June 26, 2005

What does Canada taste like?

The possibilities are darn near endless, especially given the diverse regions in such a geographically large country. I was honoured to be invited to participate (thanks, Ana and Jennifer!) in the Taste Canada event started by Jennifer of Domestic Goddess, and immediately set about trying to figure out this very question. What does Canada taste like, to me?

Salmon is one of the biggies in my region, south western British Columbia, as is Chinese food - thanks to a large and thriving living Chinatown district. While these items do speak to me of the particular collision of resource and culture that colours my city, I wanted to reach beyond the most obvious conclusions.

People in Vancouver seem particularly enthused by the "grow local" movement that is occuring all up and down the west coast, but we also embrace a fierce sort of pride in our artisanal products: small bakeries, cheeseworks, and other family-run food businesses. I decided to make that my focus.

Saltspring Island has been famous for its lamb for some time now, and is gaining an increasing reputation for producing fine cheese, as well. With this as my starting point, I chose a dinner of lamb shanks braised in BC red wine, accompanied by wild mushroom and goat cheese risotto and a spinach, pear and blue cheese salad.

My usual source for Saltspring Island lamb was fresh out of shanks - my fault for trying to source them right before an enormous Greek festival in my neighbourhood. I eventually tracked some down, but since the butcher was not my usual one I found myself doing a fair amount more trimming than usual. The wine I chose was the first acceptable Pinot Noir that I've had from BC, and is surprisingly affordable: the vaguely named Okanagan Vineyards Pinot Noir. This was also the wine that we drank alongside dinner.



Lamb Shanks in Red Wine

4 lamb shanks
2 large onions, peeled and diced medium (divided)
2 bay leaves
2 cups of red wine - preferably a Pinot Noir, if you can find an affordable, tolerable one, or other light red wine with good acids (a chianti might do it, don't use Merlot or Shiraz)
1 cup strong chicken stock
salt & pepper

Carefully trim 4 lamb shanks of excess skin, membrane and fat. Tie with butchers twine to keep the meat on the bone during and after the braising process. Season lightly with salt and pepper. In a heavy, cast iron frying pan, sear the shanks to a dark, golden brown colour on all sides.

Place half of the chopped onions in a lidded braising dish or small roaster. Lay the seared shanks on top of the onions.

Add a little olive oil to the frying pan that you used for searing, and add the rest of the onions. Cook until translucent, sprinkling with a little salt and black pepper.

Add 1 cup of the wine and scrape the pan to free up the good flavours in the fond left from the searing process, and then pour the onions and wine over the shanks.

Add the rest of the wine, the stock and the bayleaves. Place braising pan on the burner and bring up to a simmer. Place in a 300 F oven for two hours, which gives you lots of time to have a drink and mess around with the rest of the meal.

When ready to serve, remove the shanks to a serving platter, and strain the wine and juices. You can use the reserved onion bits, pink with wine, to act as a bed for the lamb shanks, if you like.

Pour the braising liquid into a shallow pan and reduce over a high heat while you finish preparing the rest of the meal and pour wine for drinking. Spoon the reduced sauce gently over the shanks and serve.


The mushroom and goat cheese risotto featured BC wild mushrooms - specifically shiitake and chanterelles. The goat cheese, stirred in right at the end, was the Saltspring Island Cheese company's Chevre with basil - tangy and assertive. I used my usual wild mushroom risotto recipe, but without the dried mushrooms, and instead of stirring in butter at the end, that is where I added the Chevre. The flavours were brighter and slightly less earthy than the usual recipe, but just as silky. The mushrooms were purchased at Choices, a chain that focuses on organically grown, local products as much as possible.

The salad was baby spinach leaves with red onion, tossed with a miniscule amount of walnut oil vinaigrette and topped with slices of pear (representing the fruit orchards in the Okanagan) and another BC artisanal cheese - this one a Tiger Blue cheese from Poplar Grove in Penticton. Poplar Grove is a unique company, in that they make wine as well as cheese.

To round things out, I picked up a loaf of Black Olive Bread from Terra Breads, our local and somewhat internationally renowned bakery specializing in rustic, chewy crusts. This proved to be the perfect vehicle for the marrow for the lamb shanks.

The lamb turned out just exactly as I wanted - tender, full of flavour, and with an almost unctuous lip-smacking texture. The use of the same wine that we were drinking by the glass meant that the flavours flowed quite harmoniously from one to the other. We had a lovely dinner with the friend whose camera I used to take these photos - yet another example of my thriving "will exchange food for goods or services" scheme!

At the end of the night - was this Canada to me? Yes - in part. The sheer number of amazing foods and cultural traditions that have taken root in Canada are impossible to cram into one dinner, but this meal reflected some of the cultural sensibilities of my city, the Greek influence of my neighbourhood, and the Canadian willingness to mix up the flavours of our various heritages (European, in my case) into a new and delicious way.

June 22, 2005

Portugese Table Wine

Most familiar for production of its fortified darlings, Port and Madeira, and for its unutterably pedestrian Mateus Rosé, Portugal also produces a huge amount of red and wine table wines. In fact, the fortified wines only make up around 15% of Portugal's total wine production, but account for over 70% of the exports.

Our wine club has overlooked Portugal as a wine-producing country until now - excepting a Port tasting from a while back - so, since Portugal actually ranks 6th in world wine production, it was definitely time to check out the serious table wines.

Portugal is unusual in that most wine is made from indigenous grape varietals, with few of the noble varieties, such as Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon being grown. This makes the resultant wines somewhat harder to market in North America, which is very name-recognition driven. One of the more recognisible wine types produced is Vinho Verde - "Green Wine." While some of them do in fact have a slightly greenish cast, the verde (green) refers to the youth of the wine rather than its colour. Vinho Verde has something in common with Beaujolais Nouveau, in that it is drunk very young and embraces the characteristics of young, mild wines. What I didn't know until researching this tasting, is that Vinho Verde is made in both white and red styles, but that only the white is exported.

We tried two Vinho Verdes - the oh-so-present Gazela (2004), which was very watery in appearance, had a green apple nose and a cidery, apple and lemon flavour with a creamy hint of dairy in the background. At 9% alcohol - typical for a Verde - it was light and refreshing and pronounced suitable for hot days and patio lazing. The second Verde, Casal Garcia Vinho Verde Branco (2004), there was an overall golden tone to the wine that showed in the appearance, on the nose, and on the palate. The scent of dried pears and freshly ground white pepper gave way to a smooth, golden-apple and olive oil palate, again with a sort of cidery feel to it. There was something slightly tropical about it that made everyone speculate about an appetizer of melons wrapped in prosciutto. While everyone enjoyed both wines, it was roundly decided that this slightly smoother wine had the edge over the two.

The one white wine that we tried was the Vallado Vinho Branco (2002), from the Douro region. In my prep notes, the final comment on Douro was that it is not known for its whites. I now know why, if this was anything to go by. Its yellowish color yielded warm tropical fruit on the nose, but it was a closed and relatively difficult scent to extract. The flavours were a catalogue of unpleasant chardonnay-like characteristics: bland, watery, oily and with little fruit. This was the thumbs-down wine of the night.

The reds were a mixed bag. The José Maria de Fonseca, José de Sousa (2000) had an interesting nose of rocks - pyrite, to be more specific, and damp lichen. Its earthy smell could somewhat be attributed to the clay-pot fermentation that is still used in the Alentejo region, but its thin flavours of red plums and cherry pits led us to suspect that the grapes were squeezed for extra yield, to its detriment. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't interesting past the unique fermentation method.

Somewhat better, the Montes Seis Reis Boa Memoria (2003) had an interesting floral quality about it, although it was closed enough that I had to work at the nose. There was a dusty quality and a hint of leather that usually bodes well. The palate was less well developed, with an underripe quality to the fruit flavours, and massive acidity. The flavours were nice, but it was universally agreed that it needed some food to bring out its charms. Going back, at the end of the tasting, I thought that the wine had opened up more, which brought out a nice, dried fig roundness to the taste. At the end of the tasting, this was one of two contenders for Best Wine.

I was quite looking forward to the Quinta de Chocapalha (2002), the only wine we had from the Estremadura region. I had read a favourable review of a previous year, and was curious how it would fare. It showed beautiful colour, garnet, and big, fat legs. The nose brought something I've never encountered in a wine before: bacon. There was a smoky note, which is not uncommon but usually a good sign (in my experience), but the overwhelming scent was that of raw bacon, specifically the fat. I moved on to the palate with literally no expectations, being unsure what that sort of nose could possibly translate to, and was pleased to find a very balanced wine with mixed red fruits and herbs - fresh thyme was mentioned - and a very drinkable easiness to it. This became the other contender for Best Wine.

The final wine of the evening was the Ramos Pinto Duas Quintas Vinho Tinto (2000), from the Douro region. It had a nice dark colour to it, but the nose was oddly metallic. While the José de Sousa had a hint of pyrite in its rocky nose, this wine smelled like freshly scraped copper wiring. The palate was weak on flavour, with a sour tinny quality that was quite off-putting. I would say that this was the least popular of the reds.

In the final analysis, four of the seven wines were rated well - the two Vinho Verdes, in a class of their own, but both enjoyable, and the Boa Memoria and Quinta de Chocapalha were both well regarded. None of the wines cost more than $20, which suggests that Portugal may be the last bastion (next to Sicily) of affordable, tasty wines in Europe.

Previous Tastings:
Pinot Noir
South African Red Wines
Spanish Wines

June 18, 2005

Fun with Photography

I'm trying my hand at digital photography, the better to update you all, my dears. These are the more tolerable of the photos of the ginger snaps that I made for my Dad (which he will get tomorrow).



I hope to be able to update all of the recipes on my site with photos, eventually.

I've added some pictures of the Oatmeal Spice Anythings to the June 16th post below, but I was still getting used to the camera settings, and it shows. Now I'm too tired and too busy to set them up for retakes. Maybe next time I make them, I'll get some spiffier pics.


