I was looking for a traditional Scandinavian spice cookie recipe to test out my new Moomin cookie cutters. I found a ‘traditional’ recipe over at Delicious Days.

This was sort of a disaster. My dough was too wet and I only got one good Moomin cookie before the cookie cutter was all bunged up in dough. Ugh. The rest had to settle being lowly circles and hearts.

Worst of all.. they weren’t even that spicy. I guess I like a bit more zing and zap than the Swedes.

We’re still eating them… but it’s not a keeper recipe.

I was looking for some recipes that use Meyer lemons and happily found this risotto recipe over at 101 Cookbooks.  I swayed a little from Heidi’s version - I used pot barley instead of pearl barley and I omitted the sour cream (sounded too weird).    In the end, I think it turned out pretty well.

I didn’t love it as much as my barley mushroom risotto from last week, but it got a solid “meh, it’s pretty good”.  Maybe it would have been better with the sour cream, but when you’ve just stirred barley for an hour, why risk ruining it?

I wish I had a pressure cooker to cook the barley faster since it takes over an hour to cook the darn stuff.  It’s worth it though.   It is.  Just use mushrooms and not lemons.

You may wish to refresh your memory of the crème brulée by reading the original post and Challenger #1.
Up to bat in our second challenge is the crème brulée from the French Baker / Benny’s Bistro (ou le Boulangerie Français.. mais oui!) in the Byward Market.

We appreciated the COPIOUS amounts of vanilla bean that this brulée brought to the table. Look at it all - vanilla bean speck city! With no fou-fou side dishes, this boastful little brulée stood up tall in its icing sugar shower and said, “Mais oui, mangez-moi! Je n’ai pas besoin de porter un béret pour être français et impressionnant.” (Translation: Eat me! I don’t have to wear a beret to be French and awesome.)

Quel attitude!

The brulée was rich, creamy and had a light crispy top (just how I like it). Also - the wait staff didn’t find it all strange when we walked into Benny’s Bistro asking if they served crème brulée. Not one single Amelie-esque lash batted at this question. Dessert in the afternoon? How civilised! Mais oui!

Boyfriendly rating: 4/5.

We tried to simplify our grocery shopping after one too many groggy Sundays asking ourselves “what groceries do we need this week”? We tried just keeping scrap paper on the fridge to jot down items as we ran out, but we’d always forget something. Like always. For realsies.

So, I started typing up a Master Grocery List (lists are awesome) to keep on the fridge. Run out of milk? Just tick the box. Cat needs food (as if he hasn’t reminded you every.single.hour. that his reserve box of food is getting dangerously low)? Tick the box.

I divided the list into items that we get at the grocery store and ones that we buy in bulk, but feel free to rearrange as you see fit.

Download the Master Grocery List

This recipe was a happy accident. As I was making pizza the other night, I made a mental list of the toppings to use from the veggie basket: cherry tomatoes, mushrooms and onion. Except, when push came to shove (ie. cheese grating) I had completely forgotten about the mushrooms. <silence> Fudge.

Sidebar: We were watching Bridget Jones’s Diary on CBC last night and they muted out the swear words. It felt so wrong.

And we’re back. Ok, so the pizza turned out just fine sans fungi, but we were now left with a real mishmash of vegetables in our fridge. Feeling a bit on the cheap side after the holidays, I didn’t feel like taking these mushrooms to Chef City so I set them on the fast track to Affordableville.

Enter barley.

For less than $2 a bag, we have enough barley to fulfill our bran requirements for months to come. I chose pot barley because it’s less refined than pearl barley. Sure, you have to cook it a scooch longer, but you get a bit more bran. Sweet. God, my 30th birthday is speeding towards me faster than I can say riboflavin.

Mushroom and pot barley risotto

• 5-ish cups of chicken stock
• Dash of sherry (1/8 cup)
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 cup barley
• 1 yellow onion - diced
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 package of mushrooms
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/4-ish cup of Parmesan

Method:

1. Melt butter in a large pot over medium heat.  Add onion, thyme and bay leaves.
2. When the onion is soft, stir in barley and add 2 cups of stock.  Cover and simmer until most of the liquid is absorbed.
3. In a separate pan (I used a non stick fry pan) add the olive oil, garlic and sliced mushrooms.   Cook for 3-ish minutes until the mushrooms are soft… or however soft you like your mushrooms.
4. In the barley pot, keep adding the stock 1/2 cup at a time and stirring.  I found I used about 5 cups of stock in all.  I should have used a bit more since my barley was a bit chewy when served.
5. Remove the bay leaves and add the mushroom mixture to the barley.
6. Stir in parmesan.

Our first challenger for Ottawa’s Best Crème brulée hails from the Social on Sussex Street. It’s a generous serving and featured vanilla gelato and an orange-fennel confit.

