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Appetizer

Appetizer / Chef / Cheryl Gonsalves / Culture / Recipe / Side Dish / Trinidadian / Vegetarian — View Comments
25
Jul 11

Trinidadian-style Fried Plantains

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

Fried Plantains

This post is long overdue but here goes! Plantains are a fruit that look very much like what most of us refer to as a banana. They are actually in the same family, but plantains generally are more starchy and less sweet than bananas. For that reason, they are generally not eaten raw, but are great in cooked dishes. Today we’ll show you a simple way to enjoy plantains, as taught to us by Cheryl Gonsalves, who grew up in Trinidad and and was sweet to invite us to her home to share her love of food with us!

Summary

Preparation Time: 5 min
Total Time: 15 min
Servings: 5 portions
Meal type: Appetizer

Ingredients

5 plantains, ripe;
salt
oil

Instructions

1. Peel the plantains. The easiest way is to chop off both ends, cut a slit from one end to the other, and roll the plantain out of the skin.

Cut the ends
Cut a slit from end to end
Roll out the plantain
2. Cut the plantains into 1/2″ slices, on a slight diagonal”

Slice the plantains
Sliced plantains
3. Sprinkle a little bit of salt over all the slices to bring out the flavour.
Sprinkle salt
4. Heat oil at ??? high heat in a medium-depth frying pan, making sure that you have enough oil to prevent the plantains from sitting on the bottom. Add the slices carefully, one by one, to prevent any splashing!
Fry the plantains
Plantains in the pan
5. Flip them gently when they have turned a nice golden brown colour.
Flip the slices
6. When they have become golden brown on both sides, remove from the oil and set them in a bowl lined with paper towel to remove the excess oil.
Fried plantains in paper towel

Results

Fried plantains

It took very little prep work and it’s hard to resist stealing bites of finished ones while frying the whole batch up! Hope you enjoy this wonderful appetizer as much as we did.

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

Appetizer / Bal Arneson / Chef / Cookbook / Indian / Ingredient / Recipe / Side Dish / Vegetarian — View Comments
23
Mar 11

Avocado and Chickpea Salad recipe from the Spice Goddess

Rating: 5.0/5 (4 votes cast)

Avocado and Chickpea salad

As promised in our recent interview post, we’re sharing with you a recipe from Bal’s Quick & Healthy Indian cookbook by the Spice Goddess, Bal Arneson. With just over one hundred recipes in the book, it was hard to settle on just one, but we were drawn to the Avocado and Chickpea Salad.

This salad is a very interesting alternative to guacamole. The chickpeas, spanish paprika really work well with the avocado. If you are a fan of guacamole, you’ll love this recipe!

Summary

Preparation Time: 20min
Total Time: 30 min
Servings: 4 portions
Meal type: Salad
Cost: $5.25

Ingredients

avocado and chickpea salad ingredients

Dressing

2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp finely chopped ginger
1/2 tsp ground cardamom; we used whole cardamom and removed the seeds from the pods to crush
1/4 tsp ground cumin
1/8 tsp Spanish paprika
1/8 tsp salt

Salad

4 avocados, cubed (save the avocado shells if you plan to serve in it); $4
14 oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed; $1
1/4 cup green onion , finely chopped; $0.25

Instructions

1. To make the dressing, combine the olive oil, lemon juice, ginger, cardamom, cumin, paprika, and salt in a small bowl and mix well.
We actually ended up doubling the amount of cumin, paprika, and cardamom because we found it was quite light and wanted to have a bit more of a kick. We suggest following the original recipe and tweaking it to suit your own taste buds!

2. Combine the avocados, chickpeas, and green onion in a large bowl and toss gently. Just before serving, pour the dressing over the salad and toss to thoroughly coat the ingredients.

avocado and chickpea salad ingredients

3. Serve in an avocado shell.

Results

The YouCook team loved this dish! The recipe was straightforward, simple and we put it together in under half an hour from start to finish. It was fresh and had great texture from both the avocado and chick peas, while the spices were a welcome addition.

