"It's a Jambalaya-laya": Spicy Lamb Sausage and Chicken

When I lived in Newfoundland my family billeted a choir from Louisiana. Two girls came to stay with us for a few weeks and as a thank-you, the choir threw a big Mardi Gras party for all the host families. That meant tons and tons of food that I'd never seen before. I'd heard of gumbo, rice and peas and jambalaya before, but they're just not foods you generally find on Newfoundland dinner tables. Crawfish? We didn't even import that at the time, about 9 or so years ago. I don't even know if we do now.

When this choir came up from Louisiana each member brought with them a bottle of hot sauce. Not as a gift for the host families, but for themselves, since they'd heard Newfoundland cuisine was so bland. They were right. None of them really liked their touristy meal of fish n' chips - batter, starch, and white fish. Tartar sauce? Really? It doesn't really jump on the taste buds of someone whose injected themselves with chilies since birth. Crab cakes were as if someone had come with a big bucket of water and dumped it on their Cajun cooking and called it Newfoundland cuisine.

So the Mardi Gras meal they made for us featured two versions of every dish, to satisfy the Louisiana and Newfoundland differences in palate:

Regular (spicy) and wimpy (relatively less spicy)

Some Newfoundlanders even found the wimpy versions too spicy! I think Newfoundlanders are about as bad as a lot of French people I know (and probably British too, or Northern European in general) when it comes to dealing with hot spices. There's a reason Newfoundland's provincial spice seems to be "savoury", something you often can't even find outside the province, but makes Christmas stuffing (dressing) in Newfoundland what it is.

Anyway, I loved the spicy versions and the wimpy versions, mostly as comparisons of the way flavour is masked and revealed by different levels of added heat. Sometimes just adding heat wrecks a dish because it overwhelms any actual taste, but sometimes it enhances what's already there. A good cook knows how to balance, and that means having made a recipe a million times to get it all exactly right. Unfortunately (and fortunately, I suppose) when you're dealing with fresh peppers (which they weren't at the time, because it was practically impossible to find anything but an old jalapeno in Newfoundland grocery stores at the time) each time you make a dish will be different anyway because of the individual pepper. So you need to err on the side of "too little" heat, and then bump it up at the end with hot sauce. That's the safe way to do it, but where's the fun in that?

I fell in love with the jambalaya at the Mardi Gras party and spent the next 5 years of my life actively seeking recipes for it to recreate the experience. Jambalaya mixes the creaminess of risotto with the salty, chewy sausage fat of paella (andouille, chorizo or whatever other meat you want to add in addition to the freshness of bell peppers and often the sweetness of shrimp), all covered in garlic, paprika, cayenne, black pepper, and a bunch of other "creole" spices, the makings of which are the secrets of many a southern chef's kitchen. Paul Prudhomme, for example. All those bottled sauces and fresh spice mixes make him a fortune for good reason. You can buy bad ones, but there's no point since it's just a mixture of spices you should have in your pantry anyway. They're usually even made with ground spices, so you don't even need to bother grinding them yourself. Just make sure they're fresh or the balance of any recipe you use will be affected.

Mostly the recipes I discovered in the next few years were really high in fat from all the meat whose juices don't get drained off (that is the flavour, after all) and oil, and you generally overeat because it's like baby food - it is so easy to swallow and let slide down your throat. My first successful recipe called for a can of tomato soup...of all the recipes I'd tried, maybe 3, this was the best, but now I look back in horror. A can of soup for flavour? Was I born in the depression?

Then all I could find were tomato-based recipes and I found them too tomato-paste-y. They'd end up being more like sauce than jambalaya. I wanted to get away from all the tomatoes and I wanted it thick and sticky. This would depend on the rice used too, which should generally be long-grain.

Then I stopped eating sausage, and jambalaya is just not jambalaya without it. Usually there's shrimp and chicken too - you just toss in whatever fresh meat and meat leftovers you have in the kitchen - but the real flavour comes from the sausage. It should be a little hot (or a lot hot), and add its own salt and spice and savouriness to the skillet. It should be the body of the dish. If you take out the body, you're left with...the mind? The soul? Neither of these things are delicious.

But when I found lamb sausages at the Plateau farmers' market in Montreal I decided to use half to make a tamale pie and the rest to make jambalaya. It was going to be a real treat, so I needed the perfect recipe. I think I did well this time. Well, I think Emeril Lagasse from the Food Network plus my tinkering did well this time. Here's the hybrid recipe:

