Cookbook Review: Eva's Kitchen by Eva Longoria

It has been a fascinating experiment testing recipes from Eva's Kitchen written by Eva Longoria and published by Random House of Canada. I will admit to being a bit resistant to reviewing a celebrity cookbook but I could tell from the poll results of my readers that I was not the only one who was a tad curious about what this Desperate Housewife had to offer us in the kitchen!

 

I did enjoy her carrot ginger soup but it did not break down very well and was not as creamy as the one in the photograph but the flavours were excellent. I adored her avocado stuffed with shrimp which was a very easy and refreshing recipe that I will make again this summer. 

 

Her Veracruz corn drizzled with homemade chipotle aioli was different, not something I had ever had before and this aioli was absolutely delicious. I used it all up and it was particularly fabulous on sandwiches. 

As you probably know, her Pan de Polvo ended up looking nothing like it did in the cookbook and remains a bit of a baking mystery. Not something I personally would make again. 

What you don't know is I also made her chunky guacamole where she insists that you use copious amounts of lemon juice and I must admit, it was fantastic on top of this fiesta salad I made.



Her baby spinach and beets salad with goat cheese was very good, even Reg liked it and he is not a big fan of beets. For additional texture I had to add my candied pecans otherwise the salad would have been too soft.



I made the asparagus with Grey Moss Inn white French dressing with shallots instead of white onion which gave it an odd pink hue, LOL. It was OK but I did not find it as memorable as Eva does. It was really, really runny and a tad sharp.

My favourite dish was her chicken with caramelized shallots and shiitake-wine sauce dinner. Absolutely delicious but mine came out this dark red bloody mess of a dish that my camera could not make heads or tails with and looked nothing like how it appears in the cookbook.

As you can see, my results were kind of all over the map. What I did love about the book is hearing Eva's voice in the introductory paragraphs of each recipe, listening to her stories and finding out why she loves each particular dish. Her personality is evident throughout the book and her dedication to good food is very prevalent.

You do not come across glossy hard cover cookbooks anymore which is reflected in the price but if you are looking for a beautiful cookbook filled with stunning photographs and do not mind paying a little extra, perhaps this is the cookbook for you?

I wish my results had not been so varied, it would make rating this cookbook so much easier. I did enjoy many of the dishes and am grateful to Eva for showing me how to make a red wine reduction, something I have been wanting to learn. This cookbook offers so many styles of food, I know I will not get bored and will continue making recipes from this cookbook.

Taking everything into account, I give this cookbook four out of five wooden spoons. I appreciate the personal touches, the amount of work that went into the photography, the beautiful layout, the quality of the paper and binding... But I am a publishing geek! If you do not care about those things, you might want to give this cookbook a pass.

There is much beautiful food to discover and none of the recipes bored me. That is quite a feat!

Favourite Recipes from Old New Brunswick Kitchens' Crunchies

The temperature in Nova Scotia has been all over the place so when it got a little cooler I decided to try and make these squares from the cookbook Favourite Recipes from Old New Brunswick Kitchens by Nimbus Publishing.

Unfortunately I have been very busy and distressed lately which does not go well with baking. Thankfully I managed to avert a kitchen disaster! Just barely...



In a bowl combine 1 cup sugar (cookbook says, "I use brown"), 1 cup flour, 2 cups quick oatmeal, 1 cup grated coconut and a pinch of salt. Unfortunately it does not say what kind of coconut so I used sweetened.



Melt 6 oz of butter with 1 tbsp of molasses in a mixing bowl over hot water.



Dissolve 3/4 tsp of baking soda in 1 tbsp of cold water.



Add the dry ingredients and dissolved baking soda into the melted butter and molasses.



Spread evenly in a buttered 13 x 9" pan. Bake in a slow oven until golden brown, 275-300F for around 25 minutes. Divide into squares while warm.

At this point I thought everything was going so well. I got on the phone with my mom and started telling her about the recipe when all of a sudden, I realized I had not added any sugar to the mixture! Somehow I had forgotten this step. I quickly got off the phone.



