A Star is Born: Perogie-gut Tarts

After 2 relatively unsuccessful attempts at making the Sweet Potato and Smoked Gouda perogies, I still had filling, but no desire to mess around with the dough again. So, for a wine and cheese that I hosted for my work colleagues last month, I took the filling, added in a few egg whites (I conveniently had them in the freezer after making the perogies, which call for yolks only in the dough ....), dolloped the mixture into little tart shells, and voila, had a very successful new appetizer. These also freeze well, so we'll be bringing the remainder to a bbq we're going to next week. I think that I will make these again before making the perogies - they captured the flavour without the fuss of the crumbly dough. I also did baked brie with caramelized pears and thyme (one of my favourite LCBO recipes), blueberry/lemon/ricotta cupcakes (using what remained of the runny lemon ricotta filling from the Rebar blintzes), caramelized onion/pesto/goat cheese pizza, and cherry tomato/basil/bocconcini skewers, along with nuts, dried apricots, grapes, etc. I think it's one of the best spreads I've ever put together: it made me want to throw parties every week!

Rebar Caesar Salad (p. 18)

I've been a bit off the Rebar band wagon, because cooking large complicated meals and showing your house to sell don't necessarily go together .... BUT, when we rented a cottage last weekend, I decided I could at least make a Rebar salad to go with our steak. Like Carrie, I didn't think about the problems of cabins and blenders (there WAS power, but no blender or food processor), so my dressing was fork-mashed and not as uniform as it probably should have been. This salad was good, but it didn't become a new instant, maybe because even Rebar can't dress up plain romaine enough to make it stellar. I didn't do the home-made croutons, and I wonder if they would have brought it up a notch. The dressing might be good with a spring mix/ lots of veggies salad, so I might put it in the dressing rotation, but I don't know that I would make the caesar for a meal again. 1.5 stars and 1 bar (I had slight more effort since I had to mince my capers and garlic in the absence of a blender, but it was really quite simple).

Woodsy Wild Mushroom Soup

This was spectacular! I am rating it very highly in part because of the uncommon mix of flavours (mushroom, lemon, cream, wine) which is refreshing, but mostly because it tastes really good. I made this soup while at Rob's cabin on Shack Island, which seemed fitting because of the outdoorsy, wild setting. I realized my mistake when I got to the last step of the recipe which called for blending all ingredients, a difficult task without power. I tried my best to mash the ingredients with a fork, but had to wait until I could use my trusty blender at home before finishing it. The unblended version tasted almost as good, but looked much more rustic. I substituted chanterelle mushrooms (thanks to Norma and her husband) for the porcini mushrooms, but will try this recipe again when the porcini mushroom season comes up (anyone know when that is?).
4 stars and 2 bars

Thai 3 Cabbage Slaw - Page 28

We had a dinner party for the people that Nic works with and decided to make a south-east asian meal. We started out with this coleslaw. I'm surprised that we hadn't made this before, since we get a lot of cabbage from our farmer in the summer. But we hadn't. We will definitely make it again. The dressing was very tasty. I left out the chile and likely used a bit less curry paste than it called for (and I think we had yellow curry paste rather than red), but it made a very tasty salad. We used one full red cabbage and one full sui choy and one recipe was just the right amount for that much cabbage... quite a lot as you can see from the picture. We thought this salad was very pretty since it had a lot of colour with the purple cabbage and the orange carrots, etc.

One bar, three stars

The rest of our meal consisted of Chicken Satay, Beef Randang Curry and Rebar Monk's curry (Page 184) - we have made the Monk's curry lots of times before (it's one of the few Curry's that I really enjoy and actually request!), so it doesn't officially get included in the count of recipes for this year's Rebar challenge, but I thought I'd post a photo of the big plate of curry that we made for our meal. We finished the evening off with fried bananas and homemade vanilla icecream.... so decadent! and sooo good. If you haven't made Monk's curry, I recommend it. I'd give it three stars and two bars (again, that's just a guess as it's one of Nic's specialties!).



Well, that's my backlog of recipes, I'll have to get a little better at posting as we make these so that it's not quite so overwhelming when I actually get to posting!

Apple Danish Squares - Page 213

These apple squares are kind of like apple pie that you can eat with your fingers. I was impressed with how well the pastry worked and I followed the directions to the letter, not being a super confident pastry baker like Nic. I didn't use shortening (since I never use it) and instead used all butter. It might have been a bit flakier if I'd used the shortening, but I was pleased enough with the pastry. We put these in the freezer and are trying to ration them a bit better than we did with the raspberry squares. Another super tasty and fun to make dessert. These also take a bit of time because of all the refrigeration of the pastry as you went along. I also make these on a day off when I could go do other things while I waited for the pastry to cool, etc.

