Rainbow Tomato Salad with Quail Eggs

When it's hot out, we love eating salads and sandwiches. Last week we had a heat wave in Vancouver. Just before the clouds rolled in and the temperatures tumbled, I made one of my favorite French salads. A tomato and green bean salad! I have actually made this dish a gazillion times because it's so easy and so delicious. Every variation I have tried has been amazing. It's colorful, appealing, filling and healthy. My grandparents-in-law were the people who introduced me to this tomato salad. It made the perfect dinner for us one summer in the South of France. It's so hot there in the summer that you pretty much have to eat salads and cold food at every meal. Now that I think about it, it has been over a decade ago since I had this salad for the first time. Wow.

I love variations and I encourage you to change things up wherever you see fit as well. My salad changes depending on what I have at home. I like seafood in mine but I'm sure it would taste great if you leave it out too. Seriously, feel free to omit or substitute whatever you like :) The variation I would like to share today involves using quail eggs. A lot of quail eggs! And three different colors of tomato. For the fun of it :)

First of all, do you know how awesome quail eggs are? Have you tried them before? I have pretty much only eaten them in hot pot or a sweet dessert soup but since learning more about them in the past few months, I have been eating them in all sorts of different ways. I mean you can basically substitute any recipe that use regular chicken eggs for quail eggs. You just need around 3-4 quail eggs per chicken egg. I did this when I made my lemon cream. Fabulous! I have also eaten them boiled just for snacking or scrambled for breakfast. Quail eggs have so many health benefits. It's like a super food really. Also, you can keep them for a couple of months in the fridge. How cool is that?!

With the addition of quail eggs, this salad has gone from healthy to super healthy. And just when I thought this salad couldn't get any better, I just made it better right there! Okay, enough bragging :) Let's go make some rainbow salad!

Colorful tomato salad with quail eggs, green beans, corn and shrimp.

Rainbow Tomato Salad with Quail Eggs
Serves 8-10

10 small yellow tomatos, whole
10 small orange tomatos, whole
4 red tomatos, sliced and deseeded (or use 10 small red tomatos)
500 g green beans, cut
340 g bag of shrimp (or other seafood)
48 quail eggs (you can half this if you like), boiled and peeled
1 can of corn

Dressing

1 tbsp garlic, crushed
1 tbsp balsalmic vinegar
5-6 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt (or salt to taste)
1 1/2 tbsp fresh herbs such as basil and thyme, finely chopped (or use 1 tsp dried herbs)
2 tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped (optional for garnish)

Boil, cool, and peel the quail eggs. Prepare the salad dressing by adding everything together (save some parsley for garnish) and setting it aside.

Combine the tomatos, green beans, shrimp, eggs and corn. I usually line a big salad bowl with paper towels and then add all of this so that it can absorb any extra liquid. The salad ingredients need to be dry so that it doesn't dilute the dressing. Refrigerate this until you are ready to serve it. Just before serving, remove the paper towels and add the dressing. Mix well and serve.

Mother's Day Highlights

Here are the highlights from this past weekend's Mother's Day:

• My husband and son were nowhere to be seen when I woke up. They later surprised me with a big bouquet of beautiful flowers! :) And a homemade card from my son!
• We got our free Mother's Day cake from Thrifty Foods. My 4 year old decorated it all by himself. Pretty, right?!
• For breakfast, we had toasted dutch oven bread (orange cranberry almond flavor), banana blueberry muffins, and lemon ricotta hotcakes. My husband offered to make breakfast but I wanted to make everything from scratch myself. It was sweet of him to offer though :)
• I opened the gift my son and daycare prepared for me. It was a nice card and a painted frame with a mother's day poem inside.
• For dinner that evening, I baked us a squash and cheddar tart with roasted garlic custard. That's just a fancy way of calling a squash quiche :) It was vegetarian but there was something definitely lardon-y about the tart thanks to the roasted garlic and smoked cheddar. It was delicious!
• Best of all, I got to spend Mother's day with my two favorite people in the world: my husband and my son! Honestly, it felt like my birthday :) So much appreciation and love.

 I had a lovely Mother's day and I hope you did too!

Almond Bark Almond Butter Cups

Did you know that almond butter cups or peanut butter cups, for that matter, are extremely easy to make yourself? Well I'm sorry but it's very true. I made them for the first time about a month ago but I have already made them three times now. Yikes!

