with all these fresh, delicious, wonderfully superb tomatos?". The answer was obvious...I decided to make some fabulous bruschetta, the perfect summer treat. You can see from the pictures the different colors of tomatos. The brownish ones are actually Purple Prince, while they look a bit odd, they are the most delicious tomatos I've ever had, and will definitely be planted in future greenhouses

Sierra's Greenhouse Bruschetta

  • Fresh garden tomatoes (or great tasting market tomatoes)
  • Fresh basil
  • Fresh thyme
  • Fresh oregano
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • Red wine (whatever is sitting around)
  • 1 glug of olive oil
  • Salt and pepper

Chop up your tomatos and herbs. Throw them into a bowl with crushed garlic, olive oil and red wine. Season with salt and an itty bitty bit of pepper. The key to yummy bruschetta is letting is sit for a couple of hours so the acidic tomato juice mixes with the scrumptious herbs and galic.

Tony and I enjoyed our tomato treat with fresh organic baguettes from the Alpine bakery, yummy goat cheese, olives and hummous. In the end we had the perfect summertime lunch with 2 glasses of chilled white wine.

Sierra posted this on Aug 10, 2006 from the kitchen | | permanent link