We found that adding some chili flakes and salt really enhanced the flavours. We will definitely try this with tomato and onion next time since this salad really reminded us of guacamole. We were inspired by the pictures in Bal’s cookbook to serve this salad inside the avocado shell as well. Not only did it look nice, it was a perfect serving size and meant less dishes to be washed.

Indian Guacamole

Rating: 5.0/5 (4 votes cast)

Appetizer / Olympics — View Comments
14
Mar 11

Arancini

Rating: 5.0/5 (3 votes cast)

Arancini

Deep fried risotto. Need I say anything more to sell this dish? I can’t think of any better combination than the creamy texture of risotto bursting out of it’s crispy deep fried shell. It’s also the perfect way to use up leftover risotto, and can even be made partially in advance and stored in the freezer until it’s time to fire up the fryer!

This version of arancini, supplied by Chef Taryn Wa from Savoury Chef Food last year at a Vancouver Olympics event at the Northern House uses Japanese panko for breading and provolone cheese with sundried tomatoes as filling. It’s so delicious and there’s almost no way you can make this dish not tasty! We even put in fillings of pancetta, mushroom, red peppers into our arancini balls.

Summary

Preparation Time: 10 min
Cook Time: 60 min , including 15 mins cooling time.
Total Time: 70 min
Servings: 20 balls
Meal type: Appetizer
Cost: $17

Ingredients

120 g arborio rice, $4 for a 750g bag. ~$0.65
20 g white onion, diced fine, $1
2 g garlic, fresh whole peeled, $0.50
4 sprigs of thyme, fresh, $2
12 ml olive oil extra virgin
20 g grana padano cheese, $3
20 ml dry white wine, $4 for a 200 ml bottle
2 l water, boiling
100 g provolone cheese, $5.49 for 250 g package. ~$2.50
40 g sun dried tomatoes, $0.90 from antipasto bar
0.5 g sea salt
0.5 g pepper
2 eggs
100 g flour
100 g panko bread, $2.50

Instructions

Make the risotto
1. Heat water in pot
2. In a separate pot, sweat thyme, onion and garlic in olive oil until transluscent
3. Add rice and sautee for 2 minutes
Rice, thyme, onion, and garlic being sauteed
4. Add wine and cook until wine has evaporated
5. Add 125 ml water and cook until evaporated
6. Repeat until rice is fully cooked (just slightly past al dente)
7. Add Grana Padano and stir until combined
8. Cool rice in a thin layer on a baking tray

Tip:Make some extra risotto and have some dinner while you wait for the rest to cool

Assembling
Roll 20g of rice into a ball and fill
9. Once rice is cool, take 20 g rice, roll into a ball and fill with 1 piece each of provolone and sundried tomato
Tip:While the natural instinct is to just pick some risotto up and start rolling it around in your hands, we found that we just ended up with risotto stuck to our hands. It was a lot easier to assemble the risotto balls using a spoon (or a small ice cream scoop) than rolling it around in our hands.
Using a spoon to ball the arancini
Also, get creative and try different fillings such as roasted tomatoes or prosciutto

Breading
10. Beat eggs with salt and pepper in a shallow dish
11. Put flour and panko in shallow dishes
Sundried tomato, provolone, panko, flour, egg in shallow dishes

Breading method
12. Dip arancini into the following:

Flour
Egg
Flour
Egg
Panko

Rolled Arancini

Frying
13. Fry at 375 degrees F until golden brown.
We used an infrared temperature gun to get to the right temperature. We found that right after putting in the arancini balls, it brought down the temperature significantly so we had to keep playing with the stove settings to keep the oil at that temperature.
IR temperature gun
Use a high temperature oil to fry the arancini, such as canola oil, soy oil, or sunflower oil. If you don’t have a deep-fryer, just put some oil in a pot – just be careful not to let the temperature get too hot or it will smoke and eventually combust. Do not use olive oil, this is not a high temperature oil.
Frying arancini

Results

sundried tomatoes inside arancini
Like I said, I don’t think there’s a way you can go wrong while making this dish. The risotto takes some patience as it takes a good 20-30 minutes of active cooking time, but almost anything you throw in the risotto or stuff in the arancini tastes so yummy.

