Saturday, April 25th - Grilled Portobello with Blue Cheese and Biscotti

How funny is this? Or maybe not. I suck at capp art but I put some chocolate sprinkles on my capp and I think I got a Cherry Blossom thing going!

Went for a lovely bike ride in Stanley Park. I say lovely because it was strangely empty. It's normally a gauntlet of slow riding tourist on their single gear rented bicycles or on tandem bicycles. I think if you're on a tandem you should be hoofing it. Two horses one bike! Hello. But it was relatively empty to a level, we were wondering where everyone was, like we were missing some massive event that we somehow slept through the announcement of.

Breakfast was a montreal bagel with organic peanut butter which D keeps in the fridge. Have I winged about this in the past? Possibly. How is one to spread peanut butter when it is as hard as cold butter. :-(.

When we got back from the bike ride we made a quick lunch of some portobello mushrooms we picked up at Apple Hill market on 6th. aka the small market with everything.

Grilled Portobello and Blue Cheese burger

4 large portobello trimmed and cleaned
1/4 c blue cheese crumbled
2 kaiser rolls
Roasted Red Pepper spread from last night.

Grill all four portobellos on all sides.

Crumble the cheese (see how complex this isn't)

Spread roasted redpepper dip or babaganous or hummous, whatever you have on the split kaiser roll or portuguese bun. Any hearty bun you want. (loaf bread won't work as well because the portobellos are very juicey and the bread will go soggy)

Place the mushrooms with the cheese in the middle.

Now D did insides of the mushrooms in to hold the juices. I would have put the topsides in with the cheese in the middle so the bread would soak the juices. Your choice. Eitherway, with the two mushrooms, you'll never say that a veggie (non-tofu) burger can't be 'meaty' again.

I'm trying to bake off the last log of biscotti from Super Bowl. I froze it because the first three resulted in a year's supply of biscotti we had to bring to work to get through..

http://365vancouvereats.blogspot.com/2009/01/saturday-january-31st-prepping-for.html

It will take you at least an hour and a half end to end after the dough is ready so be aware of the time committment. Though the first bake is 55 minutes so you can do other stuff. The end is a bit quick. b

D went out to buy some more planters and check out the fish mongers we always pass on Kingsway with the gianormous tank of king crab and dungeness crab. They also had the famed BC Spot prawns. Sadly most of the stock was spoken for by restaurants. So he went next door to one of those local grocers that seemed to always have fruit about to go off for a huge discount. He saw pints of decent looking strawberries for dollar. He bought four. As I had the oven on, he asked me to think about doing a pie or something. We didn't know that strawberries aren't baked in strawberry pies. Who knew? We've done all sorts of other pies, like pear, strawberry and rubarb, cherry, apple.... and they're all baked. Weird. We amalgamated a couple of different recipes we saw so we could use some of the things in our pantry as well as more strawberries.

Got Lotsa Strawberries Pie

2 pints strawberries, washed, drained, hulled and sliced... like with a boiled egg slicer
1 c sugar

3/4 c water (maybe less because I sliced the strawberries instead of cutting them in half so much more surface area for hydroscopic leaching... ie. water to be sucked out of the berry)

3 T of cornstarch

Pre baked and cooled pie shell

Mix water sugar and cornstarch in small saucepan.
Bring to boil stirring often.

When mixture thickens and turns transparent like shampoo, remove from heat add strawberries and pour into baked pie shell.

Chill in fridge for a few hours.

Zanzibar Coconut Tofu Curry

1/2 c coconut milk

1 c veggie stock

1T Zanzibar curry powder (D bought on holiday last year, it is different from regular, spicier)

1 chopped shallot (because we are out of onion, D made guacamole this afternoon and now we're out)

1 thumb of sliced ginger

2 serrano or other hot chillis seeded! and sliced

1 handful (i.e. fist) of green beans trimmed

1 half red bell pepper

1 half large zuccini slided and quartered

1 block (well, I used a block but we would have been okay with half bc of all the veg)

3/4 c jasmine rice (uncooked - cook as instructed)

1/2 c chopped cilantro

TIP ON TOFU in curries do in this order!

1. heat some canola oil or peanut oil on high

2. fry the tofu cubes until toasty first

3. add the zuccini until toasty

4. add the shallot, redpepper, ginger and turn heat down slightly

5. add the beans and chillis

6. add the curry powder and stir... have the fan going!!!!

7. add the coconut milk and stock and simmer for 5 minutes until the green beans go bright green.

8. serve on rice with cilantro.

Serve with light white wine to compliment the rich sauce and to cut the spice. We had a sauvignon blanc.