Hot weather food and ice water. Got up to 90 today.
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The Classiest 
You know it! 
Well, we’re just two days away from our annual Berlin trip - leaving on July 4th, so that’s kinda The Plan for the next 8 weeks 
I’d like to believe that we’ll do a tad bit more cooking at home than in previous summers… but who am I kidding? There are so many fabulous restaurants / holes-in-the-wall / beer gardens / food truck events to (re)visit. So many things we don’t have where we live: good Thai, Turkish, Italian, tapas, Greek, good sushi, not to mention supermarket items I can’t get a hold off here for the same price, i.e. buffalo mozz for dirt cheap, herring salad with red beets, onions, and apples, trout roe, teewurst, GOOD breakfast rolls - the list is endless. Are we exclusively traveling to Berlin to eat? You’d think so, wouldn’t cha?
While I’ll sadly have missed asparagus aka the white gold season, chanterelle season is in full swing, and I’ll be diving right in, as they are one of my favorite shrooms out there.
My Vespa is having some health issues (at 17 years she’s an old lady now), but I’m hoping to have her fixed ASAP: several scooter shops have closed in the last year, apparently, and as of now AUG 4 is the date I was given it can be done. That’s a whole month without 
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Lazy is the word. I made tortellini in brodo with packaged tortellini (not a brand I’d ever eat again 
). The chicken broth was my own. Blanched asparagus with lemon caper butter sauce. Then there was kale. Loads of grano and pepper and I’ll really miss Brio (chinotto) when I leave Toronto.
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Pan-roasted chicken, potatoes, and rice cooked in the chicken juices and fat for us.
Cannelloni freshly sauced and baked for mom.
I baked a small loaf of bread in the evening, so we had bread and butter on the side too, as well as avocado dressed with sesame oil and rice vinegar. (If you were counting, yes that was three carbs for the chicken eaters. That’s how we roll in this house.)
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Happy Canada Day weekend!
I made rib steaks last night, carrots-fava beans-green beans from the garden à la Polita (lemon dill), COTB, roasted new potatoes, cowboy baked beans (from a can, Sprague Foods.)
Madeleines from Pompette bakery , Baklava from a Turkish bakery called Liu and strawberries for dessert.
Friday was roasted salmon, Tomato pie, minus the crust , maple & butter braised parsnips, leftover Eataly salad misticanza (hazelnuts, lettuce, radicchio , arugula, pecorino, green beans and a Prosecco dressing I really like).
Creme Caramel from Pompette Bakery, which I believe is the best thing $6.50 can purchase in Toronto.
Tonight I’m having leek quiche from Pompette Bakery in Toronto and I’m making a shrimp salad. Or maybe Swedish Toast Skagen (Open-faced Shrimp Salad Sandwich) https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/toast-skagen-swedish-shrimp-toast
My trip envy has reached the next level. A friend has been posting photos from a trip to Copenhagen and Stockholm. I dreamt I was in Sweden last night. I haven’t been to Sweden in 23 years.
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Nice looking loaf!
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That’s a gorgeous loaf of bread!
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I cannot seem to cook tortellini properly, ever. Either the joint part is underdone, or the rest of it is overdone.
Tortiglioni in a really quick “meat sauce”
Defrosted one of the burger patties from the freezer, sautéed it with onions and garlic, tossed in some Rao’s marinara and sone liquid from cleaning the jar, cooked that down a bit till it was thicker with some parm rind
, tossed in the pasta and some Bomba hot chili sauce and showered it with Parmigiano Reggiano .
Ez Pz nice and cheezy
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" Star-Chiva Cuisine, East Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill " - Quality standard is back and better than ever. Parking is also way easier!
Treating an out-of-town ’ Chinese food deprived ’ nephew, from Montreal, to a delicious Cantonese lunch. Because it’s a holiday long weekend, I deliberately picked Star-Chiva cuisine for our venue since it is NOT a Dim Sum restaurant and hence way less busy!
We had the following really well executed and delectable dishes:
- Whole ‘Grand-Father’ 5 flavour-profile Braised Duck
- Sweet and Sour Pork
- Stirred fry rice vermicelli with aromatics paired with top-soy
glazed Tiger Prawns - Pan seared Angus Steak Cubes with Maggi glaze
- Half a ’ noble consort ’ free range chicken
- Whole Dungeness Crab with Salted Duck Egg Yolk coating
- Sauteed Gai-lan ( aka Chinese kale ) with Ginger juice and
Chinese Rice wine
Their ‘back-to-previous-form’ is one great piece of wonderful culinary news for us Richmond Hillers!
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Jerk chicken fried rice with broccolini, sugar snap peas, scallions, garlic, scrambled egg. All FM veggies. Recipe based on 2008 Fine Cooking “five-treasure fried rice”, the idea being a mix of veggies, greater in volume than the rice. Super yum, the heat of the jerk seasoning definitely came through!
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WFD tonight is bits & bobs from the pantry, fridge & freezer: Greek-ish seafood fettucce with black tiger shrimp, feta, cherry tomatoes, tomato paste, 2 shallots that need used, a bunch of garlic, a healthy splash of leftover white & some red wine, frozen basil, fresh parsley.
Terrible plating, terrifically tasty 
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TJ’s pork belly, pan-seared until the fat was rendered and brown, then glazed with a spicy chili sauce and cooked in the oven at 350° until it caramelized. Roasted grapes, Near East rice pilaf, and buttered steamed green beans alongside.
Wine. And more strawberry shortcake for dessert.
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The weekend weather here in the Boston area continues to be disappointing more often than not lately. Today it is hovering around 70F and has been varying between light showers and sheets and sheets of rain. It seemed like comfort food weather. So, we went with Shrimp Khao Soi, adapted from The Woks of Life.
Lots of very delicious broth left. Tomorrow we’ll decide if we have another go at khao soi or put it in the freezer for another rainy day meal.
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It seems gray and cloudy with a good chance of pouring rain has been our weather for 3+ weeks. We take advantage of the sunny/cloudy day because the rain is coming. (And the humidity has barely let up!)
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Exactly! Humidity - and, it even looks like we have thunderstorms to look forward to in an hour or so. It would be one thing if this actually knocked the pollen down. It never does.
Well, at least I got yummy noodle soup out of it!
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Pan-roasted Alaskan sockeye. Leftover scallion potato wedges refried in duck fat. Freshly picked carrots in a house vinaigrette. Tarter sauce from a jar.
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We enjoyed another excellent dinner at Fiorentini Restaurant in Rutherford, NJ, including burrata with compressed watermelon, roasted heirloom tomato, black garlic, and pickled shallots; wagyu steak tartare; handmade raviolone with ricotta filling, creamy fresh farm egg yolk, sage, and truffle; black ink tagliolini uni-cacio-e-pepe; scallops with corn, mint, cucumber, fresh peas; seafood risotto carnaroli with lobster, mussels, clams, and scallops; lavender creme brulee for dessert. It all went great with an excellent Amarone and Chateauneuf Du Pape.
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