Recipes

This recipe for spicy mango chicken came about as a bit of a mistake! When I canned my mango chutney this weekend, there were a few jars that didn't seal properly. Instead of reprocessing them, I decided to use them and came up with this tasty recipe.

If you're using commercial mango chutney, you may want to decrease the amount you use, as quite often commercially made chutney has a lot more sugar and could burn easily. You could then throw in some fresh or frozen mango chunks and add more spice.

This past weekend I canned mango chutney. This recipe works well with barely ripe, firm mangoes, rather than overripe ones.

This is a recipe request from my friend Kerrie (who is also getting married in September!). I shared the recipe with him many years ago.

This recipe cuts down bread making time by about half. It's not artisanal and the yeast doesn't have lots of time to develop flavour, but the hand mixing, kneading and shaping process is way more satisfying than throwing all the ingredients into a bread machine!

It's mango season and although they're not grown locally, this is the best time of the year to buy mangoes. Mangoes are my favourite fruit. I love eating them fresh and in all sorts of dishes like salads, stirfries and in desserts like this mango mousse.

Last week I made a cake for a farewell party for my former office mate, Susan, and I filled sponge cake layers with this mousse and iced the cake with whipped cream. It was a hit.

This pasta dish is delicious...it combines the meatiness of eggplant and fresh flavour of crushed tomatoes with a roundness from olive paste and smoked mozzarella.

It really helps to salt, rinse and pat dry the eggplant. It keeps the eggplant from getting watery and draws out any bitter flavour.

You can find olive paste in a tube at Italian grocery stores or other specialty stores such as the Gourmet Warehouse.

My workfriends threw a baby shower for our friend Susan, who recently had a baby boy. I made a light lemon layer cake using a few recipes I've already posted on this site, sponge cake and sparky lemon curd.

It's great when you're armed with recipes...you can mix and match different recipes to create new ones!

Fellow swing dancer, Darren Scherck, passed on his family's whipped shortbread recipe! Thanks Darren!

Heeerrrre's Darren:

Hey Barb and Roland! I've finally remembered to put this whipped shortbread recipe on your site. This is the recipe my mom always made for Christmas and other special occasions. Give it a shot and enjoy!!

This is my favourite shortbread recipe.

For Kevin's brunch, I also made these sausage patties. You can use store bought ground pork, but we bought some pork shoulder butt steak and ground it ourselves, so that we could control how much fat we wanted in the sausages. Instead of pork, you could use ground chicken or turkey.

For Kevin's brunch last weekend, Ryan, one of our dance friends, made these wonderful chinese almond cookies. These were so beautiful and delicious that we weren't sure if he made them or bought them! Not only is Ryan a great dancer, he's a great baker!

This is my recipe for Sugar-Peppered Bacon that Roland mentioned yesterday. The brown sugar and black pepper caramelize into a sweet and spicy crust. I always serve this for Christmas brunch and for special brunch occasions, like Kevin's Send-off.