Here are my salmon wraps with soy/sesame oil dressing. It's my recipe, I love things wrapped in rice paper, so I thought of the salmon inside and it really works.
Ingredients:
Rice paper, you can get this in Chinatown
Soy sauce, 1/4 cup or so depending how much you need)
Sesame oil, about 1 tablespoon
Scallion (green onion) sliced
Sesame seeds
Salmon about a 1lb (500g), cleaned and sliced into oblong pieces
Vegetable oil
METHOD:
1. Have everything ready (mise en place).
2. Place the rice paper into room temperature water to soften up. When softened, pat dry on a clean dishtowel. Place the salmon at one end and roll up.
3. Heat a non stick pan or cast iron and put about 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil, when it is hot, add the salmon wraps into the oil. Brown on one side then the other about 1 to 2 min per side and let sit on paper towels.
4. Make the sauce by adding the soy sauce, sesame oil, sesame seeds and sliced scalions, mix, place salmon wraps onto platter and put the soy / sesame oil in a container in the middle.

These are AWESOME!!! Let me know what you think

A friend suggested I try making kale chips, so I did and they are awesome.

1. Remove kale from stem and break into chip size pieces.

2. Mix extra virgin olive oil and sea salt in a bowl.

3. Mix the kale with the olive oil and sea salt mixture, remove from the bowl.

4. Place onto a lined baking sheat with parchment paper.

5. Place into a preheated oven 175 C/ 350F for about 15 minutes.

6. Turn once, don't over cook them.

AWESOME!

a cold winter evening

When I realized that I had defrosted puff pasty and it was cold outside, I decided to make a chicken pie with leeks and crimini mushrooms. It was awesome, let me know if you would like the recipe.

My pizzelle that I have been doing for a long time, I could get one of those electric pizzelle makers but prefer my mom's handheld that you do over the stove.

bacon ricotta pizza

The day after Thanksgiving and couldn't eat anymore Turkey. So, I made a Bacon Ricotta Pizza, really delicious.

One evening I ordered a bacon ricotta cheese pizza, it was delicious and so I thought, I can do that. So, here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 pizza dough, you can get this at the supermarket

mozzarella cheese

asiago cheese

ricotta cheese

1 lb (500g) bacon cut up into pieces.

Cornmeal for the pizza peel

Pizza stone

Olive oil

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 450 F (230 C) with the stone inside. Bring the dough to room temperature.

2. Cook the bacon and drain the fat and when bacon is cooked, placed onto a paper towel to absorb the grease.

3. Once oven is up to temperature, roll out the dough. Place some cornmeal onto the pizza peel and place the rolled out dough onto the peel.

4. Pour some olive over the top of the dough and with your hand spread the olive oil around, then add the mozzarella, the asiago, and the ricotta cheese.

5. Add the bacon and put into the hot oven and cook for about 10 minutes or less (this will depend your oven), but check to see when the bottom is browned.

You will love this and I am sure you will make it again and again. Let me know how it goes.

Bread

This is wonderful bread, making it for many years. You must use bread flour for making bread.
Recipe:
700 g bread flour
20 g yeast
12 g salt
1 teaspoon sugar
pizza peel
pizza stone
olive oil
plastic wrap
razor blade
cornmeal
Method:
1. Measure out the yeast and disolve in 500 ml of tepid water with 1 teaspoon sugar.
2. Weigh out the flour and salt an place in a Kitchen Aid Blender, using a dough hook, start on low mixing the flour and salt.
3. Make sure the yeast is good (you can see that it is reacting in the water).
4. Slowly add the yeast mixture to the blender and still keep it on low.
5. Once the yeast mixtrue is blended in (this takes only a few seconds), turn the blender up one notch. Continue mixing for a couple of minutes till the dough forms a ball.
6. Once the ball is formed and the dough has mixed for about 3 minutes, stop the blender and remove the dough to a flowered surface. Kneed the dough until there is a nice ball.
7. Place the dough in an bowl and spread olive oil around the bowl (about 1 tablespoon of olive oil). Cover with plastic wrap and let still till it has doubled, sometimes this happens in about an hour.
8.. Preheat your oven to 190 C / 375 F, and be sure to place your pizza stone inside. The stone should be heated for about 20 minutes before placing the bread inside.
9. Now it's time to gently remove the dough from the bowl, form your loaf of bread and place onto a pizza peel that has cornmeal on it. Slide it into the oven and cook about 35 to 40 minutes.
10. When done, remove bread and place on a rack to cool.

the beginning

So, I have never done this before, so here goes, the morning sunshine, lots of food and fotos to follow