Chicken schnitzel

I had a piece of a jalapeño ciabatta left over from over a week ago, so I made bread crumbs out of it the other day.

Today I made chicken schnitzels.  I'm not a huge fan of chicken, but I sure love the buttery taste of a schnitzel.  Please don't fry it in anything other than butter.  I went to a chop house about a month ago, with some friends who have been there before, and I had a burger.  I'm so glad I did.  James ordered a schnitzel, and I had a piece and hated it.  It was awful, and all I could taste was oil.  I bet it was deep fried too.  He didn't hate it, but said my home made schnitzels are far better.  I think I have a long way to go with his taste buds, but at the same time, they have come a long way already.

I'm fairly limited when it comes to vegetables that James will actually eat.  The list of produce he will eat is much shorter than the stuff he won't.  I still eat stuff I love, either when he's not around, or sometimes I make us separate dinners.  It's not a chore, because I love cooking.  

The above mushrooms were panfried with a bit of butter, just so they wouldn't stick, and once they start cooking they release a lot of water.  Fry them until the liquid is pretty much gone.  I used a small amount of Provence type herbs, sometimes I make them plain, or with salty butter.  The red lentils I made with cumin, coriander and a bay leaf.  I'm so into bay leaf right now.  I've always liked it, but I use it as much as possible lately.

Prosciutto di Parma

I love this photo:

I don't have the link for it, but I found another site with a similar photo:

http://agferrarifoods.wordpress.com/tag/prosciutto-di-parma/

I buy Parma prosciutto at an Italian deli, I like it on a plate with other snack type foods, like rye or pumpernickel bread, pickles, sauerkraut, other meats, various vegetables, sometimes cheese.  It's like a sampler plate, but adds up to a meal.  Takes little time to put together, but is filling, healthy, and most importantly yummy!

Spaetzle and Sticky Rice Treats

It's Monday and it's one of those days.  Super sunny out, but also super cold.  I've had better days.  I'm kind of craving everything right now.  Here are a couple of tasty fast treats.

Spaetzle are soft egg noodles, usually used as a side with meat dishes, alone or with various things, like mushrooms, onions, cheese, lentils, spinach, etc, depending on the region.  They come in three basic shapes, long and stringy, short and wider pieces, or short little knobs.  When I was a kid my grandma made egg noodles from scratch a lot, especially for dinner parties.  They aren't hard to make, but are more time consuming than opening a package.  You can buy egg noodles in most markets, German, Polish, Swiss, Hungarian, French, even general grocery stores.

I use egg noodles instead of pasta a lot; they taste better, with tomato sauce, for mac and cheese, for soups, cream sauces, etc.  Sometimes I like to boil the egg noodles, drain, fry in butter and then sprinkle with sugar.  When I was a kid, living in the country with loads of seasonal fresh fruits, we would pick whatever fruit, say red currants, or poppy seeds, or berries, and mash them up with a bit of sugar, then add noodles.  It was a great snack.  A lot of the "weird" stuff I eat, is from my childhood.

Another version of a yummy sugar and butter snack, is sticky rice.  Same idea as with the egg noodles, but minus the frying.

These photos don't look like much, but if you've tried either, you'd be salivating like me right now  :)

Cauliflower recipe that is great for your health

Click here for the recipe and enjoy!

...from www.chatelaine.com

Pig lard and lardons

I love pig fat.  If you know me, you know that.  I love pig skin, whether it's cooked or roasted or in jelly.  I buy pig lard with the bits at a Polish deli, but sometimes I make my own.  I made some recently.  My bf got me this grease pot, which is for dumping grease into, it has a sieve, so the solids stay on top, then when it solidifies, you can scrape it out and dispose of it, without clogging your plumbing with hot grease.  Naturally when he gave it to me, and I saw it said GREASE on it, I was super excited, thinking it was a pot for my fat.  Then he explained the above to me.  I said, who does that?  Why would you want to throw out lard?  When I was a kid, my grandma always had a jar of home made lard.  Sometimes she would fry rye bread in it, and it was so good.

