Apple, endives and mint salad

Well, even though it’s almost the end of August already (sighhhhhhh), I’m still enjoying my summer salads and not quite ready to dive into beef stews and chicken roasts just yet. Here is a great salad that I had the pleasure to taste in a nice trendy hang out in Montreal called Laïka. People usually go to this venue for drinks but the food is decent and the prices are reasonable.

The combination of the apples, the endives and the mint make this salad fresh and tasty. perfect for a BBQ dish, served on its own our next to a tasty piece of white meat fish like Tilapia.

Ingredients

3 endives sliced thinly

1 1/2 apples sliced thinly

25 fresh mint leaves

7 fresh basil leaves

juice of 1/2 a lemon

Vinaigrette

4 tablespoons of olive oil

2 tablespoons of rice vinegar

1 tablespoon of maple syrup (or honey)

salt and pepper

Preparation

Mix all the ingredients together!

Note: You could do the vinaigrette first and add it to the salad.

Add the lemon juice to the apples quickly so they don’t become brown.

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The lunch box project

Well today was a happy day because the wonderful and creative illustrator Lisa Orgler drew my Watermelon Martini recipe for her lunch box project. How amazing is that? And the crazy thing about it is that we’ve never actually met! But thanks to the site Foodbuzz our worlds collided and here we are today. Fascinating how things can get accomplished in the land of virtual foodies.

Needless to say that her project is quite an interesting one. Her goal?  To make food paintings out of monthly themes. This month’s theme? “Your Food, My Drawings”, hence the watermelon martini…

Last months theme was “Gnome made treats“.

When Lisa initially started in 2009, she made a painting everyday! But nowadays she enjoys more working with themes and palettes. Lisa paints on playing cards, but she also makes foodie calendars, recipe cards and has tons of cool stuff to sell on ETSY. Honestly, if I didn’t restrain myself, I think that half my house would be decorated with her awesome works of art 🙂

If you’re a blogger and would like to submit your recipes for her to draw read her submission guidelines here.

I have some blueberry muffins to tend to…

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Peanut Butter and jelly cookies

I LOOOOOOOVE peanut butter cookies! They are definitely one of my favorite kinds and I have very fond memories of baking them with my mother when I was little. I remember taking them out from the oven and putting them on news paper for them to cool off. So when I saw Giada De Laurentis making them on her show, I was glued to the tv. They simply looked delicious, I had to make them at once! So after obsessing over the recipe for about a week, I finally gathered up all the ingredients and made a batch. To my delight, they were moist and delicious! The only problem was that after making them, I couldn’t stop eating them!

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 3/4 cup creamy peanut butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 packed cup light brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup blackberry jam or blueberry or raspberry (whatever you like!)

Preparation

1- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.

2- In a medium bowl, stir together the flour and the baking soda.

3- Beat the butter, peanut butter, sugar, light brown sugar, egg and vanilla extract and mix until blended. Gradually add the flour mixture until incorporated.

4- Form the dough into small balls.

5- Using the thin end of a wooden spoon, make a hole in the center of each ball of dough, about 1/2 to 3/4-inch deep. Spoon 1 teaspoon of jam into each hole. Bake for 11 to 14 minutes until the dough has spread and the surface of the cookies are crackled. My magic number was 12 minutes!

Cool down cookies and serve!

Note: I put less sugar than in the original recipe and didn’t  add any cocoa powder as I felt that the peanut and jam combo was already plenty…

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Orange, sage & ginger butter sauce!

I don’t think that I’ve eaten as much lobster as I have this summer! For some strange reason, everybody keeps bringing them to my house (lucky me!) in hopes that I’ll prepare them a good meal. Or maybe they’re just feeling festive…

The fun thing about cooking, is that you can always get better at it! The more you cook, the more you understand which ingredients go well with one another, and then it becomes easy to improvise. So here I was, in my kitchen and everybody was at the  table asking me to make a garlic and butter sauce, the typical sauce you usually eat with lobster. But I was looking for something different and boy did I find it! The orange and the sage really blend perfectly with the lobster, not overpowering the taste, but softly accompanying it. Your guests will only be asking for more!

Ingredients:

1/4 cup of Butter

Sage (3-4 leafs)

1-2 tablespoons of orange juice ( I used orange-mango and it was quite delicious!)

1 teaspoon of chopped ginger (optional)

Preparation

In a sauce pan, heat the ginger and the butter together. Once the butter is melted add the orange juice and the sage.

And there you have it! Just make sure you serve the sauce while it’s hot!

Ps: I also discovered this summer that pre-cooked lobster was pretty good. You just have to boil them for about 3 minutes before serving. They tasted great!

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