So when I saw this recipe from Waitrose, it felt like the perfect marriage of guilty pasta and veggies! This pesto is so vibrant and fresh tasting, with the garden peas… while also still feeling like a traditional pesto, with garlic and basil. It’s delicious but also feels almost healthy.

The perfect recipe to enjoy after spending the day gardening in the allotment Which is pretty much what we do every weekend!

So if you’re looking for a quick meal on a weeknight, this is the jam! And you can easily swap out the kale for spinach, or another similar green. In fact, I actually prefer the flavour of spinach as opposed to kale. It’s subtler, which allows the pea and basil to really shine.

If you’re the type to keep frozen peas on hand, it’s an easy fridge meal. That is if you’re the type who keeps spinach or kale on hand. Enjoy!

A few years back, I was given a pasta roller as a Christmas present. It was a most unexpected gift, as it was from a Secret Santa exchange, and I didn’t know the person who had my name very well. It was absolutely perfect, as I had been dying to try my hand at making fresh pasta! And once you’ve mastered making plain pasta, striped or coloured pasta isn’t very far off! It’s not any more difficult, but it is time-consuming – oh so time-consuming…

Making fresh ravioli is only really worth it if you’re going to make unusual flavours. It takes so much time, that it’s not worth making regular cheese or spinach pasta. You have to mix together the dough, allow it to rest, make the filling, roll out the dough, fold + roll some more, then fill and cut the ravioli. Honestly, sometimes I’m not sure if I’m a masochist, or just love to cook and bake. It’s up for debate. 

To make your pasta striped, you have to mix together both regular dough, as well as coloured. While you could use food colouring, good-coloured pasta is made with natural ingredients. Cocoa powder makes brown, beetroot powder for red/pink, spirulina powder for green, turmeric or saffron for yellow, and tomato paste for orange. All of those ingredients have intense enough colours, so you only need a little bit.  It means that they won’t alter the flavour of your pasta considerably. (But remember, the colour of the pasta will lighten when you boil them.)

As I was making beetroot-filled pasta, I opted to add beetroot powder to 1/4 of the dough recipe, substituting for 5-10g of the flour. It gave it a lovely bright fuschia colour. You’ll need to experiment to see how many colour ingredients you need to get your desired shade.

Okay, now the instructions for how to make fresh ravioli (using a roller). It’s a bit of a long explanation, but stay with me! If you already know how and just want the recipe for the filling, scroll to the bottom!

The first, step will be making your filling. You want it to be completely cool when you’re ready to fill your pasta, so it’s easiest to do this first, and then chill. You can find all sorts of recipes online, and feel free to experiment! Some of my favourites that I’ve made are butternut squash with sage and mushroom with pine nuts. For the beetroot recipe, I used the base of this recipe but then added some chopped roasted hazelnuts, an egg yolk, and rosemary.

While your filling is chilling in the fridge, make your pasta dough. My original recipe came from the Kitchen Stories app, but it was always too dry and I’d have to keep adding liquid. (The video does show you how to roll etc. which is helpful if reading the instructions is confusing.) I finally just made my own. You’ll feel like it’s crazy dry still, but just squeeze it together, knead a bit, and let it rest. The flour will continue to absorb moisture as the dough relaxes.

If you’re just making plain-coloured pasta, you’ll make one batch of the recipe below. If you want striped pasta, make 1/4 of the recipe with the added colourant, and 3/4 of the recipe plain. As you layer the coloured pasta over the plain, you don’t need a whole lot.

After your dough has rested, and absorbed all the moisture, you can begin rolling! I’ve got the Marcato Atlas 150 pasta roller, which I heartily recommend. It’s solidly built and comes with pasta cutters for making spaghetti or linguine. Or in my case, you can use the linguine cutter to make stripes for ravioli!