Posted by Hello

June 17, 2005

Persian cuisine

I’ve been thinking about Persian food, lately. A few weeks ago, we went to Zagros, a small restaurant on Davie street. The quality of the food was exceptional – the dishes that we tried were delicious.

We started with a plate of pickles (torshi), which our server (whom I suspect is the owner) cautioned us were “quite sour.” They were perfectly sour, in my opinion, and sprinkled with a variety of herbs, including dill and sumac. They came with a dish of flat, flexible bread that looked cracker-like in appearance, and a thick, minty yoghurt dip (mastokhiar).

Palle tried the chicken breast kabob with barberries, and found the chicken to be succulent and not at all dry, as chicken breast can sometimes be. Barberries (zereshk) are always a delight, little sweet-and-sour speckles of fruit, glistening like jewels in the rice pilaf. My dish was a subtle combination of boneless lamb chunks with yellow split peas (Ghaimai/Ghaimeh) in a rich, highly scented gravy with a fantastic, lip-smacking unctuousness and a lovely slightly sharp hit of lime juice. I need to learn how to make this, seriously.

The rice pilafs that accompanied our meals were made from basmati rice, but each grain was plump and tender and not at all dry, as sometimes Indian pilafs can be.

We are both eyeing other menu items and are determined to go back soon. There were a number of vegetarian and vegan items that looked intriguing, as well as a range of seafood dishes.

June 16, 2005

Chicken & Veggie One Pan Supper

Here’s another “non-recipe” method-driven supper that I make fairly often in the winter, and from time to time – such as on rainy days – during the rest of the year. It involves a few minutes of chopping and arranging, and then a good solid 45 minutes of ignoring. Then, it’s time to eat! Pour yourself a glass of wine while you lounge around and supper cooks itself. If you're feeling ambitious, you could make a salad during this time.

Chicken & Veggie One Pan Supper

Preheat the oven to 400 F.

Two serving-sized pieces of bone-in, skin-on chicken. Breasts are fine, but I like to use the moister leg-with-thigh-attached. You could also use a package of four or six thighs.
Two cups of hardy vegetables, cut into chunks. Or more, if you can fit them in.

Get a large, oven-proof pan or casserole dish. Spritz lightly with canola oil. Place your chicken pieces, spaced evenly, in the dish. Tumble the chopped veggies in around the pieces of chicken, making sure they are in a single layer. Spritz the whole dish, including the tops of the chicken pieces, very lightly with canola oil. Sprinkle with salt, and add whatever other herbs you might like. I currently fancy ground cumin, smoked paprika, and a little oregano. The herbs will stick to the lightly oiled surface of the chicken and veggies.

Put the pan in the oven, uncovered, and allow to cook for 45 minutes. Dish up and enjoy!

The vegetables will shrink a little as they cook, so you want to make sure you start with lots.

What kind of vegetables work for this?
Potatoes
Sweet Potatoes
Carrots
Cherry tomatoes (pierce them, but leave them whole)
Mushrooms (cut in half)
Fennel bulb, sliced or chunked
Garlic cloves, whole and peeled
Brussels Sprouts (really! Cut them in half, though)
Parsnips
Pearl onions

I confess that I love the whole roasted garlic cloves so much that I usually go crazy and put a lot of them in. No complaints, so far.

How big should the chunks be? About the size of a cherry tomato, give or take. Garlic is necessarily smaller, but don’t sweat it. Do try for a certain amount of uniformity of size with the root vegetables, though, so everything cooks at the same rate.

Oatmeal Spice Anythings



The "anything" in these cookies can be chocolate chips, raisins, currants, dried cranberries, chopped walnuts, or anything you think a cookie needs. If you don't want to add anything like these, you can make simple Oatmeal Spice Cookies, which are very tasty, too. They aren't as rich as most oatmeal cookie recipes, although if you choose chocolate chips, that will of course add a little fat.

Makes about 3 dozen, depending on size

Oatmeal Spice Anything Cookies

Total prep and cooking time: 45 minutes

1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
1/2 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups rolled oats
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg, & allspice
1/4 teaspoon clove

"Anything" options:
as the total is about 1 cup

miniature chocolate chips
chopped walnuts
chopped almonds
raisins
currants
dried cranberries
dried blueberries

Preheat your oven to 350 F.

Lightly spray two large cookie sheets with canola oil.

In a medium mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugars until thoroughly combined. Add the egg and vanilla extract, and cream again. You can do this by hand or with an electric mixer. Pour the oats over the wet mixture. Without stirring, sift the flour, baking powder and baking soda directly over the oats. Sprinkle the salt and the spices over the flour mixture. With a wooden spoon, or on the lowest setting of your mixer, carefully begin to blend everything together. When it is starting to come together, add the one cup of optional extras. Finish combining the ingredients until the optional extras are all even distributed through the cookie dough.

Drop by spoonfuls onto the prepared cookie sheets, leaving room for each cookie to expand a little. Dip your fingers in a little flour, and flatten the cookies slightly. Bake at 350 F for 12-15 minutes, or until light golden. Remove to racks to cool - they will be soft and flexible - downright bendy! - at first, but will firm up as they cool.



June 13, 2005

Procrastination & Egg Whites

I'd never bought a carton of egg whites before. I'd always just separated out a few whole eggs, and put a bowl of leftover yolks in the fridge to make mayonnaise or custard or a pastry-wash. A leftover yolk can be a thickener for soup, an enricher for scrambled eggs, or fulfill many other possible destinies. However, when you're staring down recipe after recipe that calls for egg whites only, it makes sense to try those pristine little carton-packs in the fridge section of the supermarket.

I originally wanted to make a Darjeeling Chocolate Cake from one of Cooking Light's annuals. I still haven't made it. Upon closer inspection, the recipe looks like a pain in the rump, and as I have suffered a few culinary flops lately, I don't feel like going to all that trouble and be disappointed. Now is the time for the tried and true, and the easy and unfussy. Since the egg whites I bought came in a two-pack, each package containing a cup of liquid whites and an expiry date, I was suddenly faced with the need to use up a number of egg whites in a hurry.

Meringue is the easy answer to start with. A batch of chocolate-chip studded meringue cookies now lives in the tupperware by the coffee maker. I'd considered pavlova, too, but that requires something along the lines of timing where both of us would be home to eat it, since it really doesn't keep terribly well. I've been adding egg whites to everything. Subbing out eggs for egg whites in coffee cake, and taking an ill-advised stab at a chocolate banana souffle - ill advised in that I did not have the requisite hardware, and what do you know? Not everything can be rescued with sambal oelek, it turns out. I used egg whites to bind lamb meatloaf, veal patties, and to glaze bread loaves. I've still got about half a cup left.

I probably have enough to make that Darjeeling cake after all, but I think I'm going to wait. There's got to be a reason that I just can't summon the will to get the thing done, and I think I'm going to respect that. I do wish I'd come to this conclusion before buying the egg whites, but at least I've had some fun with them anyway. Who knows what I will end up making with the last of them? Maybe I'll give the famous Hollywood Egg White & Chive omelette a try. Or, then again, maybe not.

June 12, 2005

Search & Rescue

I'm coming to the conclusion that you can rescue almost anything with sambal oelek - as long as you like things spicy.

On the day that I wanted to make a noodle salad recipe I've been eyeing, there was nary an Asian eggplant to be seen. My favourite markets... even some less-than-favourite markets... were barren of anything other than big, glossy Italian globe eggplants, which are just the wrong texture for what I wanted. I searched, and searched, and gave up, crankily wondering about the sudden dearth. Yesterday, after a long and barely fruitful quest, I spied some somewhat limp-looking Japanese eggplants and decided that they were firm enough to use. I finally got down to brass-tacks and mixed up the dressing, boiled up the noodles and roasted the eggplant.

The dressing seemed a little rich, to me, so I scaled back the amount of toasted sesame oil by almost half, subbing out the missing liquid with a little rice wine vinegar. Sadly for me, the end result was still a little oily feeling, and not in the good, lip-smacking way. I concluded reluctantly that I had made some other error along the way, since the recipe's source was impeccable, but I really wasn't sure if I was going to be able to rescue the leftovers. The whole dish was a little under-developed flavour-wise, it seemed, although I could taste the strong sesame oil flavour and remain convinced that I did the right thing to reduce the amount.

We struggled through dinner, a little, with me being fairly unhappy with the salad, and depressed at how large the quantity was of something that I didn't particularly enjoy. It wasn't bad, it was just not quite want I wanted it to be.

Today, faced with an enormous bowl of leftovers in the fridge, I decided to see if I could pep it up a little. Sambal Oelek to the rescue! Well, I did add a little extra soy sauce, too - just to loosen the whole thing and let it act as a carrier to transport the thicker sambal throughout the noodles. I cautiously spooned up some spicier noodles, along with their accompanying vegetables, and tried it. Much improved!

It isn't number one on my hit parade - that still belongs to the spicy somen/soba recipe for fast, easy and delicious - but it certainly will be good for lunches for the next few days. I may julienne some more vegetables to go with - the eggplant is nice, but a few more crisp vegetables would add a pleasing crunch. There's already a small amount of raw carrot and blanched snap-peas, so I may just increase them. I'm thinking that some marinated shiitake mushrooms might be just the ticket, though, and add a small amount of protein to the overall dish.

June 06, 2005

Chicken & Dumplings

There may be few dishes so immediately evocative of homey and soothing comfort than chicken & dumplings. The thing of it is, there are just so very many variations that you cannot necessarily be sure exactly what other people mean when they say those magic words. Magic, because no matter how different one dish is compared to another, they still conjure up the same sort of warm-and-fuzzy feeling of being looked after. Even if you make it yourself.

Recipes range from fatty extraveganzas to more modern, lighter cuisine, from dumplings that resemble short, fat noodles to puffy, fluffy steamed buns that rest on the top of a stew, to perfectly round matzohs. Chicken can be on-the-bone or off, cut into serving-sizes or bite-sized chunks. Liquid can be a broth, a sauce, thick or thin, scant or plentiful. With vegetables, or without. There's really just no way to know.