Ingredients
4 small lamb merguez sausages (traditionally it's andouille, but this worked fine. This was a bit of a random amount, but don't use too many. In fact, the smaller the better because you want to take them out of their casings and chop them up fine. The more they spread out in the jambalaya the more each bite will have a good flavour)
1 small cooked chicken breast (optional. The mix of meat in this is really nice, but it makes it dense and protein-heavy, so only use if you want)
A handful of shrimp (maybe 1/2 lb. You don't need a lot, but they're great to toss on at the last minute to give a very tender texture to contrast the chewy sausage. I didn't have them so I didn't use them)
2 tbsp creole seasoning (below...I love that in the original recipe it's called the chef's "essence" - Emeril Lagasse, did you expect all the jokes I'm sure you now receive about women like me cooking with your essence?)
1 tbsp olive oil
3 peppers, diced (green, red, orange, yellow or black. Whatever you want. The bitter green and black ones are more traditional)
1 onion, diced
1 cup celery, diced (I used half the bottom of a head of a bok choy. It's very similar and it was available at the farmers' market. Celery was not. I eat the greens of the bok choy seperately)
3-5 cloves garlic (about 2 tbsp!), diced. This depends how much you like garlic. I like garlic.
1/2 chopped tomatoes, diced
3 bay leaves
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp hot sauce (I actually don't have any of this, believe it or not, so I used a bit of liquid from a jar of open organic spicy salsa. It did the trick)
3/4 cup long grain rice (I used basmati. Not exactly traditional, but it worked perfectly)
3 cups chicken stock (or vegetable)
Fresh black pepper to taste

Creole Spice Blend (use all dried spices and just mix this all together. It's a great spice rub for meat at a another meal on another day, since it keeps in the fridge for a few weeks. My fall-back for fish or chicken is a dijon mustard on the meat or fish and then a generous sprinkle of this spice blend. Cook however you desire):
2 1/2 tbsp paprika (preferably a hot smoked variety)
2 tbsp salt (you need all of this. It's what makes this amazingly delicious)
2 tbsp garlic powder (Emeril and I are very much in agreement on this considerably large amount)
1 tbsp black pepper
1 tbsp onion powder (I don't have any of this...it's sadder without it, but not the end of the world. The end of the world is if you skip the salt)
1 tbsp cayenne (love it...)
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp dried thyme (these last two are the less-expected creole spices that you wouldn't think would be included but always are. Sometimes basil is also involved)

Looks like a ton of ingredients but this is a big mixed bowl of flavours - meats, vegetables and rice. You don't need to make any side dishes if you don't want to, though I always do because it's too easy to eat too much of this in one sitting otherwise.

Directions: In a bowl combine shrimp, chicken and the 2 tbsp creole spice blend. Don't crush the sausage but I am big advocate of using your hands to completely coat the meat in spice. Wash your hands. Cover and place the bowl in the fridge to keep cool while you make the rest of the recipe.
In a large saucepan or skillet heat oil over medium heat.

When hot add the onion, pepper and celery, and cook for 3 minutes. Add the garlic, tomatoes, bay leaves, Worcestershire sauce and hot sauce. Stir in rice and slowly add the broth, stirring to coat all the rice kernels.

 Bring the skillet to a boil, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook until the rice is almost tender and the dish is thickened, stirring occasionally (about 15 minutes).

Now add the chicken mixture and sausage from the meat mixture. Try to keep the shrimp out. Cook until meat is done, about 8 minutes more, then add the shrimp for 2 minutes. They just need to turn pink and really don't need a long cooking time at all. Basically if you're not sure if they're cooked yet, they will be by the time you turn off the heat, serve the jambalaya, and sit down to eat it. Season to taste with black pepper first, and only then add more of the creole seasoning if you want. 

Die of spice-induced euphoria.

Candy Garlic and Salt-Roasted Zucchini With Deep-Fried Onions: Tiau

What the heck is a tiau? Nobody seems to know. I googled and googled, and then gave up and asked people, and still I have no satisfactory response. Chefs are always coming up with elaborate names for dishes, but I'm sure this one has a history. It's from Josée di Stasio's "A la di Stasio" cookbook, and this woman is neither careless not snooty. I think it may be related to the pattern created by stacking the vegetables, or it may just be "stacked vegetables" and have nothing to do with the pattern. Does that mean it's a big structure? A leaning tower of vegetables?

7 ingredients and some are optional:

Zucchini (mandatory if you're me)
Tomatoes (optional...unless you're Italian, I suppose)
Garlic (the best part of the dish, but in theory you could do without)
Onions (the guilty pleasure of the dish, but you could go without)
Olive oil (no where near optional)
Salt (you'll hate yourself for skipping this)
Herbes de Provence (I'm fresh out, so any fresh or dried herb works fine. I used oregano, but more traditional would be basil, parsley, thyme or sage, I suppose)

Oh, I lied. Add some fresh black pepper (it's optional, too, but it's a nice addition)

This is the ultimate gourmet but simple side dish (aka "Italian"). You get all your vegetables, but you load it up with a ton of olive oil. The garlic turns into crunchy candy, the onions into melting savouriness, and the zucchini into meaty, flavourful slices of my own personal heaven.

 The first time I made this I only had one small tomato, so I diced it up and scattered it on top of the stacked zucchini, but the next time I did it properly and sliced the tomatoes thick. The dish looked better, but the tomatoes were too juicy and acidic, and a little bitter, and made the meal disappointing. So I promote the diced tomato method or none at all. If you wait for an hour to cook something, and your anticipation and expectations build, it's no fun getting to the finish line only to discover that you get a flimsy certificate for the win, not a trophy, not even a small medal or goody bag - just acidic tomatoes.