Rating: 5.0/5 (3 votes cast)

Appetizer / YouCook — View Comments
9
Mar 11

Roasting (Korean) Chestnuts

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

On our Korean grocery shopping trip, we came across these large chestnuts they labelled as Korean Chestnuts. Craving them, we bought some but realized that none of us had ever roasted chestnuts at home before! The only times I ever ate them have been off a street corner in the winter so I figured it’d be something nice to do at home. Thankfully, the internet saved the day with this great blog post from Dog Hill Kitchen.

The motivation for this post was the shock I felt the week before when my friend bought chestnuts from a pretty package – unpeeled ones! This is infuriating to me since: it is a waste of packaging, encourages mass produced food instead of buying local, further separates consumers from knowing what real food is, and really… roasting chestnuts and peeling is the simplest thing you can do – do we really need a factory to do this?

Packaged Chestnuts

Summary

Preparation Time: 10 min
Cook Time: 30 min
Total Time: 40 min
Meal type: Snack
Cost: $3/lb

Ingredients

1 lb Korean chestnuts

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F.
2. With a sharp knife, cut an X into the shell of the rounded side of each chestnut.

3. Place chestnuts flat side down on baking pan.
4. Roast in oven for 20-30 minutes until the shell starts to curl where you cut the X.

5. Let it cool before trying to peel. Remove everything: the shell and the furry skin.

Results

The chestnuts kept warm for a long time, so this is definitely a nice thing to roast and snack on while playing outside in the snow. The X slits in the chestnuts help for initial peeling, but I was not able to peel a whole chestnut without breaking it into pieces, therefore no pretty pictures of peeled chestnuts. If you have any tips on how to peel whole chestnuts, we’d love to hear it!

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

Appetizer / Cookbook / Ingredient / Korean / Recipe — View Comments
3
Mar 11

Craving Kimbap

Rating: 5.0/5 (2 votes cast)

Kimbap

This weekend we decided to go for a Korean-themed cooking day. We love all different kinds of Korean dishes and set off to Galleria Supermarket to satisfy our hunger and to grab ingredients. Kimbap is one of the most ubiquitous foods in Korea and super popular because it’s

Cheap
Easy to eat
Easily found at any kimbap stores open 24/7 so you can pick it up anytime
Healthy

It looked simple enough to make so we picked up all the ingredients for your basic kimbap as well as a jar of kimchi. Be sure you have a lot of hungry mouths to feed because what you’ll buy is enough food to feed a small village.

Summary

Preparation Time: 45 min including cooking the rice.
Cook Time: 30 min , which can be done while waiting for the rice to cook.
Total Time: 60 min
Servings: 10 rolls (1 roll = 6 pieces) so 60 pieces
Meal type: Appetizer
Cost: $16

Ingredients

Ingredients

3 cups short grain rice, $5.50 for a 5lb bag. ~$1.10
1 package roasted seaweed, $3.99 for 20 sheets ~ $2
1 carrot
1 bunch of fresh spinach, $1.69
1 package fish cake, $2.65 for 5 sheets
4 large eggs, $0.65
1 package surimi (imitation crab), $3.99 – used half – $2
1 package seasoned burdock and pickled radish, $3.39 – used 2/3 ~ $2
1 jar kimchi, $4.99 for 1L – used $2
4 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 rolling mat, $2

Instructions

1. You’ll want to start first thing on the rice because you can prep other ingredients while waiting for it to cook. It would be great to allow some time to let it cool as well since working with steaming hot rice for rolling just isn’t a good idea. We used a rice cooker, but feel free to cook rice however you’re most comfortable with. Just note that you want the rice to be ‘just’ cooked and not on the overcooked side or else it may become mushy when you mix it with the seasonings.
Short-grain rice
2. Wash the spinach to get rid of the sandy grit. An easy way to do this is in a sink half-full of water. Separate the spinach leaves off the stalk/root as well. Remove the leaves from the water and drain as much water as you can.
Wash the spinach in the sink
3. Next, peel and cut off the ends of the carrot. We need to get it finely sliced, which you could do with a knife, but using a mandolin will make it faster.
Peeled carrot
4. Crack the 4 eggs into a bowl and mix well.
Whisk the egg
Now we can move onto the stove, where we can quickly prep some of the ingredients.
5. Heat a bit of oil in a frying pan at medium heat and saute the spinach for 5-10 minutes until all of it is wilted.
Wilt the spinach
6. Add some more oil to the frying pan and now saute the carrots for about 5 minutes. We just want to make them less crunchy, but not super soft so don’t overcook them.
7.Next, take the sheets of fish cake and place single layer on the frying pan. They are already fried so this is just to brown and soften it up.
Pan-fry the fish cake
8. Lastly, take your bowl of whisked egg. After heating a bit of oil at medium heat, ladle some egg into your frying pan. The goal is to make a thin crepe so put enough to cover the entire pan.

