The Slaw that Changed my Life

I'm on a roll, and my latest Rebar recipe is Vegetable Slaw with Jalepeno-Lime dressing (p. 29). I bought a cabbage last week at the market for spring rolls, and used a tiny bit, so there was plenty to get used in something else. I first made soup, and used 7 cups, but still had an awful lot of cabbage left, so I cracked open Rebar, remembering that Sim'n'Nic blogged a 'slaw a few months ago. Well, across the page from the one that they made last spring, I found a winner. There are two options for dressing - creamy or oil-based. I like oil-based coleslaw better, so that's the one I made, but I bet the creamy would be tasty too, if that's your thing. I made it with all red cabbage, because that's what we had. We also, after some discussion, left out the jalapeños. I think that a tiny amount of bite in the dressing would enhance the experience, but the 2 peppers called for in the recipe would probably be too much - I'll have to consider whether I want to try some pepper in the next batch. And there will be a next batch, because this coleslaw is really good. Seriously. I think it's the lime, but whatever it is, wow. I made it mid-afternoon Saturday and was distracted by the yummy smell for several hours before we ate it for dinner, and the tasts was a good as the smell. As long as you have a food processor for cutting the cabbage, this is easy, so I would give it 1 bar and 4 stars.

Cranberry Hazelnut Granola

Many months after identifying the recipe (the pesky showing of the house/move got in my way), I finally made Rebar granola. Once I had the ingredients and got around to making it, it was not at all hard. As I always do with granola, I made it in the roasting pan, instead of on 2 cookie sheets, so it was easy to stir while it was baking without spilling over the edges. It's good granola, the dried cranberries and blueberries and hazelnuts definitely make it tasty, but I don't think it's generally better than my usual recipe, passed down from mom. I think I would save this recipe for special breakfast occassions, when I want something a bit more decadent (and would use all maple syrup next time - I did half and half maple and honey), but it has not convinved me to forsake the granola of my youth. This is 1 bar, and 2 stars.

Pad Thai for the Parental Units

Now that I am living in Chinatown, I figure I better get up to date on my Asian cooking – so I made the Rebar Pad Thai for the folks and aunt and uncle on Saturday. I substitutes chicken and shrimp for the tofu, left out the sambal, in deference to the non-spicy palates of my guests, and left out the cilantro in deference to my own non-soap-loving palate... It was relatively easy to make – there are a few steps, so you kind of have to do all your prep and make sure you’ve read the whole recipe before you proceed, but there’s nothing “hard”. I appreciated the instruction that said “the noodles will all clump together. That’s ok. This is where most people give up, but keep going.” I don’t think it’s the best pad Thai I’ve ever tasted, but it was quite satisfying, and probably the best I’ve ever made (not that I’ve made a whole bunch). When I was making it, the molasses in the sauce seemed overpowering, but it blended nicely with the other ingredients in the final product. I might dabble in other pad thai recipes, if another was recommended to me, but I would definitely make this one again. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the camera out, so no pics, but there was barely any left, so it seemed to go over well (as did the rice paper spring rolls that I served along with it – despite the fact that we all need practice rolling, people like to make their own food!). Probably 3 stars and 3 bars for finickyness.

Back on the Bandwagon with Three Sister Burritos

I am not sure if anyone has blogged the three sister burritos. I know Sim and Nic have made them before, but I think pre-2010, and they’re new to ME, so I figure they count…. They were the first proper dish I made in the new place, so this post is long overdue, and I am trying to cast my mind back to what I thought. I made the filling a few days in advance of when I actually made the burritos, and then threw them together when I actually wanted to serve them, and that seemed to work well. This is one of those “trust rebar” recipes – you wouldn’t think that squash in burritos would necessarily be good, but they were quite tasty with the lime and chile and maple syrup combo, and the squash gave a good texture contrast to the beans and corn. I had a lot of leftover filling that I ended up throwing in the freezer, so we’ll see how it comes out. If it defrosts weird, it might end up in soup …. I would give them 3 stars and 2 bars.

Potato Pizza with artichoke, lemon, and herbs

This was divine! I made this recipe over two days to accompany a knitting session with my friend Sarah. The first day I made the pesto (a large batch so I could freeze some) and started the pizza dough. I have recently fallen in love with spelt crusts, and having spelt grain and a grain mill means I can make the crust with fresh flour. One quirk of this recipe is that olives are not listed on the ingredient list, but one of the steps calls for adding the olives (which I did not have).
Three stars and three bars (due mostly to the large number of ingredients).
...
After posting this blog I ate some left-over slices, and decided to up the rating to four stars. It really is incredible!

Rebar Linguine

A very simple and tasty meal, but I would have appreciated some suggestions on how more protein could have been added (we added pepitas). This recipe is a nice way to celebrate the new produce available at the farmers market. Yeah summer!
1 bar. 2 stars.

Bircher Muesli- a breakfast of champions!

Some of you may know about my addiction to oatmeal, which I have to admit, has now been a refined to an addition to bircher muesli. Yes, I've eaten this breakfast every morning since I first made it, last week. Although some may consider oats boring and predictable, this wholesome bowl of goodness is what I crave every morning now. I mix it up by adding different fruits and nuts (local Saskatoon berries are especially good, but also walnuts from my yard and ground flax). I have recently learnt about the health benefits of soaking oats overnight and combining oats with yoghourt to help digestion and increase uptake of nutrients (Sally Fallon, Nuriting Traditions), so I was pleased to see those steps included in this recipe. According to Wikipedia, birchermüsli was invented by the Swiss Germans' (as so many good things are like Toblerone, cheese fondu, and yodeling), and they even eat a version of this for supper: Birchermüsli complet with butterbrot and milk coffee! Think about it, Rebar. If I could give a staple 4 stars I would, but 4 stars are reserved for special indulgences like chocolate cake, so 3 stars and 1 bar.

Chocolate Chip Cookies with apricots and walnuts

I baked these cookies as treats for my Bike-To-Work-Week Team, and they loved them. In fact non-bikers were asking how they could also get one. Perhaps my team would be even larger if I advertised these cookies before hand! Although very popular with the group, I found them a bit too sweet, but they did grow on me with multiple tastings.
2 stars, 1 bar.

Mushroom Pecan (Walnut) Burgers

These were a tasty and filling alternative to commercial veggie-burgers, which are often bland and leave me hungry. The one trick is keeping them together when cooking. Putting them in the fridge to cool before cooking may have helped (as the recipe suggested), but hunger and a lack of pre-planning resulted in my omission of that step. I substituted walnuts (due to my plentiful supply), which worked well as I think pecan would have been too rich. 2 stars, 2 bars (but 3 bars for me because I (Rob) had to crack of all the walnuts).

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.