Next, we did a bridal shower for approximately 20 people.  3 different types of canapes.

1. Roasted maple duck with spicy mango chutney
2. Smoked salmon with lemon cream cheese
3. Bruschetta

Also 2 types of finger sandwiches

1. ham and cheese
2. Tomato and cucumber
both sandwiches had a dijion mayo spread

We also had:

Tomato, bocconcini skewers, crudite platter, roasted veggie platter, homemade salsa and guacamole, and a large bowl of fruit salad.

Everything turned out great and we had some great comments about the food and the cookies.

That’s it for now! Bi-weekly challenges will be back really soon!

Please visit our new business website for more information on our cookies and catering. www.cookiesandcatering.webs.com (The website is new and is currently under construction, we appreciate your understanding)

Thanks for reading =]

Eggs BeniDiCt

[This will be a 2 part blog]

Candice:

This week was a black box challenge that we have had many requests to do. The only thing was, neither of us had had dinner and both of us were pretty hungry. We decided to have an early dinner and do a black box dessert challenge.

We were each given a few minutes in our local grocery store to choose 3 ingredients for the other person. We agreed to be fair in our selections, since it was a dessert challenge, it would be easy to choose  ingredients never found in dessert, but that would have just been plain mean. We tried our best not to cheat, so when we bumped into each other down an aisle, we would turn the other way to avoid seeing the black box ingredients.

When we got back home, we got started. We unpacked our ingredients and had 5 mins to think of a dish and then 1.5hrs to create it.

My Black Box ingredients were:

Cream cheese, Almonds, and Carrots.

2 thoughts popped into my mind. Carrot cake with cream cheese topping.. but that was too obvious, I wanted to change it up a bit. So I ended up making a Carrot cheese cake with graham cracker crumbs layering the middle, and spiced almonds on top. The colour for the carrot cheese cake came out fantastic.. however, the carrot flavour was over powered by the cinnamon and the spiced almonds. It was a very rich creamy cheesecake, and the graham cracker layers provided a nice texture contrast.

Carrot Cheesecake with Spiced Almonds.

Darren:

My black box ingredients were:

Poppyseed, Vanilla Yogurt, & Pomegranate

These ingredients were a gift! I knew I wanted to make a cake with the poppyseeds and yogurt. Sort of like a pound cake but lighter, not so dense. I layered the cake with fluffy vanilla chantilly cream and it turned out amazing. With the pomegrate juices and sugar, I made a quick caramel. I also used pomegrate seeds as a garnish.

Vanilla Poppy Yogurt Cake
with Chantilly Cream and Pomegranate Caramel

Thanks for reading :]

For the appetizer we decided to make meatballs. Not just your run of the mill on-top-of spaghetti meatballs, mind you, but Red Quinoa & Veal Meatballs. To some ground veal we added the red quinoa, cooked al dente in chicken stock, some fresh chopped parsley, lime zest, garlic, soda cracker crumbs, egg yolk and salt/pepper. After panfrying them to get a nice crust, they were finished in the oven. We diced and boiled some russet potatoes to balance it out, & made a gravy to go with. Simply thickened some stock and added cream and seasonings: sage, salt & pepper.

In the end we were really pleased with this one. Meatballs came out tender and tasty, although a bit crumbly from the added grain. The gravy & potatoes added a nice touch to this nicely sized appetizer.

Next up on the menu is our entree. We made Seared Pork Chop on a bed of Rigatoni & Red Pepper Cream Sauce, Sauteed Spinach, Zucchini & Shitake. The pork was the easiest part of this- simple sear and finished in the oven. For the cream sauce we started with garlic and shallots, deglazed with white wine, and reduced with cream and chicken stock. We roasted the red bell pepper, then added to the sauce and pureed it all together. It came out this fabulous orange colour, if although visually slightly reminiscent of processed cheese or something..

I really enjoyed the presentation we came up with for this. The sauce was delicious and the garlic-sauteed veggies were perfectly cooked.

Well, that’s all for this week. Next time we’ll be doing a black box challenge. We’re going to each pick out 3 random ingredients for the other person to use in a dish of their choice.. Should be interesting!

Thanks for reading =]

Sincerely,

Eggs BeneDiCt

Another beautiful Vancouver day.  We started at the grocery store, planning out our ingredients and what we were going to make with them.  My partner wanted to make a pie, so simple enough we decided on an Apple and Blueberry Pie. We decided to use as many ingredients as possible starting with the letters, A B C D and E. We decided to use Duck Breast as our main entrée ingredient, Couscous as our starch, and Corn as our Vegetable.  We realized we were missing a letter… and how many common food items start with the letter E? Other than the obvious: Egg, Eggplant, and Eel.  We didn’t want to use any of those, so we decided to make Earl Grey Tea Chantilly to go with our pie. We bought some Dates, Asian pear, Coconut milk for our Couscous and Dill for our Corn, but we were still missing something,  sauce for our Duck.  We were thinking of making a gastrique, but we weren’t going to go the traditional direction with an orange gastrique, so I thought of making a delicious pineapple gastrique. Problem was… the letter “P” it did not belong in our challenge.  So we decided to make a Chutney. We bought a mango, Bird Chili, and Cilantro.  It was time to go back and start working on our dish.

We started off with the pie because it would take the longest: Apples, Blueberries, Cinnamon, Cane sugar in a Butter pastry.  Brushed with Egg whites and into the oven it goes.