When the edges start to look done, you can take a quick peek underneath. When it looks slightly browned, flip the crepe to brown the other side.
Browned egg crepe
Now for the final prep of the ingredients, we just need a cutting board and knife.
9. Slice the sheets of fish cake and the egg crepes into one inch thick strips.
Slice the egg crepe
10. The surimi usually comes in short fat sticks so we cut them in half length-wise.
11. By now, the rice should be done cooking and ideally had time to cool off a bit. Scoop the rice into a large bowl to mix well with 4 tablespoons of rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons of sesame oil, and 1 1/2 teaspoons of sugar.
Ingredients to mix with the rice
Seasoned rice
You’re now finished prepping all the ingredients for the kimbap filling. On to the rolling!
Plate of filling ingredients
11. It’s not absolutely necessary, but covering your bamboo mat with saran wrap will make cleaning your mat a lot easier.
Cover the mat with saran wrap
12. Place a sheet of seaweed on the mat with a very thin layer of rice. Leave about an inch of seaweed uncovered along one edge.
Cover the seaweed sheet with rice
13. Start placing your filling ingredients along the edge of rice nearest the uncovered seaweed. You can add any mix of ingredients you want, but just remember that the more you put in, the harder it might be to roll later!
Place ingredients along one edge of the rice
14. Start rolling by folding the uncovered seaweed portion over the filling.
Fold the seaweed over the ingredients
15. Continue rolling, using the bamboo mat to help press down around the roll and make it nice and compact.
Half-rolled kimbap
Use the bamboo mat to help press the kimbap together

16. All that’s left to do is cut it into bite-size pieces! Using a sharp knife and keeping the blade slightly wet will help to cleanly-cut it for presentation.
Cut the kimbap

Results

Kimbap on a plate
The fun of kimbap is that you can put any variety of filling inside! Some common popular Korean versions are tuna kimbap, kimchi kimbap, and bulgogi kimbap. If you want a vegetarian version, you can leave out the surimi and fish cake.
Making a kimchi kimbap
Preparing all the filling ingredients is the time-consuming part of this recipe. Once you have it all laid out in front of you though, you’ll have a dozen rolls up in no time. Making it with friends is great because everybody can customize what they want in it. We definitely had a lot of fun and it was hard to resist stealing bites while making it but we finally got a picture of a plate full of kimbap!
Kimchi kimbap

Rating: 5.0/5 (2 votes cast)

Appetizer / Darryl Crumb / Vancouver Dine Out — View Comments
18
May 10

Regional Tasting Lounge: Salmon Ceviche

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Salmon Ceviche

Regional Tasting Lounge is an interesting restaurant in Yaletown that features cuisines from a region of the world for a few months at a time. Right now, R.TL has a South American theme for their menu. They have some ceviche dishes on their menu and Chef Darryl Crumb offered to show us how to make his Salmon Ceviche with a Mango and Orange Dressing! Ever since my Peru trip last year when I had ceviche, I’ve always wanted to make it at home so I was definitely excited to learn from him!

Along with ceviche, they have quinoa salad (which we also have the recipe for) and Peruvian chicken so go try it out before the menu changes.
r.tl

Summary

Preparation Time: 10 min (skinning, chopping)
Cook Time: 5 min
Servings: 1 serving
Cost: $8
Meal type: Appetizer

Recipe Rating:

Ingredients

Ingredients

4 oz Fresh Sockeye Salmon (Sushi grade) – $5.00
2 medium oranges – $1
1/2 lemon – $0.60
1/2 lime – $0.40
1/2 mango – $1.00
1/2 chili pepper – $0.10
Salt to taste
Sprinkle of chopped cilantro

Instructions (Video)

Chef Darryl Crumb walks us through how to make Salmon Ceviche.