Reese peanut butter cups are one of the few yucky processed sugary foods that I eat from time to time still. I like peanut butter and we pretty much always have some at home. However, I love almond butter and we have a good supply of that as well. We also have hazelnut, cashew, and sunflower seed butter. Since exploring more vegan foods, we have been hoarding all sorts of nuts, seeds, and nut butters. They come in very handy when we make energy bars too.

I'm having a lot of fun making my own chocolates. These nut butter cups uses roasted almonds as well as store bought almond butter. This time around I thought I would have some fun and give them a two color tone. Since white chocolate is so sweet, I added almonds to lessen the overall sweetness. I used dark chocolate for the top layer so overall my chocolates aren't too sweet. If you like things sweeter, you can adjust the recipe. Enjoy and let me know what you think in the comments below! :)

Almond butter + roasted almonds + raw sugar

Make sure there is a visible ring around the almond filling!

Melt me!

Do you think the almonds help style the picture?

Almond Bark Almond Butter Cups
Makes 12 butter cups

3/4 cup white chocolate, melted
48 almonds, roasted (roast natural almonds in oven for 12-15 minutes at 350F)
1 cup dark chocolate, melted

Filling

1/2 cup almond butter
20 almonds, roasted
1 tbsp raw sugar

Slowly melt (or temper) the white chocolate and add the 48 almonds to it. Drop a spoonful of this into the center of each cup. Try not to get any white chocolate up the sides. Check to see that each cup has 4 nuts. Gently bang the cups so that the chocolate levels off and air bubbles are released. Refrigerate for 15 minutes. Pulverized 20 almonds with 1 tbsp of sugar. Add this to the almond butter and mix well. Roughly roll 12 balls out of the almond filling and place inside each cup for the next layer. Flatten the balls slightly but make sure the filling does not touch the sides. There needs to be room all around the filling for the chocolate later. Slowly melt (or temper) the dark chocolate. Pour around 1 tbsp over the top of and around the sides of the almond filling. Once all the chocolate is used up, bang gently to level the chocolate and release air bubbles. Wrap and refrigerate for 15 minutes or until chocolate is all set.

A chocolate gift for my mom. #mothersday

Chewy Brown Rice Brown Butter Rice Krispie Squares

The past few months, I have been craving for rice krispie squares. The last two batches that I made were somewhat disastrous but they still tasted good and we ate all of them within a couple of days. Every time I see rice krispies or marshmallows on special in the store, I think about making them again to see if I can improve on them. And of course to satisfy my rice krispie squares craving! :) This weekend, both rice krispies and marshmallows were on sale. Score!

My favorite recipe that I base my rice krispie squares from is on the Smitten Kitchen website. Each time I make it though, I don't measure things out and just tend to throw everything in and cheat where I can. Yup. And they turn out different every time. Who knew?! Haha. This time I decided to actually measure things out. Only for the blog, right?? Yes, only for the blog. I was careful this time and finally got the treats exactly how I liked them. The next step was of course to blog about them so that I wouldn't lose the recipe ever again :)

Warning: These treats are super chewy, totally fattening and highly addictive. Proceed at your own risk.

CHEWY!

Chewy Brown Rice Brown Butter Rice Krispie Squares
(Adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

1/2 cup butter
1 bag (400g) marshmallows
pinch of salt
6 1/2 to 7 cups brown rice krispies

Melt butter over high heat. Cook further while stirring constantly until butter is brown. It's important to stir constantly otherwise the butter will burn and leave burnt spots all over. Turn off heat and add all the marshmallows and salt. Continue stirring until all the marshmallows have melted. Add the rice krispies and stir until well combined. Pour into a square baking dish lined with parchment paper or aluminum foil and press tightly and evenly using the back of a clean spoon. Let cool before cutting.

Optional: After cutting into squares, dip one end into melted candy or chocolate and add sprinkles.

Vietnamese Chicken Coleslaw Salad

I love Vietnamese salads. Growing up, there were two in particular that we often ate that I absolutely loved: the rice roll salad and the coleslaw salad. We ate the coleslaw salad more often just because it was simpler and cheaper to make. After making chicken stock with pieces of chicken and bones, we would tear off the meat and set it aside for a coleslaw salad. My parents would then manually shave green and red cabbages and carrots for the salad. I remember doing this for them and it took forever! It always resulted in way too much coleslaw too.

When I moved out and started making my own, I bought cabbages and manually shaved them as well. Lol. Then I realized it was simply ridiculous since we could never eat that much. It was also a waste of time so I started to buy the coleslaw packages at the store. Yes, stores sell them all ready for you! And they aren't very expensive either. I remember when my parents came over and I made the salad for them. I saw my mom examining the coleslaw package I was using and then showing my dad. Yes mom. They sell them already for you! And when they are on sale they can be just $1 a bag! Awesome, right?!! It's not as fresh buying them from packages but it's definitely the best way to go here. I urged my parents to just buy the packages as well. It might have made more sense doing it manually when we had everyone at home to eat lots of food but now my parents are only cooking for themselves.

