How To Fill Up A Weekend with Cooking…

Actually, the first dish I cooked for our dinner on Saturday involved no cooking whatsover.  I have to admit having a weak moment and buying some California tomatoes, was just missing something juicy to bite into other than my dill pickles!

But I jazzed up the tomatoes by quartering them and skewering to each quarter a slice of my very own duck breast prosciutto I made a few weeks ago from Cowichan Bay Farm duck breasts.  A little salt and pepper and a drizzle of Venturi-Schulze balsamic vinegar and I still had a pretty darn local appetizer.

From there it was on to dinner with a recipe from a Delicious magazine, the food mag of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.  Gee, why don't we have a magazine like that from the CBC? (don't get me started) I cut up a chicken, rubbed the pieces with olive oil and marinated them with a from-scratch garam masala spice mix, then into a 350 oven for about an hour and a quarter.   I usually follow a recipe to the letter the first time I try it, and that was a mistake.  I thought that this spice rub really needed some salt, and it really did when we tasted the chicken.  Ramona opined that it would have been better to stir the spices into yogurt and marinate and then grill, and I agree.  Maybe next time.  Still, she made up a refreshing cucumber raita and a pot of basmati rice to go with the chicken and it was a very good meal overall….especially when we got to the dessert.

From Lucy Waverman's column in the Globe and Mail on Saturday, Ramona (with a bit of help from me) put together this apple spice cake moistened with freshly made apple sauce. (thanks for the apples, Rob and Susan!) Raisins, cinnamon and a sprinkling of brown sugar on top really made this cake sing!

Sunday dinner followed an outing to a Slow Food Pasta Workshop. I had made a couple of different kinds of dough for a show and tell, but didn't use much of either my tomato pasta dough or my spicy chile dough.  So when we got home I rolled out the rest of the dough.  Pretty, isn't it?

We tucked into a bowl of each kind with a little grated parmigiano-reggiano and just a soupcon of white truffle oil.  Why not, it was the weekend. Dessert was the leftover cake, plus some of the leftover apple sauce and a dollop of vanilla yogurt.  Nothing leftover about the flavour!