Dates, Leopoldo, and Tania

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.

Cheating on My Fruit Guy

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...

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

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!

60% Chance of Success Pouding Chomeur - The Bowl Was More Than Half Full

Unfortunately it still wasn't great. I took a pouding chomeur recipe and made it refined sugar free. Basically I knew I'd be eating it late at night and a cup and a half of brown sugar, or two cups of maple syrup were not my idea of a night cap. So, I took a bunch of fresh dates and puréed them with water and a few dried dates for the cake part, and then took a whole lot more dried dates and puréed them with water for the syrup. I had a strong feeling it was going to taste watered down, but I did it anyway. I tried to keep the water-sugar ratio decent, but I kind of figured I'd add too much water because my blender is not the greatest, so to get anything resembling a purée you need to add more water than you would hope.
This was a mini disaster, the likes of which I've not had since my mousse days. Basically I puréed fine a few times, and then the third time I'd forgotten to tighten the blender bottom all the way and didn't realize somehow that all the liquid I was adding was just flowing out of the blender all over the counter - under the toaster oven, under the drain board, into my teas. Fortunately my counter top is not perfectly even so it got kind of stuck in small date water reservoirs. A lot of towel-ringing later, and a little bit of swearing, I'd cleaned up the mess and puréed my dates. I'd made a double batch of my version of this delicious dessert because I wanted to make it in the slow cooker. Generally, small batches of things burn in the slow cooker, so better to super size and freeze portions for later. Not a problem as long as it's delicious. Oh, I also made this dairy-free and gluten-free. I made another gluten-free flour blend, this time with mostly sweet white sorghum flour and brown rice flour (plus some tapioca flour, potato starch flour, sweet white rice flour and guar gum to cover all my bases) and used almond breeze for the milk. These didn't make the recipe bad. The flour blend you would barely taste. It wouldn't really mess up the consistency of a pudding cake since it's supposed to be so liquidy anyway. The almond milk would only make it better by giving more flavour, but I was worried about not having enough salt and enough addictive sugary taste that you'd normally get from brown sugar. What happened was my pudding kind of ended up tasting like my hollow granola - lots of cinnamon, but no sugary bite. This time I had no one to resent but myself. There was certainly no physical activity involved that I could give up.

So I made this for my parents and warned them in advance that there was a 60% chance that the pudding would be good and a 40% chance that it wouldn't. I wouldn't be offended if they didn't like or if they wanted to skip dessert. My mom liked it, but I didn't, so before my dad could try it I poured over some syrup. It's supposed to be a maple syrup dessert anyway (according to some recipes) but I don't do maple syrup for anxiety attack reasons. Basically my body freaks out, and it's not exactly the most sane body (or mind) when uncontaminated with the liquid.

Anyway, long story short, the pudding actually came out pudding-like. There was some liquid and some cake, and the colour was darker than normal, but that was because of the dates, so it was fine. The taste, though, left a lot to be desired. There's a reason we use sugar. Real sugar. Honey would ahve been fine. Maple syrup would have been fine, but there's nothing like brown sugar. I should have at least added some molasses and white sugar substitute, but I feel like sends my body conflicting messages, like a mom and dad fighting in front of a child. Who do I listen to? Who do I believe? Who do I ask for candy?

Anyway, moral of the story is use less water. I think I could get away with using dates if I used more of them, and for that I need a better blender or a few days' worth of patience while the water dissolved from the purée. Pictures to come.

Banana Flambé With Watermelon and Dates

Okay, so this is kind of far out there, but it was one of the best things I've ever accidentally made. It didn't actually look like the picture above, but fire is a hard thing to catch in a photo.

I took a banana flambé recipe that called for rum, brown sugar and pineapple juice, but I had none of those things. Undeterred, I took stock of what I did have: watermelon (puréed I thought it might substitute for the pineapple juice), red wine (it works for poaching pears, so why not for flambéing bananas?), and dates (fresh, not dried, so they were juicy. If you used dried you'd need to soak them in water until they were soft, probably overnight).

