Kitchen visit, trout, calamari and sauteed beets

In my last post I shared the wonderful Ice Cream Cake I make with my cousin Emily while I was on vacation. In this post I will share the rest of our meal. Just keep in mind that we shared cooking duties so I don't have as many pictures of the cooking process... actually I'm missing a lot of photos I would normally have, but I was on vacation so we're making due with what we have.

The second day of my mini vacation Emily and I decided to take it easy, lounging around the house watching movies and cooking. To some people I'm sure cooking on their vacation is out of the question. Your relaxing, why not order a pizza, right?

Emily and I both enjoy cooking, even more so when we are together, sharing recipes and new ingredients. As kids we were always hanging out in the kitchen during the holidays, not only to sneak into food, but it was our hangout spot. It's where the magic happened. The kitchen was always loud, most of it from laughter. Cooking is a comfort for us and not necessarily because we get to eat it afterwards.

A whole rainbow trout.

Emily loves fish but had never prepared one whole before, or grilled it on a BBQ, so I decided to show her my favorite way to make rainbow trout. We started out with the whole fish, like in the picture, I showed her how to trim the fins and made sure it was clean on the inside. I raided her cabinets for Italian spices and salt and mixed them together in a little bowl. It had basil, oregano, thyme, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and ground pepper in it. I got it as close to the Italian salt rub I had at home (which I got at whole foods last year and love, But I haven't been able to find it again), It smelled like the beginnings of a pizza. I sprinkled my herb mix inside the body cavity of the fish and then wrapped the whole thing in aluminum foil. It was put on the grill while we cooked the rest of our meal. Sadly this is the only picture of the trout. We got so hungry by the time everything was done that we forgot to take pictures. It was perfectly cooked and I showed Emily how to remove the bones while keeping  as much of the fish intact as possible.

Sense being diagnosed with Celiacs Emily hasn't had some of her favorite foods. Most are not pre-made gluten free or are very time consuming to make yourself. Emily had not had Calamari in over 4 years. I was going to change that.

The hardest thing about making Calamari? 

Finding the squid. Most local stores have certain seafood staples and squid isn't usually one of them. Thankfully Whole Foods  tends to carry it, both the whole head/body (for stuffing) and pre-sliced into rings, which is perfect for Calamari.

You make it just like you would breaded chicken, dip it in the egg mixture, then rice flour, then back in the egg, then to the bread crumbs. Make sure it gets a nice coating of each layer.

All breaded and waiting for the fry oil to be hot enough.

Golden, delicious, and cooked just long enough. If you cook then too long they get really chewy.

Now I can't have Calamari without tartar sauce,  it's just wouldn't seem right to me without it.

The problem? Emily doesn't use mayo, she doesn't like it. Thankfully she had a vegan-mayo substitute. Normally I don't touch stuff like that, I prefer having as minimal processed food as possible, the ingredients in this stuff is processed before it is even processed into a vegan-mayo.  Anyway, I stubbornly wanted my tartar sauce and used it. We had gotten young garlic at the store, the kind with the bulb and the green stalk. I had never eaten it before and wanted to try it, so I chopped some up and put it in the vegan-mayo, along with some dill and pickles. It was oh so yummy with the Calamari. 

With all the seafood, we needed our vegetables, so I chopped up some golden beets, more of the young garlic and added the leftover Italian spices from the trout and I sauteed it all. The picture above is from before it all was cooked, once this was done we became ravenous animals and no more pictures where taken.

Gluten free Ice cream cake with caramel sauce

We often indulge when we are on vacation, don't we? I had gone up to Lynnwood, Wa, to visit my cousin Emily and we decided to treat our selves. This is one of two posts I have from the trip, but this one is the sweetest one and I like dessert  first whenever possible.

Now my photo recording isn't the greatest this time. We shared the cooking duties so I mainly have  pictures of making the caramel sauce, because that was my job. Emily made the whipping cream and assembled the sandwiches.  We cheated a little and bought pre-made Ice cream cookie sandwiches made by Julies Organic. 

I cooked down some organic sugar and butter... which took awhile on her stove. I had to constantly keep stirring, letting it all melt and cook down.

All melted, but not done in this picture, after this I put in a little cream  and continued stirring. It took about 20 minutes total from start to finish.

Emily whipped the cream in her kitchen aid, which is located right next to the stove, so I was able to take pictures.

When the whipping cream was done Emily took the sandwiches (3 of them,  4 sandwiches come in the box but her boyfriend had already eaten one, he could wait), she split one of the sandwiches in half and put each half on a whole cookie, that way they looked like a layered cake. She then covered them with whip cream, just like you would frost a cake. When they were done she put them in the freezer. 

When the caramel sauce was done, I let it cool for a bit before drizzling it over the cakes.

We were good and the cakes stayed in the freezer until after dinner.

These cakes were rich and almost too big for us to eat (I'm sure they aren't meant to be one serving anyway, oops). The whip cream balanced out the sweetness of the caramel and ice cream nicely. It was a perfect treat for my vacation

Could you say no to eating that?

Hollandaise sauce & Gluten Free Eggs Benedict

Have you ever gone to shopping and found several thing you just had to buy and afterwards one of them got forgotten about? I had gotten several books in my buying splurge, and when I got home I put all but one on the shelf and went off to read. This was years ago mind you, I did pick up the book, but not with the enthusiasm that I had when I bought it.

This book had a companion book of sorts, about cooking ingredients, one which I love to look through for cooking ideas. I also looked through this one, I even book marked recipes that I wanted to try, but I never got around to cooking any of them, until now.

I wanted Hollandaise sauce to make Eggs Benedict and I knew this book had a simple recipe for it.  I wasn't originally planning on using this cooking session for a post so the pictures are a little messy, they were an afterthought in the middle of cooking, I decided that I had to share this with you guys.

I got the ingredients together and pretty much just whisked for a while, the recipe was super simple.

Whisk, whisk, melt, melt....

Golden tangy goodness.

I roasted the broccoli and cauliflower in the oven while I got everything else ready. My toast was toasted and buttered. My ham slices (I didn't have Canadian bacon, so I had to make do) were browned in my frying pan next to my eggs. The most challenging part was doing all this while still whisking the hollandaise! Thankfully I prep everything before I actually start cooking, so everything I needed was in arms reach. I pre-crack my eggs in little dishes and salt and pepper them so I can just pour them into the pan when ready.

I made this for dinner and scarfed up everything, the hollandaise was so good. Because it was just me eating I had a lot of left over hollandaise sauce and had to keep it warm so it wouldn't separate. The book suggests variations for the sauce, one of which is to make it a Mousseline sauce by adding cream to it once it cooled slightly. I decided to try it, hoping that it would keep it from separating once it cooled. It mellowed out the flavor nicely and made it even creamier. And guess what? It allowed me to reheat the sauce the next day, without it separating, and I made a wonderful breakfast for Mr. Beam and myself. I will definitely be using this recipe again.