Or, as Dorie says on page 58 of Around my French Table about this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe, “Enfin! It’s spring!”.  A delicate, simple soup with just asparagus, onion, leek, shallots and garlic (although I actually used vegetable stock instead of water and added a touch of thyme too), it begs to be served in small portions – as Dorie says, serving in “smaller-than-usual-proportions [...] adds to the soup’s sophistication.” So, I served it in shot glasses. Kind of like a “cheers to spring” – now it’s finally here!

French Fridays with Dorie participants do not publish the recipes on our blogs, we prefer if you purchase Around My French Table for yourselves which you can do here on Amazon or Amazon Canada. Or for free worldwide shipping, buy from The Book Depository. Go on, treat yourself then join us here!

Contests and giveaways

* WORLDWIDE giveaway of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Cookbook – ends Monday May 27th 2013 at 6pm.

** Canadians: Have you entered my Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer and attachment giveaway yet? Closes May 29th 2013 at 6pm.

*** Hey Canadians, there are some cool prizes to be won over on the Canadian Lentils Love your Lentils site – a blogger, a home chef, and a voter will all win the chance to join Chef Michael Smith in Saskatchewan on June 23, 2013 for a culinary adventure. I have two recipes in the running!

Red lentil carrot soup with orange and cardamom
Lentil-ricotta gnocchi pan-fried in tumeric butter

I’ve always wanted an electric citrus juicer but with a tiny kitchen boasting very little counter space and even less cupboard space, it’s just not been a priority. My KitchenAid stand mixer takes pride of place next to our toaster and espresso maker. Priorities, right?    So when I was offered the chance to try one of the KitchenAid attachments from the kind folks at KitchenAid Canada, I knew exactly what I would choose – the KitchenAid Citrus Juicer.  Taking up not much more space than a manual juicer but with all the power of the KitchenAid, this seemed like the perfect compromise – allowing me to keep my stand mixer on the countertop and have my juicer too!  I already have many of the KitchenAid attachments – you might remember the meat grinder and the sausage stuffer from our Charcutepalooza exploits… and until recently was not aware that KA made a citrus juicer so was thrilled with the chance to try it out!

And to test it out – what better way to celebrate recent birthdays – mine and my blog’s – and a visit from my mum than with mimosas? I could pretty much drink a mimosa at any time of the day so we had these as an apéritif (well, mum and I did – Neil refused saying it was a “breakfast/ brunch” drink).

The juicer is powerful and whipped through 6 oranges to make 2 cups (500mls) of fresh juice in no time at all. It’s easy to attach and use and requires the same amount of washing up as one of those manual juicers.

Plus it takes up much less room than a countertop juicer (it’s not actually that much bigger than a manual juicer and if you store it on its side, it takes up even less room). So, it’s just as compact as a manual juicer but much more powerful? Win.

My only negative would be that the pulp catcher doesn’t quite keep up with the flow of juice going through (it does juice the fruit very fast) and every now and then I had to stop and disperse the pulp with a spoon so that the juice could flow through and the catcher would not overflow. But it’s a small negative – and in fact, I have to stop and remove the pulp much more often with my manual juicer.

I juiced limes as well and was very happy with the amount of juice I got out of them – this will change the way I look at juicing (i.e. not a chore but as something I can achieve in the morning, even before I’ve had my coffee!).

Cheers!

A (Canadian) KitchenAid Stand Mixer and attachment giveaway!

Thanks to the kind folks at KitchenAid Canada, I have ONE Artisan® Series Tilt-Head Stand Mixer Flour Power™ Rating – 9 Cup (2.1L) and one stand mixer attachment of your choice to give away to one lucky Canadian resident! Closes May 29th 2013 at 6pm.

Check out all the details here.

Other contests and giveaways

* WORLDWIDE giveaway of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Cookbook – ends Monday May 27th 2013 at 6pm.

** Hey Canadians, there are some cool prizes to be won over on the Canadian Lentils Love your Lentils site – a blogger, a home chef, and a voter will all win the chance to join Chef Michael Smith in Saskatchewan on June 23, 2013 for a culinary adventure. I have two recipes in the running!

Red lentil carrot soup with orange and cardamom
Lentil-ricotta gnocchi pan-fried in tumeric butter

Disclosure: I was provided with the KitchenAid Citrus Juicer at no cost for reviewing purposes. I was not compensated for writing this post and all opinions are my own.

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was Savory Brioche Pockets (pp 421-422) – one I will admit to not properly reading all the way through before embarking on it. At 8pm on a Saturday night. After having hosted cooking classes for nearly 80 people in the previous two days. So, yeah, I am cutting myself some slack here.

