Multiculturiosity

MOVED! Check out www.multiculturiosity.com

2011-01-19T11:55:00.000-05:00

My blog has now moved to: http://www.multiculturiosity.com so if you're looking for new recipes or what I've been cooking and writing about lately, you're going to have to mosy on over there. No more ridiculous grilled shrimp pictures on the front page, thank goodness!

Melomakorona: Greek Honey-Soaked Cookies

2011-01-14T11:01:00.000-05:00

I thought these were going to be easy...

...and it's not that Melomakarona are 'hard' to make, so much as they're time-consuming. You need to shape each one by hand and then place them in batches in hot honey syrup. I figured they'd be like baklava where you pour the syrup over after they're baked, but no, this one involved carefully picking them up one by one and essentially reverse deep-frying (instead of deep-frying in oil, the olive oil cookies are deep-fried in honey syrup...), then removing them with a slotted spoon and sprinkling with walnuts. They are heavenly, but anything with this much oil that falls apart so easily in your honey-drenched mouth (I initially mistyped "honey-frenched" and I think it may also be appropriate) should be epiphanal.

A Greek friend of mine asked his mom to make me a bunch of these as a Christmas present. Best. Present. Ever. Except I'm one person and there was a big Christmas-y container of them that weighed about 10 pounds.

"They last a few weeks", says my friend, but mine sure didn't. Dinner of melamakorona? I'm not going to say I didn't...I may have rounded it out with a salad or something.

So I had to make them for myself and I had to make a few different kinds as all the refined sugar and regular flour in this recipe would make them off-limits for my mom. So I did a gluten-free, sugar-free version that ended up a little more crumbly (which was fine since they didn't have to be moved once I put them in a container post honey-soak) and one regular batch. The cookies are naturally crumbly and a little gritty from the semolina called for in most recipes, so I figured it would work perfectly with a mix of rice flours, starches, and sorghum flour.

Melomakorona
3/4 cup of fresh orange juice
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup olive oil
3/4 cup sunflower oil (or other flavourless oil. All olive oil makes the cookies bitter apparently)
1/4 cup of brandy (I think I used whiskey and it worked fine)

1 cup of sugar
3 cups of all-purpose flour (or gluten-free flour blend)
1 cup of fine-ground semolina (or medium-ground, but not corn flour)
grated peel of 1 orange
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of grated cloves (or ground cloves)

For the Syrup and Topping:
2 cups of water
2 cups of sugar (or sugar substitute)
2 cups of honey (or agave, but use only about 1 - 1 1/2 cups since agave is much sweeter)
1 stick of cinnamon (two doesn't hurt...)
3-4 whole cloves
1 cup finely chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit (180C.

Stir the baking soda into the orange juice.

Put all the dry ingredients (flour, semolina, sugar, spices, orange peel) in a bowl and mix until blended with a whisk. In the middle, create a well and add the liquid ingredients (oil, brandy, and orange juice).

Knead the dough until it sticks to your hands. It should be wonderfully gooey.

To shape the cookies take a fistful of dough and make it into a log. Press the dough gently with your fingers on one side to flatten slightly. The shape of the cookies can be rounded, oval, or a small log shape. The ones my friend had given me that his Greek mother had made were rounded, so I aimed for that.

Photos from Melomakarona Greek Honey Cookies

Place the cookies well spaced in a cookie sheet (no need to grease the sheet since the cookies have so much oil in them that leeches out anyway), place on the middle rack in the oven and bake until browned (about 15-20 minutes}. A little extra is not the end of the world since they get soaked in syrup and there's no way they'll be tough, but you'll taste a slightly over-cooked flavour. If they're undercooked they may be too crumbly to soak properly. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on baking racks (or plates. Who has a ton of baking racks?).

The cookies need to cool completely before being dipped in the syrup or they'll fall apart, so don't start the syrup until the cookies have cooled.

Put the water, honey, sugar, cinnamon stick, and cloves in a wide pot (like a deep frying pan. The wider it is the fewer batches you'll need to do. It can save a lot of time) and bring to a boil over medium-high heat for 2-3 minutes. Turn the heat down to low. As soon as it starts to boil, a foam rises to the top. Scoop this off and throw it out. Remove the cinnamon stick and cloves, or save them to add to the cookie tin after as garnish. Don't eat them.

Put the cookies (as many as will fit on the bottom at a time) into the hot syrup and use a spatula to hold them down completely immersed in the syrup for about a minute, depending on how syrupy you want them to be. Then remove them with a slotted spoon, letting some of the syrup drip, place on a large serving plate in layers (or immediately into a container with a top so you don't have to move them again), sprinkling each layer liberally with the finely chopped walnuts before adding another layer on top.

Melomakarona are not refrigerated. Cover them well with plastic wrap or in tins so they don't dry out, and they'll last for at least a week. The brilliance of not using oil or eggs! You also end up with a ton of leftover soaking syrup...this is the best part. Pour it (only a little at a time) on ice cream or yogurt, or frozen yogurt, or use it in smoothies as a sweetener, or even dip fruit or toast into it. Mmm...cinnamon-infused honey syrup...you could also just make some baklava and use it all up in one go.

So was I meant to be Greek? Well some Greek friends (and friends of friends) came to the 3rd Annual Volk/Watson Christmas Extravaganza and actually said, "They're better than my mother's," and I nearly died. His mother would cry if he told her that. I know what that means in a Greek family. High praise indeed.

Zabaione? Zabaglione? Either Way, Prosecco, Sugar, Egg Yolks, and Learning Italian

2011-01-13T14:50:00.000-05:00

Though this is more commonly made with Marsala wine, and may actually have originally been made with beer, the light, bubbly sweetness of prosecco is absolutely perfect with the sweet egg yolk, frothed dessert. It's the cousin of the French sabayon a sweet or savoury sauce, but in this case, the Italians did it first and better. I also chose the prosecco because the first time I had this dish it was with champagne and the Chef who served it to me and my mother (two lactose-intolerant women overjoyed to be eating dessert at a gorgeous restaurant) told me he had learned it without a recipe from a Chef who said, "You do this, you add this now, then you do this..." etc. and that seemed like such a natural way to cook that I was inspired to recreate the dessert.

The recipe is actually very adaptable; sugar content can vary, alcohol can vary, and cooking time is really just as long as it needs. There are people who hate recipes like that, but there's something very endearing and very Italian about them.

Speaking of Italian, the one thing that stumped me was why when I look up Italian recipes for the dessert the name is "zabaione" and when I look up English recipes it's "zabaglione"? If anyone can let me know, I'd appreciate it. The recipe I used said it could have come from one of several military generals of royalty with names that all sort of sound like "ee'-oh'-neh'" but then it admits that the recipe is probably a lot older than any of those war stories. The Italians were probably eating sweetened, alcoholic egg yolks long before Captain Baglioni or Giovanni de Baylon had anything to do with it. What did men know about Italian desserts in the 16th Century anyway?

I had 12 egg yolks leftover from the angel food cake, but you can do a smaller version of this recipe if you wish by just dividing all the ingredients appropriately. The long mixing is boring, but I had a willing friend who took the whisking reigns. It was a bonus that we could speak Italian together while he waited patiently for the custard to thicken. His Italian is much better than mine, and having just returned from Rome, the whole process was quaintly beautiful.

Zabaione al Prosecco
12 egg yolks
1/2 cup Prosecco (it doesn't have to be a great Prosecco. Anything will do. Any other sparkling wine will also do. If it's very sweet, just add less sugar below)
1 cup sugar

Seriously, three ingredients. You can do this.

1. Separate the egg whites from the egg yolks and reserve the whites for another purpose*
2. Bring a pot of water to almost a simmer. It should never actually boil, but always be in the verge. Use a pot that a heatproof bowl can sit on top of safely (you're making a double-boiler).
3. Put the yolks and sugar in a heatproof bowl and beat it with an electric whisk or beater until the eggs are thick, creamy, and almost white.
4. Add the Prosecco a teaspoon at a time, beating constantly and once all the Prosecco is added, put the bowl on top of the pot and whisk or blend for 15-20 minutes, until the cream is expanded, luscious and thick.
5. Serve immediately, or remove the bowl from the heat and keep beating until the custard cools completely. If you stop beating too early, the alcohol will separate. With the Prosecco in it it's better to eat it right away and make the most of the bubbles!

*Ideally you use them first if you need to whip them, as they're not going to get any fluffier by leaving them in your fridge. You can leave for up to two days in there if you, say, want to make an egg-white omelet with them. you can also freeze them, and the same goes for leftover egg yolks in other recipes. Once you try this recipe, though, you won't have any trouble using up leftover yolks. Take that, mayonnaise.

Finally! Angel Food Cake with Maple-Honey Dessert Wine Apricots and Honey Ice Wine Figs

2011-01-12T10:49:00.000-05:00

Basically the whole concept of the 3rd Annual Volk/Watson Christmas Extravaganza started because I wanted to make Angel's Food Cake. To me, that's more than reason enough to have a party. The fact that it was Christmas came second.

I've made this recipe before, and it's stunning. This time the cake didn't rise as much, but only I had had the original, and knew what it could have been like. I also did a few variations, decorated the top with a mixture of apricots and figs in the various dessert wines, and garnished with my home-made ginger confit.

As long as you bring the egg whites to room temperature before you beat them and make sure you don't get a speck of egg yolk in the whites, you're golden. There's no butter, which usually means there will be no flavour, but the toasted almonds give a warmth to the cake, and somehow the texture is dense enough to not feel like you're eating air. The real miracle (pardon the pun) takes place when you add the incredibly sweetened fruit sauces that turn the cake itself from soft and a little chewy to almond the intense texture of a pound cake. Who needs Hell when you have Heaven?

Follow the recipe I already posted but use your dessert wine of choice. I did two sauce options: one with a maple honey dessert wine that tastes like you're drinking alcohol-laden maple syrup (aka heaven - this also tied into the theme) combined with dried apricots, and one relatively lighter version with a simple honey ice wine and three kinds of dried figs. Yes there are three kinds of dried figs.

Notes on the dried fruit:
1. You can find unsulphured apricots and regular apricots (sulphured). The unsulphured kind are darker and generally moister and more flavourful. They're also a touch more expensive but well worth it.
2. For the figs I used a mix of Turkish, Black Mission, and Calimyrna (so called because they come from "Cali'fornia). They were also my favourite fresh fig of the season, having tried these light green ones, the dark California mission figs, and the Turkish). The figs are probably sulphured, however...If you can find organic ones, by all means buy them, but they will not be cheap.

I skipped the amaretto drizzle on the cake since I actually think it takes away from the aesthetics on the cake (you can compare above). I also wanted to keep dairy out of the party as much as possible (even though the yogurt probably wouldn't have bothered anyone) and I wanted to make the dish as kid-friendly as possible by reducing the amount of uncooked booze...I, of course, served extra of the dried fruit liquor sauces on the side, and those who were not put off by what looked like slime-y goop could take heaps and heaps of intensely sugar-y nectar...

If you do make the drizzle, just use whichever liquor (amaretto, dessert wine, etc.) that you used in the dried fruit sauce. Die of happiness...and go to heaven, of course, where you'll be given more of this angelic dessert.

Buying Natural Wines and Champagnes in Newfoundland

2011-01-10T13:21:00.000-05:00

It IS possible to find a decent selection of natural wines in Newfoundland!

The second time I went to the liquor store (time # 2 of 2) this Christmas, it was to buy the wine for the 3rd Annual Volk/Watson Christmas Extravaganza. It was so much fun! I wasn't sure if I was going to buy a few of the same wines or buy a bunch of different ones, but I wanted them to all be natural (organic and then some, to put it simply, but listen to this to find out more). I knew no one at the liquor store was going to know what a natural wine was, and the best-case scenario would be that I'd just be pointed to the organic ones (that often aren't natural, and the natural ones are often not labeled organic, which they also are. Complicated, I know). So I looked at every wine-making region and read the back of bottles, and recognized some names. Here's what I came up with:

Joseph Drouhin's Morgon, Pinot Noir, and Saint-Véran, and a Bouchard Père et Fils' Pinot Noir.
I had also planned to serve two Quebec white table wines since they're supposed to be used for musical parties ("La Musicale" from Quebec honey farm and honeywine-makers Les Trois Acres) but they were left in the fridge by accident and are awaiting a new musical party at which to be opened.

On a piece of cardboard next to the bar at the party, I wrote:

About the wines:

The whites and reds are natural wines; they are produced organically, hand-harvested, and have no extra yeasts, enzymes, sulfites or other chemicals added. Many come from the same producer but are made with different varieties of grapes. By not adding any of these extras ingredients, natural wines are supposed to allow you to taste the "terroir" - the land and true flavour of the wine - since nothing is chemically-masking it.

The Honey Maple Dessert Wine and the Honey Ice Wine from Miel Nature are examples of what Quebec does best. They're a little sip of heaven. I also used them in the cinnamon apricots and figs for the angel food cake, so the cake and wine should go well together.

I couldn't tell anything about the champagnes at the liquor store, so I just bought an affordable prosecco for the zabaione and stuck with wines I trusted for the party. The prosecco was perfect for the Italian custard-like dessert.

Buying Rum in Newfoundland

2011-01-09T10:44:00.000-05:00

I got carded buying rum for fruitcake...

For the 3rd Annual Volk/Watson Christmas Extravaganza I got really excited about going to the liquor store. I get excited about going to the liquor store anyway, since I'm more of an occasional drinker who splurges a little on nicer things than a regular "pick up a bottle of plonker"-er, so a liquor store trip is a special occasion and generally leads to something delicious. Kind of like how some women feel about shoe shopping...

Anyway, I've only bought alcohol twice over the course of my entire time back on the rock, and both times were pretty unforgettable. The first time I was sent by my mother to buy rum for my dad for his Christmas pudding. Newfoundland has a lot of rum! All that rum-running from the Caribbean really came in handy for making rum popular here, and it stuck post-prohibition. There were all the standards including Bacardi and Appleton's but apparently the most popular rum in Newfoundland is Lamb's despite the fact that it's from Ontario (though the Black Sheep Spiced Rum comes from Quebec for some reason) and there are a lot of local options. Or at least more traditional ones from the Caribbean. Probably Lamb's white is specifically the most poopular, but I needed dark rum for the pudding, so I had a hard decision to make.

So while my mom was buying groceries I wandered into the rum section of the attached liquor store to check out the offerings from home and abroad:

Central America:
Mount Gay (Barbados)
El Dorado (Guyana)
Havana Club (Cuba),
English Harbour (Antigua)
Goslings Black Seal (Bermuda)
Sangster's (Jamaica)
Ray and Nephew (Jamaica),
Ron Zacapa 23 (Guatemala)

UK:
Mac Na Mara (Scotland - blended scotch)

US:
Cruzan (US)
Ron Matusalem (US)
Sailor Jerry (US)

Canada:

Governor General Light (Quebec)
Ron Carioca (Quebec)
Captain Morgon (Moslty Quebec, some US)

Malibu (Ontario)

Smuggler's Cove (Newfoundland)
Cabot Tower (NL)
Lemon Hart (NL)
Iceberg (NL)
Newfoundlander's White (NL)
Old Sam (NL)
Ragged Rock (NL), and of course,
Screech rum (Newfoundland)

That makes for a lot of options for fruit cake...I didn't want something particularly good since it wasn't going to be drank anyway, but I didn't want junk, and I didn't want anything from the rest of Canada or the US, since if I was going to buy North American it was going to be from Newfoundland. In the end I chose a bottle of Cabot Tower (mostly because it was local and you could get the smaller bottles) and took it to the cash.

I haven't been ID-ed in a good while. In Quebec if you're taller than the counter in a bar you're legal. Even in a liquor store you rarely get carded once you hit my age. I didn't even have my ID on me. I'd even said to my mom when she sent me off in search of rum (like a good little Newfoundland girl) that I might get carded, but her look of "Yeah, right..."-skepticism kind of embarrassed me into trying anyway.

The woman at the cash gave me one look and asked for ID. I sighed. It was pretty embarrassing to have to say that my mother would be right there to buy it in a minute. You're not allowed to buy alcohol for minors either, but clearly this was fine with the woman who was having a bit of an internal laugh. You could kind of see it on the sides of her mouth. Ah, positions of power. They're supposed to card if you look under 25. My mom just laughed at me when I told her. So I spent 20 minutes choosing the right rum not to drink and I still get carded the one time I don't have my ID. It figured. Murphy's law. There are an awful lot of Murphys in Newfoundland, it's true.

"Real" Sundried Tomato and Artichoke Dip (aka "St. John's Ran Out of Canned Artichokes and Philadelphia Cream Cheese")

2011-01-08T13:26:00.001-05:00

This was the non-vegan, non-"raw" version of my preferred sundried tomato spread. It has lots of cream cheese, and is actually slow-cooked to a slightly molten state, unifying the flavours better than a stove or simple arm strength, I think. Maybe just my arm strength, though.

I tricked everyone. Normally I'm tricking people with making dishes "raw" that seem creamy and dairy-filled, but this case was a little different. It's not actually an artichoke dip...St. John's ran out of canned artichokes. Absolutely ridiculous, I know, but there you have it. I went to possibly the biggest grocery store in the city and there were none. So I bought bamboo shoots instead. They're bland, they're not too salty, and I figured the texture would work fine. Besides, I don't know a single Newfoundlander who would be able to call me on it being a bamboo shoot. The best they could do is call it "not an artichoke". So when people said "great artichoke dip!" to my dip labeled "sundried tomato cream cheese spread" I just said "thanks". Not that Newfoundlanders can't tell the difference, just that most wouldn't know what bamboo shoots are or taste like. So I got away with it.

I made a double recipe. It makes a ton. It's also a very labour-intensive slow-cooker recipe because you actually need to stir it. Thanks, ma.

Ingredients:
2 cans bamboo shoots, chopped
2 packages cream cheese (the whole point of the dish was to use cream cheese because of the Philadelphia cream cheese commercials that have that angel woman eating the stuff (because the party was called "Heavenly Hosts" it had to be Phili). Except St. John's ran out of Phili too. So I used no name brand...again, no one called me on it)
1 cup sour cream
3/4 cup mayo (I had the best intentions to use a home-made mayo but I hadn't made the angel food cake yet so I didn't have any yolks sitting around and I was not about to leave any whites sitting around getting potentially less able to expand, thus causing a sunken cake. So I used bottled. Again, no one complained)
1/2 cup parmesan cheese (didn't use the real stuff here either. I'm a horrible cook. You should use the real stuff. Anyone could make this dip better than I did)
1/2 cup chopped, drained oil-packed sundried tomatoes. Finally! Something I did right!
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 cup chopped green onions (for garnish)

All you do is add everything except the green onions to the slow-cooker and stir.

Turn the slow-cooker to low and cook for just 2 hours. Stir twice during the cooking time and when it's done sprinkle with the green onions. It's kind of cool to serve this out of the slow-cooker, but it's also kind of cool to turn it into a snake. It's supposed to be served warm, kind of like a cream cheese fondue, but come on! A snake! How cool is that?

"Raw" Sundried Tomato Spread

2011-01-07T08:09:00.000-05:00

I've kind of made this sundried tomato spread recipe before, but it's so simple that it easily got changed around a little for the 3rd Annual Volk/Watson Christmas Extravaganza (in the photo, it's the dip on the right):

1 cup macadamia nuts (soaked for 30 minutes to 1 hour and drained - not just because of "raw" food dogma - mostly because you need them to soften up and be creamy)
Juice of half a lemon (or to taste. I like it kind of sharp)
2 tbsp raspberry vinegar (it was unpasteurized, so I'm not sure if it was raw, but you could just use twice as much lemon juice if you want and be a little sadder)
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup "raw" sundried tomatoes (So this is a bit fishy, I know. Sundried tomatoes are often a chemical process involving sulfites for preservation and things that aren't the sun for drying, but you could just dehydrate your own tomatoes in an oven on the lowest possible temperature with the door slightly ajar. This is probably not what happened to the tomatoes I had stored in oil...so this particular version of the recipe wasn't exactly raw)

I love raw food recipes for this reason:
Directions: Blend.

That's all. You only need to roughly chop ingredients, if at all, and then all you do is stick them in a good blender or food processor. Add a little of the sundried tomato oil or olive oil or water if it's too thick. You can optionally add a pinch of garlic powder or an entire raw clove for immune benefits (and taste, though bad breath comes along with it), or half a shallot (again, breath). You can also use cashews instead of expensive macadamia nuts if your mother is not currently in a digestive fight with them.

"Raw" Basil Walnut Spread

2011-01-06T08:33:00.000-05:00

The recipe for this basil-walnut spread (pictured in the middle of the three dips above) kind of came from here, but mostly it came from the inspiration of my mother's kitchen, which is happily filled with special vinegars from the "O" Farm, the organic farm in Newfoundland where she gets her summer vegetable and herb baskets. There was conveniently a basil garlic vinegar in the cupboard, so I'm not sure if it is actually raw (though it may be because it's unpasteurized) but I figured no one would mind. I won't be bringing it to a raw food potluck in Montreal on Saturday just in case. Well, that and other transportation reasons that include the handle of my suitcase breaking in the middle of the one intersection that separates my Montreal apartment from the bus stop that takes me directly to the airport. One intersection! And of course that's where my suitcase decides to curl up and die. Needless to say I hauled it up on top of my other one whose handle was a brute and kept walking...

Anyway, what I actually ended up doing (though you could use this recipe of the other, or something in between...or something completely different and it would still be good) was:

2 cups walnuts (soaked for 4 hours and drained. The original recipe calls for cashews but my mom doesn't do cashews. If you do, however, use cashews you'll end up with a much creamier texture, but lose a lot of the bitter, endearing flavour of the walnuts)
1/2 cup sunflower seeds (soaked for 3 hours, drained)
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tbsp basil-garlic vinegar (the website above has a way of making basil oil that works just fine. The dip will be more lemon-y this way and less complex than with vinegar, but still good. You can add a clove of garlic to the blender if your oil or vinegar isn't flavoured with it already. Be caaaareful with fresh garlic, though. It's strong. Same for if you decided to, say, add half a shallot on a whim)
1 teaspoon lemon juice (only if you didn't use vinegar)
pinch salt
pinch ground pepper

Directions:
Blend in a workhorse of a blender or food processor. The water should be enough to help it along but you may need to scrape down the sides. I haven't lost a spatula to a blender in awhile. I figure my technique is better. ALWAYS turn off the blender before scraping down the sides. Don't do like I do. I won't have any spoons much longer if I'm not careful...or eyes when spoon shards escape the blender).

Raw Macadamia Nut Ricotta

2011-01-05T08:44:00.000-05:00

You take some macadamia nuts, and you take some lemon juice...

The macadamia nut dip is the one on the left. I garnished them all with green onions and did a little design with a spoon to make it look a bit fancy, but the recipe -- very, very simple.

Lemon and macadamia nuts are a really nice combo, and whether you follow the "raw" food doctrine of soaking your nuts to reduce the or not, a good 30 minute minimum soak for these nuts before blending them up with some freshly squeezed lemon juice will give you a creamier texture. Salt is kind of important, and the lemon zest helps too, but the oil is really only there to make this creamy. The pepper is very much optional

The downside of this recipe is that the ricotta (albeit the least smooth ricotta you'll probably ever have) doesn't last more than a few days, so don't blend up more than you can chew, so to speak. A half cup of nut ricotta is a fair bit, so starting with more than a cup of nuts might be a bad idea.

With that in mind:

1 cup macadamia nuts
4-7 tbsp fresh lemon juice
sprinkle of salt (up to 3/4 tsp)
zest of one lemon
freshly ground pepper (optional)
2 tbsp olive oil (optional) or 2 tbsp water (or more to make it blend)

Soak the nuts in cold water for a minimum of 30 minutes, max an hour. These are not long-soaking nuts to remove enzyme-inhibitors, apparently. Drain the nuts and stick them in a strong blender or food processor along with the lemon juice, zest and some salt. Purée to creamy goodness, cursing if your blender dies, complaining if you have to add some water to get the darn thing to blend, and imagining how to apologize to your mother for breaking her blender (it later came back to life, miraculously. The wonders of "raw" food?).

What Else Do You Put On Dosa?

2011-01-04T13:27:00.000-05:00

Better question: What DON'T you put on dosa?

Well, if you followed last year's Christmas party, you know I enjoy layers. So in a twisted kind of canapé style I'm a big fan of dosa + gloopy thing + cheese-like thing + meat-like thing + sauce-like thing. That doesn't sounds delicious at all, does it? I'll try to be more explicit with my descriptions:

1. Dosa + caramelized onion + Quebec Oka Cheese + smoked herring + fig jam (encircling the caramelized onions above, inside the circle of smoked herring)

Or

2. Dosa + saag + "raw" (vegan) macademia nut ricotta + crab meat (NOT imitation pollock...) + raspberry/blueberry compote

You could also do these combinations on other carb-y things such as baguette or even the dry gluten-free bread I put out for my mother's sake (though I will admit the tapioca bread is growing on me, but only when warm).

So lets start with caramelized onions:

Ingredients:
Tons of onions (4 is what the original recipe calls for, but I feel like I was chopping onions forever since I did a triple recipe. The other measurements below are for 4 onions)
a little balsamic vinegar (about a tbsp, but I like 2 since the balsamic I used was pretty subdued)
the same amount of sugar (again, a tbsp, but I like 2)
oil to slow-cook the onions (about 2 tsp. Extra is fine but unnecessary)
2 cloves garlic, minced (optional)
a little salt
a little fresh parley or basil, finely chopped (optional)

What you do:
Slice the onions into very thin strips then add them to a pan of heated olive oil (medium-high heat). Reduce the heat immediately to medium and let them cook, unstirred, for about 4 minutes, or until they brown a little on the bottom. Now you're allowed to stir and keep cooking for another 5 minutes, spreading the light caramel colour throughout the onions and letting them wilt.

