Caramelized Onion Apricot Rice Pilaf

Caramelized Onion Apricot Rice Pilaf
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Today’s Caramelized Onion Apricot Rice Pilaf was conceived as an alternative Easter side to the usual scalloped potatoes. I have since seen the error of my ways and realized that this pilaf shouldn’t be in place of anything. This is a “Yes, and!” situation. You can have your pilaf and your potatoes and eat them too. But I will say that if you plan on serving lamb as your Easter main, I think this pilaf will complement its flavours a little more. I often think of scalloped potatoes as ham’s most natural companion. But why pit two stellar sides against each other when you don’t have to? 

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Tonnato Broad Beans with Shaved Fennel

Tonnato Broad Beans with Shaved Fennel and Toast
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Life has been busy lately.  Not looking for sympathy – I’m sure it’s been busy for you as well. The spring is just kind of like that. People are waking up, and it’s time to get down to business. And by “business,” I mean everything you neglected while in you were in your mid-winter stupor. Or maybe that’s just me. Lately, many of my meals have looked like these Tonnato Broad Beans with Shaved Fennel. Something I can make quickly, consume slowly over a week, and shovel into my mouth via toast while keeping one hand on my keyboard. I firmly believe we all need meals like these in our lives.

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Chicken Marbella Orzo Skillet

Chicken Marbella Orzo Skillet
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Today’s Chicken Marbella Orzo Skillet features juicy chicken thighs marinated in red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, and oregano. The chicken is cooked snuggled up with olives, prunes, and capers cooked on a bed of tender orzo. This recipe borrows heavily from the original Chicken Marbella from the book The Silver Palate. The Silver Palate is a 1980s cookbook that broke records by selling 250,000 copies in its first year. The book is by Sheila Lukens and Julee Rosso. At the time of Lukens’s death in 2009, The Silver Palate remained in the top 10 best-selling cookbooks of all time – selling more than 2.5 million copies. 

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Salmon and Spinach Fishcakes

Salmon and Spinach Fishcakes
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Today’s Salmon and Spinach Fishcakes may not look like a clean-out-the-fridge meal, but I promise you they were born out of necessity. An excess of food is a frequent occupational hazard in my work. Brands are often overly generous with their products, which is good when you’re doing rounds of recipe testing. But now and then, you nail the recipe in the first few attempts, and you’re left with more food than you can reasonably handle. This happened to me the other week, and the food in question was an almost complete side of beautiful Atlantic salmon. I know – what a hardship! This scenario would be far from a tragedy in a salmon-lovers home. I am a salmon-lover, but my partner, well, there are few things he dislikes more. 

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