Cinco de Mayo (Red Adobo of Pork and also Black Bean Soup)

Last year, I had a Cinco de Mayo party; this year, I am not so organized. Cinco de Mayo commemorates the victory of the drastically outnumbered Mexicans over the Napoleonic army at The Battle Of Puebla in 1862. Although it is primarily a regional holiday in the state of Puebla, it has some recognition throughout Mexico, and in many American cities, too. It is not Mexico's Independence Day (September 16), but it is a celebration in a similar spirit.

While it may not be Mexico's Independence Day, it holds great significance in the establishment of a national identity for many Mexicans, and as such is perfectly in keeping with my interest in the food of cultural celebrations.

While I may not have managed any particular arrangments for this year, I have been cooking a lot of Mexican food lately, including Mayan-style black bean soup and these adorable little tostadas made of Mexican adobo of pork shoulder, some awesome spinach tortillas made by a local factory (you can actually taste the spinach!), a some feisty green salsa using Brandon's recipe (of Orangette-fame). The pork shoulder took an impressive three hours of simmering in first water and then a brick-coloured adobo sauce made with pureed ancho chiles, onions, garlic, and surprisingly minimal dried spices, such as cumin and oregano. This is all about the chiles, but it is not a particularly hot dish. Anchos are, as Bobby Flay likes to say, "like spicy raisins." There's an underlying sweetness that sets off the mild heat of the pepper, and contrasts beautifully in this recipe against the vinegar-edge of the adobo.

I'm already on the record as saying that miniature = cute, and these are no exception. The first night I served them, we left the tortillas soft (but warm) and adorned them with sliced peppers and a smear of refried beans, and the second night, I crisped the tortillas in a cast iron frying pan until blistered with gold and served them with just the salsa and a little cilantro. The tortillas are about a finger's-length in diameter, making these just a few quick bites each. You could make even tinier ones, just one bite each, and I probably would if I were serving them as party snacks. In fact, I might just have to have a party so that I can do so!

Red Adobo of Pork
(Adobo Rojo de Cerdo)
adapted from the excellent New Complete Book of Mexican Cooking by Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz

7 ancho chilies, toasted, de-stemmed and de-seeded, torn into pieces and covered with warm water
3 lbs. boneless pork shoulder, cut into one-inch cubes
1 onion, peeled, halved, and stuck with 2 cloves
1 onion, peeled and diced
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
1/2 teaspoon ground oregano
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
black pepper
1/2 teaspoon sugar
398 ml./14 0z. canned, diced tomatoes
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 tablespoon lard, bacon drippings or corn oil
Salt
Black pepper

Start with the pork. In a heavy dutch oven, place the pork and the clove-stuck onion with enough lightly salted water to just cover. Bring to a simmer, reduce the heat to a very gentle heat, and cook (covered) for 2 hours. The meat will be very tender. In the final hour of the meat simmering, start the prep for the sauce.

Let the peppers rest in their warm bath for 20 - 30 minutes, until thoroughly soft. Remove the peppers from their water and place them in a food processor, along with the chopped onion, garlic, cumin, oregano, sugar and tomatoes. Process until you have a fairly smooth, heavy puree. In a heavy skillet, heat the lard, and add the puree. Saute the mixture over a lowheat, stirring constantly, for about five minutes.

When the pork has finished simmering, remove the pork pieces from the liquid, which has become a lovely pork-stock. Strain the stock, and reserve one cup. Freeze the rest for the next time you want to make black bean soup.

Thin the ancho mixture with the reserved pork stock, and transfer the mixture to your now-empty dutch oven. Add the pork back to the pot, add the vinegar, and stir well. Simmer uncovered over low to medium-low heat. The sauce will finish cooking and become quite thick. Taste the sauce, and add salt and black pepper as needed.

Serves 6. Leftovers make awesome burritos with beans, grated cheese, and salsa.

Taking Note

When one of my fellow food bloggers is so taken with a dish that she immediately needs to make it again, I take note. In this case, Linda from kayaksoup did such a great sell-job on Giada's Balsamic Chicken that I had to try it for myself.

How right she was, to be so enthused! I paired this tasty offering with lemon-orzo (still suffering from a little Greekitis, I guess), broccoli, and cumin-roasted yam cubes. I realized after I had taken the picture, that I hadn't yet sprinkled the lemon zest over, which was very pretty but by which point we were all starving - precluding the time for more photography.

This will be going into my repeat-file, too. Thanks, Linda!

A Sudden Surge of Greek

My neighbourhood is quite well known for its Greek community - restaurants, banks, poolhalls, specialty import stores - often these are Greek-owned-and-run. I have my favourites, of course, whether it's a place to hang out or a place I might go for one specific dish.

I keep kalamata olives on hand, most of the time. I'm very fond of feta cheese. I never want to run out of oregano. I really dig lamb. I'm growing surpisingly fond of spinach, even. It shouldn't be a surprise to me, then, that I occasionally suffer from a sudden surge of Greek cooking.

I am not Greek. Not even a little bit, and lord knows, I'm a little bit of a lot of things. I do, however, often get mistaken for Greek or (insert other Mediterranean culture). It's the dark hair and vigorously growing eyebrows, I think; an illusion. However, if you were to walk past my house and smell the unmistakable aroma of lamb simmering with tomatoes, onions, cinnamon and allspice as I layer my way, brow furrowed, through making a Pastitsio, you'd be excused for the mistake.The wonderfully complex-tasting seasoning of Pastitsio is a delicious hallmark of Greek cookery: the bold use of a number of spices that are often thought of as more sweet flavours, for baking, are mixed into a familiar blend of red meat and tomatoes to make a highly aromatic (yet not "spicy") flavour, completely unlike either an Italian pasta dish or an Indian curry.

This marks my first attempt at Avgolemono, a soup I have long enjoyed at restaurants, but never bothered to make. At its heart, it is really a Greek variation on good ol' chicken noodle soup. Chicken broth, a few minimal vegetables, and some orzo pasta. Where it departs from the standard is the generous addition of lemon juice and, in my case, lemon zest, too, and the use of egg. Avgolemono is a dairy-free soup, its subtle and creamy texture coming from beaten egg that is stirred carefully into the soup to create a texture more like crushed velvet than the rags of an Italian Stracciatella. After examining a number of recipes, I decided to go it alone based on the common principles of all the recipes I had seen, plus all the avgolemonos I've eaten.

It was shockingly easy. It was very tasty. And, the next day, for lunch, it was even better (and a teensy bit thicker).


Avgolemono

Serves 4

2 teaspoons rendered chicken fat or canola oil
4 cups strong chicken stock
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 large carrot, peeled and cut into quarter-slices
1/2 teaspoon oregano leaves
1 bayleaf
1/2 cup orzo
juice of one lemon
3 wide strips of lemon zest
salt & pepper to taste
1 egg, beaten
1 cooked chicken breast, diced

Melt the chicken fat in a medium soup-pot. Add the onion, garlic and carrot, and cook and stir until the onion becomes a little translucent. Add the oregano and bayleaf, and stir. Add the chicken stock and orzo and simmer, stirring, for about 6 minutes, or until the orzo begins to get tender. Add the cooked chicken breast and reduce the heat slightly.

