Author Archives: saltandserenity

Wild Blueberry Coffee Cake

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On Highway 7, in Ontario, about halfway between Perth and Madoc, there is a stretch of road, about 20 kilometers long, that is dotted with blueberry farm stands, every 2 kilometers, just like this:

I know this because we drove this route mid-July every summer for 10 years, to visit our son at camp. The first few summers we drove the route there was much discussion and bickering about which of the 10 stands would have the best wild blueberries and whether we would look too eager or desperate if we stopped at the very first stand. Then, in 2006 we made a startling discovery. All the berry stands along that stretch of highway are owned and operated by one woman – Isobel Wood. She lives in the tiny town of Cloyne, and the stands are all staffed by her kids and grandkids.

Our kids no longer go to camp but we discovered we can take that same route to visit our friends, The Monkees, at their cottage in the Muskokas. So our wild blueberry tradition is safe.

For those of you who have never tried wild blueberries, it is an experience you will not soon forget. They differ from cultivated blueberries in several ways. Wild blueberries are smaller, sweeter and more flavourful than their cultivated sister. They hold their shape, texture and colour better during baking. As an added bonus, they are higher in antioxidants. And, they are more expensive! (But so worth it)


They also sell bluebery pie and blueberry jam, but for me, the main attraction is the wild blueberries.

Of course we bought way too many blueberries, so I had to bake then into something before they ended up in the compost heap. I am not a huge blueberry pie fan, although I do recall some amazing blueberry buns from Open Window Bakery when I was growing up in Toronto. I opted for wild blueberry coffee cake.

I know that blueberry coffee cake does not sound like the most exciting dessert, but trust me on this one. This cake is moist and dense thanks to the addition of sour cream. It is studded with tons of little blueberries and the topping is a crunchy concoction made from pecans, oats, butter, brown sugar, flour and maple syrup. And the crunch from the topping is still just as crunchy on day 2, should there be any leftovers.

                                         I put together a little video showing how to prepare the crumble topping. Not that video instruction is necessary, this is a simple cake to make, but just because I am having too much fun playing around with iMovie on my new Mac!

Resist the urge to eat this immediately out of the oven. Give it at least 2-3 hours to cool. You can even make it a day ahead of time, as the flavours seem to improve. It also freezes quite well. I made it last week when we had friends visiting. Everyone was full after dinner so we each had a small piece. There was still almost 3/4 of the cake left. I wrapped it up, put it in the fridge and went to bed. When I got up in the morning only about 1/4 of the cake was left. Either I have fridge mice who know how to use a knife or someone was doing some midnight snacking. I’m not accusing, I’m just saying!

Click here to print the recipe for Wild

Blueberry Coffee Cake.

Rye Galette

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When I started this blog over two years ago, I never imagined that it would be read by college and university students. Yet, somehow, I seem to have garnered a following among the 20 something crowd. It started with the daughters of my friends. One young woman, my god-daughter, has set my blog as her home page and was worried about me when I went 10 days without blogging.  She actually called her mom to ask if everything was ok with me . How sweet is that?

Then it grew to include my daughter’s friends. She was quite proud of her mom and told her friends about my blog. I am sure they checked it out, just to be polite, because they are such nice young women!

However, I think they kept returning to the blog because they loved to read stories about my daughter and then tease and embarrass her. This was when they were in high school. Over the past 2 years they have moved onto university and have just recently moved out of residence and into their own apartments. Now they are interested in cooking, so they read the blog for recipes. And they have told their friends about it. So a big shout out to all my girls at McGill, Queens, Emerson and Ryerson!

My daughter’s best friend, spent many hours at our home when they were in high school. She loved eating at our house, especially when I made peanut butter bark, as her brother has a peanut allergy, so she couldn’t have it at home. Once she moved into her own apartment, she began asking me for recipes. She has turned out to be a wonderful cook (one minor mishap with vegetarian chili – but we won’t talk about that). She became obsessed with my galettes (free form tarts) and in May she made a Roasted Tomato and Gruyère Galette for her mom for Mother’s day and told me it was one of her proudest moments! It makes me so happy to see the next generation taking an interest in cooking and baking.

My sons, by the way, do not tell anyone their mother is a blogger. The oldest, probably for fear that his friends will read something humiliating about him, and the youngest because he can’t imagine his mother has time for anything but him!

