Butternut Squash Risotto

Jamie Oliver's white fish wrapped in smoked bacon with lemon mayo and asparagus

During our most recent trip to Costco we decided to get a package of tilapia and do some experimenting. We stumbled upon this recipe in our Jamie Oliver cookbook. It took maybe 10 minutes to put together and was so delicious we nearly made it again the next night.

Ingredients:

Serves 4

4 pieces of white fish fillets
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary, chopped
Juice from 2 lemons and their zest
ground pepper
16 pieces of thinly sliced bacon
4 tablespoons of mayo
olive oil
2 bunches of asparagus, trimmed

1. Preheat oven to 400 F
2. Rub fillets with lemon zest, pepper, and fresh rosemary
3. Flatten 4 pieces of bacon on a board, slightly overlapping
4. Lay fish on top of bacon and roll the bacon around it tightly
5. In an oven-safe pan, cook the bacon-wrapped fillets for one minute
6. Place pan in oven and bake for 10-12 minutes, or until bacon is golden-brown.
   

For the lemon mayo:

1. While fish is in the oven, mix the lemon juice with mayo and add pepper.
2. Taste to ensure the lemon is strong enough.
3. Boil the asparagus with slightly salted water
4. Drizzle the lemon mayo onto the asparagus and serve with the fish.

Father's Day Brunch

For Father's Day, Geoff and I went up to his cottage for the weekend. To be honest, we had no idea what kind of breakfast foods he liked to eat so we gave his mom a list of foods that we like to make. She informed us that crepes would be good, so we just had to decide on what to put on them.

We quickly decided to make them as breakfast-y as possible and decided to add eggs and bacon. They were great. I knew they were going to be good but they turned out great.

We also made the dessert crepes again for a breakfast dessert. A kind of heavy but great meal!

Ingredients:
1 c cold water
1 c cold milk
4 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 c flour
4 tbsp melted butter
(add 2 tsp sugar for dessert crepes).

1. Cook a slice of bacon per crepe you plan on eating. Once done, pat with paper towel to remove excess grease then crumble into bits and set aside.
   
2. Mix all the ingredients together in a blender. I don't think it really matters in what order you add everything, since it's all just going to be mixed up together anyway. At this point, you're supposed to refrigerate the batter for two hours to let it settle down, but we never have and they always turn out great.
3. Heat up a frying pan to about medium high and put a little tiny bit of oil on it to stop the crepe from sticking.
   
4. Here's the tricky part, figuring out how much batter to use to make each crepe. Be prepared to screw the first few up. Pour a little in and quickly turn the pan about until the batter is completely covering the bottom of a pan. Let it cook until it looks stable enough, then flip.
5. Crack an egg into the center of the crepe and put some of the bacon bits on top. Fold up the edges to make a rough square. Place onto a baking sheet and then under the broiler for about 1 minute to let the rest of the egg cook.
6. If you are making dessert crepes as well, with the rest of the batter, add 2 tsp sugar, and cook as above. When done, add sliced fruit, some melted Nutella and a bit of whipped cream.
   

Fiddle Heads Attempt #3 plus CRASH Potatoes!

I'm not sure what part of this meal was better, the fiddle heads or the potatoes. Probably the potatoes... but then I do love bacon... and fiddle heads.

The potatoes were AWESOME. I've never had potatoes that tasted sooooo good. They were delicious. We first made them for Geoff's sister, Brother-in-law and their sometimes roommate. They were a hit.

This attempt at fiddle heads was our best yet. I think frying them up really made them taste much much better than just putting a sauce on top.

Ingredients for Crash Potatoes
12 or so baby red potatoes
1 tbsp olive oil
Coarse salt and pepper
garlic powder (or whatever spice you want to use)
sour cream for topping (optional)

Ingredients for fiddle heads
Fiddle heads
4 slices thick bacon

Potatoes

1. Boil the potatoes for about 15 minutes until fork tender.
   
2. Preheat oven to 400F.
   
3. Arrange potatoes on a baking sheet and smash them down once or twice so they're broken open and kind of flattened but still in one piece.
   
4. Drizzle the olive oil on top, sprinkle salt, pepper and garlic powder on top. Bake for 20 minutes, serve with sour cream on top.

Fiddle heads

1. Trim the ends and boil for 5 minutes to get the gross brown coating off.
   
2. Meanwhile, fry up the bacon until crispy and set aside onto paper towel to soak up some of the grease.
   
3. Drain about half of the bacon grease from the pan and fry the fiddle heads up in the remaining grease for about 5 minutes.
   
4. Crumble the bacon up with the fiddle heads and serve!

Stuffed Zucchini

This was soooooo good. I can't even start to explain to you how much I enjoyed making eating this. Somehow the zucchini even tasted meaty. It was great!

I could eat these every day. Geoff and I found this recipe and had to try it right away. Unfortunately, the night we decided to make it, we made WAY too much, and also made the goat cheese crustinis because my sister was coming to visit me and we were going out to dinner the next night.

Luckily the left overs kept pretty well in the fridge overnight and Geoff was able to bring them into work the next morning to share with everyone was there. He said everyone that the stuffed zucchini loved it.

Taken from http://www.kayotic.nl/blog/?p=1465

Ingredients:

2 zucchini

½ tomato, chopped

1 onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, chopped

2 tbsp sour cream

1 tsp lemon seasoning

4-5 slices bacon

Goat cheese

1 tbsp butter

1. Preheat oven to 400F
   
2. Cut the zucchini in half lengthwise and spoon out the centre so it looks kind of like a boat
   
3. Roughly chop up the zucchini that you just scooped out and mix together in a bowl with the sour cream, lemon seasoning and tomato
   
4. Melt butter in a frying pan; add onion and garlic, sauté until the onion starts to brown. Mix in with the sour cream, tomato and zucchini
   
5. Cook bacon until crispy. Crumble into the sour cream mixture. Spoon mixture into the zucchini boats. Crumble a little goat cheese on top
   
6. Bake for 20 minutes

Asparagus Soup

(Serves 2)

1 large bunch of asparagus, ends removed

4-6 slices bacon

Slivered almonds

1. Toast almonds in a frying pan, set aside
2. Cook up bacon however you want and cut into little pieces
3. Bring asparagus to boil, about 4-5 minutes
4. Put asparagus into the blender and blend. Add some of the water that you boiled the asparagus in to the blender until the soup is your preferred thickness. Here you can add whatever seasonings you want, but the bacon and almonds flavour the soup really well so you don’t need much.
5. Pour soup into bowls and add bacon and almonds