Preheat the oven to 400 Fahrenheit. Slice a bunch of tomatoes (maybe), zucchini and (significantly less) onion into 3/8-inch slices (a little thinner is better because they'll cook a little fast, and if at the end of the hour you're getting a little antsy to eat, you can probably pull the dish out a little early. An hour's an awfully long time sometimes).

Mince the garlic. Don't chop. Normally I just finely chop when it says mince. My garlic press is junk. It does odd things to the garlic and kind of makes it seem like spaghetti squash the way the tendrils have a strange texture. In this case, you need to mince. The garlic needs to be that thin to roast properly and become delicious bundles instead of bitter pieces (for those who don't know, a mince is just a very, very, very, very fine chop, and home chefs generally use a garlic press to achieve it).

Take a large baking dish (or two if you love leftovers like me - makes great roasted vegetable sandwiches the next day) and line the bottom with the onions, half the garlic, a sprinkle of good salt, your herb of choice, and some grinds of fresh pepper. Then pour over about 2-3 tbsp of olive oil. I've never actually measured this. You just want a fair bit. This is Italian, after all, so add lots. Make the dish correctly the first time, and then play with amounts the next.

Then stack the tomatoes and zucchini (green zucchini and yellow if you can find them, just to make the dish look pretty) in a way that looks artistic on top of the onions. Sprinkle with the remaining minced garlic, some more (a generous amount) of salt, some more of your herb, some grinds of black pepper, and another 2-3 tbsp of olive oil. Do make this recipe with less oil you could put all the vegetables in a large bowl and add a few tablespoons of the oil. Then mix it in with your hands, and THEN place the onions and garlic in the baking dish, and top with the stacked tomatoes and zucchini.

My garlic clumped together because minced garlic doesn't really like to sprinkle...this was amazing. I don't think I'd pre-toss the vegetables just for this reason. The garlic needs the oil to roast well and mellow out, but if you toss it with the other vegetables it would spread out properly and not turn into clusters.

Don't over-bake this. Stick it in the oven for 1 hour. It may need a bit more time if your vegetables are thick, but probably not. With the tomatoes in it, there's not a big chance of the dish drying out and things getting stuck to the bottom, but even if you don't use a lot of tomatoes, like I did the first time, there should be enough oil and liquid from the zucchini to create a pool on the bottom. THAT's why the onions are so incredible. They've sat at the bottom the whole roasting time and soaked it all in. So when you serve the dish there should be puddles of oil and onion and the latter is undeniably delicious. It's basically become onion confit, but without the sugar that's usually associated with it. Olive oil deep-fried onions...

Deep-fried garlic is not as exciting, and neither was the tomato, but my lovely salted zucchini....I think I ate a whole dish of these, and was very thirsty afterward. Once, I burnt the dish a little and the onions on the bottom charred! It was kind of like onion chips, though. It will probably give me cancer, but it also gave me so much joy. Toss up?

One-Ingredient Ice Cream

Know those cookbooks that are called "5-Ingredient Dinners!"? It's the exclamation market that really does it for me - I don't get how people can get so excited by cream of mushroom soup, because inevitably Campbell's is called in to play in these poor excuses for well-rounded meals.

Still, when I was forwarded a recipe of a 1-ingredient, dairy- and soy-free ice cream I was both excited and skeptical. I guess it's the optimist in me. Some would just call it gullibility, but in this case those people would be wrong. Hurray!

You have to like bananas for this one, but if you even only like them just a little, the texture will win you over. Take some overripe bananas (lots of brown spots...no mold) and stick them in the freezer. Lots of people do this anyway, because if you're going to bake with them it really doesn't matter if the peel goes brown and the flesh loses its consistency. In fact, that's exactly what you want. In the freezer the bananas will start looking bad, but look past mere appearances and anticipate the most incredible effect of freezing:

When you purée frozen bananas their texture loses the graininess and becomes completely smooth!!!!

There are other fruit that are improved when you freeze them, like grapes and lychees, but those are because the sugar intensifies and they taste sweeter. Bananas change consistency! I actually only figured this out when I made the "raw" banana cream pie and then had to freeze the leftovers. Eating the frozen pie (because I'd NEVER stick it in the microwave to defrost was SO good, like an ice cream cake, because all of a sudden the little pieces of nuts and rough texture were gone, magically smoothed out by the miracles of freezing.

So:
1. Stick your bananas in the freezer - however many you want since there are no other ingredients to add and with which to balance quantities (You can pre-peel and roughly chop them before freezing to make the next step easier if you want)
2. Remove from freezer, peel, and roughly chop the bananas. Once they're slightly thawed this will work better, and the ice cream will blend a little more easily.
3. Place in blender or food processor and blend on a high speed.

The only problem is because this is so thick and creamy it may not blend too well in a blender, so be careful pushing it down with a spatula. Too many spatulas have met their end this way. Also, too many eyes have ended up with rubber in them from flying spatulas...

My favourite time to eat ice cream is when it has just started to melt a little, that helps get rid of the granulated texture, so this is perfect, since while the ice cream's been puréeing its also been warming up, melting a little, and smoothing out your delicious treat.

