A bit of change for today … we’re gonna give you TWO recipes instead of just ONE! Get excited …

Homemade Pasta

Pasta dough is just a few simple ingredients, a little bit of time and, for me, usually some frustration.

What you’ll need:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp olive oil

That’s it for the ingredients. There is one other thing you’ll need …

A PASTA ROLLER!

This is a fancy one that attaches to our Kitchen Aid stand mixer. You can get much cheaper, manual ones at most kitchen stores. (There is also a way to make it WITHOUT a pasta roller, just takes must more work … use a rolling pin!)

Place your flour on a mixing surface in a mound.

Create a well at the top for your eggs to go in.

Make sure the well is large enough to hold the eggs! (Yea, this is where I made a goof … you don’t want the eggs flowing over the sides, trust me!)

Crack your eggs into the well in the middle. You may want to beat the eggs first, but it’s not mandatory.

Add the olive oil to the well.

Start to fold in the flour from the edges, mixing with the egg.

You can see in this photo my egg run off from the well being too small. This did become a problem later, as any run off, if not incorporated into the flour, will cause the dough to be too dry. I fixed this by adding just a teaspoon of water.

Lesson is, if  you screw up, it can still be saved!

Now that it’s mixed, time for kneading.

You’ll want to knead the dough for at least 6 minutes, I’ve found

You’ll know it’s ready when it looks like this. It will be very stiff and a bit dry, don’t worry, it’s supposed to be like that!

Wrap it up in plastic (you don’t want it to dry out) and let it sit for about half an hour

Now for these next steps, if you don’t have a pasta roller, use a rolling pin and make the sheets as thin as possible … it’s the same process as the machine

Grab a small amount of the dough (about 1/3rd of the ball), flatten it a bit and feed it into the pasta roller.

The first pass will be the slowest!

Fold the pasta that comes out and feed it through again.

Repeat this process 4-5 times. This is lining up the gluten in the dough … making it pasta instead of just plain old dough.

Once it’s been through a few times, you’ll want to turn the dial to make the pasta thinner, then repeat the process of folding …

and rolling!

After 3-4 passes, you’ll again turn the dial to make the pasta thinner and repeat this process. Keep going until you’ve turned that dial maybe 4 times …

Once you have sheets that are as thin as you want, you’re done. These sheets can be used to make lasagna or ravioli!

But, if you happen to have a pasta cutter …

Let’s make spaghetti!

Feed the sheet through the cutter

Spaghetti!

It can be used right away, stored for a few days the fridge or even frozen for later!

(If you don’t have a pasta cutter, you can cut thin strips with a sharp knife! Makin’ it old school!)

Kale & Pumpkin Seed Pesto

Pesto is a nice, fresh addition to any pasta!

Here’s what you’ll need:

• one bunch of kale
• 1/2 cup of pumpkin seeds (shelled)
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 cup of olive oil
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp of lemon juice

Now, this one is easy … if you have a food processor

Like the pasta above, it require a specific appliance.

Add the kale, pumpkin seeds, garlic and olive oil to the food processor and blend.

Once blended, add the salt and lemon juice.

Blend until you have a nice, creamy texture.

There you have it, a few fun ideas that you can use together or separately.

Experiment with the ingredients! Flavour your pasta, use sunflower seeds in the pesto … just have fun with it!

Bon Apetit!

A favourite dish at our home, especially around the holidays, is Swedish Meatballs with Cream Sauce ( köttbullar med gräddsås). Served with lingonberry jam and boiled potatoes, it’s my wife’s comfort food.

This recipe was actually passed down from Claire’s great grandmother, so let’s go make some old school meatballs!

Part 1 – Swedish Meatballs  (köttbullar)                      

For this, you’ll need:

• 200g ground veal
• 200g ground pork
• 200g ground beef
• (in Quebec, it is called Trio, so 600g of Trio)
• 1 small/medium yellow onion
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs
• 1/2 cup milk or cream(10%)
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1/2 cup soda water
• mini potatoes (boil and serve later)

In a mixing bowl, add the bread crumbs

Add milk.

Add 1/2 cup of soda water.

This should foam up and look pretty cool!

Mix together and let it stand while you prepare the rest.

Finely grate the onion and add it to your mixing bowl.

Add the meat and salt

Grind and add the allspice. Again, grinding fresh gives better flavour and very strong aromas that make you more familiar with each spice. It’s kinda fun too!

Mix until blended.