6 fresh dates
1/4 slice (3/4" thick) of a big watermelon. Use your own judgment.
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 ripe bananas, quartered lengthwise, and halved crosswise, or made into whatever size pieces you want. If the bananas are under-ripe the recipe won't work since they'll be too starchy. Over-ripe is fine too as long as they're not falling apart from being too mushy.
splash of red wine
Long matches or a BBQ lighter...wish I had those things

Basically, you want to purée the watermelon, dates, and spices so you get a fairly liquid consistency, as if you were using brown sugar and pineapple juice. Pour the purée into a skillet (if you have to scrape it in and it doesn't want to come out of the blender it's too dry and you should add more watermelon first) and turn the heat to medium-high. When the mixture comes to a boil add the bananas. Cook, turning gently for 3 minutes (you just want the bananas to heat up).

Pour over a splash of wine (about 2-3 tbsp, but more or less is not a big deal, as long as you don't mind the wine taste). When the mixture starts to boil again (a few seconds later), light a long match or use a BBQ lighter to light the alcohol on fire. If it doesn't work, try again. After 2 tries, if it doesn't work, give up. Bonnie Stern says to "not worry. It will still taste great". Comforting, Bonnie. All my other flambés have worked but this one wouldn't. It may have been the fact that I tried to use a regular lighter and charred my thumb. It didn't burn, but there was a nice bit of black involved.

When it does light there'll be a big "WHOOSH" of flame, so make sure your head isn't too close to the pan. I think it works better with liquor, like rum, because of the higher alcohol content. Ah well. It still tasted great, like Bonnie assured me it would. Actually, with a little thick yogurt as a bed for the warm, sweet sauce (you have no idea how amazing dates are until you use them to substitute for other sweet things), and perfect bananas, this was heaven. I hate fruit desserts, but this was smooth and rich and filling. If only flames liked being caught on camera. You'll have to make the recipe to see the magic for yourself.

Oh, this works perfectly if you're having friends over because it's so simple, cheap and makes you look very gourmet. Plus, if you're a guy, you get to show off your skills with fire. I think flambé came somewhere in the evolution of "cooking with fire" after the open pit with animal on a stick, after the tandoor oven, and before the Foreman Grill. How far we've fallen...

Oh (again)! In Quebec you can buy pig-roasting setups for fires! RONA and big home stores carry them. Sure, you can roast lamb, but you know it's traditional Quebecois families who are buying these things for big pig roasts in the country. Seriously, they sell out. Call ahead.

3 Newfoundlanders Walk Into A Bar (Hasty Pudding vs. Brownie Pudding)

Hasty pudding is essentially the same recipe as brownie pudding except for two key ingredients. It calls for chopped dates (which is hilarious because they're the most time consuming part of the otherwise 'hasty' recipe) while brownie pudding calls for cocoa in its fudge sauce. The whole idea of both desserts is to make a simple, brownie-like batter (you can even include walnuts if you're into that sort of thing) and then pour over a water-based sauce. When the pudding bakes, the sauce soaks through and under the batter and you end up with brownie and hot chocolate sauce all in one dish. It's incredible comfort food, and actually not even that bad for you. I mean, it's not good for you, but there are worse things to put in your body...

...like 3 beer, 2 shots and two rum and cokes. Okay, so for some people this is an average night, but Rock Star does not enter my body. Ever. Just as rarely does coke. And Bud Light? Once in a poor, poor blue moon, and only out of consideration for the person who blindly purchased it for me. Neither do I start drinking at 2am and finish at 4:30am. My body just can't handle it. Refer to my post on being a grandmother - How to Crash A Tea Party, and Other Stories - if you don't believe me.

Every now and then you need to break out of your comfort zone. A nice fellow from the Goulds, as it turned out, swooped me under his wing and off to my 4th Juno party of the evening (the weekend leading up to the Sunday evening music awards show was the most amazing deal on copious amounts of decent to really good Canadian live music to grace downtown St. John's since 2002. A special occasion, so I think I can stay up past my bedtime, putting my grandmotherly tendencies on vacation. Little black dress, high heels.

