Green pipian

I've had this recipe bookmarked for a while, and I was thrilled to find locally grown tomatillos at the farmers market yesterday. (The Hutterites have an amazing selection of produce at the market!) These tomatillos have a great flavour, tart and citrusy.

This was also a good opportunity to take my fancy new food processor for a test drive (thanks again, mom and dad - it is fantastic!!) I also used it to make another batch of jalapeno pesto, this time with raw pepitas instead of almonds. The fresh BC jalapenos were a lot hotter than the supermarket ones that I'd previously used. Proceed with caution.

Prawns with hot tomatillo salsa

It's a bit too warm to cook today, but I wanted to make a quick sauce to accompany some pre-cooked prawns. After perusing a few recipes, and taking into account the limited amount of salsa-esque ingredients in my refrigerator, I came up with this.

Soba noodles with spicy pesto and chicken

I'm still on a quest to find the perfect summer salad. This dish isn't it, but it is quite tasty and pretty quick to throw together mid-week.

Chicken meatballs with tomatillo salsa

Despite the warm summer weather that we've been having I really wanted to make this recipe this weekend. Luckily the rain cooled things off a bit in the afternoon so having the oven on wasn't too bad.

I changed all of the herbs in the meatballs from the original recipe, and mostly used what I have growing in pots -- it may be an odd combination, but nothing beats that balcony terroir.

Asian pesto chicken salad

Continuing with my salad kick, this recipe was another way to use some of the nice herbs that I bought at the market. Although the original recipe called for fresh ginger in the pesto I added it to the dressing instead. This made quite a lot of pesto and I thought that the leftovers would be a bit more versatile sans ginger.

Generic burrito

Since I didn't cook anything this past weekend I felt compelled to make something on a (gasp) work night. So last night I threw together a quick salsa to support some burrito initiatives.

Arctic char with lentil salsa

Like most other Calgarians, I've given in to spring fever this weekend. This incredible chinook is a much needed break from the frigid temperatures that we've had since forEVER. So rather than cook yet another heavy, stew-like dish I wanted to prepare something a little lighter. (Although I'm sure that I'll be back with the heavy and the stewy before too long.)

I took a char out of the freezer and let it start thawing while I scanned some recipes. This was what I selected (although I modified it a bit). The verdict? Well, although I adored the lentil salsa, it just did not go with the char. Like, at all. (No, I'm serious.) It might have been better with a milder, white-fleshed fish like sole, but it did absolutely nothing for the char. (I think it could be brilliant with grilled chicken, though.) Anyways, here's the recipe that I used.