Author: lousysmarch

Buffalo Cauliflower Nachos

I had a craving for nachos that I managed to turn into a bonafide vegetarian recipe. (Just reminding everyone out there that you don’t need to be a vegetarian to enjoy a vegetarian meal.) Break out of your comfort zone and try this one…

First we are going to make the buffalo cauliflower. I’ve chopped up a half a head of cauliflower into smaller than bite-size pieces. In the big bowl I have flour, corn starch, water, salt, pepper, smoked paprika, and garlic powder. Now it’s just a matter of combining the two!

These will go in the oven for about 20 minutes to cook through. Point of self-criticism: make sure there is enough physical separation between each cauliflower piece because some of mine stuck together when the batter pooled. (See bottom right corner.)

When they come out of the oven, take a basting brush and coat one side with buffalo (or some other) hot sauce. I missed taking a picture when I took them out of the oven 😦

Next we are going to prepare our other nacho ingredients.

In this pic I have tomatoes, red and yellow peppers, lettuce, zucchini, celery, jalapenos, lime, cilantro, and avocado. (Not shown: red onion, sour cream, and mozzarella.)

We are going to take our peppers, celery, and red onion and give those a quick fry on the stove top. This will be one of our nacho toppings.

Now you can start building your nachos on your baking sheet. I like to line my sheet pans with either parchment paper, or a silicone baking mat. It makes for easy clean up!

On top of our nachos, we will add our fried pepper mixture, shredded mozzarella, fresh sliced jalapenos, and the buffalo cauliflower. Pop that in the oven for ~10 minutes until your cheese is just starting to brown on the outer edges of your pan.

While my nachos were in the oven, I whipped together a quick guacamole and some sour cream and lime crema.

Here is the finished product. I served the nachos in the pan (mostly for lazy purposes), and topped it off with chopped lettuce, zucchini, and tomato, the guac, a few slices of lime, and a good helping of my crema. It was really tasty and you almost couldn’t tell you were eating cauliflower on your nachos. Also the cauliflower turned out super spicy, which should mean a lot coming from me because I love spicy food.

I hope you try something new and adventurous in your home food projects! As I always say (for the past 5-ish weeks), we have nothing but time…

Pizza Review

I haven’t gotten up to doing too much kitchen experimentation over the last couple of days, but I did receive a fun new kitchen gadget in the mail! Needless to say, product review is a family affair in our house…

For historical reference, here are the two pizzas we ate immediately after filming.

Enjoy my first VLOG post!

Will it Pizza??

I mentioned I would be re-visiting this theme a while back. I feel that, since we all have TIME, we should be stretching ourselves creatively. So I have put a challenge to myself: what sort of foodstuffs can I fuse with a pizza? So far, I’ve done a shwarma pizza, the pierogi pizza, and my luau pizza. Next on the block is a cheeseburger pizza. I began working on this before Jason came to tell me that cheeseburger pizza apparently already exists. Well la-dee-da I’m doing one anyways.

Here’s the shot before it went in the oven. For toppings I have:

  • cooked ground beef
  • 3 cheeses: old cheddar, fresh mozza, and brick mozza
  • green peppers
  • red onions
  • proscuitto
  • tomatoes (but only on half)
  • olive oil

I was slightly concerned that if I put a tomato-based pizza sauce underneath that it would distance the whole pizza from the cheeseburger taste and feel too much. SO instead I did very light sauce – basically just to keep the whole thing from drying out too much.

Here’s the finished product. Overall a tasty pizza. As for the cheeseburger theme, I would rate this as as close to a cheeseburger without being a burger.The only thing I would do differently would be tomatoes on the whole pizza rather than just half, and BBQ sauce mixed in with the hamburger for additional hamburgery flavour.

Guac This Way

I promised my fans a guacamole recipe so here’s a quick, easy, and especially cheap version…

The core ingredients to a guac are avocados, lime, and salt. Anything you add beyond that is just bonus flavour. For today’s iteration, I’ve got the normal stuff with the addition of red onion, grape tomatoes, cilantro (paste), garlic powder, sriracha powder (you could use sauce as well), red pepper flakes, and lemon olive oil.

