Culinary Adventures with Camilla

This sponsored post is written by me in conjunction with the  The Book Club Cookbook launch  of their new food blogger party feature. All opinions are my own. There is a new food blogger party feature on  The Book Club Cookbook website  and I'm excited to be part of the inaugural event. The first title   Unearthed: Love, Acceptance, and Other Lessons from an Abandoned Garden   by Alexandra Risen.* You can check out details about the #UnearthedParty: here . On the Page... Unearthed: Love, Acceptance, and Other Lessons from an Abandoned Garden   by Alexandra Risen is a memoir whose events are bookended by the deaths of her father, at the beginning, and her mother, at the end. After her father dies, Risen and her family purchase a home in Toronto that has a garden that's been long forgotten. When they first look at the home, Risen writes... "It's a complete mess," I say. I love  it. Could I finally put all my gardening books to use...

We are huge fans of eggplant. Huge. We make eggplant dip   and   ratatouille  all the time. I've done an entire dinner out of eggplant, including a dessert -  Melanzane al Cioccolato . Yes, that does mean Eggplant and Chocolate. Really. It's delicious.  So, it's not a stretch to see eggplant on our dinner table. But I was ecstatic to hear this assessment from the Enthusiastic Kitchen Elf: "Mommy, this is the best eggplant you've ever made." Really, it's the best? What makes it the best? "It's fleshy and melts in your mouth. And it has its own little boat bowl."  I know that I've made eggplant boats before - such as Bademjan Shekam-por or Boats with Avocado Cream -  but I'll take it. This really was delicious. Caramelized Miso-Topped Eggplant Ingredients serves 6 3 large eggplants sesame oil for brushing 2 T sake 1 T miso paste 2 T rice vinegar 1 t sesame oil 1 T honey 1 t soy sauce or gluten-fr...

Elizabeth from  The Law Student's Cookbook  is hosting  Food'N'Flix  this month. And her pick - Elf  - is one that completely escaped my radar. So, when I saw her invitation  here and heard it mentioned on NPR as a top holiday movie, I knew I had to see it. Finally. On the Screen If you haven't seen it, do. It's fun. Just imagine a human raised by elves - North Pole elves, not Lord of the Rings elves - who goes to New York to find his biological father who has no idea he exists. Oh, and add to that Will Ferrell, James Caan, and Zooey Deschanel and hilarity ensues. I was tempted to create something with the Elf Food Groups - candy, candy corn, candy canes, and syrup - but my teeth ached just thinking about that. I thought about spaghetti and meatballs, minus the maple syrup, but that's a already household staple. So, I went a different direction. The bowl of soup that Jovie (played by Zooey Deschanel) is eating when she sees Buddy (Will Ferrell) o...

  Okonomiyaki  is a savory pancake.  Okonomi  means something along the lines of "what you want" and  yaki  means "grilled" or "cooked." We've made it before - during our Cooking Around the World Adventure   when we traveled to Japan by tabletop. Click here   to see that post . Tonight, I decided to add chicken. The batter: 2 C chicken stock, 2 C white whole wheat flour, and 4 eggs. Whisk all of the ingredients together to form a thin pancake batter. Stir in 6 C of cabbage, 1 C cooked chicken, and 1/2 C dried shrimp. Cook in a flat pan until the batter is cooked, the cabbage is softened, and the pancake is lightly browned. I have seen beautiful images of okonomiyaki garnished with okonomiyaki sauce marbled with mayonnaise. We opted for the plop and smear method. So, it wasn't very photogenic, but it was delicious. All the  okonomiyaki  sauce recipes I found were slightly different. I mixed some ketchup, honey, lem...

Riley's absolutely favorite Japanese food is inari , a fried tofu pouch stuffed with seasoned rice. So, when Dylan and I were picking up some things at the market, Dylan insisted that he was going to make inari for his brother. Sweet boy! Well, he can be... Typcially you would use sushi rice - for its stickiness - but we had some leftover rice from our Jamaican dinner, so we used that. We brought our leftover rice to room temperature, seasoned it with a mixture of sugar, yuzu juice, and a splash of soy sauce, and folded in some Nori Furikake (sesame seeds mixed with mini strips of seaweed). Then Dylan stuffed the rice mixture into the fried tofu pouches. We didn't measure; he just improvised. He kept it under wraps until dinner. When Riley came over, he squealed and gave Dylan a huge hug. Awwww...brothers. They are either best friends or worst enemies. There is no in between.

With the warm weather we're having today, mushroom-barley soup didn't sound very appealing. So I changed direction and went for a cold mushroom-barley salad, using the shitake mushrooms from my CSA box. shitake mushrooms napa cabbage spinach soy sauce sake olive oil garlic cooked barley furikake * I washed, dried, and sliced the shitake mushrooms. Then I sa utéed them in a bit of olive oil with thin slices of napa cabbage, whole baby spinach, and minced garlic. When they began to soften and stick to the pan, I deglazed the pan with a splash of soy sauce and a splash of sake.  Toss with cooked barley, more olive oil, add soy sauce to taste. Chill. Sprinkle with furikake and serve. * furikake is a Japanese seasoning made up of tasted sesame seeds and bits of dried seaweed.