Flushed with success at my recent venture into whole grains baking, I decided to try Kim Boyce’s Rustic Rye Dough and create a galette with that. In her book, “Good to the Grain”, Kim gives a lyrical description of this dough.

“The method for making this dough is similar to that for a rough puff pastry, a method I learned while working with Sherry Yard at Spago. It calls for letting a rough dough, made from chunks of butter and moist clumps of flour, rest in the refrigerator to give the gluten time to relax and the flour time to absorb the water. After an hour, the dough is rolled and folded a few times to create long “laminated” layers of butter throughout the dough, which give it its flakiness.”

Of course I waited to make the galette until my daughter’s galette obsessed friend was coming for a visit to the cottage. I filled the tart with spinach, corn, Asiago and provolone cheese and sliced tomatoes. The nutty flavour of the rye dough was perfect with that filling. Now of course my daughter’s friend wants to know how to make this, so here is a step by step tutorial, with video, to help her on her way.

Click here to print the recipe for Rustic Rye Dough .

Click here to print recipe for Asiago, Spinach, Corn and Tomato Galette

Beetroot and Chickpea Salad

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I am very fortunate that I get to spend my summers at our cottage by the lake. We entertain guests all summer long and really enjoy being hosts. However, there is something so nice about being a guest every once in a while. Last weekend we got to play the role of guests as we headed off to visit friends at their cottage in The Muskokas.

For the purpose of this post, I will call our friends, “Mr. and  Mrs. Monkey.” Of course, that is not their real names, but I am reluctant to reveal their identity for fear that once everyone learns what generous hosts they are,  they will soon be over run with guests and will no longer have space for us.

I have nicknamed them “Mr. and Mrs. Monkey” as they share a certain personality trait with that animal.

“Tests in Capuchin monkeys showed the animals consistently chose to share food with another monkey if given the option, suggesting they are capable of empathy, the team at the Yerkes Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta found.

“They seem to care for the welfare of those they know,” Frans de Waal, director of the Living Links Center at Yerkes, said in a statement.

His team tested eight female brown Capuchin monkeys in pairs. They could choose a token that gave only themselves a treat or an option that rewarded both of them, called a pro-social option.

“The fact the Capuchins predominantly selected the pro-social option must mean seeing another monkey receive food is satisfying or rewarding for them,” said de Waal.

Our friends are indeed generous and gracious hosts, just like those Capuchin Monkeys. When we arrived, hot and tired, after a 5 hour drive, Mrs. Monkey had the Prosecco chilled and ready to open. She immediately ushered us to the dock for cocktails.

While we were in the kitchen, getting the Angus Bear Paw Burgers ready for dinner, I noticed that the fridge had a chalkboard panel where Mr. Monkee had written “Dad’s 10 Statements”. One of his rules to live by is further evidence that my friends are caring about the welfare of others.

“In life there are givers and takers, always be a giver!”

The next morning, my husband and The Monkees decided to go for a 60 km bike ride. I opted out and offered to have lunch ready when they returned. When I mentioned that I was going to go out for a power walk, Mrs. Monkee loaned me  a hat, some sunblock, headphones for my i-pod (I had forgotten mine), some Bounce dryer sheets (excellent to clip onto your hat as the scent keeps the deer flies away) and a bear whistle.

WHAT??? A bear whistle? She explained that there had been a bear citing a few weeks ago so runners were advised to blow a whistle every so often to keep bears away. Like I said, she is so giving and generous. Off they went on their bike ride and I went for my walk, blowing that whistle every 30 seconds. While I did not have a bear sighting, I did attract every dog within a 30 mile radius!

After I got back from my walk and cooled off in the lake, I got to work on lunch. Mrs. Monkee had thoughtfully left the recipe out for me. I looked at the open page of the beautiful cookbook she left out for me. “Beetroot and Chickpea Salad.”

Okay, here was my dilemma. I hate beets. I want so badly to like them, because they are so beautiful, but every time I try to eat one, I gag. They have a certain earthiness that I just can’t deal with. I have tried them roasted,steamed and grilled. I have tried, golden beets, candy cane (striped)beets, and baby beets.  I just can’t stand them.  So, what to do? Do I accidentally throw the beets out, and say I couldn’t find them or do I just suck it up like a gracious guest and make the beet salad.

