[very] belated thanksgiving post

so, yeah, it's been a few months since thanksgiving aaaand i still haven't managed to blog about it. well, that's until now, cause i managed to upload photos over the holidays and decided i might as well get it over and done with. since my school schedule was so ridiculously busy, i couldn't make it home for thanksgiving, so julia and i decided to make our own student version of thanksgiving. i made the white turkey chili, and she made the yum yum treacle tart. we also made some cute little turkey cookies! they're basically a tradition for thanksgiving at home, and since our landlords were nice enough to invite us to their proper thanksgiving dinner, i thought it would be nice to make some for the kiddies.
so, let's get on with things.

thanksgiving recipe #1:
white turkey chili (makes 8 servings)
what you need:
2 packs of lean ground turkey
1 yellow onion
2 tsp olive oil
4 cloves of garlic
2 stalks of celery
1 jalapeno
3 small cans of diced green chilies
2 cans of navy beans (can substitute white kidney beans as well)
1 tbsp cumin
2 tsp oregano
2 tsp cayenne
6 cups chicken broth
1 tbsp cold water
2 tsp corn starch

step 1:
set a large pot on to medium heat and add in olive oil. dice your onion and celery and add to the pot when hot. let that cook down for ~10 minutes, and then add in crushed garlic. saute until fragrant.
step 2:
add in your ground turkey and cook until no longer pink. add your spices, finely chopped jalapeno, strained navy beans, green chilies (with juice) and chicken broth. let simmer away for ~60 minutes. if it hasn't started to thicken, make a slurry with cold water and corn starch and add to pot. stir, then you're done! easy peasy!


thanksgiving recipe #2:
angelopoulos turkey cookies
what you need:
lots of candy corn (extra for munching)
lots of caramels
box of hershey kisses or neilson golden buds
box of cookies

step 1:
microwave 1 piece of caramel for ~12 seconds, depending on your microwave. this will take a lot of trial and error. immediately squish caramel on top of your kiss/golden bud, then take a candy corn and squish it down on top of the caramel. then, take your cookie and squish it onto the back of the caramel.

yes, i realize that wasn't very precise but this is what it should look like. that's it! i know, this is awkward timing considering thanksgiving was many eons ago, but hey... at least i got around to it, eh?

happy holidays!

happy holidays and happy new year everyone! i hope everyone had a good christmas and enjoyed their time at home! christmas break is over and i'm back in vancouver :(  i thought i'd do a little updating as to what exactly went down during my looong 3.5 week christmas break. i had planned to do some hot yoga during that time... but clearly, making and eating copious amounts of food is such a better option. this is a very photo-filled blog post, so it might take a while to load!

first up and completely unrelated to food... phyllo the puppy looking so cute at christmas time! he's grown so much since we first got him and it's kind of scary. i can see the awkward sheltie stage starting to appear!

now for the real cooking stuff: a shout out to my apprentice, dad. he's my slave and i made him help me with basically everything (cleaning... holding.. lifting). i like to think i've taught him how to be better in the kitchen, but who knows.

the apprentice: seen here with pomegranate macaron shells

next up, the french macarons. i made two flavours: vanilla with pomegranate white chocolate ganache, and pomegranate with a white chocolate ganache. i used a turkish pomegranate syrup to flavour the shell and the ganache because i couldn't find powdered pomegranate.. no surprise there... now, they didn't come out perfectly, but the texture was still ommidy ommidy as it should be! i made the pink pomegranate ones first, and taking the advice from my first batch in the summer (pistachio ones here) i used a proper piping bag and nozzle. they turned out pretty well, i think i mixed the egg whites too much while trying to incorporate the food colouring and syrup in the pink ones. for the vanilla macarons i didn't add any food colouring and was careful to not over beat them, but i may have under beat them.. who knows. they all had their little feet, and all tasted yummy so it's all good!

so pretty!

next, and not quite as exciting, came the macaroons. sometimes i crave these like mad so i just had too. the tin of condensed milk was a bit old and had a weird colour, but i used it anyways.

after that came the himalayan pink salt caramels. it seems everything i have made so far has this weird white or pink colour scheme... and i don't even like pink. meh. anyways, these were super gooey and didn't stick to your mouth! i followed a recipe for nigella lawson's fleur de sel caramels but substituted the pink salt cause we had just bought some. super yum yum!

then we made some gingerbread cookies. christina and i used a new recipe for icing and... well it didn't turn out so well. some were too thick, some too thin, and by the end of it we were too annoyed to try and fix it. so, we decorated our cookies with crappy icing and it glooped everywhere. oh well.

