Nella Cucina: Picnic Cooking Class

Last year, I bought @WineGuyTO and I some Living Social deals for a cooking class at Nella Cucina.  You may remember it was where I took part in the John Plasko and Eat Rice USA demo.  It took us a while to choose which class we wanted to take, because they sell out fast!  We went with the hands-on Picnic Class (range of $95-$125), just in time for the start of Spring.  @WineGuyTO unfortunately fell ill, but my good friend @munchkinkaty was able to step in at the last moment.

The hands-on classes are great because the instructor goes over the steps for each dish and then the 4 people at the your table make each of the recipes.  I love that there are lots of instructors who walk around, giving tips and helping overall.  We were also sent copies of the recipes via email after the class, as well as taking home leftovers.

On the menu:

• Cold spring pea soup
• Muffuleta sandwich
• napa slaw
• Spaghetti fritatta
• Kitchen sink cookies

We had a great time in the class and I will definitely be signing up for other classes in the future.

Spring Pea Soup

Muffuleta sandwich

Napa slaw

 

The making of our frittata

The frittata

What we could throw into the cookies!

Our cookies fresh out of the oven

Nella Cucina

876 Bathurst St, Toronto

416-922-9055

http://www.nellacucina.ca/

@nellacucina

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Puppy Birthday

Tawse lounging on the ottoman (Instagram filter)

My second dog turned 1 on the last day of February.  Already his first year has been chaotic.  We were able to see the litter 4 days after they were born.  Though we have another dog, we had not been around when he was first born (adopted at 4 months) so we approached our second dog very much like new parents.  We gushed.  We took waaaay too many pictures.  We visited the litter 2 more times before he chose us to come home with.  His name is Tawse Private Reserve (our favourite winery) and I must explain how we came up with his name; his older ‘brother’ is Sgt. Jager Bomb so we wanted to stay with an alcohol and a military ranking.  At 10 weeks old, my fearless pup bounced off the older dog and fell awkwardly.  A week later we were seeing a surgeon because he had torn his cruciate ligament.  I was in physical shock, it was heartbreaking to see this puppy want to play and not being able to walk.  12 weeks of crate rest, it has taken him much of the first year of his life to gain back the strength in his leg, all the time acting like nothing was wrong.

Tawse and the unbaked cake.

The baked cake.

Probably my worst icing attempt ever.

And because Jager got a birthday cake and a party at daycare, so shall Tawse.  I made the cake this time around, using the recipe from here.  There were so many to choose from online, most using the same ingredients.  My only problem with the batter was that I had to add water to make it more liquid than dough.  I used chunky natural (no sugar, etc) peanut butter for some more crunch. Also the icing measurements seemed to be wrong as I ended up with a runny yet clumpy ‘icing’.  I was the only one who minded though, the pups were not as picky.

Unbaked biscuits about to go into the oven.

No party is complete without party favours, so I also made cookies.  I took the recipe from here, mixed  1/2 cup peanut butter with 1.5 cups of unsweetened apple sauce and added a good handful of frozen blackberries.  It made about 2 dozen total of the two types of cutouts.  They were cut out into bones and labradors with cookie cutters I found in San Francisco last summer.  My boys, and the pups at daycare gobbled them up

Baked bones

Baked lab dogs

 

 

Marshmallows for Valentine’s Day

It seemed that everyone on my Twitter/Instragram feed was making marshmallows recently.  And saying how easy it was.  I was dubious but intrigued.  I found the two recipes that seemed to be used by most people: Alton Brown‘s and David Lebovitz‘s.  As I was not going to make ice cream and have leftover whites, I choose to try the Alton Brown method which does not require eggs.  And it was easy!

Because I was making these in time for Valentine’s Day, I felt that they should be pink and flavoured with how I think of Valentine’s Day: cinnamon, like those cinnamon hearts. I used some red food colouring (I had misplaced my Wilton gel colouring) and added ground cinnamon to both the ‘batter’ and into the icing sugar/cornstarch mixture for coating.

Creating the sugar syrup

 

Beginning to whip with the gelatin

My only issue was smoothing the ‘batter’ out, I could not get it level or square in the pan, but since I was cutting them up into 2 different sized hearts, it worked out in the end.  Definitely needed to lightly oil the spatula for getting the ‘batter’ out of the bowl.

With the gluten-free chocolate cupcakes

My co-workers all enjoyed them and were amazed that they were homemade, because as person said “they taste just like actual marshmallows!”  I will absolutely make these again and am already thinking of new flavours.

 

Louise Prete Pasta Sauce

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A while back I was invited by Sizzling Communications to a tomato sauce launch.  I was excited as I am not  invited to events like this often, so I checked the calendar, told @WineGuyTO to make his own dinner and off I went.

At the top of a downtown condo, Louise Prete Fine Foods had set up some lovely displays of their sauce and pictorial homages to Italy.  A homemade sauce , inspired by Michael Malleau’s Nona, we tasted the pomodoro e basilico sauce in many forms throughout the night.   The sauce is quite simple in ingredients, rich, thick and flavourful.  Michael gets his tomatos directly from Italy and stews them for 3-4 hours before they become sauce.