Of course I did the right thing and made the salad, beets and all. (Mom, you raised me right!) Mrs. Monkee had already gone to the trouble of roasting and peeling the beets, so all I had to do was slice them up and prepare the dressing and other salad ingredients.

The dressing was the most unusual combination of ingredients I had ever seen. Chickpeas, beets, lemon juice, garlic, mint, sugar and olive oil, all blended to make a smooth dressing. It was just so strange that I had to taste it. Say… I do like beets, well beet salad dressing,… after all. The other ingredients mellowed the beet taste and just a hint of beet was all I could taste in the dressing.

I added some water and a bit more oil than the recipe called for, to thin out the dressing. I also pureed the heck out of it so it was quite smooth. I washed some spinach, diced some celery and cucumbers and soaked some red onions to add to the salad.

The salad is topped with additional chick peas, beets and some feta. Mrs. Monkee arrived home just in time to toss.

At lunch, I politely ate around the beets, leaving a little hill of them at the side of my plate. Mrs. Monkey, politely ate the beets off my plate. After 38 years of friendship, no words were necessary.

Click here to print the recipe for Beetroot and Chickpea Salad.

Cherry Cake with Pistachio Crumble Topping

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If you happened to be at Your Independent Grocer (or “THE YIG“, as my sister likes to call it) in Smiths Falls, Ontario, last Wednesday, at around 2:30 p.m, and you heard a crazy woman let out a gleeful scream, well, that would be me. You see, as I turned the corner, just past the pluots and nectarines, I spied a bin filled with Ranier cherries.

The Rainier cherry is the sweetest, prettiest and most pampered of cherries. Developed in 1953, it is a cross between the Bing and Van varieties. Golden to orange to pale red in colour on the outside, one bite reveals a creamy yellow flesh. They are more delicate and sweeter than Bing cherries. The season for Ranier cherries is extremely short, a few weeks in mid July, and then it’s over.

During cherry season, I eat cherries like it’s my job. During Ranier cherry season, I work overtime! I filled my cart with several bags of Ranier cherries and probably ate at least a pound of them on the drive back to the cottage. I continued to gorge on Ranier cherries for the next several days and pretty soon I was sweating cherry juice. (In my defense, it was quite humid.) It became apparent that I would have to do something with the cherries before the rest spoiled.

Tartelette’s blog  came to my rescue! If you haven’t discovered this blog yet, I urge you to go on over for a visit. It is charming and filled with wonderful recipes and gorgeous drool inducing photography. She made little cherry cakes topped with a pistachio crumble. Brimming with fresh cherries and slightly flavoured with lemon zest. this cake is a wonderful way to celebrate cherry season. I made it with my surplus of Ranier cherries, but in hindsight, the flavour of Ranier cherries is so delicate, and the colour so pale, they were lost in the cake. Next time I make it, I will use Bing cherries.

Pitting the cherries is the most time-consuming task in making this cake. if you don’t have a cherry pitter, do it this way:

The crumble and cake come together very quickly. I made a 9 inch square cake, although if you have mini cake pans, it would make an adorable presentation!

Click here to print recipe for Cherry Cakes With Pistachio Crumble Topping .

Multi-Grain Corn Cakes

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Sometimes when I finish a book,I have a very hard time starting a new one. With certain books, the characters stay with you for a long time and you are reluctant to begin a new book, because you aren’t quite ready to say goodbye to the old one. This happened to me after finishing “The Faith Club”, a true story written shortly after the horror of 9/11.

“Welcome to the Faith Club. We’re three mothers from three faiths—Islam, Christianity, and Judaism—who got together to write a picture book for our children that would highlight the connections between our religions. But no sooner had we started talking about our beliefs and how to explain them to our children than our differences led to misunderstandings. Our project nearly fell apart.”

At this point, you may be wondering if you missed something here. When did Salt and Serenity stop writing about food, and start reviewing books, and what about those multi-grain corn cakes? I actually came to make these corn cakes because I couldn’t pick up another novel quite yet. You see, I took “Good to the Grain” (Kim Boyce’s new book about baking with whole grains) to bed with me to read last week.

