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| Cherry Blossoms! |
Last year, I spent most of Easter (in Europe we got nearly 2 weeks of holidays) travelling through the Baltic states and taking a cruise to St. Petersburg. This year's long weekend was slightly less adventurous, but was still a pleasant visit home. Besides, how can you not be in a good mood when you get to wake up to these beautiful cherry trees every morning?
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| Artichokes from Trader Joe's |
My sister also came back to Abbotsford for a few days, and with everyone together, we were able to celebrate my Mom's birthday and also drive down to the States in the search for good sales and cheap gas :) But what we didn't expect to do was happen upon
Trader Joe's. I know most people have been to Trader Joe's before, but this was actually my very first time shopping here. Holy smokes, is it cheap. Like, ridiculously cheap in many respects. Though it carries mostly packaged products (lots of organic products, though), it also offers some organic fresh produce at a significantly cheaper price than the average organic market, such as Whole Foods. I found huge artichokes at $1.00 each, which ended up as a side dish for our Easter dinner. One aspect of shopping here (not sure if it's a U.S. thing or just a Trader Joe's thing) was that all produce is priced per item. So organic bananas were "$0.49" which we took as being $0.49 per pound - not, as it turned out, per banana! Our favourite part, though, was the wine and beer section, with bottles as low as $2.50. Not the best quality wine, I'm sure, but for cooking (I started dreaming of mussels in white wine, risotto, and beef bourguignon), it's a steal.
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| Carrot Juice Chicken |
Our Easter dinners are never the most traditional, as in, we rarely actually have ham and eggs. A few weeks ago, I found Laura Calder's French Food at Home book for only $5.00 at the
closing out sale of a bookstore company in Vancouver. Since then, I've been looking forward to trying out some of her recipes. One recipe in particular that intrigued me was her Chicken in Carrot Juice. It sounds kind of revolting, but I decided to take her word for it that it's unexpectedly delicious. Before I cooking with it, I took a swig of the carrot juice. It's really gross. I think I'd have to dilute it ten-fold with orange juice to will myself to drink it. This made me even more nervous about cooking with it. But anyway, this chicken cooked in carrot juice turned out nicely. It's so easy to make, too; brown the chicken, pour away the fat, season with salt and herbs, then gradually pour in carrot juice and let reduce until the chicken is cooked and the juice is a thick sauce. Somehow the carrot juice becomes sweet and delicious, unlike its "raw" form.
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| Rosti |
I also tried out Laura Calder's
rosti, which were shredded potatoes, formed into small patties and pan fried. We topped them with my dad's salmon that he smoked and vacuum-packed last summer.
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| BBA's Pain de campagne (country bread) |
Alongside the carrot juice chicken and rosti, we made a
tasty salad (omitted the shrimp), roasted the artichokes, and I baked a few loaves of
Pain de campagne (another Peter Reinhart recipe).
Carrot Juice Chicken
makes 4 servings
4 chicken pieces (legs or thighs are good)
salt and pepper
a handful of fresh herbs (parsley, basil, etc)
2-3 cups carrot juice
Season the chicken pieces, then brown in a large pan. Drain off the fat, then scatter over the herbs and pour in 1 cup of orange juice. Allow to simmer and let the chicken cook and the carrot juice reduce. Add more carrot juice as needed, until the chicken is cooked. Cook the carrot juice for longer until it is reduced to a thick sauce. Bread slices dipped in the sauce are delicious.
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| Happy Easter! |
No Easter celebration is complete without decorating eggs! I never knew that you can naturally dye eggs using onion skins, until last year when I came across a market stall in Latvia, where little old ladies were selling bags of onion skins.
