Pizza making in Florence

Pizza has to be one of my favourite foods. Sometimes I like a simple pepperoni and cheese pie, other times I want the works loaded on. While we were in Florence, we wanted to do some kind of Italian cooking class. What better than homemade pizza?!

The Food & Wine Academy Florence offers numerous cooking classes, including the pizza and gelato class we did. Our instructor, Andreas, taught us how to make our own pizza dough, including the recipe for the dough and making sure to let it rise for half an hour.

 

For something so simple, with basic and natural ingredients, it was absolutely delicious. I topped mine with homemade tomato sauce, salami, onion, oregano and fresh basil, and it turned out brilliantly. I've made it since and loved it every time!

Dear Jamie, I Love You

So by now, if you've read past entries of my blog and especially the Transatlantic Tastes section, you must know that I'm a big fan of Jamie Oliver. I've been an admirer for quite a few years, always tuning into his different television series on the Food Network and buying a number of his books (I've lost count but I have at least five, I'm sure of it.) I even had the pleasure of meeting him five years ago while living in Toronto!

I've cooked my way through a number of his recipes and shared them with friends and family. Some of my favourites include a classic Tomato Soup, delicious Crunchy Garlic Chicken and my absolute favourite that I make on a regular basis, Cherry Tomato Sauce with Cheat's Fresh Pasta, the first recipe I tried out of one of Jamie's cook books and one that has remained in my recipe box for years.

Are you a fan of Jamie Oliver? Have you tried any of his recipes? Let me know in the comments below!

It's been a while...

Almost two years, to be exact. Thanks for stopping by, I appreciate it!

So long, old look.

You may notice things look a little less...pink around here. Yep. I decided that for the new year, I'd give this blog a new look. It's undergone a serious face lift. Out with the pink, in with the gold. (Though, I think there's still some pink lurking around somewhere. I can't get rid of all of it, it's pretty much in my blood.)

I've been really into gold lately - gold jewelry, gold nail polish, gold decorative pieces around my home...so it seemed somewhat fitting to infuse my online home with a bit of gold. I'm really liking the look, and I hope you like it too!

Hello, new look.

I took some time away from blogging the past couple of years due to my offline life getting busy and lots of changes happening. Now that things have levelled out a bit, I've decided that 2015 would be a good time to take it up again. New year, renewed blogging commitment. I'm not promising to blog every single day, or even every single week, but we'll see if I can pump out a few posts a month. Let's start slow, folks. I've gotta ease myself back into this. :)

I've also decided to change my blogging topics a bit - there will be less PR posts and more lifestyle/home decor/foodie posts. The Newfoundland food scene has really picked up in the past few years and I really enjoy going out and trying new restaurants, so look for some resto reviews in the coming months. As I said above, home decor is also something I'm going to be exploring on the blog. I'm still a big fan of Pinterest and have taken to trying some DIY pins I've found, so you can look forward to entries on some simple, DIY projects.

Thanks for sticking with me, and for coming back and checking things out. I hope you'll come back and see what I have in store for this little blog!

Transatlantic Tastes: Stuffed Bell Peppers

Transatlantic Tastes is back for another year and we're starting 2013 off right, with a deliciously healthy recipe for stuffed bell peppers! When N and I talked about which recipe we wanted to try for our first cooking session of the year, she came across the following tasty dish on Skinny Taste: Santa Fe Turkey Stuffed Peppers. Filled with lots of healthy ingredients like ground turkey, corn, tomato and onion, these peppers turned out to be quite the substantial meal.


The ingredient list was fairly simple enough, but as usual, I made a few changes. I didn't include the black beans (I'm not a huge fan of beans unless they're swimming in tomato sauce and slathered on toast) and I couldn't find pickled hot serrano peppers so I used fresh. (I expect it would've tasted pretty much the same though, pickled or fresh.) Regardless of the changes, however, the peppers were really, really good, and really, really filling.


