Jul 3
As with all ragùs, the flavour of this dish is enhanced by making it in advance and it also freezes well. The recipe here is basically the same as Nancy Silverton’s in The Mozza Cookbook except that I omitted the duck liver and did not finish the dish with the added 6T. of finishing-quality olive oil that she suggests.
With our local BC Spot Prawn season in full swing (May-June), I am testing some new recipes and going back to past favourites. To me, these prawns taste sweeter and cleaner than the tiger prawns that come from faraway places, and since they are also available frozen off-season, they are my choice year round. If you have the fortitude to buy them alive and still wiggling, you will probably want to sauté them quickly, still with shells and heads on, or throw them on the barbecue. Key word here is ‘quickly’ or they will be dry and less appetizing. Then peel them and dip them in a flavoured butter. It is more of a chore to peel the just-off-the-boat prawns but if you are cooking them the day after they are caught, or if they have been frozen and the shells come off more easily, this pasta dish would be a fine choice. Read more
I have recently discovered, thanks to 8ateateight.com, a melt-in-your-mouth, simple-to-prepare Italian ricotta gnocchi recipe that produces gnocchi much lighter than their potato cousins. You can make them up in 10 minutes, freeze them, then cook them to order. Make sure you have a good quality ricotta cheese, like the one photographed below, which can be purchased at Les Amis du Fromage. I served them with tomato sauce (recipe following) or you can sauté them in butter and sage, or toss them with pesto, or meat sauce, or… Read more
I can’t remember a time when food was not an important part of my day. From an early age, I observed and participated in the kitchens of my mother and two grandmothers. Read More...
Nourishing Vancouver 