DC's Challenge - Salmon en Croute

The 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Simone of Junglefrog Cooking. Simone chose Salmon en Croute (or alternative recipes for Beef Wellington or Vegetable en Croute) from Good Food Online.

This was a fun recipe.

I enjoyed making and eating it.

It's also something I would make again.

Yay! Three out of three!

~

So basically it is salmon with a cream/spinach sauce in a pastry crust.

Now....I'm going to share a secret family recipe.

For crust.

3 ingredients

1 cup of flour

1/2 cup of cold butter

1/4 cup - with one egg

and if their is room in the cup measure liquid of your choice

I used orange juice this time, but I've used wine, other juices and milk in the past.

Grind your flour and butter together. Mix your egg and liquid together.

Mix egg/liquid into flour/butter. Form into a ball and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Roll out the dough.

This dough is very nice to work with and can be rolled out paper thin, if you want.

Cutting out some shapes for the top of the salmon packages.

I made this in November, so leaves seemed appropriate.

$1 fillet of salmon topped with cream cheese, spinach, dill, a little onion, salt and pepper.

Egg washing pastry cut outs on to the salmon packages.

Pastry leaves.

More egg washing.

After baking.

Yummy!

Looks fancy.

Was cheap.

Tasted great!

A++

Best Road Trip

A post on Points of Review about a road trip I took with my Mom 5 years ago in November.

It was the best trip ever!

We went to New Zealand, rented a car and drove around the North Island for a couple weeks.

This was the route of our trip.

We started out in Auckland.

My Grandma was born and raised in New Zealand.

And as a little girl my Mom lived in New Zealand for a while.

This is Mom and the car we rented.

She had never driven on the left side of the road, but she did a great job throughout the trip.

There were just a couple times when I thought she was going to run into the side of a mountain!

We loved the little self serve stands they had on the side of the road selling vegetables.



We went at the end of November - Avocado season, I guess.
There were avocados every where!
We even rented a cottage in an avocado orchard.




I shot a gun!
On a boat!
And I didn't hit anything.



This is our automatic clothes dryer.
We stayed over night in a hostel.
It was really nice.
We stayed in a lot of hostels.
Anyway, we washed our clothes, but didn't have time to dry them, so for a day we drove around with a backseat full of wet clothes.
Thankfully, they dried pretty fast!
And you could never do that in Minnesota in November!



The cows didn't seem to mind our car clothes dryer.


We saw dolphins!

And more cows!

This is Mom and Moana.

She is kind of an aunt.

We stayed in a really nice Bed and Breakfast in Auckland.

Breakfast.

Mom and me at another hostel.

Mom cooking at the hostel.

We cooked and ate our way across New Zealand!
The food and spending time with Mom were the best parts of our trip.

We tried to buy local (side of the road) food and try everything that we didn't recognize.

Like canned rice pudding, canned spaghetti, Lamb and Mint flavor chips (crisps), Burger Rings, freeze dried veg. and lots of candy.

Eating dinner al fresco.

In November!

We went to the New Zealand flower show.

Mom with another yummy meal of fresh fish.

Isn't that beautiful?

Spice Puffs

Spice Puffs

3 cups flour

1 cup sugar

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp salt

2 large eggs

1 1/4 cups milk

5 1/2 Tbs melted butter

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together dry ingredients in a large bowl. In another bowl mix together wet ingredients. Ad wet mixture to dry and stir just until combined. Mixture will be lumpy.

Grease muffin cups. Fill each cup 3/4 full with muffin batter.

Bake for 20-25 mins. until muffins are golden.

Before I baked the muffins I added a tsp each of ricotta cream and pear sauce left over from my cannoli.


And I got to use my new autumn muffin tins.
They were very yummy!





They were so tasty that the chickies only got to try one muffin.
They gave it 9.5 beaks out of 10.

How I Learned To Cook

I started cooking before I was born. After all, I was a bun in my mother's oven!

Ok, let's rip that psychologically damaging imagery out of our minds.

On with my story....

This is my Mom and me. (I still have those big feet :P )

Looks like I'm eating some soup. Yum.

I still eat soup like that too - feet on the table.

~

Before I was born, my Mom worked in a cafe.

After I was born, she took me to work with her.

She would rise hours before dawn, tuck me into a corduroy kangaroo-pouch-baby-carrier-thingy and jog downtown to the cafe.

Then, she would bake dozens of loaves of bread, sweet rolls, croissants, cakes, pies, soups and the special of the day - pot roast, lasagna, ect.

While she beat eggs and kneaded dough, I was still strapped into my snuggly kangaroo pouch picking up cooking tips (and probably napping).

Before I was one, I learned how to use a spoon..... to mix up homemade bread.

Later I progressed to using a knife.

Check out those peeling skills!

And the half chewed cucumber in the salad.

Baking bread with Mom.




And making pie crust.
I'm about 2 1/2 in this picture.





Frying up breakfast.

And here I am at four years old.

~

This might look like a cardboard kitchen (or just a cardboard box, if you're really bad at imagining), but for me - this was my studio.

I wanted to be The Frugal Gourmet.

You don't know who that is?

What?!?

Ok, he was a TV chef with a cooking show and he had an assistant named John.

It was great!

For years and years Frugal Gourmet was the only game I would play.

My Mom was John, so....she did the dishes.

I had a little crock pot and all day long I would put things into it and stir it and put more "secret" ingredients into it.

Then, when my Dad came home we would have candlelight suppers and they would eat my Crockpot Delight.

It took me a long time to figure out why we ate by candlelight.

They must have loved me a lot.

Bearing in mind, I thought salt was a major ingredient and paprika was a magic flavoring.

I wrote a recipe for bread: Take 1 cup salt, 3 cup floer mix togeter and add hony, egg and milk. Beat and leve for 5 houers to rise. Bake at 560 degres for 3 houers.

~

So, that's how I learned how to cook and love food.

Mostly from my Mom, with a little dash of celebrity inspiration a la Frugal Gourmet as a 'secret' ingredient.

Undercover Chicken

Catty is not impressed.

She is not a chicken.

But I think she is such a cute chickie!

Do you think she's laying an egg for me?

(Imagine me rubbing my hands together in anticipation.)

Hmmm, I don't think so.......

But she's so cute!

I'll keep her, I guess.

Wow! I Won!

Yay!

I won most unique interpretation on The Leftover Queen Forum!

I entered my cannoli recipe.

I've already started working on the next months challenge.

If you're not a member join the Leftover Queen Forum!

~

A blizzard is forecast for tomorrow, so I'll have plenty of time to cook.

I really want to make some Russian Lace, snowcream and maple whip, but I need some fresh snow!

Ricotta Souffle Strata

Last month Marx Foods sent me a box of fun stuff.

Mushrooms, chiles, vanilla sugar and smoked salt.

Mmmm, yummy!

Look at it all! Amazing!

I took Lobster and Black Trumpet mushrooms, added some Japones chiles and a little smoked salt. Then with a little help from the girls....

I took 11 eggs.

Yeah, eleven.

6 I used in the strata and 5 I used in the ricotta souffle top.

I layered left over challah bread with artichoke, crab, diced red pepper, the mushrooms, chiles and a little black pepper/salt.

Then I mixed 6 eggs with a cup of whole milk and poured that over the top of the strata.

Then I mixed the remaining 5 eggs with 1 cup of ricotta cheese.

Spread that over the top of the strata and baked it at 325 degrees for 40 mins.

I just wanted to show you how shiny the top was.
It was the tastiest old bread I've ever had.