Borscht!

My family a few generations back was Ukrainian, and they moved to the Canadian Prairies in the early 1900s (where many Eastern Europeans settled!) Some of the culture has been passed on, and while unfortunately for me as a linguist none of that culture involved language, I am very thankful that most of that culture involved FOOD!

I've already posted my grandmother's recipe for pierogies, so here's a variation on her borscht (beet stew!!) Admittedly, Rob and I winged it without a recipe or without talking to Grandma Stella, so I was going on instinct alone... but it turned out well!

Ingredients

2 tbsp butter

1 large white onion, sliced and chopped (we made ours into half-rings)

1 stalk of celery, chopped

6 cups of broth (veggie, chicken, beef, whatever!)

4 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed

10 medium beets, peeled and cubed

1/2 can of kidney beans, rinsed and drained

1/4 head of cabbage, shredded

1 tbsp of dill, chopped

salt and pepper

Directions

1. In a large pot, heat butter on medium heat and add onions and celery. Season with salt and pepper, and cook on medium-low heat until onions are transparent.
2. Add in the broth, potatoes, beets, and beans. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil.
3. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes or so.
4. Add in cabbage and dill.
5. Simmer for another 30-40 minutes. Just taste it along the way until you think the taste is right.
6. Serve with a dollop of sour cream.

I'm not sure I would change much about this recipe. Carrots might be a welcome addition, if sauteed with the onion and celery at the beginning. Other than that, I really enjoyed the recipe! And so did Rob. hahaha.

The Perfect Peanut Pad Thai

Rob went away for the weekend, so I spent my time entertaining myself... I knit 2 neck cowls, an iPod sleeve, and am halfway through a case for my laptop cords. I also made my own Chai tea syrup, and my most recent triumph is the perfect Pad Thai.

There's a restaurant in Waterloo called Rain Tree Cafe, and I am obsessed (trust me, it's the only appropriate word for my love of this dish) with their Peanut Pad Thai. The sauce is spicy, creamy, peanut-y, and has this magic way of getting more delicious the more you eat it. You really should try it. Check out their website: http://www.raintreecafe.ca/index.html .

Ever since the first day I tasted it, I have been on a quest to find a comparable dish. I've tried about 10 different recipes and ordered it in at least that many restaurants, but to no avail. Nothing could be done to replicate the perfect deliciousity (I know it's not a word, but I'm a linguist and we're pretty much trained to make up new words!) of Rain Tree Cafe's Stirfry Pad Thai.

Until now. (cue triumphant music)

I was trying to think of what to make for dinner. We had bok choy in the fridge that needed to be used up. What had bok choy in it? RAIN TREE'S PAD THAI, that's what! But to go with it, I needed to make the perfect simple peanut sauce with what we had in the fridge. So, I Googled "simple peanut sauce" and it took me to this website and voila! I had almost all of those ingredients.

Here's the recipe the way that I cooked it.

Ingredients

1/2 cup hot water

1/3 cup peanut butter

2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp white wine vinegar

1/2 tsp salt (I didn't have any soya sauce, or else I would have used that, as per the recipe)

1 heaping tbsp diced garlic (from a jar)

1 heaping tbsp diced ginger (from a jar)

1/2 tsp of hot sauce

Directions

1. Mix all of the ingredients together.
2. Pour over stir-fried vegetables and/or noodles.
3. Prepare yourself to enjoy the simplest, most delicious sauce you have ever eaten.
4. Eat it.

I will need to do some tweaking - maybe more hot sauce, more ginger... Or maybe trying fresh ginger and fresh garlic. But this is pretty damn close to the deliciousness that they serve over at Rain Tree.

Try it out and let me know how you enjoy it!!

DIY Chai Tea Latte

So, for those of you who know me well, you can easily name my favourite coffee drink- Non-Fat Chai Latte. Starbucks sells a concentrated Chai syrup that you can buy, so that you can make your own Chai Lattes at home (just add equal parts Chai syrup and milk, warm, and serve!) I recently bought this syrup, and while I enjoyed having a delicious Chai Latte at home, I'm not totally thrilled about paying nearly $9 for a 1 litre carton.

So I thought about how I would make my own Chai syrup. Having made my own Chai tea before, I knew it couldn't be too hard. So I Googled it (and those who know me well also know that I Google often!), and sure enough, it just required one extra step!

So here's my recipe for a delicious Chai Tea, and how to make it into a latte!