Remove about a cup of hot broth (avoiding any chunks) from the soup pot and add it slowly to the beaten egg in a small bowl, beating well (an immersion blender is great for this). Add the lemon juice and zest to the soup, lower the flame under the soup to very low, and add the beaten egg/broth mixture. Cook and stir over the low flame until mixture thickens, but do not let it boil, or you will have a raggedy look to the soup's texture. Taste and adjust for salt.

What's for Breakfast?

I usually try to make breakfast in at least once during the weekend. Not only is it a whole different range of cooking from my evening adventures, but it helps keep the budget under control. Like everyone else, I have my favourites - the frequent fliers that I turn to when adventure is out of the question - when the day is scheduled too tightly, for example. This is yesterday's breakfast - fairly self-explanatory in the main, but still worthy of a little explication.

I make steamed eggs fairly often - it is my go-to "basic breakfast" choice over fried, scrambled, or boiled. I often top the eggs with hot sauce before they go into the steamer - cooking in a layer of flavour. Yesterday, however, I wanted to try out my new Hawaiian Red Sea Salt, so the eggs remained pristine until they hit the plate. The verdict on the salt was - delicious! The crystals are much coarser than kosher salt, but with a flat, shingle-like appearance. Unlike my other fancy salts of the moment, Fleur de Sel and Brittany Organic Grey Sea Salt, the grains do not clump together at all, allowing for easy placement on a plated dish.

For those of you unfamiliar with the delights of a southern breakfast, the creamy mass shown at the bottom of the picture is hominy grits with cheese and sliced chile peppers. Enormously easy to make (I use Alber's Quick Grits, which I have to buy in Bellingham, because most grocers up here don't even seem to know what they are, let along stock them), grits fill in the role of potatoes in other breakfasts - although a true southern breakfast might have both, I suppose.

The first time I ever had grits was in New Orleans - at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville. I wouldn't have naturally stumbled into a place that was clearly a tourist-trap in many ways, but the daily noon downpour had just begun, and we had ducked into the restaurant in time to get a seat rather than ride out the darkened sky and hour of skin-piercing rain huddled in the doorway looking hopeful and trying not to shiver. The menu contained "Shrimp & Grits" and it seemed like as good a time as any to check them out. I've become quite a fan. I can't even listen to Jimmy Buffett without thinking of grits, such is the power of association...

I should confess that I do not usually pile the bacon onto my plate with quite such abandon. I could tell you that it was for photographic purposes, as the two strips I usually have would look paltry in comparison, but the truth is that I was working from frozen, and didn't have the time or patiences to defrost the bacon to just use what I needed. I slung the extra few strips into the pan, and we simply forced ourselves to eat them! Fortification, you know, against a day where food would be something of an unknown quantity.

This leaves only the toast left for analysis: Healthy Way's organic whole wheat bread, made without flour, but instead using ground, sprouted grain and vital wheat gluten to adjust the texture. The breads are good - although I fancy the Alpine Chipmunk Loaf more than the plain whole wheat, which may surprise those of you who are used to me avoiding anything whole or crunchy in my bread. There is no glucose/fructose (better known as High Fructose Corn Syrup) in either of these loaves, and no refined white flour. They are very tasty. The website linked above claims that the organic breads are only available in Atlantic Canada, but this is clearly out of date.

So, no smoothies, yesterday - I was out of fruit - so now I'm pretty much craving one. Perhaps today for lunch...

Easter Dinner - Cooking together

Much as I like ham, which was my family's traditional Easter dinner when I was growing up, I confess that these days I find myself leaning more towards the Australian tradition of lamb to celebrate the Spring. Of course, the Australian tradition usually involves roasting a great big leg of it, which presents much the same problem as a ham does in a household of two-plus-cat: too much leftover.

When one is not tied to unwavering expectations, however, one can feel free to walk on the wild side and do something completely different. So, with remarkably little discussion required, Palle & I settled on a lamb Daube Provençal as our dinner of choice.

Now, a daube is essentially a meat stew, and this one certainly was stewed for quite some time. 90 minutes, to be exact. Fortunately we had lunched well and further fortified ourselves with snacks in the afternoon before we got to cooking. Palle took point, and I took prep, so the dish is really his execution of the Daube Provençal from Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook - his third recipe from that book.

So, Palle handled the batch-browning while I chopped, poured and wrangled the mise en place at kibitzed at him about raising or lowering the flame, when to add certain ingredients, and whatever else I could think of. He is always patient with my sometimes never-ending stream of chatter and general kitchen bossiness, and happy to let someone else do the prep for a change, I think.

More often than not it is he who helps me in the kitchen, deftly retrieving things from the fridge or freezer, opening, peeling, slicing, chopping endless amounts of mushrooms and peppers, which are among our most frequent fliers. I enjoy it when he steps out from behind the cutting board and cooks, which would probably happen more frequently if he had more reasonable work hours.

My contribution to the night's dinner was a pear and ginger cheesecake (from the latest issue of Eating Well) for which - alas! there are no pictures. It was quite nice, but the ginger flavour outshone the pear. Of course, if you choose to drink a little Poire William with it, you probably wouldn't notice...

Miniature = Cute

It's not my fault. I'm programmed to it - we all are. Miniature versions of things are just somehow more adorable. Even bran muffins. Especially bran muffins!



The secret to the amazingly light texture of these muffins is to soak the bran in buttermilk until it is fully hydrated. You can add the extras of your choice - walnuts, raisins, orange zest - but they're quite tasty plain, too. The recipe makes 12 regular sized muffins (not bakery-jumbo monsters) or 3 dozen miniatures - just a tad bigger than your average doughnut-hole, and much more satisfying! These are great for snacking, because I cannot leave a half-muffin to dry out, even if I don't want a whole one at any given time. This way, I'm snacking down on a whole (albeit tiny) muffin several times throughout the day.

Bran Muffins

Makes 12 regular-sized muffins
Total prep and cooking time: 40 minutes

1 1/4 cups wheat bran
1 scant cup buttermilk
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons molasses
1 cup stone-ground whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 cup raisins (optional)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Lightly spritz a 12 cup muffin pan with canola oil.

In a medium bowl, mix together the wheat bran and buttermilk. Let stand for about 10 minutes or until it has thickened.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, blend together the brown sugar, apple sauce, canola oil, egg and molasses. Add the bran mixture and stir well. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and spices. Stir into the batter until just moistened - don't over-mix. Stir in the raisins (you can also use blueberries). Divide the batter between the muffin cups.

Bake for 15 - 20 minutes, or until the tops spring back when lightly pressed. Let stand for a couple of minutes in the pan, then turn out to finish cooling on a wire rack. When completely cool, you can freeze them individually on a tray, transfer to a zippered plastic bag, and use as needed. A frozen muffin tossed into a briefcase or knapsack thaws beautifully in time for a morning coffee break.



They freeze well, too. Put them in a single layer on a plate and freeze until hard - a couple of hours will do it - then bag them up and defrost as needed. I just toss a couple of them into a Tupperware container and put it in my briefcase - by the time I get to work, they're completely thawed out and fresh. For added deliciousness, about 10 seconds in the microwave and a smear of cream cheese make them almost fancy!