Now sprinkle the onions with the balsamic and the sugar and stir and cook for 10 more minutes. They should be very brown and very tender. You don't want to crunch caramelized onions, so test them now. If they're soft enough, sweet enough, and acidic enough, add a little sprinkle of salt and stir in the parsley. Test again. With so few ingredients you can't hide in this recipe and if it needs more salt, it needs more salt. If it's undercooked, cook it longer.

That's all.

For the herring, I didn't trust how salty they were so I soaked them a little, basically depriving the already bland fish of any taste whatsoever. I should have gone with the pickled stuff, or pickled some herring myself, but, well, this way was easier and nobody was going to care. I cared. The soaked and dried stuff was junk, and the texture was nothing. In the future I will accept the salt or make fresh herring instead of wimping out.

Next post: Macadamia Nut Ricotta

3rd Annual Christmas Extravaganza: South Indian Dosa to Scoop Up Your Pork Vindaloo or Saag

2011-01-03T10:54:00.001-05:00

Dosa is the easiest wrap to make ever. I don't know why more people don't eat it. It's a little coarse from the ground lentils, a little tangy, and deliciously sponge-like. Lots of people buy tortillas at the grocery store that come with so many preservatives and things you wouldn't really want to put in yourself if you looked at the ingredients list. Then other people buy things like tortilla presses, or even crepe pans and combine either hard to find ingredients or just lots of ingredients. Most people with wheat sensitivities just stick to sad, sad rice cakes.Traditionally dosa are eaten in Southern India with breakfast and lunch, but I keep having it for dinner. Kind of like having cereal for dinner, but less refined sugar and a lot more protein. It's just lentils and rice after all.

Dosa has 3 essential ingredients. Sure, it won't be as sweet as a crepe (though you could add sugar, I suppose), but it's about the most natural gluten-free wrap you'll ever make. Now "raw" food dehydrating, no kneading, no pressing, and it's as easy and fun as making pancakes. You can make the big elaborate cone-shapes one like you get in restaurants but actually making them pancake-sized helps them cooperate and be less brittle and fussy.

Ingredients:
3 cups basmati rice
1 cup urad dal ("black gram", but the black skin is removed, leaving you with something that looks like a very small split pea. It's easily confused with other kinds of dal such as moong dal, so make sure you ask)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp fenugreek (optional)

Instructions:
Soak the rice and dal in separate bowls for at least 6 hours on the counter. Add 1/2 tsp fenugreek (optional) to each bowl. The rice and dal should be covered by at least 1 inch of water.

Drain the water, rinse the rice and dal thoroughly, and place them in a blender or food processor along with 1/2 cup water. Add more water if you need to so you end up with a thin batter somewhere around a thin pancake batter or thick crepe better. I think too thick is worse than too thin, but there'll be lots of opportunity to add more water later, so for now err on the side of too thick. If the batter won't blend because it's too thick, don't be scared to add more water.

Pour the batter into a bowl and add the tsp of salt. Now cover the batter and leave it to ferment at room temperature for 12 hours. After that you can put it in the fridge if you don't use it right away. I haven't noticed any problem with keeping it a few extra days in the fridge. It doesn't go bad that quickly. I also figure that in India it would go bad more quickly, but this seems like the kind of batter you just leave lying around fermenting and it's okay for a good while.

Heat a skillet or electric frying pan like you would for pancakes and add a tiny bit of oil to the pan. In my last dosa recipe I used a much more complicated system of wiping down the pan with water and all but I don't think it's necessary. Instead, just pour out the batter a tablespoon at a time and then use the back of a spoon or ladle to swirl the batter outward in a circular motion rom the middle of the circle of batter to the edges. If holes appear that's fine. You can try to fill them in with drops of batter but the fine, embroidered look of the hole-y crepes is beautiful.

Cook for about 5 minutes or until you can get a spatula under the dosa to flip it. The edges should be slightly browned. The bottom should be a light brown. Cook a few more minutes. Done. You can do a few dosa at a time if you make them small enough and your frying pan is big enough. Normally you'd do big dosas for each person but the small one is more like giving soft-shelled tacos to your diners instead of a big burrito shell. that way you can also put different fillings in each one. Especially for the Christmas Extravaganza, it made sense to do smaller ones, so no one took a whole meal's worth of pork vindaloo or saag. I think I probably took a meal's worth of saag...but it is my heaven, after all.

Saag Again

2011-01-02T09:46:00.000-05:00

I make a lot of saag, and so it's not really necessary for me to re-post the recipe I don't think. I'll just explain that this time I quadrupled the recipe, added some grated asoefetida for digestion, mustard seeds to make it more South Indian than North, (and also digestion), skipped the green chili, and this is a photo (above) of how much spinach was involved.

Normally I use frozen spinach because you don't need to slice it up and wash it well (the annoying parts of spinach prep), but Newfoundland ran out of frozen spinach in the lead-up to Christmas. I doubt it was because Newfoundlanders went out and bought it up. Somehow I think that it's just not that popular a frozen food. I mean, you don't boil it up with Jiggs Dinner of peas pudding, so what are you supposed to do with it?

This. This is what you're supposed to do with it. Mustard seedy, asafoetida-laced gloop. I love it.

Slow-Cooked Pork Vindaloo: More Than My Dad's Heaven

2011-01-01T13:04:00.000-05:00

Of course pork vindaloo was going to be a popular dish at the 3rd Annual Christmas Extravaganza. You take a bunch of pork and slow-cook it until it basically turns into the Indian version of pulled pork. Anything "pork" and "slow-cooked" will be amazing. You don't even need to put a sauce on it and it will be amazing. You can also do this recipe all on the stove by letting it cook in the pot instead of transferring it to a slow-cooker, but your chances of over-cooking the pork are increased. Any idiot can slow-cook. In my mother's encouraging words: "Stupider people than you have done it". She didn't say that directly to me.

This recipe will leave your house smelling amazing for days. So make sure there are leftovers so that on day two you don't feel depressed because you can smell the vindaloo but you can't eat it.

I made this with turkey about a week ago. Nobody said it wasn't good, but this time I had the proper vinegar and the fenugreek the recipe calls for and I'm told it was much better. I should know that when you actually follow Madhur Jaffrey's instructions, all will be well. I did not, however "serve with fluffy rice on the side". I instead served it with South Indian crepe-like dosa. Again, no one complained. It's a ton of ingredients, but it's also mostly spices. Really it's just pork and onions, so get all your spices measured and ready to go, and your vegetables and meat chopped, and the rest takes care of itself.

I made this for 18 people, but here's the recipe for 12. It will give you LOTS of leftovers, and it freezes very well. since it's maybe a little labour-intensive you might be happy to have home-made frozen dinners of Indian comfort food.

Ingredients:
4 tsp cumin seed (whole seed - with Indian if you can use whole you use whole since all the flavour comes from the freshness of the spices. If all you have is ground that's okay - but not great - in this recipe since nothing gets toasted before being ground)
4-6 dried hot chilis (these are supposed to be the small red ones but I brought home mulatos from Montreal and I just used one big dried mulato torn into a few pieces to get the seeds out. You don't need to seed the smaller ones. It's a big richer, chocolatier, and smokier than Indian chilies. Think Indian mole...)
2 tsp black peppercorns
2 tsp cardamom seeds (you have to break open the pods and take the seeds out. In this case it's kind of nice to use pre-ground cardamom...but I don't need to beat a dead horse here)
2 three-inch cinnamon sticks (can use 1 1/2 tbsp ground if you're desperate)
1 tbsp black mustard seeds (not yellow, but you can use them in a pinch)
2 tsp fenugreek (find it, but leave it out if that's impossible)
10 tbsp white wine vinegar (a bit sweeter and less sharp than distilled vinegar)
1 tbsp salt
2 tsp light brown sugar
10 tbsp vegetable oil (yes, 10 tbsp, and I'm cutting that in half. The recipe actually calls for 20, which I only think you should if you make this dish, leave it overnight, and then skim off the fat which is very hard since there are so many spices that it doesn't really separate well. This is the problem with Indian buffets)
4 medium onions, very thinly sliced into rings (fried onions are a treat in Indian cooking. Kind of like un-breaded onion rings that are used for garnish for elaborate dishes for special events)
10 tbsp plus 2 cups water (with slow-cookers you're in theory supposed to use less liquid but I wanted this to be sauce-y)
4 lbs (1.8kg) boneless pork (from the shoulder, says Jaffrey), cut into 1 inch cubes. I just used pork stewing cubes. The pieces were very unevenly cut, but with slow-cooking that doesn't matter as much as if you do it on the stove.
1 two-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped into just a few pieces (no need to dice or even chop finely since it gets blended)
2 small (or 1 large) head of garlic, cloves separated and peeled but not chopped
2 tbsp ground coriander (if you can, toast whole coriander over medium heat for about 5 or 6 minutes in a dry frying pan and then grind in a coffee grinder or mortar and pestle. Do this in advance. Coriander is very pungent and the freshly-ground version is amazing)
1 tsp turmeric (don't skip this. It's the key to colour and digestion)

Instructions:
Grind the cumin seed, red chilies, peppercorns, cardamom seeds, cinnamon, black mustard seeds, and fenugreek (in St. John's you can find it at food for thought or bulk barn. Maybe also Auntie Crae's) in a coffee grinder, mortar and pestle or a blender. Put them in a bowl and add the vinegar, salt, and sugar. Stir and set aside. Good job! You've basically completed half the recipe. Not so hard.

Put the ridiculous amount of oil in a large, heavy pot over medium heat. When hot, add the onions and stir and fry until they're crispy and brown. Err on the side of overly-browned. In Indian cooking you want these to almost look burned since that's when they give the most flavour. Remove them with a slotted spoon to a paper towel and press very gently to remove excess oil (leave the pot with the leftover oil off the heat but don't drain it. You'll need it later and now you have a very flavourful oil). Then transfer the onions to a blender. Add 5 tbsp of water to the blender and purée the onions. Now add the purée to the ground spices you set aside in the bowl. Voila vindaloo paste. SO much better than store-bought. You can freeze this paste now to use later, or make it in advance, keep it in the fridge, and complete the rest of the recipe later. Think about it, 2 weeks from now you're craving vindaloo and you just defrost the paste. Maybe a good idea to make a double recipe of the paste...

Wash the meat cubes and dry with paper towels. If you can't find them pre-cubed ask your butcher to cube them. It will save you a ton of time. You can remove the excess fat if you wish.

Put the ginger and garlic into the blender (no need to wash it out after purée-ing the onions). Add 5 tbsp water and blend to a paste. Purée-d garlic, ginger and onion are pretty classic Indian techniques for thickening (no cornstarch, flour, or cream).

Now the fun part. Everything's ready to go, so put the put full of leftover oil back on medium-high heat. When hot add the pork cubes in batches (be careful! The oil splatters) and brown very lightly on all sides. Honestly just about 5-10 seconds per side to get rid of the pink. This is how you over-cook the pork by over-browning, especially if you're not going transfer to a slow-cooker.

Remove each batch of cubes with a slotted spoon or tongs as they're browned to a plate lined with paper towel. If you're not going to slow-cook you may want to not use a paper towel, since the collected juices will keep the meat moister. Once all the batches of pork are browned add the ginger-garlic paste to the pot. Immediately turn the heat down to medium. Stir for just a few seconds to coat the paste in oil and then add the ground coriander and turmeric. Stir for just another few seconds and then add the meat cubes, the vindaloo paste, and 2 cups of water. Bring the pot to a boil and then either transfer the contents to a slow-cooker and set it to high for 4 hours or low for 8 hours, OR cover the pot, reduce the heat to low or medium-low to keep it at a gentle simmer, and stir occasionally for about 1 hour, or until the pork is tender. If you like a little more sauce, you can thin the liquid in the pot with water. No chicken, pork or vegetable stock allowed here. The flavour comes from the spices.

I am told this dishes like this taste best:
a) warm, not hot. So let the pork cool a little before eating it.
b) the day after. The sauce continues to tenderize the meat and the spices continue to infuse the meat. So even if you over-cook it, by leaving it overnight in the fridge, it could still be brilliantly tender and even more flavourful the next day.

Serve with rice and die of happiness. If you don't eat pork, make this with lamb, or beef, or really anything, but game or fatty meat tastes the best. Cheaper cuts of meat work well for that reason.

Volk/Watson Christmas Extravaganza 2010: Heavenly Hosts

2010-12-30T11:52:00.000-05:00

The Spread

"Heavenly Hosts", aka the 3rd Annual Volk/Watson Christmas Extravaganza can be described as follows:

A selection of dishes with divinity in mind. From the angel food cake to Philadelphia cream cheese sundried tomato spread, each recipe has heavenly associations (ex: the Philadelphia cream cheese commercials) and is fit for angels. Of course, not all angels can digest dairy, so there are always alternatives, even healthier alternatives for all those eco-friendly angels. The "raw" dips are not heated above a certain temperature, are vegan, and are made with nuts soaked in water to remove digestive enzyme inhibitors, for any inhibited angels. Then there are the "Land of Milk and Honey" dishes (ironically, naturally dairy-free) - the Prosecco zabaione (Italian custard) and melomakarona (Greek semolina cookies soaked in honey syrup).

The other dishes are the personal heavens of the Volk/Watson family.

My dad's heaven: pork vindaloo
My mom's heaven: dairy-free, gluten-free dark chocolate hazelnut torte
My brother's heaven: Well my brother likes most things, and I refuse to make sushi with farmed antibiotic-laden Atlantic salmon (unsustainable, at that) so I've created a heaven for him of baguette (the manna of heaven) with Quebec Oka cheese, caramelized onions, smoked herring, crab, and fig jam. That way he can mix and match.

My heaven? Saag. Indian spinach. It's sweet and slippery and delicious. The onions, mustard seeds and asafoetida are amazing, and wrap it up in a fermented rice and lentil dosa and I'm a happy, happy person.

Here are the pictures. The rest of the food included daifuku (Japanese red bean desserts that I broiled), chicken mochi with a sweet soy-sesame dipping sauce (soy and szechuan peppercorn studded meatballs wrapped in savoury rice pastry), frozen grapes (what's heaven without branches of grapes?), home-made caramel (life - and death - are not worth living without caramel), and bottles of natural wines (again, grapes). I think that was everything? Here's most of it in pictures:

Sundried Tomato Cream Cheese Spread, Quebec Oka Cheese, grapes and pistachios

3 "Raw" Dips: Macademia Nut Ricotta, Basil Walnut Dip, Sundried Tomato Macademia & Pecan Dip with a selection of Gluten-Free Breads

Caramelized Onion, Encircled by Home-made Fig Jam, and Smoked Herring

Lentil and Rice Dosa with My Heavenly Dish of Choice: Saag

The Land of Milk and Honey: Melomakarona Greek Honey Cookies with Walnuts

My Dad's Heaven: Slow-Cooked Pork Vindaloo

Raspberry-Blueberry Compote

Almond Angel Food Cake with Honey Icewine-Soaked Figs, Maple Honeywine-Soaked Apricots, and Home-made Ginger Confit

The Zabaione was incredible...mmm...prosecco foam. The intense sugar of the dried fruit sauces and honey sauces, and caramel...and the mild sweetness of the saag with the chew of the dosa...the crunch of the dips, the sweetness of the fig jam with the caramelized onions and macademia nut ricotta, the basil walnut...the Szechuan peppercorns. Oh I love Szechuan peppercorns.

Setting up

Couldn't have done it all without some great help. Thanks to everyone involved, and thanks to everyone who came and enjoyed the party. Merry Christmas. Recipes to come.

Sourdough Disaster and Killing Little Bettie Sue Rice Culture Watson

2010-12-29T09:38:00.000-05:00

Well, I tried. I gave it my all. I even used two different recipes: One for a no-knead sourdough (Figured I couldn't mess that one up...right...), and one for a traditional kneaded sourdough. Despite the fact that this is loaf-ish thing is obviously burned (why do I keep burning things? I swear I follow directions well more often than not) the bread was just not great. For the kneaded bread I even pre-heated my eternally frigid hands in hot, hot water and immediately dove in to the dough before they time to cool off (after proofing the sourdough starter and all, as per the instructions). I kneaded and kneaded and kneaded and it sort of seemed like it got to the right doughy consistency...and then I left it to rise.

The no-knead one I touched as little as possible and left to rise.

...Except neither dough rose. I covered them in tea towels and left them undisturbed in the same place I'd had the sourdough cultures growing in the first place, so I figured if the temperature was good for the cultures it'd be good for the bread, but alas, no. I waited, and waited and waited. They just never doubled in bulk. In fact they got a dry crust on top and when I finally took the dough out of the bowls and put them in pans to re-rise ("Re-" being a joke, and punching them down being ineffectual) the underside was soft and happily doughy, but I had to tear off half the hardened top.

This is probably why my bread burned. I effectively ended up baking only half a loaf since I'd thrown out so much hardened crust. So the baking time should have been less. Anyway, I'd ended up leaving the bread to rise for much, much longer than it was supposed to, hoping in vain that they would rise, and if you leave them that long the tangy, lemony flavour of the sourdough becomes very strong. So when the loaves baked up they had a VERY strong sourdough flavour, which I liked at least, but eating a knob was like eating half a loaf, and it just sat in my stomach, despite sourdough's wonderful digestive properties and bacteria. I'm also not sure if there's a point where it's not safe to let the bread sit and kind of ferment anymore...Help?

I tried maybe 3 or 4 more times over the course of the next few days, and my last loaf was almost passable. Dense, but much better than the first few, mostly because I started feeding my gluten-free sourdough culture red fife wheat flour in the hopes that it would help the proofed starter rise better. Nope, didn't work...Lets just say I'm on the verge of murdering my babies, or just letting them starve which I suppose equates to the same thing. Thank goodness I didn't name them. It'd be harder to kill little Bettie Sue Rice Culture Watson.

God I miss my baker, Guillaume. There's something nice about being a mom to sourdough babies, but there's something to be said for expertise. Who am I to think I can do this bread thing better than a seasoned professional? I'll stick to things like angel food cakes with cinnamon figs and ginger confit, logs of sundried tomato cream cheese slow-cooked logs, zabaione al prosecco, pork vindaloo, saag, dosa, caramelized onions, blueberry compote, basil-walnut spread, macademia nut ricotta, daifuku, Szechuan peppercorn-studded chicken meatballs and melamakorona Greek honey cookies...Yeah, that's what I'll do (more pictures to come...).

Grow, Rice Babies! Grow! (Part 2)

2010-12-27T08:18:00.001-05:00

I know what it feels like to be a mother. I watch them grow up a little each day. I feed them regularly. One is currently in the fridge and is only being fed once a week (adolescence, says my mother. Step 2. It has matured past infancy and is making itself useful.) Tomorrow it will be baked.

7 sourdough cultures. How ridiculous is that? My 3 gluten-free flour blend cultures are doing wonderfully! They overflow nightly (a good sign I think), but my all-sweet rice flour cultures are struggling. Fortunately survival of the fittest is not in play. My rice babies can keep on trying, well, until Newfoundland runs out of rice flour, that is. One of these nights they'll froth, I'm sure. One is even starting to froth in the picture above. In fact I'm pretty sure that between the 5 bags of the stuff my mom bought after waiting for the Asian convenience store (yes, there is only one) to get an order in and the three I brought home from Montreal we own the most sweet rice flour of anyone in the province. I dare you to prove otherwise.

So grow, my rice babies! Grow!

Grow, Rice Babies! Grow! (Part 1): Adventures in Gluten-Free Sourdough

2010-12-24T06:25:00.001-05:00

I currently have 7 sourdough cultures started in my kitchen. Yes, 7 (you just can't see the 7th in the picture...). The basic recipe for sourdough culture is 1 cup of warm water and 1 cup of flour left for 24 hours uncovered in a warm place in a jar. Every 24 hours you throw out half of the culture and add another half cup of flour and half cup of water. So you end up with the same quantity. It's basically like cutting off the lower half of your body every day and letting it grow back healthier.

But instead of throwing out the first half of the culture I've been keeping them and multiplying my sourdough babies. I hope that's okay. I've been cutting off the legs and letting them grow into a new sourdough culture. 1 becomes 2. But then the next night, 2 became 4 when I did the same thing with both new sourdoughs. Fortunately my jars were big and at my next feeding time I managed to only end up with 7 by combining 1. I never was great at math like my brother. I mean, I wasn't bad, but it's all relative. Again, I hope that the combining is okay and I don't kill anyone.

There's a method to my madness, though. I started the culture with rice flour so that my mom could eat it, and because generally in my family's digestive tracts wheat is the enemy. Picture little rice soldiers on horseback wreaking havoc on my family's intestines. Us Eastern Europeans...So I was going to make it a completely rice flour-based culture, but then I figured since I was going to split it in half I should hedge my bets, so the first time I split the culture in half I added rice flour and water to one jar and a gluten-free flour blend of white rice flour, brown rice flour, sorghum gum, xanthum gum and tapioca starch and water to the other.

The next day the rice flour seemed just as stagnant but the gluten-free blend actually overflowed!!! It was supposed to take days and days to froth if it ever did at all. It happened so fast I didn't really believe it was ready, so I split it again and fed it again. Now I had four rice flour babies and three gluten-free blend babies. Apparently I'm a bit of a sourdough slut...

Tomorrow, bread!

Coming Home

2010-12-23T08:14:00.000-05:00

"There's about a 50/50 chance we'll be able to land in St. John's due to fog," announced the pilot. So when the runway lights appeared out of nowhere and we felt the impact of the landing, was I happy to be home or just to not be spending the rest of the night on the plane wondering when we could take-off again from Goose Bay?

GOOSE BAY! That's in Labrador. At least an hour away.

There are many reasons that flights I've been on have been unable to land in Newfoundland, including:

1. Fog
2. Snow
3: Ice
4. Some combination of #2 and #3 (sleet, hail)
5. Moose

Yes, moose. I've been redirected to Gander because of moose. Then had to take a 4 hour bus ride home to St. John's. It's my personal belief that if you live in Gander you kind of deserve that 4 hour bus ride from St. John's to Gander to think about why you live in such a hole. Sorry to anyone from Gander. There are worse places to live in this province, I suppose.

The point is that I was watching "Eat, Pray, Love" on the flight and didn't make it to the end because we actually landed. It was a bit of a relief since the part on gelato (highly glossed-over anyway) was already over, and it was all downhill from there...

My other point is that when the captain made the announcement, most people sighed and moaned a little. All you can do at that point is pray, which is why I'm glad I was watching the movie. I remembered how lovely the book was. There's a very sweet line where the main character is in an ashram in India talking to another resident. He says:

"Think of what you could do if you took all that effort and space in your head you use to think about him for something else. Think about him fondly, wish him well, then take a big breath and let God rush in to the space. Let his spirit fill you up, feed you with cold, brilliant air."

So as a prayer to land in Newfoundland, I took a deep breath and pushed out Montreal, and in came this big swell of home. The lights from the airport appeared outside the window, and as the plane wheels set down the world seemed to sparkle.

Slow-Cooker Chicken Barley Risotto with Thyme

2010-12-22T07:35:00.000-05:00

Another lunch date with my aunt pushed me to make some soul food. That means something creamy that fills you up from the inside out. Basically that means risotto. Risotto is one of those things I rarely have because I don't usually order it at restaurants and I rarely make it at home. At restaurants it's either started with butter or pre-finished with cheese, and if I'm at a place where neither of these is the case that usually means the restaurant is good enough that there's something else interesting on the menu to try AND I'm getting ripped off since risotto's generally dirt cheap to make since usually the only thing in it that costs anything at all is the cheese, which I'm not eating. Sometimes there's truffle oil or lobster involved, but not enough to make the dish worthwhile. I mean, I've had good risotto before. The other problem is that it rarely fills me up. I can eat way too much of it, so I'm rarely satisfied. At home, it usually requires a ton of stirring and I prefer to use a home-made broth (the other problem with sub-par restaurant risottos), so there's a fair bit of effort that goes into my not ending up full.

But I made it. Mostly because I have a slow-cooker and barley risotto works great in a slow-cooker, so take the effort out and it's almost worthwhile. With risotto the trick is to keep the rice grains al dente - chewy without being mushy and over-cooked. The slow-cooker is an al dente genius. There's a 1 1/2 hour window of time where those barley grains are lovely.

All you do is sauté a bunch of onions or leeks (and garlic if you wish, and I do) in some olive oil (or butter if you wish, and I don't; butter is more Northern Italian, olive oil more southern, and lactose-intolerance doesn't care about my love of Milan). Make sure the onions soften thoroughly, because if they don't you'll end up chewing them, which makes the risotto very un-appetizing. Now you can add firmer vegetables such as carrots if you wish. Sauté 5 more minutes. Then add 2 cups of rinsed pearl barley, a teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper (though I would use Sezchuan peppercorns for special occasions, just for fun). Stir for one minute on medium heat then add 3 cups of broth, a few sprigs of fresh thyme or a bunch of dried (but fresh is a million times better for infusing the broth) and one 28 oz can of tomatoes with its juice (I used my home-canned organic farmer's market tomatoes and their juice...the dish tasted like summer...mmm...). Coarsely chop the tomatoes beforehand if they're not already diced. You can also break them up in the skillet if you don't care about it being all perfectly chopped and beautiful.

Put the whole thing in a slowcooker for 8 hours on low or 4 hours on high and voila! Heaven.

About 10 minutes before serving add some kind of protein if you wish. I had leftover roasted chicken which was perfect. Nordic shrimp or maybe crab or lobster (though they make this much more labour-intensive) would also work. Red meat you could get away with, but in that case they should be served separately: Risotto alone should be a first course (primo, in Italian) and the meat should be the second (secondo). Tradition and all.