While that was going on, we cut up the ingredients for the Chutney. Originally, I wanted to put in 2 Bird Chilies, but my partner convinced me to put in one and taste for heat before we add in another one.  I took out the seeds, but did not remove the vein, hoping it would give it just a little more kick.  Sure enough, we were able to taste the sweetness of the Brown sugar, the sourness of the mangoes and the heat from the Bird Chili was perfect after being cooked.  After the Chutney was finished, I added in the Cilantro just to get the flavor, but not wilt it by over cooking it.

The Couscous contained Caramelized Asian pear, Dates, Brown sugar, Coconut milk, Bay leaf and just a dash of Cayenne to balance out the sweetness of the fruit.  Unfortunately, we added a bit too much water to the Couscous.  However, my partner came up with the brilliant idea to put it in the oven and bake it a bit.  The texture came out great after baking it. The sweetness of the pear and Dates were great, but might have been a little overwhelming because the Coconut milk flavor did not come out as much as we wanted, and since the Chutney for the was also sweet, there ended up being a little too much sweet and not enough savory in our dish.

We made Dill Butter for the Corn and simply boiled the corn to keep its sweetness and natural flavors.

Finally, we seared the Duck Breast and finished it in the oven, which came out perfectly medium.  Last and final touches, we needed some colour so we garnished our dish with colourful Confit of baby heirloom tomatoes which added a nice colour contrast to our dish.

After dinner, our dessert was ready, so as our pie cooled down we whipped up our Chantilly with Earl grey tea steeped into half of the cream, chilled and mixed with regular whipped cream.  A touch of honey and our Chantilly was ready.

A delicious pie and flavorful Chantilly were great on their own, but not so much together. The flavor of the Earl grey seemed to over power the sweet Apple & Berry pie and the flavors didn’t mesh as well as we had expected it to.  We will try our Earl grey Chantilly another time with a more Autumn flavored spiced dessert, which we both believe would go much better together.

There you have it. We conquered our Alphabet Challenge.  We had so much fun that we decided on doing another Alphabet Challenge by picking letters out of a hat but not duplicating what we used for this challenge.  We chose 6 letters: S P Z V R Q  – That is going to be quite the challenge, but we are most definitely up for it.

Any new challenges are welcome and greatly appreciated down in the comment box. We will try to complete any challenges thrown our way.

Thanks for reading =]

Sincerely,

Eggs BeneDiCt

The food was simple but delicious. Grilled Portuguese roll; stuffed with seared chicken breast, avocado, bacon, basil aioli, alfalfa and crisp red pepper. We served it with a nice salad- cucumber, strawberry tomato, asparagus and bocconcini with a grape/balsamic vinaigrette. Lime crème brûlée was to be our dessert, topped with fresh strawberry compote and mint.

After we returned home with our goods we set off right away. Knowing that the crème brûlée would need time in the fridge to set, that’s what we started with. Off to a great start until I clumsily spilled water all over the floor and my partners pants, all while putting the dessert in the oven. No biggie once we realized the precious little custards were safe.

The rest of the meal was really easy! Cut veggies, roast garlic for the aioli, fry off some bacon, grill the chicken, make the dressing. Just to keep things interesting, I managed to also spill ice on the floor at some point. After plating everything up we sat down, very hungry, to a delicious summer lunch.

The crème brûlée turned out perfectly. Delicate crust of caramelized sugar on top of a silky smooth lime custard. A surprising amount of lime flavour was infused into the cream considering we strained out the zest before baking.

Lumps + custard = super gross. Remember that.

Thanks for reading! =]

Please vote for our next Challenge!! (We WILL follow it next time, if we get enough votes)

While you’re here, please vote for our next challenge or post some new challenges down in the comment section! !

View This Poll

Sincerely,

Eggs BeneDiCt

Original Post:  Thursday April 8, 2010

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We Begin With Eggs Benedict

What a rainy day it was… although rain is typical Vancouver weather, we’ve had an extremely sunny, clear winter, but yesterday? RAINY!

We get together at about 10:45am because one of us felt like making an eggs benedict brunch. What ingredients do we already have? Eggs, bacon…. yeah, thats it. We go to the nearest grocery store to pick up a few ingredients, of course we need sides too, so we pick up some yukon white potatoes and a tiny onion. The onion was so small it was mistaken as a shallot. We grab some english muffins and off we go.

Fry off some bacon, dice up the potatoes and slice up the onions. Make the hollandaise… make.. the…. hollandaise. We have no butter. One of us have to run back out into the rain to get the butter… damn. (glad it wasn’t me hahaha) We poach the eggs with balsamic vinegar (yes, it works too.. and there was no weird taste or colour!), toast the bread, make the hollandaise (dill hollandaise of course) sauté the potatoes and onions, plate everything and there you have it.. our Eggs Benedict brunch.

What a great way to start our EB blog.
(we know it’s not the best plating/presentation.. but it was definitely YUM!)

Thanks for reading! =]

Eggs BeneDiCt

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Welcome to the Eggs Benedict: Bi-weekly Blog !!

We are 2 culinary students that love cooking, love creating, and love working together. We graduated from culinary school back in 2008 and have continued to cook together ever since. We have created and/or made dishes together such as parsnip mushroom soup, crab cakes, coconut crusted salmon, and apple-honey glazed ribs, just to name a few. And of course (after rummaging through some photos) we conveniently realized it all started with EGGS BENEDICT (with dill hollandaise).

Since we have so much fun cooking together, we figure we should write a blog about our adventures/misadventures in the cooking scene and we will post pictures of everything we make. Every 2 weeks we will get together cook and create. We will also try to think of some challenges we have to complete (such as my sister’s 600 wedding cookies).

Comments and CONSTRUCTIVE criticisms are appreciated. =]

Thanks for reading,

Eggs BeneDiCt

Original Post:  Friday March 26, 2010