Here's the original website. You can add things, like peanut butter or honey, but try it once on its own before you start to experiment. If you like bananas, and you like ice cream, you'll like this.

A New Farmers' Market: Almost "Raw" Banana Cream Pie

You might think I'd be getting farmers' market-ed out by this point. How can I keep up my frenetic pace of purchasing fresh produce? Well, it's not like I buy a week's worth of groceries everywhere I go. I buy one or two items, and only what I need for specific recipes I have planned (plus a few whimsical purchases (yes, I call half a dozen corn a "purchase of whimsy"...). My last expedition was to the Fete Éco-Bio Paysanne out at Tohu, the home of Cirque du Soleil. I was expecting more a of a farmers' market setup with tons of fresh produce, and there was some of that, but mostly it was companies offering samples of products, everything from energy bars to soy and rice milk, to yogurt, cheese, ionic foot baths, reflexology, skin care, make-up and two raw restaurants' booths. There was a lot of variety, but I found a conversation I had with a "raw" woman the most interesting.

She started off by explaining the concept of "raw" in a very much "holier-than-thou" kind of way, discussing how bad everything else was for your body, and eating raw is the best thing in the world for absolutely everyone. She got into talking dogmatically about soaking nuts, at which point I interrupted her practiced rant to tell her about the raw banana cream pie I had just made. I told her, self-congratulatorily, that I'd soaked and dehydrated the nuts, but before researching the recipe I hadn't known that this should be done. Her response was something along the lines of, "Sorry to burst your bubble, but almost as important as soaking your nuts is the length of time for which you soak them," and certainly I hadn't soaked them properly, even though she didn't ask me for specifics. I went home and found out later (since she didn't know off-hand...) that almonds need 8-12 hours, but cashews only need 2-3. Now I wondered if soaking for too long was an issue, because I certainly hadn't under-soaked them, but this woman had berated me for my nut ineptitude. Apparently it's not really an issue for most nuts, but cashews are already processed twice so they really don't need much soaking to get them soft. Also, if they soak too long, or dry too slowly, they get a "disagreeable" taste. The soaking is supposed to remove the enzyme-inhibitors that make it harder to digest the nuts, but cashews you don't have so much to worry about because of the processing. Walnuts, brazil nuts, macademia nuts, etc. soak longer. 

Anyway, the point is that I got away from that booth fairly quickly and found my way to the Crudessence booth, my favourite raw-food restaurant in Montreal. They had samples of their "cheese"-cake that was FAR superior to both my raw orange chocolate cheesecake and this banana cream pie, which were both very good, mind you.I think it's mostly because they use a LOT of agave nectar so it's incredibly sweet.

I'll get on with it now. I got this recipe from the same raw site as my last orange chocolate cheesecake, Rawmazing, and I decided to just do one big pie instead of mini, what they call "individual tart servings", but which are much too big for that. This is a perfect dessert when you want to be full after a meal without eating a whole bunch of sugar and things that aren't "good for you". This is NOT low in fat or sugar, but it's all the healthy kinds - nothing refined, nothing saturated.

Crust:

1 1/2 cups walnuts, soaked and dehydrated

1 cup brazil nuts, soaked and dehydrated

5 fresh dates (soaked until soft. After doing some research it seems that medjool dates are the dates of choice for raw recipes. They're much bigger than the pitted dates you'll find at bulk places. I actually used fresh Iranian dates, which are smaller in size, but much juicier. They also don't have that intensely sweet cough-syrupy taste to them. Good medjools don't either, but I was eating my way through the box of fresh dates anyway AND you don't have to soak fresh ones. Les Douceurs du Marché as well as the bulk place in the Atwater market carry them, but I've seen them in P/A supermarkets and La Vieille Europe on St-Laurent. Also, who knows how long you're supposed to soak the dates for! At least there are presumably no enzyme-inhibitors in those.

The original recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of coconut butter in the crust as well, but I just skipped it since the orange cheesecake recipe had the same kind of crust but didn't call for it and I'm slightly intolerant.

So you need to soak the walnuts and brazil nuts for at least 8 hours (overnight is fine) in at least twice as much water (preferably at room temperature covered in a breathable material like a clean kitchen cloth). You can also put them in the fridge, which I think doesn't work as quickly, but is safer for contamination. When you're fermenting anything (and that's basically what this is doing to the nuts) I don't trust "room temperature". In the morning drain and rinse the nuts, place them on a baking sheet (or several) and put them in your oven on the lowest heat with the door open for 12-24 hours. My brazil nuts and walnuts dehydrated well this way, but I had the cashews in a better-insulated dish, so they didn't dry out completely. This was fine, though, since I was using them right away and they were just supposed to be soaked and not dehydrated for the banana cream pie filling below. NOTE! I soaked extra cashews and the ones that didn't dehydrate completely after the soaking got moldy in my cupboard! Freezing them with a little water left in them is fine, I believe, but here's where "room temperature" comes back to haunt you. Throwing out formerly-delicious cashews is sad, but very necessary.