The fellow from the Goulds' friend, a Bayman from the Southern shore (of Newfoundland, for anyone who doesn't know what that means) was a bit quieter, always talking up his friend and buying me a few of those aforementioned 7 drinks.

So the debate begins. Hasty pudding or brownie pudding?

Hasty Pudding
1 cup flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp cocoa
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp butter or margarine
1 cup chopped dates (or raisins, if you must)
2/3 cup almond breeze (or any kind of milk)

Sauce
1 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp butter
1/8 tsp salt
2 cups boiling water
2 tsp vanilla

Versus

Brownie Pudding
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp cocoa
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup almond breeze (or any kind of milk)
2 tbsp melted butter (or margarine)

Sauce
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cocoa
1 3/4 cups hot water

3 handfuls mini marshmallows, optional

The methods are very similar. Sift dry non-sauce ingredients. Add liquid non-sauce ingredients (rub in the butter first, in the case of Hasty Pudding, though really you could just melt the butter like brownie pudding if you don't like to get your hands dirty, but that's no fun). Pour the batter into a greased 8-inch square or round cake pan. Sometimes round is more attractive, but this is both a practical decision (you're not going to go buy a square pan if you already have a round one...unless you're thinking of getting rid of your round one and upgrading to a square...if you see it as 'upgrading') and based on individual taste.

Fellow from the Goulds: "Would you like a beer? What kind?" Before I can answer: "How about a Bud Light?"

Bayman: "So you're a Townie? From St. John's? Girl after my own heart, drinking beer. None of those fancy girly drinks. Cocktails and the like. Girl after m' own heart"

The two sauces are what really differentiate the puddings. The Hasty pudding comes out much denser and the sauce is more like toffee, maybe like a sticky toffee pudding but without the cream. The brownie pudding sauce is much easier to make, and it's actually lighter, though it tastes richer from the cocoa. There is no flour to thicken it, and yet it somehow thickens up nicely anyway, defying the odds.

For the Hasty pudding sauce, mix together the flour and brown sugar, then add the butter. It doesn't matter if it doesn't combine properly because the next step is to pour the 2 cups of boiling water over top and melt it all together. The butter will melt whether it's already well-combined with the flour or not. Then add the salt and vanilla. I'm not sure why you add the salt after the boiling water, but I suppose for the same reason vanilla is always added after and not before heat in recipes, to retain the flavour. Then the sauce gets poured over the pudding cake and baked in a preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

For the brownie pudding, mix together all the sauce ingredients at once, and pour over the batter. Because this recipe only calls for hot water, you could probably get away with just 'hot' water in the hasty recipe too, though there's more in the sauce to dissolve. You certainly don't need boiling water for this one. Waiting for water to boil can be excruciating when it prolongs the chocolate pay-off. Delayed gratification and all. Then into the preheated 350 degree oven for 40-45 minutes.

Fellow from the Goulds: "Do you want another beer?" To the Bayman: "Lets get another beer." I look at my almost full Bud Light and at the almost empty beers of my companions and realize this will not work out well.

There are two options. I can chug the disgusting beer and take another, feigning gratitude. Or I can decline, thereby proving my wimpy Townie nature, disappointing these jolly fellows, and hampering the night's festivities.

I debated, and then I chose option number 3. I would slowly pour all my drinks onto the floor, so I could keep up with the Bayman and the fellow from the Goulds. I'd just pretend the floor was pudding and beer was the sauce. Avoid the shoes, and don't let anybody notice. A game, then.

The most fun part of the brownie pudding is that when it's done you top it with mini marshmallows and "return it to the oven to brown". I stuck it under the broiler to speed up the browning process, being skeptical of the recipe's assured attitude that browning could occur in the lower part of the oven. Impatient me, yet again. Broiling can be tough. You need to pay a lot of attention or your marshmallows will expand and burn, overflowing the top of the pan.