Instructions

1. De-skin salmon if necessary.

2. Cut fillet into strips.
3. Cut into small cubes of salmon.
cube salmon
4. Season with salt in a bowl.
5. Cut orange in half and squeeze both halves juice into bowl.
orange squeeze
6. Squeeze half a lemon juice into bowl.
7. Squeeze lime into bowl.
8 De-seed a chili pepper and finely dice.
9. Dice mango and combine into bowl.
10. Supreme an orange and dice it.
supreme orange
11. Mix ingredients in bowl.
mix
12. Serve immediately on a plate of spinach.
13. Top with chopped cilantro.

Results

ceviche
Ceviche is so simple and tasty!! The fresh orange and mango sauce really compliments the wild sockeye salmon! This dish takes very little time to prepare and is such a treat with fresh ingredients. I’m hoping to get some fresh fish in the coming weeks and will definitely be making some into ceviche. I also can’t wait to try all the other ceviches that Chef Darryl Crumb is making at R.TL.

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Appetizer / Vancouver Dine Out — View Comments
3
May 10

Cinema: Beef Carpaccio and Arugula Salad Recipe

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

carpaccio
The Donnelly Pub Group is offering an awesome Dine Out deal for $18 at The Calling and Cinema with food from executive chef Michael Knowlson. Cinema only opened last month and it was the first time I got to check it out! It’s beautiful, spacious and right on Granville Street. See for yourself…
Cinema
We were lucky enough to get the recipes to an appetizer, entree and dessert from their Dine Out menu! So if you’ve eaten there and wondered how to make the Beef Carpaccio, Maple Glazed Salmon or the warm Mixed Berry Pie – you’ve come the right place!

Salmon

Pie

Summary

Preparation Time: 10 min
Servings: 1
Meal type: Appetizer

Recipe Rating:

Ingredients

75g of AAA Alberta beef tenderloin
50g of Baby Arugula
Truffle aioli – garlic mayo with truffle oil
15g of French Vinaigrette
Shaved fresh parmesan cheese
Sea salt, Fresh ground pepper
2 crostini

Instructions

1. Cut beef into thin slices.
Chef’s tip: Cut the beef along the grain. Wrap in saran wrap into a cylinder shape and freeze it over night. This makes it easier to cut the beef into thin slices.
2. Place thinly sliced beef around the plate, sprinkle with salt.
3. Dress with arugula and the French vinaigrette.
You can find a recipe for French vinaigrette here.
4. Use a spoon to drizzle the truffle aioli around the plate.
Even if you don’t have a truffle aioli, sprinkle on some truffle oil for the smell and flavour. I never tire of how truffle oil complements food. For a truffle aioli recipe, here’s one I found.
carpaccio
5. Place the crostini on top of the salad.
6. Put shaved parmesan on the crostini.
6. Season with salt and pepper.

Results

Seriously delicious appetizer. The arugula and truffle oil go very well with the thin beef slices. I don’t recall tasting much of the French vinaigrette or parmesan cheese on the dish. Let us know where you buy your AAA cuts of meat for Carpaccio!

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Appetizer / Jason Bangerter / Restaurant / Winterlicious — View Comments
1
Mar 10

Auberge du Pommier Winterlicious Recipe: Celery Root Soup

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Jason Bangerter is a very skilled chef – intelligent, friendly and passionate about food. He’s the Executive Chef at Auberge Du Pommier, delivering a consistently amazing French food at one of the nicest restaurants in Toronto. I had the pleasure of trying the Winterlicious tasting menu at Auberge Du Pommier and take a tour of Jason’s beautiful state of the art kitchen. Believe me, it was one of the most memorable experiences of mine in Toronto.