Pulse walnuts and brazil nuts in food processor until coarsely chopped. Add the dates dd to food processor with coconut butter (or not). Process until well blended. You might need to press down to get everything to process well, so be careful. Press into a large pie shell, reserving about 1/4 cup of the filling for garnish. I ended up with a bit too much filling, so you can either snack on it or make an extra little tart. The topping also works well on top of yogurt (very not-raw, I know, though ironically I only eat "raw" (unpasteurized and un-thermised) cheeses and probiotic (similar) yogurts anyway. The crust should be 1/4″ thick all around, but who can actually tell? Just make it as thick or thin as you want. It'll add some savoury-ness and crunch to the pie since the filling is creamy and sweet. I'll just say "crust to taste" and leave it at that.

Filling:

2 cups cashews (soaked 3-4 hours, not dehydrated, but dehydrate any extras you're not using for this recipe)

1 cup young coconut flesh (doesn't that just sound creepy? For a type of eating that doesn't eat animal life this sounds awfully meat-a-tarian. I skipped this because coconut and I don't get along, and just used an extra banana and an extra 1/4-1/2 cup of cashews. It makes the filling less creamy and rich (probably the difference between my cake and the amazing one at Crudessence) but my stomach will be happier. 

1/4 cup coconut water (from fresh coconut). Since I didn't use the coconut I just used water here.

1/4 cup coconut butter (I used 3 tablespoons of earth balance. The flavour is strong and creamy. If you're not vegan or lactose-intolerant, I very much promote using amazing cultured butter here. There's also Becel vegan, which in my opinion tastes better than earth balance (even better if you live in the US and can find the soy-free version of earth balance) but I hate supporting Unilever, the becel company. 

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1/4 cup raw honey (the recipe calls for agave, but I don't like it. Honey has a higher glycemic index, but it also has more flavour, and my unpasteurized "raw" version is delicious.

1 vanilla bean...or 1/2 tsp vanilla extract. Yeah, vanilla beans are expensive...but so is my organic, THICK vanilla extract. I really need to make my own extract. It's just vanilla pods and alcohol.

2 Bananas, sliced (I used 3 because I replaced the coconut flesh)

Your blender or food processor gets a workout. You need to clean it out (or not if you don't mind an imperfect texture in your filling) after making the crust. I processed the cashews, 1 banana and the water first. Then I added the lemon juice, honey, earth balance and one more banana. It was really hard to process this since it's very thick, so be very careful if you press down into the blender when it's turned on. If you make a lot of these desserts, invest in a good food processor or vitamix. When it's all mixed, add the last sliced banana (the first two just need to be roughly chopped so they blend, but this one should be a little more carefully sliced) and just stir. Don't blend it in. Pour the filling into the nut crust, sprinkle the top with the remaining crust, and refrigerate for 30 minutes. The pie will thicken as it cools, and the top will turn a darker shade of purple since the banana oxidizes, which is beautiful. 

The online recipe says you can drizzle with "raw" chocolate, but I didn't like the recipe since I didn't have any cacao butter and I didn't want to use anymore earth balance to replace coconut butter.

I would have been more happy with just finding some really good quality dark chocolate, melting it, and drizzling it over top. You could also melt it with a little sweetener (agave or honey) to make a bittersweet chocolate with a high percentage of cacao into a semisweet chocolate without the refined or cane sugar generally used, or add a little almond milk to turn it into milk chocolate...so many options.

Oh, and since this cake only lasts a few days in the fridge, freeze it after 2. It's even better when you eat it frozen since the banana becomes silken and smooth.

The Peppermaster: Blueberry Miso Vinaigrette

I sampled every single maple- and dairy-free vinegar and sauce at the Peppermaster tent in the Plateau Farmers' Market. That's about 20 different condiments. Afterward, everything burned, and I hadn't liked any of the hot sauces at all, "peppermaster" though he self-proclaimedly was. Instead I bought a blueberry vinegar that was incredibly pungent on its own. It had made me wrinkle my nose at it, but that's what a vinegar should be. You don't buy a vinegar because it's smooth, after all.

So how can a peppermaster get away with selling a blueberry vinegar? He calls it blueberry vinegar with black pepper. You don't really taste the black pepper, and it's about the same (or worse, because the black pepper wouldn't be as freshly grated) than having a pure blueberry vinegar and grating fresh black pepper into it (since the pepper is a little muted by the vinegar), but it's really hard to find a really good blueberry vinegar. It's even less common to be able to sample one before buying.

This vinaigrette dilutes the vinegar with yogurt and sweetens it with honey. Feel free to use agave nectar or sugar instead, but I actually have a blueberry honey so that worked nicely.

Blueberry Miso Vinaigrette

Ingredients:
2 tbsp miso
1 tbsp blueberry vinegar (or apple cider, or rice wine vinegar, or other vinegar)
3 tbsp plain yogurt
1 tsp honey
2 cloves garlic, minced (or 1/4 tsp garlic powder)
2 tsp olive oil

Because of the yogurt in the recipe you don't need a lot of oil. I just give it a splash. Actually I'm pretty loose with most of the ingredients. As long as you taste it after to see what it needs more of, you're golden.