Speaking of (massacring) tradition, the great thing about this recipe is you're not stirring it for 25 minutes and adding more and more broth slowly, a half cup at a time. You also don't end up with an over-salted risotto from adding more and more stock that boils off but leaves behind its sodium content. And if it burns it's the fault of your slow-cooker for not having a proper "keep warm" setting. If you get to it 30 minutes later than planned everything should be just fine. Coming home to cooking risotto also makes you feel like the smartest person alive. Give yourself a pat on the back before digging in.

If this is too bland for you, boil some balsamic vinegar down in a small saucepan until it reduces by half. Mmm...balsamic reduction. Why would I ever buy this at a restaurant when it's so easy?

Caramel Apple Tarte Tatin and Not Burning Things

2010-12-22T07:04:00.000-05:00

Tarte Tatin is a butter-heavy, caramel-coated, sugar-drenched delicacy. Basically I thought my dad would love it and it would challenge me to make better pastry. I'd seen recipes that called for a simple pie crust for the dough and how could that possibly end up layered and flaky?

So, yeah, it burned a little because I suck at multitasking. The recipe also called for too few apples and they kind of fell apart in the sauce, and I used some agave nectar, which I think burned faster.All in all, though, great success because I made the pastry using a mx of gluten-free flour and spelt (yes, I know spelt is not gluten-free, but I needed more flour and my options were wheat and less wheat - aka spelt).

The tart is traditionally cooked in an oven-safe skillet (cast-iron or stainless-steel) so that the caramel cooks on the stove and coats the apples before being covered in puff pastry and baked to a golden brown in the oven. You can also transfer the contents of the skillet to a 9-inch round baking dish for the final step, and you can use frozen puff pastry if you prefer not to make your own, but the home-made, slightly time-consuming pastry will be so much better.

Tarte Tatin
Oh, and even though I over-cooked my caramel a little, it was still delicious...

Crust
3/4 cup cold butter, divided (or Earth Balance. Add a pinch of salt if you use unsalted butter)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 cup cake and pastry flour, or all-purpose (you can also use a gluten-free flour blend, but it won't be as light and flaky as the cake flour or even the all-purpose. It will still be delicious, and I haven't found gluten-free puff pastry yet)
5-6 tablespoons ice water

Filling
5 medium apples (Gala, Golden Delicious, or other firm baking apples)
½ cup butter (or earth balance)
1 cup sugar (you can also use agave nectar, or a mix of agave and sugar, but it will cook faster and burn more easily)

Crust:
The trick to puff pastry is to keep everything ice-cold says Irma: your hands, the bowl, and the rolling pin. If using frozen puff pastry, thaw a piece and roll it out to a circle larger than the diameter of your oven-proof skillet or baking dish. Place the dough on a baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until needed.

1. Sift the flour. Wash the cold butter under cold running water (skip this is you use earth balance. It should become soft but stay ice cold. Massage it in your hand until it's creamy and waxy. Knead it briefly with cold hands until no water flies off it. Place a quarter of the butter in a cold bowl and shape the rest into a flat square and place in the refrigerator (with earth balance just measure the butter and add 2 1/2 tablespoons to the bowl and put the rest in the fridge).
2. Add the flour, sugar, and salt to the butter in the bowl. Cut in using two knives or your fingers until the pastry looks like small peas. Add 5 tbsp of the ice water and combine. Add the remaining 1 tbsp water if the pastry is dry or a pinch of flour if it sticks to the bowl.
3. Refrigerate 15 minutes and start chopping the apples (see below). Roll the pastry out to a square shape on a clean, floured counter, rolling out from the centre only, not back and forth. Put the refrigerated butter in the centre of the dough and fold the four corners to the centre to cover. Refrigerate 10 minutes and start making the caramel (see below).
4. Roll out the dough again into a square and fold the corners to the centre as before. Chill again. You can repeat this process up to 4 times if you have the time, but if not, work quickly and fold 3 more times immediately. Roll the pastry out to a circle slightly larger than the diameter of your oven-proof skillet or baking dish. Place on a baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until needed.
5. Remind yourself that home-made pastry is better than frozen and this will all be worthwhile.

Caramel Apple Filling:
6. Peel, core, and quarter the apples. Cut the tips off the apples so that they will fit more snuggly against the side of the skillet. The apples will discolour a little but it doesn't matter. You can sprinkle them with lemon juice if you really want to.
7. Melt the butter over low heat in a large skillet. Remove from heat, add the sugar, and stir until blended. Arrange the apples on their sides in the pan so that the front of each piece touches the back of the next. Continue the fan pattern, starting from the outside of the skillet and working your way in. Fill in the gaps with the removed apple tips. If you are transferring the apples later to a baking dish, it's not necessary to do this beautifully.
8. Return your pan to the stovetop on high heat. Boil 10 to 12 minutes, or until the pan juices are lightly golden but not dark or burnt.
9. Preheat oven to 375° F.
10. Remove the skillet from heat. Being careful not to burn yourself, turn the apple slices over with the tip of a sharp knife, keeping them in their original places.
11. Cook 5 more minutes, then remove from heat. If not baking directly in the skillet, transfer the apple slices to the buttered baking dish. (Now you may want to be artistic with the fan shape of the slices.)
12. Place the pastry on top of the apples and brush off excess flour. Fold the edges toward the centre of the skillet or baking dish. The folds don't have to be pretty. Bake in oven until the top of the crust is golden-brown in color, about 25-35 minutes. Remove and let cool 25 minutes.

13. Place a plate or other serving dish on top of the pan and quickly flip tart over onto the plate. Check to make sure the apples aren't sticking to the bottom of the dish before removing it completely. Slice and serve with ice cream, and pat yourself on the back.

Canned and Pickled Everything

2010-12-19T07:40:00.003-05:00

The person who gave me the copy I have of the 1948 Joy of Cooking and a cast-iron skillet came to my house for lunch. It had to be one heck of a thank-you lunch. The 1948 freaking Joy of Cooking, for goodness sake! (I edited that sentence...)
So we had soup, yes, one of my favourite soups made with favourite Indian pickle, but as this person is a pickler too, I got out everything I'd canned all summer (everything that was left) for him to try. This included (from left to to right):

1. Pears and persimmons in syrup with cloves and cinnamon.
2. Fig jam
3. Pickled jalapenos with coriander and black pepper seeds
4. Pickled Carrots in the same
5. Indian jalapeno pickle with a million spices
6. Fermented sriracha sauce
7. Ginger Confit

and I topped the soup with pickled peppers.

The other jars, containers, and bags in the photo are 2 local honeys (one creamy and one liquid), natto (fermented soy beans), and matcha daifuku (green tea-flavoured rice flour pastries filled with sweet red bean paste). It was overkill, but I kind of love people with tastebuds trying a million different interesting flavours in my kitchen.

Mostly I just wanted to post this picture because it's ridiculous. For a newbie, I've canned a lot of stuff, and not died. Hurray?

The Soup That Started It All: Spicy Sweet Potato

2010-12-18T11:57:00.000-05:00

It's almost my one-year Midnight Poutine anniversary. I just remembered this the other day when I made this spicy sweet potato soup recipe. It was the first recipe I posted on the site and it's even been linked to from a site called Endless Simmer about the top 100 sweet potato recipes online. It's a pretty great recipe. Anyway, the person who gave me this beautiful cast-iron skillet was coming for lunch, and this is a great soup. Put two and two together.

The only change I made to the recipe was skipping the dried chilies part (the only time consuming, somewhat annoying part) and using my Indian pickle as the oil to sauté the onions, then adding the sliced jalapenos from the pickle later in the recipe. The heat would be more than enough. I didn't even have to add any more salt. So basically I could save 2 steps and and 45 minutes worth of soaking and chopping effort, a very important change when you got up at 5:45am that morning for radio.

It worked perfectly. I just drained a little oil from the pickle and went right on with the recipe. Then when I added the broth I also added the drained jalapenos - about 6 or so. You can add more a garnish to individual servings, but 6 ends up being a fair bit of heat. Hurray! The only other difference with this recipe is that I garnished with pumpkin seeds. Normally I'd toast them, but these were pre-soaked and dehydrated ("raw" food style), so toasting kinds of kills all those wonderful nutrients I was trying to save through my "raw" nut-soaking. So garnish as you wish.

Home-Made Caramel Frosting

2010-12-17T09:14:00.000-05:00

I gave you the cake, now you get the icing. Kind of how at a Christmas party yesterday there was this 17 month old girl who was given half a raspberry square by her mother. The mother placed the child's half on a napkin in front of her and placed the other half on another napkin in front of her other, 3-ish year old daughter. What does the younger girl do? She reaches out and takes a bite from the raspberry square in front of her.

...Then she puts it down.

Okay, so she doesn't want it? Nope, that's not it. She turns to her left and picks up her sisters' square, and takes a bite.

...Then she puts it down. Apparently it wasn't any better than her own square.

So she goes back to her own square and tries another bite. And she puts it down again. She can't seem to make up her mind. So then she picks up a coaster and offers it to my mother. My mother, polite woman that she is, exclaims, "THANK you!". So she gets given another coaster...and another...This child...

So the child wanted both cookies, but she shouldn't really be having both. that's not fair. But YOU! You can have the yellow cake and now you can have the caramel icing too! I would say you can have your cake and eat it too, but that's just not true. Even the kid wouldn't have had any more raspberry squares if she'd eaten both of them. But she's really a kind soul, giving coasters, so her greed isn't going to be her defining personality trait. There's hope.

So, caramel...

I've always been scared of the elusive "soft-ball stage". It's up there with "stiff peaks" in my nightmares of sketchy baking techniques. But it all worked out perfectly. Seriously, perfectly, and I even cheated as follows:

Original recipe:
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup milk or cream
1 1/2 tsp butter
1/2 tsp vanilla

My Recipe:
1/2 cup xylitol (sugar replacer. NOT aspartame, but no crazy blood sugar spikes)
1/2 cup dark agave nectar (it was raw, but I killed it with the cooking)
1/2 cup almond milk
1 1/2 tsp butter
1/2 tsp almond extract (I ran out of vanilla, and I'd already put almond in the cake. You can use 1/4 tsp of both if you like)

Same recipe for both. It worked just fine. You do need a candy thermometre that works, though. "Works" being the key. Ideally one that's either instant read or can latch on to the side of the saucepan.

Instructions:
1. In a saucepan dissolve the sugar and milk
2. Bring the pan to a boil and boil without sitrring until the elusive soft-ball stage. What this means is get it to EXACTLY 238 degrees Fahrenheit on your candy thermometre. It'll take about 15 minutes with agave nectar, I think? I don't quite remember, but it took awhile. It would probably take less with sugar since there's less liquid involved. You probably also need to be careful the pan doesn't boil over, but don't stir it, just lift it from the burner to lower the boiling level.
3. Quickly add the butter and remove the icing from the heat.
4. Stick a hand-mixer right into the icing and beat it until it's thick (about 5 minutes or more!) Patience is a virtue, I hear. Come on, you just whisked an egg white for an age, so this is relatively easy. Maybe grab a book or turn on the radio or something. You know, learn something.
5. If the icing gets TOO thick you can add a little more milk or cream or almond milk to thin it, but that probably won't happen if you used agave nectar.

Spread the icing on the cake right away. The icing should be cool, so it shouldn't drip, and if you actually got it 238 degrees it'll be thick enough. If you didn't get it to that temperature it needs to go back on the heat and all your beating wasn't worth it. If it's not cool yet, though, it may just not have thickened enough, so keep beating it until it's actually cool.

Oh, I suppose you could drizzle like I did, because this icing is pretty intensely sweet. You really don't need a lot to pack a punch. You can also just eat this with a spoon...a quarter teaspoon. Dairy-free caramel.

Thank you, Irma. You're the best.

"Yes B'y, Mudder Cake" With Home-Made Caramel Frosting

2010-12-16T09:39:00.002-05:00

I'm very much home. The words running through my head have turned to Newfanese.

I'll be honest, I made this cake in Montreal about a week before leaving, but I can't write about it now like a Montrealer. I'm half a country away and so I'm going to write about it in the words that are running through my head. I don't remember why I thought the words "Yes b'y, mudder," yesterday, but it seems that my mom did something shockin, and as my vowels got smaller in the front and rounder in the back and my skin got sticky from the island's damp air, those are the words I thought.

I made the cake on a whim one night after a decent dinner of leftovers and a disappointing red wine. A bit depressed at the thought of starting my evening in front of my computer, I procrastinated by making cake. If Irma Rombauer had been a Newfoundlander...well, much of her cookbook would be the same, except she'd be a little less self-confident, there would be a lot more recipes for salt fish and beef, more whipped cream pudding cakes with tinned pineapple (there are already a lot, including pineapple snow - a moulded cake with heavy cream, not whipped cream, thank god), and a whole lot fewer recipes for un-Newfoundlander-esque things like oysters, persimmons, peaches (except the tinned kind), and such foreign sounding things as tamale pie and antipasto. Honest to god I laughed a right sad laugh when I saw the persimmons at the grocery store here yesterday. they were hardly orange, more old and brown and sick-looking. If they were a dog, I would have put it down. Who would buy those poor persimmons, I haven't the foggiest.

All I have to say, though, is Jesus, Irma, your caramel sauce is some good.

Narn bit of corn syrup involved. And the cake was about the best cake I'd eaten in ages. I couldn't stop. There were no spices in it, and besides using a gluten-free flour blend instead of all-purpose, using half sugar and half agave nectar (which I thought would dry it out but it didn't) I didn't change a darn thing in the recipe.

All her sifting! I sifted until I was all sifted out: 1/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup agave nectar

Cream: 2 tbsp butter (that's it! Just 2. You could almost eat the whole cake it's so light...until you get to the next 2 ingredients) then add the sugar/agave mixture and mix for ages (about 2 minutes. You can't even drink caffeine in Newfoundland that quickly. The city doesn't believe in espresso). Beat in 1 egg yolk (at room temperature, of course).

Sift!!! Tree times (not a typo) 3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp bread flour (my gluten-free blend) or 2 cups cake flour. Don't add it to the egg mixture.

Sift!!! Just once more with1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt. That's a ton of salt. Not to a Newfoundlander who may have grown up on saltfish and saltbeef and saltpork, and Jesus, anything else you can salt, but in this cake it's a lot of salt. A delicious, perfect lot of salt. Do it.

Measure out 1/2 plus 2 tbsp milk. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the butter mixture, beat, then add 1/3 of the milk, beat, then half the remaining flour, beat, then half the milk, beat, then the remaining flour, beat, then the last of the milk. Only beat a fe seconds after each addition, says Irma. I agree, of course.

Then beat in 1/2 tsp almond extract or amaretto. The amaretto is my idea because a lot of people don't have almond extract (It's not as if there's tons of amaretto kicking around the average kitchen either, though, especially in Newfoundland, but there is a LOT of rum, and that's fine too. At the liquor store yesterday there were more rums than Canadian wines. A Newfoundlander wouldn't know a Canadian wine if it came out and sang the National Anthem. I had to laugh when I saw a shelf called "Local Wine" and there was Newfoundland blueberry wine sitting next to Pinnacle iced wine. "Local"...).

Now the fun part. I was NOT about to wash my beaters to whip up one little egg white. You've got to make sure you dry the beaters really well, because water and inhibit the riding of the white. So I decided to whisk it. People had been doing it forever, surely I could too. So I started and it was slow going. I switched hands and ways of holding the whisk about 10 times in the 5 or so minutes it actually took me to whisk the white. That's ridiculous. I tried to go quickly but I apparently am as bad at whisking as at kneading, but I can't blame my cold hands on this one.

I decided that the directions to whip until "stiff but not dry" were going to have to deal with me being exhausted of whipping. So I quit and hoped it was enough. It stayed in place when I removed the whisk, so that was a good sign, I figured. the nice thing about not using a handheld beater was the air stayed in the white better. It didn't collapse. My energy had made it stronger than electricity, I told myself. Maybe Irma's hubris is rubbing off on me? Nope, I'm still a right useless whisker.

Fold the white gently into the rest of the batter. This is where hand-whisking is great because I wasn't so worried about wrecking my cake through collapsing egg whites.

I greased the 8" cake pan liked I'd never greased before (I had to use aluminum because the bottom of my cake pan is trashed). I think I used a good 1 1/2 tbsp of butter because the rest of the cake had so little. Poured in the batter. 350 Fahrenheit for 25 minutes. Done. Beautiful. Some good, wha?

Caramel while that was going on...

Turkey Pot Shepherd's Pie

2010-12-15T08:58:00.000-05:00

Take two wonderful things and stick them together.

Things I like better about chicken pot pie than shepherd's pie:
1. It's made with chicken, not beef
2. There's a sweeter, lighter taste from the gravy, and you can even make it creamy if you want
3. It's made from leftovers, so there's less work involved

Things I like better about shepherd's pie than chicken pot pie:
1. You don't need to make a double pie crust
2. Potatoes aren't quite as heavy as said double pie crust

Best of both worlds: Pie crust on the bottom, mashed potatoes on top, chicken in the middle with leftover gravy and basic, sautéd onions, garlic and carrots.

It was beautiful. Throw in the fact that I used brine to flavour the potatoes instead of cream or butter, and I had a pretty delicious meal. I didn't feel like weighing myself down with a pound of whipped butter, and my leftover pickling solution was the trick. Sounds strange, was delicious. I actually ended up with one chicken pot shepherds pie, and one chicken shepherd's pie since I only had one pie crust and I'm more interested in the filling than the crust anyway.

What you need:
1. Pie crust (I had frozen a gluten-free pie crust from the last time I made pie. I'd even frozen it in a small loaf pan. Maybe I'd secretly known it would end up being for chicken pot pie. Ir I'd just planned on making a strange kind of filled fruit pie?

2. Leftover chicken (breast leg, whatever. Roasted is traditional, but even if you need to cook up some chicken to make this, it's all fair game).

3. Vegetables of choice (Onions, celery and carrots are standard, but use whatever you have. I even used the bottoms of some bok choy instead of celery)

4. Gravy. You can make a quick gravy - I'd especially recommend a miso gravy in this case (I leave out the nutritional yeast), so you don't have to roast a whole chicken or use a disgusting canned or boxed product that calls itself helpful - or if you have leftover, that's the best. There's a good reason this is most often made around Thanksgiving when there are leftovers. You only need about 3 tbsp. You can also skip it completely and use white wine or vermouth, and broth mixed with flour or cornstarch to thicken or not)

5. Potatoes and some kind of liquid for flavour (broth is great, but a brine solution of water, vinegar, salt and a little sugar also works wonders. I kind of liked the kick from the vinegar, but maybe that's the Newfoundlander in me)

6. Optional green thing to garnish

Instructions:
Make/buy the pie crust. It's really easy to make, but, well, I understand if you cheat. Actually, no, I don't understand, but I'll turn a blind eye this time. Defrost it if it was frozen.

Boil the potatoes whole in their jackets until soft (about 15 minutes for big ones). Make sure they're completely covered in the water or turn them during the cooking time. Test them with a fork to make sure they're done - the fork should slide into the potato easily. Remove from the water and let cool while you chop everything else for the pot shepherd's pie.

It doesn't really matter how you cut the vegetables, but if they're all cut the same they'll cook more evenly. Just hack 'em up. It'll be fine.

Sauté the onions and optional garlic and celery in a little oil over medium-heat for 30 seconds, then turn the heat down to medium low and let the onions sweat a little. 7 or so minutes later add the carrots.

While this is going on, skin the potatoes. they should slip right out of their winter jackets. Mash them with a fork or a a masher or a slotted spoon or your hands. Depends on your anger that day, I suppose, and add your seasoning of choice (you can heat a little vinegar with a bit of sugar and some salt to dissolve them if you like, or just add some milk and butter, or broth). You're going to need some liquid to make it creamy, and using the cooking liquid is bland, bland, bland.

Preheat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit.

Now add the chicken and gravy (If you're using alcohol, turn the heat up to medium high again before adding. Then let the alcohol burn off before adding a little broth mixed with flour or cornstarch). You can also add some herbs here. I threw in some fresh thyme. Keep it simple. This is not Indian tandoori chicken pot shepherd's pie, after all.

When everything seems nice and coated in gravy and it's pretty thick, move the filling into the pie crust.

Oh yeah! I forgot that I added the chopped green part of the bok choy after filling the pie crust. It didn't need to be sautéed first. That would just kill nutrients.

Top with the potato mixture. I did this with one pie crust and just stuck the whole cast iron skillet (thanks!) I'd used to sauté into the oven as well for a second crust-less shepherd's pie.This is how it came out 25 minutes later - golden and crisp on top, sweet and tender-crisp in the middle (the miso is very sweet and is a really nice complement for the vinegar in the potato purée). Basically I hunted through looking for carrots, my favourite part. Weird, I know. The potatoes even tasted like something. That's why I hate mashed potatoes - they're usually bland and boring, but these were okay. I wouldn't eat them everyday, but I'm not much of a Newfoundlander, as proven by the fact that I didn't take the free drink offered by Air Canada on my return flight last night when we were running late...Shame.

Lemon Buttercream

2010-12-11T21:15:00.000-05:00

I bought icing sugar in bulk about 4 months ago in expectation of my next cake. Maybe to you that's ridiculous, but to me that's prudent planning.

I didn't know what the cake would be at the time, and there's no way I could have suspected it would be a 6 egg yolk cake from the 1948 Joy of Cooking. I hadn't even yet met the person who gave me the book, but you know there will always be a next cake, and you know that icing sugar doesn't go bad, and you also know that having to take a trip to the store in a Montreal winter can mean the death of unborn cooking or baking plans.

So I took 4 cups of my icing sugar, as instructed by Ms. Rombauer, the Joy of Cooking author and my companion in all things good baking, and blended it with 1/2 cup of soft butter. That's really not that much butter to ice 2 cakes. If each cake has 8 pieces, that's 1/4 cup per cake, and only 1 1/2 tsp per slice. There was no butter in the cake itself or in the custard filling, even. I'm not going to call these egg yolk sponge cakes light or anything, but I could have done worse in terms of butterfat content. No pounds of butter here. It wasn't really intentional, since I only had about this much butter anyway, but the cakes were for the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre bake sale, so it was kind of convenient since most Japanese people can't digest milk very well. Stereotype I know, but if I can make fewer people sick with my baking, I'm all for it.

Anyway, I beat the butter and sugar for a long time because I'm a big believer in fully creaming butter and too much is better than too little (so about 2 minutes. Probably overkill since the butter was nice and soft already, as per Ms. Rombauer's instructions) and then beat in about 1/4 cup of lemon juice. Pour, taste, pour, taste. I like the icing pretty puckeringly sour to cut the richness of the cake. It should be VERY sweet and PRETTY sour and it needs to be a nice balance between these two.

I should ahave gone back and properly read Irma's instructions...There is, of course, a foreword to the section on icings. She says for raw icings such as this one you can put the uncooked icing over hot water for 10-15 minutes to get rid of the grainy texture. So I did, and then I didn't read the part where you're supposed to beat the heat out of it afterward before icing the cake...Instead, I let it cool on its own, but I didn't wait quite long enough.

Assembling the cake: I cut each of the 8" cake layers in half (carefully with a sharp knife!) and spread half the cooled orange custard in the middle. Then I put the tops on like a jelly donut. None of the custard even went over the edge. It was just enough filling. thanks, Irma. The buttercream wasn't cool yet, though, so I didn't want to spread it right away and end up with soup icing that ran everywhere.

So I pooled some of it into the centre of the top of the cakes and set them on baking sheets to make the drive in my borrowed car to the JCCCM. I figured I'd do the sides when I got there. That was a stupid idea. I have a few too many of those. The icing had hardened up WAY too much by the time I arrived and there was no way I could ice the sides and make it look like the icing on top blended into the icing in the middle. So I treated it more like fondant and tried to make smooth pieces out of it before sort of attaching them to the cake. It turned into a kind of abstract work of 3D icing art. Well, one cake did. The other I just left as it was, with a pool of icing centred in the middle, and the sides un-iced. I got to slice the cake myself, so it was cool seeing the layers. It wasn't gorgeous, but it tasted great and people bought it and apparently liked it, and so no, I'm not such a failure. I'm not sure what Ms. Rombauer would think.

Orange Custard from the 1948 Joy of Cooking (aka "6 Egg Yolks Later")

2010-12-10T11:48:00.001-05:00

Irma Rombauer's instructions for 'Orange Filling' (aka custard, but not really, since her actual orange custard recipe comes later and includes sectioning whole oranges) are as follows:

Stir and cook in a double boiler until thick:
1/2 tsp grated orange rind
1 tbsp lemon juice
6 tbsp orange juice
1/3 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp flour
1/8 tsp salt
3 egg yolks

I doubled it to fill my Egg Yolk sponge cakes. It didn't have the butter or as much orange zest as 'Orange Filling II', but it was easy and it was going to do the trick. Besides, I was going to inject the calorie-clogging-ness into the buttercream, so might as well keep the dietary hurdle of the custard recipe to 6 egg yolks.

So I stirred and I cooked, and it took much longer than a normal custard. there wasn't a point where I was stirring gently and it suddenly got a lot thicker and then I waited 45 seconds and then took it off the heat. It just very slowly thickened and I had to stir pretty regularly, even constantly near the end.

The filling implies a knowledge of how to set up a double boiler using a saucepan and a bowl, but some people don't know how to do this. Apparently it was standard in 1948. We've lost so much of our culture...

...I actually felt good about this because my bowls are almost that old. These babies are work-horses. They're meant for high heat like this. If you don't have a bowl that you can rest on a saucepan (either because it's plastic or another melt-able or heat-breakable material) then you're kind of SOL.

