Discoveries of Summer 2019

Bike rides where you don't feel like you're in the city.

I've done this route multiple times and have yet to get sick of it.

Toasted homemade sourdough bread tossed in a caprese salad made with tomatoes from my dad's garden, olive oil I lugged back from Portugal, and Maldon salt a friend kindly brought back from England.

I was doubtful anything could improve a caprese salad, but I was wrong.

Pasta with Eggplant Puree

I've spent the last month or two doing very little cooking and have mostly been gorging myself on grilled corn and caprese salad. Is there anything better then tomatoes and corn at the height of summer?

However, this means that other in-season vegetables are woefully being ignored. In attempt to add more variety to my diet, I picked up an eggplant at the market.

I'm still a novice when it comes to cooking eggplant but it always turns out lovely when roasted. This particular eggplant was roasted with cherry tomatoes, then blended together to make a sauce. Because there's a high ratio of eggplant to tomato, the eggplant is the star of the dish.

Read more...

Creamy Corn Pasta with Basil

I have an infatuation with corn. Once summer hits, I wait in anticipation for the appearance of corn trucks that dots the city. It's the only place I buy my corn from.

Corn trucks, you ask? More specifically, I look for corn trucks from Sweet Ridge Farm, the last commercial farm to exist in Toronto. They produce the sweetest corn that I have ever tasted. Because the corn is picked the same day that it is sold, it's super fresh and juicy.

I came across this pasta recipe and was intrigued, as the corn is thrown into a blender to make a creamy pasta sauce without the use of cream. Each piece of pasta is coated with sweet, corn-y goodness.

Read more...

Caprese Salad

Clinging on to the last vestige of summer:


Using the last tomatoes from my garden, I made a Caprese salad. No recipe needed (though Serious Eats has a guide on how not to screw it up): tomatoes, basil, mozzarella di bufala, olive oil, salt and pepper. Simple and delicious.

Crushed Tomatoes

Another item checked off my canning bucket list: tomatoes.


My friends and I got our hands on a bushel (53-ish pounds) of San Marzano-type tomatoes and spent six hours blanching, peeling, de-seeding, cooking and processing them.


By the end of the night, we admitted defeat. We only had several pounds to go but could not bare to look at another tomato. Canning is exhausting on such a large scale, and I am sure tomato remains coated every surface of the kitchen.



However, it was all worth it. After five batches, we ended up with nineteen 1L (quart) jars of crushed tomatoes / tomato sauce / tomato juice.

Pro tip: having company and drinking wine helps with the canning process.

Read more...