First mix the miso and vinegar to get the clumps out of the miso, then add everything except the oil. You can shake it or stir it or whisk it to combine. Then add the oil in a stream as you stir to emulsify it. The vinaigrette only lasts a few days in the fridge, so use it up fast or make a half recipe. It works really well as a dip for vegetables (especially carrots and tomatoes, or any sweet vegetable), and it worked especially well for raw, shaved beets with a tiny bit of orange juice on salad.

Refried Beans: "Southwest Slow-Cooking"

How can you slow-cook refried beans?

I have a cookbook I never use. Everyone has those, I know, but for me to own a cookbook and never use it there has to be something wrong with it. This one looks so beautiful. I had such high-hopes for it when I got it, but nothing that I've ever made from it has turned out well. The first time it was the fault of un-ripe tomatillos. The second time there was really no excuse. Dismayed, I put the book aside, until now.

I returned to it with skepticism. All I needed to do was make refried beans. Yes you can buy a can of refried beans for $1.00 when they're on sale at the grocery store, but all that sodium...sometimes there's even lard involved (the more traditional kinds) or tons of some other kind of disgusting hydrogenated fat or shortening. No, I would make my own. They're even cheaper this way, and should be more delicious since they'll be much fresher. The last time I made them was in my first Toronto apartment. I remember making a breakfast of refried beans, eggs and salsa. It doubled as lunch. Not brunch. I ate two meals of it that day. The beans were under-salted and under-other-spiced, but I still loved the texture. Beans are hard to digest, so I didn't (and don't) do this regularly, but sometimes I get a craving. They're also about the only thing I like about brunches at restaurants (huevos rancheros), though I often am completely disappointed (I don't ask what's in the beans, they're definitely never home-made, and I can't have the sour cream anyway...but the guacamole can make the meal).

Anyway, I cooked up a bunch of black beans (pinto beans are just as traditional, if not more so), skimmed off the scum, and used turmeric to reduce the toxic enzymes that cause digestive woes. I heard they're toxic, but please prove me wrong if you know better? I mean, not horribly toxic, but enough to upset your digestion a little (I think they work the same way as in nuts, and that's why "raw" foodists pre-soak and dehydrate their nuts, as well as sprout them). Then I went to this book and found their refried bean recipe. It was too easy...

I didn't cook the beans in the slow-cooker like they said just because you can't skim off the scum that way. So I jumped to the next step of adding the spices. Normally refried beans having a "re-frying" step, as the name implies, but these say to just add the spices to the cooking beans. Nope. I will re-fry, thanks. So I turned to the internet and found another recipe that calls for cooking in pork fat and adding garlic and onion. Then I just did it my way...

I took about a chunk of my frozen lamb fat and melted it in a big skillet (lamb instead of pork, for flavour), then added 5 minced cloves of garlic. I let it cook for a good 8 minutes to caramelize it before stirring in the beans (about 2 cups), a tbsp of fresh oregano, 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, and 3/4 tsp of salt. The salt is what will really make it flavourful, so I don't skimp here.

This all got stirred around to coat and then I tried mashing the mixture in another bowl to no avail. I gave up and tossed it in the blender in batches, pushing it down dangerously with a spatula to make it purée. The trick is to add a little water or broth to get it to the right consistency. Dry refried beans suck, but this shouldn't be soupy either. Broth is more flavourful than water, but since this was going into another recipe, not just being eaten on its own, I wanted to be careful with the sodium content, even though I'd added a fair bit of salt already.

Well, it worked. My best refried beans ever. It was all about the fleur de sel I used. A little went a long way. The fresh beans were so much better than canned, too. It may look disgusting, but any Southwestern food-loving person would be hard-pressed to say these weren't good refried beans. They made my Tamale Pie with Ground lamb, lamb sausage and chili-cornmeal crust to-die-for.

An Experience In Life: Tamale Pie With Chili-Cornmeal Crust

We all have those days, the ones when what should go perfectly smoothly turns into a disaster. 

I co-host a podcast on Midnight Poutine. It's kind of the highlight of my week. Probably better even than co-hosting the Friday Morning Show After on CKUT Radio (I have some audio excerpts at my other blog, Interculturiosity, that you can listen to if you don't want to pick through the archives in the link). Basically the day of the podcast plotted against me. I used to live in an apartment on the same  street where the podcast gets recorded. It was my street! How do you get lost going to your old street? I even noticed that the houses on the walk up the street to the supposed house were different. "Oh, that person must have completely re-landscaped their front lawn!....I don't recognize that bench," but I thought nothing of the changes because it's Outremont and people have money enough for such renovations. I even figured I'd walked passed the street that's supposed to intersect my old street halfway up it...twice! So obviously I'm an idiot and it's completely my fault. How can I blame the universe for such stupidity? Basically, I wasted 2 hours of my life trying to get to this recording session of the podcast, plus all the work I'd done finding music, writing up commentary and listening to the other songs to have an informed opinion of them for the show. Wasted. An experience in life...like my blueberries.