I took out the pan and worked the sugar into the dough for the squares. A very close call! I could tell it was going to remain quite granular but what else could I do?

I put the pan back into the oven and called my mom who I am sure found this all very amusing and a tad shocking. Just another day in my fibro life.



Thankfully the "crunchies" were very crunchy indeed and were kind of like a granola bar. In fact, it was almost exactly like a granola bar. Even with the somewhat undissolved sugar, these were very nice squares but add some ice cream and drizzle with caramel sauce? Divine!

If you make this, I highly recommend mixing in the sugar and dissolved baking soda before adding the dry ingredients so everything gets incorporated better.

I do wonder how old this recipe could be? I doubt grated coconut is something the people living in New Brunswick long ago would readily come across, if at all. Is this an antique recipe or merely retro? Whatever its time period, it was quite delicious. I give this recipe four out of five wooden spoons.

Roger Mooking's White Wine Pizza Dough with Roasted Garlic and Mushrooms

It is the weekend and when I think weekend, I think pizza! Recently I watched Roger Mooking make pizza dough with wine on his show Every Day Exotic and just had to try it myself. With it being the weekend and people having a little more time to make a pizza from scratch, I just had to share how I made it!



Here is the original recipe. When I made this pizza I had a whole day to myself and did not need to use instant yeast so instead I added 2 tsp of the last of my breadmaker yeast to 1 cup of warm water and 1 tbsp of sugar. I let sit for ten minutes.



In my mixer I had 3 1/4 cup of flour and 1 whole tbsp of salt! I found that a little surprising. I immediately worried that the salt would kill my yeast.



So I began by adding the 1/4 cup of the room temperature dry white wine with 3 tbsp of olive oil to the flour and salt first.



Then I added the yeast mixture and let the machine knead the dough for ten minutes.



Ava! I tried the trick of oiling the dough hook to avoid sticking and sadly, it still didn't work, LOL. No worries! Just wanted to let you know I tried.



I put the dough in a greased bowl and let rise for a couple of hours. Obviously the salt was not a problem, this dough got huge!



Roger shared an interesting tip for making roasted garlic on his show that does not appear in the recipe. He adds just a little bit of water, along with the olive oil and salt and pepper, to help prevent the garlic cloves from burning. He bakes his in a 450F oven for 45 minutes which is very hot! To see how I make it, check out my tutorial here.



He was right. Adding water helps them soften without interfering with the caramelization. Awesome tip Roger!



I cut the pizza dough into individual portions and grilled it on either side for a few minutes to cook through. Then I smeared the roasted garlic on top, added some sliced mushrooms, salt and pepper and some old cheddar and freshly grated Parmesan cheese. I broiled for a few minutes to melt the cheese and then drizzled with some of my sundried tomato salad dressing which gave it a ton of extra zing!

This was a fantastic pizza and the dough was very soft and tasty. I was shocked it was not too salty. I totally loved Roger's roasted garlic trick. I will be using that technique from now on but will continue cooking it lower and slower.

I hope you are inspired to make your own pizza this weekend instead of picking up the phone and dialing for delivery. I have been making my own pizza more and more these days to save money and eat healthier. Although getting a break in the kitchen every now and then rocks.

Happy Weekend!

Jamie Oliver inspires me to make my own ground beef

I hope you have been watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution program on ABC. Sadly many people haven't so they have moved the show to Friday nights and pretty much killed it. Which is such a shame. I suppose that is what happens when you try and tell the truth and it impacts big business. Thankfully they are showing more episodes starting tonight which I personally am looking forward to.



Jamie Oliver is a hero of mine. I totally agree with him that the more food we make ourselves, the healthier we will be. Well imagine my shock when he told me about pink slime! (See video above.) Here I was thinking I was being healthy by buying extra lean ground beef. Now I do not know for sure what the grocery stores do here but I did ask two meat departments if they made their own ground beef in house. No, they don't. They get it in a tube and package it up.

