Lex Culinaria

Moms' Idea Factory

Well, I've finally admitted what's been obvious to some of you for a while now. Having 2 babies in 17 months has cramped my former style to such a degree that not only do I not have time to post to Lex Culinaria, even when I do, I don't have anything to post about. Don't get me wrong, I love my babies, and I love being a mum, but let's face is, right now, my life is about mac-n-cheese, not cheese souffles!

So there. I said it.

I've started a new blog which is more mac-n-cheese and paddling pools. You can check it out here.

I loved doing Lex Culinaria, and I'm sure I'll love the new blog too. Lex Culinaria will still be here as an acrchive (please bear with me as I fix the formatting - I buggered it up when I configured Moms' Idea Factory!). Thanks for 5 years of awesome comments and feedback.

Hello again.

Time flies. Six months has gone by since I last posted. I can hardly believe it! When I last posted on Silas's first birthday, he'd just begun to walk and still had only a little bit of hair. Now he's tearing around the house like a maniac and has an Einstein-like fluffy-crazy hairdo. Lots has been going on for us, aside from cooking. I will try to recap the last six months in a few sentences:

1) finished building our dream house, with the dream kitchen I designed for myself;

2) moved from temporary house to dream house;

3) I went back to work full time (already preganant with baby #2);

4) Cakes got transferred to Langley, BC for his work;

5) We had to sell the dream house and buy one in Langley;

6) Moved to new house in Langley, leaving behind great friends in Edmonton;

7) Within days of the move, our second son, Cooper, arrived significantly earlier than expected!

Whew. I feel tired just typing that.

Thanks to all the readers who took the time to write and ask if I was okay. We are all great, just tired.

The cooking in our house has changed too. We've developed some new favourites which are probably a lot less work that previous favourites. We've also begun eating far more healthily, especially since our new son was diagnosed with Infant Reflux and i have had to cut out all: wheat, dairy, red meat, tomatoes, citrus and soy. The lack of dairy has just about killed me as I am a heavy cheese user! There will be more recipes showing up on Lex Culinaria, albeit at a slower pace, and for the time being, while I am still breastfeeding Cooper, most of them will be wheat and dairy free.

I am really looking forward to exploring our new surrounds from a foodie perspective as we are smack in the middle of some great farms producing all kinds of vegetables and fruit as well as meats and eggs. I'm pretty excited about finally being able to truly eat local. 100-mile diet? meh. We'll be doing the 20-mile diet as much as possible!

First Birthday Cake

Two exciting things happened last week. Silas turned one and I learned how to make my own fondant that doesn't taste totally gross. I hate traditional fondant. It`s kind of sickly and pasty and fake tasing all at once. This stuff is not only miles easier to make, but is actually pleasant to eat. Which is a really good thing as I am not all that skilled with buttercream icing. When I make cakes only with buttercream, they look like a 3-year old decorated them. And I did not want people to think I made Silas ice his own cake.

I got the recipe here, but if you google ``marshmallow fondant``, you`ll find heaps of recipes, all essentially the same. Don`t worry about the marshmallow being too hot to work with your bare hands. Marshmallow melts at a very low temperature so, unless you totally overcook it, you should be fine. Only one caveat: donèt try to make a 3-D sailboat out of it. It won't work. Trust me.

1 mile brunch

Well  I guess it's only 1 mile technically if you count the distance from my house to the Strathcona Farmer's market where I bought the ingredients for today's super-easy brunch. But I guess the whole point is not how far I traveled to procure the food, but how far the food traveled to where I procured it. Otherwise I could feel a whole lot better about those Philippine mangos I bought the other day.

The farms where the eggs and asparagus came from are easily within 100 miles of here though. I love the idea of coming home from the farmers' market and throwing together a quick lunch out of asparagus picked fresh and eggs collected today - served alongside bread baked fresh at one of the two bakeries a half block from my house.

