Carbonara won’t kill you
Food: Recipe - Carbonara
Little crispy bits of smokey bacon mixed with creamy egg are what make Carbonara feel decadent, and thanks to new research that reassesses the dangers of saturated animal fats, you can eat it without angst over your arteries
By Louise Crosby
I used to think bacon was the worst thing you could eat, all that saturated animal fat clogging up the arteries, bringing on heart disease. Maybe it’s dawning on me that life is short, maybe it’s the recent thinking that saturated fat is not the killer we thought it was, but I’m eating bacon now and I don’t feel bad about it.
Indeed, there is increasing evidence that the anti-saturated fat campaign underway for so many decades hasn’t worked, that the low-fat, high carbohydrate diet we’ve been advised to follow has only led to soaring rates of obesity and diabetes, while heart disease has not declined. Meanwhile, recent studies have found that saturated fats found in meat and dairy products are not as bad ...
Snack in a Snap: Cherry Almond Bars
Food: Recipe - Cherry Almond Bars
When it's too early for rhubarb and too late for fruitcake, pick this cherry almond treat to feed your appetite for something fresh, fruity and dessert-y
By Louise Crosby
I wanted to do a blog on rhubarb this week to signal the arrival of spring, but alas, there was no rhubarb to be found. Spring is dragging its heels in these parts; warm weather is that elusive thing that could arrive next week, or the week after. We are waiting for so many things: crab apple blossoms, fiddleheads, green grass. We’re right on the verge but not quite there.
Badly in need of something fresh and bright and new to eat, I found this recipe for cherry almond squares, ran up the street to our neighbourhood grocery to buy a bag of frozen cherries, and got to work. Now that’s coming to terms with reality.
There’s nothing wrong with frozen cherries, in fact they work perfectly in these rich, crumbly squares. Combined in a pot with some sugar and lemon, they ...
Minestrone makes it homey
Food: Recipe - Minestrone
It starts slowly with a pot of simmering white beans, but minestrone grows into a bowl that feeds the soul
By Louise Crosby
You could say the measure of wealth is not how many cars you have in your driveway, or how many holidays you take each year, but whether you have a batch of home-made soup in your refrigerator at the beginning of the week. Right now I’m thinking of minestrone, that thick, substantial Italian vegetable soup that will keep you going in good health for several days. We should all be so lucky.
Minestrone is something you make when you have plenty of time and want to enjoy the process. It starts out slow and quiet with a pot of simmering white beans. As they are turning soft and creamy, you take a soup pot and start to build your vegetable base, sautéing onions, garlic, carrot and celery in plenty of olive oil and bacon drippings, should you go for bacon, then adding more layers of flavour with zucchini, green beans and potatoes, ...
Trading potato chips for cauliflower?
Food: Recipe - Parmesan Roasted Cauliflower
If you're one of those self-abusing salty-greasy chip addicts, there's hope on the horizon in the form of a roasted, old cruciferous favourite: cauliflower baked to perfection with garlic and parmesan
By Louise Crosby
I have a terrible habit of eating potato chips while I’m getting dinner ready, just because I’m starving and can’t wait for dinner, and because they are so good. They’re not the best option for healthy snacking, obviously, so I make an effort to alternate with other foods like roasted, salted cashew nuts, hummus, cheese and crackers, and smoked salmon spread. All good, but the call of a potato chip is very strong. Then I discovered roasted cauliflower.
Yes cauliflower, a star of the healthy cruciferous family. It is delicious divided into florets, tossed with olive oil and salt, and roasted in a hot oven until the edges are caramelized and crispy and the centre is soft. It’s also good with Indian spices like ...
Don’t be a stranger to Spaghetti Collins
Food: Recipe - Spaghetti Collins
When you're feeling like a noodle, Pascale Manale's Spaghetti Collins will be your friend for life -- onions, garlic and all
By Louise Crosby
If some of us are suffering from a certain end-of-winter, when-will-it-ever-feel-like-spring malaise, our usual enthusiasm for cooking, or doing much of anything for that matter, might possibly be lacking. Day after day of cold and rain, snow still on the ground, and the promise of another polar vortex bearing down – in April, of all months – can get a person down. Let’s just get take-out, we say to ourselves, sinking back into the pillows with our book.
Well, here’s a simple and delicious pasta dish that should get us back into the kitchen. It’s called Spaghetti Collins and it comes from Pascal’s Manale restaurant in New Orleans, named after a friend of the owner. The recipe is included in Saveur: The New Classics Cookbook, put out by the editors of Saveur magazine. You can make it in no ...