Among many dishes at Auberge Du Pommier that everyone loves is Jason’s Truffle Soup. The creation of that signature dish goes back to Jason’s days in Europe working with Anton Mosimann, the first Celebrity Chef of our time who came up with Cuisine Naturelle and whose philosophy is that you don’t need a lot of butter, cream and alcohol to get Michelin Stars. Instead, Mosimann focuses the freshest ingredients and cooking methods to bring out natural flavours and keep his customers healthy. Chef Bangerter has definitely taken Mosimann’s philosophy in his cooking. The Winterlicious menu appetizers like the St Jacques Marinee (fresh Scallops with valentine radish, apple and lemon) and the Celery Root soup draws attention to the fresh ingredients, simple cooking methods and delicious tastes. This is one of many posts to come about Chef Jason Bangerter, YouCook’s favourite Toronto Chef.

Cat has taken the first stab at following Chef Bangerter’s recipe for the Celery Root Soup. Please read on for her experience.

I have become a recent fan of vegetable pureed soups, being both tasty and healthy – it usually consists of vegetable and chicken stock. So when Thu showed me the recipe for Celery Root Soup from Auberge du Pommier by Chef Jason Bangerter, I volunteered to try it. I was especially eager after she raved about how delicious it was when she had it at the restaurant! It was a little intimidating to make it at first, since I had never cooked with leeks nor celery root, but I managed to find fresh versions of both at St Lawrence Market. The result was delicious, despite the few mistakes I made. Read on for the recipe and my experience on making it.

Summary

Preparation Time: 30 min
Cook Time: 1 hour
Servings: 8 servings.
Meal type: Soup
Grocery Cost: $ 9.67 ($1.21 per serving)

Recipe Rating:

Ingredients

3 French shallots, peeled and sliced ~ $2.00
1 leek (whites only) split, washed and sliced ~ $1.00
3 pc garlic, peeled and crushed
½ lb. Celery root, peeled and diced ~ $1.99
2 fresh bay leaves or 1 dry
6 sprigs fresh thyme ~ $0.20
4 sprigs fresh parsley ~ $0.20
2 lt. chicken stock, beef stock, vegetable stock or water
½ lb. butter (unsalted) ~ $1.00
½ lt. 35% cream (whipped) ~ $2.49
½ cup white wine ~ $0.80

Cut celery root:

Instructions

1. In a stock pot on low heat, sweat the shallots, garlic and leek until tender.
Sweating vegetables means to cook them over very low heat, usually with a bit of butter or oil. This is commonly done in vegetable soups to soften the vegetables and for them absorb the fat without burning. See this link for more information on sweating.

2. Add the celery root.

3. Add the white wine and the herb bundle.

4. Reduce the wine until almost all is evaporated and add the stock just to cover the ingredients in the pot.
5. Simmer until all the contents are tender and the liquid is well flavoured. Pull off the heat and allow cooling slightly before the next step.

6. Remove the herb bundle and squeeze any juices into the pot.
7. Purée the soup while warm and add the diced butter pieces, a few at a time to emulsify. Pass through a fine sieve. Adjust consistency with left over liquid and season.
Chef’s tip:
Only add enough butter to achieve a velvet texture. It is not necessary to use the entire amount of butter.

8. To serve, heat the soup and fold in the whipped cream at the last minute. Only fold enough to create a frothy velvet consistency. Ladle into warm soup bowls.
9. Garnish with either black pepper, sour cream, smoked salmon, caviar or smoked, confit and braised meats or just enjoy with a piece of crusty bread.

Quick Notes

I had a few hiccups while making this soup. First of all, passing it through a sieve didn’t really work for me. I put all the soup in the sieve, and only little drips of liquid went through. Maybe my sieve was TOO fine? Anyways, I just ended up skipping this part – otherwise I would’ve had about 3 tablespoons of soup.

The second thing that went awry was taking the ingredients too literally, especially the butter. The half pound of butter did seem like a lot, especially since the soup already had good flavour, but I didn’t want to take any chances so I put it all in. After talking to the chef, I realized that the measurements are only a guide, and I should’ve only put in enough butter to reach a velvet-y consistency! Chef Jason Bangerter also said you could use a drizzle of olive oil instead of butter

The last thing was I didn’t whip the cream before folding it in the soup. So instead of the velvety texture, I just had a slightly creamy texture.

Variations

When the dish was presented at Auberge Du Pommier, there was some truffle on top. The truffle really enhances the soup with its delicious flavours – and I suppose it would increase the cost of the soup.

