Festive Fusilli

Have you ever felt a little guilty for loving mac and cheese so much? For sure Kraft dinner is a gift from the God for the poor. But maybe once your over 25 you start to think...wow! Should I really still be loving this shit? Aren't I a bit old to be eating this ghetto food for kids? If you've ever even for a moment had that thought then this recipe is your way of classing up your mac and cheese. How does mac and cheese get better maybe you're thinking...I'll tell you - Vodka. Doesn't vodka make everything better?

So this is how you make this. Make some moonblush tomatoes chop 'em up then soak them in vodka, a touch of sugar (I used agave) and a wee bit of salt. Then you cook your pasta, drain and and melt in mascarpone (just like mac and cheese) then you toss in your tomatoes and add some parsley and boom! you've got yourself some classy mac and cheese. It's like changing to champagne after spending years drinking 5 dollar bottles of wine.

I totally recommend this and it definitely has a christmas vibe to it's presentation so this would be perfect to take to a christmas time potluck. It's also super easy to make so full point all around. Treat yourself to this for sure!

Grilled Venison with Pink Gin Apple Sauce and Roast Pencil Leeks

Venison...I know I told you before that beef is my arch nemesis of meats but I'm modifying that statement. Beef is my arch enemy of the typical daily non-game meats. Venison is my ultimate nemesis. I can't even remember ever having eaten a piece of venison but there is a chance my parents fed this to me when I was a kid telling me it was beef. But I can say I have never knowingly eaten venison. Let me put it in a Star Wars context for you...just because I like Star Wars...If I were Princess Leia, then beef would be Jaba the Hut and Venison would be Darth Vader. So maybe you think 'How can you hate venison so much if you've never even tried it?'. And you've got a point...but when the mere thought of putting that food in your mouth causes you to have an instant stomach cramp and you know you would just be chewing and gagging, chewing and gagging - like those people eating testicles and intestines on survivor - you really don't even want to put it in your mouth because you know you won't be able to swallow it. So venison works on me like Lord Vader with that no-name henchmen. Without even touching me I am crushed and killed.
However, Husband is perfectly happy to dine on Bambi. So I was lucky to get a small piece of venison from my sister to make this one just for hubby. I started with marinating the meat. I let the meat defrost overnight and then marinated it all day. Next I started on the leeks. I wasn't able to get pencil leeks so I just rolled with the regular leeks. Once I had the leeks prepped for the oven I then pre-heated the oven and started on the apple gin sauce. Once I got this to the point where you just cover it an let it cook I put the leeks in the oven. After 20 minutes my leeks were done and the apples were ready for the sieve. I left the leeks in the turned off oven to keep warm and covered the sauce to keep it warm. Then I put the venison in my scorching pan and tried to cook to medium well (but I'm not good at that...). Once I had some good grill marks I plated the dish and called Husband to dinner. Husband liked this meal but he said it wasn't amazing. He gives this a solid 7 out of 10. So not too shabby.

I had a plate of the leeks and I put some of the apple gin sauce on the leeks. They were pretty decent. Out of all 3 parts of this meal the Pink Gin Apple Sauce is the best. I liked it so much I drank a couple spoon fulls on it's own..then I realized that was a little gross and pathetic so I stopped. But pathetic or not it was good!

All in all if you're making some venison (for god knows what reason) I think you may want to try the gin sauce. The leeks I'd pass on, unless you have an affinity for leeks of course.

Margarita Ice Cream

I love Tequila...I mean LOVE tequila. So I was very excited about the possibilities of this being my new favourite dessert. I was terribly let down though. First off this is expensive to make. I don't know what you pay for double cream in the UK but in Canada it's 7 dollars for about 1 cup. You're supposed to have nearly 4 cups for this so I made about a half recipe of this.

What you do is you mix lime juice, tequila (yay!), triple sec, and icing sugar with your double cream. Then you freeze it. Then you wait.

Now while you're waiting you might consider exercising for the entire 6 hours because double cream is one step away from being pure lard. Speaking of which I'll take this time to tell you the tale of when my uncle thought he'd play a trick on my grandpa. My grandpa used to like to eat vanilla ice cream and one day gramps says to my uncle "go get me a bowl of ice cream son" and my practical jokster uncle gets himself a bright idea and takes out to my grandpa a bowl of lard. But it looks like ice cream because he scooped it out with the ice cream scoop. What's crazy is my grandpa ate the whole damn bowl and never knew that it wasn't ice cream!!! True story.

What's more disturbing is that this is how this ice cream made me feel when I was eating it.