About 25 minutes later(!) it was thick enough, and I took it off the heat to cool while I made the buttercream and waited for my egg yolk cakes to cool as well. I had just used 12 egg yolks in the course of an hour for 1 cake and I wasn't even done yet. I was done with eggs, thank goodness.

The 1948 Joy of Cooking and My 12-Egg Yolk Yellow Cake with Orange Custard Filling and Lemon Buttercream

2010-12-08T10:54:00.000-05:00

This one takes the cake, so to speak...

For my friend's birthday I made her an angel food cake. It took 12 egg whites. I was not about to throw out 12 egg yolks and there's no way I could eat enough mayonnaise, zabaglione, or bechamel to get through these things in the short amount of time they can be kept in the fridge. So they got frozen.*

Then the perfect occasion came. Serendipitous, really. I had to make cakes for the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre Craft and Cake Sale. So 6 yolks for the 3-yolk cakes, and 6 yolks for the orange custard.

From where did I get such a recipe in a land of low-fat everything? The 1948 Joy of Cooking.

Just thinking about this book makes me a little giddy. It's in my house, on my bookshelf, and I cook from it whenever I want. It's a relic, like a piece of history living in my house. It's torn up, taped up and beautiful. The wonderful Irma Rombauer...her personality gets steam-rolled in the later editions, but early on she was present in every chapter, in every recipe, with fast quips, helpful suggestions, and dated commentaries. For example, the first chapter is "cocktails", and starts like this:

"The chief virtue of cocktails is their informal quality. They loosen the tongues and unbutton the reserves of the socially diffident. Serve them by all means, preferably in the living room, and the sooner the better."

She follows this up respectably with:

"To give this book the impression of sobriety and stability it deserves, the alcoholic cocktails have been relegated to the chapter on Beverages. There they may blush unseen by those who disapprove of them and they may be readily found in the company of many other good drinks by those who do not."

Incredibly well-said. Her nonalcoholic cocktails range from juices to oysters to pineapple boats. Very American. Other chapters start with wonderful introductions such as the chapter on fish which first describes the skinning and filleting process, but then dives into a Chinese proverb, and then the following:

"First, we must determine which is the best way to cook our fish."

Our fish, Irma. We're in this together.

Then there's the section on sweetbreads. I'm not sure if the modern version of the book includes the recipe for larded sweetbreads with wine sauce. Too bad. Or baked brains, tomatoes, and eggs. Breakfast of champions. Irma was definitely a champion.

Some of the best moments are her sections of "general rules", including "general rules for making pie crust" and her dictionary of baking that describes the differences between creaming, blending, cutting in, and kneading. Then there's the following description for the Queen Mary's Sponge Cake:

"When King George was sick, his wife, who is reported to have that inborn thing, 'a light hand with pastry,' bought a book of Marie Corelli's and baked a sponge cake for him....This recipe makes a large, delicate, fine-grained cake, which, if somewhat uninteresting, makes up for that by being highly digestible."

I didn't immediately think a light hand with pastry was what she meant by "that inborn thing", being royalty and all...

For the egg-yolk cake I initially planned on making the "Gold Cake", and the following description was provided:

"This recipe calls for 8 egg yolks. The cake is light and palatable."

Encouraging, Ms. Rombauer.

Light? Maybe not. And "palatable" is not usually how I think of cake. I love her honesty, though. It really seemed as though she didn't want anyone to make this cake. So I didn't. I made the 3-yolk sponge instead and doubled the recipe.

Ms. Rombauer has a lot of rules, so to make this cake I had to go back and read the opening of the sponge cake section. She says not to disturb the balance of the recipes by careless measuring. Sift flour three times. In her day, people sifted over paper. Does anyone still sift over paper? She gives the ratio of bread flour to cake flour if substitutions must be made. Then there are the separate rules for mixing with an electric mixer. Typically her mixing is done with a whisk. Fore-arms of steel, she had.

Ingredients:
Egg yolks
Sugar
Salt
boiling water
cake flour (exchanged for bread flour with Ms. Rombauer's proper ratio)
baking powder
vanilla
grated orange rind

Simple, right? I was not going to mess this one up. I even sifted the sugar and salt twice as suggested before blending it in to the beaten, light egg yolks. Then in went the water, the thrice-sifted flour (maybe I only did it twice...maybe, because then she threw a fast one by saying to sift again with the baking powder), and beat only as much as I needed to combine it all before adding the vanilla and orange rind. I baked it in an 8" baking dish and a piece of aluminum I'd shaped around my one 8" baking dish (...) and baked in my 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. Perfect. Of course it was perfect. It's Rombauer's Joy of Cooking.

To come: Orange custard (aka what I did with the other 6 egg yolks) and lemon buttercream (because I ran out of orange juice...)

*You just mix 1 1/2 tsp of sugar with every four yolks (if you're going to use them for sweet dishes) or an 1/8th teaspoon of salt for every four (for savoury dishes). The yolk doesn't really freeze solid, so it was overkill of me to freeze them in ice cube trays to make sure they could be easily separated later. I didn't plan to use them all at once...well, oops.

"Heavenly Hosts": The 3rd Annual Christmas Party

2010-12-04T10:03:00.000-05:00

When I first described the Christmas party I planned for my family two years ago and immediately called it the "First Annual Watson/Volk Christmas party" my parents laughed a little. Wasn't I getting a bit ahead of myself? Work on one before assuming there'd be more. But I never go into something like a giant catered party with anything but the highest expectations. Which is why now, three years later, we've arrived at the "Third Annual" edition of the event. We have a theme. Check. We have some rough menu sketches. Check. We even have excited to-be guests.

This year's theme will be "Heavenly Hosts". Thanks mom. I wanted something angelic to represent the season, but didn't want the kitsch of making it all about heaven and Hell. So we're leaving the devil aspect out of it. Yes, I want to do an angel's food cake, but no, there will be no deviled eggs (or devil's food cake for that matter). It's going to be on the elegant side instead.

So for the rest of the menu (since Newfoundland probably doesn't have enough eggs for me to do a whole party based on angels food cakes...) I was thinking my dad, my brother, my mom, and I would each have a dish labeled "So-and-so's Heaven". My dad's heaven would include a braised beef dish, my brother's would probably be sushi, my mom's? She has her heart set on some brownies, I think. Which leaves a whole lot of room for savoury dishes.

I was thinking philedelphia cream cheese (the angel commercials) would be appropriate, so I could do some kind of cream cheese dip and then do a raw version with nuts, and then I thought I'd just do a few more raw dishes that taste cheese-y. Probably there'll be a lot of cashews involved. That's good for dips and sauces, so maybe...hmm...

I was also thinking I wanted a lot of sourdough involved as the "manna of heaven". It's a more natural and traditional yeast. None of this fast-acting stuff, but it could take 10 days to make a yeast, and that's if everything goes smoothly. A friend here in the city offered me some of his to start mine off but I think I'll kill it by the time I get to Newfoundland. There's one good bakery in St. John's that might give me some of their starter, though I'm not even sure if they do sourdough. So the bread concept is there, and worst comes to worse, I can probably find Premiere Moisson flown in...sad, but true. No, I will try my best and making tons and tons of bread. It'll be my Christmas challenge. Turns out that in terms of glycemic index a sourdough made with white flour is better for you than even a whole wheat bread made with regular yeast!! Not in terms of minerals and vitamins maybe, but in terms of digestibility and spiking sugar levels. The whole wheat is really tough on your system, to the point where old people who eat it have a lot of trouble...Take that, Dempsters.

Anyway, so with my raw dips and desserts, maybe a "piled high apple pie", something beefy, something sushi (no salmon, trout, char or anything farmed Atlantic in this household, thanks, unless it just came off the wharf in unpolluted waters, and I don't know where those are), and then I've got to figure out what my heaven is and it's got to be something savoury. Or it can be sweet and then I have to come up with more "heavenly" or "angelic" savoury dishes.

Thoughts? Suggestions? As my highschool French teacher would say: "Questions? Commentaires?"

Roti Chanai, Take 2, with Roasted Squash and Jalapeno Pickle

2010-12-02T09:39:00.000-05:00

I'm all about eating locally, and Indian food is not exactly what immediately pops to mind. I'll tell you, though, everything in this dish was local, from the chili peppers to the squash, to the flour for the roti.

Last time my roti turned out pretty ugly, but delicious. This time they actually crushed properly. Well, it's not exactly supposed to be crushed up like this, but you are supposed to kind of smash it up a little so it's flaky...I just went a little overboard and got rid of the evidence that I didn't make it very well. Then I used the pieces to scoop out the sweet pumpkin flesh of the my roasted fellow and ate it with my Indian jalapeno pickle. Side dish of champions. I had to ration myself to only half the squash.

Salad! Finally! (With Persimmon and Pear White Balsamic Vinaigrette)

2010-12-01T09:24:00.000-05:00

You must think all I eat are pickles and jam with the occasional chestnut thrown in for good measure (it is historically the poor person's protein, and that's what most people think of as "lentils" today, and I eat a fair bit of those too...), but no, I eat a well-balanced diet. Most of the people I've ever lived with (there have been almost 30 of those, not including immediate family) have been shocked to see me make a meal just for myself and do courses. Well, what they think of as courses. I start almost every meal with a salad. That way I make sure I get some greens and I don't eat way too much of a heavy main course because I'm starving and my stomach doesn't know when to shut up.

Most of my salads aren't worth writing about, but this one...

...this salad was a bit heartier. Walnuts, a raw goat's milk cheese, shredded carrot and fennel, olives from my favourite Italian épicerie (Roberto's, home of the city's best gelato...and take-out pasta and sauces), belgian endive, and crunchy organic romaine. The dressing is what really put it over the top though.

Persimmons, pears, white balsamic vinegar, Italian dijon from (who else?) Kozlik's, olive oil, and a tiny, tiny bit of salt. I think that was it...the inspiration for it was mostly that I hate wasting things, so when I had to peel the skins of the persimmons and the pears for the fruit in syrup with cinnamon and star anise and I didn't feel like eating 8 fruits' worth of skin, I decided to purée it and maybe use it for muffins instead of apple sauce sometime...but then it was already in my blender and I needed a vinaigrette. So I have a good pear vinaigrette, and I figured that making it from the skins wouldn't bother just me (if it sucked no one else was going to know. It didn't suck, by the way). So I threw in vinaigrette-y things and as I'm obsessed with strong dijon I put in about a tablespoon of that and some more than sweet white balsamic vinegar (a splash), whirled it up with a bit of salt (it was already in the blender after all), tasted, added more dijon because I'm ridiculous and re-blended. Then drizzled in a little olive oil. I knew I wasn't going to really taste the olive oil anyway (plus I didn't really want to, since it wasn't that kind of dressing) so I didn't use more than a tsp or two. It took me 4 salads to eat my way through this dressing (over the course of 4 days, not in a row), AND I ended up using it for a raw carrot dip when my grated carrot ran out. Again, my fennel tasted like absolutely nothing, just watery fibre, which is more than a little sad, but a good man/grocer is hard to find, apparently. I suppose I am looking...for a grocer...not a man. If I happen to stumble upon a man in the process of finding my grocer, well, that would just be the icing on the cake.

Speaking of cake, I had the best cupcake of my life (well, maybe...it was AMAZING! but cupcake quality all depends on what kind of cupcake mood you're in at the time, so "For the Love of Cakes" still probably gets my "best cupcake ever" vote, but this!!!) at, of all places, the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre Craft and Bake sale. I had a key lime cupcake that had both lime zest and juice in the sponge-y cake. Light without being wimpy. It must have been baked that morning it was so fresh and moist. The buttercream was so delicious and by the end of it, it was too rich, but the first few bites of it were heavenly dense and smooth. Then there was a graham cookie (home-made) stuck in the top. Just butter, graham crumbs and salt, but some bites had more salt and some just had savoury graham and then some sneaked in the butter, which I only noticed when I wasn't eating the buttercream. I was alone in my car (well, not my car, but not a stolen car...I was alone in my "borrowed" car...lets leave it at that) and I couldn't help but exclaim about how good the cupcake was. I kept looking out the mirrors to make sure no one was watching me enjoy the cupcake. Kind of weird seeing a woman freak out about a cupcake in the driver's seat of a car. Maybe also a little weird that I had a box of 4 and a bunch of other take-out bags of various lunch/dessert things I'd purchased. It was a fundraiser, after all! Green tea mochi? Yes, I think so.

Probably no more strange for passerby than seeing me ice the two yellow cakes I made (from the 1984 Joy of Cooking I was given. THANK YOU!) with orange custard filling and lemon buttercream...to come.

Persimmons and Pears with Cinnamon and Star Anise: The Season's Last Adventure in Canning

2010-11-30T09:52:00.000-05:00

I love the Atwater library. Anywhere I can walk in and take books out for free is a miraculous thing to me. Atwater just happens to be the version of that system closest to my house. There's actually a membership (which I think defeats the purpose of "free lending"...I actually laughed at my roommate last year when he BOUGHT a membership) but it's so little and so convenient that it's worth it.

There's a cookbook section. Of course, I do read other things...but put me in front of two bookshelves on foodstuffs and I'm a happy camper. I took out three canning books (mostly out of practicality, since I couldn't carry more than that at the time) awhile ago and proceeded to pickle up a storm. The last thing I made before returning the books was a recipe for canned pears. I had a few persimmons kicking around and so I threw those in too, hoping that was kosher. Someone will tell me now if it's not, I hope. I left one jar un-canned and enjoyed the fruit in the fresh syrup.

So I can't give you the exact recipe I used, but find yourself a library or a reputable online canning source, and go to it. It was really simple, and pear and star anise is a basic combo. You take some sugar and water in a pot. Dissolve the sugar, and bring the liquid to a boil. Add the cinnamon sticks (I added extra ground cinnamon as well) and star anise and reduce the heat to let the syrup thicken and the spices infuse.

Peel and core the fruit and remove any soft spots or overripe sections. Slice them into sizes that will fit into jars. If they can't get in easily, they can't get out easily, and you don't want to be sitting around a few weeks later bemoaning the fact that the slice of pear you're craving is playing hard to get.

Sterilize the jars, put the fruit in the jars, almost to the top, pour on the hot syrup. Place the warmed lids on the hot jars, put sterilized rings on top of the lids, and process them again. I forget how long I had to process them, but it was pretty painless. Much easier than jam since the liquid doesn't have to get to the jam stage. So it was more like a pickle, but with sugar. See, I know nothing about canning. It was so nothing like a pickle.

The cans looked beautiful, and I decided to can the cinnamon sticks with the fruit, so the syrup will keep infusing over time. Now I know some people don't like cinnamon as much as I do and it may get overpowering, but anyone to whom I offer this fruit is going to have to like cinnamon. Otherwise, what the heck are they doing in my kitchen? Go find another kitchen to pillage.

You know what? The fruit gets better and better as it softens in the syrup, but since it's a simple syrup, what made this INCREDIBLE was eating it with my ginger confit. Absolutely amazing. The ginger cut through the sweetness, and then the earthy power of the cinnamon...and then the bitterness of the star anise...nothing like it. If you don't want to can you can just cook the fruit pieces a little in the syrup while it's simmering. That works too, but you can't enjoy it a month later when persimmons are no longer in season...So if you can can...

Inexpensive Moong Dal and the Montreal Metro's Helpful Spice-Grinding Tips

2010-11-27T13:51:00.000-05:00

So I was in the metro yesterday and looked up at the big MetroVision screens that tell you when the next train is coming and give you some generally uninformative news headlines, when lo and behold, I read the following:

"To grind spices in a mortar and pestle, crush them using an up and down motion."

Now that's loosely paraphrasing from the French but the "up and down motion" was pretty word for word ("d'haut en bas" I think?). Well, thanks MetroVision. And here I thought you never did much of use besides pass the time, but no, here you are informing the Quebec populace to grind whole spices themselves and exactly how to do it. Well, not EXACTLY...

There is actually mortar and pestle technique, and many Quebecers will be frustrated that their spices jump all over the place because their mortar is too small, or too light, or not coarse-edged enough. My mortar and pestle technique was first learned in Poh's Kitchen. The "best mortar and pestle" discussion gets going about 2'45" minutes into the episode, and the "technique" discussion is at 5'40":

What I basically learned from this episode is that if I ever want to marry into an Indonesian, Thai, or Malaysian family I'm going to have to work on my spice-grinding technique (Note how I did not write "grinding" technique. That would have been embarrassing). I need to relax my wrist and let the weight of the pestle do more of the work.

What else I learned from this episode was that fully smashed chilies are very hot, but bruised chilies are more subtle. Final important Thai cooking tip: heat fades in oil, so the ton of oil in the cooking makes the heat more manageable. I'll take the heat and cut the oil to the minimum, thanks.

Now if only these things would stick in my head, since I watched this episode in the early summer and I am still nowhere closer to marriage. Not that I was trying or anything. God...

The point of all this is that:

1) The Metro is good, but not great since it didn't tell Montrealers to toast their spices before grinding, but it did tell them to not buy pre-ground spices.

2) If I can't marry a Thai, maybe India will take me, since I've put my mortar and pestle skills to work a few times lately in Indian dahls (or dals).

"Dry" Moong Dal
Sookhi Moong Dal

I actually had moong dal in my cupboard! I bought it randomly, figuring I'd need it sometime for an Indian recipe. It actually worked. When does that ever work? You can find it at Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi grocers, so anywhere in Parc Ex or Pointe Ste-Charles (though it may not be labeled and you may need to have a hand conversation. Fortunately "moong dal" is still "moong dal" internationally. Just don't spell it for the person in the shop. That would be silly since the package may or may not be labeled in English. Well, maybe not silly. Do what you must and try not to feel like an embarrassed, culturally curious but under-educated Canadian. We all are, but just don't admit it. It's like academics never saying their sorry. For the love of God, why don't people apologize more. I don't mean walk around apologizing for every silly little thing, but if you can say excuse me when you bump into someone or "pardon", a better version in French, then surely people can admit they're wrong without admitting weakness. I digress...

1 cup (200g) moong dal (you can't really substitute other dals without changing the cooking time)
4 cups plus 1 tbsp plus 1 cup water
1 tsp coriander, ground
1 tsp cumin, ground
1/4 tsp ground turmeric (if you can find whole, by all means grind it)
1/8th-1/4 tsp. cayenne (I obviously tend toward the 1/4 tsp, but I understand that others may disagree)
2 tbsp oil (not olive. I used oil drained from my Indian jalapeno pickle...for extra heat, salt, and flavour)
1/2 tsp. salt (I used less because there was tons of salt in my pickled jalapenos already...actually, I think this time I forgot again and cursed myself for having made the same mistake twice - adding too much salt, as I did in my pickle in the first place)

For the Baghaar (the hot oil, spice mixture that seasons the dish just before serving):
1 tbsp ghee or oil (ghee is good for flavour, but you can't use butter even though ghee is just a clarified butter. You COULD use 1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp oil so the butter doesn't burn, but an Indian person will not be impressed. You will not find yourself anytime soon. That is obviously your goal, I know...I just used 1 tbsp more of the chili oil from my Indian jalapenos pickle. More heat, more flavour, more salt...)
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 dried, red hot chili (optional, especially if you use a chili oil like I did)

All you do in a dal is cook the lentils and then season is with a baghaar (the spice mixture cooked briefly in oil) which gets poured over top. It's the simplest dish. This one adds an extra step of seasoning with more spices in advance, and you'll find the dish much easier to digest if you follow the lentil soaking procedure. It basically acts similarly to "raw" food dishes where you want to release enzymes that give your stomach more of a work-out than it needs.

Wash the dal is several changes of water. At first it may not seem that any cloudiness is coming out, but stir it gently with your fingers for a minute to get it to open up to you, like perfect basmati rice, but longer. Drain the rice, then pour 4 cups of water (or more. You don't really need to measure. It's not a big deal) over it in a large bowl and let it sit for 2 hours. Then drain it again. Let it sit in the colander to wait, or don't use quite as much water later after you add the dal to the pot. It should end up being not too dry, but definitely not mushy from over-cooking to evaporate excess water.

Now the recipe says to use pre-ground spices but that's ridiculous. Do it only if you are satisfied with mediocre flavour. Sometimes I too am satisfied with it, but where you're cooking with water, not broth, the dish needs all the help it can get. So I toasted the coriander and cumin instead in a frying pan over medium heat for just a few minutes until they had browned slightly, giving the pan a good shake from time to time, and then ground he spices in my too-small mortar and pestle using my pre-discussed poor technique and tight wrist. Coriander flew everywhere, those little buggers, but eventually I was happy with the texture of the grind. Not too coarse or you'll be biting into coriander seeds (not really fun...or easy to digest) but not too fine. You can also grind in a blender or food processor or coffee grinder, but these are very fine grinds. In this case it's okay, really since the original recipe calls for pre-ground spices)

Phew! Done. Now combine the ground coriander and cumin with the turmeric, cayenne and 1 tbsp water in a small bowl. Stir.

Put the first amount of oil (up to 2 tbsp. I usually skimp a little, but not much or the spices will burn. A good trick is the keep all the oil to one side of the pot and when add add the spices directly onto that area instead of letting the oil spread all over the pot and not be a thick enough layer to keep the spices from burning) in the pot and when hot add the spices and water from the bowl. Do this with a rubber spatula so you get everything out all at once.

Give the spices one quick stir in the corner of the pot with the oil and then add the drained dal. Stir to mix. Add the salt and 1 cup of water. Bring it to a boil and then cover the pot tightly (place a plate on top if you can/have to to keep the lid tight) and turn the heat to "very low" for 15 minutes. This is a bit tricky because every stove is different and you don't know the first time you make this what the perfect heat will be. You want the dal grains to be tender and most of the water to be absorbed. So after 15 minutes (no peeking beforehand) test some of the grains to see if they're tender. If there's an obvious layer of liquid still in the pot and the grains are tender, then turn up the heat, remove the cover and let it boil off a little. If there's too much water and the grains aren't tender, bring the pot to a boil again, put the cover back on, and reduce the heat to slightly less low than last time. Let cook 5 minutes and check. If still not tender, cook 5 more minutes, etc.

Take the cooked dal off the heat and leave covered, waiting to be spiced. Or place the cooked dal in a large serving bowl and do the next step fairly quickly. It won't cool down that fast, but my kitchen is frigid...

For the Bhagaan:

Put the ghee (or more oil) in a small frying pan and when it's hot put in the cumin seeds. 3 seconds later (love it) add the red chili if using and cook 3 more seconds (amazing). It's supposed to darken and puff up a little but well...don't cry if it doesn't. You're probably already not getting married at this point. So it's been a total of 6 seconds and now you can pour the whole contents of the frying pan over the hot dal. You can stir, or just leave the spices on top as a kind of garnish. Fried onions are a traditional garnish, and delicious, but a lighter option would be chopped coriander...or more pickled jalapenos...mmm...

Cupcake Camp Montreal 2010 Round-Up: On the Hunt for Dairy-Free Baked Goods

2010-11-26T07:27:00.000-05:00

My personal challenge for cupcake camp Montreal 2010 was to hunt down all the dairy-free, vegan, and/or refined-sugar-free cupcakes. The idea was that this would keep me away from all the butter and cream that would make me sick for days, but allow me to enjoy the festivities (aka eat cupcakes and donate to worth causes). What a stupid idea at a cupcake event...

I thought this was possible because on the bakers' entry forms you had to say what was in your cupcakes. EVERY ingredient, I think, so I figured it'd be on display at the Camp. Easy to find dairy-free options, and there'd be tons, right? Because lactose-intolerance is so common and Montreal has this whole health-conscious movement and all...but nope, Montrealers love their buttery, creamy cupcakes. And they also apparently hate labeling things.

First of all you have to understand that the Cupcake Camp was crazy. There were lines around the block, it was cold outside waiting to get in for a good 25 minutes, you couldn't move once you got inside, and you had to push your way to the tables. So much for the kindness of strangers. All is fair in love and cupcakes. And I do love cupcakes.

This is how it happened:
1:30pm - start waiting in cupcake line. No not a line of cupcakes - a line of people. A line of cupcakes would have been much more fun.

1:45pm - starting to lose feeling in my toes, and starting to jump a little to stay warm. Added bonus of burning calories to be replaced by cupcakes.

2:00pm - Wading through the madness, I started asking people if there were any dairy-free, vegan, or gluten-free cupcakes around (anything catering to allergies might have some different options in the general area).

"Down that way," one of the vendors said with a vague point. So I headed off "that way", and found someone else to ask.

Next unhelpful vendor:

"Back there - in the back of the room." He pointed where I had come from. So I sighed and trudged back. Maybe I should have jumped less outside in the cold and saved some energy for cupcake hunting.

Third person: "There aren't around here that I've seen...but I think maybe down that way," she said pointing to the left. I paused...Then I argued.

"But someone said there were some down this way!" Maybe the exclamation mark makes me sound mean, but that's how I said it. I was surrounded by 20,000 cupcakes and I was getting angry. That's not right. Surrounded with that much sugar I should have been on cloud 9. Sure, I could have given up and eaten some of the pretty flower-decorated options, but I could also give up all my life choices and eat a lot of pig too, and I'm not about to do that either. Buttercream was everywhere, red velvet is super popular, chocolate, vanilla, lemon curd, meringues, lime, daiquiris, apple caramel, oreos, smores, ganache on top of ganache, white chocolate, peanut butter, pistachio, cheesecake, dark chocolate, squash...but no! I came for dairy-free! And I'm ridiculously stubborn. So I pushed my way to the front of the tables - very stealth-like with my large empty box of cupcakes - and wound my way around both of the huge rectangles of cupcakes. I pushed and I yoga-ed myself over kids, under boxes being held in the air above heads, limbo-ed arms outstretched for cupcake deliveries, and even managed to avoid getting frosting in my frazzled hair. I went all the way around until I found one chocolate dairy-free cupcake with dairy-free frosting. No ingredients listed. Who knows what was actually in it, but it was wasn't milk, so I took it rather than be completely foiled. Vegetable shortening? Soy?

