10 toppings for Hanukkah latkes

Crisp, aerial potato latkes are able (and tasty) cartage for adorable toppings.

Sour chrism with Pink Applesauce or Roasted Red Pepper Relish are admirable help-yourself choices for a ancestors Hanukkah meal.

Crème fraiche with a aberration of smoked apricot or smidgen of caviar makes dinners and hors d'oeuvres memorable. But whether the latkes are aloof or haute, you won't appetite to absolute yourself to aloof one topping. Anniversary makes abundant to top all the Aureate Latkes.

5 aloof latke toppings:

* Chunky Maple Pear Sauce

* Roasted Red Pepper Relish

* Pink Applesauce

* Beginning Cranberry Relish

* Lemon Crème Fraîche

5 haute latke toppings:

Duck Confit

Packages of avoid bonbon are accessible in accomplished aliment stores. Two legs (10 oz/280 g pkg) accommodate 6 oz (175 g) meat, abundant for a accumulation of latkes. Heat in baby pan in 400°F (200°C) oven, axis once, until hot, about 10 minutes. Remove bark and breach meat from cartilage into bite-size pieces. Top anniversary latke with 1 tbsp (15 mL) Chunky Maple Pear Sauce, baby pieces of avoid bonbon and parsley leaf.

Caviar

Top anniversary latke with 2 tsp (10 mL) Lemon Crème Fraîche, Crème Fraîche, or acerb chrism and about 1/2 tsp (1 mL) caviar; baptize with cautiously chopped beginning chives. You charge about 50 g caviar for 36 latkes.

Grilled Artichokes

Drain 9 oil-packed broiled artichoke hearts (available in jars in accomplished aliment stores, Italian grocery aliment and some supermarkets); cut into quarters. Top anniversary latke with 2 tsp (10 mL) acerb cream, Crème Fraîche or Roasted Red Pepper Relish again artichoke quarter.

Cold Smoked Salmon, Char or Gravlax

Top anniversary latke with 2 tsp (10 mL) Lemon Crème Fraîche, Crème Fraîche or acerb cream, aberration of smoked angle or gravlax and bough of dill. You charge about 8 oz (250 g) smoked angle or gravlax for 36 latkes.

Hot Smoked Salmon, Trout or Mackerel

Top anniversary latke with 2 tsp (10 mL) Lemon Crème Fraîche, Crème Fraîche or acerb cream, baby allotment of smoked angle and bough of dill. You charge about 8 oz (250 g) smoked angle for 36 latkes.

Caviar choices

Caviar is the absolute roe of sturgeon, and appeal for it has depleted the agrarian citizenry and apprenticed the breed to the border of extinction. Instead of the best admired Beluga and acclaimed Osetra and Sevruga caviar, we acclaim added environmentally affable farmed caviar or roe from beneath endangered species.

Farmed caviar from American sturgeon (delicate atramentous Hackleback or fair blah Paddlefish) are beneath expensive, eco-friendly choices.

Other acceptable caviar choices:

* Apricot Roe (large orange to ablaze red roe with soft, aqueous centres and candied apricot flavour)

* Whitefish Roe (mild brittle aureate caviar)

* Flying Angle Roe (tiny beaming orange eggs accustomed to abounding sushi lovers through California rolls).

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Brunch for the holidays

Plan your card about one of our bristles aces make-ahead capital dishes, again annular out your blithe brunch with an array of bagels, muffins and jams. As a bonus, we’ve included an easy-to-customize bake-apple bloom – a healthy, auspicious accessory to any brunch.

Recipes

* Rolled Salmon Soufflé

* Saucy Cordon Bleu Omelette Rolls

* Mixed Mushroom Quiche

* Asiago and Tomato Pie

* Scrambled Egg Enchiladas

* Holiday Bake-apple Salad

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Slow cooker Q & A with Elizabeth Baird

Get accessible for the winter chill! Canadian Living's Executive Food Editor Elizabeth Baird shares her best apathetic affable advice.

CL: Do you accept admonition for addition who's new to apathetic cookers?

EB: Apathetic cookers are one of the easiest accessories to use: There's aloof the lid, the ceramics admit and the housing. A apathetic cooker abandoned uses as abundant electricity as a 100 watt bulb, which is why it's such a aces thing. You can put it on, go out to a cine and appear aback to a hot meal.

For addition that's new to them, there's no big inititation aeon – you can bound appropriate in. There are no appropriate techniques all-important to get going.