Ingredients

3 cups cold water

4 black tea bags (pick your favourite - I use orange pekoe)

3 cinnamon sticks

1 tsp ground ginger

4 whole cloves

4 cardamom pods

2/3 cup sugar (brown or white, whatever you have!)

milk (to make the latte)

Directions

1. In a small pot, add water, tea bags, cinnamon, and ginger to the pot.
2. Put the cardamom and cloves into a tea ball, and add the tea ball to the pot. If you don't have a tea ball, you can drop the spices into the pot. The tea ball is a personal preference. It stops little bits of the cloves and cardamom pods from getting into the tea mixture.
3. Bring the water and spices to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer. If you're making tea, remove the pot from heat, strain tea bags and spices, and serve once tea reaches desired strength. If you're making the latte, simmer for 5 minutes.
4. Remove tea bags, spices, and tea ball. Stir in the sugar.
5. Add syrup to milk (1/3 syrup to 2/3 milk; or 1/2 and 1/2). Refrigerate remaining syrup in an airtight container for about a month.

Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie

This blog is all about trial and error. Often the first time I try a recipe, it just doesn't turn out the way I want it to. So I document it on this blog, with my notes and suggestions. This is not only for you to be able to learn from my mistakes, but for myself as well. So the next time I try the recipe, I can change it until it's perfected.

For example, Rob and I have perfected the Squash and Sage Pasta recipe.

Now we've just tried one for Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie, and it was far from perfect... but that's what cooking is all about, and I look forward to tweaking the recipe the next time I try it!!

Ingredients

1 can of beans (kidney or black beans or whatever you'd like!)

1/2 can of tomato paste

1/3 cup of vegetable broth

1 tbsp diced garlic

1 cup of corn niblets (Rob and I used fresh corn that we had recently frozen!)

10-12 small potatoes

salt and pepper

grated cheese (optional)

chopped green onion (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
2. Boil and mash your potatoes using your favourite recipe. Some people add butter, some add milk, and some add both. Mash 'em however you prefer!
3. Meanwhile, drain and rinse your beans. Put the beans, garlic, tomato paste, and broth into a saucepan. Season with salt and pepper and stir until paste and broth are blended.
4. Simmer the bean mixture until it thickens.
5. Spread the bean mixture into a square baking dish. Rob and I used a 9x9 pyrex baking dish.
6. Spread the corn niblets on top of the bean mixture.
7. Top with the mashed potatoes. If you opted for the grated cheese and green onion, sprinkle these on the top of the pie.
8. Bake for about 20 minutes. Broil for a minute or two at the end to brown the top.
9. Cool for a few minutes before serving.

Notes

This recipe wasn't as successful as we would've liked... Here's what we thought:

• The bean mixture was a little bland. Be sure to season it well. Next time, we will add some sauteed onions and possibly some chili powder. Also, maybe use some garlic powder instead of fresh diced garlic. Rob suggests preparing the bottom layer as if it was chili.
• I would add more than corn to the middle layer. Maybe some peas and carrots to add flavour.
• The cheese and onion mixture on top needed to be browned in order to have an impact. When we prepared it, the cheese was simply melted and bubbly which didn't add much to the overall flavour. Next time, I would either make sure the cheese was lightly browned and slightly crispy or I would leave it out altogether.

Even after all those suggestions, I think this recipe has potential to be a family favourite. It's all about experimenting with the seasonings and ingredients to make it your own.

Lemon Sage Chicken

So today I was looking in the fridge and thinking about what I was going to make for dinner. Zucchini... potatoes... cucumber... lemon... sage... chicken. So I googled "Lemon Sage Chicken" and came up with a ton of different responses. My favourite was the following recipe from Good Housekeeping. This is the original recipe, but keep in mind that I altered it to make one serving since I was only cooking for one!

Ingredients

4 chicken breasts

Salt and pepper

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 cup reduced sodium chicken broth

1/3 cup white wine

1 tsp grated lemon zest

2 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp chopped parsely

1 tsp chopped fresh sage

1 tbsp cold margerine

Directions

1. Butterfly your chicken breasts. Between two pieces of plastic wrap, hammer the meat until it is 1/2 thick.
2. Season both sides of each breast with salt and pepper.
3. In a pan, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add chicken breasts and cook until chicken is no longer pink throughout.
4. Set chicken aside and cover with foil.
5. Add chicken broth and white wine to skillet. Simmer until sauce is reduced by half.
6. Stir in lemon zest, lemon juice, sage, and parsely.
7. Remove skillet from heat and stir in cold margarine.
8. Drizzle sauce over chicken and serve.

Notes

As I mentioned before, I altered this recipe to fit one serving. Also, I didn't have parsely, so I left it out. I also substituted veggie broth for chicken broth, because I didn't have chicken broth.

A few tips...

• Don't use white wine that is too sweet.
• I continued to reduce the sauce after I added the sage and lemon because the sauce was really thin and I wanted it to thicken up. Looking back, I wouldn't have reduced it for so long because the sauce became too sweet.
• Don't use too much lemon juice - it will overpower the sage.

I really liked this recipe otherwise, and would definitely make it again with the aforementioned alterations!

