Mexican Birthday

Sweet Potato Soup with Lime-Yogourt Garnish

My sister and I decided to make a special meal for a friend's birthday, and since she requested Mexican, Mexican it was! I have to say, it was very loose Mexican though. It was still delicious, however, and it seemed our friend appreciated it very much!

Firstly, we made a sweet potato soup with a yogourt-lime garnish. This soup is so delicious, yet so simple. You cook onions and add chili powder, then you add five cups of diced sweet potato and cover with water. Once the sweet potato is tender, the soup gets pureed and some yogourt gets stirred in. The garnish was simple as it was just a 1/4 cup yogourt with 1 tsp lime zest and 1 tsp lime juice stirred in. The addition of the juice makes the garnish easy to drizzle over top of the soup.

Nachos

Tomato-Mango Salsa

Next, we winged it on some nachos. We figured we purchased so many types of Mexican ingredients that we wouldn't use all of, so it made sense to use those to top our nachos. We used taco cheese, some homemade fajita seasoning, pickled sliced jalapenos, re-fried beans, and a homemade tomato-mango salsa, then baked them off. They were very pretty and tasty to eat!

Chicken with Fajita Seasoning for our homemade tortillas

For our main, we made homemade corn tortillas and chicken with fajita seasoning. You can buy bags of corn flour at the grocery store, which you simply add water and salt to, then form into tortillas, and fry. We topped our fajitas with the tomato-mango salsa.

Bean and Corn Salad

For a side dish, we made a bean and corn salad, as this was something specially requested by our friend. It was a mixture of beans, corn, avocado, red pepper, tomatoes, green onions, and cilantro, and then it had a tangy dressing of lime juice and olive oil. I cut back the olive oil to 3 or 4 tablespoons, as opposed to the 1/2 cup the recipe stated, and it worked really well.

Caramel Flan

Finally, for dessert we tried our hand at a caramel flan. Despite the lengthy time to allow for setting this dessert, this dessert had one of the fastest preparation times of any dessert I have made. It was light and custardy with the caramel finish on top.

Strawberry Pie

Strawberry Scones

Strawberry season is just finishing up here in southern Ontario, but my family managed to get a strong jump on it this year by both freezing bags of fresh strawberries and making jam. Additionally, my sister and I used them for baking, like for some delicious strawberry scones, or this strawberry pie that I'm going to talk about now.

Strawberry Filling

I'm not a terrific pie maker, although I've been making them on and off for four years. It's really important to find a recipe for pie crust that won't fall apart when you attempt to transfer it to the pie plate. The crust recipe in the joy of baking's strawberry-rhubarb pie recipe did the trick, because it was durable while also being flaky and moist once baked. I followed the recipe for the filling as well, but I doubled the amount of strawberries I used because I didn't have any rhubarb.

Strawberry Pie before it hit the oven

All said and done, the main issue I had with the pie after it was baked was that there was a lot of liquid in the filling that never thickened up. This was odd to me considering the large amount of sugar and the several tablespoons of cornstarch that were used. We came to the conclusion that the berries we got this year must have had some extra water in them. Other than that, the pie was very tasty with sweet strawberries and buttery, flaky crust. I would make it again!

Baked Strawberry Pie

Mother's Day Afternoon Tea

Place Setting with Menu

I know it's late, but since I posted what my sister and I made for our stepfather for Father's Day, I wanted to post what we made for our mother on her special day. We were planning on taking her to a local tea place for an afternoon tea they had for Mother's Day, however, they were all booked up. It was my sister's brilliant idea to make an afternoon tea at home and it was my idea to complete the theme with menus!

Curried Egg Salad

For beverages, we made a pot of hot wild blueberry tea, a blend from said tea shop. It is a delicious black tea with just the hint of fruity blueberries and is really tasty with just some honey stirred in. We decided that an iced tea would be nice to accompany our meal too, so we chilled some strawberry fields white tea from teopia and flavoured it with some honey, lemon slices, and fresh strawberries.

Cream Cheese and Cucumber Sandwiches

We made three types of sandwiches, the traditional cucumber and cream cheese on white sandwich bread, curried egg salad on dark rye, and sliced chicken deli meat with brie and apple butter that was toasted on sliced baguette. Our mother enjoyed the sandwiches a lot, but I think the egg salad was a clear winner for taste and presentation as we topped those sandwiches with some radish slices and chives.

Chicken, Brie, and Apple Butter on Toasted Baguette

For dessert, Megan made lemon curd tarts and I created my own cupcake with a spiced chocolate base and a caramel buttercream. I think we all enjoyed the lemon tarts the most with their tart lemony sweetness and velvet texture. My cupcake was delicious too except that the icing was quite rich after so much food.

Lemon Curd Tarts

My sister and I loved creating this menu and it was finally an excuse for us to use our nice tea sets!

Chocolate Spice Cupcakes with Caramel Buttercream

Father's Day Meal

Sirloin Steaks With Sauteed Mushrooms

My sister and I thought it would be really nice to make our stepfather a meal for Father's Day as opposed to taking him out, especially since we are so often disappointed with restaurants nowadays. We decided to make him grilled sirloin steak with sauteed mushrooms over top, boiled corn on the cob, roasted potato salad with a sour cream and horseradish dressing, tatsoi sauteed with an Asian dressing, and a blueberry cake for dessert. The entire meal was very delicious; my step dad said he enjoyed it immensely! It was also very reasonably priced to make by comparison to a restaurant meal and we had leftovers for the next day.