While mixing add in the bread crumb mixture.

Finally, once that is mixed, add an egg. Mix well.

Now you are going to want to take this mixture and let it cool down in the fridge for about 30 minutes. It makes it easier to roll!

Take a pinch of meat and roll it into a golf ball sized meatball. Now, if I’m having a lot people over, I usually make them a bit smaller, so that everyone will be sure to get some.

Swedish Meatballs don’t have to be small. At the Pelikan in Stockholm the meatballs I got were almost baseball sized!

Chill the meatballs in the fridge to get them to firm up, makes them easier to cook!

Now, get a frying pan and add plenty of butter … mmm, butter

Time to cook those meatballs!

That smells AMAZING!

Don’t forget about those potatoes!

Get your potatoes boiling with a little dill added to the water.

Now that your meatballs are done, get them into a ceramic bowl or some such container and cover them to keep them warm while you make the cream sauce!

Part 2 – Cream Sauce (gräddsås)

You’ll need:

• 1 cup of stock (beef or chicken) or water
• 1/2 cup of heavy cream(35%)
• 2 tbsp flour

Pour the stock into the pan and stir it to get all the tasty little cooked bits loose. Simmer for a couple of minutes.

Mix the flour with the cream.

Pour the cream and flour mixture into the pan.

Stir the sauce until mixed well, then bring to a boil.

Let the sauce reduce until it has reached the desired thickness.

Pour this loveliness into a gravy boat or suitable container.

Plate the meatballs with lingonberry jam and potatoes.

Don’t forget that cream sauce!

Now, go grab some Aquavit!

A lovely holiday meal, courtesy of Sweden and The Joli Pantry!

Bon apetit!

Here’s a relatively easy way to make Rustic Rye Crackers. This is one of those things that when you serve it to people they’re amazed because you “don’t make crackers, you just buy them!”

Alright, let’s look at how we did this!

This is what you’ll need:

• 200g whipping cream
• 200g water
• 260g rye flour
• 320g white flour (for bread)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 packet of ‘Fast Acting’ yeast
• caraway seeds (for topping)
• sea salt (optional for topping)

Add the cream and water together in a small saucepan

Warm this mixture until it’s warm to the touch, but not hot. You want to activate the yeast later, not kill it!

Get all your dry ingredients and a large mixing bowl

Add both the rye and bread flour.

Add the salt and the yeast!

With a whisk make sure all the dry ingredients are well mixed.

Pour the warm cream and water into the bowl of dry ingredients.

Stir as you pour!

Keep mixing until you have a well mixed dough.

Pour your dough out onto a nice surface dusted with rye flour.

Knead the dough for 2-3 minutes

Slice the dough into 6 roughly equal sized pieces

Okay, so this seems to be working …

Roll the slices into balls of dough.

Let the dough rest somewhere warm for 20-30 minutes, covered

While we’re waiting, let me tell you a little secret. This is actually our recipe for Swedish Hardbread (knäckebröd). Turns out, it’s perfect for making crackers too! I’m going to show you a few ways to prepare it now!

Once the dough has risen, take one ball and place it on some parchment paper with a dusting of rye flour.

Roll until very thin or the dough has gotten about 30cm in diameter.

Get some of those toppings! (we use caraway and salt, but you can also use sesame seeds, dill … heck, experiment!)

Sprinkle on your toppings, then roll once to really get them set into the dough (if you don’t, your topping will just fall off once it’s cooked)

Now, use a fork to make many, many little holes! This is what will keep the dough from rising up … it’s gonna make it a cracker.

Place dough in oven at 475F for approximately 5 minutes. Flip over and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Watch to make sure it doesn’t burn!

Option 1 – knäckebröd:

Place dough in unaltered. Let cool on a wire rack after.

Option 2 – Rye Crackers:

Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes and place on a baking sheet.

Pop them in the oven!

Nice rye crackers!

Option 3 – PLAY AROUND!:

This one we added dill. Put whatever toppings you’d like on a cracker!

Serve it will cheese or pâté (or if you’re doing the Swedish thing, a little sil (herring) is always good!)

So, there you have it! Rustic Rye Crackers you made yourself.

Bon Apetit!

It’s the time of year when we start thinking about family. For some of us, this means a warm, happy feeling …. let’s follow that!

Growing up Claire would visit her Grandma in Hamilton, Ontario and at some point they’d end up making these cookies.

