The 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Simone of Junglefrog Cooking. Simone chose Salmon en Croute (or alternative recipes for Beef Wellington or Vegetable en Croute) from Good Food Online.

From the moment I first visited Simone’s lovely site, I knew I had met a kindred spirit. Besides being a passionate cook and baker, Simone is very warm and always welcoming. You can tell I’m a big fan.

I was thrilled when she agreed to host the December 2009 Daring Cooks’ challenge, and even more thrilled with her choice of Salmon en Croute.

For me, anything wrapped in pastry is a good thing.

I’m going to keep this short because the Christmas baking is a-callin’, but I chose to make the salmon because I love it and I don’t eat enough of it.

I took a beautiful salmon fillet, removed the skin and then coated it with a mixture of cream cheese, dandelion leaves, spinach leaves, green onion, salt and pepper. I lay the salmon on a bed of puff pastry that I’d had stored in the freezer. The puff pastry was homemade (thanks to the Daring Bakers making puff pastry from scratch is a breeze!) so all I had to do was defrost it.

I baked the pretty bundle at 400 degrees F. for about 30 minutes and I ended up with a beautiful golden package that was oozing cream cheese filling.

Quite simply, it was delicious! Had I known that making this dish was so easy, I would have tried it sooner.

Thank you, Simone!

Please take a moment and visit all the other Daring Cooks to see what they cooked up!

This is the final Daring Cooks’ challenge for 2009. For a group that got it’s start this year, I’d say we’ve done remarkably well. Here’s to 2010 and all the beautiful dishes waiting to be cooked!

Ciao!

And on the sixth day of the 12 Days of Cookbooks, I give you Mario Batali’s Holiday Food.

Published in 2000, this book has been around for almost ten years but I only discovered it earlier this year while perusing some titles on-line. I immediately snapped it up and haven’t been disappointed.

Besides being the perfect size to slip into someone’s Christmas stocking, it’s the perfect special book to have on your bookshelf when the holidays come around.

From what I can tell the recipes are a collection of ones that Mario Batali has presented on the Food Network so you can probably find most of the recipes on-line. Still, though, it’s nice to have them all collected in one place and they are fabulous recipes!

Based heavily on Italian holiday traditions, the book walks you through Christmas to New Year’s so this is the perfect time of year to buy it.

I made it my Flavour of the Month for December 2009 so I’m hoping to try many recipes, but for today, you’ll have to settle for the Gamberoni All’Acqua Pazza (Shrimp in Crazy Water). I apologize for the quality of the photo. I was basically drooling as I put the shrimp in the dish and couldn’t wait to dig in so my patience for snapping a photo was limited to say the least.

This would be a perfect dish as part of a traditional Italian Christmas Eve feast, which is usually comprised of fish and seafood only. It’s really easy to make and it’s fast so you can put it together quickly.

Besides having a lot of sweet recipes, what I especially love about the book is that there’s a heavy emphasis on fish and seafood.

It’s a gem of a little book so I hope you pick it up, if not for yourself, then for someone special!

Ciao!

Jumbo Shrimp in Spicy Tomato Sauce
Adapted from Mario Batali Holiday Food.

Serves 4.

1 pound jumbo shrimp, cleaned and deveined
olive oil
1/2 a large onion, roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, roughly chopped
1 tsp. red pepper flakes (or you can use fresh hot pepper)
2 cups tomato puree
1 cup white wine
salt to taste
roughly chopped parsley (optional)

In a saucepan, pour in enough olive oil to just cover the bottom of the pan (at least 3 or 4 tablespoons). Heat the oil.

Once the oil is hot, add the onion, garlic and red pepper. Saute until softened. Adjust the heat so that you don’t burn the garlic or onions.

Add the tomato puree and the white wine and simmer for 10 minutes until the mixture thickens.

Taste and adjust the seasoning.

Add the shrimp to the sauce and cook for 5 to 8 minutes, until the shrimp is cooked. Don’t overcook the shrimp or it will be tough.

Plate the shrimp and sauce and sprinkle with parsley if you like. Serve hot.

Enjoy!

It’s Daring Cooks time and the August 2009 challenge was hosted by the gracious Olga of Las Cosas de Olga and Olga’s Recipes.

I’m always a bit in awe of people who have not one blog but two so I tip my hat to you, Olga. Of course I would tip it to you anyway for this incredibly delicious challenge.