I have made several things from the book, and enjoyed them very much, but then I somehow got sidetracked and forgot about it. I stayed up very late reading, and in the morning I was raring to go to bake with whole grains.

In the multigrain chapter of the book, Kim gives a recipe for a multigrain flour mix  consisting of whole wheat flour, oat flour, barley flour,millet flour and rye flour. I headed out to my local bulk food store and stocked up. She says to mix up a batch of these flours and keep it in the jar on the counter to use in all sorts of recipes.

I decided to adapt my regular corn cakes recipe and substitute the all-purpose flour in the recipe with this mixture.

They looked good, but the taste was bitter and the texture was leaden. Had to toss that batch. I decided to take a step back and add whole grains a bit more slowly. I played around a bit more and threw out a few more corn cakes until I finally hit upon this combination of grains:

As I was cutting the corn off the cob, I pondered the milk decision, buttermilk or whole milk?

I decided to mix up a batch of each, The buttermilk mixture (on the left) looked so much more promising, thicker and all bubbly. I had high hopes for it!

By this time, it was getting close to lunch, so I threw in a diced jalapeno pepper.

The buttermilk batch did indeed cook up higher and a bit fluffier, but I found the taste of the whole milk one have a purer corn flavour. The buttermilk seemed to subdue the corn flavour and overpower it.

At last, I found the perfect combination. This final batch, had the goodness of whole grains, the crunch from corn meal and fresh corn, the heat of jalapenos and the fresh dairy taste from whole milk. Fried in a little bit of butter, these corn cakes were crispy around the edges and soft on the inside. They disappeared very quickly.

All that was left was the mess!

To print this recipe click Multi-Grain Corn Cakes

Summer Crostini

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There are times when you feel like being culinarily creative and making beautiful lunches like these for weekend cottage guests.

And there are times when you don’t feel like moving from here:

and want to suggest to those guests that they just help themselves to a peanut butter and sour cherry jam sandwich!

Happily there are several options in between these two. Option #1, and my personal favourite, is when weekend guests are invited and invariably ask what they can bring, suggest “lunch for Saturday.” When my mother heard that I do this on a regular basis, she was horrified. Had she not raised me to be a gracious host?

Actually, I think that people feel happy to contribute when being invited for the weekend (or longer, and those to whom I am referring, know exactly who you are!) And truthfully, it’s not the cooking that I mind. It’s the planning and figuring out what to make that takes up so much mental energy. So it’s nice to let someone else figure it all out and just show up at the table and be surprised. However, there is a caveat here. Make sure that your friends are comfortable in the kitchen and possess a basic skill set for preparing  meals.

I have one friend who used to use up every dish, pot and utensil when she prepared her meals. We would eat brunch at 2 in the afternoon. They were exquisite brunches but way too much for a cottage. Happily, she has gotten into the swing of things and now prepares perfect meals without destroying the kitchen. This friend is in fact, so comfortable in my kitchen and knows exactly where everything goes, that she and my husband joke that in the event of my demise, she will just slip seamlessly into place and become the woman of the house. Truthfully, all my friends are wonderful cooks and I love having them take over my kitchen.

Another friend makes sure we always have enough wine and her salads and salad dressings are so creative and inspiring. Did you ever notice how much better salad tastes when someone else makes it?

One friend takes her responsibility so seriously that she begins researching the meal she will prepare as soon as we settle on a weekend. She is an extremely accomplished cook and last year we feasted on Peruvian Grilled Chicken, Chile Roasted Sweet Potatoes and a 7 Layer Coconut Cake for our Saturday night dinner. Her husband is a skilled mixologist and she just told me he has perfected the Negroni, so I am looking forward to sampling that when they come to visit in August.

Option # 2, if you just aren’t comfortable turning over your kitchen, or have control issues or whatever, is to cook on auto-pilot. Perfect one special lunch and just make it every weekend, for the rotation of guests that turn up. If you have different guests every weekend they won’t know that you do this and you will look perfectly at ease turning out a wonderful lunch.

Here is my auto-pilot lunch that got its test spin last weekend, to rave reviews, I may add. These crostinis  will be appearing on the menu every Saturday for the next 8 weeks!