Bean there, done that
Food: Recipe - Ucceletto Beans
If you're looking for some long lead cooking that can help you stay healthy, the ever-humble bean is one of the best options
By Louise Crosby
I know busy people who spend Sunday afternoons in the kitchen making food to last well into the week. Stews, spaghetti sauce, soups, casseroles. This is the time for relaxed cooking, letting things simmer long and slow. Then come Monday or Tuesday night, after a long day at work, dinner is just a matter of heating things up, boiling some pasta or making a salad. Food is on the table in no time and you thank yourself for making the effort in advance.
When I take a long look at meals, I often cook a pot of beans. Not the sweet pork and beans of our youth, although they can be very good, but chick peas or black beans, brown pintos or white Great Northerns, soaked overnight, then simmered for an hour or two with some aromatics for flavour – a quartered onion, some chopped carrot and celery, a head of garlic. ...
Pick a Pepper, Stuff a Pepper
Food: Recipe - Cheesy Stuffed Poblanos
While stuffing peppers is a cross-cultural tradition, Mexico's passion for stuffing the warmly flavoured poblano is close to perfection
By Louise Crosby
For eons, people have been stuffing vegetables – with rice and other grains, beans, meats, cheeses. Think of eggplant stuffed with spiced lamb and pine nuts, pale green zucchini stuffed with ground beef and rice and cooked in a yogurt or tomato sauce, mushrooms stuffed with bread crumbs and cheese, squash stuffed with quinoa and feta. It’s a traditional and creative way to liven up a vegetable, make it the star attraction, in fact, and to pack more nutrition into your meal.
Peppers are a natural for stuffing because they’re hollow, and in Mexico, chiles rellenos – poblano peppers filled with cheese, dipped in an egg batter, and fried – are a favourite food. America’s Test Kitchen The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook played with that idea by first microwaving the peppers for a ...
Macaroni and Beef Casserole: Comfort food gets all haute cuisine
Food: Recipe - Macaroni and Beef Casserole
As the modern food revolution continues to make the exotic feel everyday, it's also taking old standards such as the humble macaroni casserole and turning them into something that's not just comforting, but au courant
By Louise Crosby
Pick up a food magazine, check the Internet, or tune into your television and you’ll notice that the conversation around food these days is quite sophisticated – it’s all about cooking like the pros and how-to videos, organics and heritage crops, locally-grown and artisanal foods, and sustainable, small-scale farming. Ingredients that were once exotic are now everyday, there’s nothing the home cook can’t do. So a dish that harkens back to the 1950s and ’60s and calls to mind something Betty Draper might have taken to a neighbourhood pot luck in Mad Men, had she been friendlier, might strike you as passé.
But you’d be wrong if you thought this Macaroni and Beef Casserole, developed by ...
Spawn a love affair with Maple Mustard Grilled Salmon
Maple Mustard Grilled Salmon makes for a hearty treat that's easy to prepare and doesn't require many ingredients
By Louise Crosby
Many are the times I’ve wracked my brain for something quick and easy to make for dinner, and this salmon recipe has often sprung to mind. It’s tweaked only slightly from Chef Michael Smith, FoodTV host, cookbook author, and “official food ambassador for Prince Edward Island.” (Watch the Food Network and you can’t miss him.) I’ve made it a million times.
The recipe is simple to prepare, doesn’t require a lot of ingredients, and lends itself to innovation; dress it up with a pinch of curry or chili powder, or take it in an entirely different direction with some chopped parsley and dill. Substitute honey for the maple syrup, marinate for the allotted time or skip this step altogether, grill it on the barbecue or pop it into a hot oven.
Whichever path you take, it will be delicious, especially served with crispy roasted ...
Spice up the last gasp of summer: Watermelon Gazpacho
Watermelon is a fruit that's also a vegetable, and ingredient that can be exploited for its watery sweetness as well as its ability to play savoury base to a spicy Watermelon Gazpacho
By Louise Crosby
Most of us can remember eating watermelon as kids – at picnics and barbecues and on waterfront docks. It was cold and sweet, a rite of summer. It didn’t matter if the juice dripped down our chins, all over our arms and onto our shirts, it was fun to eat and no one minded the mess.
Fast forward to the other day when I visited my friend Amanda at her home in the woods bordering Gatineau Park, just across the river in Quebec. A great cook, she served me a delicious lunch in her screened-in porch that started with a bright, refreshing watermelon gazpacho, a Lucy Waverman recipe published in Food and Drink magazine. Yes, there are more refined ways of reliving this childhood memory.
Watermelon, by the way, is apparently both a fruit and a vegetable. It is considered a ...
