Emma's Caesar Salad

Sometimes I don't have a lot in my fridge, and I just want a quick dressing without the fuss. This one from Emma Waverman is great-lots of flavor, with no weird anchovies or things to scare off the kids. The flavor is pretty mild which is great for picky eaters, and whips up fast (which is great for busy moms). I love to add a little more lemon and some fresh cracked pepper.

Adapted from Whining and Dining

½ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup olive oil
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp finely chopped garlic
⅓ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 small head of romaine lettuce, washed and torn into bite sized pieces
handful of croutons

In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic until smooth.

Spin your lettuce in a salad spinner until dry, then place in a large bowl. Toss with the dressing until well coated, then sprinkle with cheese and toss again. Salt and pepper to taste. Add the croutons just before serving so they don’t go soggy.

Makes 4 servings.

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Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is probably the best chocolate chocolate chip cookie recipe that you will ever meet-rich, decadent, and down right sinful, these are a favorite in my house. Make sure to use the best quality chocolate you can find, it makes all the difference in the world! I especially would love these at a barbecue with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Don't bake these if you have an extreme love for chocolate, you won't be able to resist them. If you are making them for small children, they are delicious with dark chocolate M&Ms substituted for the chocolate chips.

Adapted from Mrs. Fields

2 ½ cups flour
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
¾ cup white sugar
1 cup salted butter, softened
3 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups (12 oz) chocolate chips

Pre heat your oven to 300 F and line your baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder. Set aside. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugars together until they form a paste. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and then continue to beat, adding the eggs one at a time and the vanilla extract. Mix until light and fluffy.

On low speed, add the flour mixture until just combined. Stir in the chocolate chips with a wooden spoon. Spoon out the dough by tablespoons onto the cookie sheets, shaping slightly with your fingers so they are round. Bake about 21-23 minutes until the tops are just set, and then transfer to a baking rack to cool completely.

Makes about 2 ½ dozen.

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Veggie Pasta Salad

On a hot summer day, I love to have pasta salad for dinner. They are so easy to just fix up to accommodate whatever you have in the fridge, and you can add anything from hard boiled egg to leftover chicken, tuna, some steamed salmon, or shrimp. This one is dressed with oil, vinegar, some fresh shaved Parmesan, and dried herbs, but you could substitute some fresh ones from your garden. I like to use a variety of colored peppers to give it more color-when I made it this time, I was just using up what was in my fridge so it was a little blah looking. Go wild!

250 g vegetable fusilli pasta, or plain pasta
1 red pepper, slivered
2 cups zucchini, slivered
½ cup sliced green onions
6 mushrooms, sliced
¼ cup carrot, peeled and grated
½ cup sliced celery
⅓ cup olive oil
¼ cup red wine vinegar
2 tsp Parmesan cheese
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
¼ tsp oregano
¼ tsp basil
¼ tsp garlic powder.

In a large pot of boiling water, cook pasta according to instructions on the box until al dente. Drain and rinse under cold water so it doesn’t cook further, and set aside. Toss in a large bowl with the sliced and chopped vegetables.

In a small bowl, mix together the olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, oregano, basil, and garlic powder. Drizzle over top of the pasta mixture and toss well before sprinkling over the Parmesan cheese and tossing again. Chill or serve immediately.

Makes 8 servings

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Roasted Pears

This is the simplest summer dessert, and so versatile-you can change up the pears to peaches, plums, apricots, or even nectarines if you wish. The trick is to roast them until tender and then serve with the best quality ice cream possible. I chose to make vanilla bean ice cream, which turned out to be the best we'd ever had. To things even more over the top, drizzle with chocolate sauce.

Adapted from John Bishop

4 pears
unsalted butter, melted (about ¼ cup)

Gently peel the pears and then cut in half. Toss with melted butter and place, cut side down, in a tin lined with parchment paper. Roast at 375 F for about an hour until golden brown on the bottom. Remove from the oven and let cool.

Serve the two halves with a scoop of ice cream and a drizzle of chocolate sauce, if desired.

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Shaved Asparagus Pizza

This is a different take on the usual tomato sauced, cheesy pizza that you are probably used to. Mozzarella and shaved asparagus dotted with creamy boursin cheese sound different and interesting in theory, but to be honest I was wary of them in reality. That is, until I took a bite. This pizza is so good that you will have the most staunch veggie refusing child nibbling their way through it without complaint. I'm not ashamed to say we pounced on the leftovers, greedily shoving each other out of the way. (well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Maybe.)

Adapted from Tasty Kitchen

Pizza dough for 1 12-16 inch pizza (I like this recipe)
Olive oil
About 8 oz mozzarella (fresh is good, but I used regular shredded)
1 pound of asparagus
½ of a 5 ¼ oz package of Boursin garlic and herb cheese (or the same amount of a similar spreadable her and garlic cheese)

Pre-heat oven to 450 F.

Over a large bowl, shave your asparagus the best you can. Mine kept breaking, it was hard to actually shave it much. I took the leftover bits and sliced them as think as I possibly could. Set aside.