I made chicken & dumplings for dinner last night. My version, for the record, is a creamy chicken stew (made with a milk-enriched veloute and no actual cream) with boneless, skinless chicken thighs cut into bite-sized pieces, lots of vegetables (mushrooms, carrots, whole garlic cloves, celery, corn, and peas, this time) and big, fluffy, herbed dumplings that are dropped by the spoonful onto the bubbling stew and steamed, tightly covered, for 15 minutes. It is a one-pot meal.

My version is a lot leaner than that of my foremothers: I brown the bite-sized chicken pieces in a smidge of canola oil, sautee the "hard" veggies in sherry, and use a slurry of milk and flour without additional fat to thicken the sauce. The dumplings themselves are fairly lean already, although in recent years I've taken to using chicken schmalz (carefully poured from the pans of roasted chickens past, and stored in a mug in the freezer) instead of canola oil, because the flavour is just phenomenal. Add to that a little chopped parsley and some chopped sage leaves culled from the window-box garden, and you've got a tasty, tasty treat. They can go on beef stew, as well, of course (a little rosemary is nice, there, but with chicken we're getting precariously close to Scarborough Fair dumplings - parsley, sage, rosemary & thyme).

I am a firm believer in layers of flavour, so I add bayleaves and mustard seed and ground thyme to the stew mixture, and I've been known to add a shot of Tobasco sauce, too. I tend to under-salt this when I'm using homemade chicken stock in the sauce, so I have to constantly check it at the different stages of cooking to ensure the right amount. The final garnish is a healthy grinding of black pepper.

We eat a fair amount of chicken, actually. We don't eat a lot of chicken and dumplings, though, and I am not sure why. Maybe it's that I like it to be something of a special treat, and that might fade if served too often. Maybe it's that my repertoire is getting quite large, and it's hard to get anything into rotation on even a monthly basis, unless it's monumentally fast and easy, and while chicken and dumplings is relatively easy, it's not particularly fast. Every time we have it, though, I think to myself "Damn, these dumplings are good. Why don't I have these every week?"

June 01, 2005

Cake in progress

The Apricot Nectar Cake, first edition, came out of the oven last night, and was an immediate flavour success despite a miscellany of obstacles - not the least of which was a decided lack of Apricot Nectar.

Huh? That stuff used to be everywhere, but on the day I actually need it specifically, I can't even find a place-marker for it on the shelf at Safeway. I used to drink the stuff cut with ginger ale, to lighten the thick, fuzzy texture, but I guess I haven't bought any in a while.

I ended up having to settle for an all-juice blend of apple, orange, and peach. The apple juice thinned out the sensation of drinking velvet, which made it perhaps a better beverage, but also made it a thinner texture than I had hoped for (not to mention, different flavour!) for the cake.

Still, I was determined to go forward. The combination of the weaker flavoured juice with the lemon extract, lemon zest, and lemon juice glaze made for a thoroughly citrussy flavour, but my refusal to add yellow food colouring, per many of the recipes I was cribbing from, made for a sort of blandly coloured cake. Not snowy, like a white cake, nor adequately orange to suggest the flavours within. Yellowish beige was the interior of the cake (the fact that I got any colour at all is likely attributed to the yolks of the two free-range eggs) and perhaps a little bit to the zest. The top and sides of the cake took on a nice golden glow, though.

I am reluctant to add food colouring where it is unnecessary, so I have been contemplating alternatives. I have a lovely little container of saffron that was just recently given to me, a gift brought back from the Middle East, and that seems like it might be the way to go: citrus, apricot and saffron all go together delightfully, and it would add a slightly exotic depth of flavour to the cake that appeals very much - at least on paper. Other colour options include Turmeric, which would be effective might probably detrimental to the delicate flavour, more lemon zest, which would have limited effect, or the dreaded bottled colouring.

The pan-size could use fiddling, too. Since I was starting with 2 cups of flour, a 9x9" pan seemed a little small, so I went with a 9x13". The cake did rise to about double its batter volume, but was still fairly short. I am contemplating using a bundt pan for the next attempt - slice-friendly and somehow well suited to the snack-cake oeuvre. I could, of course, give the 9x9" a try, although I suspect that the cake would volcano a bit in protest.

The texture was fairly pleasing - light, much as the buttermilk coffee cake is, but very moist thanks in part to the lemon glaze that is applied while it is still warm (another argument in favour of the bundt). The fat content was a measily 21% (as best I could calculate with the tools at hand, that is) but it doesn't taste like health-food at all.

Overall report? Favourable, with subsequent attempts scheduled to rectify minor defects. Now I just need to source some genuine apricot nectar...

May 31, 2005

Restlessness and Cake

I've been a little restless in the baking department, lately. I like to have some sort of baked goods on hand for taking to work, and with only two of us in the house I prefer that the baking items are ones that can be sliced, wrapped and frozen in advance, so I don't end up resentfully staring at a somewhat stale piece of coffee cake at the end of the pan. By having two or three different things in the freezer, I can mix it up and stave off boredom.

The thing of it is, even with the mix-and-match approach to stocking the freezer, I'm finding my frequent flyers are starting to pall a bit. Don't get me wrong, I love that coffee cake (and the fact that it can be varied quite a bit in itself), and I will probably always love the Devil Fooled Cake, but it seems that for months I've been oscillating between the two, with the Spiced Sweet Potato bread thrown in when I just can't face the others anymore.

Of course, there are many more cakes and cookies and squares in my repertoire - so why the repetition? The thing of it is this: I like to eat relatively healthy foods, and if I am taking baked goodies in my lunch EVERY SINGLE DAY, I want to make sure that they're not completely detrimental to my health. Those three are the shining stars of my heart-healthy, lower fat, and all-around guilt-reduced recipes.

Last week I experimented with rumball brownies, based substantially upon a Cooking Light brownie recipe. It was fairly tasty, but needs work, and I can see myself tinkering with it in the near future. Still, brownies are not usually a go-to snack for me (even non-detrimental ones) and while these little darlings are lower in fat (clocking in at about 30%) than most recipes, I'm looking for something more in the 20% range so that I can snack with impunity.

Tonight, I plan to attack a simple snacking cake made with apricot nectar. The recipe is a hybrid of many different recipes that I've found online - most of which call for prefab cake mixes, which I tend to avoid. I will, of course, keep you posted with the result.

May 26, 2005

Kitchen Makeover

Those of you who have been loyal readers of my main site, Always in the Kitchen, know that I've been promising to give the whole place a spiffy new look sometime this year. I'm pleased to announce that the renovations are under way!

This blog will likely stay materially the same (possibly gaining some artwork), but stay tuned for the fully re-vamped kitchen sometime in the not-too-terribly-distant future. Yay!

May 25, 2005

The Heartbreak Grape

In honour of the resurgence of popularity for the obstreporous Pinot Noir (due in no small part to the Oscar-nominated movie "Sideways") and because it has been a few years since we did a dedicated side-by-side tasting of it, my wine club chose Pinot Noir for its May tasting.

The nickname "The Heartbreak Grape" comes from the fact that there really isn't a mid-range of Pinot Noir wines. If all the conditions are right and the grapes are grown in just the right way and handled carefully by the winemaker (and the stars are all in alignment, etc.) the resultant wine will be a marvel of complex, elegant character and nuance. One misstep, however, and the wine is dreadful, sometimes to the point of utter undrinkability. The grape responds truculently to mishandling, and grows well only in certain microclimates.

We sampled Pinot Noirs from British Columbia, Oregon, California, New Zealand and France.

Most disappointing, were the expensive bottles from France, weighing in at $28 and $77 respectively. While we were warned that both bottles were from "off years" where the conditions were not ideal, we were still surprised by the thinness of character in the Chateau De Chamilly 1999 Cotes Chalonnaise - the scant fruit flavour seemed to evaporate on your tongue before you could even swallow, and the jammy, flat, overcooked plums in the Domaine Bizot 2000 Vosne-Romanee Les Jachees. The latter was particularly disappointing in that it had by far the best nose of any of the wines, full of leather and smoke and fruit.

California's offering, the Mandolin 2002 was not particularly good, but it was inexpensive ($13) and many people found it inoffensive. I didn't care for it, but I seemed to be the lone wolf of dissent, although it was broadly acknowledged to be an inferior wine.

We had three wines from BC - the Blue Mountain 2003 ($24), the Quail's Gate Family Reserve 1998 ($35) and the dark horse of the evening, brought by one of the tasters, the Okanagan Vineyards (2003? I can't recall) a new product which will be soon made available at a shocking $10. In summary, for the BC offerings, the Blue Mountain was overrated and generally mocked as the inadequate darling of people who buy into the artifically difficult availability, the Quail's Gate had some good flavours and aromas but was definitely past its best-before date, and the Okanagan Vineyards was bright, tasty and juicily drinkable, if not particularly sophisticated - we were shocked to find out how little it goes for.

The Kim Crawford 2003 ($24) from Marlborough, New Zealand won most tasters despite its screw top, with bright, cherry flavours reminscent of soda pop. It had a pleasant, if not entirely characteristic nose of cedar and orange zest.

The clear winner of the evening was the Torii Mor 2003 ($35) from Oregon. It showed a classic nose of slightly mouldy wood, cherries and vanilla that were echoed in the flavours. The wine elicited comments about its silky texture and smooth, balanced flavours, although some felt that it edged a little too far into sweetness. This wine was the one that had tasters wrangling over any leftover amount, and which I hoarded to go with my dinner.

The next tasting will be table wines from Portugal (as opposed to ports, sherries) which I hope will include some vinho verde, a speciality not found anywhere else.

Previous Tastings:
South African Wines
Spanish Wines

May 23, 2005

Taking Stock

...and, resultantly, making stock.

I have a pretty good freezer attached to my fridge. Unlike its immediate predecessor, it keeps ice cream frozen solid (very solid, in fact) without creating that partially melted and refrozen, crystaline sludge that looks like part of the set from the ice caves of Hoth. The freezer also has a rack, which is eminently sensible and makes searching for things much less precarious than it otherwise would be.