You can feel free to add a different garnish while serving the dish.

Results

Despite my many mistakes, the soup actually turned out quite tasty. The first few mouthfuls were pronounced “delicious” by my boyfriend. However, since I added way too much butter, it was hard to eat too much of it. It is a good recipe and I would make it again, with Chef Bangerter’s suggestion of using a drizzle of olive oil instead. Thanks to Auberge du Pommier for providing a great soup recipe, and introducing me to using leeks and celery root soup!

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Appetizer / Olympics — View Comments
25
Feb 10

Atlantic Canada House Recipe: Smoked Salmon Spheres with Cream Cheese and Carmelized Apples.

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

After enjoying the Smoked Salmon Spheres at the Atlantic House, YouCook made it at home. This finger food will surely impress at any gathering and is relatively simple to make. We learned how to caramelize apples and how much sugar to put in. The apple cream cheese will also go well on bagels and crackers.

Summary

Preparation Time: 15 + 15 mins. (15 mins for cutting apples and then 15 mins for wrapping salmon balls)
Cook Time: 10 mins.
Servings: 20 balls
Meal type: Appetizer
Grocery Cost: $30.20 ($1.51 per ball)

Recipe Rating:

Ingredients

5 apples, preferably crisp tart cooking apples like granny smith or crispin, peeled and cut to a 1/4″ dice ($4.00)
1 cup (250g) cream cheese ($3.20)
1 cup sugar ($2.00)
1 tbsp shallots, finely diced ($1.00)
1 tsp ginger, finely diced ($0.50)
1 tsp garlic, finely diced ($0.50)
3 tbsp butter ($3.00)
2 packs (300g) smoked salmon ($16.00)
Five spice to taste

Procedure to Caramelize Apples

1. Peel and cut apples to a 1/4″ dice

The best way I found to chop the apples quickly was to cut slices off one side, then the opposite side, then the other two sides until you’re left with just the core in the middle. Cut the slices into strips (like french fries) and then dice up the strips until you get this:

2. Heat butter on medium heat. When butter turns light brown, add in apples. Cook until tender crisp, approx 5-6 mins.
3. Add sugar to apples. Here is my tender crisp apples with a bit of sugar sprinkled on top:

I actually only used about 3 tbsp of sugar but if you like sweet stuff, you’ll get better caramelization if you use the whole cup.
4. Cook for another few minutes until apples and sugar start to turn brown and caramelize.

5. Remove from heat and set aside and allow to cool.

Procedure for Assembly

1. Finely dice shallots, ginger, and garlic.
2. Mix together cream cheese, apples, shallots, ginger, garlic, and add five spice to taste.
3. Lay salmon flat on plastic wrap.
4. Spoon cream cheese mixture onto salmon and use plastic wrap to form a ball.

Tips:

For a colourful contrast, add some green stuff for garnish, like pea shoots or something else mild tasting.
I ended up with a lot of extra filling left, possible because the apples I used were huge. I think this recipe would work just as well with three large or four medium sized apples instead. The leftover cream cheese mixture tastes great on toasted bagels too, so it wasn’t so bad to have extra for breakfast the next morning.

Results

Variations

The apples taste great with the smoked salmon no matter how you do them – caramelized, lightly cooked, raw (although be careful, raw apples will brown if left exposed to air, and will release water if you let them sit with sugar on them). Cooking the apples less will result in a crispier texture which is interesting and still delicious.
Also, as I mentioned, I didn’t want to use too much sugar so I cut it down to about 3 tbsp. I find it’s entirely a matter of taste, because I got reviews from my guinea pigs…I mean, friends…ranging from too sweet to not sweet enough. The more sugar you use the easier it is to get the apples to caramelize.

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Appetizer / Restaurant / Seafood / Winterlicious — View Comments
5
Feb 10

Winterlicious Recipe: Big Daddy’s Coconut Shrimp

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Here’s a tasty recipe from Big Daddy’s Crab Shack and Oyster Bar. It’s one of their most popular appetizers and you will thoroughly impress any guest if you serve this up. The hardest part would probably be deveining the shrimp, but thank goodness the kind chefs at Big Daddy’s took pity on us and did that step for us! Big Daddy’s was generous enough to provide us with ALL the ingredients (including the big tiger shrimps deveined!) for our YouCook night and we’d like to thank them so much. The prices aren’t updated here yet until we make this dish again and have to actually buy all the ingredients.