Roll and stretch out the pizza dough to fit the stone/pan you are baking it in. Drizzle with a little olive oil and slather the surface of the dough with it. If you are using fresh mozzarella, cut the ball into slices and lay them on top of the dough. Otherwise, just sprinkle your grated mozzarella cheese on the dough.

Top with the asparagus. I know this will look like a lot of asparagus, but it will cook down. Don’t worry!

Crumble/dot with the garlic and herb cheese, trying to get some all over the top.

Bake for about 15 minutes until the bottom of the pizza is golden brown and the cheese is turning a little brown and melty. Let sit for five minutes before slicing and serving.

Makes 8 pieces.

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Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

Sandwich cookies are something I almost never make. The idea of rolling out dough, then cutting, baking, freezing, etc. just seems like far too much work to me. The great thing about making sandwich cookies is that they can be done in stages-make the dough, bake, freeze, then fill a few days later.

These cookies are a bit of work with all that cutting and rolling, but totally worth it. Make sure you let them set and become cold so that the filling sets up or you'll have the unfortunate experience of biting into one and having the filling squirt out the sides!

Once filled and chilled to set, they are a rich, intensely chocolate cookie with a fudgy ganache center that can't be beat. I usually can resist cookies, but these ones called to me often. I'm sure you won't be able to resist their call either!


Adapted from Canadian Living April 2011

Cookies:

¾ cup unsalted butter, softened
⅓ cup granulated sugar
⅓ cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 ½ cups flour
½ cup cocoa
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt

Filling:

90g milk chocolate, chopped
90 g semi sweet chocolate, chopped
1 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
⅓ cup whipping cream

In a bowl with an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugars together until they form a grainy paste. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the egg and vanilla, then continue to beat until well mixed.

Whisk the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a medium sized bowl, then stir into the butter mixture until well combined. Turn out the dough onto the counter, gather it all into a ball, then half it and shape each piece into a disk shape. Wrap them in plastic film and put in the fridge to chill for about an hour until firm.

Roll your chilled dough out to ¼ inch thickness between two sheets of waxed paper. It's important to get the cookies thin so that the ratio of filling to cookie is just right-too much cookie and it overwhelms the filling. Cut out the dough with a 1 ¼ inch round cookie cutter. Don’t remove the cookies, but rather put the dough in the freezer for about 15 minutes until firm. Pre-heat the oven to 325 F.

Remove the cookies from the freezer, take them out of the dough scraps, place them on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet, and bake for 10-12 minutes until firm. Let the baked cookies cool completely on a cookie rack.

Re-roll the scraps and continue cutting out cookies, putting the dough in the freezer, then baking. When the cookies are all baked and cooled, make the filling.

Filling:

In a small saucepan over low heat (or you could do this in a heat proof bowl over hot, not boiling, water) melt the chocolates and butter until smooth. Take off the heat and stir in the cream, then set aside to cool until it’s spreadable.

Assembly:

Slather the bottom of one cookie with about 1 tsp of filling, then sandwich with another cookie. I found that the filling was a bit soft at first, but once they sit awhile (and especially if you put the cookies in the fridge), they harden up and are absolutely divine.

Makes about 36 cookies

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Sunflower Chicken Burgers With Wasabi Mayo and Beet Ketchup

A few months ago I had the chance to meet John Bishop while he talked to the Vancouver School District food service staff at Windermere Secondary about making some small changes in school food. I was kindly given a copy of his book Fresh, which has quickly become a favorite cookbook in my house. This chicken/turkey burger recipe is by far the best I've ever made. The Asian flavors, the crunch of the sunflower seeds, tang of the beet ketchup, all come together in "a party in my mouth" as my teenager loves to say. Do not be tempted to fool with this and skip either the wasabi mayo or the beet ketchup-all together they meld into one very, very good burger.


Adapted from Fresh

1 ¼ lbs ground turkey or chicken
3 Tbsp unsalted sunflower seeds
¼ cup chopped green onion
1 tsp ginger, minced
1 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp olive oil
½ tsp ground pepper
¼ cup mayonnaise
1 tsp wasabi paste
4 split hamburger buns
½ cup alfalfa sprouts
beet ketchup (see below)
2 Tbsp pickled ginger

In a large bowl, mix the turkey, sunflower seeds, green onion, ginger, cilantro, and soy sauce with your hands until it’s all well incorporated. Divide the mixture into four balls and then form each into a patty. Set on a plate. Season with pepper.

Heat the olive oil in a fry pan over medium heat, then add the burgers. Cook for about 4-5 minutes until the bottom is browned and crisp, then turn and cook the other side. Continue to cook until the burgers are cooked through and no longer pink in the middle.

Toast the buns under the broiler, then set aside. In a small bowl, stir together the mayonnaise and then wasabi. Spread some on each half of the buns. Top one half of the buns with the hot cooked chicken patties, and top the others with some alfalfa. Top the chicken patties with a spoonful of beet ketchup before serving.

Makes four

Beet Ketchup

1 onion, diced
1 tbsp minced garlic
2 cups red wine vinegar
1 cup sugar
3 cups cooked, diced, beets

Combine everything over medium heat in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer for 45 minutes until the vegetables are softened. Transfer to a blender and process until smooth. Allow to cool before using. This will keep well for up to a month in your fridge in an airtight container.

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