So I made the Kick-A** Mexican Pulled Pork this weekend and finally remembered to take pictures!
J, being the excellent cook he is, busted out the tortilla press his mom brought back from Belize for him and made tortillas from scratch. Additionally, he did up a corn/pineapple/sweet pepper salad to go with the pulled pork soft tacos. We cooked, we ate, we fell into comas.
I would like to say right upfront that this is a bit labour intensive; but, you will not have more fun making dessert than you will making these ice cream sandwiches!! It’s a great one for kids to get involved, too: messy, fun and no sharp objects are involved.
Makes 10.
Ingredients
2 ripe bananas
3c vanilla ice cream
20 peanut butter cookies (recipe here!)
2 c buttered/sugared peanuts, crushed
1 c smooth peanut butter
1 long sheet of wax paper
Directions
1. Mash the bananas into slightly-softened vanilla ice cream. Add the peanut butter, stir, and replace in freezer for an hour.
2. In the meantime, bake the cookies according to the recipe.* Make sure they have cooled completely before using.
3. Remove the ice cream from the freezer and lay the wax paper out on the counter. Place two cookies on the wax paper, one facing up, once facing down.
4. Pour the crushed nuts on to a plate or a low-sided bowl.
5. Add a generous scoop of ice cream to the upside down cookie and place the second cookie on top.
6. Roll the sides of the sandwich in the crushed nuts. Repeat until yer outta cookies!
7. Place all sandwiches back in the freezer for at least 30 minutes.
*You certainly don’t have to make the cookies from scratch. One less thing to do. 🙂
You want to make this. Trust me. It’s got lots of different textures, it’s easy to make, it’s healthy and it’s delicious.
Serves 2.
Ingredients
1tb canola oil 
1 mango, sliced thinly
1/2 red pepper, sliced thinly
1/2 orange pepper, sliced thinly
handful of snow peas
12-16 shrimp, peeled & deveined
1 c roasted peanuts
1/4 c chopped cilantro
2 packages of soba noodles
Sauce
1 lime, juiced
2 tb soya sauce
2 tb hoisin
1 tb oyster sauce
1 tb rice wine vinegar
2 tb ginger
1 ts sesame oil
1 ts hot sauce
Directions
1. In a small bowl, combine all the ingredients for the sauce.
2. Boil a pot of water for the soba noodles and cook to the directions on the package. (Usually two minutes tops.) Drain.
3. Heat up canola oil in a wok or large pan to medium-high heat. Add peppers & shrimp, cooking for 1 minute.
4. Add in mango, snow peas and peanuts. Cook 1 minute.
5. Add in sauce and drained noodles. Cook another minute until all ingredients are coated with the sauce and shrimp are pink.
6. Serve and top with cilantro.
The St. Lawrence Market in downtown Toronto is one of those places that everyone should check out as often as possible. It houses every food product under the sun from bread to meat to fruit to fish to dessert to vegetables…and so on. My husband and I popped in a couple of weeks ago and found some beautiful purple peppers, which I’d never seen before. The lady selling it recommended that we eat them raw, as once they’re cooked they lose their colour.
OK: salad it is!
We ended up throwing some figs in there and made a dressing with 3 parts olive oil, 1.5 parts fig-balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and lemon juice. The purple peppers were crisp and less sweet than the red, orange & yellow ones in the salad. Will definitely pick them up again next time we go!
Pork tenderloin is a great cut of meat: low in fat, not terribly expensive and can take on any flavour you like! This is a great dish if you want or need to prep ahead of time. You can marinate the pork from 10 minutes to 24 hours and it will taste great. The longer it sits in the marinade, the more of the flavour will be imparted into the meat.
Most consider pork safe to eat once it hits 145 degrees. That’s not “well done” (which is generally considered around 170), but it’s certainly cooked enough to eliminate any bacteria that could be lingering. Overcooked, dry pork is pretty gross. But, as with most cooking, if you worry too much it won’t come out right. A good rule of thumb is 20 minutes per pound. I do mine at 375 and it comes out just right!
