Today I threw together a Brazilian fish stew, or at least somewhat inspired by Brazil. Very colourful and tasty, took some time to prep and cook though.

Here’s what we need:

• 28 oz can of tomatoes
• 1 lbs of salmon fillets
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 large onion
• 1 big yellow squash
• 1 big zucchini
• ½ cup fresh parsley
• 1/4 cup dried cilantro
• 1 tbs peperoncino
• 2 plantains
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 1 cup water
• 1/4-1/2 cup lime juice

Roughly chop up the onion. Pour the olive oil into a big pot and fry the onions on low heat for about 5 minutes. Add the crushed tomatoes and garlic, let boil under lid while cutting up the yellow squash into strips (like fries) and the zucchini into small cubes. Add to the mix and also add the cilantro, peperoncino. Cut up the parsley rough and add as well.

Put the salmon on top and squeeze a good amount of lime juice over them. Put on the lid and cut up the plantains. About 1 inch thick pieces (around 8 pieces per plantain) add to the mix and stir. Add water and let simmer on medium heat until the fish and plantain is cooked through. About 20 minutes. Stir forcefully to break up the salmon into small pieces.

Salt and pepper to taste and then it’s ready to serve!

Here’s what I used:

• One deer round roast, about 1 lbs
• 5 tbs olive oil
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbs dried marjoram
• 1 tbs pickapeppa sauce
• 1 tbs dried chipotle peppers

Mix together all but the venison to make a marinade. Rub it over the roast and sear it in a hot pan for colour. Brush on the rest of the marinade all around the roast and put it in the middle of the oven at 300F for about an hour.

That’s it.

Note: the pickapeppa sauce made it very sweet, so in hindsight – maybe only half a tablespoon.

Served rare to medium rare, garnished with parsley

Here’s what I used:

• 5-6 green onions
• 1 zucchini
• 14oz canned tomatoes
• 4 celery stalks
• 1 red bell pepper
• salt, pepper to taste
• garlic powder
• handful of parsley
• 1 tbs dried tarragon

Start out with chopping up the green onions and fry them on medium heat in a big pot in some olive oil. Add the zucchini and celery, stir and let cook for a few minutes. Add the bell peppers and the can of tomatoes, all the dry spices and lastly the parsley. Let simmer covered for about 10 minutes. Salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste.

This is kind of Ratatouille inspired, simple, fast and can be made with any onions/chunky vegetables. Have fun! :)

Anyway, I saw a nice oven steamed vegetable recipe and decided to recreated with whatever I could find: bell peppers, squashes and shrimp. Sounds like a meal right?

For this storm emergency dish I found:

• 18 shrimp
• 1 yellow squash
• 1 yellow bell pepper
• 2 tbs white wine
• olive oil

Chop both the squash and bell pepper length wise to make strips. The bell pepper about half an inch thick and the bell pepper very thin. Pour white wine over the vegetables and a good amount of olive oil, to really moisten the vegetables. Mix around until all is covered and put in the middle of a big aluminium foil sheet. Peel the shrimp and put on top of the vegetables and wrap the foil sheet up. Preheat the oven to 450F and let the “foil hut” cook for about 20-25 minutes.

Served with potatoes fried in Old Bay seasoning.

I rushed home after a long day out and about and started preparing the kitchen. I started out by making the marinade. I went with something sweet, something foresty, something different…

My balsamic/forest marinade:

• 5 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 2 tbsp honey
• plenty of thyme
• 2 tsp rosemary
• 2 tbsp juniper
• 2 cloves of garlic
• dash of liquid smoke

To make it you just have to mix everything together basically. I added everything in the order of my recipe (it’s an original!) got out the garlic press for the garlic cloves, crushed the juniper with the back of a knife and halved all the rosemary leaves. Stripped the thyme sprigs off of its leaves and mixed. While letting the flavours mix I prepared the skewers.

Here’s what I used:

• 1 lbs deer steak
• 1 orange bell pepper
• 1 yellow bell pepper
• 1 yellow squash
• 10 portobello mushrooms
• 1 yellow onion
• 1 jalapeño

Cut up everything into similar sized squares, with exception for the jalapeños of course. I cut the mushrooms into pieces of four. For the squashes I first halved them and then chopped them. Some of the steak pieces were long and thin so I wrapped up onions and jalapeños in some. Like hidden goodies.

Brush the marinade over the skewers. And put into the oven to broil for about ten minutes or until vegetables is starting to get golden. The venison will stay pink/red when broiling.

Boil up some rice and mix all of these ingredients in a big bowl.

• Rice
• Big handful of Italian parsley
• 1 tbs olive oil
• 2 lemons

It’s all ready to serve. I wish I had a barbecue or one of those grilling pans, but broiling things in the oven works almost as well. Extra thanks to the liquid smoke. It really gave it that barbecue flavour!

After 10 mins of broiling

Served on top of lettuce with a side of rice

I experimented together a venison roast of loin. It didn’t taste bad, it just didn’t match. I won’t tell you the mismatching ingredient yet, let’s see if you can guess!

Heres what I used:

• about 1lbs of deer loin
• couple of table spoons of olive oil
• 1 yellow squash
• 2 carrots
• about an inch fresh ginger root
• 1 cinnamon stick
• garlic
• Jamaican “Pickapeppa Sauce”
• 1 large sweet potato

Oil up a deep pan for the deer, set the oven at 350F and just mix all the ingredients together. Mince four cloves of garlic, halve and cube the squash, chop the carrots, slice the ginger root thinly – one slice per piece of loin. Pour over the pickapeppa sauce and mix until everything is covered. Then pour the mix into the oven dish and put it in for about 20-25 minutes for medium rare meat.

