Battle of Ingredients: Moon Festival & Autumn BBQ

Welcome to the next round of Battle of Ingredients hosted together with Phoebe over at Starry Traveler’s Road. This month’s get together was a slightly belated Moon Festival celebration as well as the last BBQ of the season.

Its a packed one this time so let’s see what we came up with. A lot of the food was really thought up simply by our brains so if we have recipes references, we’ll share it, if not, we can list some ingredients or whatnot. this time seems mostly to be checking out spices and such. Nothing too complex as we were both fairly busy with our personal lives.

Wines

The two wines offered by our friends this time were these two rose wines

• Listel
• Cote des roses

I will talk about both of these wine in the upcoming wine recap. I had already tasted Cote des Roses before but realized that I hadn’t shared it in any wine recaps before (oops..).

Main Courses

We went fairly simple this time. Phoebe took care of most of the food. She had some vegetables from various types of cauliflowers to peppers and more. She also had corn. There was also steaks which she had two types of seasoning for. The first was a gourmet steak spice blend and the second was a innovative herb type which was a mix of oregano and thyme with salt.

My contribution for dinner were kabobs. It had sausages, zucchini, peppers, mini portobello mushrooms and onions. The sausages were the IGA supermarket brands. One kabob had the honey-garlic flavor and the other one was wine and chives. There was no additional seasoning added to anything. We just put it on the skewer and barbecued it.

Results

I’m sorry that I didn’t take more of the veggies pic. However, everything turned out really good. The steaks had two different flavors. The one with the spices had more of the flavor as the spices were on the steaks itself. While the herbs and salt was more subtle, which is normal since it was just on top. As for the kabobs, I thought they turned out fairly well. It was fairly packed but cooked quickly so was good. The sausage flavors were also quite delicious.

Dessert

 

Dessert was obviously the highlight here and that’s moon cakes. Just like last year, we went for a more local brand. This one is a Canadian brand, King’s Pastry. It was a variety pack (like last year as well). The flavors were the following:

• Date paste
• Red Bean paste with melon bits
• Traditional one egg yolk lotus paste
• Five nuts

To be honest, they were okay. The five nuts had the citrus peel which was a bit intense. My husband and Phoebe was not a fan of it to say the least. The traditional was a bit too sweet. The date paste turned out better than expected. The same applied for the red bean paste.

We also had a fruit bowl that I put together with apples, clementines and grapes but I forgot to take a picture so we’ll leave that out since no one really ate any of it with the amount of sweets we already had.

Overall, a simple but lovely meal together!
This is a wrap for this Battle of Ingredients!
Back to the indoor kitchen for us as we figure out our next battle!
Nothing settled just yet..we’ll be back in a few weeks!

Recap: Goodfood #8

These Goodfood boxes have captured us lately and we’re trying really hard to eat healthier, meaning less processed food. The last month was pretty nice and overall, its already feeling much better. Especially with me starting back up the whole workout process. I’ll talk about that in the upcoming Weekly Adventures segment instead. Who knows, maybe we’ll start back up the old segment for workout roundups. We’ll see, right?

Last week’s Goodfood was a lot of interesting experiences to say the least. Let’s check it out!

Japanese 7-Spiced Pork Ramen with Lacinato Kale

Its pretty common to start off with the ramen recipes a lot of times because its usually the simplest to put together. Its why I love making them so much. This one was a little crazy since we had to cook the pork chops with the seasoning. Its one of those instructions that I never quite understand the process of and am trying how to pat a meat dry and then season them. My husband says we season it in the pan but that doesn’t make sense since we should season it outside and then put it in the pan. Regardless, the main deal with this one was when I cooked up the pork chops, I think the spices were super spicy because we both started coughing like crazy. I’ve been having allergies and sinus problems so it was a slower reaction for myself. This plate was pretty spicy even without the sambal added in. However, it was also super delicious and my hunch is that the spiciness comes naturally from the ginger cooked with the kale.

Chicken Cacciatore with Seared King Oyster Mushrooms & Mashed Potatoes

I had originally wanted to make changes to the Chicken Cacciatore so that I could have it also. While I did for a part of it, I decided to make the mashed potatoes as is. My plate had the chicken and the mushrooms while my husband had what it was supposed to be like in the picture above. The highlight of this dish was trying out the king oyster mushrooms. I can’t say that I’m particularly in love with it. We’re both much more into portobello mushrooms. However, this one does have a distinctive taste to it, maybe a sweeter taste but a more spongy texture because its cap is so tiny. However, I love how we simmer the chicken in sauce because it makes it super tender and while takes longer, is one of my favorite ways to cook chicken.

Spiced Beef Platter with Hummus, Chopped Salad & Pita

My husband was the only one who ate this one however, I did prepare it. This is probably one of the easiest meals to prepare since we got any of these meal boxes. It said 20 minutes to do and was pretty much on point. Its not a lot of chopping. The multitasking potential for this one is so high as you can get the pita in the oven and cook the beef and everything almost side to side. I had a timer for one task and my eye on the pan while plating in the final stages. It was pretty fun to do and didn’t take too much time which is what I love as a break from some of these more elaborate meals.