Two stars, two bars.

Enchiladas Con Calabacitas - Page 201

Nic wanted to make these enchiladas but realized that we'd need to serve them to other people, so when Matt's parents were in town we made them for Matt and Sarah and Mr. and Mrs Horne. I think Esther might have come over as well.

I didn't get a photo of the finished product but you can see the work in progress here. These were tasty little creations. Mesa red sauce is a good addition to any meal (but you have to remember that it's another recipe that needs to be made, adding to the cooking time).

I think that these were a bit of work so I'd say they were three stars and three bars. A good meal to make for friends, probably not one that you'd want to make after work, both because it makes so much and it does take a while to put it all together.

Perfect Jasmine Rice - Page 194

I need to devote a separate post to the "perfect jasmine rice" that is on the same page as the cashew stirfry from the previous post. Our rice maker mysteriously bit the dust about a month ago so we were happy to see this recipe for rice as we re-educated ourselves on how to make rice in a pan. We agree that this rice is perfect. The recipe works just as well with brown Jasmine rice as white and we've made it five or six times since we made the stirfry. It has definitely become a new staple which we have enjoyed. I'm pretty sure that it all comes down to the butter - but whatever it is, we give "Perfect Jasmine Rice" four stars and one bar... I don't think we'll ever make rice any other way again.

Tomato Tofu and Cashew Stirfry (Page 194)

This recipe is definitely more for the lovers of Indian food. Nic really really liked it and I thought it was "fine". Nic gave it three stars, like Carrie did and I would say for me it's only a two star recipe, just because it definitely didn't have my favourite flavours. Nic made this one as well (are you sensing a trend here), so again I'm not sure how hard it was to make. He enjoyed the meal and was happy to eat the left overs while I ate the leftovers from the pasta from the previous post.

Spring Fettucine (Page 173)

I'm a sucker for anything with a cream sauce, so when I saw this recipe and noticed that it was asparagus season I figured that I should try it. I left out the smoked salmon, because I'm not entirely clear if I should be eating it, but I think it would be an excellent addition to the meal.

Vodka is not a staple in our drinks cabinet (I'm not sure that I've ever actually intentionally made a drink with vodka...) but we happened to have two small samplers of vodka that had come with other drinks at some point history... it was just about enough and I topped up the last little bit with some tequila which I'd bought to make another Rebar recipe about a year ago. The results were good and the sauce was creamy and lovely.

Two bars, two stars.

Raspberry Oat Bars (Page 217)

These bars were really really good. Make them! You won't regret it. I've been using my flex days for baking and these bars caught my eye. I bought a jar of "Bonne Maman" jam and used the entire thing. The bars were the perfect amount crunchy and with the raspberry jam they weren't too sweet. They did not last very long!

I'd give these four stars and two bars. They took a while to make because I had to bake the bottom first and then put on the jam and topping and bake the top. I was glad I was making them on a day off.

Chickpea-Cashew Hummous - Page 112

This is a not very artistic photo of very tasty hummous. I have been eating more vegetables as snacks and we wanted a dip that was tasty and healthy. The spices in this hummous- especially the cumin, give it a very unusual taste. it doesn't taste like conventional hummous, but it does taste very good. My only complaint was that the hummous was very dry and so it was a bit of a challenge to use it as a dip (it tended to crumble and fall off the veggie sticks!). If we made it again, we'd try to find a way to make it a bit more spreadable/dippable, maybe just adding some water would help - or maybe it needed a bit more oil.

2.5 stars and I'm guessing one bar... again, Nic made this, so I'm not sure how long it took him, but it didn't seem to be too onerous.

Bhangra Burrito - Page 202

After being fascinated by the recipe for a long time, Nic finally made Bhangra Burritos a few weeks ago. For the girl who doesn't LOVE curry, these were a pleasant surprise and we both really enjoyed the Burritos. We enjoyed these with a generous helping of our home made Mango chutney, but any chutney would add a lot to the recipe. You can see that Nic has also loaded his burrito up with cilantro. Things that have cilantro on the side generally work the best for us!

I didn't make these so I'm not sure how many bars they would be rated, but I'd give them 2.5 stars for taste.

Thai Dragon Bowl - Page 145

After a hiatus from using Rebar for a while, we have been back at it with a vengeance. A few weeks ago I made the Thai Dragon Bowl soup. It was very good, although I put in extra coconut milk which diluted the flavour somewhat. I wanted it to be a bit more coconut-y but I think that I would have been better off keeping to the recipe. However, it was a very good soup. We added bok choy and left out the cilantro.

I'd say two bars and two stars but this could likely be raised to three stars for taste by following the recipe a bit more closely. I'll be interested in your opinions if any of you make this soup.