CL: Can any compound assignment in a apathetic cooker?

EB: If you're alteration a favourite compound to a apathetic cooker version, you will charge to cut the aqueous bottomward by about half, because there's actual little dehydration in apathetic cooking.

This agency you don’t necessarily get the aforementioned flavour concentrations that you ability accept from added affable techniques, so you ability appetite to assignment with juices or stocks – article that's got a little added flavour than water. A little wine, a bit of cider, or a little bit of beer – that will accord you a nice flavour.

CL: I accept a huge apathetic cooker, but I alive alone. What recipes do you acclaim that benumb well?

EB: A lot of apathetic cookers are advancing in a beyond size; some authority as abundant as 7 or 8 quarts. The kinds of things that assignment able-bodied for the freezer are stews, curries, and pulled pork recipes. There are admirable beef Abbreviate Ribs with Mushrooms and Red Wine Sauce that benumb actual well.

A clairvoyant told me she had fabricated the pulled pork and that fabricated one banquet for her family, one banquet for the freezer and again a brace of lunches for her boyish sons. That's absolutely the affectionate of affair you appetite to use your apathetic cooker for.

CL: What's one of the simplest apathetic cooker recipes for addition who never remembers to adapt 12 hours in advance?

EB: Most of the apathetic cooker recipes now baker in a lot beneath time than 12 hours. Generally speaking, craven takes about four hours, so it's a acceptable best for a being who is abbreviate on time. Both Saucy Mushroom Craven and Craven with 40 Cloves of Garlic booty 4 hours.

Beef recipes booty longer; added acceptable about 5 to 6 hours. If you don't accept a lot of time, there are soups that booty beneath time and some of them are absolutely hearty.

The added affair that's absolutely fast is fish. Salmon, or any added white fish, takes about an hour and a bisected to cook. We accept one apricot compound in my latest cookbook - Canadian Living: The New Apathetic Cooker Collection (Transcontinental Books, 2009), and it's a great, fuss-free compound that's actual nice if you're entertaining.

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Tips Easy pie crust

Perfect pie band doesn't accept to be difficult to master. These pastry-making basics will booty you from Pie Disaster to the Queen of Tarts!

1. Keep it cold

When you are authoritative pie dough, algid fat and ice algid baptize are essential. Make abiding you are air-conditioned your chef afore you cycle it out and - if your compound permits - arctic it afresh afterwards you accept lined your pan with the dough. When the algid pockets of fat amid the layers of chef hit your hot oven, they will cook and actualize beef that lifts the surrounding chef afar and makes light, cool layers.

2. Acerbic makes a breakable crust

Not all pie band recipes alarm for auto abstract or alkali and you can accept absolute pastry after them. But if you like a breakable crust, than a little acerbic will accord your pie melt-in-your-mouth appeal.

3. Use a ablaze touch

Break bottomward the fat into the abrade until it is adequately analogously broadcast with a few ample pieces left. Once you’ve add the algid water, try not to dissipate the chef – aces up the chef and bead it aback into your basin a few times until the chef has appear together. Make abiding you use abundant baptize so that the abrade is aloof coated but not soggy. You should not accept ample amounts of dry $.25 of chef in the basin – if you do, baptize in a bit added water. Pat the chef into circuit after administration it too much, and blanket in artificial wrap.

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Magnificent cakes

Maybe you were too active beating the basin aback Mom was answer the secrets to her aces desserts. Are you now adulatory you paid added attention? Don't worry, we're actuality to help. We've aggregate the Canadian Living Test Kitchen's fail-safe tips and tricks to authoritative perfect, admirable cakes, every time. (Mom will be so appreciative you afraid on to her every word.)

Ingredients

Butter, eggs and milk should be at allowance temperature. Let angle on adverse for about 1 hour. To acceleration up the process, balmy milk in bake until almost lukewarm. Place eggs in basin and awning with balmy water; let angle for 10 minutes.

Doneness

Check block about 5 account afore time is up. The accepted tests are: block tester amid in centre comes out clean, block springs aback back agilely affected or edges appear abroad from abandon of pan. Some cakes may accept specific break in the recipe.

Removal

Let block angle in pan on cooling arbor until close abundant to authority its shape, about 10 minutes. Run knife about bend of cake. Place cooling arbor on top of pan. Wearing oven mitts, butt pan and arbor and about-face over. Lift off pan. Peel off block paper, if present. If you are ceramics block and do not appetite to see indents from cooling arbor through the glaze, alter block afresh so top faces up.

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