The usual fat-reducing technique of replacing some of the oil with unsweetened applesauce is employed here - I keep my applesauce in the freezer, too, and defrost in the microwave as needed.

I also make these with double-the-sugar, which brings it to a whopping 1/2 cup(!) They still are nowhere near as sweet as cupcakes, but if you're looking for a little hint of sweetness, that's the way to go. They are still frightfully healthy, I assure you.

Again With The Chicken

I don't know why I've been cooking chicken so much lately - maybe it's because I stocked up so well the last time a decent sale came up. Tonight's recipe was Golden Chicken with Spicy Refried Beans from Eating Well magazine's online recipes. Any recipe that requires me to toss raw chicken into a pile of cumin and coriander has to be all right, in my books. To make matters even better, this recipe was finished in about 20 minutes - not including the time it took to chop up a little Turkish salad, which wasn't long either. Certainly, it was all done in less than half an hour.

The beans are simmered briefly in the same pan that the chicken cooks in, which adds a layer of flavour and eliminates the need to dirty another pan (always a plus). I thought they were very tasty - I had never had refried white beans before. They could have been a smidge creamier - you can see how dry they look on the plate - but they reheated beautifully. Next time, I'll add a little more water, or perhaps vermouth, and see how that turns out.

The dish turned out quite well overall - not as stupdenous as the first recipe I ever tried from EW (a braised, stuffed turkey breast with cider gravy), but a good weeknight supper dish. I was inspired enough to go get the latest issue, and have spent the day drooling over the four recipes for asparagus, within.

Simple Dinner

Sometimes, simple is best. One of the most stress-free dinners that I can think of is a roast chicken - happily, a meal that not only provides dinner, but also lunch (or another, convertable dinner the next day) and bones for making stock (or for tucking into the freezer for making stock in the future).

I am almost incapable of roasting a chicken without throwing a few whole (cut in half if they're exceptionally large), peeled cloves of garlic into the cast iron frying pan that I use as a roaster. When there is about a half-hour of roasting time left (I roast with a high-heat method, so 400 F minimum) I toss the garlic in and shove it around a little so that each clove gets slicked with rendered chicken fat. Then, I knock together a side-dish or two - if I'm feeling fancy - and dinner is pretty much ready.

If at all possible, mushroom fiend that I am, I like to place a few mushrooms around the roasting chicken, too. They like a little more time than the garlic, so you can prep them after the chicken has gone into the oven, and just add them when you're ready. They soak up the flavours of the chicken and the garlic, and if you're lucky they develop a little burnished crust of salty goodness. Even the humblest, most ordinary of mushrooms turns out extraordinary with this treatment. It is helpful to give them a stir part way through cooking, just so that the flavours distribute evenly. It prevents part of the mushroom from drying out and becoming chewy, and it encourages the absorption of garlicky juices.

I'm pretty much all about the pasta, these days, so the one shown here is simply mini-penne (pennini piccoli) tossed with a little butter, parmesan and parsley, and the carrots speak for themselves - simple, steamed, sprinkled with a little kosher salt.

A glass of wine, and Sunday supper is ready.

Bunny Redux

Do you remember that I had the larger part of two rabbits still in the freezer? Well, even well-wrapped, meat doesn't like to be frozen for too long, so we decided to greet the pretend-Spring weather that we've been having with a lovely little dinner of Rabbit in saffron sauce and, not so incidentally, break in my new cookbook Bones by Jennifer McLagan. The recipe was well-written and easily followed, and I did suprisingly little to tweak it to my own cooking reflexes. The technique of blanching the carrots, onions, and asparagus - while not new to me - was something I didn't have a lot of direct experience with. The result was incredibly tender vegetables that weren't at all mushy. I was surprised at how happy I was with the blanched asparagus, since I usually roast them to great effect.

The recipe also delighted me for one particular reason - it contained a mini-dish of seasoned rabbit livers on toasts as an accompaniment. Almost a play-within-a-play, really. I'm not the biggest fan of chicken or beef livers, but the rabbit liver is something special. Petrushka introduced me to rabbit livers pan-fried in butter, seasoned with a restrained hand, and devoured as the cook's treat - a little dish picked up from his chef-friends. I liked it much more than I expected. This dish, I daresay, is actually a little better, as the slight brightness of the parsley actually heightens the delicacy of the liver. Plus, little toasts make an adorable vector.

The saffron, an Iranian variety, was a gift brought back by family visiting the Middle East, and has been waiting patiently on a little throne in my kitchen while I blithered about deciding whether its inaugural use should be risotto alla Milanese, a Moroccan tagine, a paella, an Indian curry, or something else entirely. So, really, this dish was the meeting of several needs: to use the rabbit before it suffered freezer burn, to try a recipe from Bones, and to finally crack open the saffron.

Saffron is a highly distinctive, very unusual flavour, shockingly pungent for such a delicate thread-like spice. There is an almost bitter note that thoroughly permeates anything it comes even remotely in contact with, and contains a particularly strong dye that stains everything it touches (when wet) with a yellow, sometimes orangish hue. It is shockingly expensive - ounce for ounce the most expensive spice in the world. Naturally, it comes in very small containers.

Having broached the packaging, I think that I should probably move forward with some of those other saffron-notorious dishes I was contemplating. It would be a shame for the supply that I have to lose its potency while I vascillate over application. This is ever the challenge of delicacies - one must enjoy them while they are fresh, or risk losing out.

Trompe L'Oeil

Well, I may not be fooling anyone at all, I suspect, but at first glance this looks substantially more like an adorable little doughnut than an adorable little muffin. That is, however, exactly what it is: an oatmeal breakfast muffin made with buttermilk, grated carrots, ginger, wheat bran, and spices, all baked up in a NordicWare miniature Bundt pan that I received as a Christmas gift last December.

I've been playing with muffins, lately. I'm designing a bran muffin suitable for athletes, low in fat and sugar, and high in complex carbohydrates. I hope to be able to show the results of that soon. In the meantime, these little darlings also fit the bill, being naturally high in soluable and insoluable fibre.


These muffins are designed to have a low-to medium glycemic index, but I do not have the tools to measure either the index or the glycemic load exactly. They are not very sweet, so if you are accustomed to sweeter muffins - as most people are - and you aren't watching your sugars intake, you can double the honey in this recipe without making it completely unhealthy. In fact, even doubling the honey, this recipe would still probably qualify in the medium GI range. The idea of this recipe is to provide a good, long-lasting breakfast on the go or mid-morning snack.

Gingered Carrot Oaties

1 1/4 cups rolled oats
1/4 cup wheat bran
3/4 cup stoneground whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup finely grated carrot
1 1/4 cups low fat buttermilk
1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger root
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup (scant) honey
2 tablespoons canola oil

Soak the oatmeal and the bran in one cup of the buttermilk. Let stand for 1/2 hour to let the oatmeal soften. The mixture will get very thick and a bit stiff.

Preheat oven to 375 F. Lightly spritz a muffin pan with canola oil.

Add the grated carrot and grated ginger to the oats. Beat the egg, honey and canola oil separately, then add to the oat mixture. Stir well. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and ground ginger. If you want to add raisins or dried cranberries, go ahead and add a handful of them now. Add the remaining 1/4 cup of buttermilk to the oat mixture, and then carefully stir the flour mixture into the oats, adding half the dry ingredients at a time, and stirring until just combined.

