Overdue food post!

One of my favorite topics to blog about is food and recipes. I haven't done any in the last little while though and I'm glad to be back with more!

I've been eating the same thing over and over lately, so I didn't have anything interesting to post. Today, I have for you a healthy lunch recipe that's light and tasty, perfect for spring and summer time : turkey burgers with smoked salmon and cucumber salad. Yum! ♥

The salad is a colorful blend of lettuce (I like to buy the prepackaged, prewashed kind to save time!), cucumber, shredded carrots and cabbage, light spicy italian dressing and homemade marinated smoked salmon. The smoked salmon is really what makes this salad come together. It was made by my mother in law's boyfriend in his very own smoke house. Amazing right? It's extremely flavorful and really does give a kick to anything it's added in!

The burger is made of a ground turkey patty seasonned with biftek seasonnings, a whole wheat bun, ketchup, mustard, tons of onions, lettuce and garlic flavored pickle slices. The patty was cooked on the barbecue outside and the bun slightly toasted.

It was an great healthy lunch!

Do you guys like food posts?

DOFT : my version of lemon chicken

DOFT stands for Dinner of the day! Fun concept or not? Tell me what you think!

Today, for dinner, I made one of my favourite recipes : Lemon chicken! My mother used to make this meal for us all the time and as soon as I started cooking for my own self, I asked her to share the recipe with me. I’ve been making it for my boyfriend and I ever since ♥

Since I love this recipe so much, I thought I would share how to make it here. You can accompany the chicken with either long grain or short grain (the sticky type) rice. I choose broccoli instead for today, since I wanted something a little lighter. The lemony sauce marries fantastically with the broccoli.

These are the ingredients you will need for two portions:

- The juice of two lemons

- 4 tbsp all purpose flour

- ½ tbsp paprika

- Salt and pepper to taste

- 2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts

- ½ a broccoli

- 1 cup of chicken stock

- 3 tsp caper*

- Oil to fry

* You can skip the capers if you don’t like them

Prepping the chicken

First, remove any fat from the chicken breasts. Then slice them into thin strips of approximately the same size (so that the chicken will cook evenly and quickly).

Mix the flour, paprika, salt and pepper in a plate or a bowl. Cover each strip of chicken liberally with the flour mixture.

Warm up some vegetable oil in a pan on medium high. Add the chicken making sure nothing overlaps. Cook until golden brown on each side.

Add 1 cup of chicken stock, the juice of two lemons, and capers. Let it simmer until the sauce thickens.

Prepping the broccoli

Cut and wash half a broccoli. Then, cook it until tender by either steaming ( I used this method today) or by boiling it.

Serve everything togheter. If you like, add some sauce over the broccoli. Tadah! YUM ♥

Today's lunch : Temakizushi!

For anyone who do not know, Temakizushi is basically the conical shaped kind of sushi, it's also often called hand roll in restaurants. I like making Temakizushi instead of the more traditionnal maki and nigiri for two reasons:

1) The preparation is much quicker and simpler (no rolling or cutting required which are very time consuming and also very messy).

2) It allows each person to choose their favorite combinations and to vary according to their taste. Also, if we don't finish everything I prepared, since it's not rolled into a maki, I can just put it away to use in another recipe later rather than having to throw it out. =D

In my opinion, it is THE best way to make sushi at home. I used to make makis and that would require anywhere between 2 and 3 hours of work for two people! I would also have to deal with heaps of dirty dishes afterwards. Not fun!

Now it only takes me about 15 minutes to prepare the ingredients and the rice is cooked while I prepare other ingredients (I make it in my rice cooker and that takes about 20 minutes). It's quick, easy and super convenient. It's my favorite meal to make!

I took the idea for temakizushi on this website : http://a-vos-baguettes.blogspot.com/2009/06/temakizushi-1.html which I mentionned in an earlier blog post! I just love this site. This is also where I took my sushi rice recipe. It is the best recipe I have found so far, my rice is always perfect! ♥

Here is how I set up the table before we eat. We have got spicy mayo (I make this myself), panko (for the tempura-like texture), soy sauce, nori cut in squares, sesame seeds, surimi, cucumber, avocado and sushi rice. Yum!

And this is how I make them.

Place a small amount of sushi rice onto the nori.

Add the fillings in a diagonal line.

Bring both corners to the middle to create a conical shape. Dip in soy sauce and enjoy! ♥

We didn't have any that time, but I also like to use smoked salmon, Masago (a kind of caviar), and fresh raw salmon!

Lunch of the day : Ham and cheese sandwich with veggie soup

I made this super quick and easy lunch today. The sandwich consisted of baguette bread with mustard, garlic liver pâté (it sound aweful, but it’s really tasty), ham, Monterey Jack cheese and lettuce! Yum ♥

The soup is from St-Hubert and only contains around 40 calories per serving, amazing for anyone on a diet!

Hot & spicy lunch : my version of instant ramen

The soup actually looks like it's smiling =p that wasn't even intended!

When we don't have much to eat left in the pantry or simply when we're unispired for lunch or dinner, I like to make this version of instant ramen. Who would've thought you could transform a boring 33 cents pack of chicken ramen into this?

This soup is spicy and savory and it has become a staple at my house! I like to add in some bok choy once in a while for an extra portion of veggies. The best part is that it's super simple to make and really inexpensive.