The Pierogy House

So it's been a while since my last post... My apologies, but I went for most of the summer without an oven or a stove! (Long story... don't ask!)

So this next recipe isn't a new one, but it's one of my favourites. As a child, I would go visit my great-grandma, a Ukrainian-Canadian, and we would spend the entire day making pierogies, hundreds of them! Grandma Stella's favourite memory of our pierogy-making days is a day when I posted a sign on her front door that read: "The Pierogy House".

So here's my Grandma Stella's recipe for pierogies with potato and cheese stuffing, and her famous sauekraut stuffed pierogies!

**Disclaimer: This recipe isn't going to have any specific amounts. Grandma Stella cooks from memory, and when I asked her for exact amounts, she said "Just enough of each that it seems right". So I will try to explain what "right" feels and looks like. **

Potato and Cheese Filling

Ingredients

Potatoes

Grated cheddar cheese

1 medium white onion

Butter or margerine

Directions

1. Boil a pot of water.
2. Peel and cube the potatoes and add to the boiling water. Boil until soft.
3. Meanwhile, heat butter in a frying pan on medium-low.
4. Dice the onion and add to the butter.
5. Sautee the onions until soft and transparent. Be sure not to carmelize them.
6. Drain the potatoes and put back into the pot. Mash the potatoes.
7. Add the onions.
8. Add the grated cheese. If you're using cheddar, the potato and cheese mixture should be a soft orange colour. My best advice would be to taste it and see if you like it!

Sauerkraut Filling

Ingredients

Sauerkraut

1 medium white onion

White mushrooms

Directions

1. Chop the onion and sautee in a deep frying pan on low, just until transparent and soft.
2. Chop the mushrooms and add to the frying pan with onions. Sautee until soft.
3. Meanwhile, put the sauerkraut in a strainer and rinse it. Add it to the mushroom and onion mixture.
4. Stir on medium-low until the juices in the pan start to evaporate.

The Dough

Ingredients

Flour

Water

Vegetable Oil

Directions

1. In a large bowl, combine flour with a bit of water and a dash (about 1 tsp) of oil.
2. Mix with your hands. The dough is "right" when it no longer sticks to the side of the bowl.
3. Flour your counter or flat surface, or wherever you plan to roll the dough.
4. With a rolling pin, roll the dough until it's about 1/4 to 1/2 centimetre thick. **Hint - flour your rolling pin before rolling to prevent sticking**.
5. Using a cup or a round cookie cutter, cut a circle about 10 cm in diameter out of the dough.
6. Add a tablespoon of your filling to the center of the circle, leaving a centimetre rim around the edges.
7. Fold the dough in half to create a half-circle and pinch around the edges tightly, ensuring a tight seam.
8. Set your finished pierogy on a flat surface between two tea towels.
9. Continue making your pierogies. If you run out of dough, make some more! If you run out of filling but still have dough, you can freeze the extra dough.

So now you've made all of your pierogies. If you are eating them immediately, put them into a pot of boiling water for just a few minutes!

If you plan to freeze them, you need to flash freeze them to prevent the dough from sticking together. Don't know how to flash freeze? Here's what you do:

1. Clear some space in your freezer!
2. Lightly flour some cookie sheets.
3. Lay your pierogies out of the cookie sheet, making sure none of them are touching.
4. Cover them with a tea towel and put them in the freezer.
5. Once they're frozen, you can put them in a ziploc bag.

Unfortunately, I couldn't tell you how many this will make... sometimes you'll make 3 dozen, or like the last time Rob and I made them, you may end up with 9 dozen or more!

So good luck, and I promise you, it's not as complicated as it sounds. Grab a friend and soon enough you can have your own Pierogy House on the go!

Spicy Black Bean Gazpacho

After a long hiatus and a 5-week trip to Europe, I'm back!

While Rob and I were in Europe, we collected a list of recipes to try when we get back, some inspired by the food we are while we were there, and some not. The following recipe is one I have made before, but never got around to blogging about!

Ingredients:

1 red pepper, seeded and chopped

4 green onions, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 or 2 jalapeno peppers (depending on how spicy you'd like), seeded and chopped

3 tomatoes, chopped

1 540 ml can of tomato juice

1 540 ml can of black beans

2-3 tbsp of red wine vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Put red pepper, green onion, garlic, and jalapenos into food processor. Blend until finely chopped.
2. Add tomatoes and blend until smooth.
3. Stir in the tomato juice, black beans, and vinegar.
4. Season to taste.
5. Serve ice cold.

This recipe is really refreshing, but I did make a few small changes to it. I like to add a bit of cucumber (peeled and chopped) into this recipe. You can also use coriander to season it, or add some tabasco sauce for a bit more bite.

A refreshing meal for hot summer days!