Your dough should not feel too dry at this point but is still more crumbly and stiff than any other kind of dough. For the best al dente pasta, you need to activate the gluten in the dough. What this means is lots of rolling it out, folding it, and then feeding it back through the machine. As with making croissants, this is called laminating.

When rolling pasta, you cut off a chunk of dough (re-wrap the rest) and flatten it enough to fit through the machine on the lowest setting. Then you slowly increase the setting until your dough is the thickness you want. But see, if you only do that, you’ll end up with soggy pasta. As this dough was never properly kneaded, we need to work the gluten in the dough to give it a bite when boiled. To do that, you’ll want to work the dough through a couple of the settings, then fold your dough in thirds, and feed it back through the machine on the lowest setting. For the best-textured pasta, you’ll do this about 6-8 times before continuing on to your final thickness. This also helps you get neat edges before cutting! You can see visual examples in this long post about the perfect homemade pasta. I think I’ll try that recipe the next time for comparison!

To add the stripes to your dough, you have to laminate each colour first, then roll each to the same thickness (about halfway to your desired thickness). Cut both pieces to the same length, and then cut the coloured ones into even strips. As I had a linguine cutter on my roller, I used it to cut the red dough into even pieces. If you don’t have one, you can simply use a ruler and pizza wheel/knife.

Then, use water to dampen one side of each stripe with a wet finger (or brush if you’re fancy), and lay over the plain dough sheet. This gets fed back into your pasta roller (at its lowest setting), and the two layers get sandwiched into one! Then you keep rolling it out until it’s the right thickness – it’s really quite easy!

Most people recommend that you roll pasta for ravioli to about the last or second-to-last thickness on your machine. Too thick and it’ll feel like eating more dough than filling, but too thin and your ravioli may explode when boiling. It’s a delicate balance.

Once you have two sheets of dough ready to fill, you can use a ravioli cutter, cookie cutter, or ravioli mould set. The first time I made filled pasta, I made tortellini by hand and it took ages! After that, I saw a ravioli mould at Homesense and jumped at the chance to make 12 ravioli at a time. This mould is very similar to the one I have at home.

If using a mould, first make sure it’s lightly floured. Then lay one piece of dough on top, fill each cavity with about a teaspoon of filling, and use water to lightly wet the area around each filling. Then lay a second piece of dough on top, press out any air bubbles, and use a rolling pin (often included) to cut all the edges. Turn the mould over and tap to turn them all out.

If you don’t have a mould, you lay one piece on a lightly floured table, and add little mounds of filling on top. Space them out as far as needed for whichever cutter you are using. Then wet around each filling (I just use a damp finger), and cover with the second piece. Press together around each filling to remove air bubbles, and cut out with your cutter! Easy!

As you are making the pasta, place the finished ravioli on a well-floured baking tray, uncovered. You can then boil them straight away, or freeze them in a single layer, before moving them to ziplock bags for storage. Ravioli cooks in only a few minutes, even from frozen. This makes them a great weekday meal, once you get past all the time they take to make. 

And that’s it! It takes a long time, but if you enjoy stuff like that, it’s quite fun. Especially to see your handiwork with the stripes!

So if you’re feeling brave, why not try making your own pasta this week? Or perhaps set aside some time on the weekend, as it can take a while…

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It’s beginning to feel like fall over here, despite the fact that it’s still technically summer. The weather here in London definitely hasn’t received that memo The chill in the air has got me craving soups, casseroles, and all things cozy. But, as it’s still summer, I thought I would compromise with this summer borscht!

My grandma used to make two kinds of borscht, summer and winter. And my favorite was always summer, hands down. I loved the fresh dill flavor, the slight tang from the sour cream, and the salty ham. And not only does this meal taste good, but it looks kind of fun too! Depending on how much beetroot you add, or how bright their color is, it can turn out almost pepto-bismol pink!