I even called one of the store's head office to find out if ammonia was used as a means of sanitizing the beef and they said it was not listed in the list of ingredients. Um, well, no... It isn't a flavouring...

This all kind of freaked me out. I am far from being a vegetarian like I used to be but I do care about what I eat! I got all upset and did not know what to do.



One day we were visiting my mother-in-law and she wanted to get rid of a lot of stuff and I burst out, Lorraine, do you have an old meat grinder? Sure enough, she did! And she was happy to give it to me. What a sweetheart! I found out that her and my husband used to use it to make pickles when he was a boy. How sweet is that?! A real family heirloom and a potential solution to my foodie problem.



I took my Dremel tool to it to clean it all up and put it together. I attached it to my small kitchen island and was ready to go.

I invested in an oven roast and removed what I thought was all the skin and cut it into chunks. Turns out that even the tiniest piece of that silvery skin can make your life hell. Which happened to me immediately. Nothing came out of the grinder at all at first. I thought it was broken until I removed the cap and got rid of the tiniest piece of fat. I began again. 

Then it was smooth sailing. Well, sort of. This is not easy to do by hand at all!



I cleaned out the last of the meat using by putting of bread through the grinder which worked pretty well. I found out later from online friends that it is much easier to grind meat that has been in the freezer a while.

After washing it and drying it completely, I lightly oiled it and put it in a bag with some brown rice for storage (thanks Alton Brown).



I used the meat to make Chuck Hughes' Super Burger. It was one of the best and most tender burgers I have ever had!

The only problem? Not only did grinding the meat hurt my shoulder, my hands killed for DAYS!!! I was in agony. I think I am going to have to blindfold my husband and get him to do the manual labour next time because there is no way I can do it again and he is a tad more squeamish than I am about meat.

I love Jamie Oliver's passion for helping kids, I do. But I care about YOU! I care about us adults and what we are eating too. I hope you watch his show tonight and keep in mind that it is so important to learn as much as you can about your food and make it yourself if you can. I feel so bad for Jamie, he is trying so hard and the world is not listening.

Well I am Jamie! And I will be watching and listening tonight.

President's Choice Product Testing: Peanut Butter Filled Pretzels, Memories Of Argentina Chimichurri Sauce and Lime & Habanero Tortilla Chips

It seems to be product testing and review day today but considering I was up all night thanks to a two and a half-hour thunderstorm that began as soon as my head hit the pillow last night, bring on the snacks and treats!

I did mention the other day that I fell in love with PC Peanut Butter Filled Pretzels and that love affair has continued. A foodie friend on FB did make a good point though. The peanut butter flavour is not super strong but that is one of the reasons why I really like them. The exterior is so crunchy and salty and the interior is sweet and smooth, I think they balance each other well together. Oh and I did dip them in Nutella, way too overpowering! Leave them as is and enjoy.



I do have one complaint! I COULD NOT get the top off! I had to get this weird thingamagig for removing tops off jars which sometimes hurts my shoulder. The top was so huge my little hands had no way of gripping the lid. Thank goodness for my weird tool to help me get in there and start taste testing. This giant jar really is a "must try" of snacking goodness and totally worth $5.

I was also happy to find out this treat contains no artificial flavours and how cool is it that when you shake it, you can hear the wedge of peanut butter rattling around inside?! I tried to cut it open to share how it was made but it shattered every time.

If it weren't for the packaging issue this would have gotten a perfect rating but every time I potentially get hurt opening a container to get at food, I am unhappy. Still, I give this product four and a half out of five wooden spoons. Love it!



I was very excited to see their Memories Of Argentina Chimichurri Sauce in the mystery box. I have made my own chimichurri sauce before and love it but rarely make it because Reg hates vinegar and it is a vinegar sauce. The idea of picking up one of my favourites sauces just for me with no work appealed to me deeply.



