We got our hands on some really nice lobster tails, so we decided we were going to try some lobster rolls! These are sort of a hybrid between different styles of lobster roll, but they came out super delicious. We didn't have the traditional sort of hoagie or hotdog bun-style roll for the bread, but we used these excellent little fluffy brioche rolls that came out amazing well. You could almost more call these lobster salad sliders, I suppose!

You can switch up the flavour profile with the herbs and such. Parsley would work well in the dressing as well. This is also a recipe that would be nice to use your own homemade mayo for, really go all out.

Salpicón is a Spanish dish usually including chopped veggies, potato, and some kind of shredded or chopped meat held together with an oil and vinegar-based dressing. The word itself means "hodgepodge" or "medley." For our recipe, we used a beautiful hot-smoked trout that we were able to source locally, but you can use any kind of smoked fish, or even some other kind of canned seafood chopped nice and fine. shredded or pulled meat would also work fine in this recipe.

There are a few alterations you can make to adjust the flavour profile. You can switch up the veggies you use, and add or remove herbs or spices to your tastes. Really nice party food that went over very well at the birthday party we brought it to. A perfect summer dish, refreshing and light.

Little late today! Our building was without power from 8am to 8pm (and our videos go live at 9:30am).

Anyway, this week we made blondies. This was for a friend's birthday party, and they really basically taste like a giant chocolate chip cookie, except a bit fluffier. We also added in some toffee chips (we got the really excellent Skor toffee chips), and they add a really lovely buttery flavour to it.

You definitely want to err on the side of underbaking these, because overbaked they get very dry very quickly. You can also add in things like chopped nuts if you like. Pretty simple and delicious dessert! Perfect for a party!

This is adapted from something we had at a local Middle Eastern eatery recently. It's a very similar sort of recipe to hummus, but it replaces the chickpea with braised beets. This is a great dip to put out for parties, and even people who aren't big beet fans may love this. The colour is just stunning. The beets combined with the light tahini make for this unbelievable magenta colour. You can garnish this with parsley or chives, and it's best served with either warm pita, pita chips, or tortilla chips.

You can change the flavour profile a little by switching up what you braise the beets with. Replace the garlic with shallots, add some cinnamon or clove, lots of fine little alterations you can make. You can also roast the garlic you add to the recipe to reduce its sharpness, but we don't recommend using the garlic that you braised the beets with, because it was pretty flavourless after all that cooking in water.

My husband is a huge fan of Dune, and this is a recipe that was referenced by Odrade in Chapterhouse: Dune. This is an adaptation of the "oyster stew" from that book. Now, it's really more of a soup because nothing is stewed in the dish, but it is a delicious and refreshing soup. We use mitsuba for this dish, which is very similar to flat-leaf or Italian parsley, but has a bit more complex of a flavour. If you are unable to get mitsuba, then the flat-leaf parsley will do just fine.

We used a really gorgeous local dry Riesling for the wine component, but any dry white wine will work fine. We enjoy the complexities of a Riesling for something like this instead of the refreshing simplicity of a pinot grigio, for instance, but a pinot grigio would do extremely well in this dish.

A little while ago, we made a mistake. My hubby had just had his second COVID shot, and was a little loopy from it while he was trying to order seafood from a place that delivers restaurant quality seafood to consumers in our neighbourhood. He meant to get 6 each of 6 different kinds of oysters, but accidentally got 36 of one of them. So we looked up to see if we could safely store them, and apparently you can shuck them into a container, then freeze them immediately, and they'll be good frozen for a month or so, so we popped them into the chest freezer. But now we've got all these shucked oysters to play with!

This is adapted from a recipe that we had a Japanese restaurant near us, with some inspiration from the classic Oysters Rockefeller. Once everything starts hitting the pan, it cooks really quickly, and it came out just amazingly tasty. You can switch up the herbs if you like to adjust the flavour profile. Just make sure you don't overcook the oysters.

Bit of a basic one this week, we're doing peanut butter cookies! It's a pretty simple recipe, and very tasty. We like to use real natural peanut butter because it's better for you (doesn't have hydrogenated oils) and tastes better. Also, we like to use crunchy peanut butter because we do like the texture with the chunks of peanut in the cookies.

Interestingly enough, the cookies do not spread at all while they're baking, which is why you want to do the traditional crossed-fork pattern on top. You want to spread it out with the forks so that they're cookie shaped when they're baked, otherwise they will stay mostly ball-shaped in the pan! Also, if you're going to freeze some for future baking, make sure you use the fork spreading before you freeze them.

This recipe originated at Commander's Palace in New Orleans and was developed by the legendary Paul Prudhomme. There are a few different variations of this recipe, and this one is primarily based on the version from Brennan's of Houston. Sauteed shrimp are no great secret or anything, but the real key to this recipe is the incredibly delicious compound butter that you finish sauteeing the shrimp in! We served this over rice, but it also makes a really delicious dish served over grits (and we have a great recipe for cheesy grits on our channel).

There are a couple of ways to change this recipe up, as well. Mushrooms are sometimes added to the compound butter (and if you use something like dried porcini, you can reconstitute them in the cognac with the sundried tomatoes). It's a Paul Prudhomme recipe, so of course it's swimming in butter and cognac. Also, feel free to mince the garlic and shallot if you don't want to grate them, but grating them will get more of the flavour throughout your compound butter.

&pp=sAQA

It's time for cool and refreshing summer drinks again! This year, we're making lemonade, but really we're making lemonade concentrate. You know those cans of concentrated lemonade you can buy at the grocery store and mix with water to make a big pitcher of boring, overly sweet lemonade? Well, this is way better than that! The real trick for this recipe is to steep your lemon zest in the simple syrup after it comes off the heat to let that lemon oil really infuse into the syrup.

We found that this concentrate mixed at a ratio of 2 parts concentrate to 4 parts whatever you're mixing it with. So, for the plain one, we did 2 parts concentrate to 4 parts sparkling water. For the cocktail, we did 2 parts concentrate, 1 part bourbon, 3 parts sparkling water. Your concentrate may have more or less intense flavour, so find whatever ratio works best for you! Also, if you're using a box grater for the lemon zest as we did here, make sure to avoid getting the pith as much as you can, as it will add a bitter flavour to your lemonade.

This is a recipe adapted from my family instead of something that hubby came up with. This casserole is really similar to a dish my mom made a lot while I was growing up. We used to grow zucchini and tomatoes in the yard, and this delicious casserole would happen when they were fresh and ripe. Nothing like eating your own produce from the garden!

You can make this vegan by replacing the butter with vegetable oil and omitting the cheese or using vegan cheese instead. Also, you can use more or less garlic or shallot, or if you really want some intense bulbiness, you can use the mandolin to get paper thin slices of onion to layer in there with the tomatoes and zucchini. Lots of ways to spice this up. You could add a bit of curry powder or five spice powder if you want to change the flavour profile completely, but we like to let the fresh flavours of these local veggies shine on their own in this dish.