Serves 2.
Ingredients
1 lb pork tenderloin
2 tb soya sauce
2 tb orange marmalade
2 limes, zest & juice
1 ts sesame oil
1-2 ts hot sauce
1 c sesame seeds
Directions
1. In a medium bowl, combine soya sauce, marmalade, lime zest & juice, sesame oil and hot sauce. Taste and adjust according to your palate. If you think it needs a little more of something, go for it.
2. Make several small incisions in the pork and put it in the bowl with the marinade. Spoon the marinade over the pork and marinate for desired time.
3. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
4. In a foil-lined baking pan/sheet, add the sesame seeds. Remove the pork from the marinade and coat all sides with seeds.
5. Bake for 25 minutes. Check the temperature at this point. If it’s at 145, it’s ready!
6. Rest & tent for 10 minutes.
7. Slice into coins and serve.
Now that the weather has cooled off some, I’m back in the kitchen more and more. Our kitchen is teensy so there’s nowhere for the heat from the oven or stove to go and heats up in a hurry. I am no fan of literally sweating over the food, but now that it’s a little cooler I’m back in action!
So last night’s dinner: sesame-crusted pork tenderloin with an Asian marinade, stir-fried broccoli and onions, an herb-buttered ciabatta and the famous cranberry, mango and pecan salad. I will definitely make this again and maybe cook the pork just a smidge less. It was still juicy and tender, but probably needed five minutes less in the oven. The rule of 20 minutes per pound was right on point! I’ll be posting the recipes shortly…
Two of my long-standing girlfriends? Oh yeah, they can cook. I have known these girls for 10+ years and, when I was in my “Cooking? Pffft.” phase, they would come over and show me that…well, I was being an idiot. There is a fairly well-worn story about how one of them came over, took one look at my fridge and forced me to sit there and help her clean out the whole thing. She was appalled and rightly so. The other wasn’t going to clean out my fridge, but she was sure going to show me that cooking could be easy and fun.
The Great Fridge Cleaner is the five-course-dinner-party-thrower, the experimenter, the “let’s-throw-stuff-together-and-I-bet-it’ll-be-delicious” cook. The Hot Biscuit can turn any ingredient into magic and loves to try out new items. But her specialty? Baking. We all look forward to our birthdays because we KNOW we’re going to get something home-baked and de-freaking-licious. (Best example: the pony-shaped cake she made for a friend’s birthday earlier this year.) Both women are confident in the kitchen and have, over the years, made some incredibly delicious food. The GFC introduced me to the simple pleasure of edamame and the less simple beef roast; the Biscuit makes the most addictive side dish on the planet: crack dip.
They have extraordinarily different personalities but they do share a love of food. The three of us in the kitchen is a pretty hilarious sight, usually getting in each others’ way (especially in my kitchen, which is annoyingly teeny). But both in their own way inspired me to get into the kitchen and just try it out. Whether it was showing me that a can of tuna could be transformed into something really tasty or how to make chocolate truffles, these ladies know how to be creative and fun in the kitchen…and isn’t that what it’s supposed to be?
Yep, that's a chocolate pony cake.
I was lucky enough to win a shopping spree at Chapters a year ago and one of the first things on my list was a plethora of cookbooks. They’re like crack to me. I bought books on baking, on Jamaican, Italian and southern American food and so on. One book that wasn’t initially on my list but has subsequently become my favourite cookbook of all time (sorry, Joy of Cooking. I’m sure this is blasphemy in many circles) is Julie Albert & Lisa Gnat’s fantastic Bite Me.