The only real seasonings used in this recipe were cumin, garlic and cilantro, plus a little salt and pepper. Even so, it was very flavourful. Next time I try these peppers, I might season them with a bit of taco seasoning mix, to try a different flavour.

Once the filling was all fried up and the peppers were stuffed, I popped them in the oven in a baking dish with a little water at the bottom to prevent them from burning on the bottom.



About 10 minutes before they were done, I pulled them out and sprinkled some old cheddar and mozzarella cheese on top, and stuck them back in the oven under the broiler. The result? Delicious cheesey goodness.



My cooking partner's peppers were a success as well, and when we both ate a pepper each, we were stuffed! If you're looking for a delicious, healthy, relatively easy recipe, something different from the norm, then I suggest you try these peppers - you won't be disappointed!

2013, Here We Go!

Well, we're almost a month into 2013 and it's time to talk about Resolutions. Did you make any for this new year? I'll admit, I've been struggling a bit with trying to figure out what I'd like to accomplish during the next twelve months. Last year, I did a pretty good job with two out of my four resolutions: I read more, thanks to my Book Club, and I definitely cooked more, thanks to Transatlantic Tastes, but I didn't spend less money (judging from the numerous pairs of new shoes in my closet) and I didn't really worry less. (I knew those two would be tricky, especially the worrying part - Captain Over-Thinker, right here, folks).


Since I was so successful with my "more's" last year, my overall resolution is to Do More: Cooking, Reading, Whatever.


My cooking partner and I are planning on keeping up with our cooking, but we've decided to step it up a notch and branch out from the wonderful Jamie Oliver. (N is convinced we're now "advanced" chefs. We'll see how this goes.) As we're both pretty active on Pinterest, we've come across a lot of recipes that we're looking forward to trying out. So, one resolution: Cook More (Again).

As I said above, I read more in 2012, thanks to the Book Club I joined with some friends. As I now have a Kobo Vox, courtesy of my mother, I've been downloading books like they're going out of style, but that hasn't stopped me from actually purchasing physical books as well. What I'm currently reading: Forgotten, by Catherine McKenzie. I've read her other two books, Arranged and Spin and loved them both, so I'm looking forward to this one very much. Book Club has started up again this month so I'll also be reading Wild, by Cheryl Strayed in the next couple of days. So, my second resolution: Read More (Again).

My last resolution is to Do More in general. "Do more what?" you might ask? Do more whatever. Do more cardio at the gym, do more volunteering, do more exploring, do more blogging, whatever! Just do more. Use the time I have to do as much as possible. As I said in my 2012 Year in Review, quoting the Holstee Manifesto: "Do what you love and do it often." Well, I'm going to do more of what I love, and do it often.




I called 2013 my Break Out Year, and I think it really will be. Time to "Do More" for me, because I owe it to myself. So, with almost one month down, here we go. Here's to 2013! My Break Out Year, the best year yet!

I've got my game face on. Bring it, 2013!

Transatlantic Tastes - Homemade Tomato Soup and Deconstructed Grilled Cheese

N and I were Skyping a few weeks ago and decided we needed to get cooking again. Transatlantic Tastes has been on hiatus for too long and we missed it! So, last weekend, we "got together" (via good ol' Skype) to whip up a delicious meal.

As it's now autumn and the leaves are changing and the weather's growing cooler, there's nothing like a delicious bowl of soup to warm you right up. That's why, when we were trying to pick our next recipe to try, I thought we should do something completely different from what we've done in the past: soup.

There are lots of different kinds of soup, but I picked one that is a personal favourite of mine: good ol' classic tomato. Jamie says this recipe is really simple, and he's not kidding - it's so simple. With an ingredient list that's comprised of all foods that you'd most likely already have in your fridge or pantry, whipping up a pot of this scrumptious soup can make anyone feel like an accomplished chef.

Along with the soup, I decided to make a grilled cheese sandwich, because nothing goes better with tomato soup than grilled cheese. Though again, I didn't want to do the traditional grilled cheese with the two slices of manufactured white bread and the processed cheese slice. Instead, I bought some freshly baked Italian style ciabatta bread and some fancy aged cheddar cheese and broiled it in the oven. The result was amazingly tasty!

