It’s not often I see fresh fruits in cookies. Usually, it’s of the dried variety: raisins, apricots, cherries, cranberries. So when I saw One Bowl White Chocolate Macadamia Raspberry Cookies on Cookie Madness, I was greatly tempted and inspired.

I made them a few weeks ago, leaving out the macadamia nuts since the nut store near my house was out of them. Next time, I’ll be sure to add them, as I’m betting they give the cookies a great other texture, crunchy and different.

However, even without them, these cookies are a pretty tasty something! The white chocolate blends perfectly with fresh raspberries. The raspberries cut a bit of the sweetness of these, but not much – these are almost insanely sweet, rich and decadent cookies. They’re certainly not as pretty as those posted on Cookie Madness (I believe my raspberries were a bit too ripe, and ended up turning to delicious juicy mush), but they are one awesome cookie!

White Chocolate Raspberry Cookies
adapted from Cookie Madness
Makes 2 dozen

8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick), softened
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoons heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt plus an extra 1/8 tsp
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1 1/3 cups flour
2/3 cup lightly salted macadamia nuts, barely chopped
4-5 ounces white chocolate, cut into chunks (I used Lindt)
1/2 cup (more or less) fresh raspberries , washed and dried

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

2. Cream butter and both sugars with an electric mixer. Beat in eggs, vanilla and cream, then beat in baking soda, salt and cornstarch. Add flour and stir just until blended. Stir in nuts and white chocolate. Drop dough by rounded tablespoons onto a parchment lined baking sheets.

3. Carefully slice raspberries into halves or quarters – this will vary, depending on how much raspberry you want in your cookies and how large your raspberries are. Gently press pieces of raspberry in cookie dough rounds

4. Bake for 12-13 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

When I saw Closet Cooking’s spanakopita recipe a while back, I became to determined to make it myself. Spinach pie is probably in my top 10 of favourite foods; I love feta, and combined with butter, dill and fresh spinach, well, I’m pretty much in heaven.

I remember having some great spinach pie in Greece, and my aunt makes one of the best version of spanakopita I’ve had. I’d love a recipe that is as good as either of those, and this one comes pretty close. I made some personal changes to the recipe listed on Closet Cooking, such as adding more feta to less spinach, using and using sweet red onion instead of green onions. So here’s my version of a tasty, flaky, buttery spinach pie! It really is quite nice, with little tangy punches of feta, dill overtones, fresh spinach and a lot of butter.

Spanakopita: Greek Spinach Pie
Adapted from Closet Cooking
Makes one 8×8 pan

3/4 pound spinach
7 ounces crumbled feta cheese
1/4 cup chopped fresh dill (Next time, I would add even more than this)
1/2 large red onion, finely chopped
1 egg, lightly beaten
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup butter
phyllo dough (thawed over night in the fridge)

1. Steam the spinach until it wilts. Run the spinach under cold water to stop the cooking process. Squeeze the spinach and drain.

2. Sautee the chopped red onion in a tablespoon of butter. Put aside.

3. Mix the spinach, crumbled feta, dill, onion, egg, salt and pepper in a large bowl.

4. Brush the bottom of an 8×8 inch baking dish with butter.

5. Brush the top of a sheet of phyllo dough with butter and place it in the pan.

7. Repeat placing phyllo on top, then buttering, until you have 6-8 layers, depending on how thick you want the crust.

8. Place the spinach mixture on top of the phyllo dough.

9. Brush the top of a sheet of phyllo dough with butter
and place it on the spinach. Repeat until you have 6-8 layers depending on how thick you want the crust.

10. Bake in a preheated 350F oven until golden brown on top, about 30-50 minutes.

I found it was quite nice straight out of the oven, but as it cooled on the counter, the flavours mellowed a little and it tasted better and better as time went on.

It’s been so long since we’ve updated this site, but with good reason: we have recently returned from our 3-week vacation in Hawaii! We were originally going to spend 2 weeks in Hawaii and then 1 week driving the California coast. That all changed once we actually got to Hawaii and realized there was no way we were going to leave it, so we changed our flight and spent that last week right where we were.