There’s no real technique to any of this. Simply put in a metal bowl and mash with a fork or (if you’re so fancy) a pastry knife works well also. Just be mindful of the amount of liquid that you add because, depending on your ingredients that you are adding, you could get into a situation where you are into soup territory.

One of the greatest lessons I’ve ever learned in life is that if you work out enough, you can have nachos for supper. It’s simple science, Summer.

LOCKDOWN LUAU

I wanted to do something special for dinner, without causing too much of a mess in the kitchen. I had a pork roast already, so I decided to make BBQ pork and pineapple skewers on the barbeque.

The sometimes unfortunate side effect of not being able to grocery shop whenever I want to leads to many kitchen substitutions. For example, having to fish out the chunks of pineapple out of the bag of frozen fruit medley. Something I always have on hand are those little plastic lemon and lime juice balls that they sell right next to the fresh guys in the produce aisle; a decent substitution and I endorse them fully.

To go with the skewers, I decided to make some nacho chips out of my old tortillas as well as a salsa fresca with some red onion scraps, my lime juice, the rest of my one jalapeno, and my cilantro of questionable freshness.

Once the pineapple was thawed out, I cubed up the pork and marinated the whole lot of it in cheapo BBQ sauce and some lime juice from my squeezy bottle. Simple and easy.

So in the end I had more pork than pineapple (see left-most meat sticks). I half-cooked my skewers in the oven first. I find the pineapple can burn at unequal rates to the pork (due to the sugar content of fruit), so by doing the majority of the cooking process in the oven it will ensure you have appropriate BBQ grill marks rather than something that looks like Mt. Vesuvius.

I cut my tortillas into strips rather than the traditional triangle shape to be different. I’m using the cheapest vegetable oil (in the largest integer) that I can buy. I have never known any difference across brands/price points. Also, if you aren’t a regular fryer, try a few test tortillas first to make sure your oil temp is correct. Start at medium heat and let the oil warm up for probably five minutes (or longer, depending on stove types and age etc.).

As soon as they are out of the oil, hit your chips right away with your seasoning. I have used a habanero lime grinder mix that I got at Winners Homesense when we still had civil liberties like casual shopping.

Here are the skewers after being finished on the BBQ. Once they come out of the oven, I re-doused them in more BBQ sauce since the baking will likely result in moisture loss.

And here is what’s left of the chips and the salsa. I can’t take credit for the tomatillo sauce (green goop) as that is store bought. Still tasty though!

Lunch Leftovers for Summer

Here’s a food idea that you can try at home with a few easy ingredients and some leftovers. This is a dish that my sister Summer would love: a mexican salad bowl! I love these because you can make use of whatever you have, it’s relatively healthy, and every bite you take is a little bit different.

In the pic, I’ve got old cheddar, sour cream, what’s left of some iceberg and romaine, a half squeezed lime, some cilantro, leftover brisket, and my tomato and pineapple salsa I made yesterday. For my bowl concept, I made some white rice in my Instant Pot.

Two extra elements I wanted to add to my leftovers bowl is a quick guacamole, and some lime crema. For the crema, all you need is some sour cream, some chopped cilantro, and some of your lime juice. I don’t usually measure my kitchen ingredients, but rather choose to taste along the way and adjust if necessary. (I’ll have to make a separate post about guacamole another day.)

When my rice was cooked, and my brisket re-heated, all that was left to do was assemble the bowl.

On one half of the bowl, pile your rice, and top with your steak, cheese, and any spicy spices you like. On the other half of the bowl, fill with your lettuce mixture. Top with salsa and guacamole. I used my crema to divide the bowl, and garnished with some cilantro sprigs.

Send me your own versions of salad bowls!

Boredom Baking, Pandemic Pizza

I started off this Easter weekend with two goals: make Easter cookies, and develop a way to put pineapple onto a pizza that I didn’t find revolting. I like pineapple just fine, but on a pizza? Not my style. I am a bit more of a traditionalist with my pizza style (with the noted exception of the peirogi pizza).