This soup was so good, I invited my parents and brother over for dinner the next day to enjoy it, and they cleaned the pot out! And I loved making it so much, I made it again later in the week with the rest of ingredients I had in the fridge, and it was even better the second time. I've now divided it up into separate containers and this delicious meal will be great to take with me to work over the next couple of weeks.



Seriously, do yourself a favour and go make this soup. You'll impress yourself and any of your culinary critics. And let me know how it turns out!

Revisiting the New Years Resolutions - Part One

At the beginning of 2012, I made a list of four things I wanted to try and do this year. Now that we're more than halfway through the year, (which I can hardly believe - WHERE did the time go?!) I thought it was be a good idea to check in with myself and see how I've been doing with keeping my resolutions. This might jog your memory as well, and make you revisit any resolutions you may have made earlier in the year too!

1. Learn to cook more: When 2012 began, a good friend of mine and I decided we wanted to try a bunch of new recipes that were relatively easy but still delicious to expand our palettes. Being a big Jamie Oliver fan, and having watched his television series where he teaches people who have never picked up a frying pan in their life how to cook, I thought his cookbook, Jamie's Food Revolution, would be a good place to start. We began our cooking series, Transatlantic Tastes (Since we live on opposite sides of the Atlantic for parts of the year, we cook "together" via Skype) and learned a few new recipes while catching up on what was new with each other.

Now, as I'd said in my original blog post, I figured that we wouldn't be able to cook every single week, because we're both busy people, and I knew life would get in the way. So while we haven't cooked as often as we would've liked, we did manage to do our cooking sessions a handful of times, and we are still trying to get back on track. Stay tuned for more recipes!

2. Spend less: This year, I wanted to spend less; time, money, whatever. I took a look at my upcoming year and all the things I knew would be costing me money over the next 12 months (like weddings, travel, etc.) and wrote down all of my bills and loans to pay off, and set up a budget. Thanks to online banking, a lot of these can be paid automatically at certain times of the month, and also thanks to the helpful bank teller at BMO, I've been able to work out a schedule and figure out how to pay off some of those loans, while still putting away money into my savings.

I've also been spending less time on things like watching television, but during the summer, that's not exactly hard - there's not a lot of good television happening (except for Mad Men and Suits, but the former finished early in the summer and the latter only takes up an hour of my time each week, so that's okay, right? Plus, who can resist the charming Harvey Specter? Not this girl.) I've been spending less time being lazy on the couch and much more time hitting the gym. If you have a membership, you might as well use it as much as possible, right?

Have I jogged your memory just yet? I'll be back soon with Part Two of Revisiting the New Years Resolutions!

Transatlantic Tastes - Crunchy Garlic Chicken

Before Transatlantic Tastes went on hiatus, we actually prepared a recipe that I hadn't blogged about. To be honest, I forgot about it, because my camera died right before our cooking session, and I couldn't take any pictures. But then, as luck would have it, I remembered that I'd snapped a few with the camera on my phone! 

So, here, after a few lost months, is another session of Transatlantic Tastes! Our recipe for the week: Crunchy Garlic Chicken.

I'd actually made this recipe before N and I started Transatlantic Tastes and it's been delicious every time. It's a bit time consuming, but the ingredients are pretty basic and the results are pretty tasty.   

                                       

The ingredients included:

- 1 clove of garlic

- 1 lemon

- 6 saltine crackers (I used Jacob's Cream Crackers)

- 2 tablespoons of butter

- 4 sprigs of fresh Italian parsley (I didn't have any fresh parsley, but I did have some freeze-dried Litehouse Parsley, which worked just as well!)

- sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

- 2 heaped tablespoons all-purpose flour

- 1 large egg

- 2 skinless chicken breast fillets

- olive oil

It did take some assembly, but once I got going, I got into a rhythm of flour, egg yolk, crust, and didn't mix up my hands...too much. They were still pretty coated in everything by the end of it though. Oh well - it's hard to cook something like this and not get your hands a bit messy.