I’ll post some of our Hawaiian adventures, culinary and not, soon. But first, we did manage to spend 2 days in San Francisco and ate ourselves silly, so here’s some of those highlights.

Our plane landed there very, very early – around 6:30am. We took a taxi from the airport to our hostel, and thankfully, were able to leave our bags there. We wandered out into the early, gray, rainy, windy, freezing morning – quite the shock for two people who had just spent 3 weeks in the blazing sun. We were still wearing shorts and sandals, and got so cold that eventually we had to break down and buy sweaters.

We walked through Chinatown (which was almost all still closed), and managed to find some great dim sum snacks. Also saw some buckets of live frogs and turtles in some of the markets – definitely a little disturbing.

Our spirits brightened after walking towards Fisherman’s Wharf and finding a candy store with mounds of saltwater taffy in every flavour anyone could ever want.

We came across piles of sea lions barking at the next wharf, and learned it’s actually a sea lion hospital. It was noisy, and pretty adorable.

Soon after came what I have since dubbed Crab Alley. Restaurants, stands, carts…everyone was selling crabs and crab products. Sandwiches! Chowders! Whole crabs! We settled on sharing a crab sandwich, overflowing with crabmeat.

One would think that shrimp dumplings, taffy and crab sandwiches would be enough for breakfast, but we had to stop at the Ghirardelli store for a cup full of what I assume was just straight-up melted dark chocolate. Later on in the trip we returned for another cup, this time mixed with some coffee and Bailey’s, topped with whipped cream.

We ended the day (after a long walk and some beers on Haight-Ashbury) (and then some sushi in Japantown) with a dinner of salt-and-pepper crab in Chinatown.

The next day was a lot sunnier, so we took full advantage and set out on our rented scooter early. Chinatown and more dim sum was the first stop.

Afterwards, we scooted over to Market street so we could walk towards Off the Grid, a gathering place for food trucks to stop and sell their products. It can be found in a different location in SF depending on the day of the week. There were actually a lot less food trucks there than I had expected, but it was also a Tuesday. I imagine the Saturday or Sunday meeting spot must be much busier.

We ended up chosing to get a Filipino burrito from Senor Sisig – it was packed with rice, tomatoes, beans, sweet pork and a fried egg. While the rice was a bit underseasoned, the burrito as a whole was something I would eat again and again, even if it was too big and filling for the two of us to finish.

We also checked out a second food truck near Fisherman’s Wharf, as we weren’t about to leave California without having a fish taco. I found the sauce to be a bit too spicy for the (fried) fish, but overall – a great taco.

The last (mostly…getting back home was a whole other ordeal that landed us in the airport for 14 hours the next day, but we won’t talk about any of that food) meal we enjoyed there was some takeout from Memphis Minnie’s. We got a taster plate that included the prok ribs, the beef ribs, some pulled pork, a corn muffin, macaroni and cheese, greens and baked beans. We took this feast towards the bay, where we sat in the windy evening while someone played Stairway to Heaven over and over and over.

This was definitely a whirlwind tour of the city, and I’m happy we ended up renting a scooter, as we wouldn’t have been able to get to all the places we did otherwise. I tried to keep this mostly food-related, but here’s a few more photos from our 2 days in San Francisco:

Soli & The little yellow scoot

Golden Gate Bridge

Trolleys

Haight-Ashbury

Off Haight Street

Soli & Postcard Row

Chinatown

I have never tasted clafouti, much less make it myself. But with all the photos I see, and all the great things people always say about clafouti, I figured it must be great stuff…so of course, I eventually gave it a try.

Now, as I said, I have never had clafouti, so I didn’t know what to expect, and I’m still not sure if the dessert sitting in my fridge is supposed to taste the way it tastes. It is unbelievably, intolerable eggy. It’s like eating an omelet with cherries stuck in it. Not good!

It looks really nice, but tastes so wrong. All you clafouti-eaters and bakers out there – is it supposed to be so eggy? I thought it was supposed to be similar to a pancake? Are there two types of clafouti recipes, the eggy one for those who like that kinda thing, and the pancake ones?