I figured it was ok that I didn’t have most of the ingredients for the filling since I would be filling it the following day. So I started getting the ingredients organised. And realised I didn’t have any all-purpose flour. What??? I mean what self-respecting baker/ cook/ food blogger doesn’t have flour? I had cake and pastry flour and whole wheat so figured I’d go with the whole wheat. Having made brioche only once before (with astounding luck!), I was not entirely sure that it was going to work out to substitute whole wheat for all-purpose flour but with nearly 3 hours of rising to get done before I could go to bed, I just got started. I figured it would be a learning experience, right?

The dough was a lot tougher than I remember the bubble top brioche dough but I carried on. It actually rose pretty nicely during its first rise at room temperature.  Close to midnight that night, I put the dough to rest in the fridge overnight.

The next morning I retrieved said dough from the fridge and rolled it out. It was a little tough to get started but once I worked it a little, it rolled out beautifully. Of course, as I was rolling this out at 8.30am still in my pajamas (hey – it was Sunday!), I suddenly remembered that I didn’t have the right fillings (potatoes, onions and goat cheese) so I rummaged about in the fridge to find fillings for both sweet and savoury pockets – pesto and tomatoes for the savoury and cream cheese and strawberry jam for the sweet.

I let them sit for 20 minutes before baking them – they were supposed to rise and be “puffy” but mine went nowhere.

Result?

An excellent snack for Mr Neil and my mum who were already outside gardening at that point – both of them pronounced it a little thick on the dough around the edges but it certainly tasted good. The savoury one tasted a little like a fancy pizza pocket (sorry, Julia!).

Would I make these again? Probably not though I am curious to see how they would turn out with regular all-purpose flour – would they be puffier? Probably. But really, I’m not fussed either way. They did re-heat pretty well the following day in a microwave so they lost some of their crispiness but the dough/ pastry was pretty tender and tasty still.

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie, Baking with Julia was hosted by Carrie of Loaves and Stitches and you can find the recipe on her blog.  Tuesdays with Dorie participants do not publish the recipes on our blogs except if we happen to be the host for the week, rather, we prefer if you purchase Baking with Julia for yourselves which you can do here on Amazon or Amazon Canada. Or for free worldwide shipping, buy from The Book Depository. Then join us, baking along at Tuesdays with Dorie. Go on, you know you want to.

Contests and giveaways

* WORLDWIDE giveaway of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Cookbook – ends Monday May 27th 2013 at 6pm.

** Canadians: Have you entered my Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer and attachment giveaway yet? Closes May 29th 2013 at 6pm.

*** Hey Canadians, there are some cool prizes to be won over on the Canadian Lentils Love your Lentils site – a blogger, a home chef, and a voter will all win the chance to join Chef Michael Smith in Saskatchewan on June 23, 2013 for a culinary adventure. I have two recipes in the running!

Red lentil carrot soup with orange and cardamom
Lentil-ricotta gnocchi pan-fried in tumeric butter

See that up there ^^^ ? Dinner, made by 5-10 year-olds. Real food. Crunchy garlicky chicken fingers and oven baked potato wedges served with a salad. Sounds simple huh? Well, yes, that was the idea behind my menu choice for both of my Food Revolution Day 2013 activities I hosted – both parent-child cooking classes – one at my school with 19 of my Petits Chefs and Cooking Basics guys and their families and one at The Kitchen Studio for 5 kids and their family members.

When I was choosing the menu for these events, I wanted something that 1. I knew we could pull off in a couple of hours, 2. That the kids would want to eat, 3. That the parents would want to eat and 4. That the kids would want to make again by themselves. A healthier version of chicken fingers and fries certainly checked off all those boxes, though on reflection, given we made one dish at the school and Kitchen Studio Food Revolution events last year, I am not entirely sure what I was thinking with three separate components.

I know my trusty helper and fellow Toronto Food Revolution Ambassador, Adell Shneer, thought I was a little crazy when I sent her my “play-by-play” sheet for my school event with everything timed down to the minute. Her response “That looks great, hope we can keep to schedule.” Haha!  But as Adell and anyone who has been reading my blog for a while will know, I don’t like to dumb things down just because I am cooking with kids. If you raise the bar high, they will absolutely come up to meet you there. In my mind, I guess I wanted to show people that making a healthy family dinner not just for but WITH your kids is possible. Getting families back in the kitchen, cooking and eating together is one of the premises of Food Revolution Day and one I wanted to really embrace this year.