I generally try to put bags of "stash" items in the narrow, below-the-rack space, which fits perfectly a re-sealable tortilla bag crammed with burritos, a couple of ziploc bags of gyoza, and currently some adorable little scoops of baked falafel. The above-the-rack space is larger, and allows me to stack containers of frozen soup, cooked beans in their liquid, leftover curry, and all manner of yummy things that I might need - applesauce, frozen corn, leftover pasta sauce, IQF shrimp.

In and around the towers of freezer cartons, are an assortment of bags containing things that no one in their right mind would consider food in their current state: chicken carcasses that were picked almost clean, and meaty ham bones. These things are something of a secret weapon in good home cooking, because they make delicious stock that has a multitude of uses.

When I get a bonus day off, such as today, without too long a chore list of things that I need to do outside of the house, I like to round up some of the bones from the fridge and put them to use.

Right now, I am simmering a ham bone with bay leaves, brown mustard seed, a few slices of onion, some parsley sprigs, and a clove of garlic that has been sliced almost-through in about six places. There was a certain amount of meat scraps still clinging to the bone from where I wearied of divesting it before chucking it into the freezer, but that's okay because it now can give its all to the stock.

Ham stock is quite gelatinous by nature, and also can be very fatty. You don't want to be making it the same day you are using it, because it benefits immeasurably from standing around for a while so that the fat can rise to the surface, solidify in the fridge, and be scraped off and either a) discarded or b) made into some dish that requires pork fat. I generally choose option a because I don't do a lot of cooking with pork fat, and the amount rendered in the soup process is significant in terms of stock, but not in terms of what would be needed for a lot of southern cooking. I suppose, if I were truly living up to my pioneer stock ancestors, I would simply scrape it into another container and save it to make biscuits, but mostly I can't be bothered. Besides, I already have mugs of goose fat and chicken schmalz in the freezer.

It doesn't take long to make a good ham stock. It mostly minds itself while you take care of other things, simmering gently on the stove for an hour or two, filling the house with its hammy scent. It makes me want to make split-pea soup right now, but I have other things planned for the afternoon and I am looking forward to having a supply of ham stock waiting for me in my freezer the next time I make Jambalaya or a simple risotto.

Today, it's ham stock. If I get the rest of my day sorted out and am still feeling ambitious, I might drag out the two sets of chicken bones, and make chicken stock, too.

May 20, 2005

Living on the Edge

... of the expiry date.

Sometimes my cooking and/or baking is predicated on what’s most in need of using up. The tag end of an irregularly used pasta shape, the green peppers that I had forgotten to put in the salad four days ago, the milk that is rapidly approaching its due date. Things that are taking up space.

I open the door to the fridge, and survey the contents with an Iron Chef scowl. What can I make that will use up as many of the “secret” ingredients as possible? Then I get right to work. I don’t have a small army of sous-chefs to chop and stir on my behalf, but I also don’t have to work within an hour’s time constraint or stand at the end of the table while mincing tasters make faces and search for adjectives for “meh.”

When the must-use items include buttermilk, the first thing that leaps to mind is coffee cake. Almost infinitely adaptable and very forgiving of slap-dash, make-do efforts, the coffee cake can conceal a multitude of kitchen sins. It’s a good thing, too.

When I was first learning to bake, I would assemble all of my ingredients on the kitchen table before beginning. That way, there would be no surprises, such as last night’s realization that I only had half the amount of buttermilk required, and half the amount of the correct type of sugar (golden/brown sugar). Only slightly daunted, I soldiered on with the recipe, using a quarter-cup of liquid egg white instead of a whole egg, packing the remaining space in the sugar-cup with both demerara and white sugars, and replacing the filling and topping with shaved Callebaut chocolate and cinnamon. The buttermilk was shored-up with regular 1% milk and left to “age” in the hopes that the culture in the buttermilk would quickly convert the interloper.

The finished cake didn’t rise quite as high as the original recipe faithfully does – my punishment for subbing out the egg with only whites and the buttermilk for a mixture - but it was light-textured (“weightless!” says Palle) and flavourful, with a pretty spackle of chocolate across the top. Although less sweet than the regular version, it was in fact ideal with a cup of coffee.

The rest of the regular milk is on a ticking clock, too – I will probably make paneer tonight, to go with tomorrow’s potential Indian dinner. Cooking the milk will give me the day or two’s respite needed to gather my wits and plan a dinner around it.

May 15, 2005

Off to Market

The Farmers' Market at Trout Lake opened for the season, yesterday. The sky was overcast, but it was warm enough that I had to remove a layer coming home. I like this kind of weather for the market - blazing sun makes the shoppers cranky and difficult, and since it's treated as a family outing by many folks, a sunny market day can mean a lot of wailing children. So, I go early, rather than after noon, and I prefer to go on cloudy days.

Not all of the vendors were there. There were only two bread bakeries, for example, and while one of them had the coveted pao de queijo in unbaked form, the lineup was fierce and I didn't make it through. There were two apiaries hawking honey and beeswax products, but I have a fair amount of honey, and little need for beeswax at the moment. I examined the offerings from a discreet distance, and moved on.

The mushroom folks were there, and that is where I made my first purchase. A large tub of mixed mushrooms, containing variously a portabello, some shiitake, some oyster and a few cremini mushrooms was mine for only $5. They will become dinner of some sort, tonight - I'm rather thinking that Wild Mushroom Risotto might be the way to go. I also found a vegetable stand which had French Breakfast radishes, and since I've been adding radishes to everything lately (usually the regular, round, red, globe radishes) I thought I'd give them a try. Organic Long English cucumbers were only a dollar each, so I snagged one of them, too. I forsee another Greek or Turkish salad in my immediate future.

My final purchase was a riotous little French Thyme plant. French Thyme and English Thyme are both thymus vulgaris, but the leaves do look a little different. I'm not entirely sure what the difference is, so perhaps I need to do a little research. French Thyme is widely regarded as the preferred among all thymes for cooking, and since my little kitchen rennaissance of French dishes (not to mention all the Caribbean dishes I've become so fond of) it made sense to replace my long departed garden pot.

Cloth bag stuffed full of goodies, and clutching my fragrant pot of herbs, I stumbed down to Broadway to catch the bus home. Yesterday's menu had been worked out well in advance, without room for any of these treasures, but today... today I get to play.

May 09, 2005

Fennel is the next big thing

In my kitchen, anyway. I enjoy the odd food jag, and I’ve been between frenzies of late. It started with Molly’s recipe on Orangette for Carrot & Fennel Soup. Not only was the soup delicious (and easy to make), it froze well and reheated fabulously for a lazy Sunday lunch when you dare not brave the Mother's Day frenzy of brunch.

When I was shopping for the ingredients for the soup, I noticed how lovely the fennel bulbs in the store looked. Smooth and white, clean and fresh – begging to be shaved raw into a salad, braised and whirred into a puree, or sliced and roasted and tossed with linguini, fennel seed, chile flakes, halved cherry tomatoes, and cubes of fontina.

That last one, the pasta dish, may very well be dinner tonight. I haven’t made it in ages, but it was very popular the few times that I did. If I remember correctly, the original dish called for some sort of bacon or prosciutto, but I’ve got some ham to use up, so tiny cubes of sautéed ham it will be. There’s also a few black olives languishing from the Cinco de Mayo potluck, and they might go in, too. A little crushed garlic, a little good quality olive oil… dinner’s looking pretty easy, and pretty tasty.

I’m also eyeing a purely fennel soup recipe from one of the Australian Women’s Weekly collections (I think it’s the Fruit & Vegetables cookbook). I suspect it will freeze well, and I’m leaning favourably toward Sunday lunches like yesterday’s – a little soup from the freezer, some good bread, various cheeses and pickles. It feels so very much like home.

May 06, 2005

Lazy Roast Chicken

There may be no rest for the wicked, but the lazy can still enjoy a darn good roast chicken. I’ve seen (and made) many variations on your basic, garden variety roast chicken over the last twenty years or so. I’ve brined, and stuffed, and butterflied, and cooked upside-down for half the time. I’ve put butter between the skin and the meat, I’ve trussed, I’ve basted, and employed an exciting variety of herbs, sauces, rubs, and quirky temperature adjusting. Lid on. Lid off. Most of these ways work perfectly well, but my standard lazy roast chicken is a mighty fine dish on its own.


It’s not really a recipe, more a set of directions and suggestions. I use a basic broiler/fryer for most of my roast chickens – they’re cheaper than “roaster” chickens (albeit smaller) and fit nicely into my cast iron frying pan.

This is what I do:

Preheat the oven to 400 F. While the oven is heating up, rinse the chicken under cool water, allow to drain (just hold it over the sink and give it a shake, really) and pat the surface dry with paper towels or napkins – something that you can toss away when you’re done.

Put the now-dry chicken breast-side up into a dry cast iron frying pan - mine is a 10 ¾” and fits most broiler/fryers perfectly. No chicken-roasting gizmos needed!

Pull up the skin flaps around the cavity, and pull/cut off and discard any excessivly large globules of fat. Wash your hands thoroughly in hot soapy water.

Spritz the top surface of the chicken with canola oil, or rub lightly with oil (and wash your chickeny hands again). Sprinkle coarse salt liberally over the chicken breasts and legs. If you want to add another herb or spice – paprika gives it a lovely colour – do that now. Place the pan in the hot oven.

Do not cover the chicken (lid or tinfoil or anything).
Do not baste the chicken with anything
Do not change the oven temperature

A 3 lb. chicken cooks in about 1 to 1.25 hours. During this time, you can relax. Do the laundry or other chores if you want, otherwise laze about in your favourite fashion. Test the chicken for done-ness (an instant read thermometer registering 185 F when thrust into the thickest part of the thigh meat is good, or a knife into the area between the leg and the body – if the juices run clear, you’re good to go). Remove the pan from the oven and transfer the chicken to a plate or carving board. Let the chicken rest for at least 5 minutes before cutting, or you will lose most of the juices. Slice/carve/destroy the chicken as suits you best. Devour.

