Presenting: The Wingwich

Greetings, 2012!

In 2011, M. moved across the street from a Wild Wing. It's a popular place for watching UFC and, from what I've observed, it's the Place 2 B for men who like to smoke out on the street and talk really loudly. This particular Wild Wing also projects the UFC match/fight/competition/show on the window for the rest of the world to see without actually going into the establishment. I've often watched and listened in on the Wild Wing happenings from M.'s window, mostly thinking about the mighty wing. I've dropped hints about making an excursion over there to chow down and share a basket to which M. replied "Hmm. I dunno, Jen."

One fine day, M. texted me with "I have an idea!!!" Always leave it to M. to take it up a notch and put a new spin on an old favourite.

THE WINGWICH

• One dozen wings from your favourite wing joint. Our preference is the BBQ/medium wing
• A bunch of organic celery and organic carrots
• Some soft and slutty buns, preferably sub buns or long hot dog buns
• Two servings of blue cheese dipping sauce provided by the wing joint
• Makes 2-3 wingwiches

1. Using a vegetable peeler, shave some thinly sliced carrots and celery. Cut up the rest for some healthy snacking.

2. In a bowl, strip off all of the wing meat. Set the bones aside for sucking on later. Don't worry: you can still treat yourself to the savage and Fred Flintstone-like behaviour of sucking off the meat from a tasty little bone.

3. Slather on the blue cheese dressing onto to the soft and slutty buns.

4. Pile on the wing meat onto the buns.

5. Top them off with the shaved carrots and celery.

6. EAT AND ENJOY!!

Bunny Bling Bling Tip: It helps if you live across the street from a wing joint.

Farm Fresh Deviled Eggs

Here is an idea for a snack if you're feeling like you miss your mom.




ingredients

6 extra large eggs (the best eggs you can get your hands on. Watch out for those egg scammers who sell you crappy eggs)
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/4 cup mayonnaise (make your own, or purchase a trusted brand)
1 teaspoon finely chopped onion (and we mean FINELY)
1/4 teaspoon hot sauce (we used Harissa)
1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
sweet spanish paprika, or smoked paprika





instructions

1. Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. Gently place your eggs in the water with the help of a spoon. Be careful not to crack the eggs. Boil for exactly 12 minutes. Use a timer.


2. Run your eggs under cold water to cool and place in the refrigerator for one hour.

3. Crack and peel the eggs under cold running water. Make sure to get rid of all pieces of shell.

4. Gently slice each egg in half, lengthwise. Be careful not to break the whites. Remove the yolks and place them in a bowl. Place the egg whites on a plate and set aside.

5. In the bowl with the yolks, add all ingredients, except the paprika, and mash together with a fork for a very, very long time, until it is very creamy. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

6. Stuff the yolky cream into a pastry bag. Using a large star tip, fill each egg white half with the yolky creamy filling.

7. Sprinkle with paprika. Serve with pickled vegetables.



Bunny Bling Bling Tip: Don't eat too many eggs or you'll get the egg farts.

Fresh and Juicy Fish Tacos!

1. The Fish:
Fresh fish filets (tilapia, or maybe a nice piece of cod or halibut?) you could also use shrimps

Marinate the fish with:
1 tbsp grated ginger
1 tsp grated garlic
1 or 2 limes, juiced
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper
1/2 grated poblano pepper, or a tbsp hot sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
salt and pepper

Mush and whisk together all ingredients of the marinade in big bowl. Take out a 1/4 cup and set aside to use as a dressing later. Marinate your fish filets in what is left over and chill for a couple of hours, or for a couple of minutes, like we did.



Make a little sealed package with some foil and bake the fish in the oven at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until it's done. The fish should be white all the way through, flaky, tender and easily breaking apart when scraping it with a fork.


2. The Green Salsa
1 ripe avocado, cubed
1 or 2 limes, juiced *
salt and pepper
1 or 2 green onions, thinly sliced
a couple of small tomatillos, sliced really thin
2 tbsp cilantro, chopped

In small bowl, combine all the green salsa ingredients with the 1/4 cup of the marinade that you had set aside.

3. Red Salsa
1 seeded tomato, if in season
1 red onion, diced as small as you can humanly chop it
1 lime, juiced
some olive oil, salt and pepper

In another bowl, combine the red salsa ingredients. Note: You can skip this step if you don't have yummy tomatoes on hand, especially if they are not in season. Here, we just used some cooked red onion and roasted chopped poblano peppers but it was waaaaaay too spicy. Feel free to improvise.

4. Begin layering using:
Sprouted corn tortillas (love this product!)
sour cream

In any order that you prefer, stack all the ingredients (fish, the green salsa and red salsa) on your heated tortillas. Squeeze some more lime juice on top! Plop some sour cream to finish! voila! yum!