These crostini were featured in an article in the June 2011 issue of Bon Appetit. I have adapted them slightly. The first one features ripe peaches, ricotta and honey. I made Homemade Ricotta Cheese, but feel free to use store-bought. Just don’t try making this with less than perfectly ripe peaches. Although the peaches I bought were not yet local, they were the “tree ripened” variety, and after a few days on the kitchen counter, they smelled like peaches.

The finished crostini get a drizzle of honey just before serving.

The second crostini has a base of feta, sour cream and pickled jalapenos. It is topped with grilled corn, cilantro and a squeeze of lime. For these I used a multi-grain baguette and rubbed the  grilled bread slices with a garlic clove.

I set out all the prepared ingredients on trays and let everyone assemble their own. Much easier and way more fun. There are so many excellent quality Artisan breads available in supermarkets now. Have fun with your choices but be sure you slice the bread thinly (less than 1/2 an inch thick). You want the toppings to be the star, not the bread.

Click here to print the recipe for Peach and Ricotta Crostini.

Click here to print the recipe for Grilled Corn Crostini

Turkey Tonnato

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I named my blog “Salt and Serenity” because I need to have a judicious amount of both on a daily basis. It helps to keep me balanced and sane. Last week I moved up to my cottage for the summer. You would think that by now I would be drenched in serenity. However, nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead of looking at this all day long:

I am looking at this:

You see, just before I moved up here I made the switch from PC to Mac. So my days have been filled with trying to learn how to use my Mac. That cool guy on the commercial made it sound like it would be all fun and games. Sure, fun and games until I can’t find all my documents. Then I just want to poke Mr Cool Guy”s eyes out!

Yes, serenity is in short supply here at the cottage this week. The nice woman at the Apple store promised me a short learning curve. Perhaps I’m just a slow learner, but I am having a heck of a time editing my pictures and creating new files. Nothing works the same anymore. Things keep disappearing off my screen and I have no clue how to get them back. I opened my trash bin yesterday, only to discover a file of photos I had been trying to find for over an hour.  I have no idea how they got in there.

So, all this to say that this week, I had neither the time nor the inclination to experiment with anything new in the kitchen. There would be 8 people at the table for dinner on Friday night and I needed a dish I could cook on auto-pilot, as all my brain cells were being consumed by my Mac.

Turkey Tonnato to the rescue! I found this recipe in Gourmet Magazine (a moment of silence please!) 10 years ago this month. It has stood the test of time. I can’t think of too many things that still seem stylish and appropriate 10 years later. Certainly today I would not wear the fashions from the early 2000’s. Trucker hats, sweat suits, low-rise jeans, belly baring tops and daisy duke shorts just don’t make the grade in 2011. But turkey tonnato is still the perfect summer dish. Think of it as the summer food equivalent to white jeans. A timeless classic.

Turkey tonnato is a spin on the classic Italian dish, Vitello Tonnato. It is basically chilled veal in a tuna sauce. The turkey version involves poaching a whole turkey breast in water and vegetables. Then the turkey chills overnight in the broth, where is soaks up all the liquid and remains moist and juicy. Canned tuna, mayo, olive oil, anchovy paste, and lemon juice are blended into a smooth sauce. While the combination may sound a bit strange,” turkey with tuna sauce”, the flavours really work. The turkey is slightly bland and the tuna sauce is tangy.

In the classic Italian version, each slice of cold veal is dipped and coated in the sauce before plating. This idea came about before anyone realized the artery clogging properties of mayo! In this lighter version, the sauce is served on the side and you can decide for yourself just how many arteries you wish to clog.

What I love most about this dish, besides the taste, is that it can be made ahead of time. The day before you plan to serve it, poach the turkey breast and make the sauce. The next day, all you have left to do is slice the turkey and cook the potatoes and beans.

After an overnight cooling in the broth, the turkey is ready to be sliced. Slicing the turkey breast is simple if you remove the breast from the bone first. Then remove the skin and just slice across each breast into 1/4 inch thick slices.

Basil is a tender herb and bruises easily. The best way to cut the basil is to stack the leaves, roll them into a cigar shape and slice across into thin strips. This is known as a basil chiffonade.

Wishing you all a serene week!

To print the recipe for Turkey Tonnato, click here.

Doing the Gombey Smash

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It is always such a startling revelation for me to discover that foods I previously thought I hated, I now actually really like. And, it seems to be happening with more frequency as I age. Perhaps it’s a side effect of Botox use? (Only kidding!)