Nifty extras: A large russet potato bakes in about the same amount of time as the chicken. Wash the potato thoroughly, and jab it with a fork a couple of times. Place on the oven rack next to the frying pan full of chicken and ignore until the chicken is ready. The potato will be, too.

Roast garlic is delicious – even more so when it is roasted in chicken fat! Peel a handful of cloves (or heck, do the whole head!) and throw them into the pan with the chicken about ½ hour before you expect the chicken to be done. Give them a little stir so they’re coated with the chicken fat. When the chicken is ready, the garlic cloves will be sweetly caramelized and delicious.

If I am going to have leftover roast chicken, I like to remove the meat from the bones right after dinner, while it is still warm and freshly cooked (use your bare hands!); it is much more hassle if you wait to do this after the chicken has been refrigerated. I plate the boneless meat, cover it with plastic wrap and put in the fridge for the next day. The bones go into a bag and into the freezer, to deal with when I feel like making stock.

There you go. Not glamourous, not fancy, not even really a recipe – more of a method. But it’s a low maintenance dinner (you can always make a salad or steam some broccoli in the last few minutes of cooking) that I’m happy to have, and which gives me great leftovers and stock-fixings.

That’s a reasonable amount of mileage to get out of one little chicken, I think.

May 04, 2005

How much did those renovations cost?

Rob Feenie has recently appeared in television commercials for White Spot, trading on not only his name-brand recognition from his show on the Food Network, but his recent triumph on Iron Chef America.

It's bewildering. One can't help but wonder if our local boy is losing it, especially after seeing the dreadfully constructed ad for his own restaurants, Feenie's and Lumière, on the backs of buses. I have no objection to his advertising his own enterprises, although it looks as though he lost a bet and had to use something his competition picked out, frankly. The ads are ugly, and probably unnecessary. Both of his restaurants appear to be doing very well - filled with people every time I am there, or even walk past them. He owns one of the true destination restaurants in Canada in Lumière, and heaven only knows, the boy doesn't suffer from lack of exposure in this town.

Lumière was closed down for a while in April, for renovations. I haven't been back yet since it re-opened, although the menus look as delicious as ever (and the format has changed slightly for the tasting menus in the formal dining room). I really like the bar there - the staff know their drinks inside and out and you never have to worry that your vintage cocktail is going to show up in a metal "martini glass." The food at the bar is also exquisite - I haven't had a dish there that was less than fabulous, and some of them (the four-cheese macaroni, the wontons in Peking duck broth) I can get almost evangelical about.

In fact, as I have said before, I am willing to eat anything that Mr. Feenie puts down in front of me. This is partially why I'm so flinchy at his recent plugging of White Spot. The general thrust of the new White Spot adverts (some of which apparently feature John Bishop of Bishop's although I haven't seen that one yet) seems to be all about the use of fresh, local ingredients - something for which both Rob Feenie and John Bishop have long been vocal advocates. White Spot isn't adding foie gras to its (optimistically named) triple-o sauce, or forcing you into a prix-fixe format.

It seems like it should be a good deal for White Spot - endorsement of their product by some of the fanciest and shmanciest chefs in town, and since White Spot is a local chain, won't particularly contaminate their reputations abroad. However, is the name-brand endorsement really going to reach out to the target audience of White Spot? Is it going to elevate the clientele, or move the restaurant chain more up-market? Is it going to have anything other than amusing kitsch factor for the current patrons? Didn't it cost them a lot of money?

It would have to cost White Spot a lot of money. I cannot fathom how or why either of these chefs would stoop to shilling for a tedious local (BC & Alberta) burger chain without White Spot driving a dumptruck of money up to his house. With two booming restaurants, an established television show AND an Iron Chef America title under his belt, how much more does he need? Are we going to see him hawking his own line of cookware (although, that would be less irritating than what he's doing now)? Plugging the fish counter at Safeway? Has he lost all sense of perspective? Is it all a joke?

I can't help but be waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don't care if he does eat at White Spot, it looks like selling-out, to me.

May 02, 2005

Whoops, I did it again...

... I played with the requisite pan-size of the recipe that I was making. Consequently, the banana cake took almost twice as long to cook, and got rather firm on the top. Volumetrics, baby: always do the math.

The thing of it is, when I'm paying attention I know that you can't sub an 8" springform pan for a 9" square pan, for crying out loud! It doesn't matter what the recipe says. But no, I was thinking "Oh, I've got an 8" springform! I'll use that." I would have been better off using an 8" square pan, rather than the round one. The math was backwards. You can sub them the other way 'round. Oh, well.

Then, there was the ham. I was looking for something suitable for a jambalaya version that I've been working on, and when I saw inexpensive, marked down further, smoked picnic shoulder lurking in the supermarket, I thought, "Oh HO! This will work nicely!" Completely forgetting to check to see if it was going to need cooking, or was in fact fully cooked, I tossed it into the fridge (with a heavy thump, might I add, at 7 lbs of piggy goodness) and it didn't occur to me until about 5:30 that it might need some time in the oven.

Of course it did. It needed 2 1/2 hours in the oven, in fact! By the time it was ready, I was starving and the house smelled like an entire roast pig was turning on a spit somewhere. The cat was going ballistic whenever I went into the kitchen to check on things, and I was starving. No way was I going to much around with chopping up celery at that point - dinner was going to be revamped around the pork shoulder.

The thing about pork shoulder is, it's much fatter than pork hind-leg, from which we get ham. This means, that at 8:00pm or so on Sunday night, starving half-to-death in the face of plenty, I was rather sloppy about removing the fatty layer from the roast before slicing. The meat was succulent and very tasty, but the amount of grease I ingested has left me quite queasy even to this moment of writing. I really shouldn't have nibbled on the crackling.

Evenutally, I divested the meat and (most of) the fat from the remains of the roast, and placed the meat in large chunks in the fridge to be made into jambalaya today. The meaty bone, from which even the least greedy person could have found more flesh to carve, got wrapped and frozen with the vague notion of split pea soup in the future (Hi J!). Tonight, I get to carefully remove the remaining fat from the chunks of meat (and oh, how I will be scrupulous to get each bit!) and make it useful once again.

It was one of those weekends, though, where almost nothing went quite right. There was an apple-raspberry crisp that turned out rather nicely, and I didn't manage to cut myself while slicing roasted chicken breast or anything, but that's the extent of the triumphs.

April 28, 2005

Gadgets

I have two new kitchen toys: a small "ice cream" scoop with a bar-release, and a pasta fork.

Those of you who have heard me objecting to single-use items cluttering up the kitchen (knives, toaster and coffee-maker excluded on the grounds of sheer volume of usage) might be a little surprised, but I actually love gadgets. The magpie aspect of my personality likes things that are shiny, small, and nifty while the spartanist futilely rails about the lack of overall portability in my life.

It's not like I fall victim to as-seen-on-tv items like the perfect pancake or batter pro or butter dispenser products, and I don't think I own anything sold by Ron Popeil. I do have a hard time justifying single-use gadgets, though. I tend to think long and hard before adding something else to my kitchen hardware. Even the olive pitter, which I had on my Christmas wish list a couple of years ago, I felt silly about acquiring (although it's a sleek, beautifully crafted metallic device) and ended up justifying on the basis that it could pit not only olives, but also cherries. Two uses! To be fair, it's the same usage on different items, but that doesn't really matter, does it?

My rationale for the ice cream scoop was similar. All it does is scoop, really. But it can be used for ice cream, or cookie dough (ah, the memories of my first job in Vancouver, at Teddy Bear Donuts Cookie Factory!) or - as in the case of last Sunday - falafel. Totally justified! I've already used it for two of its potential uses.

The pasta fork was a little harder to grit my teeth and buy. It cost under three dollars, but it just looks ridiculous and I felt a little silly buying it. However, in the past few months I have been developing a master recipe for spicy soba, which are types of Japanese noodle that are susceptible to clagginess if drained in the classic colander method. Portioning the final dish, using forks, was a bit annoying, too. The pasta fork has solved this dilemma entirely. Works like a dream, actually. It may look a little silly, but I no longer find myself struggling with the noodles. As far as I know, this device only performs the one function. Can I give it points for being able to accommodate multiple types of noodle? Being useful to more than one cuisine?

Optimistic with my latest acquisitions, I have pinned a list to the fridge of all the gadgets that I am currently attempting to rationalize. I may need a bigger kitchen, if I succumb to them all.

April 25, 2005

Salad days, ahead of schedule

You can tell that Spring is finally here (apologies to those suffering under the blizzard in southern Ontario) for a whole host of reasons: half of the town have tucked away their leather coats into closets, brighter shades of green and pink and yellow (it's the new orange!) are showing up, the young, nattily-dressed men on the #22 bus into downtown have shaved their heads, and I'm making salad.

I'm very fond of salads, actually. My mother favoured huge leafy salads that she constructed individually right on each dinner plate (and covering at least half the plate, maybe more) in the summer, and cole slaw in the winter. It wasn't until I left home that I encountered things like tabbouleh, rice salads, lentil salads, pasta salads. I took to them rather fiercely.

After my lamby foray into Turkish and middle eastern cuisine this weekend (yesterday I experimented deliciously with baked falafel) I find myself with an interesting assortment of leftovers, which, individually do not constitute a meal, but together, and augmented a tad, will do just fine. Leftover slices of roast lamb with cacik and olives (!) and a few sliced tomatoes, feta and cucumbers can make very satisfactory sandwiches, stuffed into pita bread, as will the falafel. What I really needed to go with it was a salad.

The Shephard's Salad that went with the original lamb dinner was rather fun. Much like a Greek salad in that it consists primarily of chopped tomatoes, cucumber, and green peppers (and even more so since I added some cubed feta) it also featured lettuce (not to be found on any self-respecting Greek salad, thank you very much Eastern Coast!) sliced radishes, and was dressed with a combination of fresh lemon juice, olive oil, fresh sliced mint leaves and the all-important sumac, a woodsy-lemony flavoured spice. It was quite delicious, but having had it two days in a row, I am sort of looking for something else.