When I first moved to Montreal I went to Jean-Talon market. If you're interested in food and cooking, and you live in Montreal, that's what you do - go to Jean-Talon. The chaos, the havoc, the smells, the tastes (not as friendly as St. Lawrence in sampling, mind you)...it's a city block of joy for me. Basically, if someone took me to Jean-Talon, not knowing me very well, because it was THEIR favourite place, I would probably marry them on the spot. That or live common law, happily, and refuse a commitment ring in favour of a pound of oysters...but that's just me.

Anyway, one of the first times I went to the market I took my granny cart - one of those old lady carts that I'd seen in Chinatown in Toronto before I moved. Ever so practical, those old Chinese Grandmothers. Mine was even uncomfortably low to the ground, intended for short women, making it difficult for me (though not a tall woman) to drag behind me. I walked the 30 minutes through Outremont, the Mile End, Little Italy, and the beginnings of the cultural mélange that happens on rue Jean-Talon all the way to the market. Being the end of the summer, I loaded up on fresh produce until my cart was full. For me, the beginning of September means buying as many fruit as you can to freeze for the lean months to come. So that's what I did. I topped off my laden cart with $20 worth of Quebec blueberries - the wild ones that actually taste like something, not the big, fat New Jersey ones that are all brawn and no brain - flesh and no flavour. 

I was not going to walk my full cart back to Outremont. My back was crying out for a better method, so I took the metro. The subway in Montreal is notoriously awful, but seemingly only to people who have experienced other, more successful and efficient, subway systems. Torontonians, to put it in perspective, even the Toronto system is better than Montreal. At Jean-Talon metro there is no elevator. Some of the multiple entrances don't even have escalators, which means you're lugging your heavy stuff wherever you go. God forbid you try to leave the province with a suitcase. Impossible unless you're a Russian weight-lifter. If you're a small woman, you can carry a shoulder bag and no more, without assistance. 

Fortunately the Montreal population is extremely kind. I made it down my first escalator and first flight of stairs without incident. Then I got to the big flight - approximately 60 stairs. I had a method, you see. I take the lower part of the cart in my left hand and jam the bar handle into my hip. Holding the stair railing with my right I shuffle step down the stairs. It worked fine, but when a nice gentleman offers to help, you don't say no. I lifted from the horizontal bar handle and he lifted from the back...and there went my blueberries.

They tumbled all the way down the 60-odd steps. The man was apologetic, but much like the podcast incident, it was really all my fault. It was at this moment that a woman who had seen the whole thing turned to me with a sympathetic expression and said,

"C'est une expérience de la vie."

...I was so angry with myself. All those blueberries, expensive blueberries, lost by one thoughtless action, but yes, it was an experience in life. I was in a new city, riding the metro, experiencing Montreal life with a grocery cart full of local produce. To top it off I had interacted with two kind Francophone individuals (the man who was really my "expérience" accomplice and a woman who was my kindhearted judge. 

When I got home that day all I could do was to try my best to enjoy the food that had not spilled, and when I got home from the podcast recording that was not a podcast recording the other day all I could do was enjoy my leftovers of Tamale Pie with Chili-Cornmeal Crust. I got there. See? It wasn't the end of the world, just one more experience in life.

Ingredients:

1 tsp oil

1 lb ground lamb from Agneau Des Venne farm (plateau and mile end farmers' markets)

3 small lamb sausages from Agneau Des Venne farm (plateau and mile end farmers' markets. That leaves 4 leftover to make jambalaya...coming soon)

2 onions, diced

1/2 head bok choy, sliced and diced

1 cup green beans, diced

1 jalapeno pepper, optional. I skipped it but only because I didn't have one

1 tbsp chili powder (this makes up for the loss of heat, but not of flavour from the jalapeno)

1 tbsp cumin seeds

1 tbsp oregano (fresh is best, but dried is fine)

1 tsp salt (make sure your sausages, stock and refried beans aren't overwhelmingly salty or you'll have to reduce this)

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 cup ketchup (I only had about 1/2 cup, and it made a big difference! I use a no-sugar-added variety, but Heinz will give you a much higher sugar content. Be careful!)

2 cups (1 can) refried beans

1 cup lamb stock (or beef or chicken. Not vegetable. That's just weird since it's a heavy meat dish. Even chicken is best only used in dire straits)

1 1/2 cup corn kernels

Topping:

1 cup cornmeal

1/2 cup flour (all purpose is best for consistency, but I ran out of my gluten-free flour blend, so I used whole wheat. It was just fine, but just not as smooth as it would have been)

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

1 cup milk (or almond breeze, or soy milk)

1/4 cup melted butter (or margarine or Earth Balance)

1 egg, beaten with a fork or whisked

1 cup Monterey Jack cheese (optional. I did not use this...but I think it would have helped. With the cornmeal the topping tasted just a little bitter and I think the cheese would have covered that up, especially since there's no sugar. It also makes it a whole lot richer, so if you're watching fat content, be aware!

1 can chopped mild green chilies (Okay, Montreal, now I know that the city has some great Mexican grocery stores, but there seem to be none in my area. I went to the Atwater market and nowhere could I find a proper can of chopped green chilies. My fallback place, Les Douceurs du Marché, providers of all things gourmet and obscure, especially in packaged, imported and canned goods, almost failed me. They had one option for canned chilies and they were no where near mild. I would not call jalapenos "mild". I ended up using an entire jar of sliced (not chopped, but that's pedantic) in this topping. Needless to say it more than made up for the lack of jalapeno in the base. Heat would have been coming out my ears had I added the optional fresh jalapeno. I really, really liked the chili-studded topping though. It turned into a real Mexican treat and not just a meat pie from just about anywhere. 