Spoon into prepared muffin tins (smooth the tops if using mini-Bundt pan). Bake for 20 minutes. Let stand in the pan for five minutes, then turn out to cool on wire rack. Excellent with a little butter, or a smear of jam, but also delicious plain (see comments above recipe re: honey).

Should make 12 small-ish regular muffins, or 6 mini-Bundts plus two "cookies."

Which brings me to my other note - you can bake these simply as a drop cookie, using large tablespoons of batter on a lightly greased/spritzed cookie sheet. Bake for 12 - 15 minutes or until they bounce back slightly.

One Noodle, Two Nights, Two Dishes

I've been eating more pasta these days. This is partly because I'm doing a fair amount of quick-cooking, and pasta responds very well to that sort of thing - where you make the sauce or, to be more Italian, i condimenti, from simple ingredients while the water comes to a boil and the noodles cook. It is also because pasta is relatively low on the glycemic index, making it a more desirable food (as long as I don't compensate by eating monstrous portions, but that hasn't been a problem) for me as I strive to find the right foods to offset my health challenges.

When I was first cooking on my own, I still cooked for a family of three or four people, in terms of quantity. It was easier, more familiar, and I liked to have leftovers the next day. When I started getting tired of chewing my way through an enormous vat of chili or large casserole, pasta was one of the first dinners that I turned to for simple preparations for one or two people. At that time, I was all about the fettuccine. Preferably in a creamy sauce, thank you, which you can manage if you have a schedule that involves full time school, part time work, no car, and a fondness for nightclub dancing non-stop for four-hour stretches.

Linguine is a noodle whose charms I have only come lately to appreciate. I would flippantly dismiss it as spaghetti that got squished flat, and concluded that I might as well eat spaghetti as linguine. Subtlety, you might well have guessed - not my strong point. For the first time, a few years ago, I bought linguine under duress in an attempt to precisely follow a recipe in a magazine. This may have been because I had also recently read up on how it is very important to Italians to marry the correct sauce to each specific pasta shape. I worried that I had been going about it all wrong. Certainly, fettuccine was well matched to my creamy concoctions, but the linguini - ah, how to even express how much more elegant it was! Like the Linguine with Roasted Fennel recipe, it was an olive-oil based dressing that I made for the pasta. The noodles were slick, plump and shiny, without being weighed down by sauce. Each one slithered onto the fork almost of its own accord. It wasn't dry or uninteresting at all, and the amount of olive oil needed was about the same as is used in most more familiar pasta sauces just to saute the vegetables. Clearly, I was on to something.

I still enjoy a good cream sauce, now and again, and of course I am no stranger to cheese. The simplicity of a slick of good olive oil, a few fresh herbs, and a few vegetables has become my standby easy dinner. What I put in it - depends on what I have lying about. I might toss some vegetables on a grill, or roast them in a hot oven. I might have some shrimp lurking in the freezer, or a jar of artichoke hearts, or I might not have anything more exotic than button mushrooms and some parsley, but it's amazing what you can do with them. Especially if you have a few treasures squirreled away to brighten up any dish - a little bottle of white truffle oil...a small box of beautiful Brittany Sea Salt...a good hunk of parmesan cheese. The variety is infinte, and up to the limits of your imagination or your pantry, depending on whether you're willing to stock for the eventuality.

Prescription cheese

Today, my doctor told me that I need to get more calcium in my diet, and suggested increasing my dairy. Despite daily yoghurt infusions and a fondness for cheese, apparently I still need more. I was still ruminating on the ways I could possibly get more dietary calcium - running the list through my mind and trying to figure out if I was missing out on any major calcium sources - when I realized that I knew exactly what to make for dinner: something so rich, extravagant and dairy-laden that I tend to only make it once or twice a year.

Macaroni and cheese is a quintessentially North American dish but, sadly enough, most people make it out of boxes if they make it at all. This is a darn shame. This version uses real cheese and real butter, and it tastes out of this world. Not only that, but it doesn't take longer than the boxed stuff (you just have to do a couple of things while the water is coming to a boil). In a little nod toward Rob Feenie's splendid mac n' cheese with its cap of Irish-cured bacon lardons and four different cheeses, tonight I walked on the wilder side of macaroni and cheese: I added a little blue.

Macaroni & Cheese
Adapted from Cook's Illustrated February 1997

Serves 4

125 g. elbow macaroni
2 tablespoons butter
3/4 cup evaporated milk (not condensed milk!)
5 oz./140 g. grated sharp cheddar (6 oz. if you're not using blue)
1 oz. /30 g. crumbled Danish Blue
1 egg, well beaten
1/2 teaspoon hot pepper sauce (Tabasco is fine)
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon ground mustard seed
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper

Put a pot of water on to boil. While it comes to a boil, in a small bowl whisk together the egg, 1/2 cup of the evaporated milk, the pepper sauce, salt, mustard seed, and white pepper. Grate the cheddar. That's pretty much your whole prep.

Add the macaroni to the boiling water, and cook according to preference - I don't need to tell you that's al dente do I? Drain the pasta and return it to the pot over a low heat. Add the butter and stir well until melted. Add the milk/egg mixture and stir until it starts to thicken. Turn the heat off, and start adding the cheese, a small handful at a time, finishing with the blue cheese. Do not turn the heat back on to make it melt faster, or it will separate out into a grainy, ugly mess that will make you cry. Be patient, stir for the couple of minutes that it takes, and serve.

This is bloody rich, so small servings are best, preferably with lots of veggies and maybe a slice of meatloaf or something. Hey, I need more iron, too, did I mention? I won't be having this weekly in the name of dietary calcium, but it's a lovely treat - and what better time?

Buckwheat Pancakes

I've been meaning to try making buckwheat pancakes for months, now, but somehow never really got it off the ground. Part of the reason is that I've not had them often, and I wasn't really sure where to start - what would make one recipe look better than the others as a jumping-off spot. However, I've had great luck with other recipes from Molly at Orangette, so it seemed like a great place to start. If I was going to put blind faith in a recipe, a fellow blogger with great taste seems like the best place to start. When I saw her recipe for Blueberry Buckwheat Pancakes, on Saucy, I promptly printed it out and stuffed it into my more serious file of Things I Must Try. Saucy no longer seems to be a going concern. I don't know what happened, but the recipe is still there, fortunately for those of you who haven't tried it yet.

One of the things that particularly appealed to me was that these seemed to be nice, substantial pancakes, as opposed to the crepe-like buckwheat creations I've seen from time-to-time in restaurants and cookbooks. This was exactly the kind of pancake that I was looking for. Slightly plump, golden-edged, tender, hearty, and simple.

As you can see from my efforts shown above, I did not follow through with the blueberries, but that was actually due to the current high prices as opposed to my inexplicably quirky iffy-ness regarding blueberries. I would not rule out blueberries on a subsequent attempt.