Bunny Bling Bling Tip: If you live in Toronto, we highly recommend visiting Fisherfolk at the Wychood Barns Farmers Market on Saturday mornings, the fish counter at Peter's No Frills at 222 Lansdowne Avenue, or the St. Lawrence Market to get the freshest and best quality fish!

limes: you know when you sometimes you get those dried up sad limes that don't even give you a teaspoon of juice? When you shop for limes, look for the heavy ones - the heavier the juicier!

Jen's Meatballs

I visited the Sorauren Farmer's Market this past Monday and picked up some nice ground meat, inspired to make giant homemade meatballs and then tossing them into a slow cooker.

M. guided me through this process of making the meaty concoction, advising me to add ingredients found in my fridge and throughout my kitchen. She kindly named the recipe "Jen's Meatballs."

ingredients

1 pound ground pork
1 pound lean ground beef
1 medium sized onion, finely chopped
1 red pepper, roasted, peeled and finely chopped
1 egg
2 cloves garlic, grated
2 tablespoons ketchup, for some nice slutty sweetness
1 tsp Frank's Red Hot Sauce
1 tsp red chili flakes
1 tsp oregano
breadcrumbs
salt and pepper to taste

strained tomato sauce, aka Passata di Pomodoro

instructions

1. Combine meat, red pepper, onion, garlic, egg and seasonings in one giant bowl. Give the mixture a thorough massage.

2. Liberally add salt and pepper to achieve the right flavouring. Don't be shy about it.

3. Add a little bit of breadcrumbs to help with consistency. You want to be able to pack these babies into nice sized balls. Don't add too much though -- you don't want them to become too dry.

4. Make your meatballs into whatever size you think you will eat. Bigger meat balls are better for the slow cooker. I made mine the size of my palm. In total, I made 12 meatballs.

5. In a slow cooker, gently stack the meatballs. Cover the meatballs with the strained tomato sauce.

6. On a low heat, cook the meatballs for approximately 8 hours.




EAT!

Bunny Bling Bling Tip: When adding salt and pepper, give the meat concoction a little taste to make sure that you've got the desired flavouring. Don't swallow the meat though. Spit it out, but don't spit it back into the bowl.

Ode to the Bean Salad

I've recently started appreciating a nice bean salad as a side dish, a light snack for work or something to bring to a friend's potluck. It's also great if you're on a tight budget and don't want to sacrifice your health and diet.

Bean salad! No problem! It's easy and affordable to make. It is healthy and tastes really good with the right mixture of ingredients.

This is my favourite way to make a bean salad:

ingredients

2 cups chickpeas
2 cups of black beans
2 cups of kidney beans

2 green onions, sliced
2-3 medium sized carrots, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
2 stalks of celery, chopped
1 avocado, peeled, pitted and cubed

1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup lemon juice
salt and pepper

instructions

1. Evenly mix chickpeas, beans and vegetables in a large bowl.

2. Combine the olive oil, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice and garlic. Add salt and pepper to taste. Make sure it's nice and tasty!

3. Pour dressing into the salad. Mix it thoroughly.

EAT!

Bunny Bling Bling Tip: Buy dried beans over the beans in a can. It's cheaper and better than pouring out slimed canned beans into your salad. Click here for some instructions on how to prepare dried beans for cooking.

French Onion Soup

I stopped over at M's place on the night of the highly anticipated snow storm of the year, possibly the worst of its kind in over 2 years (ooh), carrying a knapsack that contained a couple of special items, including a lovely bottle of red wine that I had been saving (a gift from an old roommate) to pair with something delicious. The night was christened with a couple of hours of random Netflix picks while M. prepared icing for her swiss butter cookies. M. also served up this really wonderful French Onion soup that she had made. All of her soups are incredibly warming and tasty, but this one in particular was appropriate for this type of night. I jotted down the recipe for this one. Check it out.

ingredients
8 small-med sized onions, thinly sliced
three cloves of garlic, grated
six sprigs of thyme, picked
2 litres of chicken broth
1 cup of apple cider
1 apple, grated
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup port
1/4 cup of red wine
salt and pepper

Crostini
baguette
smoked cheese, i.e. smoked cheddar
olive oil
salt and pepper

Soup

1. Making the chicken broth: Boil chicken bone or any kind of chicken off-cut in a pot of water, covering the chicken. Bring to a boil and simmer gently. Skim out the white foam from the pot. Add salt and pepper. Let it simmer for about an hour, or until the broth is at your desired flavour.