At first I did not mind the sauce. I slathered it over a beautiful grilled steak. The more I ate it, the less I liked it. There was such a harsh tone when it came to the acidity, like they used some cheap vinegar, that it bothered me more and more. I tried marinating fish in it and making a fish enchilada and then it was official. I hated.



So I had to make my own sauce to compare. The recipe comes from Everyday Day Foods (AKA Martha Stewart) and is referred to as a garlic-parsley sauce. Obviously mine (featured on the right) is more like a pesto and uses parsley, not cilantro so they appear to be two totally different entities.



Mine was so much better! So tasty, strong and stunning with the grilled steak, if I do say so myself. Even at just $2.49 I personally would not buy this sauce. I have only had the one homemade Chimichurri sauce so I can not compare it to many traditional recipes. All I can say for sure is, no thanks!



I thought I was in some serious trouble when I saw the bag of PC Lime & Habanero Chili Flavour Kettle Style Tortilla Chips. I am a wuss when it comes to heat but have been building up my tolerance slowly over the last year. Would these tortilla chips kill me?



They almost didn't get the chance to try because once again, packaging was an issue. This bag was silly difficult to open. I love that the outside was made out of paper the way chip bags used to be but the plastic interior made it almost impossible to rip open with my hands.



To cut the heat I made my foodie friend Sandra's Pineapple Salsa. I had a feeling the sweet salsa would go great with the acidic and spicy tortilla chips. Dang, was I ever right! A perfect combination. So good!

Those chips are absolutely the hottest I personally can handle but remember, I am a wimp when it comes to heat. I shared these with my husband last night and he said, "Damn, those chips are HAAAWWW-AAAT!" He agreed that with the salsa, they were a perfect match and made them more bearable.

I did eat numerous chips sans-salsa and man, they were good like that too. Nicely coating in flavouring, I adored the lime and there was a sweetness to them that went so well with the heat. I do not see how these could be any better. Despite the annoying packaging, a great deal at $3 a bag. I give them five out of five wooden spoons.

Two home runs and one foul ball so far!

Artisanal Kitchen's Mellow & Fruity Three Olives Extra Virgin Olive Oil

I received two small bottles of Artisanal Kitchen's Mellow & Fruity Three Olive Extra Virgin Olive Oil in the mail to do some product testing. What intrigued me was that the three olives used to make this olive oil were all grown in California, which some purists may find shocking.

As a result of being grown in California, apparently it is more mellow and lighter than imports, "...which tend to have a more peppery taste profile," says olive oil creator, Anna Zoitas. Let's see if she is right!



Because I had so little of this elixir I did only two recipe tests. The first was using it in Wayne's Ranch Dressing recipe. Normally fancy olive oils are too strong and bold in flavour to put in a dressing that requires a more neutral oil but I wanted to test this oil's "mellowness."

As soon as I poured the oil into the dressing, the colour immediately blew me away! It was beautiful. So rich and warm at the same time. Also, the dressing was perfect. The oil was not too strong or overpowering at all. I enjoyed it so much I used it in a white pizza I made with my homemade marinated olives.

Looks can be deceiving but not in this case at all. I was shocked that such a deeply coloured olive oil could be so neutral in flavour. But would it be too boring? Onto the next bottle!



The press release says this oil is perfect for cooking, dipping and dressing. Personally, I would never cook this oil. It would ruin all those fabulous healing omegas in this first cold pressed oil. No, I would use it to make a raw sauce. One of my favourites: basil pesto!



I had just enough oil for one serving of the basil pesto sauce and it was a beautiful lunch. Fresh, bold and not boring at all.



This olive oil really is light and mellow but you can feel the goodness with every bite. Its low acidity (below 0.5%) makes this a beautiful smooth olive oil to work with, no matter the application.

I thoroughly enjoyed product testing Artisanal Kitchen's Mellow & Fruity Three Olive Extra Virgin Olive Oil. What a luxurious treat! I give this product five out of five wooden spoons. The company contacted me and said you can buy their product here and if you are in Canada, here.