The challenge date was, of course, August 14th, but I was having some issues and couldn’t post.

I’ll get right to it. This is just delicious. From start to finish it was a lovely recipe to make that was actually surprisingly quick (considering some of the Daring Bakers’ challenges take … like … four days!).

Without question my favourite part of the recipe was the sofregit, which was a thick, almost paste-like mixture of tomatoes, onions, mushrooms and garlic, used to enhance and flavour the rice. I loved the sofregit so much I ended up spreading some of it on bread and just eating it that way!

I loved cooking the rice in the rich liquid consisting of some white wine, water (you could have also used fish stock) and a bit of the sofregit. The cuttlefish was delicious in this dish and the artichokes and mushrooms were also very good (confession: I used artichokes canned in water.).

The only element of the challenge I didn’t make was the allioli, which is a thick, custard-like sauce meant to accompany the dish. I really wanted to make the traditional allioli, which would have required a mortar and pestle. I don’t have those. Yet.

I could go on and on, but I won’t. I really hope you try this recipe out as it’s scrumptious.

Thank you so much for broadening our horizons, Olga!

Ciao!

If you’re interested in the recipe, you can find it here.

Halibut and fava beans.

Two foods I don’t eat nearly enough of.

While fava beans, obviously, are not in season for long, whenever I do eat halibut I always ask myself: why don’t I eat this lovely fish more often?

The opportunity arose to enjoy both of these lovely foods when I saw a recipe in the April 2009 issue of Bon Appétit for Halibut on Mashed Fava Beans with Mint.

While I miscalculated slightly when buying the fava (I didn’t buy quite as much as I needed), this was a tremendously delicious dish. The halibut was light and smooth and the spicy fava bean mash was the perfect accompaniment.

Today is Victoria Day in Canada so it’s a national holiday. I’m off to enjoy the enjoy the day but before I go, here are some more entries from other foodbloggesr who have tackled that magazine pile!

Wandering Coyote of ReTorte made Beginners’ Bread from an old issue of Canadian Living.

Janie of Panini Girl made Fava Bean and Arugula Crosini from Gourmet.

Remember, if you have a magazine recipe that you’ve meaning to try, send me the link to your post and I’ll include in my Magazine Mondays round-up!

Have a great week, everyone!

Ciao!

I didn’t know very much about Cinco de Mayo until my Aunt D and Uncle M moved to San Jose, California more than ten years ago. The holiday became a bit more significant to me because my Aunt D would often mention it in conversations.

When Uncle N and I visited my aunt in May 2005, I came across references to the celebration as I read up on Californian food culture.

A few weeks ago, I came across a recipe for Chipotle Shrimp Tostadas on the Food & Wine site (the recipe is from the September 2008 issue).

I made them for dinner on the eve of Cinco de Mayo as a nod to the holiday and also as a promise from me to me that I’m going to get back to California soon!

As I expected, they were delicious! I mean they were really really good. I scarfed mine down and enjoyed every bit of it. I don’t often cook foods from other cultures so I really enjoyed making these as well.

Happy Cinco de Mayo to those that celebrate the day!

Ciao!

Just kidding! But I made ya’ look, didn’t I?

While I would love to hop on a plane tomorrow and fly back to the homeland, that’s just not in the cards (at least not for tomorrow). Instead, let us take a moment to sit back and pretend that we’re flying to Italy tomorrow and then we can further pretend that we will be spending our days looking for one osteria after another in which to indulge our passion for Italian food.

I love pretend.

In Italian, the word osteria refers to a simple sort of restaurant that tends to serve food that here in North America we would likely refer to as “rustic” or “homey”. For those of us of Italian backgrounds, an osteria would likely serve some of the dishes that our grandmothers or mothers would make at home. But one should never think that an osteria is not worth a visit. While the food may seem “simple”, osteria meals are usually flavourful, comforting and satisfying.

I’ve had the book for so long that it seems like it was about a thousand years ago that I received it, but I was given the chance to review Rick Tramonto and Mary Goodbody’s Osteria, a cookbook dedicated to the type of food that one would enjoy in an osteria (in case the name didn’t signal that …).

I’m a big fan of Rick Tramonto’s books. While I’ve never had the pleasure of dining at any of his establishments, I have had the pleasure of his cookbooks and he’s a very successful cookbook writer, in my opinion.

