Recipes

As part of our Thanksgiving feast tonight, I made this butternut squash and hazelnut lasagne to go along with the ususal turkey and all the trimmings. It was a hit! Everyone enjoyed the sweetness of the squash in contrast to the crunchy, aromatic hazelnuts.

Panzanella is an Italian style bread salad that traditionally uses stale bread, tomatoes and other seasonal vegetables. Since we had some gorgeous heritage tomatoes, I decided to make this to accompany our steaks. This is my version of panzanella.

Our friends Lisa and Rebecca made these luscious rhubarb and raisin meringue squares a few weeks ago. The filling has a custard-like consistency and the meringue topping adds a light finish. If you can still find some rhubarb at the market, try these out!

For many home gardeners, it's plum season and there's an overabundance of plums. Our friends Rebecca and John gave us some beautiful plums that are red and shaped like prune plums but are much larger. We ate a few as they were and baked the rest into this delicious plum streusel cake. Try it warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!

It's the peak of B.C. blueberry season and I've been using blueberries in whatever I can. To preserve the deep flavour of local blueberries, I've made blueberry lemon jam. Fresh lemon rind adds an extra dose of sunny citrus to the jam.

Last week our friend Margaret invited us to her apartment at English Bay to watch the fireworks. Seeing that Italy was the country featured to perform the fireworks and Margaret is a fan of all things Italian, she served some great Italian wines as well as cheeses and desserts.

I got this fun idea for stand up caesar salad many years ago from a Seattle based cooking show. Now that summer has finally arrived and it's ideal for entertaining outside, I serve this unconventional, do-it-yourself caesar salad that doesn't require any dishes.

Simply place your salad ingredients on a table and let your guests assemble their own salads and eat them as they walk around your patio or yard. Keep the dressing in a bowl of ice to keep it cool. Enjoy!

For Roland's and Susan's joint birthday party, I made these Turkish meatballs, that I adapted from Sylvia Molnar's cooking class at the Cookshop.

You can find sour cherries in jars at shops that sell Mediterranean groceries such as Parthenon or Bosa. Leftover cherries are great with vanilla yogurt, in strudel or pies!

Our friend, Cristina, grew up in Costa Rica and she shares this Costa Rican punch recipe. Cristina says that you can find variations of this punch at any Costa Rican social gathering. She recommends using as many ripe tropical fruits as you can and using bananas gives the punch its base flavour. Give it a try!

I would have thought that this is obvious but please use untreated cedar if you try out Mark Bernstein's cedar plank grilled salmon. This was pointed out by Katherine, one of our readers. Thanks!