Individual Vegetarian Pot Pies with Cremini Mushrooms & Broccoli

Pot pies without any dairy products? Count me in! These vegetarian pot pies were pretty decent. For myself, I thought it was pretty good. Its a little time consuming because there is a ton of stuff to chop and then cook and then bake. I also didn’t quite understand the idea of only having the crust on the top to cover and the bottom not having it. I guess the concept of pot pies is that the bottom of the pie is in a pot? We had aluminium bottoms which I do appreciate Goodfood team for providing. However, it does remain that there is a blandness to it. My husband thought so because of the lack of spices. I thought it was a nice balance to the week full of crazy flavors. I can see myself doing this recipe again but adding some meat in it since I get the concept of how to make it now.

That’s it for last week’s Goodfood box!
A few new ingredients we tried out and learned a few new recipes that we’d probably try again with our own twist.
My fave does go to the 7-spiced pork ramen. It was perfect for the weather and while it was spicy, it was really satisfying.

Dinner: Roasted Endives with Thyme

Its been quite some time since I last posted up a recipe and here we are! I went on a cooking craze so here we are!!

I’ve been wanting to try out cooking endives for quite some time now. A few weeks ago I went out to Atwater Market in Montreal and came back with a ton of vegetables. Of course, I picked up some endives. After looking at some recipes, we decided to do this simple recipe which we also happened to have all the ingredients. That is definitely a plus. 😉

Also, the recipe below is for 4-5 endives but I only had three so I made little adjustments.

Roasted Endives with Thyme
(recipe from: http://naturallyella.com/roasted-endives-with-thyme)

Ingredients

4-5 Endives
2 tbsp olive oil, divided
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
2 tsp thyme, minced
3-4 tbsp toasted bread crumbs

1. Preheat oven to 425F. Slice the endives in half lengthwise and toss with two teaspoons olive oil, salt and pepper. Place in a roasting pan and bake for 15 to 20 minutes until endives are tender and starting to brown.
2. Heat 4 remaining teaspoons of olive oil in a small skillet until warm. Remove from heat, add thyme and when endives are done, drizzle the olive oil/thyme on top and sprinkle with toasted bread crumbs.

That’s it! Easy, right?  Still, as I type this up, I realized that I did make some small changes other than a slight adjustment of portions. The main thing is that we ran out of black pepper. Horrible, I know. So instead of using salt and pepper, we ended up using The Keg steak spice. Also, we completely forgot about the toasted bread crumbs so that was omitted. Another thing is that we recently swapped out olive oil to avocado oil. I’m not sure if that would affect the taste.

However, it turned out absolutely delicious. I haven’t had endives many times but it turns out that I like the texture of the vegetable, plus this one blends in simple spices. Definitely an efficient and easy meal to make and that is exactly how I like recipes to be since I’m not such a skilled cook.

Do you eat endives? How do you cook them?

Dinner: Beer Chicken

I can feel my experimental and fun cooking/baking self coming back! The energy is just coming back in.

I’ve heard a lot about Beer Chicken or Beer Can Chicken, whichever you want to call it.  We did a pseudo version of it for Christmas dinner upon the suggestion of my best friend. And it turned out really well since just marinated the chicken in it.  Its one of the reasons I was pretty delighted to give this a go especially since we just got gifted some Labatt Blue and everyone laughed at it but no one drank it. I’m not a beer connoisseur. In fact, I don’t digest beer well so I can only have it when its used in cooking (or mixed in drinks like Jagerbomb).

However, my one fear is that the can will explode in the oven.  Which it didn’t 😉 My oven and home is very much intact. *knocks on wood* Lets not jinx myself…

Beer Chicken
Serves 6
(Recipe via Pinterest: http://www.jocooks.com/main-courses/poultry-main-courses/beer-can-chicken/)

Follow the link above for the ingredients and cooking instructions.

Substitutions:

• Dry Tarragon was replaced with Oregano.
• Smoked Paprika and Chili Powder both omitted.
• Adding a 1 tsp (roughly) of Montreal Chicken spice

The recipe doesn’t specify it but I had to use the bottom rack of my oven to put in the chicken was its placed in upright and should come out upright as well. However, mine toppled over some time in the last half an hour. I’m sure depending on the size of your chicken, it will vary as well on time but for me, the 1 hour 15 minutes was exactly perfect.  The meat was juicy and tender.  It was absolutely a delight.  Not to mention the very delicious smell as its cooking that spreads through the house.  It is a really simple way to make a dinner.  I did it after work but if it was done earlier on  a weekend, it would be perfect.  I love making roast chickens because I just put them in the oven and then set the timer and walk off to do whatever I need to take care of.  When its all done, I’m done with my stuff also, right on time to fill up my belly with some delicious food.

Beer chicken is definitely a winner.  On a side note, its kind of a silly and weird thought to talk about a recipe where you have to stick a can up a chicken’s behind.

How do you like to make whole chickens? What spices do you prefer? Do you like to cook with beer (or other alcohol bases)?