While the deer is cooking, cut the sweet potato into long strips/fries. About a third of an inch thick each. Fry them either in oil or butter but be sure to turn often. They burn very easy and take 5-10 minutes to cook.

So can you figure out what the mismatching ingredient was?

Answer: GINGER

As with past seafood dishes, this one is very simple (but takes a bit longer). I made a very delicious seafood soup with salmon fillets.

This recipe is a very nice one to follow because it does take time, but you are working the whole time, whether it be prepping the ingredients or washing off the cutting board/cleaning dishes.

Alright, so this is what you’ll need:

• A bit less than a pound of salmon fillets (or any other fatty fish)
• Sprigs of fresh thyme
• 2-3 tbsp olive oil
• 2 yellow squashes
• 2 zucchinis
• 2 medium large potatoes
• 2 celery stalks
• 1-2 carrots
• 3½ cups of stock (chicken or fish)
• salt & pepper to taste
• 1 onion
• 1 can (14oz) of tomatoes
• 1 bay leaf
• Italian parsley for garnish

Start off with cutting up the onions into cubes or chunks. Anything that will fit a spoon basically. Then chop up the celery roughly. If you want to you can also chop up the carrot now, or add it later if you like it crunchier. Put two to three table spoons of olive oil in the pan and heat it up. Tip in the vegetables you just cut up and stir occasionally, cook until softened.

While the onions and vegetables soften start chopping up the squashes and potatoes, again into anything that will fit on a spoon.  Tip them into the pot together with the sprigs of thyme and mix around. When everything got a bit of colour add the can of tomatoes, stock and bay leaf. Stir put the lid on and let simmer for about ten minutes.  Add the zucchinis, mix, and let simmer for another couple of minutes. Lastly add the salmon fillets on top of the soup (don’t mix it down yet!). Put the lid back on and let simmer until the fish is cooked through. Push a spoon through occasionally to check on the fish.

When the salmon is cooked through, start breaking it up with a spoon (or your tool of choice) until in small chunks – stir and serve :)

So lets start with the fish, I bought a barramundi (also known as “Asian bass”) a smaller fish around the pound size. I bought it whole and untouched meaning I had to clean, scale and gut it myself.

Clean the fish by rinsing it under cold water and scale it with the dull edge of a knife (a regular dinner knife works, just don’t press too hard). When I did this scales were flying everywhere. In my face, eyes, hair, all over my shirt and on the kitchen floor. Once again I suggest buying a pre-cleaned fish. I was scared about gutting the fish since as far as I can remember I’ve never done it with my own hands. I’ve watched a lot of people do it though. But it was very simple. You just cut a medium deep cut at the belly of the fish, starting at the vent and continuing up towards the head and gills. Don’t cut too deep, you don’t want to puncture the organs. When you have cut open the cavity just stick a finger in there and pull out all the contents. Some things you might have to use a little knife help for but it shouldn’t be much. Then rinse out the cavity and you have your scaled and gutted fish ready to be cooked.

Wrap aluminium wrap around a baking pan and oil it lightly or spray it with cooking spray. Place the fish and make diagonal cuts like in the image.

For the stuffing:

• 1 sage leaf for each cut
• 2 thin garlic slices for each cut
• rosemary sprinkled in each sage leaf and all over the fish
• 1 lemon

Place some garlic and rosemary on a big sage leaf and roll it up, place it in a cut. You can also put a slice of garlic on the outside of the sage leaf for extra flavour. Cut the lemon into wedges and stuff the cavity. I pressed them lightly to spill some lemon juice on the inside.

Bake in the oven at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, until the flesh is completely white and tender.

I had trouble serving this for one reason, being that I used too little oil and the fish was stuck to the aluminium. But other than that I just cut it up and served on a plate of potatoes with some hollandaise sauce :)

So to be honest, I had no idea what broil was so I had to Wikipedia it. Turns out it’s just like grilling – cool! So I looked for some vegetables that would be delicious grilled and came up with: asparagus, carrots and cherry tomatoes.

So here is the pre broiling picture. I put them up neatly, not stacking anything, and drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled salt on top of that. Finished it off with plenty of thyme. Then I put it into the oven and broiled it for approximately 10-12 minutes.

For 10-12 minutes everything was pretty good. Texture wise the carrot probably needed another minute or two in the oven but I was a bit scared of burning it all too much since the thyme came out black! Other than that it was excellent! The asparagus was slightly crispy outer and savoury soft centre. Definitely great as the side salad on any hot dish :)

Its very simple, it just looks fancy, trust me ;)

What you need:
Italian Bread
Butter
Salami
Your favourite mild cheese (I used Muenster)
Oregano
Tomatoes
Garlic olive oil

How I did it:
I spread butter on both slices of bread (for moisture and for ingredients to stick) and put two slices of cheese on one bread slice. On top of the cheese I put two-three slices of the salami. Cut up about half a tomato for the sandwich and put those slices on top of the salami and top it all off with some oregano. Put the sandwich together and have a frying pan ready on low/medium heat. Sprinkle some garlic olive oil in the pan, it matches this so well! And let fry for a few minutes on each side, either until the cheese melts or until the bread is the beautiful brown colour you want it :)

Fast & easy! And very, very tasty. You could probably replace the oregano with basil for more flavour and even switch the cheese for a good mozzarella and maybe even some sun dried tomatoes to make it more Italian style.

I didn’t know about grilled cheese sandwiches until I came to America and now that I do I added my own twist to them, enjoy :)