Cooking with Nick : Artistic Lefties – Curried Shrimp

The dinner Nick made the other night was delicious.  He took some left-over grilled shrimp and made a wonderful curry that he served over Basmati rice. All served up on paper plates because we have no dishes due to kitchen reno.

Lovely Lefties : Penne Pasta with Salmon

For our main meal today, which rather than brunch was 'Lupper' (Linner?), Nick prepared a pasta dish using the leftover salmon from the bbq the other night. It had originally been marinated in tarragon and lime juice, so those flavours came through in the leftover dish.

To make it he sauteed shallots (sliced once or twice into lengthwise chunks) and small mushrooms, (left whole if they're bite size) in olive oil, then added a good scoop of the homemade tomato sauce he always has on the go, or you can use plain canned tomato sauce. To this he added a bit of salt and then at the very end he tossed in some chopped fresh oregano and basil. If you only have dried spices, cook the sauce for a bit longer. In a separate pan he fried some garlic slivers in melted butter (we like garlic so he used 3 cloves but use as much as you like, or none at all), then added the salmon, cut into chunks and cooked it just long enough to heat it up. In the meantime he had boiled the penne noodles (you can also used rigatoni, macaroni or rotini). To serve he tossed the noodles with the sauce, plated this and then topped each serving with some of the salmon. Grated Parmesan cheese, freshly ground pepper, and dried pepper flakes if you like it hot, were added over-top.

We are lucky to live within an easy walk to the shop of one of Toronto's best cake makers, Dufflet , where they make all kinds of delicious desserts, including a nicely sized 'cake-let' for smaller families. Nick had popped in during the day and picked up this little beauty, and we had a piece instead of an evening meal ... we like treats but try to eat them instead of a meal, rather than in addition to a meal ... lol, yes, we had cake for dinner!



 



 

What’s up in the Garden : June

Hi :) Hope everyone is enjoying summer so far! Here are some pictures of what came up in our garden during June.

[caption id="attachment_1761" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="Lilac and Fern"]

[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1762" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="First Rose and Sedum"]

Insects up for Inspection

Ok, I'm not sure at all what was up with the insects in our deck area today. I shot all these pictures within 10 minutes of each other, when I noticed a proliferation of winged creatures just sitting on my plants. Now, Nick had turned the compost in the bin earlier that day and maybe they were attracted to the smell (which is undetectable by human noses, btw). But if it were that wouldn't they have been swarming around the bin rather than sunning themselves on the leaves? Maybe it was the particular phase of the moon combined with the level of humidity in the air? Or the ...the ...well, I don't know what it was, but it was a true buggy phenomenon, for sure!

Barbeque after the rain

With a kitchen reno going on, we currently have no stove, and our kitchenware is all packed away except for a few dishes and two wine glasses which are promotional items with a company logo on them. So most days we are eating our lunch out and dining on sandwiches in the evening.  Or we are grilling our meal outdoors. Thank goodness we're having this done during the summer. It wasn't really planned that way, but we're glad about it, as the weather has been so nice and we've used our back patio as our living room (while all the furniture that was previously in the kitchen resides in our real living room.

But wait ... did I speak too soon about the weather? The plan for today's lunch was to cook outside, when a sudden thunder storm threatened to change our minds.  It began to rain just as we were starting up the coals, but it didn't stop us.  We hunkered under the awning as the rain pelted.  Just as quickly as it began, it cleared up, leaving the air nice and cool and smelling fresh.