2. In a different pot, a larger one, heat some oil at a high heat. Add sliced thinly onions, grated garlic, thyme and grated apple. Add salt and pepper. Cook until mixture is well seasoned, until the onions are nicely browned and carmelized but not burnt. Stir it often enough so that the onions are a pasty texture.

4. On high heat, add the port. Scrape out the bare bits of onion from the bottom of the pot and deglaze it with the port. Separately add the red wine, balsamic vinegar, red wine vinegar and the apple cider and cook each portion until dry. Here, you are making a taste that is a mixture of sour, salty and sweet. Add the strained chicken stock.

Bring it to a boil and then to a gentle simmer for about one hour.


Crostinis

5. Cut 1/2 inch slices of baguette. Lay the the slices out on a sheet pan. Lightly brush oil and sprinkle salt and pepper over the slices.

6. Bake for 10 minutes at 300° F

To Finish

7. Pour the soup into small, oven-friendly bowls, to be served individually. Place crostinis into the soup bowls and cover it with some thinly sliced cheese and freshly cracked pepper. At 425° F, bake them in the oven for 10 minutes. Lower the heat to 400 ° F and cook for another 10 minutes. Cook until bubbling and until the cheese, crostinis and soup are a golden brown.

SERVE!

royal bunny icing

makes 2 cups

lbs = pound

oz = ounces

t= teaspoon

1 egg white = 1 oz

ingredients

1 lbs icing sugar

1/4 t cream of tartar

3 oz egg whites

pinch of salt

flavour and colour

instructions

in the bowl of the Kitchen Aid, sift the icing sugar and cream of tartar. In another bowl, whisk the egg whites until frothy. pour the egg whites over the icing sugar, and with the whisk of the kitchen aid in your hand, whisk the egg whites and icing sugar together until they come together a little bit. Set up the bowl and whisk on the mixer, mix on low speed until it comes together, then on high speed for 2 minutes, or until the icing is thick and pale white.

separate the icing into 2 containers, and put a piece of plastic wrap over the container, touching the icing directly, so it doesn't form a crust as it starts drying. Mix colour into each icing. start with a tiny drop, stir with a little spoon, and see the results. for the colour, add a small amount at a time, don't add a lot or you'll get intense colour, which can only be corrected by adding a ton more white icing. A little goes a long way should be your rule of thumb.

flavour: definitely add vanilla if you have it. other flavours can be any kind of citrus oil, add a 1/2 t, or orange blossom water, add 1 1/2 t, or any type of flavour you've got lying around. I am a big fan of rose, bergamot and lavender. think about who is going to eat your cookies before adding anything too crazy though..

bunny bling bling tip: royale bunny icing is so hard and sweet when it dries! make sure you thin out the icing with a drop or two of water, until it reaches the correct, runny consistency. once you dip the cookies in the icing, the icing should be thin enough to run off, but thick enough that you can't see through it. make sure that the consistency is correct before trying to work with the bunny icing!

sweet bunny swiss butter cookie

t=teaspoon
T=tablespoon
c=Cup
g=gram

ingredients

250 g unsalted butter, soft
250 g sugar
5 yolks
1/4 c 35% cream
zest of 1 orange
1 t cinnamon
1 t pure vanilla extract (bunny bling bling is using almond extact today, but only 3/4 t)
1/4 t salt
500 g all purpose flour

instructions

cream the butter and sugar in the bowl of the kitchen aid until smooth. Scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula a lot during this whole process to get the bottom of the bowl cleared. Add the yolks, mix, scrape, add the cream, mix, scrape, then the zest, cinnamon, vanilla, salt and flour. Scrape the bowl. Add 1/2 the flour, mix until smooth, then the other half of the flour and mix until you see the dough coming together around the mixing paddle. the dough should be smooth and well mixed.



flatten some plastic wrap on the work surface, and pile the dough on the plastic wrap. wrap it up in a little parcel, and flatten it so it cools and hardens in the fridge in a thin layer while you do something else for at least 1 hour.

Preheat your oven to 350F.

Take the dough out of the fridge, and cut it in half. Set one half aside. roll out the dough, using plenty of flour on the surface and the rolling pin. turn the dough and roll it in 2 directions until it is about 1/4-1/2 cm thick. cut out the bunny cookies and lie them out on a sheetpan covered in parchment paper, or non stick sheet. Freeze the cookies on the sheetpan for 1/2 hour until hard.

Bake the cookies in your preheated over at 350F for 8 mins then rotate the pan, then another 8 minutes. baking times may vary depending on the size and thickness of the cookies, and the oven you are using. bake to lightly golden brown on the edges and underneath.

Bunny Bling Bling Tip: ALWAYS use a timer!