So with our allotment of beets and potatoes ready for harvest, I set about making this soup. Now, I normally only make borscht after I’ve had a ham roast, as it provides me with the bone for stock and meat for the soup – but not this time. I’ve been having trouble finding a ham over here with the bone in, so I cooked a small ham, sans bone, and then got a friendly butcher to give me some bones for the stock. The bones didn’t provide as much flavor as I would have liked, and maybe you’re also struggling to find a ham with a bone? If that’s the case, just substitute some chicken or other neutral-ish stock.

So whether you’re feeling the last of the summer weather, or you craving something a bit warmer, try this soup! Personally, I think it’s a great meal no matter the time of year. So, forget “summer” borscht, let’s call this anytime-of-year-borscht.

Every pizza is a personal pizza if you believe in yourself

A couple of years ago I found myself working at a little cafe in Victoria. It was a great job, as there were only two of us in the kitchen, and we had plenty of freedom in terms of our hours, etc. One of the other great perks of this job was the lunch! Most restaurants etc. have free food as part of the job, but from my experience, it’s almost always unhealthy! Pasta, pasta, pasta… pretty much cheap carbs every day. But here we could make our own lunches with salads, sandwiches, and the occasional pizza!

They would make these individual pizzas for lunch each day, with different toppings. And boy, were they good! They would also sell the pizza dough for people to make their own at home.

As the baker, it was my job to make the pizza dough in large batches, and then we would defrost a few each day. These small balls made perfect thin-crust personal pizzas – so you can imagine I decided to make them at home! I adjusted the recipe a little bit for myself (I’m not super into whole wheat flour), and then would make a batch and freeze them. Then, all you need to do is pull a couple little pizza dough balls out and let them prove/defrost for a couple hours. You can even bring them out first thing in the morning, and let them defrost in the fridge.

All in all, it’s a super simple recipe that can make lots of pizza dough in advance. Which makes it pretty great for a weeknight meal. Just add some pizza sauce, fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, mushrooms, or whatever you like to your pizza!

Yum!

Salmon burgers with basil lime aioli in squid ink brioche | Hello Victoria

When I was originally planning this post, I had intended to do both the squid ink brioche and burger recipes. But see, I’m not convinced that the brioche recipe is a winner yet. I might try doing it again with different ink (I bought one that was more of a paste, and another that was really liquid) and then see if I can make a good enough bun to justify the extra effort of making them. This recipe was a bit difficult to work with, and the resulting burger was a tad crumbly.

For now, you can simply enjoy the look of black burger buns, and the recipe for these amazing salmon burgers.

I first had these burgers at a friend’s house, for a potluck BBQ dinner party. The only salmon burgers I had ever had prior to that, were just salmon steaks, not ground salmon. I’ve made these plenty of times now, and never deviate from the original recipe, because it’s just that good!
The sauce really makes it too… something about the combo of basil and lime really works with salmon. It also makes a mean dip for chips/fries!

As an alternative to your normal fries, we had these burgers with roasted Jerusalem artichokes! I’ll post the recipe later this week, as well as the lemon garlic aioli we had with them (two aiolis in one meal!).

Now, you can make these patties by blitzing a salmon fillet in a food processor (or even finely chop it if you can’t use one – did that once), but if you live in Canada, give your local Superstore a try! The one near me in New Westminster always had ground salmon! Much nicer to work with due to a lack of food processor clean-up, and cheaper too!

I normally make these as little sliders and serve them with tomatoes, lettuce, and aioli. It makes about 6-7 little burgers, depending on how large you make the patties. I usually just shape them however big my buns are. (I feel like some butt-related humor should be inserted here…)

Anywho – if you’re looking for something a little different for a weeknight dinner, give these a try!

