Smoked Salmon.

Another great buy from Costco, 500g of smoked salmon for less than $15, how can you resist?! I don't remember the last time we had any actually, but we both love it so it was a huge treat. I know the Brits eat it differently to the Canadians, but I stuck to my traditional way. 

Fresh, thinly sliced, buttered brown bread, smoked salmon, freshly squeezed lemon juice and black pepper. You cannot go wrong! It really lets the flavour of the salmon speak for itself, you get a little saltiness from the butter and the fresh lemon and pepper just enhances the fish. Heaven. We had this for lunch yesterday. I then set aside a little in the fridge and froze the other half for another time. I figure it is better to have 2 treats than to over indulge in one go?

I made a sandwich for my husband to take to work with rest of the salmon in the fridge. Same brown bread, a little mashed avocado, few drops of lemon, pepper and the salmon! I found the 1/4 avocado in the fridge left over from a salad and it was perfect portion size for going into a sandwich, and those 2 things go really well together. 

Lemon curdy pudding (and how to make it better next time hopefully).

I was making this pudding to follow the steak dinner last night. I say pudding, I mean dessert in Canadian language, as pudding is a kind of dessert here, so confusing!

Anyway, it is my Mum's recipe and I loved it growing up and this was my first attempt at making it on my own. I had such high hopes (as usual) and lots of expectation (as usual) and really wanted it to be just how I remembered. Luckily, the dinner guests are very forgiving and understanding so I didn't feel any pressure to provide perfection for them. Also, I had some left over chocolate quinoa cake in the fridge which would have to do as an alternative! 

The recipe uses stiffly beaten egg whites and a water bath cooking method. So having creamed the sugar and butter and lemon zest, and added the flour and baking powder, and then the milk and lemon juice, I was meant to fold in the egg whites but not too much. I think the first problem lies here. I didn't fold it in enough. There were small pockets of egg white on the surface of the batter which later on burned in the oven. Which I think is connected to the second problem, that I had the dish too high up in the oven. As Megan pointed out, cooking in a water bath (sitting your dish with mix inside a larger dish 1/3 filled with water so it partly steams/boils as it is baking) is a very gentle cooking method, so me putting the dish higher up in the oven put it into the hottest part of the oven and this didn't coincide with gentle cooking. I think in the future I will put the oven rack lower down and have the dessert cooking right around the middle of the oven. Needless to say, there needs to be a repeat attempt at this to get it right. 

The outcome wasn't terrible. I could actually peel away the burnt bits and the rest wasn't too badly affected. The aim is to get a light, fluffy cake part at the top with a creamy, saucy, lemon curd type part at the bottom. Very subtle flavours, very delicate dish. Ideally. It tasted great, I loved it. I love lemon! (I used to eat them whole, skin and all, with rock salt, as a child, it was one of my favourites! Also green mangoes with salt. I hope someone from Zambia reads this and understands as I know everyone else will be disgusted no doubt!) My husband is not a fan of lemon desserts so he had chocolate quinoa cake, and I got to have the rest of the lemon pudding today for brunch! Yay me!

Shopping at Costco.

I thought I would put a brief entry about Costco here following our trip there yesterday. Costco can be amazing for deals but do go there armed with a list and stick to it or you will end up with a lot of things you didn't need simply because they were a good deal. It also helps to have strong knowledge of the value of things in other stores to compare because while some things are a steal, other things simply are not cheaper, or are even more expensive than you can get elsewhere, so be careful. This is not the case too often though. Also bear in mind that with things coming in larger sizes, if you won't use it before it goes bad then it was not a good buy, it was wasteful. We tend to buy a lot of meat here as it is good value for money and also good quality. When we get it home I unpackage it all and put it into zip lock bags in portions for the 2 of us and then freeze it. Happy browsing and lots of self control to you!