Now that I've possibly shocked you with the revelation that I don't rate blueberries at the top of the berry continuum, I suppose you won't feel anything but numb when I mention that maple syrup is not my favourite pancake-topper. No indeed! My pancakes meet their fate and my plate with variously peanut butter (very occasionally with a small amount of maple syrup on top of the peanut butter) or fruited yoghurt. Fruit preserves are also nice, if they're not too sweet. Fact is, it has been literally years since I bought a bottle of maple syrup. Part of this is because we tend alarmingly toward the eggy-savoury breakfast choices, and part of it is that when I do use syrup, I tend not to use very much of it. Indeed, I would rather cut a piece of pancake and dip one edge, than pour the syrup over top.

Sadly for food photography, peanut butter does not look sexy as a pancake topper - although I assure you it is delicious, so long as you like peanut butter - and yoghurt...well, let's just leave it as "unattractive." Thus, you get a picture of a naked pancake stack (ah, who am I kidding, I don't eat them in a stack, either, I devour them as they come off the frying pan).

One word to the wise - if you like the lacy golden look of the pancake surface, re-spritz the pan between batches of pancakes. The alternative, a dark, even brown, is certainly tasty but this way is more picturesque.

Palle's Jerk Chicken

Finally, at long last for those who commented and emailed:
The following post is Palle's - I'm merely the conduit. My own notes are at the end.

Jamaican Jerk Chicken

Makes 4 Servings

½ cup white vinegar
zest and juice from 4 limes
¼ cup canola oil
5 scallions, trimmed and coarsely chopped
4 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
2 inch piece of ginger, coarsely chopped
4 fresh habanero (scotch bonnet) chilis, coarsely chopped and seeds removed *
2 tablespoons ground allspice
2 tablespoons ground dried thyme
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
3 pounds chicken, cut into 8 pieces

1. Combine the vinegar, lime juice, lime zest, canola oil, scallions, garlic, ginger, chilis, allspice, thyme, cinnamon, sugar, pepper, salt and cayenne. Using a blender, or food processor, blend into a medium puree (not too smooth – this is isn’t French cuisine). I find I get better results if I keep dry and wet ingredients apart until just before it is time to blend. It will seem like a lot of allspice and thyme, but for Jerk it is correct.
2. Place chicken in a medium bowl or other container.
3. Pour marinade over chicken. Turn pieces well to ensure even coating and all pieces are covered.
4. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Fours hours to overnight is preferable. Turn occasionally.
5. Heat the oven to 350 F°.
6. Place the chicken covered by marinade in a pyrex baking dish. Cook for 45 minutes.
7. Eat.**

* A note on habaneros. If you can’t get fresh habaneros you may be out of luck. Other chilis do not make an acceptable substitute. You may make a yummy sauce, but it won’t be Jerk. Habaneros have a singular, irreproducible flavor. You may be able to get away with dried – but I’ve never tried. For a milder jerk use 3 habaneros, with pith and seeds removed. For a medium jerk use three or four peppers with about half of the pith removed, and all seeds removed. For hotter jerk leave in all the pith and leave in a few seeds.

** Resist the urge to add cilantro. Jerk goes well with rice, rice and beans, sweet potatoes or coleslaw.

Dawna's notes:

While the recipe calls for the more traditional bone-in chicken, we usually make it boneless - thighs and halved breasts - and reduce the cooking time to 35 minutes.

I have yet to be involved in the process of making this dish. My job here is strictly sides (and occasionally inventory). I am currently strongly hinting that this would be excellent with pork tenderloin, and I think that might be the next version.

Beef Barley Soup

It's a fortifying soup. Rich without being fatty, filling thanks to the chunks of tender beef and the plump grains of barley, not to mention the slightly exotic and ever-so-suggestively boozy shiitake mushrooms. This, my tongue informs me, is what soup is supposed to taste like. It isn't just a catch-all of leftovers shunted into a pot full of water or stock, it's a precision-strike in the kitchen, each ingredient calibrated to bring a specific characteristic to the party.

I am gradually shifting most of my eating patterns towards foods with a lower glycemic index - loosely, this means foods with "staying power" - that don't instantly get converted into glucose the moment they hit my stomach. I should note that I am not categorically shunning any food or category of food, but that I am making an effort to eat thoughtfully in such a way that my blood glucose levels achieve a kind of Tao - an even-keel instead of the sugar spikes and crashes that can be problematic with my particular health concerns. This means that I am increasing my use of the foods that achieve the slower digestion that will benefit me. One of the big players is barley.

I confess that it has been a while since I made anything with barley. I don't have anything against it, in fact I quite like the flavour, but to me it has never been anything other than soup or stew. I had a risotto made from barley and lamb broth at a restaurant in Scotland, and it was quite delicious - really almost more of a stew, but isn't that what risotto is? A kind of particularly creamy, luscious rice stew?

I thought I would start of small, though. A nice pot of the good old beef barley soup, perfect in the iffy weather of not-quite-spring. My mother made a lovely version using leftover roast beef, but since she was "cooking from her head" there was never any recipe written down. I decided to turn to the experts - Cook's Illustrated. I plugged the words Beef Barley Soup into their search engine, and it spat out the issue that contained the recipe - February 1998. From there, it was an easy saunter over to the bookshelf to extract the right slim volume (I am very proud to own every single issue of Cooks Illustrated magazine) and turn to the right page.


Here is my version of their recipe - although I used the considerable shortcut of the entirely servicable Pacific brand beef broth. I only made a half-recipe, since I only had one litre of broth, but next time I make this I will make at least a whole recipe - gosh, maybe even a double! It's that good, people. I tweaked the recipe here and there for other reasons, too, but as you can tell I'm very happy with the result. The following recipe is for the quantity that I made:

Beef Barley Soup
Adapted from Cooks Illustrated

1 lb. bottom blade steak, cubed into stew-sized pieces, lightly salted
1/2 cup white vermouth
1 litre beef broth (I used Pacific brand, and was quite happy with it)
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 stalk celery, de-strung and finely diced
1 med onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 carrots, peeled and cut into quarter-coins
6 large shiitake mushrooms, stem removed, sliced into half-slices
1/4 tsp powdered thyme
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/4 cup pearl barley
1/4 cup parsley, chopped
salt
pepper
2 tablespoons dry sherry to finish

Preheat oven to 350 F. Preheat cast iron skillet on stove top.

In a dry, preheated cast iron skillet, sear the beef in batches until all pieces have a good, dark golden brown on at least two sides. Do not cook all the way through. Remove each piece as it is ready to your empty soup pot. Deglaze the skillet with the vermouth, and pour over the beef pieces. Add all of the beef broth, and place soup pot, covered, in the oven. Let the meat and broth stew together for an hour and a half. Toward the end of the stewing time, start prepping the rest.

In your skillet, heat the oil and saute the onion, celery, carrots, and mushrooms. If the mixture is too dry, deglaze slightly with a little water or vermouth. Continue to saute until onions are translucent and celery is tender. Add the garlic, thyme, and tomato paste, again with a little water if necessary to prevent sticking.

Remove soup pot from oven, and scoop out the pieces of beef to a cutting board. Chop the beef to soup-sized pieces and return to soup pot, along with vegetable mixture and barley. Simmer on the stovetop for about 40 minutes, or until barley is fully cooked and tender. Adjust for salt and pepper, add the chopped parsley and stir through. Remove from heat and stir in dry sherry. Serve with a nice hearty bread for a surprisingly filling dinner.