Lentil salad it is. There is, as it turns out, a Turkish version of green lentil salad lurking in the pages of The Sultan's Kitchen: a Turkish Cookbook. It is both similar to and quite different from the Ethiopian recipe "Azifa" that I like to make in the summer, being a combination of cooked, chilled green/brown lentils dressed with finely chopped vegetables and a simple vinaigrette. Whereas the African recipe has hot peppers, mustard, and red wine vinegar as its distinctive ingredients, the Turkish version is mellower, featuring more chopped mint, cilantro, sumac, and fresh lemon juice.

Lentil salads keep very well for a couple of days in the fridge, and lend themselves well to packed lunches - whether or not you have refrigeration available. They are also a fantastic source of both protien and vitamin-rich vegetables, and if you have a conservative hand with the olive oil, they can be healthily lean, too. In the summer, they are a favourite accompaniment (second, perhaps only to couscous salad) to grilled lamb burgers. Really, they make a great, easy side dish at any time, and I'm really looking forward to it tonight.

April 24, 2005

Impromptu

I didn't really intend to have a dinner party last night, it just worked out that way. Last week I picked up a de-boned half-leg of lamb at the supermarket, and plunked it into the freezer. Large pieces of lamb are always useful, whether one intends to roast them or dice them for stew/kebabs - always a good thing to have around. My plan was to try my hand at a rather attractive looking Turkish dish in one of my cookbooks, so I took it out of the freezer and started defrosting it on Friday.

The dish was quite simple, actually - it did require a shopping trip, as I did not have any pistachio nuts on hand, nor did my dwindling supply of dried apricots look up to the task. There was also the matter of the fresh mint - my garden mint is not yet sufficiently large to harvest, so I picked up a bag at the market.

The actual finished main dish was a boneless lamb half-leg roasted over a pilaf (or pilav, in Turkish) of long-grain rice cooked with garlic, onion, pistachio nuts, diced dried apriot and a good quantity of finely minced parsley and cilantro. The rice was carefully concealed under the meat so that the juices from the meat would soak down into the pilav and enrich the flavour. Once cooked, the meat was rested briefly and then sliced and served platter-style.

It was a simple enough dinner not to require over-thinking on my part. Cacik, the Turkish answer to Greek tzatziki, was simple to prepare, and the Shephard's Salad from The Sultan's Table by Oczan Ozan was the most sensible of side dishes (although I added feta... because I like feta and have been craving it lately). The lemon juice dressing went beautifully with the freshly chopped cucumber, tomatoes, radishes and peppers. A little pita bread from the market, and we were pretty much set.

It was my sneaky thought that, while I was at an afternoon event yesterday, I could casually invite a friend or two over for a casual little lamb dinner. In my usual spirit of testing recipes out on my friends, this seemed a most excellent plan, and mojito consumption in the afternoon made the whole thing sound just that much more fun. By the time the lamb came out of the oven, there were five of us, some of us a little tipsy, wine was being opened, and the cat was banished to "boarding school."

I forgot the olives. I don't know how, exactly, after making several mental notes on the order of how much I was looking forward to the olives, but I forgot them until the plates were cleared and I was putting out a plate of Turkish Delight and some fresh Iranian dates as a sort of dessert. I also forgot the napkins until prodded, but this is an ongoing mental lapse. If I don't set a fancy table with cloth napkins, I will completely and entirely forget that they might be necessary. Happens every time.

The lamb turned out exactly as I wanted it to, and everyone had kind things to say about the food in general. After dinner was done, more friends joined us for a glass of absinthe and to listen to a few cds. As far as unscheduled dinner parties go - I had a ton of fun.

Today, I'm going to eat the olives.

April 21, 2005

¡Viva Mexico!

Cinco de Mayo is fast approaching, which means that I'm craving Mexican food. The few good Mexican restaurants that I know of in this town will be packed on May 5 - often featuring misguided live mariachi-as-noise - so I'm contemplating putting together a potluck dinner. In 2004, we had a lot of fun with a St. Patrick's Day planned potluck, so I see no reason it shouldn't work for Cinco de Mayo.

Theme dinners on weeknights work best when more than one person is doing the cooking. I'm picturing a lovely pan of enchiladas in the oven, maybe a jicama salad, and a few Dos Equis Amber floating through my veins. Tortilla chips and salsa everywhere! Now I just need to persuade some participants...

Biggest obstacle? I need a larger kitchen table.

April 20, 2005

South African Red Wine

Last night was the 8th anniversary of my wine club. I really ought to know more about wine than I do, after eight years (although I did take a year off for health problems). We drank reds from South Africa, and were generally pleasantly surprised by the quality.

South African wines are often compared to Australian wines - both have that southern hemisphere hot-and-consistant weather going on, which means that there's one less variable to contend with as far as the wine making process goes. Most of the wines that we tried come from the Stellenbosch or Paarl districts in the Coastal Region near the coast on the Western Cape, where the average temperature is a pleasant 35 C - cooler than you would expect from its latitude. Check out the brief history of South African wines.

It is significant that around 75% of the red wine vineyards in South Africa are less than 10 years old. It takes time for a new vineyard to produce grapes that yield good wine, and many of their wines are just now reaching a level of quality that can make them contenders on the international market. The red wine varietals most often cultivated are shiraz, cabernet sauvignon, and pinotage (a local hybrid of pinot noir and cinsaut developed in 1925), but really there is a full gamut of reds produced there.

A particular quality that was noticed almost across the board in everything from the cabernets to the pinotages to the proprietary blends, was a distinct smokiness to the wines that is a characteristic that I haven't found in wines elsewhere. There was a slight hint of burning brush and barbeque that hit the palate like a surprise, as it wasn't really represented anywhere in the nose. The more sophisticated wines, such as the Saxenburg Private Collection 2000 Shiraz (Stellenbosch) had a smooth quality despite the smokiness, but the young, feisty and affordable Beyerskloof 2003 Pinotage had a strong smoky redolence with a lot of acids and a slightly acrid (but appealing) overtone of burnt coffee grounds and crushed black peppercorns. It made almost everyone at the table desperate for barbequed ribs.

The least interesting or appealing wine was the thin, smoky K.W.V. 2003 Roodeburg (Western Cape, Paarl) with a nose of dusty wood and a sour taste of oily, burnt wood. No surprise, it was the least expensive wine, with little to no information on the bottle regarding varietal.

Probably the best wine of the evening was the Warwick 2001 Three Cape Ladies Cape Blend (Stellenbosch), which was a blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and pinotage. It had a minimal nose, but flavours of dark berries, a hint of gooseberry, and a delicate, balanced quality. However, it was the interesting, expensive De Toren 2002 Fusion V Private Cellar (Coastal Region) blend of five varietals with its nose of vanilla, chocolate, leather, nutmeg and gingerbread and flavours of tobacco, violets and plums that got the most exclamatory comments.

The cabernet sauvignons tended toward very classic nose or palate - green peppers, cedar, and a certain amount of dust. The shirazes were a divided between overripe (a quality often found in hot-weather shiraz and merlot) and the simple (but smooth).

The overall quality of the wines was higher than my previous - albeit limited - experiences with South African wine led me to anticipate. Some of the wines were in the magic zone of being quite drinkable and quite affordable, but the best of the wines were a wee bit overpriced for what you're getting. Still, more and more South African Wines are becoming available now, and as the wineries settle on which grapes they want to produce and develop their vines, it's well worth watching (and tasting) to see where they go from here.

Previous tasting:
Spanish Wines

April 19, 2005

Snap, Crackle, Fffffzzzzt!

Indoor electric grill + coffee maker + ancient house with wiring done by drunken monkeys = blown fuse. Well, and the breaker was tripped, too.

So, now I still don't know how long it takes to cook fat sausages on an indoor grill.

I was also interested to note that making the coffee took priority over rescuing the sausages, but that may have been a stress-related choice.

April 17, 2005

Rah, Rah, Rasputin!

За ваше здоровье!*

Friday night we took in a singular entertainment at Rasputin Restaurant on West Broadway. I've been there a few times, but not recently. Nothing had changed, however, except that I think the portion sizes have increased.

The reason to go to Rasputin - a slightly unnerving name for a restaurant, unless you take comfort in the notion that Grigori Rasputin survived at least one attempt at poisoning - is for the ambiance. Well, the food is good, too, and they have the best vodka selection I've seen in this town, but in what other restaurant do you get to listen to the owner belting out Russian folk songs, accompanied by two staff members playing the synthesizer and the triangular balalaika?

The service is friendly, occasionally edging on pushy, as the owner patrols the restaurant between sets. We were sharing a zakuski (appetizer) of pickles when he interrupted us to tell us that the enormous pickled whole tomatoes on the plate were "the very best." Naturally, we had to try those next. They were fantastic! I also suspect there may have been some vodka in the pickling process. I wonder if they make the pickles in-house, as certainly they were unlike any commerical pickles I've ever seen, even in shops that cater to Russians and the eastern European market.

I ordered the lamb shashlik - meat cooked on a "sword" that is in fact an enormously long metal skewer. The seasoning was simple and very complementary to the lamb, whose flavour came through beautifully. The meat was not overcooked, but still retained a steady pink colour inside. The portion size was astonishing - it almost seemed as though they had managed to get an entire lamb threaded onto the skewer. The lamb was served on a rice pilaf (plov) and accompanied by a large, multi-vegetabled salad. I couldn't finish it all.

Our host, working his garrulous way around the room, serenaded the newest waitress, Marina, by singing a folk song of the same name. She seemed greatly embarrassed, but went about her duties with an only slightly red-faced dignity. The owner made a point of announcing to the entire restaurant that "Tonight, we have very special guest, famous movie star, many many movies" but couldn't seem to place the actor's name. So, he asked us. Fortunately for all, we did recognise Michael Moriarty (Law and Order's Ben Stone) and were able to supply the missing information. Our host, suave as ever, made up for this by singing "a special song, just for Mr. Moriarty." He did not, however, appear to recognize Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luthor on Smallville) who managed to eat in peace.