I’ve always enjoyed coconut shrimp and each restaurant definitely does it differently. Big Daddy’s has mastered this recipe with the use of the larger flattened black tiger shrimps. The combination of flour and panko and coconut flakes makes this dish really tasty. And of course the sauce tops it off to be a great appetizer.

Summary

Preparation Time: 20-30 mins.
Cook Time: 5 mins.
Servings: 4-6
Meal type: Appetizer

Recipe Rating:

Ingredients

24 black tiger shrimp, 21-25 count. Peel, devein, and butterfly, leave tail on

Breading Ingredients – 3 Step process

Step 1: Flour

1/4 cup all purpose flour

Step 2: Egg Wash

1 egg
1 cup milk
1 fl oz coconut rum

Chef’s tip: Big Daddy’s uses Parrot Bay or Malibu

Step 3: Breading

3/4 cup grated coconut
3/4 cup panko crumbs
1/4 cup all purpose flour

Canola oil, good quality, amount depends on fryer size

Dipping Sauce Ingredients

1/2 cup orange marmalade
1/2 cup prepared mustard, good quality
1/2 cup buckwheat honey

Chefs tip: Do not use dijon mustard because it will ruin the taste of the sauce. Use only good quality yellow mustard.

We used normal (non-buckwheat) honey which I find tastes much better than buckwheat honey. Maybe it’s the brand I have at home, but I really don’t like that wheat flavour.

Instructions

Dipping Sauce
1. Place items into bowl and whisk until well blended
2. Transfer to bowl and hold until needed
note: Sauce can be made day before
Chefs tip: You can put the sauce in the fridge for about a week actually, as long as you store it properly

I couldn’t quite get the sauce entirely blended, you could still see little flecks of honey…but my arm was getting tired from whisking.

Coconut Shrimp
1. Place butterflied shrimp into flour and lightly coat

2. Transfer to egg wash coating lightly, shake off excess.

3. Transfer to breading.

4. Lay shrimp flat and press coconut mixture into both sides of the shrimp flattening until well coated and lay out on tray
5. Repeat process until finished, let shrimp sit in fridge for at least an hour before using

I forgot to put the shrimp in the fridge but it still tasted good to me.
6. In fryer set at 350F, place the number of shrimp it holds into basket but do not over load
I didn’t have a deep fryer, so I put a small pot on the stove on medium high and filled the bottom inch with Canola oil. I also don’t own a meat thermometer so I had to estimate the temperature. When the oil started looking liquid-y, like water, I tested it by dipping a shrimp in to see if it bubbled or not. The first time it didn’t bubble so I let it heat for another few minutes. The second test had the shrimp sizzling and bubbling as soon as it touched the oil, so I turned the heat down to medium and started frying shrimp. Apparently another way to test the oil is to dip a wooden chopstick in, and when that bubbles then the oil is a good temperature…but I’ve never tested that method out yet!

7. Cook shrimp for 4-5 minutes (depends on quality of fryer and ability to maintain the temp) remove to paper towel lined tray once golden brown
Chefs tip: When the batter on the shrimp turns golden brown, the shrimp is done

My shrimp cooked in about 15 seconds….maybe my temperature was higher than 350! But it did taste delicious anyway. I definitely think the better judge of doneness is the colour of the shrimp. And if it’s been butterflied properly, the meat is so thin anyway that it cooks through super fast.
8. Once cooked, place desired number of pieces on plate or tray, serve with marmalade dipping sauce

Variations

Chicken could be used in place of shrimp – coconut chicken fingers sounds pretty tasty as well! This would be a good variation for people that are allergic to shellfish.

Results

The result was a light and crispy shrimp. The panko crumbs, which is used for tempura batter, gives it the same light texture as tempura. The coconut taste is subtle, as is the coconut rum, but it really brings out the flavour and gives it that exotic coconut taste. This tasty appetizer is a sure crowd pleaser and great finger food for any party!

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