Serves 2 - 4, depending on what else you're serving and how greedy/hungry people are.

Most Important Meal of the Day

I'm a breakfast kind of girl. Always have been. I know a lot of people who say that they cannot face food until they've been up for an hour or two, but I cannot really imagine it. I wake up hungry, and I usually want something involving eggs.

Weekdays are a bit rushed for much of a meal, since we both work, but I usually have something - toast is probably the most frequent flyer, although sometimes I find myself on a cereal kick. Lately I've been having oatmeal once I get to work, which certainly helps me through the morning without getting the munchies. Occasionally, I'll scramble up a single egg to top a piece of toast on a weekday breakfast, but it probably doesn't happen more than once a month. In the summer, my primary breakfast and snack is slices of fresh tomato on dry toast with a hit of salt and pepper, but tomato season is still a way off.

Weekends is where breakfast is really at. We usually go out for breakfast for one of the two weekend days, when the budget can stand it, and the other day(s) we make breakfast at home. We have our favourites - the scrambled egg quesadilla with hot sauce is both popular and relatively speedy, and we're quite fond of the fritatta. We both tend more toward savory rather than sweet breakfasts, so while I'll occasionally order pancakes or French toast in a restaurant, I don't often make them at home. I do go on little kicks - we'll have poached eggs with hominy grits a few weekends in a row, or I'll make a strata, if I have some time on my hand the night before. If you've read any of the preceding posts, you'll know that we're not vegetarians, so bacon and sausage are not infrequent players, although in the interest of preserving our arteries we don't default to them.

This morning, with a fridge full of raspberries from an unexpected sale-discovery and a hankering to use the blender-cup that came with my Christmas Multi-Quick, I set about making breakfast smoothies to fortify us while we sliced, diced, and whisked our fritatta into being. I was cooking without a recipe, just making it up as I went along, and we were pretty pleased with the results. I may decrease the yoghurt and increase the milk next time, as this was quite thick, but it didn't really suffer for the thicker texture. The inclusion of lime cordial was Palle's brilliant suggestion.

Raspberry Smoothies

170 g fresh raspberries
1 ounce lime cordial
1 1/2 cups low fat vanilla yoghurt (I use Astro)
1/3 cup 1% milk

Place all ingredients in your blender, or better still the blending cup of a hand-held immersion blender. Blend until smooth. Serves 2

I confess that I have always pooh-poohed the idea of breakfast smoothies as a quick-fix, but that is because using the traditional blender meant that there was quite a bit of clean-up. With the immersion blender, which cleans up lickety-split, all you dirty up is the blending cup, the stick from the blender, and measuring cups, if you use them - you could freehand pretty easily, I think.

We sipped away at our smoothies and chopped mushrooms, green onions, and peppers for the fritatta, and made some coffee to round out the meal. This ought to hold me through the day, or at least until we get back from the afternoon wedding we're attending.

Bunny dinner

I eat a lot of things that are considered iffy or even downright questionable here on the west coast. I'm not particularly squeamish or sentimental about food or animals, although I prefer that any animals that are rasied for food are raised and killed under humane conditions. If you think that rabbits make better pets than dinner, you may want to skip this post.

I like French food. Thus, I am ever drawn to dishes than include things like foie gras, and happy to eat steak tartare (from a reputable source, of course), and my enthusiasm for duck is well documented. Another favourite has got to be rabbit. My usual preparation for rabbit is Lapin Dijon, which is baked in a sauce featuring white wine, shallots, and of course Dijon mustard. It is a dish that goes particularly well with freshly roasted asparagus, and to me is suggestive of spring, although I'm not ruling out some unhealthy connection with Easter running through my ragged little brain.


I am fortunate in that Palle shares my culinary partialities, because while I know some couples who have wildly divergent dietary preferences are able to overcome the hurdle and live happily ever after, I don't know that I could do the same thing. I certainly wouldn't want to have to. Not only is he interested in eating good food, however, he's also interested in cooking it.

Armed with a copy of Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, he set about making Lapin aux olives, a dish where the olives are so plentiful as to count as a vegetable rather than a garnish. This recipe also marked a first-foray into the world of demi-glace - the using thereof, rather than the making - and the resulting dish is entirely his. My main contribution was to dig out the instructions that I had made for him on the way to cook a perfect pot of jasmine rice, and to ask him if the tiny green picholine olives had come pitted; they had not. Fortunately, there was enough lagtime in the simmering process to give him time to get to work with on the olives, but it was certainly time well spent.
The recipe called for the hind legs only, and served four. Therfore, two rabbits were called for, and the remaining rabbit pieces are currently sitting in the freezer while we dither over whether to try the luscious-looking recipe from Book A, or the simple elegance of the one from Book B. At the moment, the forerunners are my new book Bones by Jennifer McLagan, and the always- wonderful D'Artagnan's Glorious Game Cookbook. I'll keep you posted with the winner, as always.

Of Jerks and Yams

I should really let Palle write most of this entry, as it features his signature dish - a five star, five-alarm, tangy, fierce, and delicious jerk chicken. He makes the sauce from scratch - no pre-mixed seasonings or ready-pour fixings. It's just the man, the knife, and the blender and ingredients such as fresh limes, green onions, a boatload of allspice, and the all-important habanero peppers. He has been perfecting the dish for a while - trying it out on willing, yet oh-so-unsuspecting friends, tweaking the amounts of vinegar and ginger root, and coming to the understanding that the end product is irretrievably linked to the quality (and heat) of the peppers.

I know that there are other things that one can "jerk" in the kitchen. Pork is quite popular down in the islands, and I suspect that a pork tenderloin baked in jerk sauce would be a real winner. Goat and lamb are also obvious choices - lamb being a little bit easier to source in my neighbourhood. Somehow, to this point, we have only managed to jerk chicken. In its defence, it is an outstanding combination - very much a classic dish.

It is a funny thing - a twitch, if you will - where it is virtually impossible for me to throw out leftover sauces. I scrape them into little plastic containers and stack them in the fridge for future use. Way back when I checked out Food Ninja's Jamaican Beef Patties, the sauce that I bumped mine up with was leftover jerk sauce that had been carefully hoarded against such an eventual need. I've also used leftover jerk sauce variously to add kick to bean dishes and casseroles and, quite memorably, as a pasta sauce. The pasta sauce worked so well, in fact, with only a little cream added to mitigate the heat, that tonight's leftovers will likely meet the same fate later this week. This time, however, there is a little chicken left over, too, which will make for quite a splendid re-working. All I really need to do is pick a pasta shape.

I'm surprised that we haven't used pasta as a side dish for jerk before, actually. We tend to rely heavily on a rotation of side dishes that might include several of: rice, cuban-style black beans (or replace both of those with Jamaican Style Rice & Beans), cole slaw, ceviche, and yams.


I have never had a bad instinct, when it comes to yams - well, those yams which are actually orange-fleshed sweet-potatoes, that is. I've been happy to eat them prepared pretty much any way they are presented to me, but it is only recently that I have added them to my repertoire with any real frequency. They were predominantly a holiday item at our table, baked and served with brown sugar and black pepper, and I have always been happy to eat them.