It's funny when I think about eating at home while growing up. Everything was so manual and labor intensive. I guess my parents were so used to doing things the long and hard way in Vietnam that they didn't bother looking for shortcuts available to them in Canada. We would buy raw peanuts and roast them ourselves at home. I remember being sent outside in our vegetable garden and blowing and stirring the peanuts to remove the skins on them. Again, it just took forever. One day, my mom told me that we don't have to do that anymore because they sell already roasted and skinless peanuts at the store. Lol.

I'm obsessed with candied bacon lately so naturally, I had to throw some in :)

So the recipe I'm about to share consists of both store bought coleslaw and roasted nuts. Save yourself a lot of time and trouble and just buy coleslaw and nuts! Normally, I use peanuts in this recipe but since I didn't have any at home, I just used almonds. I love this salad because every crunchy bite you take is sweet and salty and just full of flavor from all the raw vegetables and nuts. It's definitely different than a lot of salads out there, which is something I love about it. I make a lot of salads now, including a lot of French salads. This refreshing Vietnamese chicken coleslaw salad is still one of my favorites. My husband and 4 year old loves it too :)

Vietnamese Chicken Coleslaw Salad
Serves 4

1 package coleslaw (16oz)
3/4 cup fresh mint, chopped
1 cup shredded chicken meat

Seasoning

garlic oil (pressed garlic fried in a lot of oil)
fish sauce dressing (Nuoc Mam)

Toppings

candied bacon (optional)
crushed nuts

Toss together coleslaw, mint, and chicken in large salad bowl. Serve each plate with around 1 cup of this mix. Spoon over 1 tbsp garlic/oil, 2-3 tbsp fish sauce dressing and then top with 1 tbsp candied bacon (if using) and 1 tbsp crushed nuts. Serve immediately.

Anatomy of the Perfect Nutella Cupcake

If I haven't already mentioned it, Nutella cupcakes are definitely one of my favorite cupcakes. I have made cupcakes and cakes out of this thing so many times I have lost count. It is somewhat of a specialty cake so I do save it for special occasions. For instance I made them at my son's 3rd birthday party, for Christmas, for Valentines, for when our long time friend came to eat with us etc. I don't like to be boring though so each time the icing or decoration would be a bit different.

The Nutella cake alone is delicious but with icing, it's a-ma-zing! Even when I messed up and completely forgot to put the egg yolks in, it still tasted good. Lol. A bit oily and weird but still good :) When I ran out of rum, I made it without and it also tasted great! So don't worry about the rum. It doesn't make a huge difference if you leave it out ;)

Nutella cake and cupcakes are great with ganache, swiss meringue buttercream, chocolate swiss meringue buttercream, fondant etc. You can't really go wrong with this cake. Unless you burn the cake, of course :) My favorite used to be with chocolate swiss meringue buttercream but recently, I mixed up a nutella swiss meringue buttercream that I just fell in love with. Omg. It tasted like heaven. It had a tint of Nutella flavor in it and was much lighter in color, compared to the chocolate buttercream. The frosting was a beautiful contrast on top of the dark cupcake. It was sweet, but not overly sweet, and was slightly salty from the Nutella. I can't wait to make this again! It basically follows the swiss meringue buttercream method but I sort of half-ed the butter, half-ed the sugar, then added maybe 1/2 to 3/4 cups of Nutella. Something like that (?). Haha. I am such a hacker. If you are interested in a detailed recipe for this frosting, let me know in the comments below and I can measure out and write it down next time ;) This frosting would be excellent on other types of cake as well. Or even cookies! I tried a Nutella cloud frosting once and it was ridiculously sweet. Sorry Sweetapolita :( It looked beautiful and it came from a trusted source but I really don't like desserts that are too sweet. Again, I grew up eating Chinese sponge cakes with lots of fruit and whip cream :)

Recently, our out of town friend came to visit us. She stayed with us for two days and I wanted to shower her with great food and desserts. Like any good host would, you know? :) My friend is great and she's always great to us as well. She bought our 4 year old a Star Wars Lego and instantly became his BFF. Lol. I cooked Vietnamese for her this time and for dessert, I made Nutella cupcakes. She never had mine before so I just couldn't resist. They actually turned out to be remarkably perfect that I decided to make a blog post out of them. When my friend saw them for the first time, she told me that I should open up a cupcake shop because they looked amazing. To that, my usual response was "yeah, yeah but no." But I love her for saying that :)

Mommy's little helper hard at work.