Fingers crossed I've timed each side correctly...

The end result was, as I said before, delicious. And what I really like about it is that you can use full chicken breasts like I did below, or you can also cut up your chicken and make chicken nuggets, which, growing up (alright, fine, and still today) were my favourite food. 

Jamie explains this recipe step by step in his book and keeps everything simple as usual. If you're looking for a delicious chicken dish, why not give this one a try, and pair it with a simple salad?

Looking pretty good!

Until next time, happy cooking!

The Monthly Friday Night Supper Club

Last week, I had a couple of girlfriends over for dinner. Once a month, we get together on a Friday night and either try a new restaurant we haven't been to before here in St. John's, or one of us cooks a meal for the other two, while someone else brings a bottle of wine and the other a dessert. We call it our Monthly Friday Night Supper Club. (I like to name things. It's a thing.)

This past week, I made my favourite pasta dish for them. I've written about this dish before - infact, it was the first Transatlantic Tastes dish N and I did. This simple cherry tomato, balsamic vinegar pasta dish is so delicious and so easy, it's my go-to meal when I'm tired of stir fry and still want to have something nice and home cooked that's an upgrade from Kraft Dinner or Chef Boyardee Ravioli. (Don't get me wrong, I like a bitta KD every once in a while, but....come on. And as for Ravioli...well, it brings me back to my childhood. I eat it once in a blue moon.)

Anyway, this really is a simple dish, and it's great for a weeknight when you don't want to have to put a lot of effort into dinner, but on the flip side, if you want to have something tasty and impressive looking for a little dinner party, it works really well. You can find the recipe here in Jamie Oliver's cookbook, or you can take a look at my earlier Transatlantic Tastes post about it, so can try this dish for yourself!

I always have a good time when I get together with these two ladies - we met in university at different points; one I studied abroad with and the other I did several English and Religious Studies courses with, until the three of us were all in the same English grammar course. We formed a study group and from that came a real friendship. We lost touch over the last few years, with travelling and studying abroad in different places, but we reconnected this past January and have had a great time catching up. I've said it before numerous times, but one of my favourite things is catching up with an old friend and finding how what's been happening in their life.

I'm looking forward to our next Friday Night Supper Club, and I know the girls are as well. Here's to food and friendship!

Mmmmm, pasta. :)

The Return of Transatlantic Tastes!

Transatlantic Tastes has been on hiatus for a few months due to life getting busy for myself and my cooking partner, but a couple of Sundays ago, we managed to set aside a few hours to try a new dish and catch up on all our news. Our chosen recipe? "Parmesan Chicken Breasts with Crispy Posh Ham". 

This is a recipe that I've wanted to try for a long time, (like, for a couple of years long time) but for some reason, I just never did. To start up our cooking sessions again, I thought this would be a great dish to get us going!

If you've ever seen Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food television series on the Food Network, this dish is one that Jamie cooks for a group of men who have never cooked before in their lives, and I figure if they could do it, so can I. Sure, I didn't have Jamie Oliver standing next to me, giving me a demonstration before I started, but I figured N and I would do just fine.

The list of ingredients were pretty easy - some I had in my pantry already, others I had to make a trip to the grocery store for. I don't usually have things like fresh thyme or prosciutto on hand regularly. The ingredients included:

• 2 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 2 small skinless chicken breast fillets
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1 lemon
• 4 slices of prosciutto
• olive oil

Recipe? Check!

The ingredients all ready to go!

Chicken breast sprinkled with fresh thyme, freshly ground pepper and lemon zest

Let's see how this turns out...

Not the prettiest presentation, but it sure tasted good! N gives the thumbs up!

This was a fairly easy recipe to make, and it really was a delicious meal. The next time I try it, I'll be sure to flatten the chicken breasts a bit more, to give them a more even cook through. If this recipe is something you'd be interested in trying, I recommend you check out Jamie Oliver's website, or pick up his book, Jamie's Food Revolution.We'll be back again soon with more Transatlantic Tastes recipes!