Here are the ingredient you need to make it:

For two portions

- 1 sheet of toasted nori

- 2 eggs (hard boiled)

- 1-2 green onions

- 2 packs of chicken instant noodles

- 2 tblsp of Sriracha Hot sauce (this makes really spicy ramen, only use 1 tbl spoon if you like it a little more mild)

- 2 tblsp of soy sauce

- 4 cups of water (not shown)

If anyone is interested to know how I make it, I'll gladly make a post about it! ♥

Super quick and easy lunch

I had an amazing lunch today, it felt like a meal you would order at a breakfast restaurant, but it only took 10 minutes to prepare and was much healthier! Very filling and the strawberries were heaven!

Lunch for two : Smoked salmon bagel

Lunch of the day ^_^

My favourite breakfast : berry smoothie

Ever since I was little, my breakfast of choice has always been cereal (my favourites are Reese puffs =D). They might be tasty, but as the years passed, I realised how little nutrition value they offer. After an hour and a half in class, I would be absolutely starting, and lunch was still more than 2 hours away!

When I moved into my own place, I kept on with cereal breakfasts for a while, but every morning, in class, I’d be starving. Who can concentrate on a difficult Integral calculus class with an empty stomach? Well, I couldn’t. That’s when I discovered homemade smoothies. My boyfriend found a recipe on the internet for a berry smoothie so we decided to give it a go!

To me, smoothies appear like they would be a treat more than something that's good for you, but this recipe is super healthy! Now, I start each day with a good amount of fruits and protein. The best part? I’m not hungry as quickly =D

The glass looked boring on its own so I put a little elephant next to it XD I really got to learn how to take proper food pictures...

Recipe for 2 smoothies:

1 cup of natural apple juice (the brown kind)

2 cups of frozen mixed berries (strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries)

1 banana

100g of silk/soft tofu

Blend everything well with a blender and serve! So yummy ♥

Tell me what you think if you decide to try it!

Homemade sushi

My all time favourite dish has been sushi for the past 2-3 years. I cannot get enough of it, I could eat it, every single day ♥ The only problem is, well I’m a student, on a student budget and sushi is so expensive! I can only afford to go out and eat it once or twice a month.

My solution? Homemade sushi! They can be time consuming, but they’re totally worth it!

Here are some pictures of my homemade sushi for fun =D

Homemade caviar sous-marin sushi

I’m in love with this restaurant in Montréal called Kanda sushi. It’s basically an all you can eat sushi place, where you can order as much sushi as you like from their premade menu from nigiris to makis and sashimi. You can also get other types of Japanese food like tempura shrimp and veggies, endamame, yakitori, etc and it’s all included in the same price. It might not be the fanciest sushi (although the fish is always really fresh and tasty), but I adore going there!

One of my favourites is the caviar sous-marin nigiri (submarine caviar). I’ve never seen it anywhere else and it’s really yummy! My boyfriend and I always order tons of them. Until recently, I couldn’t exactly pinpoint what it consisted of, so one day we went to eat there and I asked the waiter. Basically, it is made of surimi (imitation crab), red caviar, Japanese mayo, cucumber and salmon all chopped up finely and placed on a rice ball then wrapped in seaweed.

Here’s a picture from their site:

Source

I decided to try it at home and it was a real success! Although I didn’t have any salmon handy so I skipped that. I will definitely try it with salmon next time. Also, I didn’t have any Japanese mayo (the last time I bought some, I didn’t cook very often and I ended up wasting about half of it! It’s pretty expensive so I haven’t bought anymore, but the light mayo I used was a fine replacement)

♥ ♥ ♥

Ingredients (for 4 pieces of nigiri):

- 100g of calrose rice (sushi/Japanese short grain rice)

- 4 sticks of imitation crab

- 1 teaspoon of finely chopped cucumber

- 1 teaspoon of caviar

- ½ tablespoon of light mayo

- 1 sheet of nori

- 15 mL of rice vinegar

- ½ tablespoon of sugar

- 1/8 teaspoon of salt

I have recently found out that this type of sushi (with the seaweed rolled over a ball of rice and filling) is called a Gunkan sushi. I found this on a visit at Yuzu Sushi in Quebec City. They didn't have exactly the caviar sous marin, but they had other variations that were really yummy. I will keep an eye out in the future for any sushi spots serving Gunkans and what variation they offer. Who knows I might stumble across a caviar sous marin dupe?

It’s one of my favourite types of sushi! What’s yours?

Making onigiri for the first time

I absolutely love trying out new recipes, especially Japanese food!

For anyone wondering, an onigiri is typically a rice ball in the shape of a triangle, or cylinder with a filling either in the center, or mixed into the rice. They’re often wrapped with nori.

So here are the results of my first two attempts at onigiri! The first one is filled with canned tuna and mayonnaise and the second one is another type of onigiri in which the filling is mixed directly into the rice. I made mine exactly like the recipe I found on http://a-vos-baguettes.blogspot.com (it’s a blog written in French only, sorry!) with salmon. I think both turned out really nicely and they were really yummy!

The recipe is super easy and quick, especially if you use a rice cooker like I did to cook the rice.

Oh and sorry for the pretty bad quality of the pictures! I have yet to find a decent setup to take good food pictures... I was thinking I could cover up the black/brown table I am using with a white sheet and stick a white cardboard onto the wall to get a cleaner background. Any ideas?