This recipe was just too much for me. It's so rich and fatty. I could feel my colon swelling shut as I was eating it. I couldn't eat my 2 scoops I'd portioned out. I ate one and then dumped the other. If you do feel the need to make this. I think the only way this would be tolerable to your intestines is if you served just one tiny scoop of this on a brownie or something. I'm not going to recommend this to you..but i wouldn't deter you from it either. If you're interested give it a shot but I recommend very small portions for this.

Wasabi Lime Dressing

Whooooooaaaaa momma!!! Eat this if you have a cold. Ai-yai-ai! This will definitely add some kick to your salad. So easy to make, just like the other 2 dressings she's got. This makes about half the amount of dressing of the other 2 but that's because you need just a little. I'm the kind of person who likes a good healthy portion of dressing on my salad. But I had to keep a light hand with this. Right after I made it I dipped a slice of cucumber into the dressing for a taste test and my head nearly popped off my shoulders. It was from this experience I wisely chose to hold back on the dressing for the salad.

The whole time I ate my salad I'd get these infrequent nasal cleansing that were intense. But the flavour was good enough that I kept going back for more. If you can't handle spicy keep well back of this recipe but if you are looking for something a little different then make sure you try this!!!

Sake Sea Bass and Wilted Greens

This recipe I was excited about...then lost my excitement...but then when I ate it I was brought back to my original excitement. The whole thing started with a trip to the farmer's market. I went there this morning to get an organic fair trade cappuccino. But then that stand wasn't set up when I got there. So I decided to peruse the veggies. I had in the back of my mind that I would make this recipe next and I thought the farmer's market would be the perfect place to get me some greens to wilt. The swiss chard looked really good at one of the stands and I hadn't had swiss chard since I was young and I decide this might be a good time to try it again.

So that was how I decided to make this tonight. I had to pick up the fish on the way home too. Big surprise that Metro didn't sell fresh Sea Bass. I picked up a fillet of Snapper in it's place. Preparation of this meal is really simple. This recipe does make 4 servings and I was only cooking for one tonight so I didn't make a whole fish like Nigella suggests. I used a single serving fillet and therefore reduced the cooking time dramatically. For the whole fish it's 25 minutes. I cooked my piece for 10 minutes.

Then for the wilted greens I washed the chard and chopped it down to more manageable pieces and sauteed them in the anchovy and garlic oil. I also decided kinda last minute to toss in some marinated artichoke hearts too. The end result was some perfectly cooked and seasoned fish and I've become a fan of swiss chard. Which is great because it's soooo healthy for you. I'm feeling pretty good about this recipe because it is so fantastically healthy and delicious meal!

Warm Potato Salad

Potato salad is such a summer staple. When you think summer BBQ or summer picnic I bet potato salad is one of the first 5 foods you think of. I've gotta tell you I've never had a warm potato salad before so this was a nice change. The thing that I really liked about this one was that it's not a mayonnaise dressing. This salad has a vinegary-mustard dressing which i found very pleasing. I had a sous-chef help me make this tonight...my 1.5 year old niece. so I'm thinking that if she can make this you should be able to also.

I recommend this one. Give it a try at your next BBQ.

Chocolate Mint Cookies

Nigella may want to reconsider naming these Diabetic Coma Cookies. OMFG I felt a cavity forming when I bit in. These are WAY too chocolaty and WAY too sweet for me. Husband will have his work cut out for him eating these. I'm sure it's a task he's up to though...he is cookie monster afterall. He's been begging me to make these all night. I promised him yesterday that I would make him cookies tonight and I think he might have divorced me if I didn't come through. He seemed very nervous when after dinner I sat on the couch to relax a bit (I do work all day)but he looks nervously about and says "You're gonna make those cookies right???" I reassured him that I was going to make them...so there was no getting out of it. This man takes cookies more seriously than our wedding vows I think.

Amazingly enough though Husband is now in a canundrum of his own making. This man never eats lunch so he comes home famished then shovels food in his mouth (think cookie monster style) and 15 seconds after his orgy of eating looks at me and says "uggggg I'm soooo full" to which every night I say "So don't eat so much..or try eating lunch so you're not so starved". This is our daily routine. Now he's stuffed himself so full that when I say the cookies are ready he says to me "I can't eat a cookie. If I do I'll either puke or have a heart attack." Ah, well there's always tomorrow's binge for them to be had. But I won't be eating anymore that's for sure. Chocoholics may want to add this to their list of will do's. And I'm pretty sure that when cookie monster comes home from work tomorrow he'll suck back a few of these no problem.