I love creamy pasta sauces and I love making them from scratch. My mom requested seafood fettucine alfredo for her birthday this year, so I’m sharing the fettuccine alfredo recipe that I used. If preferred, you could substitute chicken for the seafood, or serve the fettuccine alfredo plain.
Different versions of savoury pancakes are popular in Asian cuisine, including Korean pancakes, Japanese pancakes, and Chinese pancakes. My favourite is the Chinese scallion pancake that is believed to have originated in Shanghai. Considering these pancakes are made with flour and green onions, I have always found them to be overpriced in restaurants. Luckily, they are very easy to make. Although they are slightly time consuming to make, you can make a large batch and freeze them for quick and easy future meals. These make a great accompaniment to all sorts of dishes, but especially to stir fried Shanghai noodles (see recipe here) and sticky rice rolls with pork floss (see recipe here).
Sangria is a Spanish drink that consists of wine and fruit. I never knew that red sangria (made with red wine) could taste so smooth until my friends Yili and Kent made me their sangria with a secret ingredient. It may not be authentic, but I can drink this stuff like it’s juice. The recipe below provides guidelines for making a classic sangria, as well. Sangria is thought of as more of a summer drink, but I make it all year round. It’s a fun drink to serve at a Halloween or vampire themed party. I made two large pitchers for John’s housewarming party, and they were finished early in the night (I only had one small glass).
I have made this potato and green bean salad many times, because it’s flavourful, it can be served warm or cold, it’s quick and easy to make, it’s a one pot meal, it only requires 4 total ingredients, and it’s a great way to use up leftover cooked potatoes and/or green beans. I like to add tuna when I’m serving it for lunch or dinner. It’s also a great option for pot lucks as it is gluten free, dairy-free, egg-free, vegetarian, and vegan (as long as you don’t add the tuna).
My family and John love the taste and I love how easy it is to make. I should note though, that this salad does not keep well. So if you are serving it warm, it should be eaten soon after it was made. If you are serving it cold, be sure to cool all of the other ingredients first and then toss them with the dressing just prior to serving.
This is a simple recipe for a delicious split pea soup that you can easily turn into a meal in a jar and a great gift. (This soup is gluten free and can be made vegetarian, vegan, and dairy free.) I love giving meals in jars as hostess gifts and housewarming presents. For people that live in emergency-prone areas, canning meals in jars is essential to being prepared for anything. Some of the better food preservation methods require equipment such as pressure canners, vacuum packing machines, oxygen absorbers, and freeze dried foods, etc. You can find more information and meal in a jar recipes here. You won’t believe the range of meals that you can put in a jar with a shelf life of months to years.
This split pea soup recipe was inspired by The Bean Ladies’ Lickety Split Pea Soup. In December 2013, I had the opportunity of sampling two of The Bean Ladies’ products at The One of a Kind Show in Toronto, ON. Their bean soups were delicious, but, in my opinion, very overpriced. So I recreated their soup recipe for a fraction of the cost. See my recipe for Curried White Bean and Sweet Potato Soup, which was also inspired by The Bean Ladies (coming soon).
I made these baked brie crostinis for John’s housewarming party and they were one of the party favourites. They are very quick and easy to make, especially considering I was making enough to serve a large crowd.
I love macaroni and cheese and these mini macaroni and cheese bites turn a comforting pasta dish into finger food fit for any party. These can also be made gluten free! I used grown-up cheese and made two versions of macaroni and cheese bites for John’s housewarming party. If you only own one mini muffin pan, which I do, these can be tedious and time-consuming to make. But they can be made hours in advance and then reheated in the oven prior to serving. You could also bake these in a standard muffin pan and serve them as a side dish for a sit down meal. This recipe also happens to make the best baked macaroni and cheese dish I’ve ever had, especially cheese mixture #2. I used the leftover ingredients to make individual baked macaroni and cheese dishes as shown in the photo below.
I made caramelized onion and gorgonzola puff pastry tarts for John’s housewarming party. They were definitely one of the party favourites. They were also easy to prepare in advance. I cut them into small squares for finger food, but this tart would make a great first course, too. If you have the time and patience, you could turn these into round hors d’oeuvres instead. These would be cute and elegant for any event. Simply use a small, round cookie cutter to cut out rounds of the rolled out dough, follow the recipe as written, and place the filling onto each round of dough before baking.
In the past, I often used store bought, frozen puff pastry for special occasions and parties. Although I had been planning to attempt making puff pastry from scratch for years, I put it off, because the process requires many steps and resting times. So imagine how excited I was when I found a time-saving technique for puff pastry in The Modern Baker. Not only is this puff pastry easy and relatively quick to make, it is freezer friendly, too. So you can make several batches in half a day, freeze them, and have your own instant puff pastry for future uses. This puff pastry bakes up beautifully flaky, buttery, and crisp. I’ll probably never use store-bought puff pastry again. When I used this dough to make cheese danishes, my dad said that they were better than the ones that he buys from a bakery. I’ve also used this successfully for savoury tarts (see recipes here and here) and beef wellington. Here are a few other recipes that use puff pastry: Hong Kong egg tarts (see recipe here), apple turnovers (see recipe here), chicken or turkey pot pie (see recipe here), and vol au vents.
One of the reasons why I love love love Vietnamese sandwiches (banh mi), is that they contain pickled daikon radishes and carrots. These pickled daikon radishes and carrots are very easy to make and are a great side dish to almost any meal. Enjoy them with a bowl of Vietnamese beef noodle soup (pho tai) (see recipe here), or a dish of meat and rice, or add them to your rice paper rolls (see recipe here). These are also a great accompaniment to Korean food (see my beef short ribs (kalbi) recipe here). I love making my own pickled vegetables, because I can control the salt and sugar content. If you are not sure what to do with your leftover daikon radishes, you will find a list of different recipes that use this radish here.
When white daikon radish went on sale for only 9 cents per pound, I did what I had to do – I bought pounds and pounds and pounds of it, found different ways to cook it, and ate nothing but daikon radish for two weeks. It was awesome! 🙂 So here is a list of dishes that you can make using white daikon radish. Let me know if you can think of more items!
If you’ve never cooked daikon radish before, I should warn you that the cooking process releases an unpleasant odour. But once the radish is fully cooked, the smell goes away, and the radish has a mild flavour.
Cooking with Alison’s Mom (Part 2)
Hairy gourd is a Chinese vegetable that resembles a cucumber with fine, white fuzz on the skin. This hairy gourd soup is light and simple and, like most Chinese soups, it allows the subtle flavour of the vegetable to come through. We make this soup all year round, because my mother grows the hairy gourd in her garden. This soup is normally made with a Chinese salted egg, but we recently discovered that this soup is even better when you use drippings from steamed lobster instead. Both variations have been provided in the recipe below. [On a side note, according to the teachings of Chinese medicine, this is a neutral vegetable (neither a ‘hot’ food nor a ‘cold’ food), so it is suitable for everyone.]
Chinese hairy gourd vegetable
Cooking with Alison 