So every once in a while, I fry rye in lard, and either eat it with my home made sauerkraut, or with sliced dill pickles.  It's insane how good it is.  Just to clarify, dill pickles by my def, have no vinegar, just natural brine.  If you're buying "dill" pickles at the supermarket, read the ingredients.  Also, if you're buying rye at the supermarket, read the ingredients, wheat flour is usually a huge component, and to give the bread a denser feel and "healthier" look, they add caramel colour.  Food regulations should be much stricter, especially labeling.  Somehow though, the gov't seems to think that infringing on our privacy (SOPA/ACTA) is more important than labels on our food.

Here is my story in pictures  :)

Those lardons, skwarki (Polish) or scruncheons, as they call them in Eastern Canada, especially Newfoundland, are so yummy, they are like little crispy squishy sponges filled with pig fat.

Another option is just lard on rye with sea salt, I used maple smoked rock salt from BC:

Give it a try, let me know what you think.
Bon appetit!

Beef Stew

Stews are an easy dish to make, mainly because it's a one pot kind of a dinner.  They are perfect for cold days, healthy and hardy.  It's like a soup, but more filling, and who doesn't love soup.  They are convenient too, because you can pretty much put anything into a stew.  When you're in a pinch, you don't even need much meat, or any meat for that matter, veggie stews are delicious, and you can include various beans to make them more filling and increase the protein and extra fibre.

I used grass fed, AAA, ribeye steak, cubed it and seared it in spices.  I love marjoram with red meat.

In a pot, I fried up some fresh garlic in butter.  I found an Ontario grown heirloom variety, it's amazing how much flavour there is in such small cloves/ heads compared to the majority of standard supermarket garlic from China, and sometimes from the USA.  When I was a kid, and my grandma grew a lot of stuff, her garlic was also small.

I added diced carrots, potatoes, dry polish sausage (Krakowska), some peas, spices (bay leaf, marjoram, rosemary, thyme, s&p), and a bit of water, enough to barely cover the stuff.

Once the beef cubes were about half way cooked through, I added them to the pot.

Then as it was cooking, I made a roux (flour and butter) to thicken up the water, and make it into a sauce, otherwise it would be a chunky soup.

It was delicious, nutritious, and filling.  Now I'm waiting for my brownies to cool down  :)

Lemon Bars and Swiss Meringues

I always bake more in the winter, except for pies which I love making in the summer and fall, when the fruit is ripe and naturally sweet.  I miss fruit.  I miss parts of my childhood, especially the home grown fruits and veggies, all the yummy preserves and pickles my gran used to make for the winter.  Life was simpler then, I miss it.

In the last week I made Swiss Meringues, they were a hit at Family Day, which my sister hosts each year, and invites a bunch of friends.  They were reminiscent of the chocolate bat marshmallows from Count Chocula cereal, which I'm not even sure exists any more.  Anyway, these were easy to make, but time consuming, especially the baking time: 2hrs.

I also tried to make Pecan Bars, from  Linda Collister's book, but they didn't stick.  I know that ingredients differ between different countries, especially flour and dairy, but this recipe just didn't work.  I made some notes in the margin, so when I try to make them again, I will do things a bit differently.  I ended up eating the "muesli" with unhomogenized milk, and it was delicious with its sweet and buttery crunch.  The ingredients were simple: oats, brown sugar, butter, pecans, maple syrup.

The Lemon Bars, also from Linda Collister, were awesome.  I love good quality lemon desserts.  I always feel like I have to say that, because I don't mean donuts.  I am a sucker for pastries and butter.

The base on these lemon treats was very buttery, something between short bread and butter pie crust.  I specify, because when I make pies I only use butter, anything else ruins the taste.  Butter produces a flaky enough crust.  Shortening leaves an awful aftertaste, if you're not happy with the flakiness from butter, I suggest making French pastry flaky dough, it doesn't get any flakier, and you're still using butter.
I skipped the lemon rind in this recipe, mainly because my lemons were getting a bit wilty, and it's impossible to grate wilted rind; I've tried in the past.  The texture was smooth and firm, but not hard.  Both the pastry and the filling were delicious.  I find a lot of bakery bought lemon tarts either have good pastry or good filling, this had both.

I was craving something sweet this evening, but wasn't in the mood to bake, mainly cause I wasn't sure what I was craving.  I ended up making a yummy smoothie, with strawberries, peaches, ground flax seeds, a bit of water and some almond milk, I also added a bit of local light honey.  I didn't want a honey flavour, and light coloured honey is mild compared to dark or amber, which you should use if you want a honey taste.

Bonsoir  ;)