The wall closest to the musicians is dominated by an enormous, heavily stylized painting of three Russian horsemen in medieval garb, clutching clubs and staring into the distance. Tatars, I would guess. The painting is carefully lit so that it can be enjoyed by the whole restaurant, and it is not the only painting of its kind - just the largest. Although, the huge, idealized painting of the Mad Monk himself looms just inside the doorway.

The music is loud enough during sets that conversation is difficult, if not impossible. Your best plan is to submit to the ambiance, enjoy the well-prepared food, and tap your toes to the catchy folk rhythms.

It was, all in all, a lovely evening.

*To your health!

April 13, 2005

Many Food Blogs and Two-Lentil Soup

There are an awful lot of food blogs out there. I didn't really look for them, before I started my own, so I had no idea the amount of information smog I was contributing to. I knew that blogging had become awfully popular, but I didn't realize how many amateur food writers there are out there. They range from the fascinating to the tedious to the downright ugly. Incoherent gibbering about restaurants to sly, sophisticated observations on cultural foibles. I've got my eye on a few of them, and may put up a link section in the future.

I made lentil soup for dinner tonight, as threatened. Most soups made with brown/green lentils suffer a little texturally, being a little too thin unless you purée at least half the finished amount. Since my decision to make soup was at least partially predicated on laziness, that sort of pre-empted any notions that would dirty up the food processor or blender. (Perhaps I need an immersion blender). I decided to go with two different lentil types, instead. Brown lentils and red lentils, to be precise.

I usually use red lentils to make Bengali Red Lentils a dish which is simmered for long enough that the lentils dissolve into a creamy mass. I decided that their tendency to self-purée could be put to good use in soup, as well, and I was right. I had mentally prepared myself for needing to get in there with the potato masher to squash them into compliance, if necessary, but it wasn't.

I was originally planning a very simple soup, just lentils and fresh vegetables, but one look in the fridge while fetching the carrots, celery and leek suggested otherwise. Countless little containers of things like mashed potato, diced ham, and a peeled yam (not to mention the red bell pepper that was languishing) and even a little leftover pizza sauce resulted in a thick, hearty but still healthy soup in the fine tradition of Heirloom Soup. Only enough leftover for lunch tomorrow, however.

I contemplated making biscuits to go with the soup, since they would be a fine match, and we were out of any other type of bread, but eventually decided on focaccia. Basically, I just used the herbed version of my pizza dough recipe, and allowed it to rise in the pan a little before spritzing with oil, sprinkling with salt, and baking for about 10 minutes. Dead easy, and healthier than the biscuits would have been.

April 10, 2005

Spring Cleaning, starting with vodka (Penne alla Vodka)

I should note, to start, that I'm using the vodka neither to make cleaning more fun (although it's a heck of an idea!) nor as an actual cleaning agent. The vodka became involved by dint of being a major player in a notorious little Italian-American pasta dish Penne Vodka which was my recipe o' the week - and not incidentally, dinner on Saturday night.

It's a simple dish. While you heat up the water to cook a pound of penne pasta, you simmer 4 cups of simple tomato sauce with a cup of vodka. By the time the penne hits the boiling, salted water, your sauce will have reduced slightly, and you add a cup of heavy cream. Just before the pasta is al dente, drop a half-cup of grated parmesan into the sauce, give it a stir, drain the penne, stir it into the sauce, and allow to simmer on low for a couple of minutes more to absorb some of the sauce and give you time to devour a salad. A little black pepper, and you're done.

A pound of pasta, generally speaking, will serve four people as a main course, which evens this out as a 1/4 cup of vodka, 1/4 cup of cream, and 1/8 cup parmesan per person. Not exactly light food, but neither is it of the heart-attack inducing alfredo sauce calibre. It tastes very rich, though. Rich enough, that in these early days of Spring, it makes you contemplate taking up jogging, or lettuce.

I've never been an advocate of starvation diets. I've been known to try a few cleansing programs, such as the cabbage soup cleanse, but with my - er, let's say "abbreviated" - innards, such haphazard approaches to eating can be quite detrimental. I am feeling inspired to eat a little more healthily, though. Fortunately, I have a giant bag of chicken burritos in the freezer, but that would get fairly dull after a few days. I am resolved to make an effort to cook dinners that leave me feeling energized instead of tired, though. Light, clean meals. Out come the lentil soups and the vegetarian dishes, for a dusting-off, scraping off of the barnacles, and refitting of the hull. Foods where there are no oils or other added fats, where the intrinsic nature of the ingredients is a little healthier. A week or two of that, and I should be able to fend off the next Cheezies attack.

Final pronouncement on Penne Vodka? Very tasty, a little rich, and a little monotone on its own; would make a fantastic side dish to chicken piccata, though.

April 08, 2005

Pizza pizza!

It’s probably some sort of sin to use delicious, expensive, Bleu d’Auvernge in this fashion, but I’m desperately craving a “buffalo wing” pizza. And, since I have a chicken breast in the fridge that could easily be sautéed up in a little hot sauce, and a lump of the Bleu leftover from Bunny Night, I think I know what I’m making for dinner.

Heck, I’ve even got celery to serve as sticks on the side. I suppose that, in keeping with the fancy cheese, I should use the most expensive hot sauce my collection offers, but I think I’ll go with the comparatively mild Red Devil, as the flavours should work together better.

April 07, 2005

Mid-week domestic frenzy

I fear that my plans for this evening might outstrip my available time and energy - they're certainly going to cut into my CSI watching time (which didn't used to be a factor, thank you Lisa). I'm forging ahead, though, because the freezer is bare. Well, not bare, exactly. It's just that I used up the last of the frozen burritos, and now cannot imagine wanting anything else for lunch.

In the spirit of adventure, and because the supermarket has a pretty good special on boneless, skinless chicken breast right now, I'm planning to incorporate a little diced chicken breast into the latest version. Of course, while I'm sitting at the table rolling and wrapping a dozen or so burritos (first in the tortilla, then in plastic wrap for freezing), I might as well have some other irons in the fire, so to speak. I've got a frozen chicken carcass waiting to become stock, and a head of none-too-frisky looking celery that is probably in desperate need of use, so I think I'll set that a-simmer before I start mixing my filling.

Making burritos in the evening has the added advantage of making dinner as a sort of by-product. Maybe I'll get a little crazy and add some of the prawns that I've got stashed in the freezer to the ones we'll be eating for dinner.

All this leaves the oven free, and I'm down to a mere couple of slices of Spiced Sweet Potato Bread in the freezer, so if I'm really organized I will be able to have a cake or pan of cookies or something merrily baking away while I attend other matters. I sort of have my doubts about that last one, there. It may depend on how frisky I'm feeling by the time I get home from the store.

Even if I only get the burritos done, I'll still be basking in the glory of accomplishment, and won't feel guilty about drinking in front of the tv for the rest of the night.

April 04, 2005

Hungry

I must be on the mend - I'm ravenous this morning. This is the first time my appetite has truly kicked in since Tuesday, so I'm sort of relieved. And hungry!

Bunny dinner went fairly well - the parsnip pieces were perhaps a little on the small side and therefore cooked up a little spongy, but flavourful none-the-less. The sauce was slightly milder than usual, as I was using a different brand of Dijon than my beloved Maille, but was tasty, and yielded enough to double as a pasta sauce in leftover-land.

The hit of the evening was undoubtedly the raw milk brie de Meaux that I scored from Granville Island on Saturday. Rich, buttery, fragrant, and smooth, and unlike any other brie I've ever had. It took some careful unwrapping, as it was pretty soft, but patience is rewarded for such things.

April 03, 2005

Bunny night

I've been threatening to do this for some time, and tonight's the night: I'm cooking Lapin à la Dijon for dinner for a couple of friends.

I love doing dinner parties - casual ones, that is. I'm certain that if I were to attempt any sort of formal affair, my head would explode, but having a couple of folks over to dinner is an easy thing to do.

My menu is simple, and based on that of a French bistro: Rabbit in Dijon sauce, roasted asparagus, parmesan-roasted parsnips, and pommes persillade - parslied potatoes, for the non-French speaking. Nothing terribly daunting.

We will be starting with a chicken liver mousse, and finishing with a selection of French cheeses (including Palle's favourite Bleu D'Auvergne) with sliced pears, grapes, and fig-anise bread from Terra Breads.

The chicken liver mousse recipe is freakishly large. I had been intending to provide each person with their own little individual pots of mousse and heap a pile of sliced baguette in the centre of the table. If I do that, however, I will be faced with a daunting amount leftover, so I've opted for a large crock of mousse in the middle of the table, surrounded by baguette slices. If I manage to delay the rest of dinner long enough, perhaps it will all get eaten, but I would hate for my guests to be too full to try the bunny.

I tend to experiment on my dinner guests. It seems a swell time to drag out a recipe that I've been meaning to try, and tonight both the mousse and the parmesan parsnips fit the bill. The parsnip recipe comes with a solid nod from the Marquise, so I'm expecting it to be quite tasty - but if the nutty flavour of the parsnips isn't quite my guests' cup of tea, it will be a minor enough part of the dinner.

The bunnies came with their livers, so I have an extra treat up my sleeve. Pan-fried rabbit liver in butter with kosher salt. I should have enough for one little croustade each, an amuse-bouche if you will, to entertain my company while I rattle around with the asparagus. Wish me luck.

April 01, 2005

Unexpected Homer Simpson Moment

"What's happening to me? There's still food, But I don't want to eat it." - Homer Simpson, "Maximum Homerdrive"

This isn't a quote I ever thought would make it into my brain when faced with a plateful of brownies and rocky road bars. Unlike Homer, though, I haven't already eaten most of a cow to get to that state.

Brownies, people! Good ones. And all I can think is, eh... there's a lot of them.

Loss of appetite. Hm. I guess I'm still sick. Bummer.

March 30, 2005

Sick (and tired)

No one likes being sick. One might think, given all of the practice I've had, that I would at least face it with a certain amount of resignation, but I don't. It's frustrating.