Bruschetta and 13th St wine

Lasagna

Meatballs

Pizza

Some Italian non-alcoholic beverages, quite tangy!

 

We tried the sauce  as bruschetta (not pictured) in individual lasagna cups, with a meatball and lastly on a square of pizza throughout the night, interspersed with both red and white wine from 13th Street Winery. During the night, there was a fresh pasta making demonstration with guests as participants, which Michael and guests then used to make a dish in front of everyone.

Michael and Alexa Clark stretching out the fresh pasta.

Michael cooking the fresh pasta.

We all left with our own jar of sauce to try for ourselves at home.  I heated it up and did a simple spaghettini dish with nothing added, so we could taste specifically for the sauce.

Our thoughts: nice texture, some spice but not too much, overall a good sauce.  What I did not like was the big chunks of tomato and garlic, even though I like a chunkier sauce, I felt when I found a whole clove that it was too much.  So I may have mushed some of the chunks smaller.

Would I buy this? Yes, though we do not eat pasta often in our house, I would use this as my pizza sauce base.

Thanks to Mary Luz and Sizzling Communications for the invitation and Louise Prete Fine Foods for the jar of sauce.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.  

Pomegranate Scones

If you read my previous post you saw that I wanted to use my new food processor more.  And you may have noticed my badge on the right side of the page that I post to Gastropost, usually through my Tumblr page.  This week the challenge was tough: cranberries or pomegranates.  You know which way I went from this blog title, but the recipe I made could use either.  I will point out that I am a huge fan of cranberries, even visited a bog last year and brought home many yummy things.  But this week, there were lots of pomegranate seeds in my fridge that needed to be eaten.

I used to post monthly to the Daring Baker, but some of the challenges I found either too intricate, were recipes I was not interested in eating or already knew how to make.  The one month I regret not trying was scones.  So what a perfect vessel for many pomegranate seeds!

 

I used the recipe for raspberry scones found in the recipe book that came with my food processor, obviously swapping out the raspberries for pomegranates.  This came together so quickly, I was amazed at the ease in making it.  Having the food processor definitely helped!

I misread a step and only scored the tops instead of cutting all the way through before baking.  But warm out of the oven, with some butter, these were quite tasty!  @WineGuyTO took one to work but warned it may be eaten before he got there.

Even Gastropost put into this week’s paper!

 

My New Year’s Food “Resolutions”

El coleccionista de instantes / Foter / CC BY-SA

I do not make resolutions in January.  Being a teacher, I have always felt (and this may sound weird) that my ‘new’ year starts each September.  That is when I make a concentrated effort to shake things up, try new lessons, etc.  In my personal life, I have always felt that you can make changes at any point during the year, but I see the appeal of doing it as of January 1st.

As my blog is approaching its second birthday, I have been inspired by other bloggers posts to push further. Recently I read  What’s On My Plate, and her food resolutions. Gastropost even did it as a challenge and I am excited to see everyone’s posts this Saturday in the paper (New Year, New Menu: This week, your mission is to eat something that embodies how you intend to dine in 2013).  So I have decided to create my own list of new foods I want to try, restaurants to visit and recipes to create.

Foods

This year I want to try (at least once a month) a food I have never had before. I am a bit squeamish about different foods, such as pieces of animals like beef checks, offal and marrow.  And I am still learning to like fish, as I did not eat it other than as fish and chips growing up.  So my goal is to try new (to me) foods, different cuts of meat, different types of fish, and maybe even the tentacles when I order calamari.  

Restaurants

This one will be tough because @WineGuyTO and I agreed to eat in more often.  But I have a list of places in Toronto that I would still like to try.  I really want to explore my new neighbourhood and find great spots no one has really eaten at because they do not have a known chef, but are still great.  I also want to get back to brunching more.

• Arcadia - our friend’s brother-in-law is the chef and has been telling us great things about it
• La Carnita - loved them at TUM and really want to see the restaurant
• Campagnolo - we had meant to go last year and then never made it.
• Khao San Road - I know the chef and partner just recently left, so am hoping it will still be good.
• Ceili Cottage – Its in my end of the city now and I have only heard good things

I think I will be adding to this list throughout the year.  Where do you want to eat this year?  Let me know!

Recipes

Mainly I bake and though I enjoy it, I really want to try more meals.  I have a slow cooker and yet never use it, so that is on my list of things to try.  When I got my food processor recently, it came with a massive book of recipes, so I will be perusing it for ideas. As I mentioned above, I want to eat more at home so to that end  I want to try more recipes for actual meals.  This means more dinner parties! One specific thing I want to learn how to make and incorporate more into my cooking is sauces.

I hope you follow along this year as I try to accomplish all these resolutions

2012 in review

Thanks WordPress for compiling this for me.  Seems 1 post is still a fav even a year later!

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 4,700 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 8 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.