Happiness Is...

...A spur of the moment trip, to a city where you lived for a few years on your own, away from close family and friends, left to create your own, new little life.

...A new book by a favourite author, just waiting to be opened and devoured.

...A coffee date with a good friend, catching up on all the events that have happened during months of separation.

...A fabulous meal, cooked by myself, full of nutritious, delicious ingredients.

...An evening spent curled up on the couch watching a favourite film.

What is happiness to you? :)

Transatlantic Tastes Week Two - Quick Salmon Tikka with Cucumber Yogurt

This week in our "Transatlantic Tastes" series, we decided to step up our game a bit, while still cooking something that was somewhat basic. We went Indian!

Anyone who has lived in England or is familiar with English food and culture will know that curry has changed the definition of British cuisine. It could be said that the curry has essentially become the national dish in modern day Britain. There are just as many curry shops as there are chip shops in cities and towns all over the nation.

While we didn't make a proper curry this week with rice and all the fixings, we did make a dish that is Indian to its core. I've listed the ingredients below to show you what makes up the recipe, and as you can see, most things you will be able to find in any supermarket. I was a little concerned that I wouldn't find the tandoori paste that Jamie calls for in the recipe, but as luck would have it, good ol' Dominion came through for me! It was even the brand he specified, Patak's!

Jamie Oliver's website hosts a large number of his recipes, including this week's, which you can find at the link below.

Quick Salmon Tikka with Cucumber Yogurt


Ingredients:
naan breads or flatbreads
a fresh red chile
a cucumber
a lemon
natural yogurt
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
fresh cilantro
2 salmon fillets, skin on, scaled, and bones removed
tandoori, or mild curry paste
olive oil

Ingredients at the ready...

Should've used Greek yogurt! Ah well, I know better for next time. :)

The salmon is sizzling away!

The finished product...a little charred, but still good!

Nancy's turned out pretty good as well!

This dish was a little challenging because to be perfectly honest, I'd never cooked salmon before. I'm not a big fish eater, and with my shellfish allergy, I generally stay away from all fishy foods. But, I wanted to give this recipe a try, because it involved two things I don't have very often - fish and Indian cuisine. It's always good to try something new! Jamie also says in the recipe that it's called "Quick Salmon Tikka..." because it should take about 17 minutes to throw together...well, it took us a bit longer than that, probably because we pause to talk so much and don't actually try to rush in our cooking. That's my excuse and I'm stickin' with it.

Like last week, I had to switch out some ingredients for others; I couldn't find a red chile pepper anywhere in St. John's (does anyone know where I can find chillies that look like this? Ignore the green! I want red!) so I had to use a jalapeno instead, as that was all they had at the grocery store. It didn't add the heat I think it was supposed to.

I like to think that my finished product looks exactly like Jamie's, however, I'm sadly mistaken. Jamie's salmon isn't as charred as mine turned out to be, but I expected I wouldn't cook it perfectly, since I'd never cooked salmon before, and didn't really know how. However, when the time came for the taste test, it still tasted pretty good!

You can try this recipe for yourself by picking up a copy of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution cookbook, or checking out his website, JamieOliver.com! Until next time, happy cooking!

Transatlantic Tastes Week One - Cherry Tomato Sauce with Cheat's Fresh Pasta

Welcome to "Transatlantic Tastes with Nancy and Elizabeth"! (We're still working on the name. It might also be called "Bangers and Mash: Transatlantic British Cooking with Elizabeth and Nancy" or "The Transatlantic British Cooking Class". We'll figure it out.)


