Fettucine Carbonara

Growing up I was not exposed to "Italian" food beyond spaghetti and Pizza Hut. When I met Jess I became exposed to a new world of food because of her Italian lineage.  Carbonara was something her mom specializes in and the combination of crispy pork, soft onion and a creamy cheese sauce made it an instant favourite of mine. The recipe is pretty easy and unless you don't like meat, cheese and pasta you will probably love it. I only have a photo of the finished product because most of the magic happens in a closed pot.

Carmine's Bolognese Sauce

Jess and I just got back from a trip to New York where we had some of the most amazing food of our lives. My favourite was Carmine's restaurant. Carmine's specialises in "Family Serving" Italian food. Since it was just the two of us we ended up getting a meat and a pasta. This was about 30 pounds of food. The Spaghetti Bolognese was the best I have ever eaten. I immediately started looking for a copy cat recipe and found this one as the starting point of my own. I really didn't change much from "Anna's" version other than the way that I prepared some of the ingredients and some of the cooking times. This will be my "go to" sauce recipe. It tasted exactly like Carmine's. This made sauce for a ravenous family of five with some leftover... don't forget your fat pants!

Everything Pretzels

 

Jess and I were sitting around and started quoting some of our favourite lines from Seinfeld and one of us gruffly said "These pretzels are making me thirsty!" As soon as I heard it I started obsessing about munching on some soft, chewy pretzels.

One of the benefits of moving back to Canada has been reuniting with our kitchen stuff and collection of cookbooks. I actually ended up finding this recipe in a 2011 Food Network magazine featuring a handful of Guy Fieri's pretzels. I ended up doing a version of his "Everything Pretzel". I have replaced some of his ingredients and forgot others but the pretzels ended up being amazing. Jess and I both ate them for breakfast and lunch for almost a week. She preferred to toast hers while I chucked mine in the microwave. They were great cold but some things are better heated up.

 

 

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

I am a huge fan of the Kitchen Aide brand of mixers and have collected a number of attachments for it. My latest purchase was the Ice Cream maker. It was good timing because we've been having a bit of a heat wave. Being a novice ice cream maker I was nervous about how this would end up. I did a little research and found that there are two types of ice cream. The first is the "French" style which is custard based and the second is "Philadelphia" style which is pretty much cream and sugar. I decided I would start simple and go for "Philadelphia" style. We found Vanilla Beans in our local grocery store so I was set to make Vanilla Bean ice cream. I adapted the recipe from David Lebovitz's "The Perfect Scoop". The book is great and has a huge selection of sweet treats to make. 
I didn't read all the directions for the Ice Cream maker before I started so the situation was a little out of control for a minute or two. From my small sample size I realized that making ice cream is about preparation and execution. It takes a long time to get up and running but I think the finished product was worth it. It was easily the best ice cream I've ever eaten. One of the first taste testers even validated the name of my blog by promptly dribbling ice cream down the front of his shirt. Vanilla went from the bottom of my desired list of ice cream flavors straight to the top in the time it took to get a spoon from the bowl to my mouth. I made about a litre of ice cream and it lasted about 48hrs. We ate it as straight ice cream, ice cream with Bailey's and used the last bit in a fruit smoothie. I am going to try to make a different ice cream on a weekly basis.

Two Bite Asian Meatball Tacos

We had a few people over and I wanted a tasty finger food that was a little different than the norm. I make different kinds of meatballs on a regular basis and decided that a sweet and sour meatball would be great but I hate trying to skewer them on tooth picks. The last time I used tooth picks I accidentally used the mint flavoured ones and everything they touch tasted like toothpaste.
I settled on mini tacos because I love tacos and thought that a little tortilla would be a great way to get it into your gob.

This is one of the easiest "recipes" because it involves almost no cooking. I made tortillas using my standard "Home Made Flour Tortilla Recipe" and instead of dividing the dough into individual tortillas I rolled the dough out in a sheet and used a 3.5 inch round cookie cutter to cut them out. I ran the roller over them a couple more times and ended up with the perfect sized mini taco shells.

For the meatballs I used our slow cooker. This was perfect because I didn't have to get anything ready when people were here. I did everything in advance and could enjoy eating instead of trying to cook and visit.

Banana Flambe

For Jess’s birthday this year we were having a huge waffle brunch complete with walnut waffles, maple sausages and Banana Flambé. I wanted the mix of waffle, sausage and fruit to be reminiscent of eating banana bread or banana bread pudding. I have never flambéed anything (on purpose) and wanted to give it a go since I would be cooking on a real gas burner. This is a super easy recipe and you can easily skip the flaming part and just have some fried bananas to take your breakfast to the next level. They would also be great on ice cream. They have earned the name Flam-bitches from my father in law who was surprised that they turned out and that I still had my eyebrows.

 

Calzone

Pizza is pretty much at the top of my list of things I could happily eat every day until I died. We usually have a selection of ingredients in the refrigerator for toppings but do not have an easy pizza dough recipe to fall back on. This dough recipe is literally the easiest recipe you could ever make and it pays huge dividends. It is fast and only has a few ingredients. We have a tiny oven and I made Calzones so that I could fit more in at a time. The ingredients shown will make one large calzone or one standard pizza.

Lemony Pancakes

The best thing after a big night out is a giant breakfast to cure your hangover. Neal and Laura visiting guaranteed that we would be having a giant breakfast.

This is my favorite pancake recipe because it makes fluffy but not dry pancakes that are almost a crepe in consistency. The burst of citrus makes every mouthful worth it.

They are a little time consuming to make depending on how many you plan on cooking at a time. I wake up early so I amused myself by making one medium/large pancake at a time and warming them in the oven until everyone dragged themselves out of bed. I made a double recipe and it makes 15 – 20 that fed 6 people.

Swedish Meatballs

 

Swedish Meatballs on a Bed of Lemon Thyme Couscous with Spinach

 Despite the uncountable times we’ve been to Ikea, (we even had our car stolen from the parking lot once), I have never tried their cheap Swedish Meatballs. I always end up with 6 hot dogs and a frozen yogurt. To be honest I never really knew what made Swedish balls different from normal balls. So when I was watching Jamie Oliver’s 15 Minute Meals and he whipped up a batch, I saw what I was missing out on.

In the last decade I have grown fond of all things Swedish as a result of Jess’s lineage on her Mom’s side. Her Grandparents filled my wardrobe with clothing tastefully sporting the Swedish flag and colours, so I think this meal will get the stamp of approval.

Like most things I cook I did not follow the recipe and made addition and subtractions based on availability, taste and whim.   

Enchiladas Rojas

The title for this post, “Enchiladas Rojas”, may technically be wrong but I liked it more than “Wet Burrito”. Basically I made meat wrapped in a four tortilla baked with a red chilli sauce smothered with cheese and sour cream.

This will probably be the last Mexican inspired dish I make for a while because it came awfully close to becoming a Fail. My cavalier attitude towards cooking frequently gets me into trouble in the kitchen. I have trouble with simple things like frying an egg, pouring anything from one container to another, and my true Achilles heel is the quantity of spicy things I add to dishes. I love hot food but prefer flavour over ass melting heat.

I barley reigned myself in before this meal was a write-off but the collateral damage ended up being Jess’s food was on the dry side due to the limited amount of sauce I used on hers. This made 10 enchiladas with extra red sauce.