Print

Salmon Burgers with Basil Lime Aioli

Keyword Salmon Burger

Prep Time 45 minutes minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 5 minutes minutes

Servings 6 – 7 Sliders

Ingredients

• 600 g boneless skinless salmon cut into chunks (or ground salmon)
• 75 g breadcrumbs
• 1 large egg white
• 1 shallot finely chopped
• 1 tbsp fresh basil chopped
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2-3 tbsp vegetable oil for frying
• 200 g mayonnaise
• 2 tbsp fresh basil finely chopped
• 1 lime juice and zest
• 1 garlic clove minced
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

• If using a food processor, place the salmon, breadcrumbs, egg white, shallot and basil inside. Pulse until combined, but not puréed. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
• Divide the mixture into 6-7 portions and shape each into a burger patty. Place onto a plate and transfer to the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.
• Heat the oil in a large frying pan, then add the burgers and fry for three minutes on each side, or until golden-brown all over and completely cooked through.
• For the basil and lime mayonnaise – mix all ingredients together in a small bowl. Season, to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Notes

Original Recipe from http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/salmonburgerswithbas_86430

Authentic chicken korma recipe | Hello Victoria

Who doesn’t like a man who can cook?

One of the best things about Richard is that he not only enjoys cooking but is quite good at it too! Since I am a baker by trade, he told me that he won’t bother trying to get really good at baking/breads/etc. – that’s my thing. But he does want to have something that he’s better at than me, something that our future kids will request (“dad’s —-“).

To that end, he has decided he will work on being the best at Asian cuisine. Right now, he’s focusing on Indian curries and bought the cookbook Rick Stein’s India. You should have seen how excited he was when it arrived! It’s a really great cookbook, full of truly authentic dishes. The best part is that it’s not like recipes you find online, where you’re using store-bought pastes or spice mixes – this book has you grinding cardamom pods, making your own coconut cream, etc.

So far, we’ve made three recipes from the book, and are excited to try more! (The masala chai tea is quite delicious!)

Now, for those unfamiliar with it, chicken korma is one of the mildest curries out there, with just that hint of warmth from the small amount of chili spice. It’s mostly a creamy coconut dish with aromatic spices, rather than the kind that makes your eyes water.

Perfect for you, mom!

Richard thought it would be a good idea to start mild and work our way up, as he’s better with spice than I am. I mean, I like spicy food, but since he lived in Nepal and Singapore for years, he has acquired a better tolerance than me. (All his traveling has also meant that he is very adventurous with his food choices, which is another great thing about him!)

To go with this curry, I decided to try the naan recipe from his cookbook. If Richard was going to become the king of curries, then I should learn how to make some mean naan bread to go with it, no? It’s a pretty straightforward recipe, and in my opinion, turned out quite well! I’ll figure out a few variations for it, including a really strong garlic naan, before posting it here. Richard also mentioned he once had naan with coconut in the middle which sounded interesting, but perhaps too much coconut to go with the korma?

Anyways, enough rambling… to the recipe!

Mushroom and white wine risotto | Hello Victoria

I know that I should really be trying all of the recipes that I already have saved on Pinterest, but for some reason, I keep adding new ones. I’m pretty sure we all have the same problem, no?

I found this recipe after racking my brain for something new to make for dinner – I had recently bought a box of arborio rice and have been itching to finally try my hand at making risotto. Mushrooms are one of my favorite things to eat, and while I don’t enjoy drinking white wine (red all the way!), it does add a wonderful flavor to the dish.

The instructions for the recipe were really easy to follow and worked out beautifully. I’m pretty sure that if he didn’t want to take some for lunch the next day, Richard would have finished the whole pot!

The only things I changed were the amount of cheese I added (less than it called for, as I didn’t want to use too much expensive cheese!) and more mushrooms. I had bought waaay more than necessary by accident but figured another cup wouldn’t hurt.

If you’re a fan of mushrooms, wine, or just delicious creamy food – then you’re in for a treat! The risotto isn’t that hard to make and only takes about 30 minutes. We paired it with some leftovers of the wine I used (always a plus), as well as little leek and salmon parcels. Not the healthiest meal, but oh-so-delicious!

Recipe adapted from 3 Yummy Tummies