Some of the amateur design finalists - my favourite was Santa on the right...then the strawberry flower in the middle. I don't think either won. Some people just love fondant, alas. That's not a cupcake...that's just sculpting with debatably edible plaster...

Well, that was one. There was no way I was going to find 6 more...but I set off again with my box a little less empty and my spirits a little lifted.

3:00pm-ish: I found a gluten-free one. I don't know what kind of flour it was, and it probably had dairy in it, but it was looking like it was the best I could do, so I took it.

3:15: Then I found sponge cake cupcakes with lime meringue. Sponge often doesn't have dairy, and meringue definitely doesn't, so I figured there'd at least be LESS dairy in them. Then I found another two dairy-free! How had I missed them? Right, because it was a zoo in there. These were listed as having soy in the cake and frosting, and they tasted dry and bland (it was yet another generic chocolate offering). Come on! Where were the skilled Montreal bakers making Alice in Wonderlands with almond milk?

Where was the chocolate raspberry with apple sauce or prune puree? If Oscar the Grouch can be sculpted from fondant, the Olympic Stadium made with pearls and ribbons (see below), smoked salmon be topped with sesame bagel, and Santa Clause's feet can stick out upside-down from a circular fireplace cupcake (see above), then SURELY someone could make a selection of delicious dairy-free options. SURELY!

Kids were making cupcake aquariums for goodness sake. Amateurs were making Mario and Luigis and sushi platters of cupcakes. Pros were sculpting in gold flakes and lace. And yet, I ended up finding a grand total of 5 "alternative" cupcakes (without dairy, or gluten, or eggs, or with raw sugar).

3:45-ish: So my plan went horribly awry. Completely frustrated, I then went and chose the prettiest dairy-stuffed creations I could and tried them all out of bitterness (mine, not theirs, though one with a dark chocolate truffle inside was a bit surprising). Dulche de leche, and even sorbet by Bilboquet topped with their vanilla ice cream. My head was pounding from caffeinated coffee fumes from three of the city's best espresso shops (Neve, Myriade, and Nespresso). Myriade even had cupcakes from Le Chien Fumant and I chose the dark chocolate one because I've heard their patissier is very good. It was nice and simple. The pound-like cake was pretty good, and the chocolate seemed a little nutella-y nutty, but it just couldn't stand up to the strong flavours I'd just tried. My mouth was on sugar overload. The apple caramel overpowered even the lemon options (except the curd, which could have punched through Rocky Balboa). My favourites were the ones that were cakes, filled with something and topped with something, like "For the Love of Cake" in Toronto. I stayed away from the bacon options.

4:00-ish - I sat down and ate. The organizers were asking people who had completed their purchases to leave so more people could come in, but I had just run around a zoo of cupcakes for 2 hours being a little over-tired, and under-cupcaked and there was no way I was leaving before the winners of the Best Montreal cupcake, best professional design and taste, and best amateur design and taste were announced.

The most innovative cupcake I tried? A chocolate base, then a layer of vanilla with lemon zest on a thick, thick, thick slightly lemon buttercream icing, garnished with a slice of beet confit (in the middle-right of this picture with the red circle sticking in the top). Beet confit! The rest of the cupcake was good and offered lots of variety, so when you got sick of one flavour there was suddenly another to enjoy, which is important when you get bored easily, like my tongue, but the beet! The beet! It tasted like candy. No bitterness, but just sweet enough. Not too sweet even. It was perfect with the lemon. It was from a student from the Centre de Formation Professionel Jacques-Rousseau. I went back to tell him I loved his cupcake but he had gone. I wouldn't have wanted to stay in that madhouse longer than necessary either.

The other highlight of the event was seeing local food celebrities. Everything got better when Chuck Hughes left, I'm sorry to say, since his fanclub cleared out. I also managed to get to front where the judges sat and when no one was looking I may or may not have stolen Nadia G's gift bag when no one was looking...imported smoked mullet, Italian olive oil, and Italian dried pasta. Nothing local? So I gave it back.

I'll get my own mullet, thanks. If bacon can go on a cupcake...hmm...smoked fish cupcake?Well, the oyster cupcake won the #failcake and that was pretty stupid. I mean, come on, you take an oyster and you take a cupcake. Real difficult...I would have given it to the person with tuna actually IN the cupcake. At least that took some skill. They even made poor Nonna Maria (well the voice thereof) eat the thing. God knows when it was shucked. I hope he went and threw up afterward for his own sake...Stupid crowd cheering him on to do it. How much wasabi, horseradish, and soy sauce would he need to make that okay? I guess people eat tons of not great sushi and don't get sick. Iron stomachs, I tell you.

To sum up,

Things I learned:

1. Manners go out the window when cupcakes are involved
2. Christmas present options for any and all cupcake-making Montrealers this year include a label-er (mark those cupcakes!!) and a map since they suck at giving directions.
3. I'm going to have to make my own cupcakes if I don't want to ingest a pound of buttercream when I'm craving sweets. I'm thinking caramel dulche de leche with almond milk, with maybe a pear base to make it moist, and/or a date-sweetened chocolate poundcake-type cupcake filled with fig jam, and topped with diced figs softened in cassis honeywine in a thick probiotic yogurt icing...like an alcoholic crème fraiche.

Dates, Leopoldo, and Tania

2010-11-25T12:32:00.001-05:00

The final Jean-Talon fruit vendor test was dates. Medjool, not dinner and drinks. In fact, I've had worse dinners than these dates before. I won't get into it, but trust me, sometimes you're better off with medjools.

Now, I've gotten picky with my dates recently (lets focus on fruit, please...); there are Iranian ones that taste like candy, with a richness and fruitiness to the cough syrup taste. Kind of like they're on the edge of fermentation.

Then there are Tunisians. They taste like honey when they're perfectly ripe, and biting into the bottom of them should cause their syrup to stream into your mouth. Then you chew the soft, baklava-like flesh up to the harder top. But this is between my fruit guys, Leopoldo and Tania.

But the Tunisians are just better! They're the ones that I'm not sure where they come from (probably somewhere in the Middle East) and they come in those big red boxes with a plastic window in the front, and you can pick out a few when you want them. I'm sure that the three places I favour when buying these dates all get them from the exact same place. It just all depends on the turnover of the bulk store and the freshness of the dates. Oh, and how they're stored. They dry up easily, but they can get kind of over-ripe in humidity. So keeping them at their optimal juiciness for more than a few days in a Montreal winter is tricky.

Leopoldo and Tania at Jean-Talon market (my competing fruit vendors who don't know it) both sell their dates for 8.99/kg (I think it's kg. I always forget). It's pretty expensive, but these dates are huge. Where I could eat a lot of the smaller honey-filled Tunisians, I can eat significantly fewer of the enormous medjools. I don't want to know what they're sprayed with, but that's probably what sucks the flavour out of them. That's the thing, see, they're not actually that delicious, just sweet. But the texture! When they're soft they're just chewy enough to feel sticky and smooth, but one day in a fridge or in the cold and you're working too hard to chew or adding liquid to make it fresh. They're the perfect thing to eat when you need a boost of energy that won't result in a crash 20 minutes later.

Back to my men: Leopoldo's looked good one day and I bought a few to try. They were okay. A bit dry. I figured most date-buyers wouldn't purchase their dates here at Leopoldo's since he's generally not a Middle East specialist. Italian, South African, American - yes. Then when I was at Tania's buying fennel I saw the dates at the cash register. They were obviously juicy and perfect and I bought some and oh...so good. Except, as usual, no real flavour. No honey, no fruit - just sugar. and sugar's not bad. So they're perfect for baking without refined sugar, but not so perfect for snacking if you're looking for flavour.

That's why I have to go with the Tunisians and toss my men to the wayside. Overrated, men. They all tasted a little different from each other (the dates, not the men, not that I've tried them all or anything, the dates...geez, complicated) - like 5 or so different kinds of honey - strong buckwheat, mild clover, a little bit of blueberry maybe - in one $5 box (did I mention you get 1 kg for $5 at the Tunisian place next to Leopoldo's?). Not that I'm a cheap date...I'm hilarious, I know.

My point is, maybe I'm imagining things, but some just taste different.

My other point is that if fennel, persimmons, and grapes all came from Tunisia and were sold at the Tunisian place next to Leopoldo's, that's where I'd buy them. He'd be my fruit guy, but for now I'm pretty happy with straight sugar and Tania. Sorry Leopoldo. When I want a bit of sarcasm and I'm sick of being treated too well, I'll come crawling back.

Competition #3 Between Leopoldo and the Man With Whom I'm Cheating on Him

2010-11-24T12:12:00.000-05:00

...and there there's fennel. It's clear I'm obsessed with this vegetable, and as disappointed as I've been with my fruit guy, Leopoldo, the last few times I've bought it, I decided it was time to try again. But the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Some people call this empirical science, but no, it's insanity.

So, I chose to go with my second fruit guy and hope his fennel was different...and that I was not crazy. That's important.

I got the same deal on 3 fennel bulbs (for $5) at Tania Fruits - my new fruit guy. I'd been advised by someone which much more kitchen experience than myself to blanch the fennel before roasting them, but that only seemed to make it roast a little faster. It didn't make it any less watery. At least it didn't char as much, but it all kind of melted to fennel mush. Apparently the blanching also keeps it from discolouring, but it was just me eating it, so what did I care about colour?

I did everything else the same: coated the blanched fennel in oil from my pickled Indian jalapenos (amazing! salt, oil, heat) and roasted at 400-ish for 15 minutes, turned the fennel, and roasted another few minutes until they were tender. The elusive "tender-crisp" never appeared. Now I'm blaming my baking sheets. I've tried different sheets and casserole dishes and still nothing is working. I sprinkled the fennel with lemon once it had roasted, and that was lovely, at least, but it was basically chewy soup.

Alas, fennel and I are still working things out. Much like my fruit men. Except they don't know about my tests. I swear I don't usually play games, but choosing the right fruit guy is important in my life.

One more test to go before I stop being such a floozy: Dates, ironically.

Fruit Vendor Throwdown: Dancing, My First Persimmon and Knowing That Something's Missing

2010-11-23T09:58:00.000-05:00

Have you ever had an experience where it ends and all you think is "Huh...That's it?"

Yeah, that's kind of how I felt with persimmons, except, well, it wasn't really a disappointed "that's it". Some people can take things so seriously. Sometimes all you're saying is simply, "that's it?" and it doesn't mean that what you just experienced was bad, just that there could be more (quantity) or it just could have been better (quality). With persimmons, even though it was my first time, I knew this was not the ultimate persimmon flavour. Call it fruit intuition. It wasn't fresh off the tree. It wasn't local. It'd been picked in advance to ripen during transport. Its skin was tough to make it through the long drive. It was just sweet and mild, but I wanted intoxication. I wanted to feel as though the world had slid itself out from under my foot and I'd gone tumbling into a gravity-less void. I wanted sharp acidity mixed with honey-like (not sugar-like) sweetness.

The one thing that was perfect was the texture. There were two kinds of persimmons at my fruit shop and there were three ways I was instructed to eat them:

I follow directions well. Where fruit vendors lead, I will follow. Like a dance. So Leopoldo (whose name is not Leopoldo) told me to eat the smaller ones like an apple, I could eat them right away, and they'd be just a little crunchy. Then let a few more of them ripen a few days on the counter and they'd be soft and mushier, more like a mini-explosion of juice. The larger ones, he said, needed 2-3 days on my counter before they were ready. They should become soft and seem like a single puncture wound would be the end of them. Then I could bite into them and all the juices would seep out. Well I waited 2 days and I tried one. It was still a bit tough, but the very bottom was heaven. The top created a strange starchy coating around my gums and seemed under-ripe, so I figured the trick would be to wait another day or so. The next day the next persimmon was better and the fruit was half mushy and half thicker, soft pieces. These sections of fruit stayed together inside the mush and made for exquisite chewing. One persimmon was perfect with cereal because the juice gave the liquid the cereal needed, and the fruit sections gave the soft chew, so it was like two fruit in one (kind of like milk and strawberries - not taste-wise, just combination-wise).

I bought another 8 persimmons from my second fruit guy to compare. The grapes had been better, so maybe the persimmons would be too. Nope, they were exactly the same.

But then I ran out of soft ones and it got so cold that nothing was ripening in my kitchen, so I'm sitting around waiting for them to ripen and they never will. I've just been told that I should stir-fry them up with green beans, spinach or some other vegetable and since they're kind of tough like I apples I think this might work. My two fruit vendors are locked in a tie, for now.

Next trial: fennel.

Cheating on My Fruit Guy

2010-11-21T19:18:00.000-05:00

The world is letting me down. First my "free Gazette man" and now my fruit guy. Good thing I still have Guillaume. Loyal Guillaume with his incredible sourdough and his yeast that smells like strawberry jam-filled donuts. I swear.

This is not about Guillaume. This is about Leopoldo. Leopoldo even caught me cheating on him, but I would never cheat on Guillaume. I'm a little scared to go back and face up to my indescretion. I don't think he'll ever offer me his best fruit again. Or make me a deal on mangoes. Good thing it'll be awhile before he gets good mangoes in, I guess...

The worst part is I cheated on Leopoldo with his neighbour whose name I don't even know. Shameful. The two men seemed to be offering me the same things: consistency, comfort, and persimmons.

Oh, and moscato grapes, fennel and dates (medjool. Not the most fun kind, but pretty exciting sometimes).

Then I realized I don't even know the guy from Leopoldo's actual name, since he isn't even Leopoldo himself! Leopoldo is like 60 or 70 or something and rarely even enters his own fruit shop anymore. My crudgety yet lovable salesman must have a different name, and he never told me what it was. So much for trust.

I'd like to say I was drunk and can't be held responsible for my actions, but all I had in my system at the time was one moscato Italian wine grape. Before fermentation.

So why'd I cheat? Leopoldo's neighbour offered me a grape. I didn't pay much attention because I'd had one at Leopoldo's before, but this was completely different. It tasted like wine - sweet without the acidity. I've never had a grape like this before. All the flavour without the alcohol! To some this is a good thing, to others it's less so.

What makes the grapes special is that they're grown on hills and the elevation is what gives them their flavour (along with the added sweetness from the lateness of the season and the concentration of the sugars. Late harvest wines often taste like quasi-dessert wines from sweetening on the vines).

I bought three bunches and my new beau asked if I was going to share with friends. I lied and said yes. A great way to start a relationship. Instead, I ate a bunch and froze the rest, as Josée di Stasio taught me. This concentrates the sugars even more. It was hard to put these beautiful grapes in the freezer, but leaving them in the fridge wasn't making them any more delicious. Eating fruit fresh when it's perfectly ripe is divine...

...which brings me back to persimmons...

Pissaladière: "A la di Stadio"

2010-11-20T09:25:00.000-05:00

This wasn't your fault, Josée.

If I could only follow a recipe properly this would have been fine, delicious even, but you asked for 2 lbs of onions and I only had 1 and a pound of leeks. And apparently leeks take a whole lot longer to soften than I thought, even when they look ready for the next step. I didn't even try one to make sure. Ultimate mistake. Honestly, I had to do was not under-cook them and this is the easiest recipe in the world. My canned (home-canned, so they taste like summer, not factory) couldn't even save this pissaladière.

So for anyone else who aspires to di Stasio greatness, here's how to make this dish properly:

1 tbsp olive oil heated over medium heat
2 pounds onions (you can use leeks but they MUST be softened to an onion-like consistency), cut in slivers
4 tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
Some thyme
1 glove of garlic, finely chopped
salt and pepper

Add the leeks to the hot oil and cook about 5 minutes, then add the rest of the onions since I think they'll cook faster. Cook, and cook, and cook, and then when you think they're done, TASTE them, for the love of God taste them. If you have to chew and crunch they're not done. 20 minutes minimum. Just suck it up and wait. If the leeks and onions start to burn turn down the heat or add a tiny, tiny bit of water. You don't want to steam the onions and leeks, but better slightly steamed than slightly burned. You can also use 2 tbsp at the beginning instead of one if you must, OR do this in 2 batches because I think another potential downfall of my own was that the pan was not big enough. I'm thinking ENORMOUS frying pan next time.

Finally, when you can't wait any longer and the leeks are edible add the 4 seeded, peeled and chopped tomatoes, some fresh thyme or some dried (a small sprinkle, a big sprinkle, as you wish), some minced garlic (about 1 clove), and salt and pepper. Cook 5 minutes more. There shouldn't be a lot of liquid from the tomatoes, but you also don't need to drain them or anything. The juice will help deglaze the leeks and onions.

Preheat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit.

Now pour the whole thing on top of pizza dough or a flatbread dough (pita bread works too. I had a roti that I stretched out to pizza-like thinness. At least that worked...well...). Don't forget to oil the dish before you put the pizza dough/bread dough in or you'll never get to eat that dough. Mine got stuck and I scraped and I scraped and it never got eaten. Such a waste.

Into the oven for 25 minutes, or until you figure it's done and the sides of the dough haven't burned. You can also brush the top of the leek/onion mixture with olive oil so it browns a little, but that only helps if you didn't mess up the onion frying. Such a novice mistake. Optionally top with anchovies, olives or red pepper strips (preferably roasted, though the 25 minutes will go a long way toward roasting them) before popping in the oven. The salt from the olives collapses into the leeks, so at least it's properly seasoned.

I'm such a bad Quebecer. Messing up pissaladière...

The Downfall of the "Free Gazette Man"?

2010-11-19T12:38:00.000-05:00

Of late, there has been something wrong with my "Free Gazette Man".

It had gotten to the point where I walked to the metro in eager anticipation of an ingenious sales pitch. Some days I even WANTED to read the Gazette (Well, mostly Wednesdays when the food and life section comes out...and the free gazette man doesn't work on Saturdays).

But this year that I didn't even dress up for Hallowe'en! Why? Basically this brilliant man who tells me to clean my windows, give educational gifts to friends, and convinces me to dress up as a newspaper for Hallowe'en seems to be a little depressed and angry. Yes, the weather is a little chillier and I wouldn't want to be outside for half the day either, but once I slightly reached out my hand for a newspaper and he thought I was waving him off, and he scowled. He scowled! Another time he thrust the newspaper out in front of me angrily and I was so taken aback that I moved out of the line of fire and didn't take the newspaper I'd been thinking about taking for the last 2 minutes. Now I'm a little scared to go to the metro. It's as if I've offended him (well, maybe more so as if "people" have offended him since he doesn't know who I am) and I'm doing my traditional conflict avoidance thing. It's good for getting me on my bike and off the metro, but soon I'm going to have to see this man more often as the weather gets less bike-friendly, and I'm a little nervous.

What if I miss a great recipe or a great food article because I chose not to take the Gazette just to avoid a mini-confrontation with this man? The way I see it, I have two options:

1. I can be a little stealth, and take a newspaper from the stack by the doors instead of taking one directly from him. It's not as though he works on commission or anything.

2. I can remember to read the paper online instead, but then this slightly angry man is stuck outside a little longer each day, waiting for all his newspapers to be taken. Maybe at 5pm he just leaves the extras and goes home. Does he get fired if they don't all get handed out? I don't want him to get fired...I just want him to stop scowling at me.

So, what to do, what to do?

Here's the best idea I can come up with:

I'll avoid him when I see him, my Gazette Man, and then when I see an unguarded stack by the door I'll take 3 or more to make up for the days when I don't take one. It's a horrible waste and completely negates the point of handing the newspaper out for free, but he wouldn't care, I wouldn't care, and we both get to our destinations a little happier, maybe (me to the metro, him to his home).

Yes?

"Raw" Granola: Dried Apricot, Almonds, Sunflower Seeds, Sprouted Oat Groats Sweetened with Date Paste

2010-11-17T23:21:00.000-05:00

This recipe sprouts for 1 day, soaks for one hour, takes 30 minutes to prep and then 2/3rds of another day to dehydrate. Why would anyone got to the trouble of making this? Well, I'm a sucker for recipes that end with the instruction to "enjoy", and I suck at "real" (sugar high-inducing) granola (see efforts 1 and 2). So I figured a raw one might work for me better. Besides, it's SO much better for you (and me). But I'll admit, some of it became beautiful granola clusters and some just didn't, and by the time I ate my way through 3/4 of it I decided to take the rest and kill its raw food goodness by sticking it on the stove with some water and turning it into oatmeal-like hot comfort food. I'll never be raw. I'm okay with that. In fact, I'm ecstatic.

1 cup oat groats (a bit weird, but I don't get along with buckwheat and these are less processed than flaked oats)
1 cup medjool dates (soaked for at least 1 hour in 1 cup water if they're not that soft. Medjools are the big ones that taste only halfway like cough syrup. Tunisian dates are better since they're more honey-like, but you'll need more of them. Iranian dates have a bit of a fruitier taste to them which would work, but might be too much for the recipe. Use what you have...just not regular, pitted dried out dates that should only ever be used for your Grandmother's disgusting date squares. Don't get me wrong, I love date squares! Just not those)
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup almonds
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ginger
1/2 vanilla bean

1) 2 days before you want to eat raw granola soak the sunflower seeds in a bowl of cold water and place in the fridge overnight. Do the same with the almonds and another bowl, and do the same with the oat groats and another bowl. Or you can do like many raw foodists do and soak your nuts the day you purchase them, then the next day dehydrate them on a baking sheet in the oven at the lowest possible temperature with the door left slightly ajar (takes about half a day if you remember to turn them over halfway), then freeze them for later use. Enzyme-inhibiting-free nuts at your service.
2) In the morning soak the dates in just enough water to cover for 1 hour. (Skip this step if they're soft)
3) Drain the dates and reserve the soak water in a small saucepan. Bring the water to a boil and add the vanilla bean. Reduce heat to a simmer (you can also add fresh ginger here instead of or in addition to the powdered ginger later). Simmer the bean for at least five minutes. The longer, the better.
4) Pour the liquid into the blender and remove the vanilla bean and ginger. Wash the vanilla bean and leave it somewhere to dry. You can re-use it if you store it in an air-tight container once it's dry.
5) Blend dates, cinnamon, nutmeg, and powdered ginger along with the vanilla-infused liquid.
6) Drain the sunflower seeds, almonds, and oat groats and rinse under cold water. Spread evenly on 2 large baking sheets.
7) Pour date mixture over oats and seeds and stir to combine.
8) In a real dehydrator you could just dehydrate this at 115 degrees for 16 hours and it'll get beautifully crispy and granola-like. the oven won't get you to that state of granola perfection, but it's not bad. Stick the trays in the oven on the lowest possible temperature with the door slightly ajar for about half a day and stir periodically. Rotate the pans around so the granola dehydrates sort of evenly. When you're happy with the crunchiness of it, it's done. If you pre-soaked and dehydrated your nuts they may want to burn on you, so be careful. Even at this low a temperature your seeds can go from flavourful to dead pretty easily.
5) And, as always, enjoy!

Horribly Misshapen but Still Delicious Roti Chanai

2010-11-17T09:53:00.000-05:00

Ever had someone tell you that Jesus loves all the little children, even the ugly ones?

All childhood scarring aside, that's how I feel about this roti. I kneaded and put all my love into it, and then Montreal's environment and my horribly cold hands didn't get along with the gluten in the dough. So it didn't stretch properly...no matter (you're actually supposed to throw it against the counter-ytop to stretch it...there's a technique - and video instructions), I just took it and stretched it by hand, and so instead of having beautiful cracked layers after folding it over itself twice, I had a single, thick layer of doughy goodness. Wrap it around some eggplant, some fennel, some sambhar, some dahl, some squash - the options are endless - and you almost forget about how poorly you (I) made it. Until the squash starts oozing out of the holes in the dough. Ah well, that's the fun of it.

The recipe is from my favourite cooking podcast/show, Poh's Kitchen. I'm a little in love with Emmanuel, the adorable Frenchman, but this Kuala Lumpur Chef is also pretty good. He teaches Poh how to throw roti which, in my opinion, makes him a hero. I am not as good a good pupil as Poh, but the chef did not make my dough for me either...

Ingredients:

makes makes 8-10 roti

500g plain flour (best to weigh, because this isn't exactly 2 cups. I used whole wheat because I realized as I started that that was all I had. Probably affected my throwing ability for the worse...)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1 cup water

2 tbsp condensed milk (I use very evaporated almond milk. It theory it should be the same consistency, but really it isn't. Maybe that's why it didn't work out perfectly for me...but that's just an excuse)

2 tbsp margarine (or oil), at room temperature

1/2 egg, lightly whisked

Extra margarine

Extra vegetable oil

1. Combine flour, salt and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Make a well at the centre of the dry ingredients and into it, pour the water, condensed milk, margarine and egg.

2. Work in a circular motion with your hand, gradually gathering more and more of the flour into the wet ingredients until you more or less have a single mass.

3. Tip all the ingredients onto the bench and knead until smooth and elastic (ambiguous elasticity terms don't help me very much, Poh...). Roll into a cylinder and divide the dough into ten pieces. Knead each piece a few times to achieve a smooth texture, then shape into a ball. Gently cover each ball with margarine and rest in a bowl alongside but not on top of another. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rest in room temperature, overnight.