christmas dinner started off with baked brie topped with caramelized onions and shrimp dip for appetizers. we had intended to do a roasted beet, goat's cheese and pecan salad but we were a bit behind on timing, so we left it for the next day. for the main we had turkey with stuffing, sweet yams, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. to go with all this om nomness, we made mulled wine or gluhwein, reminiscent of our holiday trip to germany, belgium and the netherlands a few years back.

for new years, we had vasilopita, a greek cakey-bready thing. i kind of ruined it this year because my curiosity got the best of me and i found the coin by using my physics smarts. as you will notice, the star in the middle is spread out and weird looking due to all my finger pokes. whatever, i still found it! the best way to eat this cake is to heat it up in the microwave, put a big scoop of vanilla icing with it, and mush it up with a fork. sounds gross but it's oh so delicious. i tend to eat a lot of things mushed up like that... awkward...

i also had a chance to use my new immersion blender (from santa) to make a delicious butternut squash soup with spicy chorizo bits. i am going to devote an actual blog post to this so... check back soon!

would you look at that colour!

well, that was a little snippet from my holidays. i hope everyone is settling back into school smoothly and that you all have a great year ahead!

long time no see / macaron madness

ok, after getting nagged for the last few weeks from everyone, i've finally found a bit of time to start up my blog again after the summer. so, let's catch up on my life, and my random cooking shenanigans!

my summer started with a lovely 2 months of summer school. oh joy. i took 2 courses: introductory archaeology, and indian religions. kind of random. anyways, the kitchen in residence was kind of crap/scary/dirty all the time, so not too much exciting stuff went on there. starbucks + baguette + brie + wine pretty much sums up that part of the summer.
theeen i went back to montreal and ottawa to visit my famjam, where the real food happened. yemista, moussaka, pastitsio, steak x7, ribs, bagels, eggplant dip, la botega sandwiches from god, brown butter pasta, poutine, menazzaleh, cupcakes x4, bacon x923898230, the works, scary fish with teeth, beaver tails, brie and baguette and BACON FAT EVERYTHING. oh lord. now i know why i'm fat...

anyways. yes. i ate a alot. i also tried my hand at macarons. now, as you may have noticed, i don't really bake things that often. cooking is easy cause you just throw things together and somehow you come up with something. but with baking, everything has to be exact. it's scary. aaand queen of the exactness are macarons. why did i do this to myself? oh yeah, cause you can't get them like, anywhere in victoria. and when you can, they're super expensive. so, why not make a massive batch at home and save some money? yep, that's just what i did.

mmmm macarons!   : )

so, i will ring in the new year of blogging by starting with these delicious pistachio macarons! note: they weren't 100% perfect, but for a first attempt i think i did pretty well! the only thing was that they weren't very tall, but i'll let you know where i think i messed up. also, i was originally going to make pistachio filling but i ran out of icing sugar. i substituted nutella instead. who doesn't like nutella? it was still awesome.

what you need:
160 g of pistachios, unsalted
120 g egg whites (room temp)
200 g icing sugar
35 g granulated sugar
green food colouring
lots of nutella
an extra pair of hands? (thanks dad!)

step 1: 
peel the skin off your pistachios. this was soo time consuming, so if you can find them already skinned, or even in powdered form, then do it! if you can't, blanch them in hot water first. it will make it a lot easier to get the skins off. let them dry.
step 2: 
when you're waiting for them to dry, preheat oven to 350 and line your baking trays with parchment paper. sift through your icing sugar to get out any lumps. then add to your food processor, along with the dried, skinned pistachios and process until you get a fine powder. sift and set aside. (mistake #1: didn't process them long enough and still had some small-but-not-small-enough bits of pistachio in there).
step 3:
add in egg whites to your mixer and beat on medium until soft peaks start to form. then gradually beat in your granulated sugar, while increasing the speed, until thicker peaks form. i added in about 5 drops of food green food colouring, but if you want a bit more then go for it. once mixed in, add your pistachio/icing sugar powder and gently fold with the egg whites.
step 4:
spoon mixture into a piping bag with a round tip (mistake #2: we didn't have the right shape, and ended up squeezing the mix out of a smaller tip, which probably made the mix deflate a bit). try and pipe even, 1" circles onto the baking tray. as you can see, i basically used up all the baking trays in my house.... 3 were in the oven when i took this pic. yep.

my army of macarons!

step 5:
let sit for an hour to let the shells form. if you wanted to make a filling, now would be the time! if just sticking with nutella, bake for ~10 minutes. let cool before removing from parchment. try and slowly peel them off. if they start to stick, put them back in the oven for a few more minutes. pair similar sized ones together, and slather on the nutella!