Based on a wartime recipe, clipped off the back of a cereal box in post-war London, these cookies melt in your mouth and somehow give you that warm feeling of family.

You want that, right?

Here’s how they’re made:

You’ll need:

• 4 cups of all-purpose flour
• 5 oz of white sugar
• 3 packets of vanilla sugar (if you can’t find this, letting a vanilla bean sit in white sugar for a few days will create vanilla sugar)
• 1 package of Crisco
• 2 tsp of baking powder
• 1 cup of chocolate chips (or more if you like!)
• 4 eggs
• candied cherries (for garnish)

Add flour to the mixing bowl

White sugar!

Baking powder.

Here’s the vanilla sugar we mentioned.

Add that to the mix.

Blend all those ingredients together.

While that’s mixing, add the chocolate chips!

Once that’s done, turn off the mixer.

Slice the Crisco into small pieces.

Now add that to the mixing bowl.

Mix until the Crisco is blended with the dry ingredients. It will still be lumpy, don’t worry!

Add the eggs!

Again, we’re mixing until it’s blended.

The dough should still be a bit lumpy, but look like ice cream. (Doesn’t this look like chocolate chip ice cream?)

Let the dough chill for a few hours in the fridge OR you can roll it into large balls, wrap them in wax paper, and put them in the freezer to use at a later date.

We’re gonna make them now!

Take a small amount of dough. Roll it in your hands and place it on a cookie sheet. Flatten the ball into a round cookie shape

Repeat this step! If you have children or grandchildren, you have a workforce to help you out at this point, go for it!

Go get those very sticky candied cherries and cut them into pieces.

Place the cherries in the centre of each cookie. You can obviously play around here. If you have a child work force, this may be a good time to let them get creative!

Into the oven at 350F for approximately 12 minutes. Watch for the cookies to start to get golden around the edges and take them out (these cookies do not get brown … unless you burn them).

And there you have “Grandma” Cookies! Serve them with a nice cup of milky tea or a cold glass of milk. Perfect to leave out for Santa Christmas Eve!

Bon Apetit!

So, Thanksgiving is upon us … if we’re American. Up here in Canada we also have Thanksgiving, but it’s in mid-October. We call THIS holiday “American Thanksgiving”. We celebrate it by watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and some NFL football during our lunch break at work!

In honour of our American friends, we made a holiday classic, Pumpkin Pie!

For our recipe, you’ll need the following:

• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
• 1/2 tsp orange zest
• 1/2 cup of heavy cream
• medium-small size sugar pumpkin (or pie pumpkin)
• 2 pie crusts (yup, this makes 2 pies!)

Cut your pumpkin in half.

Clean out the halves and save the seeds for roasting! (I’ll give you a quick recipe for this later, for now, keep focused on that pie!)

Roast your pumpkin for approximately and hour at 350F, until a fork can pierce them with ease.

The pumpkin should be easy to remove at this point with a spoon. I’d suggest waiting a little while for the pumpkin to cool a bit, as this can be really hot after an hour of roasting! Set the pumpkin flesh aside  for now.

Add 2 eggs to the bowl and just the yolk of the third.

Mix in the brown sugar, white sugar, salt and spices.

Add the orange zest and continue to mix until smooth.

Now add that pumpkin!

While mixing pour in the cream … Yes, in case you were wondering, that is Pippi in the background of the lovely mixing GIF above … she’s always helping!

Keep mixing until you have gotten the smoothness you want. We keep it a little lumpy for a more rustic-style pie (shows off how homemade your pie is to your guests!)

Add your pie filling to a prepared crust. You’ll have enough to make two pies, so one to keep and one to bring to the office and impress your coworkers … or, maybe two pies to keep (who am I to judge you?)

Bake in the oven at 425F for 15 minutes, then reduce to 350F for 45 minutes or until a knife pressed into the pie comes out clean. I have bamboo skewers that are great for testing a pie without causing too much noticeable damage!

Let your pie cool for a few hours. It will have risen in the oven, don’t worry, it won’t stay all puffy

Now cut yourself a slice and serve it with some vanilla whipped cream!

There you have it! Pumpkin Pie!

Bon Apetit!

Of the many way there are to prepare coffee, one of my favourites is Turkish Coffee. Prepared on a stovetop, this full bodied, flavourful coffee warms you up and wakes you up!