Last Thursday, nearly 60 boys and their family members gathered in our school dining hall to cook and eat together. Guided by the calm, organised Adell, the boys and their families worked through the three meal components in just under 2 hours. Pretty amazing, and made possible with A LOT of help – as well as Adell taking complete charge of the “lesson” part of the evening, I had the ever-calm Michelle (who works with the boys in cooking club every week alongside me), Emilie and Janet (who helped this year with the Cooking Basics club), my mum (because there’s nothing like coming on vacation and being put to work!) and Jacquie and Steve (who, although they were there cooking with their own kids, were able to lend a hand where necessary). A special thanks to Chef Corey who helped me with my food ordering (and countless other tasks) and Karen who just listened and nodded as I planned out my event so she could get the facilities organized, not batting an eyelid at the craziness of it all! The Petits Chefs themselves helped out setting up the dining hall too – it really was a team effort.

Cooking with that many people really does require some planning but as Adell said, if you start with a decent recipe, you’re halfway there. Apart from the fact that choosing recipes from the Food Revolution cookbook seemed a natural thing to do for a Food Revolution event, I happen to love the cookbook. It’s real food, made simple. Not simplified, just made do-able and approachable. For anyone.

I mean, how can learning how to make French fries from scratch be a bad thing? Especially when there’s no frying involved.  The boys particularly loved these (as I imagined they would). If just one of the boys encourages a parent to make these again, I’m happy. But I am sure there will be more.

And really, a lesson where you get to get your hands all “goopy” with egg, flour and cracker crumbs? The best!

I loved wandering around the room watching parents and their kids hard at work making their dinner. I tried not to intrude too much as they caught up on each others’ days. And, in fact, I didn’t have to. After having the group lesson with Adell, the boys were fairly independent at their stations. I barely had to help at all. Made me so proud

Watching these boys and their parents create this meal, then sit down to eat it together might sound like a small drop in the Food Revolution ocean but imagine if we all stopped to cook and eat together just once a week, what a difference that would make. The Food Revolution is not about big changes once a year, it’s about small changes often. I hope the boys and their parents will look back on this evening remembering how much fun it was and be inspired to cook a meal from scratch at home.

The following day, on Food Revolution Day, I did the class all over again. I was very lucky to have the support of The Kitchen Studio, The Cookbook Store, Sobeys  and Yorkshire Valley Farms for this public parent/ child cooking class.

With just 5 kids and 6 adults, it was a much smaller operation but not without its challenges – cooking with kids you don’t know is a little nerve-wracking (“Will they listen to me?!”) because apart from anything else, it’s hard to predict what their skills will be in the kitchen.  I love the space at The Kitchen Studio as it’s just like cooking in a home kitchen so it’s not at all intimidating which is important when you have a group of kids who don’t know each other (or me!) cooking together.  In any event, I should not have worried – we had a wonderful group of enthusiastic, interested kids which great “can do” attitudes – they jumped right in at every task and completed this meal in a little over 2 hours. Given there were 5 and 6 year-olds in the group, I think this is mighty impressive.

From the potatoes to the chicken to the salad, these kids worked hard and learned some great basic kitchen techniques on the way.  Slicing potatoes into same-sized wedges so they’d cook evenly…

Oiling the potatoes so they were evenly coated in the drizzle of olive oil…

Crushing garlic (and hey, I think a couple of the adults learned a trick or two here!)…

Crunching crackers to make crumb coating for our chicken and picking leaves off the thyme…

Zesting lemons and chopping butter…

Slicing raw chicken into even-sized fingers… (these kids were great about touching the chicken – even some of my Petits Chefs are still working their way to feeling ok about touching raw meat!)

And then the fun part: coating the chicken in flour, egg and the cracker crumbs…

While the chicken and potatoes were cooking, we made a huge salad together..

And then (finally!) we sat down to eat… The meal was truly delicious.

By the end of the night, we had settled into a comfortable rhythm and it felt like we had been cooking together for ages. Food and cooking really do have a way of bringing people together. And that sense of community, coming together over a meal prepared together, is totally what Food Revolution (Day) is about.  I’m excited to continue working as an Ambassador for REAL FOOD. Because nothing is more important than cooking it, sharing it and passing it on.

Food Revolution Cookbook giveaway (worldwide)

Thanks for the generosity of The Cookbook Store, I have one copy of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Cookbook to giveaway –  to anyone, anywhere in the world (I’m covering the shipping).

To enter, leave me a comment and tell me how you embrace Cook it. Share it. (Who do you pass on your knowledge to?)

For a bonus entry, tweet the following message:

I want to win a copy of the @JamieOliver @FoodRev cookbook from @cookbookshop + @eatlivtravwrite http://bit.ly/Z7kR7a #FRD2013

Then come back to leave me a message telling me you did.  Contest closes on Monday, May 27th at 6pm EST and the winner will be chosen via Random.org and emailed on Tuesday May 28th.  Good luck!