I include the recipe so that any people in the know can tell me if they use a drastically different one that yields a different clafouti. Or if eggy is your type of dessert, then this could be the recipe for you.

At any rate, any help/guidance someone can give me about clafouti and how this turned out so wrong (I think?), would be sooo appreciated!

Black Cherry Clafouti
The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Fruit

2 tbsp butter, for greasing
2 cups cherries, pitted
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup icing sugar, plus extra for dusting
4 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
2 tbsp Kirsch (I used dark rum)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Use the butter to thickly grease a 5 cup gratin dish (I used a 9″ glass pie plate).

2. Scatter the cherries over the base.

3. Sift the flour and icing sugar together into a large mixing bowl and gradually whisk in the eggs until the mixture is smooth. Whisk in the milk until blended, then stir in the Kirsch.

4. Pour the batter carefully over the cherries, then bake for 35 – 45 minutes or until just set and lightly golden.

5. Allow the pudding to cool for about 15 minutes. Dust liberally with icing sugar just before serving.

I fully intended to participate in this week’s Tuesdays With Dorie‘s recipe: Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream. However, I didn’t get it done it time, so I’m posting quite late. But it still counts!

Quebec grows some pretty fantastic blueberries, and they’re right in season now. Tiny, and bursting with flavour, these tiny berries are the ultimate in flavour. Of course I would want to make an ice cream out of them.

And what an ice cream it is. It reminds me of a frozen yogurt, but it still retains a wonderful creaminess. The sour cream is fantastic, and takes away from the over-sweetness that so many ice creams carry with them (though being an ice cream addict, I have no problem with any ice cream, ever, overly sweet or not). It didn’t taste like cheesecake to me, but a yogurt, and it was utterly fantastic. Little blueberry bits trapped in a blueberry-flavoured cream? Yes, please!

Even though I didn’t post on time, I will stay true to TWD fashion; find the recipe here. For me, the recipe was perfect; I wouldn’t change the amounts given. It’s definitely worth making, and next time, I’m going to drizzle some melted chocolate in the mix. Chocolate makes everything better, after all.

I love pesto. To me, there aren’t many better flavour combinations than garlic and basil…add some pine nuts and Parmesan cheese, and it’s even better….not to mention sooo easy to make.

This pasta sauce is a nice variation from the regular pesto we all know and love. I took some liberties with the original recipe. After roasting orange, yellow and red peppers and removing the skins, I added more red peppers to the sauce than what was asked for, as well as adding roasted mushrooms, pine nuts and Parmesan. It has the same flavour as pesto, with the mushrooms and peppers adding an extra oomph to it.

Roasted Pepper & Mushroom Pesto
adapted from Eat Shrink and Be Merry
Makes 8 servings

3 large red bell peppers
2 large yellow bell pepper
2 large orange bell pepper
1 pound mushrooms
3 cups packed fresh basil leaves
3 tablespoons pine nuts
5 tablespoons olive oil (I added more – add until it reaches your desired texture)
5 garlic cloves
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, divided
1 teaspoon salt
500 grams pasta (I used fettucini)
Freshly ground black pepper

1. Preheat broiler. Halve red, yellow and orange peppers. Remove stems and seeds. Place peppers cut-side down on non-stick baking sheet or glass baking dish. Broil until blistered and charred. Transfer to a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let stand for 15 minutes. Peel off skins. Set four of the red pepper halves aside. Cut remaining peppers into thin strips. Set aside.

2. Roast the mushrooms.

2. In food processor, puree reserved red peppers halves, basil, olive oil, garlic, 1/4 cup Parmesan, pine nuts, mushrooms and salt (I added the salt and olive oil slowly, to taste) until smooth.

3. Cook pasta according to package direction until tender but firm. Drain and return to pot. Add pepper strips and pesto. Toss to combine. Serve sprinkled with the reserved Parmesan and freshly ground pepper.

For dessert, chocolate-pecan pie with a scoop of ice cream. A nice summer meal.