This book pulls off the feat of not taking itself seriously – at all – while providing incredibly delicious, accessible recipes. I have yet to make anything from this book that did not meet with 
rave reviews. Their Cranberry-Mango-Toasted-Pecan salad (found here!) with Dijon dressing was an instant classic. Salads can be pretty blah as, let’s face it, they are often an afterthought. But I guarantee that no one will forget this dish. It takes a little bit of time to sugar the pecans, but the most work i
nvolved in this dish is cutting up the mango…which takes all of 2 or 3 minutes. Equally winning were the Apple Muffins with Streusel topping that I brought to a friend’s birthday brunch.
Bite Me is full of hilarious pictures, playlist suggestions for prep work, food quotes and, most importantly, page after page of flavorful, manageable recipes. I made the Herb-Encrusted Beef Tenderloin a while back which, unsurprisingly, came out beautifully despite my own timing issues. (Apparently converting cooking times isn’t my strong suit, but it all worked out in the end!) I can’t recommend it highly enough for cooks of all skill levels. My husband has promised me that he’s going to tackle the Chocolate-Crusted Creamy Caramel Cheesecake. Given the success of the previous dishes, I’m sure it will disappear within hours.
OK, so “fish taco” might not be the most appealing phrase on the planet, but these tilapia tacos are downright yummy. And simple. I promise. Tilapia is one of those great white-meat fish that doesn’t have a ton of flavor, so this dish is great if you’re feeding folks who don’t like things that, “taste too fishy.” I *was* one of those people, so I know of what I speak!
You’ll see very small measurements in this recipe. I don’t really measure the spices – a shake or two will do. If you like lots of cumin, add more! I wouldn’t recommend adding too much more cinnamon, though: it’s really potent and can dominate the rest of the flavours.
Serves 4.
Ingredients
2 tb olive oil
1 ts cumin
1/2 ts cinnamon
1/2 ts salt
1/2 ts pepper
4 garlic, minced
1 small handful of cilantro, chopped
1 lime, juiced
2 tilapia filets
1/2 red onion, diced
1 ear of corn/1c corn kernels
1/2 bell pepper, diced
2 chipotle peppers in adobo, minced
1 c sour cream
Directions
1. Mix the chipotle peppers and sour cream in a bowl and set aside.
1a – if you’re using an ear of corn, boil a large pot of water and cook the corn for 3 minutes. Toss into a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking process. Using a good, sharp knife, remove all the kernels and set aside.
2. Heat oil in a pan over medium-high heat and add everything from cumin to the cilantro in the above list. Saute for 3-4 minutes.
3. Add the tilapia fillets, onion & pepper. The fish will take anywhere from 3 minutes/side to 5/side, depending on how thick the fillet is. Regular, supermarket fillets will be closer to 3 minutes.
Without fail, this is a major crowd-pleaser courtesy of Giada de Laurentiis. It makes enough for a full baguette, depending on how generous you are. I made this for a family dinner and it was a huge hit. I’ve been making it since and passing the recipe on. It will take about an hour a bit, but only because you need things to cool before you can work with them.
Ingredients
2 cups chicken broth or water
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes – this is just enough for a bit of heat. Feel free to add more!
1 (16-ounce) bag frozen peas
1/4 cup fresh chopped mint
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup whipping cream
3 ounces finely diced prosciutto
1 baguette, sliced into 1/2-inch thick slices
Extra-virgin olive oil
3 to 4 cloves garlic
Directions
1. Warm the broth and chili flakes in a medium pan over medium to high heat until it boils. Add the peas and cook roughly 5 minutes or less, til bright green. Drain the peas with a sieve, catching the flakes.
2. Place the peas, mint, salt & pepper in a food processor or hand blender. Process until smooth. Taste to make sure seasoning is where you want it. Cool for 30 minutes in the fridge.
3. Meanwhile, slice the baguette & preheat the oven to 375.
4. Place the baguette slices on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet in a single layer & bake for 10 minutes.
5. Drizzle the crostini with olive oil and rub with garlic cloves.
6. Whip the cream until stiff peaks form. Fold the cream into the pea puree.
7. Top each crostini with a spoonful of the mixture and a few pieces of prosciutto.
Food Nurd 