* Canadians: Have you entered my Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer and attachment giveaway yet? Closes May 29th 2013 at 6pm.

**  Hey Canadians, there are some cool prizes to be won over on the Canadian Lentils Love your Lentils site – a blogger, a home chef, and a voter will all win the chance to join Chef Michael Smith in Saskatchewan on June 23, 2013 for a culinary adventure. I have two recipes in the running!

Red lentil carrot soup with orange and cardamom
Lentil-ricotta gnocchi pan-fried in tumeric butter

Happy Food Revolution Day!

I can’t think of a better post to write today than one involving my Petits Chefs. And since it’s Friday, Dorie Greenspan has to be involved too! And since it’s Food Revolution Day, with the theme of “Cook it. Share it.” what better way to celebrate than to share how to make a Dorie Greenspan recipe with the boys? The French Fridays with Dorie crew are participating in Food Revolution Day too!

Food Revolution Day is a chance for people all over the world to come together and stand up for good food and essential cooking skills. It’s a chance for people to come together in homes, schools, workplaces and communities to cook and share their kitchen skills, food knowledge and resources. Food Revolution Day is a global day of action to raise awareness about the importance of good food and better food education for everyone.

My choice of recipe was a little bit dictated by the boys and what I know they like but also guided by necessity. Last night I hosted 19 boys and their family members in my school dining hall – we taught the boys a couple of Jamie Oliver recipes, then they taught their parents, then they sat down to eat together. More on that later (when I have recovered!). Since I felt like three components of the meal was not enough (!) and that we needed something a little sweet to end the meal and I remembered how much the boys last term loved making Thomas Keller’s madeleines so I figured we’d make Dorie’s version together. And because a cooking class involving nearly 70 people didn’t quite seem enough to take on, I hosted regular cooking club right after school yesterday where the boys prepared the madeleines!

Now, I’ve also made madeleines before for French Fridays with Dorie and Tuesdays with Dorie and I even spent an afternoon discussing whether lighter or more golden colour was preferable in one’s madeleines last summer at La Cuisine Paris. They are a pretty easy, yet fancy looking dessert and last time we made them in cooking club, a few of the boys’ mums ended up buying madeleine pans because the boys loved them so much. Once you have the madeleine pan, it’s a simple-to-prepare dessert that everyone seems to love!

In terms of passing on cooking “skills” there’s not much these boys don’t know. So I didn’t think it would be too challenging. Unexpectedly, the greasing and flouring of the pans proved to be something they were quite interested in and took a great deal of time perfecting…

The recipe itself is fairly simple though making 72 madeleines required some math skills…

I knew that a recipe that involved lemon zesting would be popular

I forgot my piping bags at home so the boys learned to fill the madeleine pans with spoons…

et voilà:

We popped these in the fridge for a few hours whilst we went ahead and whipped up, oh, you know, oven baked potato wedges, cruncky garlicky chicken and tossed salads for, you know, 19 families (all the boys’ work!) and then baked them up in time for dessert.

We had a bit of a madeleine pan #fail though – four of the 6 trays we used were perfect and gorgeous, the other two were a little odd – they didn’t have the typical “hump” that a madeleine does, rather, they had a bizarre concave effect and stuck to the pan. With a little persistence, we got them out but the were definitely the ugly ducklings A great lesson to show the boys how differently things can turn out with just one slight change in a recipe though. They still tasted great and, in fact, there were NONE left so, you know they can’t be all that bad. Here’s what the nicer ones looked like:

Madeleines to make Dorie proud Gobbled up by one and by all. I’m pretty sure a few (more) of the mums will be buying madeleine pans soon

All in all, a wonderful success I love showing the boys how easy homemade, from-scratch treats can be and I do hope I inspire even one of those boys to bake something from scratch this coming long-weekend. I always say if you’re going to have a treat, you might as well make it from scratch so you know what’s going into it! I’m sure Jamie Oliver and the Food Revolution folks would agree. Well done guys!

French Fridays with Dorie participants do not publish the recipes on our blogs (though you can find this week’s recipe online here) – we prefer if you purchase Around My French Table for yourselves which you can do here on Amazon or Amazon Canada. Or for free worldwide shipping, buy from The Book Depository. Go on, treat yourself then join us here!

* Canadians: Have you entered my Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer and attachment giveaway yet? Closes May 29th 2013 at 6pm.

**  Hey Canadians, there are some cool prizes to be won over on the Canadian Lentils Love your Lentils site – a blogger, a home chef, and a voter will all win the chance to join Chef Michael Smith in Saskatchewan on June 23, 2013 for a culinary adventure. I have two recipes in the running!

Red lentil carrot soup with orange and cardamom
Lentil-ricotta gnocchi pan-fried in tumeric butter