I never thought I'd make this recipe in the first place, but I went to the Plateau farmers' market one day and the guy at the Agneau des Venne stand (lamb and sheep from the Venne farm in the upper Laurentians in Quebec) looked at me in the way that means "You're not a customer." It's that look where there are free samples and they definitely think you're just there for the samples. Well, I was a little offended, even though the man was very nice, but he deals with this all farmers' market long. So I started asking questions and sampling (and I rarely eat any kind of sausage but I tried 4 lamb ones) and decided it was high time I made some jambalaya. The picture above is obviously not jambalaya, but I remembered also looking through my slow-cooker cookbook and seeing a recipe for a tamale pie that I was pretty sure involved some ground beef as well. So I bought some ground lamb and some merguez sausages (not exactly traditional for a tamale, but very, very delicious with a hot sweetness). Sure proved that man wrong, didn't I...

The recipe is actually a whole lot like a shepherd's pie but with some added chili heat in the crust itself. I changed some of the ingredients (I didn't have carrots, but I had green beans. I didn't have celery but I had the white part of bok choy) but it all worked out really well.

Tamales aren't just Mexican, so I should really shouldn't be saying this is specifically a Mexican-style dish. Apparently they go back to the Mayans and the Incas, so about 5000BC. Also, the whole point of tamales is they get stuffed in plantain leaves or corn husks and there is definitely no stuffing here. That's kind of like saying a shepherd's pie is a sandwich, or even a sandwich pie. That's just weird. 

Anyway, I love doughs, so sticking a spicy, moist dough on top of a stew of spicy, richly-flavoured meat is what I think of as a great idea, whatever the name. 

I changed the recipe process a little too:

Sauté the ground lamb and sausages (removed from casings) in the heated oil until there's no more pink. 

Remove the meat with a slotted spoon to a pig plate layered with some paper towel to absorb the fat. Don't press down with the paper towel (you want some juices to remain) but you don't want the excess. Yes you're draining flavour too, but there's more than enough flavour leftover. Don't worry. This makes the difference between 20 grams of fat in the meal and 30...approximately. Place the meat in the slow-cooker (or a deep-dish, large baking dish or casserole, for a non-slow-cooker version)

Drain the fat from the skillet (not into the sink...into a glass jar that you can keep in the fridge until full and then throw out. Or you could re-use the fat soon since it is so delicious, but it won't last forever unless you freeze it and then I'm not even sure because of the spices and things in the sausages. Help?

You don't need to wipe the pan, but just by pouring off the fat, there'll be enough left to sauté the onions, green beans, and bok choy over medium heat. After 5 minutes add the jalapeno (optional) and the base spices. 

 Cook 1 minute then add the ketchup and refried beans. 

Mix and then add the lamb stock (or beef or chicken) and the corn. Bring to a boil and then transfer it to the slow-cooker. Stir into the meat.

Now a little bit of baking, but don't worry baking novices, this is a very safe intro. 

In a big bowl combine the dry ingredients (cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt and pepper) with a whisk or a big wooden spoon or a spatula...or just a big spoon of whatever sort. The whisk is best because it adds air to the topping, making it lighter and fluffier in the end. Make a well in the middle. In a small bowl melt the butter to have it ready to go. In another small bowl beat the egg with a whisk or a fork. Only now pour the butter, whisked egg and milk into the well in the flours. If the butter is too hot and you add it to the egg or milk in that state, it may cook the egg or curdle the milk a little. Not the end of the world, but not the lightest, fluffiest cornmeal dough ever. 

Whisk all the ingredients together (or stir) and then add the cheese (optional) and chopped chilies. 

This time I just stir because the dough gets stuck in the whisk when it's too thick. It's good to use it in the last step when the dough is being combined, even if it does get stuck, but now it's not such a big deal. 

Spread the dough evenly on top of the base in the slow-cooker and cook on high for 3-4 hours or low for 6-8. I chose low for 5 and then high for 1 and that also worked out fine. Normally I wouldn't be so bold, but the meat is basically already cooked and you're just supposed to cook until the top is risen and crusty. My slow-cooker cooks a bit unevenly so one side of the crust was fairly brown and definitely ready and the other was a tiny bit soft, so I ate from the crisp side and will make sure the rest gets thoroughly microwaved or baked in reheating leftovers another day.

You can also mix the meat and vegetables in a large casserole dish, pour the topping evenly over the filling, and bake at about 375 Fahrenheit for about 45 minutes, is my guess. That is very much just a guess, so make sure you watch it and take it out when the topping has risen and is crusty and slightly browned. The meat should be bubbling underneath.

Mmm...pie. Spicy pie. It's not a tamale, but it's has a whole lot more meat, and a whole lot more comfort, than a skimpy cornmeal-wrapped chicken or beef thing.