Fresh certainly tastes better. Even the baby loved it. The baby who's going to be one on Monday. Eek.

Try this out for a quick and amazingly flavourful lunch. Throw in some nice fresh dill if you've got it. Don't forget the bread to soak up all the lemony buttery juice left on your plate. And make sure you eat it outside in the sun.

Poached Sunworks Farm eggs on Edgar Farm asparagus with lemon butter

Serves 2

• 1 bunch asparagus
• 1 small knob butter
• 1 Tablespoon each water and lemon juice
• 4 eggs
• 2 Tablespoons butter, very soft, almost melted
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• salt
• pepper

Snap the ends off the asparagus and rinse well. If it's quite gritty let it soak for 10 minutes in warm water and then rinse well. Melt knob of butter in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Lay the asparagus spears in hot butter and drizzle over water & lemon juice. Use tongs to move the asparagus back and forth in the steam and melted butter until asparagus is cooked but not floppy, about 6-7 minutes. Set aside.

In a large-ish pot heat about 3 inches of salted water until it is just barely bubbling. Poach eggs according to these instructions.

While eggs are poaching, whisk butter and lemon juice together in a small bowl. If you can't get it to blend, pop it in the microwave for 3-4 seconds. You should be able to get it to blend, and stay suspended, nicely after that. Stir a bit of salt & cracked pepper and chopped dill, if you are using it. Set aside.

Use tongs to arrange asparagus on each of two plates. Top with poached eggs and drizzle over sauce.

Remember the bread or risk horrifying your husband by licking your plate. Not that anyone I know would ever do that. I'm just saying.

Just in time for summer

I found a great little tool that lists all the farmer's markets in Edmonton (or anywhere else in Alberta if you ask it to) complete with hours of operation & a map to get you there. How easy does that make getting great local produce?

Check it out HERE.

March menu: Warm Salmon Nicoise

Since having Baby Cakes, I've discovered that popping out to the grocery store is not the easy task it used to be.

In an effort to reduce the numerous trips to the grocery store necessitated by my tendency to cook whatever I want, whenever it suits me, I'm experimenting with setting weekly menus that I can shop for all at once. So far so good. I've avoided repeated trips to the grocery store and have tried out a few yummy new (fast!) recipes. Last week, among other things, I made a really delicious & simple salmon Nicoise. The fact that it's pretty healthy too is just a bonus. You can serve it warm, as I did, or chilled. It tastes even better the next day, so would make an excellent brunch dish or packed lunch. I didn't do a traditional Nicoise salad dressing with anchovies because I had just made up a huge batch of this dressing for having on hand, and it went wonderfully.

This one is definitely going in the rotation!

400 gm (about 12-14) new potatoes, any variety, halved
250 gm fresh green beans, topped & tailed
1/2 large fennel bulb, thinly sliced
1/2 sweet onion, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons capers (salt rinsed off), minced
1/3 cup fresh Italian parsley, chopped
2 large ripe tomatoes, in thin wedges
20 large pitted olives (whatever kind you like), halved

(90 ml) 1/3 cup of Glen's Mama Ro's Wicked Salad Dressing.

4 salmon fillets (you could also use halibut or tuna)
1 lemon
salt & pepper

Put a cold pot of salted water on the stove and place the eggs in it. Bring it to a boil, cover with a lid and remove from heat. Allow to stand for 9  minutes. Remove the eggs from the water. Set aside.

Return hot salted water to stove and bring to a boil again. Drop halved potatoes into the boiling salted water. After 5 minutes drop in sliced fennel. After 5 minutes more, drop in green beans. Reduce heat and simmer 5 more minutes, or until potatoes are cooked through but still firm and fennel and beans are also cooked. Drain vegetables and rinse under lukewarm water to stop the cooking, but allowing the vegetables to remain warm. Toss in a bowl with the onions, parsley, olives , capers and tomatoes. Toss with dressing . Set aside.