4. After the overnight resting you will find the dough soft and stretchy (um...it was pretty stretchy). Now the fun part begins. Start by oiling a substantial area of the bench liberally. Place one of the balls of dough onto the table and press down with the palm of your hand while moving it in a circular motion. This is just to flatten and smooth out the surface of the dough as much as possible before you stretch it. It takes a bit of practice to throw the roti the professional way and while it's definitely quicker, an equally effective method is to work around the edges of the circle of dough, gently stretching the edges outwards as far and as thinly as you can (so it's like tracing paper and about 60 to 70 centimetres in diameter), and before holes start to appear (best to follow the video instructions but expect to fail...at least if you're me)

5. Fold a third of the way in on either side of the circle, so you have three layers of roti on top of each other, then fold this elongated shape into thirds again, so you end up with a squarish shaped roti. Heat up your frypan on high heat with a dash of vegetable oil and pan-fry the roti until golden blisters appear on both sides. Let it cook 3-4 minutes. If it takes longer your pan isn't hot enough. Mine always seemed to take longer, and they were so thick I felt that I had to turn them over, but I liked them crisper this way. I tried the smashing thing below once and it kind of squished in a little and then came back out as if nothing had happened. Kind of like yelling at someone and getting no reaction. It's really unsatisfying. Not that I yell at a ton of people or anything.

When cooked, immediately slide the roti onto a chopping board, wrap your palms around the edges and smash your hands together so the roti bunches up and flakes. Rotate the roti and do this several times while it is still hot. Yeah, that didn't work for me...it was still delicious. Serve immediately.

Tip: Before each fold, gently smear a small dollop (about a quarter of a teaspoon) of margarine onto the roti. This will prevent the layers from sticking and help the roti cook more evenly. (For this to matter, you're going to need to throw it properly. I figured that since it didn't stretch properly and tons of holes appeared it wouldn't matter if I folded the gnarled ends over without a little more margarine. I suppose that's giving up, but no one at my kitchen table minded. Go figure. Maybe I'll invite more than just myself to dinner next time...).

Pickled Carrots

2010-11-16T09:22:00.001-05:00

Basically, I had leftover brine from making the pickled jalapenos, so I chopped up some carrots and pickled them too. No point letting brine go to waste. That's honestly all this is. Always sterilize a few too many jars than you think you'll need, in case something like this happens and you can pickle something else. Can't wait to open these guys soon...so much sugar. STORE IN FRIDGE! Eat within a month and a half, I think...

Pickled Jalapeno Peppers

2010-11-13T18:55:00.002-05:00

I actually feel bad writing this now because I haven't eaten these yet. They're sitting in my fridge (because I'm paranoid about my cupboard since there was no water bath afterward) waiting for me to decide they're ready (Apparently it only takes a week, and these only last a few months, so the window of opportunity is small for so many jalapenos). They're also waiting for me to finish eating my pickled red chilies, my Sriracha chili sauce, and my most recent Indian pickled jalapenos. Why open yet another beautiful pickle when I'm not ready for it and its life becomes shortened by letting it breathe? That would feel awfully gluttonous, well, as far as brine-pickled jalapenos can be considered gluttonous. I mean, come on, it's not as if there's a pound of butter and cream in there; the chilies aren't going to go to my waist.

Take a second here to picture that...chilies going to your waist. Someone could then nibble my waist and their mouth would burn. It would be a sign...whether they liked chilies or not would be an important moment. Nevermind why that person would be nibbling my waist in the first place. One of these days I'll learn to be a romantic and less...unique (I hate the word "weird"). Maybe.

One quick note on the recipe: It comes from David Lebovitz via Michael Ruhlman and Michael Symon, three food writing greats. The last paragraph of Lebovitz's intro to the recipe made me stop for a second and think about life...

He says he keeps Ruhlman and Symon's book on his bedside table to read at night,

"kinda like “normal” people make, say…fiction or biographies their bedside reading. Or keep their refrigerator stocked with things like milk, vegetables, eggs, and other necessities…instead of cramming it full of pickles."

Yup, you should see my fridge, David. I completely understand. It's ridiculous. My roommate is silently fuming that there's no room for his food because there are jars everywhere - labled yet mysterious jars filled with strange things. One by one they disappear, only to be replaced by my next pickled concoction...

Pickled Jalapeños

Adapted from Live to Cook by Michael Symon and Michael Ruhlman

1 pound (450g) fresh jalapeno peppers, washed

2 1/2 cups (625ml) water
2 1/2 cups (625ml) vinegar

3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons coarse salt, such as kosher
2 bay leaves
2 tablespoons whole coriander seeds
3 cloves garlic, peeled
2 tablespoons black peppercorns

1. Sterilize a bunch of jars (estimate: five 250mL jars) and rings. Wash them with the lids in hot, soapy water, and the put the rings and jars in the oven at 220 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes. Or put them in water covered by 2 inches, bring the water to a boil, and boil 20 minutes. The oven is less of a hassle.

2. Stab each pepper three times with a sharp paring knife and place them in the sterilized jars (use tongs to move the jars around and take them out of the oven, and use chopsticks to stick the jalapenos in the jars. I removed the stems because they take up valuable space, and I think I even stripped out the seeds. That was such a long jalapeno seed-stripping day. You should skip that step and just cut off the tops)

3. In a non-reactive saucepan, bring the other ingredients to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for five minutes.

4. Bring a small pot to a simmer and then reduce the heat to very low. Add the jar lids for 5 minutes or until you're ready for them.

5. Remove the brine from the heat and pour over the peppers in their jars. Push the peppers down with the chopsticks to make sure you get any air bubbled out and squish the chilies in as much as possible. Wipe the rims down with clean paper towels (no touching with fingers!). Place the lid on the jars, twist on the rings and let cool. Once cool, refrigerate for at least a week before using, if possible. (You can use them sooner, but Michael says they’re worth the wait. If Michael says, then who am I to argue? So I wait. Thank goodness I learned patience with ginger confit, but that was just 5 days.)

Now the things is, as I said, these only last a few weeks! So I have a lot of pickles to get through and some friends to make with some timely gifts. Any takers? Otherwise they're going straight to my hips.

Indian Jalapeno Chili Pepper Pickle and My Addiction to Heat

2010-11-12T13:27:00.001-05:00

Absolutely amazing. I can't believe I almost didn't make this recipe. I spent about an hour looking for the perfect pickled jalapeno recipe and I chose two -- this one and a standard vinegar-brine chili pepper recipe. But this one...I have no words.Basically my first bite of this was up there with some of the best restaurant experiences of my life (butterfish with wakatake sake at Ame, tagliatelle at Enoteca Sociale, marrow at Aix Cuisine du Terroir. That's all I can think of) and the best recipes I've ever made (2 day marinated almond poppy seed lamb with figs. That's the only recipe. Oh, and perfectly in-season ataulfo mangoes. The eggplant dish is pretty amazing, but has nothing on this pickle).

Now I know not everyone is as obsessed with heat as I am, but this stuff is addictive. It took me FOREVER because I took out the seeds of the peppers (I'm really not into just heat, I'm into heat and flavour when combined with heat, and the seeds are just ungodly hot), but I am so happy now. Yes, chili peppers create endorphins, so maybe I ate so much of this that I pickled myself happy?

It looks gross, yes, but Indian food in general looks like a stewed mess and only Vikram Vij's team at his Vancouver restaurant tried to make it beautiful. Everyone else who cooks it just eats it, closes their eyes, and dies of happiness. The reason I love this so much may have something to do with the fact that I halved the recipe but forgot to cut the salt in half too...

Or it could have something to do with the 1/2 cup of oil, but I doubt it because the oil doesn't actually add any flavour. Since it was a canning recipe, though, I didn't skimp.

Indian Pickled Jalapeno Peppers
1 lb fresh green chilies (you can use green or red and any type or size you want, but the heat and flavour of the pickle will vary greatly
1/4 cup vinegar
1 tbsp garlic, chopped roughly (it gets blended)
250 ml mustard oil (about 1 cup. I used sunflower oil, but mustard oil will be better and bitter)
1/2 tbsp fenugreek seeds
1/2 tbsp ground turmeric
1 tsp nigella seeds (black cumin seeds)
1 tbsp black mustard seeds (a little extra if you don't use mustard oil. It doesn't really make up for it at all, but it can't hurt)
1 tsp crushed asafoetida (I've only ever seen it in chunks at Indian or specialty spice stores, and then you need to grate it. It smells like onion and garlic together, so don't make this and then plan to hold hands with someone you like all night. If you don't like 'em, grate away)
1 tbsp salt (1! Not 2! Geez...)

Directions: This is a 2-3 day process. I'm sorry, but just do it once, and then yell at me if you still want to.

Wash and dry the chilies.

Cut off stalks and slice chillies across into 1 cm (1/2 inch) slices. Give yourself a good hour to to do this. Invite a friend over to help, one who doesn't plan to put in his or her contacts later that night. Done that a few too many times. Wasted a lot of contacts that way...hurt a lot of eyes that way...well, two.

Sprinkle with salt and turmeric, toss to mix evenly, cover and leave for 2 days in the sun or place in a very low oven for 2 hours each day. (2 days! Ridiculous! But I did it. Even turned the oven on as directed.)

1 day in advance, soak the mustard seeds in vinegar overnight, then grind in an electric blender with the garlic when you're ready to start cooking.

Sterilize about four 250mL jars and lids (it's better to do 7 or 8 125mL jars if you have them, because this pickle is precious). So wash the jars, lids and rims in hot soapy water. Then stick the jars and rims in the oven for 20 minutes at 220 Fahrenheit. Then just leave them in the oven until you're ready for them (remember to turn the oven off).

Get all the other ingredients ready in advance. No time to prep while you fry.

Heat oil in a large pan and add the fenugreek and nigella seeds.

Heat while stirring, until the fenugreek is golden brown (not long at all, just about 10-20 seconds or so), then add the asafoetida, stir, and add the blended mustard seeds and the chilies together with any liquid that is there. The salt will have sucked the water out of the chilies but for some reason you want to pour it all in. I think it makes the chilies a little more crunchy so they don't wilt in the cooking and get soggy in the pickle.

Cook, stirring now and then, until the oil rises to the top and the chillies are cooked but soft.The oil seemed to rise right away, but I think I cooked about 8 minutes??

Bring a small pot of water to a simmer, reduce the temperature, and add the lids for 5 minutes to soften the wax.

Put the hot pickle into the sterilized jars, put the lids on top, and tighten the rings (no hands, please). Tongs are wonderful things. So are pickles. Oh God, so are pickles.

I waited about a week before eating this and the first things that hit me was the salt, then the other savoury spices, then the heat, and it was the heat that lulled me into submission. I would have done whatever it wanted. Fortunately it can't talk, so I assumed all it wanted was for me to keep eating it...which I did.

Pickled Indian Chili Peppers Dripping in Luscious, Spicy Oil

Oh, I suppose I should tell you what you can eat this with. I've had it so far with squash, bread, eggplant, fennel, and roti, but it goes perfectly with anything that needs a kick and doesn't already have too much (or uncomplementary) seasoning of its own. So daals are good, or lentil soups, or noodles, or rice, or potato dishes (even buttery ones). Maybe even chilies or stews, but you won't know until you try. This is basically my all-purpose seasoning for the next while. Instead of salt, I will add salty, pickled jalapenos. Note: it does NOT go with hummus. DOES NOT!

Vanilla Bean Chestnut Purée

2010-11-10T09:37:00.001-05:00

When I moved to Toronto from Newfoundland, one thing I couldn't take were all my mother's cookbooks from which I'd been cooking for a few years. It's part of moving out, I know, to start a collection of your own, but there's something beautiful about a book that you and your family have been using for years. The pages are a little worn, there are stains on the pages from fingers and from chocolate (or tomato, or fennel, as I discovered in my Indian cookbook this morning), and you've adjusted measurements to suit your tastes. Your experiences and memories are recorded in that book.

So starting over is hard and my collection in Montreal is still relatively small. Most of the books I have I don't even use - leftovers from when I started that my mother could bear to part with (Kids Cooking, 1001 low-fat recipes, mostly junk, really, but great ways to get started before I turned into a snob. If anyone reading this wants to make a pot of dirt and worms - chocolate soil and gummy worms - let me know and the book's all yours).

The one precious book my mother did let me take was Alice Medrich's "Chocolate and the Art of the Low-Fat Desserts". It is the most sublime dessert book. It has recipes that range from easy to very, very difficult and I've worked my way up from chocolate icebox cookies to meringues, to grand marnier cakes, to frozen hazelnut tortes made of multiple mousses (often unsuccessfully, but sometimes with a little bit of air-filled luck). Alice taught me the wonders of pillowy lemon mousse (yes, in a chocolate cookbook), the simplicity of custard, the beauty of genoise, and the wonders of properly made buttermilk loaves (oh, and liquor soaks. God I love liquor soaks). It's such a good book that even though it's out of print, my mother found a used copy online just so I wouldn't have to cart mine home every Christmas and waste valuable suitcase space (traditionally, half the baggage on a St. John's final destination Christmas flight doesn't make it anyway because so many people are going home with some many things for family who they haven't seen in a year that the air carrier just doesn't load about half the baggage because they assume there will be weight problems on the sardine-stuffed plane. The baggage, not just the people).

The point of all this nostalgia is that she (Alice, not my mom) has two recipes that use chestnut purée. Working my way through the book I wanted to make these recipes, especially since she describes it as a simple delicacy, to be enjoyed on its own as a light dessert. In Parisian bistros waiters would serve it to you directly from the can with a little creme fraiche. In fact, the only places I've seen the purée (which can be bought sweetened or unsweetened, or whole in syrup) are in gourmet specialty stores and the only brands for these cans that I've seen are still imported from France.

Turns out that chestnut trees in North America pretty much died out! Chestnut purée was never big here like in France so no one seemed to miss them, but you can still find fresh chestnuts around Thanksgiving, and more often toward Christmas (chestnuts roasting on an open fire and all that, but who has actually roasted a chestnut? Maybe you would have if there had been more trees). They're making a come-back, though. The native North American variety is being combined with the Asian variety for a chestnut resistant to the blight that plagued the N.A.-version. Apparently, in 10-15 years we'll have a genetically modified chestnut that's 15/16th North American and 1/16th Asian. I'm not sure how I feel about the genetic modification...Anyway, look for the Italian or French chestnuts if you can find them, instead of the Asians, says my chestnut source.

The cooking process is time and labour-intensive, so I still recommend buying the relatively expensive purée (though the fresh chestnuts aren't exactly cheap either), unless you're me, of course, or want to experience it once, or...well, you know that home-made is always better.

There are a few methods to making chestnut purée. If you're going to roast them you need to score them with a knife first (an 'X' on the bottom) so they don't explode in the oven. The easier way is to boil them twice to remove the two layers of skin, and it doesn't effect the flavour too much if you're making purée from it.

Vanilla Bean Chestnut Purée
1 kg fresh chestnuts
500g (2 cups approximately) sugar
1 litre (about 4 cups) of water
A vanilla bean (optional, but a VERY, VERY good idea. Or you can add a 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract near the end)
Salt

Put the whole chestnuts in a pan of cold water and bring to a boil. Boil for 3 minutes. (In theory you can now remove the outer layer of skin, but the recipe was ambiguous about this, so I just left it on).

Drain and place them back in the pan with some fresh water, this time with a pinch of salt, and boil them for about 20 minutes. Leave the chestnuts to stand in the water (take the pot off the heat) for an extra 5 minutes.

Remove them from the pan a few at a time (put the lid back on after removing each couple to keep the heat in, since they're harder to remove when they're too cool) and carefully remove the chestnut skins (cut in with a knife to open the chestnuts like a books and scoop out the flesh with a spoon).

Place the chestnuts in a shallow frying pan.

Dissolve the sugar and water in a separate pot over low heat. Add the vanilla bean and allow to simmer while gently stirring until the syrup thickens a little. If you're using extract, allow the syrup to thicken and then add 1/2 tsp extract.

Pour the syrup over the chestnuts and simmer gently on low for about 30 minutes. Turn the heat off and let them steep in the pan for 20 minutes. Place in blender or food processor and purée, or just serve these are half chestnuts in their syrup. I could have puréed the chestnuts after removing them from their skins, but then they'll burn more easily in the frying pan.

Serve with crème fraiche, thick yogurt, or whipped cream (I personally think ice cream is too cold to serve with the chestnuts. The chestnut flavour would be hidden and you definitely wouldn't taste any vanilla. The lighter creme fraiche contrasts the sweetness of the chestnuts (mostly carbohydrates) and lets the vanilla shine through. In theory a vanilla yogurt or ice cream would complement the vanilla of the purée but all that fake vanilla flavouring feels wrong after using a real, luxurious vanilla bean (maybe a home-made yogurt made with the same kind of vanilla bean. If I had an ice cream maker I'd still give it a try, even though I think it would be too cold).

It's the simple things in life...

One of the Strangest Things I Ever Made: Dehydrated Butternut Squash

2010-11-09T10:35:00.001-05:00

Starts like this:

Turns into this:

Then turns into this:

Weird, huh? Yeah, I thought so too. So you take a butternut squash, peel it, cube it (1-inch cubes), soak the cubes for 8 hours in cold water (or overnight), drain, put them on a baking sheet, and stick it in the oven (or dehydrator. Imagine! What luxury) on the lowest possible temperature with the door open for about 16 hours. Turn the pieces over about halfway. Better yet, put the pieces on a rack so they dry on all sides at once and you can cut the dehydrating time in almost half.

Of course, I can't follow a recipe for the life of me. So I forgot to soak the squash, which is the whole point; it makes it easier to digest. I then puréed the whole thing for some reason (I guess I figured the liquid would evaporate more easily that way?) and lined a baking sheet with the purée. God was it hard to blend that thing. Took forever. I had to coax my blender into cooperating by promising it something liquid later, such as a juicy smoothie with no ice cubes. I tell you, that thing's a workhorse, though. Wouldn't trade it for anything, not even a VitaMix. (Wouldn't trade it, but would accept a VitaMix as a gift).

Then I stuck it in the oven as per the instructions above. Took forever to dehydrate, more than 16 hours. I added fresh thyme, though, which was a lovely idea for once. You need to stir it in or it'll just dry out and be bland, though.

Hours and hours later I sort of flipped the stuff over and broke it up a little. It's the inside that doesn't dehydrate well so the more surface area exposed to air the better. I even stuck it back in the blender after about 12 or 16 hours to break it more. It ended up looking like a strange kind of granola and the colour got bright orange, though the flesh had originally been pale. The taste is really interesting! Usually squash is mild and sweet, but this was a lot more pungent. With an acid (vinegar), it would work REALLY well. So I'd use this as a garnish for salad with a vinegar dressing. Kind of like raw croutons. They take a fair bit of chewing, but they're interesting. Originally the recipe from Rawmazing said to wrap it up with sage and some raw nut cream but that didn't sound like a good idea, so I just snacked a little. Just want to say that I'm glad I'm not actually "raw", and experimenting with these things is just fun and not a "life or not-eating" (aka death) thing...

Extraordinary Eggplant: Indian Bringal

2010-11-07T08:06:00.000-05:00

I've gotten into the habit of roasting or even boiling (in a rush) eggplant and then seasoning it with a blend of "hot", "salty", and "sweet" (ex: cayenne + soy sauce + oyster sauce; chili paste + fish sauce + hoisin; red pepper flakes + miso + mirin, or some combination of these which become mostly Chinese, Vietnamese or Japanese dishes), but sometimes a recipe comes from a reputable source and I just have to try it (this is officially an Indian or Bangladeshi dish, similar to bhartha, but with much more nut flavour and, despite the huge quantity, less oil than you'll find in restaurants). There's no added sweetener but the eggplants should be sweet enough on their own, even without taking out their seeds or leeching out their liquid with salt first (eggplant cubes in a colander for 30 minutes is standard, but the extra salt plus the wait time is annoying, says the girl who just spent 5 days making ginger confit...).

This was the best eggplant dish I've ever made, and I've made a lot of eggplant. It's no good the second or third day. It has to be fresh because the sesame flavour dies and then whole thing is kaput. But do it perfectly, and life is beautiful...

Ingredients
4 medium Asian eggplants (1 1/2 pounds - the long, thinner, lighter purple ones)
1/4 cup
1 large onion
1 tsp garlic, minced
1/2 tsp cayenne
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cumin seeds, crushed or coarsely ground (I toasted them first. The recipe doesn't say to do that, but it's standard. It actually made me doubt the recipe that this wasn't required, but no, it was trustworthy. If a person had told me this recipe instead of seeing it printed, though, I would have worn a very quizzical, doubtful face)
2 tsp minced green cayenne chilies, optional
2 tsp shallots, minced, definitely not optional
1/4 cup fresh cilantro

Preheat the oven to 450 Fahrenheit. It's better to char the eggplant over a grill for a smoky flavour, but the sesame oil does a pretty good job adding savouriness on its own, so roasting is fine. If you have a grill in which you can put wood chips to give food a smoky flavour, please invite me over and I will make this recipe for you. We should be friends. I also feel that if you're reading this and we're not already friends we should be friends, with or without eggplant.

Rub the eggplants with a little of the oil and prick them all over with a fork. Roast them in the preheated oven on a baking sheet for 45 minutes. Really you don't even need the baking sheet, you can just put them straight on the bars, but my oven bars don't get cleaned that often and I roast a lot of things that set off the fire alarm and leave some char in my oven, so I went with the baking sheet. Know thyself...

Let the eggplants cool (turn off oven).

Heat the rest of the sesame oil over medium-high heat in a skillet. When hot, add the onion, garlic, cayenne, turmeric and cumin. This is the giveaway on how this is not an authentic Indian recipe. In a real Indian recipe you would probably never add all these things at once. The ground spices especially would probably go in after the onion and garlic had browned, but it worked fine, and there's enough oil to make sure nothing burns, so really it's fine...

Lower the heat to medium and cook for 10 minutes. Do not have a seat and/or a smoke, walk the dog, start a book, etc in this cooking period. Sure, there's lots of oil to make sure the onions don't burn but you have 10 minutes to cut the eggplant in half, scoop out the flesh, and mash it in a bowl with a fork before the dish is ruined. Starting...now!

After the 10 minutes (set the timer, please) add the fresh cayenne chilies to the onion mixture and stir-fry 1 minute. I think I either used red cayennes or none at all. I certainly didn't use greens. You can also skip this if your tongue doesn't like fire. Mine does. There's a reason there are 4 sets of spicy things in my fridge right now: a jar of Sichuan peppercorn pickled chilies, one fermented Sriracha chili paste, one un-fermented chili sauce, and 4 jars of Indian pickled jalapenos. I maybe don't have a great reason for this, but addictions must be fed, and really, in the grand scheme of addictions I figure I'm not doing so badly. I could be my brother...(I really don't think he reads this. Too busy being a successful addict. If he does read this, we'll talk about it when you come visit me. Bring a grill, some wood chips, and some eggplants and we'll make a time of it. What you don't know, other readers, is my brother visits me once every never, so I have nothing to worry about).

We were cooking, weren't we?

Add the eggplant and salt and cook 2-3 more minutes.

When you're ready to serve (ideally right after the 2-3 minutes is up since the dish isn't getting any more delicious by making it wait) add the minced shallots and stir-fry for 1 more minute. The quick fry keeps you from having raw onion breath for the rest of the night, but also keeps them crisp enough that it really is a garnish. Then garnish each serving individually with coriander (roll it up into a tight cigar and slice at 1/2 cm intervals, approximately). You can garnish the whole skillet with the cilantro but then the plate presentation isn't as beautiful. Normally I would say garnish the skillet and eat from the skillet because it's eggplant, but that's a whole lot of sesame oil and I will have no part in encouraging you to over-indulge in something like 36 grams of fat. It's meant to be one dish in a meal of many dishes. Go find yourself some naan or roti...or puri...mmm... (or other bread) and some protein, and some friends to share it with (only because the dish doesn't keep well. Friends are returnable). Oh, and thick yogurt to cool your burning mouth. You don't want it so hot in there that you can't taste the sweetness and nutty sesame flavour, so periodically dousing the flames in your mouth with cooling tangy yogurt is key. I dare you to tell me this is not an amazing dish.

Patience and Ginger Confit, Part 4

2010-11-06T06:13:00.001-04:00

Finally, after 5 days the ginger is ready to be canned. Sterilize the jars, keep them pristine -- no fingers since you are a mold that will contaminate them -- and fill them with the ginger in its syrup which has been drained and brought to a boil one last time. No cold liquid into hot canning jars.

If you do all of these steps properly -- the chopping, soaking, boiling, boiling, boiling, boiling, soaking, boiling, soaking, boiling, canning -- the ginger will keep for years. Love springs eternal. But once open, once disturbed, once you start to enjoy a jar, it lasts no more than a few months. Your contagion and air itself get inside and break down everything you worked so hard, and waited so patiently, to preserve.

But after five days I think it's always worth it, the effort. If it's this good, it's always worth it. Whether it last a week, a month, or a year, I have ginger confit.

Patience and Ginger Confit, Part 3

2010-11-05T13:19:00.001-04:00

It's two days later and now I drain the syrup again into a saucepan. I bring it to a boil, reduce the heat to medium for 8 minutes, then pour it back over the half-confit-ed ginger in the bowl. Cover it. Wait 2 more days. More sleeping. More praying my kitchen isn't too cold and 5 days of my life and hours of my peeling and chopping efforts have not been for naught.

This is the test. I somehow managed to get through the past 2 days, but can I do it again? Can you learn patience? Does having done it once make it easier?

Maybe it's like getting your heart broken -- it still hurts every time, but maybe the hurt is mellower.

Maybe it's like the ginger after each boiling in Part 1 -- you want the piquancy because it reminds you that you're alive, that you feel something. So two more days of patience and masochism.

Or maybe it's like fear -- you can learn not to think about it. It's rare you actually stop being afraid. Fear is rational. You should be afraid of falling from a height. That's what keeps you from doing stupid things, but you still probably peer over high railings, hike mountains or crags, and seek out the best view. The return might be worth it.

