All posts tagged: summer recipe

Pork & Bacon (Porkception) Skewers with Peanut Dipping Sauce and Mango Salad

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These Pork & Bacon Skewers are my latest and greatest creation! Tender pork chop meat is marinated in a delicious ginger-molasses marinade and is skewered between a thick slice of Double Smoked Bacon from Red Barn Market. You can also call these Porkception Skewers. Grilled to perfection on the BBQ and served with a refreshing mango salad and peanut dipping sauce– these skewers are perfect for upcoming summer BBQs! #KitchenImprovYYJ Challenge I came up with this idea for a recipe from participating in the #KitchenImprovYYJ cookoff, where each week we were given a list of ingredients that we had to make a recipe with. During the final week of the competition, our ingredients were: apple, coffee, bacon and peanut butter. While many people would think to make a sweet recipe, I opted for savoury just to be a bit different. Plus, I love savoury foods way more than sweet foods! And so these Pork & Bacon Skewers were born! I marinated the pork chop with ginger, molasses (for that sweet and smoky flavour), maple syrup, …

Summer Tomato & Rosemary Focaccia

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One of the best ways to tell that summer is here (other than the heat) is all the fresh garden produce that is available. I’m so happy to see fresh cucumber, zucchini, beans, figs, and my all time favourite: tomatoes! You can’t beat sweet, juicy and incredibly flavourful, summer tomatoes! Whether they are red tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, green tomatoes, or fancy heirloom tomatoes, you have to gorge yourself on them while they are in season! Plus, since they are so easy to grow and have a high crop yield, they end up being dirt cheap at the grocery stores during the summer! I’m all for that! Tomatoes are an incredibly versatile fruit and can be prepared in many ways. You can simply eat them fresh with a drizzle of olive oil and salt and pepper, make them into tomato sauce to serve with pasta, or even dry them out to make sundried tomatoes. The possibilities are literally endless with tomatoes! But no matter which way you prepare them, they will always pair perfectly …

Simple Grilled Clams

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While clams are abundant year-round on the west coast, I particularly love to enjoy them in the summertime. They make the perfect light (yet satisfying) summer meal, especially when they are combined with fresh summer flavours and eaten outdoors on a patio or at the beach. This year, I decided to experiment with cooking clams. I typically steam-cook clams in a large pot on the stove, but realistically, I can do that any time of year. However, I can only grill my food for a few months before the rain starts up; so naturally, I opted for experimenting with grilling clams. After a few tries of experimenting with various ingredients and flavour combinations, I came back to keeping it simple, and that’s how my recipe for Simple Grilled Clams came to be! Direct or Indirect, that is the Question I had seen a few recipes where the clams were grilled directly on the metal grates of a grill. While I thought this would be great, I found that the tasty clam juices easily fall into …

Pesto Stuffed Cherry Tomatoes

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Basil + tomatoes = the best summer combination. Even though summer is winding down, you can still celebrate these two delicious summer foods for just a while longer. For the next few weeks, the basil will still be abundant and delicious and the tomatoes will be juicy and flavourful. By the end of September, these will all be gone until next summer. Thank goodness we are able to preserve these flavours well into the winter by making some pantry staples like tomato sauce, oven-fried tomatoes, and basil pesto. On this last long weekend of summer, I really want to sit back, relax, and enjoy the rest of the basil and tomatoes I have on hand (and maybe a drink or two :P). And what better way to do this by making my Pesto Stuffed Cherry Tomatoes! I picked up some fresh, local basil and cherry tomatoes (along with some other goodies) at the Burnaby Farmers Market today specifically for this recipe.  I love the rainbow cherry tomatoes for this recipe because they are super sweet …

Couscous Salad with Grilled Halloumi

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With fall being just around the corner, our outdoor BBQ and grilling days are numbered. I know when December and January rolls around, I am really going to be missing hanging out on the patio and eating grilled chicken, burgers and grilled veggies. So in these last few weeks of prime BBQ and grilling season, indulge in your favourite grilled foods and mix it up with this recipe for Couscous Salad with Grilled Halloumi. Halloumi is a very firm cheese that originated on the island of Cyprus. It is typically made with a combo of sheep and goat milk (or even cow milk), salt and dried mint. Once made, the cheese sits in brine and gets super flavourful and firm. Now when I say that it is a firm cheese, I mean it. This cheese is so firm that you can grill it, pan fry it, do whatever you want to it over a heat source and it will not melt. It’s kind of magical actually. When it is cooked, it becomes soft and creamy. …