For our first cooking adventure, Nancy and I decided to stick to a recipe that was fairly basic, since we were just starting out as chefs. We figured we shouldn't get too ahead of ourselves. So when flipping through our Jamie's Food Revolution cookbooks, we thought that a pasta recipe would be a good place to start. The following is so easy, but so delicious, that it's a great recipe for beginner chefs:


Cherry Tomato Sauce with Cheat's Fresh Pasta

Ingredients:
1 1/2 pints ripe grape or cherry tomatoes
4 cloves of garlic
a small bunch of fresh basil (While Nancy had fresh basil, I couldn't find any in the grocery stores, so I used Litehouse Freeze-Dried Basil, which worked perfectly!)
1 pound fresh lasagna, defrosted if frozen (we both changed this; she used penne and I used ditalini)
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
olive oil
2 pats of butter
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
4 ounces parmesan cheese


To prepare your pasta:
Cut the tomatoes into halves or quarters, depending on size. Peel and slice the garlic. Pick the basil leaves off the stalks and put them to one side. Finely chop the stalks. Cut the lasagna sheets into 3 or 4 long strips and put to one side. Grate the parmesan.


To cook your pasta:
Bring a large pan of salted water to a boil. Put a large frying pan over a medium heat and add a couple of lugs of olive oil and the garlic. Add the butter and let it melt. When the garlic starts to brown, add the tomatoes. Give everything a good stir, then add the basil stalks and half the leaves. Add the vinegar and season with salt and pepper. Drop your fresh pasta strips into the pan of boiling water and cook for 3 minutes. Drain in a colander over a large bowl, reserving some of the cooking water. Add the pasta to the frying pan with a splash of the cooking water and half the parmesan. Give it a good stir. Taste and add a little more salt and pepper if you think it needs it.


To serve your pasta:
Divide the pasta between your plates or bowls, or put the pan in the middle of the table and let everyone help themselves. Sprinkle over the rest of the parmesan and the basil leaves, tearing any larger ones up. This dish is lovely with a simple side salad!


The great thing about learning to cook is that even though you should try to stick to the recipe as much as possible, there is always room for substitutions and switches. I couldn't find fresh basil, so I substituted it for freeze-dried. Nancy used fresh penne instead of fresh lasagna, and I switched out the lasagna for little round pasta tubes called ditalini. To add more protein to the dish, I also cooked up some chicken and added that in, another way our final dishes differed.

Below are some of the photos I took of our cooking adventure:

First step: Make sure all the ingredients are ready to go!

Off to a good start...

Pasta and sauce bubbling away!

Nancy's hard at work on her dish too!

Add a little parmesan cheese to taste...

The (delicious) finished product!

Nancy presents her finished dish, while I display mine and the recipe!

All in all, week one was a success! It really is an easy dish to make, with Jamie laying out the recipe step by step. One recommendation I would have, however, is that with any recipe, you should read the entire thing through once before you begin, just so you have an idea of what to expect, and aren't taken by surprise by anything that's in there.

Don't forget, you can try these recipes too, by picking up Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution cookbook at a bookstore near you! Check back in a few days to see how Week Two of Transatlantic Tastes went!

Elizabeth and Nancy's Transatlantic Cooking Adventures!

In my first blog post of the year, I talked about 2012 being the Year of Elizabeth (Again), and the different resolutions I want to keep during that time. One of those resolutions was to learn to cook more.


Being a big fan of Jamie Oliver, I own a bunch of his cook books, like any proper fan would. One of my favourite books of his is  "Jamie's Food Revolution" - a collection of recipes for even the most basic of chefs (like myself.)


I sat down to lunch one day a few weeks ago with my good friend Nancy. She's currently working on her Ph.D at Oxford, and was about to fly back to England to begin a new term. I told her of my plan to work my way through a lot of the recipes in Jamie's book, and the more I talked about it, the more she liked my plan. The more she liked it, the more she wanted to do it herself, until finally, Nancy decided that she, too, wanted to try some of the recipes.



From our talking and planning, we agreed to have a weekly cooking date, where we would make the same recipe, me in Newfoundland and Nancy in Oxford. Of course, being the arts students we are, we can't do something like this and not document it. So I decided I would write about it on my blog, and Nancy would keep a photo journal.


 Our first cooking date was yesterday, so in the next few days, I'll be updating with a blog post, summarizing our adventure. Check back again soon!