Patience, too, has its returns -- delayed gratification, expectation, anticipation...and in the case of ginger, the practical justification that the finished product will be better than the original. Raw ginger versus confit-ed ginger. There's really no comparison. Even sweetened or candied ginger isn't the same. The confit syrup is like honey instead of sugar granules, with so much more flavour involved. Ginger confit becomes a treat that sneaks slowly into your sinuses, lets you marvel at its beauty, and then on the 10th bite takes control of your whole body, starting in your head and working its way down. It's nothing like an ice cream headache, and nothing like wasabi. You don't want the burn, you want the sweet sharpness that came before in bites 1 through 9, but you've gone past that now. It's the most surprising dessert that pounces unexpectedly. Or maybe a better way to understand it is that it's 9 bites in heaven before the cloud gets pulled out from under you and you fall into something fiery.

So how do you re-ascend?

You wait...

...until your tongue forgets why you burned. Until your mouth forgets why you had to stop chewing. Until you forget how far you fell. Until your heart forgets how it was hurt. 30 minutes? A few hours? A day?

Never forgive the ginger. Forgiveness isn't a natural reaction. Not forgiving is supposed to keep you from getting hurt again. You can, however, forget, which is beyond your control and just as dangerous as stepping out a little too far on that ledge to watch the sunset. Day will turn into night whether you see its last golden rays or not, so maybe you should just stay close to solid ground. But sometimes forgetting is good. It lets you enjoy again the sweetness before the burn. The burn will inevitably come, but you live in blissful ignorance for 9 bites. Just long enough to maybe make it worth it.

Patience and Ginger Confit, Part 2

2010-11-04T10:08:00.001-04:00

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of sleep later, I drained the sugar/water from the ginger into a saucepan and brought it to a boil. Reduced the heat to medium to simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes. then I poured the syrup (it's almost syrup now) back on top of the ginger in the heat-proof bowl. The plate went back on top, and the bowl is sitting again at room temperature for 2 days. I can't sleep that long.

...but I wait.

Patience and Ginger Confit

2010-11-03T09:37:00.000-04:00

Wines can take years to make and mature. Alcohol can take months to infuse. Pickles can take weeks to soften in brine...

...so 5 days for ginger confit should be nothing. It should be like getting to the end of one breath and instead of getting bored and moving on to your next flight of fancy, opening your lungs and inhaling again - it should be natural. And yet, here I am, trying to learn to be patient.

Ingredients
500g fresh ginger (yes, that's half a kilo, which is just over a pound of ginger)
800g sugar (3 cups plus about 3 tbsp)
500mL water (about 2 cups)

There are all sorts of recipes with lime peel and chilies for ginger confit, which sound amazing, but for a first time I looked for a recipe that was basic. I had to actually look in French because candied ginger is not the same as ginger confit, and all my English results for ginger confit were candied ginger. So I looked up gingembre confit and found this.

First the chopping -- a pound of ginger peeled with a spoon is not a task to be embarked upon lightly. Tearing off the gnarled skin from the knuckled fingers, and then chopping the uneven pieces into a mountain of matchsticks takes time. My roommate entered the kitchen at the beginning of the peeling stage and asked what all the garlic was for.

Thank goodness it's not garlic, I thought. It's one thing for my hands to burn (and they did), but it's quite another to smell for two days. I don't want to waft in the metro. An hour later when he came back into the kitchen I was still peeling ginger.

After the matchstick chopping (which goes relatively quickly with a good knife and some leftover ambition) I put the ginger pieces in a bowl of cold water and left them to soak for an hour.

...and for the first time in the ginger process I waited. This is harder than peeling and chopping sometimes. I don't know what was coming out of the ginger, but the water turned immediately cloudy. An hour later when I removed the ginger pieces, there were thick streaks of gelatinous yellow sticking to the bottom of the bowl. I have no idea.

Then the ginger went into a saucepan with enough cold water to cover. I brought the water to a boil. boiled five minutes, and then drained the pan. Refilled the plan with the ginger and fresh cold water, brought to a boil, boiled five more minutes, drained. Repeated two more times. I could have done it four more times but it takes 15-20 minutes per boil session and I'm new at patience. Young, flighty me actually likes the piquancy of the ginger that gets mellowed with further boiling.

While the ginger is boiling for the last time I dissolved the sugar in the water in another saucepan. No need to waste time doing this once the ginger is drained and shivering. I am not a Zen master (yet), after all. After the final boiling and draining, I put the ginger into a clean heat-proof bowl and poured the sugar/water mixture on top. Then I covered the bowl with a plate and let it sit at room temperature for 12 hours.

...and I waited. and I breathed.

Balance and Seaweed Salad

2010-11-02T10:42:00.000-04:00

I ate this over the course of three days and not on one day did I remember to take a picture. Well, the seaweed is long, wide, flat, green and slimy -- kind of like "not my tagliatelle noodles" pictured above -- except my green guy looked like a forest and weren't so perfect. They had cuts and scrapes and cruises. The other sea things that usually cling to them had been removed for packaging, but the saltiness remained. I think you should soak dried seaweed and use the salty soaking liquid to make a fish pasta. Hmm...

Anyway, the recipe is very simple. There's no real cooking involved and it's all about balancing flavours and tasting and balancing. Repeat. Repeat. Then the next day the liquid will have been absorbed and it may taste different, so you adjust, taste, repeat again.

Normally this kind of salad is made with thin pieces of seaweed such as wakame or arame, but I had the wide pieces that cost about $10 less a bag. Same process.

Ingredients
Seaweed, one big handful
Boiling water to cover
Sesame oil
sugar
rice vinegar
soy sauce or tamari
green onions or chives
sesame seeds, toasted (optional. Put some seeds in a small frying pan for a few minutes on medium heat until the seeds are fragrant and very lightly browned. Burnt is way past browned. If you make too many, they keep for awhile. They do lose their freshness but they're still better than untoasted seeds. When you go for sushi you can taste if the seeds are freshly toasted or not. Often they're not...)

You need enough boiling water to cover the seaweed, so take a large pot and fill it halfway or three quarters of the way to the top, bring the water to a boil, and then remove the pot from the heat and add the seaweed. Put a lid on the pot and leave it to soak for at least 30 minutes. Drain the seaweed and rinse to remove the excess salt. You can save this soaking liquid if you want. There's great sea salt in there...

...and turning things green is pretty fun. Take that artificial colouring FD&C Green #3

Then you play chemistry. That's a game right? There are kids who play that instead of running around outside and getting their Vitamin D, right? Well, I recommend you stand in front of a sunny window not in Montreal when you make this since apparently there is just not enough sun to keep the general populace out of depression in winter. I can almost believe that. Montrealers drink a lot of beer when it's cold...and wine...and liquor...and eat things covered in gravy and cheese and dead pig, and well, that can't be a rational decision. There must be other factors involved, such as a lack of some vitamin, but that's why I'm a cook, not a chemist, and I just play.

In a large bowl put the drained seaweed and toss over a good tablespoon or so of sesame oil (preferably toasted sesame oil. You don't toast it yourself. You buy it toasted. I assume the seeds are toasted and then the oil extracted. See? Just playing, not doing the real chemistry), a good splash of unseasoned rice vinegar (the same kind as for sushi), a relatively smaller splash of soy sauce or tamari (a lighter soy is better instead of a darker one. So again, one meant for sushi is best), and some finely chopped green onions or snipped chives. You can also add red chili flakes (just a little) or some minced ginger, but I find the ginger is a bit too light and fruity and takes away from the rich earthiness of the sesame flavouring. If you don't want to use much oil, consider using ginger instead, or just a touch of sesame oil along with the ginger. Then use more sugar to sweeten it. Ginger is not an oil replacement, but since the noodles are already so slimy, if your oil isn't very flavourful you're just filling yourself up with tasteless fat.

Add the toasted sesame seeds last, and toss together. If it's not salty enough add more soy. If it's not sweet enough add more sugar (or mirin). If you can't figure out what it's not "enough" of then it probably needs more green onion, chives and sesame oil or seeds. I usually go with the seeds before the oil, since excess liquid just sits at the bottom of the bowl like a soup that gets sucked into the seaweed overnight. So you end up with leftovers that are way too salty or way too oily. More often you lose the salt, sweet, hot, or umami (earthiness/savouriness, roughly) by the next day and need to adjust the flavours again.

Great eaten right away, great chilled 30 minutes i the fridge to let the flavours "marry". Love that term. Marriage is a 30 minute process. Don't they mean...

A Peck of Pickled Peppers Not Picked By Peter

2010-10-31T14:00:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure if that's actually what I meant to write or if it's just tactile stuttering because I can barely feel my fingers...

It was a long bike ride from Jean-Talon this morning and the Tunisian dates and the bison rib didn't keep me warm from the inside out as I'd hoped. I did the same thing last Sunday minus the rib but it really didn't seem as cold then. Last week I loaded my bike up with a mix of red and green peppers and planned to do some standard pickling. So far my pickling has been a bit exotic for a newbie (fig jam, cayenne peppers, green gage plum and vanilla jam, daikon radish threads with Sichuan peppercorns) so I decided to step back and try a basic recipe for pickled peppers. Now I'm sure they weren't already pickled when Peter Piper picked them. In fact he probably brought them home to his mother or wife to pickle them, but he put the effort in. My equivalent effort was getting the pickles home from the market. Not one spilled (unlike my heart-breaking blueberries) but I had no wife or mother at home to pickle them for me. I'll think about working on that.

Pickled Peppers
8 green peppers. sliced
8 red peppers, sliced
8 medium onions, roughly diced
2 cups white vinegar
2 cups sugar
2 tsp salt

In the end I don't think I like this recipe because in all the blanching and boiling the peppers lose their colour, which means they lose a lot of their nutrients, and that's kind of the whole point of canning - to preserve things such as nutrients. Still, it was the best recipe I could find, having not looked particularly hard in three recipe books and not trusting the internet.

Let it be known, I did this all correctly:

1. Wash your jars, lids and canning rings in hot soapy water and put the jars and rings in a big stock pot or canning pot. Bring the pot to a boil and boil for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, just leave the jars and rings in the water but turn off the heat.

2. Combine the peppers, onions and 1 1/2 cups of boiling water in a large saucepan. Cover the pan and let it stand for 5 minutes. Drain.

3. Return the vegetables to the saucepan. Stir in 2/3 cup vinegar and 2/3 cup water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 5 minutes.

4. Drain the vegetables again and put them back in the saucepan. Cry a little as all those nutritious things circle down the drain. Dream of summer when all this canning nonsense isn't necessary.

5. In a small saucepan, bring a cup of water to a boil, then turn off the heat and add the jar lids. You don't want to boil them and wreck the wax seal.

6. Heat the remaining 1 1/3 vinegar, the sugar and the salt in a microwavable bowl or cup (or on the stove in a saucepan, but that makes your stove pretty busy). Add the mixture to the vegetables and again boil the heck out of the previously brightly coloured peppers. Okay, well boil them gently for about 25 minutes, until they're tender-crisp.

7. Carefully take the jars out of the sterilizing water (for some method suggestions, check here) and place on a clean cloth next to the pepper pot.

8. Fill the jars with peppers, onions, and brine up to a 1/2 inch from the rim of the jars. Use a chopstick or spatula to push down to get any air bubbles out, and then wipe the rims down with a clean cloth or paper towel. Carefully place the lids on top, then the tightening rings (no hands, please). You can tighten the rings by hand, though. Not too, too tight. Not superman tight. Just "little old lady" tight. Harness your inner little old lady. Do not:

1. Swear when you drop a lid
2. Cry when you see that's it's snowing
3. Give up. Never give up.

Then stick the jars back in the still hot sterilizing water (they shouldn't touch the sides or bottom of the pot, so put down a kitchen cloth in the bottom or form some kind of rack. Anyone want to patent a circular canning rack with me? Bring to a boil, and start the timer for 10 minutes (for half pints) or 20 minutes (for full pints) once the water comes to a boil again. Remove the jars again to a clean cloth, turn them upside down (not really necessary apparently, but it's comforting when they pop. Somehow makes botulism less scary) and let them cool. Label them. Now you're allowed to cry.

Hey, at least you have pickled peppers.

Pauper's "Raw" Sun-dried Tomato Pesto and Life-Lemon Juice at Chez Snips, Part 2

2010-10-30T10:33:00.001-04:00

I ran out of lemon juice, but I doubt that jives metaphorically with life not giving me lemons anymore. My point is that there was plenty of "life-giving-me-lemon"-juice left over after I made a pound and a half of roasted jerusalem artichokes, and plenty of free time. What do you do in this situation?

1. You get a haircut (check)
2. You eat super healthy and affordably (and check)

So I went back to my fabulous hairdresser, Nadyne Kasta of Chez Snips, who even sneaked me in before she sneaked out of town for some birthday celebrations. Of course, I brought jam to thank her. Then I went home feeling 100% better to blend nuts.

Raw Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto

2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 cup sunflower seeds (soaked overnight and dehydrated in your oven until dry, or in a dehydrator)
3 tbsp olive oil
1-2 tsp lemon juice
a pinch of salt
1/2 cup parsley (or basil)
1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes, coarsely chopped, or snipped with scissors (basically I just wanted to use my amazing home-made oven-dried tomatoes. My goodness they were good)

In a blender or a food processor (preferably the latter), process the garlic cloves, sunflower seeds, olive oil, lemon juice and salt. Process until very well combined and you have a pesto consistency. It's going to be really, really thick. If you want, you can add a little water, or not dehydrate the sunflower seeds as much, but that takes some of the crispness out of the pesto, and with raw food you don't want to give up any crispness without a fight. So fight that blender until everything's processed.

Then add the chopped/hacked/snipped parsley or basil. Process until well combined. Add the sun-dried tomatoes and process until combined. This may take forever if you don't have a VitaMix or a good food processor, but it's worth it, and there's actual cooking involved, so you're not going to burn anything. Dehydrating the nuts doesn't give as great a flavour as toasting them, so if you don't care about raw, just make this as a standard pesto by heating the probably not soaked and dehydrated nuts in a small frying pan for a few minutes, moving them around until they're browned on all sides and aromatic.

Serve with pasta (wheat or zucchini), or as a dip or spread. Adjust the lemon juice content (unless you just ran out like me, and are forced to use lime juice instead. Lime was interesting...but not lemon. I guess I'm just happy life gave me lemons and not limes, though maybe that would inspire to cook more Thai and Mexican, neither of which are bad things).

When Life Gives You Lemons You Roast Jerusalem Artichokes (Part 1)...

2010-10-29T18:05:00.000-04:00

...Or maybe that's just me.

The thing is, I love lemons, but if they were all life gave me, I'd be a well-fed, yet unhappy person. Until today I'd had four beautiful items sitting in my kitchen waiting to be cooked and no time in which to cook (or 'un-cook') them. So when life gave me lemons and an abundance of time I took their juice and poured it on top of some jerusalem artichokes and garlic and roasted the whole thing. Then I poured more life-lemon juice on top of a raw sun-dried tomato pesto with sunflower seeds (beautiful kitchen item number 2 - recipe to come).

These jerusalem artichokes I had saved since the last Montreal Marché Fermier Farmers Market. I bought them from Aaron Langille (well, they weren't his sunchokes, but he stepped in to help out the farmer that day since he didn't have any help. Swell guy). I feel kind of mean giving you that link because he has an amazing dinner coming up with Cookies Unite and he gets to plan and execute the whole thing (multiple courses, whatever he wants) and it's BYOB and only $30 for some of the top sous-chefs in the city (DNA, Le Club Chasse et Peche, XO, etc.) and it happens not often enough...and the most important thing is it's completely sold out. SO keep that link in your bookmarks and reserve your spot for the next one.

The point is I'd been waiting for the right time to roast artichokes. My go-to recipe for jerusalem artichokes is soup but I really didn't feel like:
1) soup
2) peeling all those knobby things to get a smooth purée. Even with big pieces it feels as though by the time you're done peeling there are no artichokes left. Maybe that's why they're called artichokes, since the same thing happens with their big green counterparts. Montreal doesn't even compost, so it really is a waste.
So, instead:

Roasted Jerusalem Artichokes

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

5-8 cloves garlic, peeled (I removed the green inside vein thing because apparently that makes them bitter, but it's not really necessary. Go with 5 if you hate garlic and go with 8 if you're me...or, you know, someone else who likes roasted garlic a lot and doesn't have a date tonight)

1 1/2 pounds Jerusalem artichokes, rinsed and cut into 1-inch cubes (mine were smaller because that way they roast faster...that way they also burn faster, though, so be careful)

1/3 cup water

3 tablespoons lemon juice

a ton of fresh thyme (a bunch, stems removed)

a pinch salt

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400° F. In a large baking dish mix the oil and garlic and put in the preheated oven for 5 minutes.

Then add the artichokes and toss to coat with the oil and put the baking sheet back in the oven for 25 minutes.

In a small bowl combine the water, lemon juice, thyme, and salt and after the 25 minutes are up pour the liquid over the artichokes.

Roast for an additonal 20 minutes or until the liquid has almost evaporated and the artichokes are tender on the inside and crisp on the outside, then eat while you wonder why you've never roasted artichokes before.

Lemon and Thyme Roasted Fennel: "How Did I Get So?"

2010-10-27T07:52:00.000-04:00

Dear Fennel,

I feel as though a beautiful song by Ingrid Gatin aptly reflects how I feel about our relationship. Please watch this video before reading the rest of my letter:

"Time swelled the moment that we started"...I washed you and cored you carefully, then thinly sliced you because what we had was new and fragile, and you always tiptoe at the beginning of a new relationship, tread softly. So I wanted to roast you long and slow at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for 35 minutes, turning you only once so you didn't burn. I saw you as something so naturally beautiful that all I wanted you to wear was a little oil (olive), cologne (thyme), and your own sweat (sprinkle of salt). My small hands cautiously explored your skin while I dressed you slowly.

"Make way for love, make way for heart-ache"...At first you seemed so sweet to me, but every conversation became a little more bitter, as if you were being bathed in lemon juice. I only wanted a little since the sweetness had been overpowering, but there was no substance to your words and your body turned from strong and firm to weak and watery. But I was the one whose eyes were close to tears.

"How did I get so"...fooled, lead astray, disappointed...underwhelmed? I wanted your lips to taste like licorice and your skin to yield to me its sweetness. Alas, it was not to be.

Fennel, I hoped we could have something real, but you weren't ready for me this year. Maybe a year apart will help you grow - mature, even - and next summer we'll be at a place in both our lives where we'll be ripe for each other. If you run to California and drive the long distance back to me once my city of Montreal has melted away the cold, I'll never want to see you again. You can't have the best of both worlds. Stay, instead, here in the ice and the storms, ride out the winter, and if in summer we run into each other again, I'll again chase the candy of your lips.

With love, always.

One Love Fennel: Roasted Pasta Sauce or Ragout

2010-10-26T11:09:00.000-04:00

I went to my fruit guy in Jean-Talon, Leopoldo. He doesn't do local. Neither did he have ataulfo mangoes (though he did the next week), and I knew the white peach and white nectarine seasons were over, so why did I go back to him? Because that's my Sunday. He makes my Sunday a happier day, what with his slightly intimidating self-assured nature that inspires trust.

And it turned out that white nectarines are back in season in California!!! I nearly died of joy. Leopoldo said they were good, so I bought them. They were better than the Ontario ones, he said (and he was right, since I haven't had a really good Ontario one all season for some reason...you can't get the sweeter white ones from there now anyway, and I'm very picky). Unfortunately he was wrong about them being good, and my world collapsed a little, my heart tore at its tender seams, and I felt a bit spiritually lost.

Every last nectarine tasted like starch. It's true they weren't ripening properly in my frigid kitchen (1 degree celcius yesterday! That's madness) but they just turned to mush and went bad. There were a few that were almost trying to be flavourful, but they failed miserably...

But this post is not about nectarines. It's about fennel. Those too I found at Leopoldo's before I knew how crushed my heart could be by a man and his nectarines.

I have an ongoing love affair with fennel. I used to hate the anise flavour of the vegetable until I found a recipe a few years ago that said to roast it and then add a tiny, tiny bit of lemon juice and the natural sweetness of the vegetable comes out and the bitterness gets roasted away. I ate a whole fennel bulb that way and again nearly died of joy. I suppose I have a lot of near-death experiences with fruits and vegetables...

In Quebec this season the rain hasn't been right for fennel growing. I bought local, organic ones only once this summer and braised them with fibrous, wiry results (recipe #2 in my "Recipe For Disaster" cookbook?) AND they were really expensive! $3 or $3.50 for just one dwarfed heart.

But Leopoldo had a sale on. $5 for 3 of the big, juicy ones. I was sold. Even on the last organic farmers' market day of the season of Marché Fermier I chose to take up valuable granny cart space with three big bulbs of non-local fennel. That's how much I love these things.

So I decided to roast two of these guys according to my roasting bible in a recipe meant for pasta sauce, but which I would just have just with bread, and then I'd roast the third bulb according to my standard, simple roasted fennel with lemon recipe. Here's the first:

Roasted Fennel with Tomato (Pasta Sauce or Bread Topping or Sandwich Filling...or Snack)
2 bulbs fennel
1 head garlic (mmm...roasted garlic...)
1 tbsp fennel seeds (overkill, but nice)
2 tbsp olive oil
4 plum tomatoes, chopped (I used fresh green ones...bad idea! They weren't nearly sweet enough and they weren't plums, so the acidic, bitter juices got into the fennel and killed them in their over-heated sleep. You're also only supposed to end up with 2/3rds of a cup, but I had about a cup and a half of tomatoes to use up, so that's what went in...again, not a good idea. Try to cut the tomatoes evenly so they roast evenly, and again, smaller is better)
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
kosher salt (or other) and ground black pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 450 Fahrenheit. Cut the fennel bulbs (wash them first) through the core and into quarters. Then cut out the tough core of each. Finally slice the outer layers into 1/8" slices. It doesn't really matter how thickly you slice them. They'll just take more or less time to cook, but I find the thinner ones end up crisper and the bigger ones are more watery, so slimmer is better in this case. In a BIG baking sheet or roasting pan toss the fennel slices with everything else and spread it as thinly as possible in the pan.

Once the oven is preheated, roast the fennel for 35-45 minutes. Don't stir or turn unless it's looking as though it'll burn at any second and it's not quite done yet. Voila dinner.

If you want to make this into pasta sauce, cook some pasta, drain it and return it to the pot. Add the roasted mixture, scraping in all the delicious blackened bits. Add about 2 more tablespoons of olive oil, then tear a cup of fresh basil leaves from their stems and add those. To serve, toss in a little mozzarella or parmiggiano reggiano (please, please, please do not use pre-powdered "parmesan" cheese. You'll break my heart more than the nectarines and Leopoldo did).

You know, I was expecting the fennel to make up for the lacklustre nectarines, but again, I was a little disappointed. I mean, they weren't bad, but I think I cut them too thickly and they ended up too watery. I also think my tomatoes were too juicy (and I used too many), but really the fennel flavour should have still been strong and dreamy, and I should have fallen in love with the aroma from my kitchen. In and out, in and out...I know, it's a bad cycle.

Alas, food is fickle and my heart is not a plaything. I also feel as though maybe I deserved this for buying so much imported fruit and vegetables. Surely the flavour just couldn't be as good as what I could get organic and local. Maybe I'm the fickle one, since the next day I fell in love with eggplant all over again. Well, to be fair, I fell in love with eggplant in sesame oil, so I mostly fell in love with a quarter cup of sesame oil. That sponge-y local, organic eggplant just soaked it all up and caressed my broken heart (and stomach).

The Most Important Part of Thanksgiving: Being Thankful for Chicken Stock?

2010-10-24T14:31:00.000-04:00

I mean, friends and family are all well and good, but chicken stock...

I shredded every morsel of flesh off that bird. Knives aren't good enough (or maybe I should say I'M not good enough with knives?). Then I threw the broken carcass in a big pot of water so that the body is covered. Bring the water to a boil and skim off the scum before adding the leftovers of peeled and chopped vegetables past that have been sitting in wait in my freezer, and top it up with some fresh hacked carrots, onions (shallots, in this case), tomatoes and parsley. Normally I get scared by tomatoes, but I had a few that needed to be used up and stock is definitively "how to use stuff up".

Bring the whole thing back to a boil, and then reduce the heat to low and let the pot simmer for ages. I over-boil it so it becomes concentrated and takes less freezer space. So, after a few hours (you can also stick it in the slow-cooker for 8 hours on low or 4-5 on high, but the water won't evaporate so it might not be as flavourful if you added the "proper" amount of water to begin with) take it off the heat and strain the vegetables and carcass through a fine-mesh sieve. I use tongs to take the big pieces out first because pouring chicken carcass into a sieve is a recipe for disaster. There is probably a cookbook somewhere called "Recipes For Disaster" and this is the first recipe. One day when I write my cookbook...

You can be very anal about stock or not. Ideally you want to use a cheesecloth-lined sieve and strain it AT LEAST once to get any grit or dirt out, but I still don't have a cheesecloth. I had one once...Alas, now I'm back to using paper towel, which is wasteful since liquid is absorbed, but it does an okay job. So line a fine-mesh sieve or strainer with paper towel or a cheesecloth and pour (again) the broth through. Try to pour it in just one area of the paper towel so the next step is easier:

Ring out the paper towel. No ringing necessary with cheesecloth. Let the broth come to room temperature before putting it in the fridge. If you want to strain the fat let it sit overnight in the fridge and the fat will rise to the top and form an easily-removed layer the next day. That fat is good for you, though, it's what actually helps you recover when you have a cold, so leaving at least a little is a good idea. Once the stock is cool you can just transfer it immediately to freezer containers, or if you have immediate soup plans, or other uses for stock in the next few days, leave it in the fridge.

There's nothing like home-made broth, but I have this crazy habit of making it poorly. I think it's the length of the recipes. Don't you hate it when recipes just go on, and on, and on...