My tasting partner and full-time boy, considered this dessert “too eggy.” I could see where he was coming from, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I didn’t care for the thick crispy sugar crust - too thick and edging into caramel apple territory.

The orange-fennel confit had us a bit confused. Were we supposed to eat the giant pieces of orange peel? After a couple of bites, I decided to forgo the peely parts and focus on the softer parts of the confit. Much better.

Boyfriendly rating: 3/5 (bonus point for yummy side dishes)

I kid you not.  This game to find the best crème brulée in Ottawa is ON.   After having an amazing crème brulée at Domus, we decided to kick off this tasting challenge.

Below is the dessert that prompted this tasty duel, the crème brulée from Domus with a side of “cookies”.  The quotes are actually in the menu.  “I don’t know why.”

Made with real vanilla bean and organic milk and eggs - this little love pot set the bar pretty high.  It had a paper thin crust that didn’t get all stuck on your teeth and was topped with a little wafer and sprig of mint … and of course, a side of “cookies.”  The “cookies” were dusted in salt - a salty surprise!  I am now in love with salt on cookies.

Overall - a delightful and creamy texture - not too creamy, not too rich, not too eggy, not too burnt sugary.   Perfect.

Boyfriendly rating: 5/5

Next up…  the Social.

The first recipe of 2008 was a bit haphazard - my “better” half decided to ring in the new year by coming down with a nasty cold and saluting the new year with tissues and a lot of nose honking.

For dinner we (ahem I) decided to fling some things together and bippity boppity boo make a pizza.   After dragging myself away from the awesomeness of 30 Rock on DVD, I threw the ingredients to this pizza dough recipe in the breadmaker.  Seriously, what did we do before this?  Oh yeah, we bought package pizza dough mix.   Embarassing.

I made my favourite pesto recipe and smeared it all over the pizza.   Then I scattered a cup of halved cherry tomatoes, caramelized onions, grated cheddar and parmesan and the final touch, a generous handful of toasted pine nuts.

The crust rose nice and thick, the cheese bubbled and best of all, it was ready in time for the BIG JURY VERDICT on Coronation Street.  OMG.  Tracey Tracey Tracey luv.  It was awesome… and so was the pizza.

Boyfriendly rating: 5/5   “Just because I’m sick doesn’t mean I can’t eat… and taste stuff”

Lana’s pizza-perfect pesto

• 2 cloves of local garlic (three if it’s supermarket garlic)
• 1/4 cup + handful of toasted pine nuts
• 1/4 cup + generous handful of grated parmesan
• 1 tsp of coarse sea salt
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 tsp (or more) of lemon juice
• 2 cups (2 supermarket packages) of basil

Blend in a food processor or with a hand blender. Sometimes I also throw in some sun dried tomatoes (after soaking them for a few minutes in hot water).

I decided to make homemade ice cream again - this time a fancy “crème fraiche” recipe.  It had a four-fork rating on Epicurious, so I thought it was going to be a pretty safe recipe.  Best of all, you didn’t need any eggs!   No need to make a custard to begin the recipe.  Awesome!

I followed the readers’ instructions, substituting part of the buttermilk for evaporated milk and using superfine sugar.

And then there was the crème fraiche.

I didn’t quite have the two cups of crème that the recipe required, so I subbed a bit of yogurt cream (using my fancy coffee filter straining system).

You can see the water dripping into the mixing bowl.  Less water means less ice crystals in your ice cream.  Woot!

Sadly, I didn’t like this ice cream very much.  True to the Epicurious reviews, it was  very rich, but not quite tart enough to balance out the sweetness.  I wonder whether I should have reduced the amount of sugar since I used superfine instead of regular old white sugar.

But the clincher was the crème fraiche taste.  I had never used or tasted crème fraiche before and I guess I expected that it wouldn’t taste exactly like sour cream.  Very expensive sour cream.

Girlfriendly rating: 2/5

I’ve blogged this recipe before, but this time I’ve included better photos. Same delicious taste using apples from our veggie box, better white balance.  We tried putting a dollop of crème fraiche on top, but we weren’t so fond of the taste.  Kind of like expensive sour cream.  Meh.

Mom’s Apple Crisp

• 1/4 cup of margarine or butter
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup flour
• 3/4 cup oats (I used the 3-5 minute kind)
• pinch of salt

• 4 1/2 cups chopped apples (I like the skin on.. you may not)
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 1/4 cup sugar
• dashes of cinnamon and nutmeg

Mix the crumble ingredients well. Set aside. Chop up the apples and mix with lemon, sugar and spices. Empty into a square baking dish. Top with crumble.

Bake at 350F for 30 minutes.

* Tip from Mom: Throw in some candied ginger or cranberries.

Boyfriendly rating: 5/5