It began about 15 years ago, with coffee. I thought I didn’t like coffee, but my friend Brigitte introduced me to a big bowl filled with hot steamed milk and foam, with just a tiny bit of coffee and 2 spoonfuls of sugar. What a gateway that was. Within no time at all I was drinking a huge bowl of espresso, with just a touch of steamed milk and a mere 1/4 teaspoon of sugar. A few years ago I joined the dark side and began eating, and loving, cilantro. Then I discovered the joy of Brussels sprouts. I love them raw, sliced thinly on the mandoline, with silvered almonds, Pecorino Romano cheese, lemon juice and olive oil.  Then there was the discovery of my love for walnuts and hazelnuts. Walnuts used to send shivers up and down my spine, but now, I love them. I think I was philosophically opposed to hazelnuts because Giada uses them or Nutella in every recipe she makes. Then I had them sprinkled over a salad of green beans, thinly sliced raw mushrooms, parmesan, lemon juice and olive oil. Whoa, talk about taste sensations.

All this to say, that I have just discovered another new edible love. It happened while on holiday with my 5 siblings, 1 niece and mother. We took my mom to Bermuda to celebrate her 75th birthday. I discussed the issues leading up to this journey in my last post. If you read it, or if you have parents and/or siblings, then you will completely understand what I am about to divulge to you. Somehow, as adults, when we get together with our parents and/or siblings, we revert back to childhood patterns and behaviours.  I am sure a psychologist would have a field day with the analysis of this phenomenon, but suffice it to say, old jealousies and petty annoyances rear their ugly heads. Let’s just say, that alcohol helped to soften some of these sharp edges.

On our second night in Bermuda, we met in the bar for cocktails before dinner. I love to be with my sisters for many reasons. The fact that three of them love Prosecco, like I do, makes cocktail time much more celebratory. It always feels more festive to order a whole bottle of Prosecco rather than just a glass, like I usually do. The fourth sister ordered a “Gombey Smash.”My mom ordered a glass of water. My brother ordered a gin and tonic. I think he needed to display some testosterone with all these women! My almost 11-year-old niece ordered a ginger ale.

When the drinks came, the sister with the Gombey Smash started licking her lips and making mmmmm noises. Of course I had to taste. She was right! It was fantastic. Fruity, slightly tangy and loaded with my favourite flavour, coconut. I looked at the cocktail menu to see what was in this concoction. Pineapple juice, orange juice, apricot brandy and Malibu rum. RUM?? I don’t like rum. Apparently I do like Malibu rum. A lot!

I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to be with my mom and all my siblings on such a happy occasion. We had never taken a holiday together and it was very special. Now, we just have to hope that the surgery we perform on my 11-year-old niece, to remove her memories of all conversations she may have overheard while on the holiday, goes well! After all, what happens in Bermuda, stays in Bermuda.

Mix up a big batch of this drink at your next family gathering and soon you will all be doing the Gombey Smash!

To print the recipe for Gombey Smash, click here.

Asian Chicken and Lettuce Wraps

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Two weeks ago, I heard my bathing suit calling for me, well not actually calling, more like mocking me, from the bottom drawer of my closet. It was daring me to pull it up over the pasty white flesh of my legs and then over the lumpy bumpy flesh of my hips and belly. Aaaagh! Can there be anything more scary than putting a bathing suit back on after a winter of consuming comfort foods?

Last December, basking in the warmth and love of a family celebration (my mom’s 75th birthday), my 5 siblings (4 sisters and 1 brother) and I decided it would be a great idea to take mom away on a little trip to celebrate this milestone. There were lots of phone calls and e-mails back and forth as we tried to figure out where and when to go. We almost had a BBM (Blackberry Messenger) family group formed, which would have made communication so easy, but then my brother had to go and join the dark side… he bought an iPhone!  Just between you and me, I think he did it on purpose so we would stop BBMing him.

Choosing when to go was no easy feat. Two of my sisters are school teachers so taking time off during the school year is challenging. My brother is an accountant and January-April is a special period of hell for him, also known as tax season. To complicate matters, we decided that no children or spouses were to be included on this trip. Just mom and her kids. So child and pet care arrangements had to be made. Finally a long weekend in June was found to be was agreeable to all.