The fellow from the Goulds: "Lets get a shot". To the Bayman: "How about a shot?"
I look at my almost full second beer (having successfully made a pudding cake of the floor with the first 2 minutes before) and at my companions' almost empty beer, and realize this will not work out well.

"Cheers!" Down goes the jager bomb, and out into the beer. Pretend like you're chasing it with the second drink. Unfortunately my beer was a little too full and there was nothing to be done. Also, unfortunately, the beer quickly became a fountain from the additional alcohol. I would have to be more careful for the rest of the night. The best laid plans...

My marshmallows expanded to three times their original volume. I think they would have overflowed like the beer if I hadn't gotten them out right away. They were brown enough, but oh so deliciously gooey on the inside. This needs to be eaten right away, before the marshmallow condenses back down to a normal size, hardens and becomes a bland layer of sugar instead of a smore-like treat. Mmm...heaven.

At 10 minute intervals for the rest of the night:
The fellow from the Goulds: "Do you want another beer?"
"Sure!"

The Bayman: "Can I get you a drink?" I look at my unfinished current drink...
"Sure!"

The fellow from the Goulds: "2 Rum and coke and a beer, please."

The fellow from the Goulds: "A shot. Lets get a shot"
By now I had mastered my shooter into beer spitting technique. Thank goodness.

4am, last call:
The fellow from the Goulds: "You got another few beer behind the bar there? 3 of them.

The question is a tough one: Which is better? The Hasty Pudding or the Brownie Pudding? Pudding origins aside, I certainly preferred the brownie pudding. Somehow I could taste the baking powder in the hasty pudding, though it actually contained less, and it wasn't exactly the flavour I was looking for. Cocoa masks everything in fake-rich liquid cocaine. The dates made the
Hasty pudding sweeter, yes, but the Brownie pudding was much more satisfying. Definitely the Brownie Pudding.

And how did three Newfoundlanders walk out of the bar? Well the fellow from the Goulds and the Bayman were drunk, and the Townie was sober.

Which of these did I choose? Neither. Men aren't pudding.

Freak Snow Storm Harira Soup

Yesterday didn't start out badly. Sure, the day before there had been a few flakes of snow, but it was in positive digits. Then all of a sudden I look out the window to see sideways snow whipping through the air. I actually had to get out the snow brush and scrape off the car. Good thing I did, too, because the thing stalled when it spun on the layer of accumulated white stuff, the wheel locked up, and I barely avoided the car in front of me, using my relatively snow-free mirror to figure out how to get me out of harms way.

Anyway, it was a day for soup, both to warm me up and to calm my nerves. Slow-cooker aromatic soup. No-need-to-walk-to-the-grocery-store soup.

Harira
olive oil
2 onions, finely chopped
ground cumin, ginger, turmeric, and black pepper
6 cups chicken broth
fresh coriander (cilantro. They're the same thing)
fresh lemon balm
1 cinnamon stick
1 cup yellow lentils
2 cups cooked chickpeas (no cans for me)
1 can diced tomatoes (well...it's not tomato season)
pitted dates

So I kind of overhauled the recipe because I didn't feel like walking to the grocery store. There was supposed to be a whole bunch of parsley in there, and the recipe certainly didn't call for the lemon balm. It wanted a 1/4 cup of lemon juice instead. It also wanted more cilantro than I had. Oh, and green or brown lentils, instead of my yellow ones. It's soup, though, which is fortunately a very forgiving meal.

I had dried chickpeas, so my first step was to quick soak them and cook them separately from the rest of the soup. To do this you (1) bring a cup of dried chickpeas to a boil in 3 cups of water. When it gets to a boil, you cover it, reduce the heat, and let it simmer for two minutes. Then you remove it from the heat, keeping it covered, and let it sit at room temperature for an hour. Drain the pot after an hour, rinse the chickpeas, and (2) put them back into the rinsed pot with 4 cups of water. Bring the pot to a boil, cover and reduce the heat again, and simmer for 35-40 minutes, or until the chickpeas are tender (not mush, but not too tough. They shouldn't take 30 seconds of chewing to break down in your mouth). Drain the chickpeas and rinse again. All the rinsing removes the starch and makes them easier to digest. The fresh chickpeas (as opposed to using a can) won't have that brine-y smell, so your soup will taste more nutty and less...well, packaged.