He’s worked on a number of cookbooks including Gale Gand’s Butter Sugar Flour Eggs and is the author of several of his own including favourites like Fantastico and Amuse-Bouche (also with Mary Goodbody).

In Osteria, Tramonto presents a wide range of comfort dishes with many of them updated. In his Breakfast section, for example, there’s a recipe for Eggs in Hell (I’d eat them just for the recipe name) that features eggs served up in a spicy tomato sauce with toast. We’ve all heard of ricotta pancakes but how about Goat Cheese and Ricotta Pancakes?! There’s a trusty section on Sandwiches and a section on Soups and Salads for some lighter fare. What would a book based on osteria-cooking be without a section on Pizza (short but nice) and Pasta? The book continues with Fish and Seafood, Braises, Poultry and Meat, Side Dishes, Cheese and of course, Desserts.

If I had to choose one word to describe it besides delicious, I would choose comprehensive as it very comprehensively covers every course (and then some) with ideas for every manner of osteria-type food.

The recipes do tend to be lengthy but the idea is to take your time preparing these dishes that are sure to make everyone happy. The book itself is pretty to look at (lots of great photos), well-organized and enthusiastic. By this I mean that you can tell the authors of the book truly enjoy the subject of the book (you’d be surprised how many cookbook miss the mark on that point).

While I wanted to try so many recipes, I only managed to try two, both of which turned out very well. I would have liked to take the time to try more but I’ve already had this book for so long that I felt it was time to share it with you.

When I go out to eat I almost never order fried calamari because I find them to be one of the most horribly prepared dishes in restaurants. Either the quality of the calamari is very poor or they’re an oily mess. So you can understand that I was drawn to the recipe in the book. The breading for the calamari is a mixture of semolina flour and panko crumbs. I was unable to locate panko so I used homemade bread crumbs instead (we grind dried bread in the food processor and use that for breadings). The calamari are accompanied by a flavourful “aoli” of mayonnaise, sour cream, herbs, salt, pepper, lemon and lots of fresh garlic. The semolina gave the breading a nice crunchy edge and I have to say they were the best fried calamari we’ve ever made at home.

For the second recipe, I was still out to sea (heh … sorry!) so I decided to try the Tagliatelle with Octopus Putanesca, except we never actually made it to the tagliatelle part. This twist on Pasta Puttanesca has you baking a mixture of onions, octopus, fennel, olives, wine and tomato sauce in the oven before using it to dress the tagliatelle. Now I know it doesn’t look very promising, but trust me, when this baby came out of the oven it was tagliatelle be damned and just dig in with some bread, which is exactly how we ate it. The more observant among you will notice a piece of skate floating around in there. I had a tiny piece of skate languishing in the freezer so I threw it in to no ill-effects, thank you very much!

I wish I could go on about the recipes but I only tried these two. But they were greatly enjoyed and based on those two, I would highly recommend the book.

So … failing a trip to Italy to visit a real honest-to-goodness osteria, you might consider the book instead!

Ciao!

Dear Barbara,

I hug you.

I hug you and I hug you and I hug you.

I hug you across the land and the water that separate us.

I hug you over the mountains and through the valleys in between us.

I hug you over the earth and through the clouds.

I hug you by the sun and by the moon.

I hug you in the winter and the spring and the summer and the fall.

I hug you Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday and Sunday.

I hug you January to December.

I hug you in the rain and in the snow and especially in the sunlight.

I hug you in my kitchen in front of my oven.

I hug when my mixer is running and my hands are covered in butter and flour.

I hug you in the day and in the night.

I hug you when I’m eating panettone.

I hug you with all my heart and all my strength.

I hug you I hug you I hug you.

Love,

Ivonne

Bron of bron marshall and Ilva of Lucullian Delights are angels. They organized a Virtual Hug event for everyone that knows and loves Barbara of winosandfoodies.com so that we could all send her the biggest hug imagineable, because she needs it right now. Barbara is one of those people that you just feel so blessed to know. Bron and Ilva suggested some ideas of dishes we could try that Barbara is craving at the moment. They also offered a list of foods and flavours that Barbara loves. On that list was champagne. (You’ve got great taste, Barbara!) I decided to make my Orange and Lemon Fish with Prosecco for Barbara.