We decided on Bermuda as it was a short flight for all and the weather would be lovely in June. A little bit of sightseeing and some beach/pool time suited everyone. Thing seemed to be moving along quite well until it was time to decide who would room with whom. It has been at least 35 years since my older sister and I shared a room and I was not that keen on doing it again any time soon! Finally rooming arrangements were figured out, with just a few insults, snide remarks and residual hurt feelings flung about.

Then it was time to choose seats on the plane. There was quite a scurry and commotion about who would sit with mom on the plane. I will not disclose whether the direction of the scurry was towards or away from mom. Finally all the arrangements were made and just the waiting and packing remained. With less than a week to go, I mustered up the courage to try on bathing suits. That’s when the realization hit me. Time to start eating a little bit lighter, although I was doubtful that a week of light eating could undo the damage of a carb loaded winter.

I had seen a recipe in the June issue of  Bon Appetit that called for serving a chicken stir fry in a lettuce wrap. They looked perfect for a light weeknight dinner. I decided to bulk them up a bit with the addition of lots of vegetables. I settled on a mixture of mushrooms (shitake, white button and cremini), carrots, snow peas and yellow peppers. A little bit of garlic, ginger and cilantro would help to bring it all together.

Vegetables were done, now onto the chicken. Many years ago, when working at Dinah’s Cupboard, a food shop in Toronto, I learned a trick to create a tender and juicy chicken stir-fry. Dinah called it the “velvet glove” treatment. The chicken is given a protective coating before stir-frying. The best coating is a mixture of cornstarch, egg white and rice wine vinegar. I think of it as a sort of sun block for chickens!

Since my daughter is a vegetarian, I also prepared some tofu. I cooked the vegetables separately from the chicken and tofu. Begin with some ginger, garlic and green onion, then add the mushrooms. They will take about 5-7 minutes to give off their moisture and cook down and brown. The carrots, snow peas and peppers are added at the very end, so that they are heated through briefly but still retain their crunch.

Boston lettuce and hearts of romaine make a really nice wrapper. We finished the wraps off with some sweet chilli sauce for heat, some cilantro for its brightness and some cashews for added crunch.

To print the recipe for Asian Chicken and Lettuce Wraps, click here.

Coconut Curry Cashews

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I used to think I didn’t like the flavour of curry. And then, a few years ago, my good friend Mrs. Grizzly (that’s just my nickname for her!) brought these spiced cashews to my cottage as a little gift. After gobbling down most of the bag, I discovered that,  say… I  like curry! I do like it! I have since branched out and made Roasted Halibut Curry and Bobby Flay’s Country Captain Chicken, from Throwdown.

Then, last week I was reading the June issue of Martha Stewart Living and I came across a recipe for Coconut Curry Cashews. I am like a fish attracted to sparkly lures when I see the word coconut. I go right for it and can’t think about anything else. Of course I had to make these. (Just a little side note here, I had let my subscription to MSL lapse about a year ago because I was not finding anything inspiring in there. But I picked up the June issue at the supermarket last week and I found so many things I want to try.)

I headed to the bulk food store to get some cashews. There were three cashew bins in a row. The first had cashew pieces. The second held whole cashews and the third was filled with jumbo cashews. Ever wonder why a whole cashew tastes better than a half. And why jumbo cashews taste better than regular? Just one of life’s little mysteries I guess. So I bit the bullet and bought the jumbos. (salted, of course!) I had some unsweetened flaked coconut at home from nutsonline. You could also use shredded coconut for this recipe, but the flaked is a little more luxurious.

Melt some butter, whisk in curry powder and then add honey, sugar and water.

Pour mixture onto cashews, mix well and spread out on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for about 15 minutes. Top with coconut and bake for an additional 7 minutes until all is golden.

It all baked together into a beautifully shellacked sheet of cashew brittle. Each and every cashew is perfectly and completely coated. After it cooled, I broke it into little bite sized pieces and tasted. This is buttery, toasty, crispy goodness with a kick of curry. It is highly addictive. You will find yourself eating one cluster, then another and then another until  finally, your hand reaches the bottom of an empty bag. You will be hooked.

To print the recipe for Coconut Curry Cashews, click here.