The great thing about making pizza at home is that it’s easy to customize. In fact, everyone can make their own designer pizza, adding the ingredients that suit their tastes. Making the dough is a highlight as you get to be a part of the process of turning flour, water and yeast into a restaurant-worthy pizza crust. Set a date with the family to make pizza.
Yield: makes six 15 cm (6 inch) pizzas
Preparation Time: About 2 hours
Different areas of Italy include different ingredients to the tomato sauce they make. In northern Italy, where the area of Tuscany is located, they include a mixture of vegetables to add extra flavour to their tomato sauce. This mixture is called a soffritto.
Yield: 4-6 servings
Preparation Time: 1 hour
This “big bowl of red” is perfect for practising knife skills and feeding a crowd. It’s a one-pot meal loaded with goodness. The spices add amazing flavours making it deep and rich in taste, but not overly hot. A bonus is that many of the veggies you will be eating grow locally in BC. This recipe can be made with canned pantry ingredients, spices and frozen vegetables, all of which have a long shelf-life. It is also inexpensive and great for batch-cooking making it the perfect recipe to add to your repertoire. Making chili can be competitive as everyone thinks their chili recipe is the best, including us! We think our Project CHEF chili is THE best recipe out there. Try it out, we’ll let you decide.
Yield: Serves 5 – 6 people
Preparation Time: About 20 minutes
Cooking time: About 45 minutes
If you are new to cooking, this is a great recipe to practice many important cooking skills, in particular, knife skills. You will have the opportunity to practice your Claw & Saw as you precisely cut the tomatoes and onion. This simple recipe can be put together in a flash, but that doesn’t mean it lacks in flavour. It is one of our favourites and is sure to satisfy your taste buds. Roll up your sleeves, wash your hands and let’s get started!
Yield: 5 quesadillas
Preparation Time: About 20 minutes
Cooking time: About 4 – 5 minutes each
Baking bread might be your best excuse for a science experiment at home. It’s fun to watch yeast come alive in the right environment and work it’s magic on dough. Practice your accurate measuring skills in this recipe and use math to divide the Focaccia into fair amounts for everyone in your household. It’s going to smell heavenly and you’ll want to eat it warm because it’s just too hard to resist. Focaccia is an Italian flat bread. You can use different toppings, however this recipe calls for the classic Italian flavours of rosemary and parmesan cheese.
Yield: one dinner-plate sized loaf
Preparation Time: 1 ½ hours, including rising time
Cooking Time: 25 minutes
Cooking with ingredients that are in season makes a recipe taste so much better. In BC, corn is a summer grain and this Fresh Corn Chowder is best made when you see fresh cobs of BC corn at your local market. You can use frozen corn if you really can’t wait to try this soup but making this at the peak of summer with fresh corn will make a big difference to the flavour of the chowder. This recipe comes from John Bishop, a long time supporter of Project CHEF.
Yield: 8 Servings
Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 25 minutes
What makes a good curry? It’s all in the spices. India, in particular, is famous for the variety of sought after spices that are important to Indian cuisine. Spices were so precious, early European explorers set off around the world to source valuable spices. So what exactly is a spice? Spice is a dried part of a plant, such as the seed, fruit, root or bark, that adds flavour to our food. Have a smell of each spice, are any of them familiar to you?
Yield: 6 servings
Preparation Time: About 30 minutes
Cucumber is a favourite veggie of many. Oh, but wait a moment, it has seeds! Is it a vegetable or is it a fruit? Botanically speaking, a fruit is a seed-bearing part of a flowering plant that is edible. A vegetable is an edible part of a plant without seeds. A cucumber is botanically a fruit but we often classify it as a fruit-vegetable because it has seeds but is not as sweet as an apple or strawberry. This sweet and sour cucumber salad has a fantastic flavour combination that will please your palate.
Yield: 4 servings
Preparation Time: About 20 minutes (plus one hour in the fridge)
In June, gardens are overflowing with fresh and tender lettuces and salad greens. Use this quick and easy recipe to showcase local greens from your garden or the market. It’s easy to customize with other veggies, such as grated carrot, or even a sprinkle of cheese.
Yield: 4 servings
Preparation Time: About 15 minutes
A pesto is a sauce or dip of crushed ingredients. Traditionally, a mortar and pestle is used to pound and crush the ingredients together to form a smooth paste. The most commonly known pesto is the Genoese Pesto originating from Genoa, Italy, which is made with fresh basil, garlic, pine nuts, Parmigiana Reggiano and olive oil. This is the flavour profile we will be using in our recipe. Pine nuts can sometimes be hard to find and are very expensive, therefore can be replaced with other nuts such as cashews, walnuts or pumpkin seeds. Check your pantry and use what you have. If you are growing basil, you can use this fragrant herb fresh from your garden. Before getting started, ask an adult to set up the food processor and help you to use it.
Yield: 4 servings
Preparation Time: About 10 minutes