June in British Columbia means many wonderful edibles are popping up in our gardens. This salad showcases fresh and tender butter lettuce with sweet-as-candy local strawberries. Try this light and lively combination!
Yield: Serves 4
Preparation Time: About 20 minutes
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
En papillote is a French term and a cooking method that means “in paper.” Today we are cooking our ingredients inside paper, not just any paper, but parchment paper that is designed for food and can withstand high temperatures. We are creating a tightly sealed paper parcel where the salmon will cook by steam.
Steam is a versatile moist cooking method where liquid is vapourized into steam. The steam carries heat to the food and cooks the food. Steaming food preserves many of the nutrients and seals in the flavours.
Be sure to use BC Ocean Wise salmon to ensure that the salmon was sustainably caught.
Yield: 4 small servings
Preparation Time: About 20 minutes
Cooking Time: About 10 minutes (longer for larger pieces of fish)
On your last nature walk, did you find any plants that made your heart sing? Have you revisited them to see them grow and bloom? It’s beginning to look like summer with blooms, fruits and all kinds of plant delights. What will you spot in your neighbourhood?
We have worm castings! Now what? There are two ways to use the castings Vermicompost and Compost Tea.
Everyone loves pizza! The Project CHEF team is here to show you how to make whole wheat pizza from scratch, an activity the whole family can enjoy. The best thing about pizza is that you can add any toppings you like. What will you put on your pizza?
Have a look at Project CHEF’s best tips to work safely when working with the stove. In this video, you will learn all about the “chicken wing arm” and the “shield,” just to name a few of our safety technique recommendations.
Following a recipe can be more challenging for some due to food allergies or intolerances. This doesn’t mean that food should be any less enjoyable or lack in taste. Knowing what substitutes to use for certain ingredients that cause issues is helpful in being able to alter recipes to suit your individual needs.
Salad greens we grow ourselves are phenomenal! Why do they taste so different? In a word, freshness. We have seen it time and time again in schools, kids who start out “allergic” to greens soon become salad green lovers by tasting all the different flavours of greens they are cooking with in the classroom, some even from their school garden. If you don’t try growing anything else with us this season from home, try one pot of salad greens. From seed to plate in a bit more than a month, the satisfaction can’t be beat.
We have made this traditional recipe with Kindergarten to adult cooks and the response has always been a resounding two thumbs up. Make this recipe in the springtime when BC rhubarb is in season. Although it may be tempting to make this early in the season, try to wait for BC strawberries as they explode with flavour and colour taking this recipe off the chart with local goodness.
Yield: Serves 6 – 7
Preparation Time: About 20 minutes
Baking Time: About 45 minutes @ 350 F
To be a chef you need to be part artist, part hard worker and part scientist. To really understand cooking it is important to understand the science behind behind the recipes. En papillote is a French term and a cooking method that means “in paper.” You guessed it, today we are cooking our ingredients inside paper, not just any paper, but parchment paper that is designed for food and can withstand high temperatures. We are creating a tightly sealed paper parcel where the vegetables will cook by steam. Steam is a versatile moist cooking method where liquid is vaporized into steam. The steam carries heat to the food and cooks the food. Steaming food preserves many of the nutrients and seals in the flavour. Try using different combination of herbs, vegetables, and even spices to create your very own veggies en papillote.
Yield: 4 parcels
Preparation Time: About 20 minutes
Baking Time: About 20 minutes
We measure ingredients when cooking to get the exact amount we need. This is important so that recipes turn out the same every time we make them. Let’s look at different ways to measure ingredients.
We tell our students that the best tool in the kitchen is attached to you …your hands! There’s so much you can do with your hands! In this video we look at cracking eggs, picking and tearing leaves from herbs, tearing cheese, greasing a pan, mixing ingredients and kneading dough.
Here is a side dish you can prepare in a snap using common household items. Take a look through the list of ingredients, do you notice anything that stands out? You may think that ingredients like honey and cinnamon are reserved for sweet foods, but they have their place in savoury foods too. Many cuisines are created by carefully balancing out flavours that tickle our tastebuds. Salty, sweet, sour and spicy are the predominant flavour categories that are used in everyday cooking. Create this recipe then taste your creation. Really taste your food and become a chef. Perhaps you would like the salad to be saltier, sweeter, more sour or spicier. What could you add next time?
Yield: 4 servings
Preparation Time: About 20 minutes
Peperonata is an Italian dish of slowly cooked sweet bell peppers. It can be enjoyed in many ways – it’s delicious by itself, on a toasted baguette, or even as a pizza topping. Many peperonata recipes include capers. Culinary capers are the unopened flower buds of the caper plant and can be purchased pickled. The star ingredient here is the bell pepper. On a Scoville scale, these peppers score a zero, meaning they have no spice at all. All bell peppers start off green, then slowly change colours as they mature. At the farmers markets you can find yellow, orange, red, and even purple peppers, depending on their varietal. At each stage, the nutrition within the peppers changes, and so do the flavours. When the peppers are green, they are a bit bitter, and become sweeter as they mature.
Let the Project CHEF team know how you enjoyed your peperonata!
Yield: 5 servings
Preparation Time: About 30 minutes
Two favourite foods come together in a delicious morning treat. Pancakes and apples, what’s not to love? This tasty combination will wake up everyone with the smell of apples and cinnamon, a match-made-in-heaven. Ask an adult to be with you for this recipe since you will be using an oven and a blender. It is a guaranteed happy start to the day.
Yield: 4 – 6 servings
Preparation Time: About 25 minutes
Baking Time: 5 minutes, then 25 – 30 min.
If I had to pick a favourite fictional food-related children’s book, one of the top tier books would be Chicks and Salsa, written by Aaron Reynolds and illustrated by Paulette Bogan (Bloomsberry USA Children’s Books, 2007).
What could be more fun than farm animals deciding to cook Latin inspired food and holding a fiesta? This book is begging to be read aloud as the words spring to life with alliteration that captures their fabulous feast. The illustrations are equally rich with delicious details.
Enjoy the video retelling of the book then get busy searching for wonderful words that feel good in your mouth. After that, make a sumptuous snack with our Latin inspired recipes.
We can travel the world through food and today we are preparing a delicious snack that is a popular street food in Mexico, Central America and South America. A tostada is a crispy tortilla typically made out of corn, however, it can also be made with wheat tortillas. Try making your own Whole Wheat Tortillas using our Project CHEF recipe. You can use a variety of different toppings to build your tostada. Some of our favourites are our Black Bean Dip, fresh Tomato Salsa and of course, Guacamole. Check out our video with the whole Project CHEF team teaching you how to make this these tasty tostadas.
Yield: 6 – 8 servings
Preparation Time: 15 minutes
We can travel the world through food and today we are preparing a delicious snack that is a popular street food in Mexico and Central America. A tostada is a crispy tortilla typically made out of corn, however, it can also be made with wheat tortillas. Tostadas can be made with a variety of toppings. Experiment to find your favourites.