You can also just soak the beans in 3 cups of water overnight, then the next day drain and rinse and continue with the second part of the cooking. Also, feel free to double (or triple) the amount of beans you soak and cook, since beans will keep in the freezer for several month (1 month, says the Canadian Living Slowcooker Collection cookbook, at least 3 months, says me and every other source I've seen).

The recipe for Harira attracted me because of its exotic spices. Cinnamon slow-cooked is one of the best things in life. Add to that the fact that I get to garnish soup with dates and I'm sold. I even skipped the tricky part of the recipe that says to make an herb bundle of cilantro, parsley and the cinnamon stick, which worked just fine.

Harira is a soup traditionally served at the end of the day during Ramadan. Muslims fast all day and this meat-free (if you use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth), protein-rich soup is a warm, comforting and affordable way to fill up a hungry person fast. I love practical yet delicious food traditions. It's a nice mix of sweet and savoury; a real treat but full of healthy ingredients.

Instructions:
Sauté onions in oil over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add the ground spices and stir for 1 minute. Now transfer the mixture to the slow-cooker.

Deglaze the skillet with 1 cup of the broth, and scrape the browned spices that are clinging to the pan for dear life into the slowcooker with their aromatic brothers and sisters.

Now you're supposed to chop 1/4 cup of parsley and coriander to use as garnish, and tie the rest into a bouquet garni (herb bundle) with the cinnamon stick, but I never have kitchen string, and ever since Bridget Jones' Diary's blue soup fiasco I dare not risk using any kind of substitute to tie my herbs together. So I just chopped up all the cilantro and lemon balm I had (my mom keeps it frozen from an organic veggie coop in the summer. I don't just 'happen to have' lemon balm...) and chucked it into the slowcooker with the cinnamon stick. Why would I want to remove the herbs at the end anyway? The recipe just says to garnish with more anyway. The cinnamon is easy enough to take out on its own, being a big stick and all. Oh, I also figured not using parsley wasn't the end of the world (though I could have used dried I suppose) since I sometimes think of parsley as a wimpier version of cilantro. It is often called for to substitute the more pungent cilantro in recipe books (including this style of cooking) for people who's taste buds don't like...well, flavour. Yes, the herbs are different, but it's soup and it would all be fine.

Then all I did was add the cup of lentils, the cooked chickpeas, the rest of the broth and a can of tomatoes (diced and with juice) to the slow-cooker. Oh, since my tomatoes were salt-free and my broth was reduced sodium, I added a tiny bit of salt. Crystal salt. Much better for you than boxed sodium, and I only needed a pinch. Really the only way to mess this soup up is to have it under-flavoured, and lentils and chickpeas would need a little salt help to shine.

The slowcooker got turned on low for 8 hours, and when it finished, I poured a bowl and topped it with half a date. Other garnishes include a sprinkle of ground cinnamon and lemon slices, but I hate overly lemon-y soup (Sorry, Greece. The lemon balm worked much better than acidic fresh lemon juice, which should be added after the soup has cooked if you use it, along with the reserved herbs, if you use those too), and I was too hungry for soup to grind a piece of cinnamon stick in the coffee grinder. If it was pre-ground cinnamon from a package, it wouldn't have been worth the effort. Better to just suck on the cinnamon stick in the soup, which partially unfurls during cooking. It also makes a good spoon to scoop up the lentils, beans and tomatoes, and the intoxicating flavour beats any glass of wine to accompany the meal. This soup is such a wonderful Muslim food tradition.

Just one note: definitely, definitely don't skip the date garnish. You need it to contrast with the acid of the tomatoes and the nuttiness of the chickpeas and lentils. Like toasted coconut in Josée di Stasio's lentil soup, it makes the meal go from standard/fine to epiphanal.

It's still snowing...this is ridiculous.