A culinary epiphany on Christmas day a few years ago led me to the creation of a holiday yam dish that was quite fresh and different from those that I had eaten before: I baked the peeled, cubed yams in mixed-citrus juice with whole spices - cinnamon, star anise, cloves, and allspice. They were tasty, and a pleasant change from the more sugary ones I was accustomed too. They became a Christmas tradition for us.

Over the last few years, I have ventured out more and more as I seek to find ways to make my meals not only healthier, but more delicious than ever before. I started adding yams to soups and curries, and was quite pleased with the results. I started sprinkling baked yam halves with ground cumin, salt and black pepper instead of sugar or butter, and this became a low-fuss favourite. Last year began my fascination with oven-baked yam fries, which has intensified now that I'm eating less white potatoes than I used to. It is amazing, what a little cumin seed and chili powder can do for a simple baked yam.

Today, I had another aberrant thought. Last week, while attending a gala dinner at a museum, I was served a tasty little tapas dish of fig-stuffed pork tenderloin over maple yam puree. As a still somewhat new yam enthusiast, I was delighted at the idea. The pork was tender and juicy, and nicely accented by the figs. The yam puree, however, was not up to snuff. It was grainy and fibrous, and leaked water into the bottom of the plate. The strong maple flavour sharpened the sweetness of a vegetable that does not need help in the sweetness department. It was, all in all, a disappointment.

So, since Palle was making jerk chicken for dinner, and since some sort of yam is a favourite accompaniment to jerk chicken, I set about re-inventing the yam puree. Nothing sweet was to be added, I told myself, and something has to be done about the texture.

I peeled and diced the yams and set them to steam and become soft enough to mash. A little chopped garlic sauteed in a tiny amount of butter was prepared on the side and topped liberally with ground cumin and left to infuse while the roots finished cooking - which didn't take long. I drained the tender cubes of yam and scraped the garlicky, cuminy butter into them, and set about vigorously mashing. Despite having chopped up the yam in its raw state, there were still disconcerting fibers. I finished the flavouring with a couple of tablespoons of coconut cream powder, and added just a little water to the pot. Still a bit grainy, still leaking a bit of water. I stared at the immersion blender for a moment, shrugged off the possibility that it would completely destroy the dish by rupturing too many starch molecues, and put it in motion. Immediately, the graininess disappeared and the liquid integrated into a smooth, velvety, luscious puree. I had found the answer. I only wish I had made more. Guess what we're having next time there's a jerk in our kitchen?

The Things You've Been Missing

While I was unable to post during the Great Computer Crash of '06, I was certainly still cooking. I'm dedicating my next few posts to catching up on some of the things that simmer, baked, stewed, and burbled out of my kitchen during the latter half of January/early February.

Chicken and Dumplings is one of those peculiarly regional dishes that varies so much from location to location that it sometimes seems that the only constant is the chicken - and even then, it can have almost infinite variations of cut, bone, and procedure. As for the dumplings - my goodness, there are an aweful lot of things out there going by the name "dumpling." I've seen everything from dumplings that incorporate some of the chicken inside them, to matzo balls, to something thin, slick, and almost noodle like. I, myself, have been known to substitute a good biscuit, rising tall and turning golden and firm in the oven, but I think of that as a separate dish.

My own dumplings are the same as my mother's. Simple, minimal ingredients of flour, salt, baking powder, a little fat and a little milk - some fresh green herbs, if I can get them (even if only parsley). They are dolloped in small spoonfuls over a gently simmering stew - in this case a stew of boneless chicken, shiitake mushrooms, a few root vegetables and some celery and onions - and covered tightly for the 15 minutes it takes for them to puff up into perfect little balls of bread-y goodness.

The fat that I am most likely to use for dumplings is rendered chicken fat. I keep a mug of it in the door of the freezer (alongside, I confess, similar mugs of bacon fat, duck fat, and goose fat), simply pouring the fat away from roast chickens from time to time so that I can use it when a little fat is called for and the chicken flavour will be an asset. These dumplings are the perfect use for it. A mere tablespoon of chicken fat in a cup of flour yields light and fluffy dumplings with just a hint of savoury chicken accent. A little hit of comfort in the long nights of winter.

My freezer full of mugs of fat is probably a separate story all by itself - a stash borne of the habit of frugality and the sure knowledge that these frozen treasures add a depth of flavour and character to my dishes that is simply impossible to find using good ol' canola or olive oil.

Back in the Saddle Again

I'm back, baby! The main Always in the Kitchen site has finally been updated. Check out the essay for Winter Weather, or the recipe for Creamy Pink Pasta - pictured above with an optional crumbled bacon topping. Excellent in mini-portions as an appetiser for your favourite Italian dish, or as a main course.

I hope to get back to the fortnightly updates - my publishing schedule will return to Wednesday nights, which means that the next update should be on March 1. This blog, of course, I will continue to update on my usual irregular basis.

Love is all you need - but a little spice never hurts

This post was written for From My Rasoi - Cooking for Love, where Meena knows that "A way to one's heart is through their tummy."

Okay, I'm - dare I say? - cheating (just a little) with this one, but only in that I'm not actually cooking Indian food for Valentine's Day dinner. If I were, though, this is what I would make. This is a simplified Chicken Korma that can be easily put together by even the most distracted cook, and yields a creamy, mildly spicy dish that warms your heart on its way to your stomach.
The boneless chicken cooks in the richly scented gravy to a silky tenderness, and the occasional burst of flavour from one of the few whole cloves or cardamom pods makes each bite take on a slightly different but equally delicious character.

I have adapted this from Quick and Easy Indian Cooking by the inimitable Madhur Jaffrey. In the picture, the chicken pieces are perhaps a little larger than ideal, but a bit too large is preferable to chopped too small. Pieces the size of a walnut in its shell are good.

Quick Chicken Korma

1 1/2" fresh ginger, peeled & roughly chopped
6 cloves garlic
4 tablespoons canola oil
3 bay leaves
2" cinnamon stick
8 cardamom pods (green)
4 whole cloves
1/4 teaspoon whole cumin seed
1 small onion (about the size of a lime) chopped finely
1 tablespoon ground coriander seed
1 tablespoon ground cumin seed
2/3 cup canned diced tomatoes
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, raw, diced slightly large
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3 tablespoons cream

Grind the peeled garlic and ginger into a smooth paste in a blender or mini-prep, adding a little water if necessary.

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add bay leaves, cinnamon stick, cardamom pods, cloves, and whole cumin seed. Stir until it starts to pop, then add the finely chopped onion. Stir well, and cook until the onion gets a little translucent, with browned edges. Add the coriander and ground cumin, and stir and fry for about 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes, and stir and fry for 30 seconds, then add the diced chicken, the cayenne, the salt, and the water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and allow to simmer, uncovered for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add cream, and cook for another 8 - 10 minutes, stirring as needed until sauce becomes thick.

Serve with basmati rice, or flatbread.

Serves either 4 for dinner or 2 for dinner, with enough leftovers for 2 lunches the next day. I had to defend my leftovers with threatening fork-movements and a wild look in my eye.