Rooibos Chai Tea

2010-10-23T08:31:00.000-04:00

This is my second Ochado tea. They're from the Marché Fermier that's currently closed, but you can order online. Chai is an easy thing to make since it's just a blend of whole spices, all of which I already have, but this is a rooibos chai, and I don't exactly have the right trees lying around to make that for myself. I do have better rooibos tea that I could infuse with my own spices, so I'll get around to that one day, but this version from Ochado is very nice and there's no way I'm going to be drying my own orange peel anytime soon. Besides, their spice balance is very good. That's what you pay for. It also came with a recipe. I've made it twice so far and my only adjustment is taking down the amount of honey slightly, but not too much as I took out too much the second time and it was too watery and bland.

For 1 person:
1 tsp of Rooibos Chai tea (or other chai. Rooibos is caffeine-free, and usually chai is made from black tea, so just a heads-up)
1 cup filtered water
2 tsp to 1 tbsp honey
1 cup milk (I used almond milk, which was lovely)

Bring the water to a boil, add the tea and honey and reduce the heat to medium to let simmer for 5 minutes. Add the milk, bring back to a boil, and remove from heat. Strain into a mug and enjoy.

You could also put the tea in a tea infuser and boil it that way. Saves you the trouble of straining after, but it's really not much trouble at all unless you're quadrupling the recipe and serving it to pretentious friends who think a strainer is out of place in tea service. My recommendation? Keep the strainer, lose the friends.

Thanksgiving Roasted Turkey With Chocolate Sourdough Dried Fig, Apricot, Date, Cranberry, an Apple Stuffing

2010-10-22T07:55:00.000-04:00

Turkey is so easy. The bird had been sitting in wait overnight, being moisturized by the Sichuan peppercorn salt under its skin and in its belly. Next step was to stuff it with the Chocolate Sourdough dried fruit stuffing and sprinkle the top with more of the salt. Then a pastry brush swish of olive oil to spread the seasoning all over the skin and it was done. The turkey even had a flap of fat that the legs got pushed through to keep the cavity closed -- no knitting needles, skewers or kitchen string required. The oven was preheated to 450 Fahrenheit and the turkey went in for 20 minutes.

After that it got basted and the heat got turned down to 325 for 4 hours. It got basted (approximately...) every 30 minutes and after the 4 hours I checked the thigh with a meat thermometre to make sure it had cooked through to 165 Fahrenheit. Then the other most-important-part of roasting a turkey: I tented it with aluminum foil for 30 minutes. This distributes the moisture throughout the meat. You just shocked a dead animal for 4 and a half hours; I hope you can understand that it's a little hard for it to relax and let the juices spread evenly through its flesh. 30 minutes in a relatively cool tent is like a massage after a workout or a hard day. I was going to say "like a cigarette after sex" but I don't encourage such things (One? The other? Both?).

How was it? The turkey, you mean? Moist and flavourful. Every now and then you'd get a slight hit of some kind of unidentifiable pepper, and then the salt of the crisp skin would make your eyes water. The turkey was joyfully overwhelmed by the sweetness of the dried fruit in the stuffing, but the thyme actually shone through everything, and helped bring the savoury turkey flavour back into the game. Even the subtle chocolate intertwined itself with the bird in a mouthful of Mexican mole-inspired joy. Thank goodness I don't believe in unchanging tradition. A perfect balance of cultural influences, recipes, and chastened innuendos make me feel very Canadian...at least very Torontonian and Montrealaise.

Chocolate Sourdough and Dried Apricot, Fig, Date, Cranberry, and Apple Turkey Stuffing

2010-10-19T21:15:00.000-04:00

Yup, all those things actually got stuffed inside a 12 lb turkey.

First, Bonnie Stern had a stuffing recipe up for Rosh Hashannah, and it seemed like a waste to stuff turkey breasts with it. You have to cut open all the breasts and you can never get enough of the delicious filling in there (the filling is always better than the meat anyway). As I'm a big believer in sharing traditions, and an even bigger believer in not wasting the rest of the turkey, I figured Thanksgiving would be the perfect time to bastardize her recipe by adding a loaf of bread and turn it into enough stuffing for an entire bird. Thank goodness I was right for once.

1 giant turkey (10-12 lbs -- ridiculous, I know. I put it in my bike basket, as I do with all heavy things I buy at the market, and nearly made my bike do a somersault twice trying to jaywalk across Atwater, it was so back-weighted.

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 tsp salt (kosher if it's for Rosh Hashanah, of course)
1 tbsp fresh rosemary
5 beautiful shallots, diced
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 apple, peeled, cored and diced
2 tbsp honey
1/2 cup dried apricots, diced (easiest to do all the dried fruit dicing with scissors)
1/2 cup pitted dates, diced
1/2 cup dried figs, diced (don't buy medjools. Buy the cheap, pre-pitted ones and save yourself the hassle)
1/4 cup apple juice (Yeah, I didn't have juice, but I had apples, so I just blended them and made purée. I figured a bit of extra fibre would be just fine, and the stuffing would get a lot of added juice from the turkey)
1 tsp thyme (fresh or very high-quality dried. Mine was amazing. I opened a can of Épices de Cru thyme from Provence...mmm...it actually MADE the dish since the slight bitterness cut through the sweetness of the dried fruit and the tang of the sourdough. Absolutely amazing)
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup water

I did everything right until I decided to stop being so well-behaved...

I cooked the onions, garlic and apples to in the oil over medium heat for about 8 minutes.

I added the honey, apricots, dates, figs and apple juice and cooked a few more minutes. Then I added the thyme, lemon juice and a tiny bit of my salt and Sichuan peppercorn blend. Then I chopped up an entire load of chocolate cranberry bread from LaPerle et Son Boulanger in the Plateau market (I bought two loaves that week so I wouldn't go loafless for a week once this was used...actually I used the opportunity to buy both a cranberry chocolate loaf AND a hazelnut loaf. I swear the toasted hazelnuts are the most amazing things ever invented, possibly besides this recipe, but if you put one of the most amazing things into THE most amazing thing it only helps. I know I'm crazy but even the hazelnuts inside the loaf seem toasted by the baking process. The ones outside get a slightly charred, papery cover that I adore too, but this loaf just seems magical. "Magical sourdough". I should never market anything. Ever.

Now my favourite part: mixing it all together. I actually didn't want to do it with my hands because I didn't want to waste any liquid by getting it stuck to me and not to the bread, but in the end my hands won out. Massaging bread like this is amazing. The only thing that beats it is bread pudding because there's more liquid. You shouldn't lick your hands after that one, though. This one I had to have some restraint to just not eat by the spoonful.

Then into the bird it went. And straight into the oven...

Thanksgiving: Roasted 12 lb Turkey With Chocolate Sourdough and Dried Fruit Bread Stuffing...Spiked with Sichuan Peppercorns. Enough fusion for you?

2010-10-18T10:56:00.000-04:00

I'm going to tell you the secret of why my Thanksgiving was successful, and it has only a little to do with alcohol. It has a lot to do with the secret powers of certain foods...such as Sichuan peppercorns...

My whole idea for Thanksgiving was to have 10 friends over and ask everyone to bring a milk-, cow-, and pig-free side dish. My roommate would make dessert, and I'd do the turkey, the stuffing, and the gravy. I'd also bake some potatoes because it's ridiculous to ask someone else to heat up their oven to make potatoes when mine is already roasting merrily away.

Besides, I had farmers' market potatoes. I also had Sichuan peppercorns, and great plans to combine a Rosh Hashanah stuffed turkey breast recipe with an Asian-Inspired Sichuan-spiked roast bird...Oh, and I'd throw in a loaf of chocolate cranberry sourdough bread just for fun. The Asian turkey recipe came from the Montreal Gazette and Jonathan Cheung from Appetite For Books, possibly my favourite bookstore. My Gazette man is back at the Lionel-Groulx metro, as you may know, and I am a loyal follower. I am not a loyal follower of sausage, however, so Bonnie Stern's dried fruit stuffing won out over Jonathan Cheung's pork-based Asian stuffing. The reason for adding the sourdough bread was to get more out of the stuffing, and because traditional turkey stuffing is bread-based. Who am I to mess with tradition? Rhetorical, yes.

The thing about Sichuan peppercorns, see, is there's both a mouth-numbing effect, but there's also a mild stimulant or aphrodisiac effect. Most of the people at the dinner were couples, but I believe that an aphrodisiac can be either sexual or just a stimulant that makes you social and happy. So conversation flowed. So did the wine, but honestly we went through about 2 bottles of wine during the meal and slowly made it through half of a third by the end of the evening. For 10 people. Well, really 7 since 3 had beer, but 7 people and two bottles of wine is practically unheard of at most Thanksgiving dinners, and I know that's not just my extended family.

All I did to make Sichuan peppercorn salt was roast 1 tablespoon of the aromatic kernels for 35 seconds in a hot pan until they were aromatic and started to smoke slightly, then ground them in my mortar and pestle and added 3 tablespoons of Himalayan salt (sea salt, fleur de sel, and kosher salt would all work fine).

What did I do with the Sichuan peppercorns, you ask? Three things:

1. The day before Thanksgiving I blended 3 cloves of garlic with a 2-inch piece of ginger, and 1 tbsp of olive oil until it formed a paste, stirred in a large pinch of the Sichuan pepper salt and pushed it under the skin of the washed and dried turkey (loosening the skin is a bit of an effort but it's worth it when the meat is tenderized by the salt seasoning but the skin crisps up from the roasting. I think it's actually one of the biggest tricks to doing a good turkey). Then I threw some extra peppercorn salt inside the turkey cavity, wrapped the bird in a huge net of aluminum foil, and put it in the fridge.
2. After stuffing the turkey the next day I sprinkled it with more of the peppercorn salt and brushed it with oil.
3. An hour before eating, after much basting, I used some of the pan drippings to coat the potatoes that were going to get baked. So they, too, were coated in peppercorns.
4. Instead of putting salt and pepper on the table, I put out a shot glass of of the peppercorn salt as seasoning. It looked like salt with freshly ground pepper...it was just a little more aromatic.

Of course, I didn't tell anyone this. They're better off this way, thinking they had a wonderful time of their own accord. All the while, I knew that I'd mildly drugged my dinner guests, increased their heart-rates, got a little bit of adrenaline going, and seduced them with Sichuan peppercorns...

Sambar -- Take 2 (No, Not Samba. Wrong Continent)

2010-10-16T18:58:00.000-04:00

I'm convinced that in Mexico you have to dance salsa when they make salsa, but what if the country of the food and the dance don't match? I'm not so foolish to believe that South Indians dance samba when they make sambar. In fact I'm sure they dance bhangra instead.

God, I hope they do...Check out the 1:57 minute mark. It's actually a really hard dance...

Maybe I danced around my kitchen a little while I was making this...maybe. It was my second sambar recipe, and if you want to make sambar, use my first recipe because I got this one online and it was a bad recipe, which I didn't know until the end. Partly it was probably my lack of tomatoes' fault, but mostly it was the recipe.

1 cup toor dal, but I used skinless urad dal, which is definitely wrong)

2 tbsp channa dal

1 bunch coriander leaves

2 tbsp coriander seeds

1 bunch curry leaves

ginger (all it said was "ginger" so I went with the standard 1 inch piece)

2 cloves garlic

1 tsp asafetida (I assumed it should be grated, because that's just what you do. Explicit this recipe was not)

1 tsp jaggery (this is a dark sugar so I used regular sugar with a tiny, tiny drop of molasses) 1 tsp fenugreek

1 HUGE zucchini, chopped into 1/2-inch cubes, or really, however you want (but you can use almost any vegetable you want - potato, beans, caulifower, etc)

1 tbsp mustard seeds

2 tbsp oil 1 large onion, diced

6 dried red chilies

1 tbsp rice salt to taste

1/2 cup tamarind water (one golf-ball sized piece of tamarind soaked in boiling water for 30 minutes, then strained through a sieve)

1 medium tomato, chopped

1 tsp turmeri

I made the sambar masala just fine I thought, even roasting the mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, cumin seeds, and black peppercorns longer than the coriander seeds, red chilies, rice, and channa dal (which is traditional, and which is why I thought this would be a good recipe in the first place. Poh, from Poh's Kitchen taught me this is important in an episode with Indian spice master Ragini Dey). I'd also never seen a masala with oil in it since it wouldn't keep a long time.

The middle part of the recipe was less "fine". See you have to make the sambhar masala and then you have to use some of the same ingredients in the dish itself, but the ingredients are only listed once, so when I got down into the meat of the recipe (it's vegetarian, yes) I had no idea how much of certain spices to add...so I added the same amount again. WAY too much spice without anything to soak it up! Spices are delicate and while you can play with them, you can't just double them haphazardly. Shame on you, recipe.

I finished the recipe just fine as well. I threw in some zucchini for texture and vegetable (yes, "for vegetable"). I'd even soaked a whole piece of tamarind and used my ENORMOUS new sieve to strain out the stringy bits. Oh it was beautiful, beautiful sieved tamarind. Well, the rest of of the tamarind is in my freezer waiting for the next time I don't mess up sambar...or a samba, or a salsa. I hate messing up a salsa...the dance, I mean. It's embarrassing. You feel like you're wasting the guy's time. He could have spent the last 5 minutes of his life dancing with someone else, someone with better technique, hands that fly through the air, feet that do extra steps that no one really teaches you. He could have danced with someone who'd flirt with him. I'm not going to flirt with you, arrogant dancing partner who decides I'm a waste of his time mid-dance. With food and dancing you need to have some self-respect.

Oh, here's a hilarious video on learning to dance bhangra. Indian aerobics shows are much cooler than North American ones. Grapevine, anyone?

Vanilla Bean Green Gauge Plum Jam

2010-10-15T06:56:00.000-04:00

These plums, I believe, are also called "Reine Claude". Claude must have loved them more than the purple ones. I can understand that.

See, I bought vanilla beans...

I went to Épices de Cru in Jean-Talon market and asked to smell the 7 kinds of vanilla beans they keep in large glass jars. I wafted. I've had Madagascar and Tahitian before. Those are the standard exotics, but some of the others I'd never seen around. There were also Indian, Papua New Guinean, Ugandan, and Sri Lankan, and Mexican vanillas. The price range was also pretty broad, but I ended up choosing completely based on the smell I wanted, and these happened to be the Ugandan and Sri Lankan. From what I remember the Mexican smelled like grainy sugar. Can vanilla smell grainy? The Tahitian was a more intense version of the same. The Madagascar was big and floral, but I worried it might seem a little hollow in a jam. Again, hollow vanilla? The P.N.G. smelled like the Madagascar...but just less aromatic. The Indian was somewhere between the sugary-ness of the Mexican and the rich flowers of Madagascar. Then the Ugandan and Sri Lankan were the ones that seemed strong enough, without being too sugary or bitter. I can't quite put my finger on what I liked about them, but honestly, it probably didn't matter that much which pods I chose. All of these kinds were so fresh that they would do a wonderful job probably. The fun part is just smelling these vanillas and feeling like you're a million miles away in a warm, sunny, tropical place where such magical things may grow.

On to the recipe. It's from here. There are 4 ingredients and no pectin. Easy.

Green Gage Plum and Vanilla Jam
2lb (about 1kg) Green Gage Plums
1lb (about 500g) sugar
juice from 1 lemon
2 vanilla beans

The only thing that's annoying is that you need to pit every plum...

You're supposed to cut the plums into big chunks but I just had them in half. Would have been better in chunks. One of these stays I'll learn to read.

Then the plums go into a large pot...not the pits. Add the sugar and the lemon juice (I'm skeptical about adding the lemon juice now, since all the boiling kind of kills the intensity of the flavour, but I picked a high time to learn to read, didn't I?). Stir well to combine. Cut a round piece of parchment paper the size of the diameter of the pot, and place it on top of the fruits (I have absolutely no idea why you do this with the parchment paper. Sure, the fruit needs to sit, but paper? Let sit for about an hour (or a day, if you're me. I figured as long as they didn't start to ferment I'd be golden).

Cut two vanilla beans lengthwise (my goodness this was so fun. You never want to wash your hands again. SO much better than chili peppers!), scrape the inside of the pods to get to all the seeds (funny thing about these pods...there were no seeds!!! I looked, but I was like a surgeon looking for an aromatic, sugary tumour - I really wanted to find it, but I didn't want to tear the precious body apart. For the surgeon it's probably a little more serious if you can't find what you're looking for...but, well, no, my jam holds a similar importance to me. I put my heart into it. Not like a surgeon could put a heart into something, but...wow, I'm done now, I swear...).

Scrape the pods and all the seeds into the pot with the fruits. Place the pot over the stove and bring to a boil over medium heat. Gently stir to make sure all the sugar is melted. Bring the heat down to a simmer, and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until it reduces at least by half or until it reaches the thickness you like. Ambiguous, recipe...

To test to see if the jam is ready, put a small plate in the freezer for a few minutes to cool it. The take a small amount of jam on the tip of a spoon, and drop it on the plate. Put the plate back in the freezer for 30 seconds. Remove it and press down on the jam with your finger and it should be gel-y, not liquid-y. If it's still a little runny, you might want to continue cooking for just a bit longer. Mine took forever and I figured it was because my plum chunks were too big, so I transferred the jam to the blender and pulsed it VERY briefly. I didn't want puréed jam, but I wanted to get the natural pectin in the fruit out from where it was hiding. Then the jam went back on the stove for maybe 10 minutes, stirring religiously because it'll burn now that it's quasi-puréed, and I tried the cold plate trick again.

The canning thing...well, you CAN can this or just stick it in the fridge (apparently you're supposed to remove the vanilla pods but I didn't think the vanilla flavour was that strong as it was and I'd seen other recipes that said to add the pod to the canned jars for aesthetics anyway. If you can, sterilize the cans and rings in boiling water for 20 minutes, remove with tongs (no more touching). Add the lids to gently simmering water for 10 minutes. Fill the jars with the jam to the bottom lip, wipe the rims with a clean cloth or damp paper towel (no touching, remember?) and then use tongs or a jar lifter to place the lids on, followed by the rings. Now tighten with your hand (don't burn yourself). Then jam lifter the jars back into the water you used to sterilize them in the first place, return the water to a boil, and start the timer for 20 minutes once it returns to a boil. Remove from pot, cool, SLIGHTLY tighten the rings. I did this with my tomatoes too soon and now I can't open my tomatoes. It's very sad since I tried to open one for a sambar recipe I made...the sambar ended up being not so great since the tomatoes would have added the necessary acidity to the dish...aw, well. Cooking for 1 means fewer people complain. I didn't say NO ONE complains, but there's always a trouble-maker, isn't there?

Oven-Dried Tomatoes

2010-10-14T08:28:00.000-04:00

So I figured I'd missed the Montreal "sun-drying" opportunity. Fortunately I've been dehydrating like mad and feel very comfortable with my oven door slightly ajar.

When I bought expensive tomatoes from my farmer John to make sauce he told me not to make. He said they're too expensive for sauce. No, no, trust me, I said. In the end it was the best sauce ever. I figured the same tomatoes would make incredible dehydrated (oven-dried) tomatoes. The normal sundried tomatoes you find in stores often have sulfites added for colour or preservation, so if you don't dry your own (who does that anyway?) check the label.

This is actually really easy. Pictured above is how to do it very poorly with a lot more maintenance. What you need is a cake rack placed on a baking sheet. I just used a baking sheet brushed with olive oil. I did not have my Atwater Library membership or my three loaned books on preserving at the time. Had I known...

Anyway, slice Italian tomatoes (the sauce tomatoes that already have less juice, not field or beefsteak or heirloom or cherries - though you could get away with cherries and they'd be sweet...hmm...) in half and place cut side down on the cake rack or something that elevates the tomatoes and lets air pass underneath. This will dry the tomatoes in half the amount of time otherwise required. You can brush the tomatoes on both sides with olive oil if you like, but I'm sure this doesn't expedite the drying process.

Then stick them in the oven at the lowest possible temperature with the door a little open. And wait...

And wait...

And wait...

And then...

If you didn't elevate them you might need to turn them over a few times in the process, though having them skin-side up doesn't really help the liquid evaporate out. I used bigger tomatoes that had two cut sides, so there was more juice but also more turning required. Basically it required a day and a bit of turning to dry these guys out when overnight should have sufficed. I was scared to under-dry them because then they'd go moldy and all would be for naught - those precious tomatoes reduced to barely nothing as it was. I'm stocked for winter. So much pasta sauce...

Honey-Grilled Nectarines

2010-10-13T17:06:00.000-04:00

I only had two white nectarines left; I could have cried. They were a little starchy. It's the end of the summer, so there are really no more great white nectarines to be had until next summer. That's so long away. Months and months of cold - mind-numbing, finger-freezing, shiver-inducing Montreal cold - to get through before I can again experience a perfect white nectarine...it breaks my heart.

So I wanted these two nectarines to be used extraordinarily. To get rid of the starchiness I decided to grill them, and sweeten them, and add lemon to bring out their flavour. It worked. Rarely is cooked fruit better than raw fruit to me, but melted butter makes everything better.

Super simple:
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon water or dessert wine (I used amaretto, which was incredible...)
1 teaspoon unsalted butter
2 fresh bay leaves (optional. I skipped it because I couldn't find mine...not a good sign)
2 ripe nectarines or peaches, thickly sliced

1. In a small bowl, stir together the honey and water (or amaretto...mmm). Heat a large, heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add the butter and add the bay leaves. When the butter sizzles and the bay leaves start to blister, add the fruit.

2. Cook until the bottom is browned, about 2 minutes. Turn it over and let it brown just one minute on the other side. Transfer the fruit to plates or a platter.

3. Reduce the heat to medium-low and pour the honey/amaretto mixture into the pan. Stir, scraping up any brown bits, and then simmer until deep brown, about 2 minutes.

4. Pour the honey mixture over the fruit. Serve with a little creme fraiche, or ice cream, or thick tangy yogurt...or just on its own.

5. Thank someone or something for summer and cry a little inside as you savour what's left of it.

"Raw" Zucchini Noodle Pasta With Sun-Dried Tomato Spinach Cashew Sauce

2010-10-12T11:38:00.000-04:00

I wanted to make zucchini noodles. It's basically impossible to find Quebec organic zucchini now. The season is over. If you see them it's unnatural, and it reminds me of strawberries in December (not jam), but I bought them anyway because I wanted to make zucchini noodles, and I figured that in the winter I'm going to buy zucchini one way or the other, and it definitely won't be local organics then either. Horrible reasoning, I know, but there you have it. Welcome to my head.

I have a slicer thing that I inherited from a former apartment. I used it for my daikon radish threads (amazing by the way. So much better than raw radish. The salt and vinegar cut right through the stomach-turning quality of it and made it something almost sweet)...and then the crank went missing. I have a feeling I threw it out...forgetting what it was for, thinking it was some leftover junk in a wild purge of apartment things. 'Wild' being a relative term - it's not as though I turn into a savage when I clean my apartment . I probably thought about it hard for maybe 5 minutes and weighed my options for a machine-less crank before deciding it was useless and throwing it out. Idiot...

The point is my blade doesn't work anymore. I tried using a bobby pin to replace the crank that keeps the machine together, but that didn't work. I tried a chopstick but that didn't work. Then I decided to just grate the zucchini. It's not the same. In fact, it sucks. All the liquid comes out of the zucchini and you end up with watery "pasta". I mean it's bad enough it's not real pasta, but it's worse that it tastes like chewy strands of watery mush.

Anyway, I had some green zucchini and some yellow and I threw in some red pepper for colour, so at least it looked beautiful.

Really the dish was all about the sauce anyway, which was wonderful. Raw food gets a bad rap, but that's mostly because you find some bad recipes. When you find a good recipe, keep it, use it, and appreciate it.

"Raw" Spinach Cashew Sauce (or spread, or dip...)
Here's the recipe from one of my favourite raw websites, Rawmazing. It's very lemony, this sauce, but that's good because you want something to cut through the mild sweetness of the cashews. I hate using raw shallots and garlic, but it does taste really good. You could also sauté the onions and garlic in the olive oil first, and then add them to the purée if you're not actually a raw foodist. I didn't out of laziness, not out of dogma. The nice thing about raw food is you throw a bunch of things in the blender and don't use a million dishes, pots and pans. The downside is it's all baby food...

...purées and chewy dips. It's a nice, healthy change, but, well, I couldn't do it all the time. On the upside, I feel really strong the days I eat this way (even one meal a day of it, as long as the other meals in the day aren't really starchy or refined sugar-y). I don't get the "raw food high" or "glow" that I see on people who do it all the time, but I'm quite convinced that in a fight I could take them. Well, me and my animal protein could take them, maybe even especially on the days I eat raw, though, if that makes any sense...it's kind of like cross-training, raw food...you do it sometimes and it makes you stronger. Then you do other things other days, and together you're better off.

Anyway, for the pasta sauce I didn't add any extra salt (you put the nut spread into the pasta sauce recipe below on the website) and I didn't have enough sun-dried tomatoes to add a whole cup, but I had maybe a quarter cup and that worked just fine. I'm currently oven-drying my own, so I'll have lots for next time. Hard to get the sun to do that for you this time of year in Montreal...

Anyway, I was very happy with this dish and ate it with more zucchini pasta for the next three days, because that's how long it keeps. The cashews keep fermenting a little in the liquid if you store it in the fridge (or freezer), so either you're going to be eating a lot of nuts or you're going to be throwing some out or sharing (God forbid). Just remember that it can be a good dip or quiche filling as well, and don't let that limit you because I think it's the perfect sandwich spread too. Mmm...lemon. Succo di limone at the Fromagerie Atwater (pure, imported lemon juice, much better than the organic lemons from California, and I would never use non-organic since they're from the same place and are just worse, and I'm a lemon snob). Sorry, carbon footprint.