Grilling Steaks

The sirloin steaks, I am happy to say, were cooked beautifully on the grill. I'm always afraid with overcooking meat because it tends to get tough and some meats, like beef, really don't need be to left on for too long. I'd say we got our steaks to a tender medium rare to medium.

I even managed to get some nice crosshatched markings on them making them look extra pretty! When the steak doesn't stick to the grill anymore, you just turn the steak about 90 degrees and leave on for an extra minute or two before flipping to get the crosshatched markings.

The mushrooms we sauteed were white mushrooms. What we do is we first get a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil in the pan and get it very hot until it bubbles. When the fat stops bubbling you can add the sliced mushrooms in and watch them absorb all that fat, before they'll start to brown. We presented our steaks on a platter with the mushrooms draped over top.

Roasted Potato Salad

We found the recipe for the roasted potato salad in the "Earth To Table" cookbook in the winter section, but we figured it would work just as well now as in winter and would be a perfect accompaniment to the steak. The only thing was we couldn't find fingerling potatoes which the recipe calls for, and instead had to use baby potatoes. We roasted them off with some olive oil, white wine, and thyme leaves until tender and then tossed them in our creamy dressing of sour cream and grated fresh horseradish. Topped with green watercress it was an elegant looking salad and accompaniment to our meal.

Tatsoi

My sister was responsible for cooking the tatsoi, which is an Asian mustard green. She chose to wilt it with rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and sesame seeds which amounted to a very yummy side dish.

The blueberry cake is something that I've tried several times before and have even spoken of in a previous post. This cake is so delicious with a thick layer of blueberries on a cornmeal cake and is a light way to finish a meal.

Mexican Omelette

Today for breakfast I chose to make a mexican-style omelette. The idea really struck when I looked into the fridge and saw a lonely cob of corn that we boiled a few nights ago, leftover sweet red pepper, leftover diced onion, and leftover chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. Along with the eggs, it was a pretty obvious idea to make an omelette with all those ingredients.

For my sister and I, one chipotle pepper adds good spice to this dish, but if you're hesitant about spice you can use a quarter of one or a half depending on the amount of spice you like. I wouldn't cut the pepper out alltogether though, because along with the spice, it also imparts a nice smoky barbecue flavour to the omelette.

For the cheese, I used a taco cheese that I bought from the store, but shredded cheddar or mozzarella, or anything else that you prefer should work well too.

For the garnish, I used chives because that's what I had, but for more authenticity some cilantro would be nice as well.

I should add that I didn't really measure anything for this recipe, so the amounts listed below are approximate, but I think they should be pretty close to what I did.

Here is my recipe:

Mexican Omelette

Serves two people

Ingredients:

1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup diced onion
1/4 cup diced sweet red pepper
1 cob of corn, boiled, kernels cut off
1/4 to 1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, diced
1/4 cup shredded cheese (I used taco cheese)
4 eggs
chives or cilantro for garnish

Directions:

1. Heat olive oil in frying pan
2. Add onion, red pepper, corn, and chipotle; cook until onions are translucent and vegetables are tender-crisp; set aside on a plate
3.  In a bowl, mix up eggs
4. Add eggs to frying pan and cook until halfway done
5. Add vegetables to half of the omelette and top with cheese
6. Once cooked enough that the egg is pliable, place empty half of omelette over the vegetable side
7. Remove from pan onto a plate and place in microwave for approximately 30 to 60 seconds until all the egg is cooked
8. Cut in half and place halves on their own plate; garnish with chopped chives or cilantro

French Onion Soup

French onion soup, especially with the rainy cool weather that we're having right now, is something that I love to eat. I've actually made Julia Child's recipe for it twice recently as it's so delicious.

The recipe includes the same sorts of ingredients as other onion soup recipes, but one that is quite unique to the recipes I have tried in the past is the addition of wine. I find that anything acidic like that brightens up the flavour a bit and makes it more complex.

The first time I served this soup, I simply dished it out into individual bowls, placing a slice of ciabatta bread in the center and sprinkling parmesan cheese over top. The second time, the soup was ladled into individual onion soup dishes, some toasted ciabatta on top with grated gruyere cheese, and set in the oven until the cheese melted. I really enjoyed this recipe and would try it again.

Chocolate Mousse

I've seen several chocolate mousse recipes before, some which utilize gelatin and other which simply fold in whipped cream. In fact, a mousse recipe by Nigella Lawson I used once even required marshmallows to be melted down. The chocolate mousse recipe that I tried last week was the best I have ever made and used a much more traditional method to gain a silky texture, beaten egg whites.

The first step of the recipe is simply to melt your chocolate down with some butter, adding egg yolks to it and setting it in the fridge. The next step is to whip your egg whites. Then you whip your whipping cream before folding both the cream and egg whites into the chocolate mixture. At the stage of melting the chocolate I added some strong coffee for extra flavour.

I chose to pipe the mousse into dessert bowls to give it a more elegant finish. Then I chilled it for several hours. The mousse was really silky and smooth, although I would use less coffee than I did because it overpowered the chocolate slightly.