Peel cooked eggs and slice lengthwise into quarters. Set aside. Heat a large nonstick pan, sprayed with oil, over medium high heat. Cook the salmon steaks on each side until cooked, about 8 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish. sprinkle fish with salt and pepper and squeeze lemon over it.

Spoon marinated salad onto 4 salad plates or soup plates.

Chop or break up the cooked fish and distribute over the tops of the salad. Top each serving with 4 quarters of egg.

Vegetarian Tostadas: Fiddly but worth it

Last weekend I splurged a little and bought 4 new cookbooks. Of those 4, three were from the Williams-Sonoma Savoring series. I promptly sat down and flipped through each. Halfway through the Appetizers book I spotted a vegetarian tostada recipe and decided it was going to be dinner one night this week. Never being one to feel constrained by someone else's recipe instructions, what I made was a bit different from what was written in the book, but it did turn out beautifully and, despite the amount of prep-work involved in dicing and cooking 8 assorted vegetables separately, I reckon I'd make it again in a heartbeat. The sauce isn't spicy at all, but has a great Latino chili flavour. If you can't find dried Latino chillies where you are, you can order them online for next to nothing. Although, if you can get them in a place like Edmonton, you can probably get them anywhere.

I usually buy my Latino cooking supplies at Edmonton Latino on 118 Avenue at about 101 Street, just behind NAIT. They sell really excellent Mexican chocolate disks for making Mexican hot chocolate there, as well as dried Ancho chilies, annatto paste, several kinds of masa harina and lots of good brands of refried beans. You can also get masa flour at Superstore and tostadas can be found at Save-On. For this recipe you can use tostadas, which are crisp corn tortillas about 5" in diameter, or you could substitute small (5") soft flour tortillas, which don't make quite as much mess. Feel free to also substitute any of the vegetables for what you have on hand or enjoy and lastly, if you can't find decent refried beans, you can make your own pretty easily. There are about a zillion recipes available online.  I reckon these would make excellent party food if you made tart cases out of cut tortillas or some such....

Sauce

• 6 large dried Mexican chilies (Ancho, Guajillo, or New Mexico or a combination - I used half Guajillo and half Ancho)
• 6 large cloves garlic (roasted if you can be bothered), crushed
• 5 Tablespoons white vinegar
• largish pinch ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 2 teaspoons ground oregano
• 1 teaspoon salt

Vegetables

1/2 pound each, diced:

•     new potatoes
•     fresh green beans (trimmed)
•     carrots (peeled)
•     baby zucchini
•     chayote squash
•     sweet potato

• 1/2 cup small cherry or grape tomatoes, quartered
• 1/2 medium yellow onion, diced
• salt

Tostadas

• 12 good quality 5" corn tostadas (or tortillas)
• 1 tin refried beans
• 1/2 lb queso fresco ( you can substitute feta or goats cheese)

Trim stems off the chilies, cut in half and roll them in your fingers to dislodge most of the seeds. Place them in a shallow bowl and cover with boiling water. Allow to soak 20 minutes. Drain and reserve water.

Place soaked chilies and the remaining sauce ingredients in a food processor, mini chopper or blender. Whiz to form a sauce, adding as much additional chili-soaking water as needed. Strain through a mesh sieve and set aside.

Make sure all your veggies are diced roughly the same size. Bring a medium pot of salted water to a boil and set a large metal bowl full of cold water to the side. Cook diced potatoes for 5 minutes, use a slotted spoon or small sieve to transfer them to the cold water to stop their cooking. Repeat with green beans & carrots (4 minutes cooking time) and  zucchini, sweet potato, chayote (3 minutes cooking time). When all veggies have been cooked and cooled, drain and dry on a kitchen towel. Toss with tomatoes, onions and sauce, set aside.

Spread each tostada/tortilla with a tablespoon or two of beans, top with a mound of vegetables and sprinkle over some of the cheese. Serve cold.