om nom nom!

that's it! considering it was my first attempt, they were super good. crunchy on the outside, chewy goodness all around! this recipe probably made ~50 macarons, but i don't know for sure as my entire family was nibbling on them before i could put them all together!

loukoumadopolis

well, i'm back to the grind after having a week off for reading break. instead of actually reading, i got on a plane and headed out east to visit my grandparents in montreal. it was COLD. first four days was all snow, and -17 degrees! by the time i got to ottawa to see penny, it had warmed up quite a bit. too much cause they closed the rideu canal the day penny and i went to go skate : (  when am i ever going to be back in ottawa it february?! (hopefully never...) anyways, i devoured tons of yummy greek food (including deer that my papou shot while hunting in the fall) ate my weight in montreal bagels, and was spoiled with having several glasses of my papou's homemade wine every night. it was beyond glorious.

my papou and yiayia, montreal 2008

one of the highlights of my trip was making loukoumades with my yiayia. it's no secret to anybody that knows me that i love loukoumades. it's an addiction. and now that i actually have my yiayia's recipe, it's going to be actually be problem. if you don't know what these golden balls of deliciousness are, i pity you. i really do. they're basically a greek version of a doughnut: batter fried till crisp, then drizzled with greek honey and cinnamon. penny, christina and i basically die anytime we eat them. see video below.

bites penny. bites are good.

sometimes loukoumades that you get from a bakery or festival can be quite dense. my yiayia's recipe is anything but. its light and fluffy on the inside, but crispy on the outside - the perfect loukoumades. oh, and i know, i know, this blog is supposed to be somewhat healthy, and deep fried batter doesn't exactly fall into that category. well, this blog is also for me to share a bit of my heritage for those who care, whether healthy or not! so, here we go, my yiayia's recipe:

what you need:
~ 1 cup self rising flour
~ 1 cup of lukewarm water
2 tbsp greek honey
pinch of cinnamon
oil for frying
2 sheets of paper towel

step 1:
pour oil into a pan and heat up. take a mixing bowl and pour in lukewarm water. slowly stir in the flour until it forms a slightly goopy mixture. it should kind of resemble a thick pancake batter.
step 2:
while waiting for the oil, take honey and heat up in the microwave so it is more liquidy. this makes it easier to cover the loukoumades.
step 3: 
once oil is hot, take a spoonful of mix and pour it into the oil. only fry a few at a time or they will take longer to cook. once one side is golden brown, flip over. they should take a few minutes per batch.
step 4: 
place the crispy loukoumades on a few sheets of paper towel to soak up the oil, then serve. pour greek honey on top and sprinkle with some cinnamon. if you want, you can add sesame seeds too  : )

light, fluffy, crispy and down right yummy loukoumades

i'm proud to call you chocolate bear

if you haven't watched scrubs, please do. it pretty much changed my whole entire life! there's just way too many awesome, awesome moments (cactus hands, guy love, bugel fingers, everything comes down to poo, jd and cox, kung fu fighting surgeons, pumpkin babies, toto in the tub, ted - in general haha) i wish jd and turk could be my friends.... anyways, i was watching my favourite moments from scrubs and stumbled on this:




it reminded me that i hadn't had chocolate in a long time. i know, that's weird cause chocolate bear is turk's nickname, or really it's christina's nickname. but whatevs. something you all should know about me is that i have quite the obsession with peanut butter and chocolate. i love peanut M&M's, peanut butter M&M's, reese's pieces (big or small) and reese's pieces candy. it's really bad. i'd say i need help. so, this obsession, plus my craving for chocolate from 'guy love' got me thinking... i should make peanut butter and chocolate brownies. nom nom nom. it's a super simple recipe, i think my mistake was trying to fit it all into a baking dish too small and also not having baking powder. the good thing is that even if you didn't do everything right, the end result is still super yummy cause it's pb and choco. you can never go wrong.

peanut butter brownie with hot chocolate  : )

what you need:
1/2 cup of peanut butter
1/3 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar (packed)
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1tsp baking powder
1 cup milk chocolate chips

step 1:
preheat oven to 350 degrees. cream together peanut butter and butter. beat in sugars, eggs and vanilla.
step 2:
stir in flour and baking powder. when everything is fully mixed, fold in your choco chips!
step 3:
spread into baking pan for ~30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out with fudgy crumbs.
step 4:
let cool and slice!
makes approximately 12 servings.

gooey and chewy brownie