Food tastes different, if you can taste it at all. Muscles are too tired or sore to drag oneself into the kitchen, and the prospect of doing anything more effort than chewing (and even that seems daunting) is unthinkable.

At least, when the culprit is simply a brutal head-cold and not something more medically serious, I know that in a few days I'll be back to splashing around in the kitchen. In the meantime, though, it's all I can manage to curl up around a cup of tea or switchel and languish next to the cat on the sofa.

March 28, 2005

Sage, ho!

The basil in the kitchen window is already a half-inch high, and while I was very excited to see it show its little green head a mere five days after I planted it, I have been completely overwhelmed with giddiness at the sight of the newly-sprouted sage in the container next to it.

The seeds, for both the basil and the sage that are planted in the window above my kitchen sink, are seeds that I harvested from the plants that were growing in my garden last year. I am particularly pleased by the idea that I can have a fresh crop of herbs this year, without even the initial paltry outlay of a few dollars for seeds. It's not about the money - although more of it would be nice - it's about the green thumb.

I like to think that I have a green thumb. It's not true, as I've had all kinds of mysterious ailments and other problems (not including the cat's predation of the chives) plague and kill various plants. I've had a Fraser Fir succumb to a mysterious blight that turned it brown in the space of a month, despite my fevered attempts to research a remedy. I've had a thriving patch of English thyme go belly up for no apparent reason. Most recently, I've had a bay tree rust itself into an early grave after years of happy, if not ecstatic, bay leaf production.

I won't even get into the plant-deaths that occurred due to my own carelessness - failing to bring delicate plants inside before the frost, etc. I like to grow plants and trees, particularly when they are useful in cooking, so every year I decide what to grow, and set off with the best of intentions.

The sage plant that I have been nursing along since 1997 died this winter. It was not before its time, although I don't know how long container-sage should live. This particular plant had struggled and survived in the face of over-enthusiastic application of insecticide in its formative stages, poor lighting, bad weather, moss growth, neglect, over-harvesting, overgrowing its pot, and probably a number of other things of which I remain blissfully ignorant. I knew that it was dying. I knew that I could possibly save it, if I tried, but that all previous attempts to save ailing plants (rosemary notwithstanding) had only prolonged their agony. I didn't even try.

I did, however, harvest some big, fat purple seeds from its lavender and white flower tubes last summer. The sage had died back to a single, valiant stalk, so heavily overcome with flowers that it bent over the side of the pot and then struggled upward in a strange s-shaped attempt to reach the sunlight. I admired its strength of character, its determination to survive, and when the seeds were ripe, I saved them in a little envelope. By Thanksgiving, the sage had given up. Almost two weeks ago, I planted four of the seeds in my window-sill container, and now two of them have sprouted.

I am ridiculously pleased about it.

March 23, 2005

Spanish Wine

I belong to a wine club that meets monthly, and has done so for (as of next month) eight years. I know that for some people the words "wine club" will cause their eyes to roll back in their heads and conjure images of delicate, mincing sips of wine followed by face-making and spitting, or words like "well-rounded" or "full-bodied" that the uninitiated suspect would better refer to the backsides of those indulging.

This is because they've only experienced uber-formal wine tastings as some sort of prestige / social climbing event where people attempt to impress each other. It can be hard to convince folks that we

a) don't spit out the wine unless it's amazingly bad; and

b) are more likely to describe a bad wine as tasting like the floorboards of a '69 Cadillac hearse than more rarified language.

Still, despite that, we occasionally get new members, and sometimes they aren't scared right off by our rambunctious behaviour and casual approach. We're certainly not a club for the faint of heart or delicate sensibilities.

Last night was a long-overdue revisit of Spanish wines, and we fared rather well. All seven of the wines were at least drinkable, and five of these got good marks from most of the participants. This time were were not only limiting our intake to Spain as a region, but specifically the red wines of Spain. The clear winner of the evening, with almost universal approbation, was the 2000 Bodegas Estefania "Tilenus" from Bierzo, Spain, at $30.99. The lowest rating was probably the 2003 Bodegas Solano "Fandango" Tempranillo from Utiel-Requena, Spain at $9.95. It wasn't a bad wine, although a little sour. I wouldn't be sad to have a glass handed to me at a party, for example, but it's not good enough to make me want to buy it. There was a good range in quality between those two, including a wine that was quite a bit pricier than the Tilenus.

Something that set the Tilenus apart and made it particularly interesting on paper was that it is made entirely from a grape called "Mencia" which is indigenous to Spain and, to my knowledge, has not been cultivated commercially anywhere else.

There has been a sudden increase in the number of Spanish wines available in British Columbia LD stores lately, and all the wines that we tasted last night are listed as new arrivals that are available on a temporary basis. Perhaps some of the better ones will be picked up by the increasing number of wine shops that have opened recently, but certainly - if you like Spanish wine, now's the time to stock your cellar.

March 18, 2005

Not that Irish

Oh, I'm pretty sure there's some Irish in there - there's certainly English and Welsh - and as they say, everyone's a little bit Irish on March 17th.

Last night we had the incredibly un-Irish dinner of chili dogs. I'm still somewhat on my simplicity-kick, and chili dogs made from leftover frozen chili is pretty darn simple. The big plan was to then go out for a pint and a dessert, but I wasn't feeling that well and went to bed early. Apparently, I missed all kinds of excitement (read: bad behaviour) at my local Guinness-dispensery, but I did hear the sirens suggestive of many drunken louts wandering into the streets irrespective of traffic.

I have nothing against the celebration of St. Patrick's day, although I'm not a big fan of parades (or any other crowds). Last year, I organized a planned-potluck where we had Beef in Guinness, colcannon, champ, soda bread and all manner of delightfully Irish goodies.

I just wish that the whole idea of St. Patrick's day hadn't been subverted into a drink-til-you're-sick festival.

March 13, 2005

Simple Things

Although my usual kitchen inclinations run to the culinary equivalent of sequins, and I can be guilty of trying to squeeze one too many items into an omelette (risking utter flavour chaos), occasionally I do remember just how much I like simple things.

The very simple spaghetti and meatballs that I made last weekend have inspired me to consider other super-simple dishes for week-night suppers. Tonight will be gyoza (far from simple, but easy and delicious - especially if you have a stash of them frozen in your freezer) with spicy bok choi, but tomorrow I think I'll take a whack at a traditional Italian dish of spaghetti with olive sauce. Perhaps I'll make simple things all week - revelling in the ease of preparation and the uncomplicated flavours.

March 07, 2005

Weekend of Firsts

I spent much of this past weekend in the kitchen, experimenting with dishes I've never tried before. I started slow, with a simple French yogurt cake laced with blueberries and ground almonds, and on Sunday dialed it up a little with fresh key lime pie and spaghetti with meatballs.

Okay, I've made spaghetti before, and no - I didn't make the pasta from scratch - and yes, I've made meatballs before. But never together, as the classic Italian / Italian-American dish. I read through a variety of articles and recipes that debated the merits of various fillers and moisteners and meat options before deciding on a simple, almost plain-jane approach of beef meatballs seasoned with fresh parsley, a smidge of garlic and good parmesan. Next time I'll add a little salt, too, but I thought the salty parmesan might suffice.

Sauce for a dish like this is best left simple, too. I made a very basic simmered tomato sauce with a little onion and garlic, a light hand with the dried oregano and a heavy, heavy hand with the chiffonade of basil. Simmered with the meatballs, after they had browned adequately in the heavy cast-iron pan, it provided the perfect backdrop.

The finished dish was almost too pretty - I chose to serve Italian-American style, rather than with the pasta and meatballs as separate dishes, as the Italians do. Black stoneware plates topped with loops of white pasta, artfully arranged meatballs and just enough sauce to slick the noodles, once mixed. A little extra basil, black pepper and a grating of parmesan, and it was completely adorable. I probably would have admired it for a bit longer, but I was hungry. I need a digital camera.

The key lime pie (recipe from Cook's Illustrated) that we had for dessert was made from actual key limes, which are tiny, walnut-sized and not-particularly-juicy little fruits. I zested ten of them for a standard 9" pie (graham cracker crust), which yielded just enough zest but only half of the juice that I required. Fortunately, I had a few regular Persian limes around to pick up the slack. I now know why there are bottles of key lime juice available for the home cook - I'd much rather have a machine extract the tiny amount of juice available.

Key lime pie is traditionally topped with masses of whipped cream, but since I had some egg whites left over from making the filling, I decided to go for a meringue topping instead. It emerged from the oven with a beautiful golden marshmallowy top - again, picture perfect - but then, as it cooled, the meringue decided to shrink a little, and wept sugary tears over its surface. It was still tasty, but substantially less attractive to look at.

March 04, 2005

Shopoholic

One of my co-workers says that I shop for food the way most women shop for clothes. This, upon hearing me comment that, as I was early for a dinner date I popped into nearby Meinhardt's to oggle the gourmet goodies.

This is why I have cupboards full of edible oddities, yet nothing to wear.

March 02, 2005

On the Spice Trail

A couple of weeks ago I forayed into the world of fresh cheese making, with an Indian paneer. I now have another skill to add to my list o' reasons not to be eaten first after the civilization collapses. It was a raging success, and also a bit of a surprise, as I hadn't realized how closely related paneer is to ricotta - the classic Italian fresh cheese. It was also frightfully uncomplicated. I now understand my Literature teacher's contempt for Ben Gunn's helpless pining for cheese while living on goat's milk.

I have been creeping slowly into the world of Indian cookery over the last year, edging away from pre-mixed masalas and premade flavouring sauces in favour of learning the classic techniques. As I write this, there is a large bowl of kidney beans sitting in a bowl of water on the kitchen table for tonight's endeavour at making rajma rasedar, a classic vegetarian dish that I am assured by the recipe's owner is considered compulsory for celebratory menus in the Punjab.

Since I have had very good results with the other recipes that I've tried from this site I have no doubts that the results will be tasty.