The Easter cookies were a no-brainer shortbread recipe. Turned out exactly as I envisioned. Additionally, (as if we aren’t going to have enough sweets in the house this weekend) I also threw a batch of peanut butter rice krispie squares into the mix.

To the conundrum that is pineapple on pizza. My good foodie friend Tyler and I have been vicously arguing about this for literal years…. Anyways, I decided to try and figure out a way to make this work. I’m reiterating that I do like pineapple. It has to be possible.

Let me walk you through my thought process, in which I have taken a somewhat scientific approach. I’m making the following two assumptions: ham and pineapple go together; and, pizza sauce and pineapple do not. So let’s exploit the first assumption and discount the second. Therefore, I need a sauce substitute. I decided to make pineapple and cilantro butter.

Pic on the left is the raw, semi-mashed pineapple, fresh chopped cilantro, a few peppery spices, and gobs and gobs of butter. Eventually it cooked down so the pineapple became soft (see pic on the right). Once it was cooked through, I let it cool down, then blended it in my food processor, and then stuck it in the fridge to re-solidify.

Let’s move on to my toppings.

For the quintessential ham flavour, of course I’m using my favourite pandemic pancetta. Only this time, I’ve got two types: a cubed version, and a very thinly sliced variety.

I’m keeping the tropical feel of my meal with a blend of mozzarella and mexican Cotija cheese, which is very salty (almost like a brick of Quebec-style cheese curds).

I’ve also made a tomato and pineapple salsa for sprinkling on top of the pizza. Ingredients include: grape tomatoes, pineapple, jalapenos, white onion, cilantro, green pepper, lime juice, a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika, and some chili flakes for extra spice.

Did you notice the bourbon and gin in the pic above? My original intent was to mix drinks to go with the pizza, but then I got lazy. Meh it happens….So i’m deferring those to tonight. I will be making mint juleps with a pineapple twist.

You may have also noticed the two bags of doritos. I made two different dorito-flavoured dusts that I used on the crust of the pie. It was tasty but it was very messy so I don’t think I will do the dorito crust in that way again.

All in all, the pizza wasn’t completely terrible. It took a bit longer to assemble because I was being incredibly careful because I didn’t want to overdo the pineapple flavour.

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

Mood: Pizza

This is Monday’s creation: another attempt at improving on Boston Pizza’s pierogi pizza. I know I am partial but I believe mine is the superior pie. I structured this second attempt a little differently than the first. From the dough moving up, I layered the garlic cream sauce base, chili flakes, combination of cheddar and mozzarella cheeses, the thin sliced potatoes (that were soaking in chili oil for hours already), another layer of the shredded cheeses, sliced fresh mozzarella, fried pancetta cubes, and some more chili flakes somewhere in the mix…When it emerged from its 500 degree sauna, I topped it with fresh chopped green onions and it is served with drizzles of sour cream on top. The only feedback I received was that it had maybe too much cheese. What an absurd statement. Can there exist such a ludicrous notion??

Moving backwards in time, Saturday’s pizza was a crowd pleasing quad pizza: four different quadrants of tasty toppings to suit even the most discerning of seven-year olds.

Don’t ask me what went where on this frankenpizza, but I do remember that my favourite was the quad on the far right which included fresh mozzarella, ricotta cheese, red onions, proscuitto, green onions, and fresh sliced tomatoes. Here’s a shot of some of the toppings that went on:

Zoey also made a quad pizza for her and Kees to enjoy. Here is a shot of theirs. (Notice the entirely pepperoni and cheese quarter?)

Pie Art

Hi all! Making pizza isn’t just about making a meal; it is an art form in itself. You have a dough canvas that you decorate with all sorts of colourful toppings. Food that looks great AND tastes great? That’s a no brainer. Tomorrow I will be making some more dough, and will be constructing my pizza artwork. Maybe one day I will attempt to re-construct some famous works of art in pizza form. Suggestions are welcome! I think Munch’s The Scream would be fun to do since it has a very heirloom tomato-coloured sky already. No need to worry: pictures will surely follow…maybe sooner than later. I’ve got nothing but time…