This is what you need

You’ll need:

• dark roast coffee beans
• grinder
• small pot
• cardamom (optional, often used during Ramadan)

If adding cardamom, you’ll need to shell the pods

The grinder you see above actually belonged to Claire’s great grandparents! It’s from circa 1915 in Syria. This grinder as gone from Syria to Lebanon to England to Hamilton, Ontario and now resides in Montreal, Quebec!

Her grandmother told stories about how her and her brothers would have to sit and take turns grinding coffee when guests were coming over!

Okay, you’re probably looking at these photos and saying “I don’t have a grinder like that!”.  You just need beans ground at the finest setting (most grinders have a ‘turkish’ setting). It is almost a powder when ground.

Add beans to grinder … You can also add the cardamom at this point if you wish. (make sure you have removed the outer shell!)

Grind, grind, grind!

Pour grinds into pot. Now, add the water. You’ll want to make enough for a few cups, but remember that Turkish Coffee is served in small cups (you aren’t going to have a Grande Turkish Coffee … well, not if you want to sleep anytime in the next week!)

If you are using pre-ground coffee, you can add ground cardamom at this point to your grounds.

Bring pot to just under a boil on your stovetop.

Watch closely or pot will boil over! You want to make sure to keep it from boiling so you don’t ‘break the crema’ on top.

Pour a little into each cup and return it to the stove, repeating the step above. Continue this until the cups are full. Your kitchen should smell like coffee by now!

I don’t tend to add anything to Turkish Coffee, but you always can add sugar or cream (add before you pour the coffee). The cardamom will act as a natural sweetener.

Serve with lovely treats. Again, we got these lovely treats at Adonis Market in Montreal.

There you have it, Turkish Coffee!

Bon apetit!

It came from an Italian American tradition. On Sunday, after church, all the grandmas would spend the afternoon preparing a big meal for the family, a “Sunday Gravy”. As I am neither Italian nor American, please be lenient on my take on this classic.

So, what did I use?

For today’s meal (it will be slightly different each time):

• 5 hot Italian sausages
• 5 mild Italian sausages
• 3 pork shanks (osso bouco style)
• 2 lb pork roast
• 2 cans of diced tomatoes
• 1 Spanish onion
• 1 kg of rigatoni (sometimes I use a penne)

Usually I will have meatballs as well, but today, since I wasn’t making it for a large group, I didn’t add them. Many people will say meatballs are mandatory, but I always encourage you to improvise!

The meats you choose are up to you. I’ve used lamb neck, veal ribs, beef short ribs … basically, stuff with a bone is good. Also, since it’s going to simmer for many hours, don’t get expensive cuts of meat. Anything becomes tender after that amount of time.

Sunday Gravy is really just a type of braise. Here’s how it’s done:

Add some olive oil to a large pot (and trust me, you want something large. After the meat is added you’ll be surprised how much of the pot is full).

Grab your meat! (Sorry vegetarian pals, this one is gonna be meaty).

Brown the meat in the pot.

Once it’s all done, remove the meat to a separate dish.

Good ol’ plate of meat!

Chop up your onion.

Add that to the pot with some garlic and cook them until they start to get clear. Make sure they’re getting all the little brown bits of the meat mixed in!

Add the cans of tomatoes.

Add some oregano and  stir!

Time to put the meat back!

You may have noticed I did not cut up the pork roast. If you get a well marbled piece of meat it’s going to basically fall apart in the hours of simmering ahead so you don’t need to worry!

Make sure to pour in those drippy juices that came off the meat while it sat on the plate … that’s a lot of flavour you’d be losing!

Lovely!

Bring it to a slow boil, then turn the heat down to low. Cover the pot and walk away. This is going to simmer for a minimum of 3 hours! (it’s a recipe for a nice Sunday afternoon … go watch football now!)

Okay, internet magic time … those 3 hours have passed, time to get the pasta ready.

Add your pasta to boiling water. Get this cooked to a nice ‘al dente’.

Now we’re going back to our pot. Looking great, time to remove the meat!

Place the meat on a separate dish.

Is .. is … is that a plate of meat????

Yes it is Pippi … yes it is!

Now, go get that pasta out … I’m sure it’s cooked perfectly by now!

Add that pasta to your sauce!

Now that it’s well mixed, go grab a serving bowl.

Put the pasta in the bowl. A big thing about this meal is it’s for a large group or family! You serve it on big platter, let people take what they want!

Serve it with garlic bread, add a caesar salad … enjoy it! Make this when you have a people over to visit … they may never want to leave!

There you have it, my version of Sunday Gravy!

Bon apetit!