Baked cod with sundried tomato pesto and crunchy breadcrumbs

This adult style fish finger (more like mitts!) is extraordinarily easy to make.  Cod is cheap at 10 bucks a pound and extremely forgiving.  I smeared  tomato pesto over the top of the fish and added handfuls of breadcrumbs (mixed well with olive oil to ensure crunchiness).  Bake at 400 for 30 minutes and you're done.  This is no-fuss cooking.

This entire meal - including the potato-brocolli-green pea smash and the side salad with crispy pancetta is a Jamie Oliver 30-minute meal.  http://tinyurl.com/c2epj6l
Next time I'll use less pesto (too instense) and probably try and make some kind of caper relish instead. 







Sunday leftover pasta

Neither Trevor or I had any energy or desire to hit Loblaws after the weekend...and Thursday and Wednesday nights previous to that.  Who the do we think we are?  We need our sleep and opportunity to recover after too much indulgence in summertime fun....not go, go, go four nights in a row (?!).  This resulted in some self-hate last night where you vow to be better to yourself.  Anyway, I digress...

After we dropped off our cottage guests, we stopped by Provenance at Dundas and Euclid to gather something dinner.  Have you ever been in a shop where the store keeper and his client are chatting away as you patiently wait for them to finish so you may place your order?  I can't fault the store keeper as he was engaging with the customer while checking her out...but I was pissed at the woman who, in my opinion, was not making it a swift transaction.  Its like when you're waiting in line at the ATM and the person in front of you is counting their dollar bills without stepping aside to do so.  I guess my point is that when there are people waiting, hurry the fuck up won't you?

The above dish is spring onion with garlic...minced red chili, red bell pepper, chicken sausage, spinach, and parmesan cheese.  All leftover items from the fridge, minus the sausage. I got a "Meeks...you're a really good cook" from Trevor as he went back for a second helping and that gave me a madebymariko smile.

Breakfast Pizza

This was good.  Not great.

This was a great concept in theory, but I think it suffered when I used flat bread instead of actual pizza dough.  Plus, as a rule, I never order white pizzas, so I shouldn't have been surprised when I felt that it needed moist tomato to carry it through.

I used a vegetable peeler to make ribbons from zucchini, which I sauteed in olive oil and garlic.  I covered with mozz cheese, fresh herbs from what I had in the fridge, and cracked two eggs which I overcooked.  How to get the white done without resulting in a hard yolk?  Lower temperature for longer time I imagine.

Grilled Chicken with Peach BBQ Sauce and Roasted Green Onions

The peach bbq sauce is one of the tastiest things I've made in months.  I kept eating tiny spoonfuls of as dinner came along.  Super easy to make, I highly recommend trying it.  You can find the recipe here.  My one comment about the process is that the peaches are difficult to cut into slices after you've removed the skin (can't grip the slippery suckers), so don't bother trying to use a knife.  Use your hands and tear the flesh from the pits.  Btw, this is Gywneth Paltrow's recipe...so...ya know....

Not that I am any authority on cooking, but I find the best way to cook a chicken breast indoors is as follows: 1)  Grill on a pan at medium high heat for 3 minutes each side (set a timer).  Pop into a 350 oven for 15 minutes and then let rest covered with tin foil for 5 minutes.  Paam.  Cooked chicken minus the salmonella.

Roasted green onions.  I'd seen this in a magazine done on a bbq.  Cover in olive oil, salt, pepper, and roast at 400 for...gosh I can't remember now...10-12 minutes...basically the ends will begin to burn and you should take it out.  They are so sweet and only slightly oniony.  Delicious. 

Long time no see

This is my first post since December. 

My hair is longer, my waist a bit thicker.  I fell in love and moved in with my boyfriend.  I stopped cooking regularly and when I did, I couldn't be bothered to plate, position, and photograph.

I'd like to get back to that.

Nordic Vegetable Soup

They call it Nordic because it comes from a new cookbook The Nordic Diet by Danish cook Trina Hahnemann.  This is easily straight up Canadian as we too suffer from blistering cold winter environs.   The recipe can be found here.

Instead of 8 cups of vegetable broth I used half veg, half chicken broth.

Beet + Fennel soup because its easy, veg, and I'm holiday fat.

I apologize for this photograph.  Not having any natural light to shoot, I was going to fiddle with the settings on my camera and set up a nice shot...but the pink soup started bleeding up with side of my white bowl...so I threw in the towel and snapped this.  I enjoy the bottle of multi-vitamins for women, OPI nail polish, bottles of red wine, and sunglasses case all lazily positioned right next to my stove...just where they belong.  

My blog went missing for the past few weeks.  I seriously thought that some asshole internet company snatched up my domain name after it expired (my credit card expiration date had changed, so the auto-renew didn't go through) and thought that I was doomed to not be able to use madebymariko.COM anymore.  Thankfully I have resolved this.  I've been ultra lazy with this blog.  I noticed my commitment to this thing wane as the days got longer, and the weather got nicer.  That was like, May.  Then I drank and partied my way through the summer, with little interest to photograph the food I assembling together...not madebymariko worthy.  At all. 

For the past month, I've been experiencing one of life's great gifts - new love - with a guy who likes to wine and dine...maybe more than me...which is a lot...and totally fucking amazing.  As such, my jeans no longer fit and I have officially been wearing leggings for the good part of two weeks now.  The holiday indulgence went to an all new high this year.  I'm rather disgusted with myself and so my foray back into the kitchen starts with a Beet + Fennel soup.  The ingredient which amps it up and gives it tanginess is Kefir....which should be consumed as per the instructions in the recipe and not to taste...as I am now discovering is a touch hard on the digestive system....yeeeah.