So what constitutes the perfect Nutella cupcake? In my opinion, it needs to meet a certain cake to frosting ratio, and have a good balance of nuts and chocolate. The cake needs to be moist but still hold it together after each bite. It needs to look appealing and taste so spectacular that you wouldn't even care how many calories were in it. Lol. It's funny because when I first tweeted this cupcake, I concluded the tweet with "5000 calories." Every response I got was that it looked great and would be worth every calorie. Honestly, what would be worst than ingesting 5000 calories for something that tasted bad? Oh, I would cry.

My perfect Nutella cupcake contains cake, chocolate swiss meringue buttercream center, Nutella swiss meringue buttercream top, ganache, and a ferrero rocher chocolate ball. It sounds like a lot but with the right proportion together we have achieved the perfect marriage of hazelnut, chocolate and buttercream. And really it's just a medium size cupcake so you'll always have room for it ;)

Bonus: It's GLUTEN-FREE! My friend and I were talking about gluten free bakes since she bought some from Victoria to take back to a friend in California. She raved about how great they were and that she couldn't believe they were gluten-free. That got be thinking and then after looking at all the ingredients and reading the back of labels, I told her that my Nutella cupcakes, without the chocolate ball, were gluten-free too. If you are allergic to gluten or on a gluten-free diet, remove the ball and all is good! They definitely aren't vegan but hooray for being gluten-free cupcakes!

Candied Bacon Chocolate Spoons

When I started making cookies, I bought a few cookie cutters. Then a few more. Then LOTS more. It's gotten to the point where I'm having trouble keeping track of all my cookie cutters.

Then came cupcake and cake making. I bought a few sprinkles, then a few more. Now I have an endless supply of sprinkles. Whenever I'm at a baking store though, I am still checking out sprinkles to see if I can add anything to my collection. I'm nuts, right?!

Now comes chocolate making. I became interested in making my own chocolate bars after going to my first chocolate tasting class here in Vancouver. Soon after, we went to France and Italy. It was in Tuscany that I visited the Amedei factory and bought their award winning chocolate. Before leaving France, I bought my first chocolate molds. When I came back home to Canada, I bought some more. I'm probably at about a dozen different molds now! I'm always on the lookout for more molds I can use for chocolate. I'm sure it won't be too hard for me to grow this collection too. Lol.

A month or so ago, my Mother-in-Law in France sent me a couple of new chocolate molds. I was so excited! I didn't have an excuse to make chocolate then but now I do. Well, sort of. Our friend from California is visiting us this weekend and I wanted to make her a chocolate gift. That's a good enough reason, right? :)

Remember my new obsession with candied bacon? This month may be grilled cheese month but it mind as well be candied bacon month as well. I just can't stop with this stuff! The crazy thing is that it's so simple to make as well. Buy bacon, sprinkle with brown sugar, and bake. Done!

Candied bacon.

I used to think bacon chocolate was yucky but once I tried it for the first time at my chocolate tasting, I actually loved it. Now that I have made candied bacon, it was time to finally try making my own bacon chocolate. I took extra care in baking my bacon this time. I wanted them crispy and dry as possible. I started baking them for about 8-10 minutes first. Then I poured out the fat. Before putting it back into the oven, I sprinkled on some brown sugar. Then I baked them some more. I poured out more fat at the end and then drained them on paper towels. I also manually dabbed each piece of bacon with paper towel to remove as much grease as possible. When they were as dry as possible, I cut them as small as I could with a big strong knife. My bacon bits were then ready to use as toppings for my chocolate spoons :)

Tempering chocolate.

My 4yo at work.

60% dark chocolate sprinkled with candied bacon bits and gold candy.

Packaged chocolate spoon gifts.

It was a big chocolate making day. My 4yo decorated spoons for his little cousins. I also went ahead and made mini candied bacon chocolate bars. Why the heck not, right? The mini tablette bar mold was also new from France. I used candy wrap on a few of them and made my own wrapping paper out of card stock. I chose a simple design since they were so mini. They weren't perfect but they were still adorable :) These individually wrapped chocolates are all for my friend! She may just hate me though since she's watching her weight too. Ahem. I barely see her and I want her to try these so does that make me an evil friend? Sorry.

DIY wrapping using designed stock paper and glue.

Mini candied bacon dark chocolate bars.