What's going on in the kitchen?

Well my conscience has got the better of me and I have decided to update my blog once again. It has been far too long yet again and I'm sure you are all wondering what I have been eating these last weeks. Whilst I am not feeling inclined to give you a meal by meal commentary on what I have been eating I thought I would just mention a few, mainly ones that I managed to snap a photo or two of before devouring.

So as you are probably aware it is Spring here in Vancouver, and has been for some time now. With the onset of Spring comes some rather scrumptious vegetables including one of my new favourites asparagus. Yep that's right, I quite like asparagus nowadays. And during Spring asparagus becomes very affordable. One day I noticed there was a bunch of asparagus sitting in my fridge (there are 2 for $4 bargains all over the place and so I invariably end up with way too much asparagus in my fridge). So anyway I decided that I would try asparagus soup. I had a quick look through my recipe books (very quick look as there are only 2 of them at the moment) and found a lovely looking one, wait no that wasn't the one I used, I must have found the recipe on the internet somewhere. Anyway the soup tasted jolly good and I took a photo of it before I polished it off.


Another side effect of it being Spring is that I start making more salads. This week has been a prime example of this. Last weekend I was down at Granville Island grabbing some yummy stuff, and decided to start my evening meal with a fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil salad. I first tried this combination in New York 1 1/2 years ago and I just can't get enough of it. The 3 flavours work exceptionally well together and I just love the texture of a good fresh mozzarella ball.


Yesterday I decided to have salad again as I had already had bacon and eggs for brunch so didn't need anything too fatty for dinner. As I was wandering through the vege store I spied some mandarins and decided to use them in a kind of asian inspired salad. Well OK, it wasn't really particularly asian inspired except for the soy sauce I put in the vinaigrette but it was really good anyways. So good in fact that I decided to make the same salad again for lunch today.


While I was home in NZ I watched a wee bit of the food network, ok I watched way too much of the food network. One of the shows was all about salads and one of the salad dressings had pomegranate molasses in it. I had never heard of this ingredient, but they said it tasted really good so I thought I would just have to try it some day. Today was that day. It is an ingredient used a bit in Mediterranean cooking and is available in Mediterranean grocery stores. I don't know of any of those in NZ, but in Vancouver there are at least 3 that I know of, and my bus just happened to be going past 2 of them today. So I got off the bus and bought a bottle of pomegranate molasses, ingredients - pomegranate juice. If you want to try some and can't find it in any stores then you can just make your own by reducing pomegranate juice (widely available nowadays) until it is relatively thick, one website suggested reducing 2 cups down to 1/4 cup. Now armed with my pomegranate molasses I had to think of something to make with it. I already had a salad planned for lunch (see above) and had the dressing already made for that. I didn't really feel healthy enough to have salad twice in one day so had to find another use for the molasses. After a quick google search I settled on pomegranate chicken. Basically you just coat a chicken breast in crushed walnuts and flour and cook it in a fry-pan. Then you remove the chicken and add chicken stock and pomegranate molasses to make a bit of a sauce. So I did this and the result was not quite what I was hoping for. I think maybe the ratios in the recipe may have been a little off, or else maybe more likely is I should have measured the molasses instead of just pouring it in. It is quite a powerful ingredient and is rather tart. I think it would have tasted pretty good if I had used less molasses, I will have to try it again some time. I think it would work rather well on roast lamb so I may try that some day too. It is also very tasty mixed in with orange juice and sparkling water, very refreshing.

Well that about covers all of my recent memorable meals. I guess I haven't been putting so much effort in to my cooking these last few weeks. I haven't had anyone over for a meal for a while so I will have to get on to that too, it might help inspire me get cooking again.