Lovely Lemon Loaf

I'm very fond of citrus, and lemons are constantly jockeying for position with limes as to who reigns supreme. I was rattling around the kitchen, wanting to make something different for lunchboxes, when I noticed that there were a couple of lemons begging to be used. I put aside all notions of buttermilk coffeecakes and chocolate snack cakes, and even shrugged off the faint thought of gingerbread in favour of something that I actually have not made in a very long time.

I don't know what I was thinking. It's a fabulous treat, and it is quite low fat and easy to make. It's only a small loaf, so it will disappear in no time flat, but if you're wanting to prolong it's shelf life, it freezes beautifully, too. Cut into slices and wrap well with plastic wrap, and tuck into the freezer. If you do this enough times with enough different little bits of baking, you'll have quite a selection to choose from when it's time to throw lunch in a sac and run to work. Completely defrosted and fresh as a daisy (more or less, your opinion of daisies may vary) by coffee break.

Lemon Loaf
Adapted from Anne Lindsay's "Lighthearted Everyday Cooking"

1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup soft margarine
1 egg
2 tablespoons low-fat vanilla or lemon yogurt
1/2 cup milk(1%)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
zest of a lemon
1 teaspoon real lemon extract
pinch of salt

Glaze:
juice of a lemon
1/4 cup granulated sugar

Spritz a small (8x4") loaf pan well with canola oil and set aside. Preheat oven to 350 F.

In a large bowl, cream the margarine and sugar together. Add the egg and yogurt, and beat well until very pale and light-textured. Beat in the lemon zest. Add the milk and blend until thoroughly incorporated.

Mix together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Beat carefully into the wet mixture until just barely blended - you don't want to overmix it and get tunnels. Scrape the batter into your prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for 1 hour, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let the cake stand in the pan for 3 minutes, while you make up the glaze.

Mix together the lemon juice and sugar very thoroughly. After the three minutes of the cake "resting" are up, pour the glaze evenly over the entire cake. In a few minutes, the cake will soak up all of the sweetened lemon juice. Let stand another ten minutes, and remove cake from pan. Allow the cake to cool completely, uncovered. Once cool, store in a cake-safe and use as needed.

This actually makes a lovely dessert, if treated like a pound cake - berries and freshly whipped cream, or a little ice cream - even a raspberry sorbet would be lovely.

Attention Subscribers!

Just in case I'm not able to successfully extract my mailing list from the crashed computer, please note:

If you were (or would like to be) a subscriber to the email mailing list notifying you of updates to the main Always in the Kitchen site, and you would like to continue to receive updates, please email me and let me know, so that I can add your email back into the list.

My apologies for the technological screw-uppedness.

Thanks!

Hummus / Hommus / Hoummos

I never really know quite how to spell it. Certainly, some of the variety of spelling comes from whether you are translating from Greek, Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, or any of the languages from throughout the regions where the dish is consumed. I tend toward the most popular spelling, hummus, but I'm happy to eat it in any language.

Hummus is fantastically cheap and easy to make, and a little goes a long way. It is a favourite snack, alongside vegetables or pita bread for dipping, or smeared across a tortilla in a callous disregard for each cuisine's autonomy - or, fusion, as we like to say here on the west coast. I even have it on toast, for breakfast now and then. It packs easily for lunches, makes a terrific afterschool/work snack, and if you don't use an enormous amount of olive oil, it's a fairly healthy way to sneak a little non-meat protein into your life, your kids, your household. Plus, with raw garlic in there, I'm convinced that I'm getting some great health benefits, too.

There are an awful lot of different recipes out there, too. I've tried a lot of variations: with tahini, with nut-butter, with green herbs, with a miscellany of spices. I've made it fat-free, low fat, high fat, and with yoghurt. I tried Orangette's White Bean Hummus to my great delight, and I am quite likely to make a batch of hummus starting from dried chickpeas that I cook myself. However, I like to keep a can or two of the beans in my pantry, so that I can whip this most simple one up at almost literally a moment's notice. It's a lot leaner than the varieties that you get in Greek restaurants, but that's my intention. I'm happy to eat the rich stuff when I go out; at home, I want a dependable, tasty workhorse-recipe that doesn't go straight for the thighs.

Hummus from the Pantry

1 19 oz. can of chickpeas/garbanzo beans, drained - liquid reserved
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 lemon - juice only
1 tablespoon the best-tasting extra virgin olive oil you can afford (optional)
pinch ground cumin
pinch ground cayenne

In the belly of your food-processor, blender, or Multi-Quick chopper container (guess what I got for Christmas?), place the drained chickpeas, peeled garlic, lemon juice, spices, and olive oil. Pulse, chop, or blend on a low setting until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add about 1/3 cup of reserved liquid from the chickpeas, and process again. Stop, scrape the edges of the bowl, and continue to process until the mixture is smooth and creamy. If the mixture is very, very thick, add a little more of either the reserved liquid or fresh water, and continue to process.

If you are not using the olive oil, you will need to add a little extra water/liquid, as the dip will firm up considerably in the fridge. The goal is for a creamy consistency about the thickness of a sour cream-based chip dip, or a loose mayonnaise.

Taste, adjust for seasoning if necessary (I seldom add salt if I am using canned chickpeas) and remove to a lidded container to store in the fridge until needed. This makes about two cups.

Serve in a bowl with a sprinkle of cayenne or paprika, and, if you're feeling fancy, a little anointing of olive oil. Provide flatbreads or vegetables to scoop it up.

If you are using a blender, you will probably have to stop and scrape a little more than if you are using one of the other tools, but you will get a very fine texture, which is to be prized.

Jamaican Chicken Stew

Still not able to post new photos (soon, I hope!) but I did manage to find an unposted photo that I had stored elsewhere than my computer. This is a dish that I make quite often - it's quick, it depends on staple ingredients from my pantry, and it is delicious. It's also extraordinarily healthy, being both very low-fat and chock-full of antioxidant black beans.

There are a lot of recipes kicking around the web for Jamaican Chicken Stew and I suppose that mine isn't radically different from the others out there, but I do prefer it with my own little adjustments. I originally took the recipe from the first Cooking Light Soups & Stews collection, and added/changed/tweaked as necessary to come up with this - a household favourite that gets made at least once per month (and has been made with turkey thighs, chicken thighs, or chicken breast to good effect).

(Note: expired link removed - instead, please see recipe in the comments, below)

I make this often enough that I should probably just mix up a big batch of the spice mixture that gets tossed with the cut-up chicken. I almost always have some black beans and a can of diced tomatoes lurking around, and capers certainly keep well in the fridge. I keep a giant bottle of vermouth on the kitchen counter to use in risottos and to deglaze anything that seems to need it, which is much more pantry-friendly than the red wine listed in the original recipe. As written, the recipe takes a paltry 1/2 hour to make, from strolling into the kitchen to dishing up the finished dish. Use of a non-stick pan makes clean-up decidedly easy, and if there are any leftovers (I always plan for leftovers) they reheat splendidly for dinner or lunches the next day.

Really, this is a dish that gets five stars: one for being delicious, two for being quick, three for being healthy, four for easy clean-up, and five for terrific leftovers.

Now I know what to do with that package of chicken breasts I found on sale at the supermarket this week: I'm adding this in to my menu plan!

Common Cold

I know what it looks like. No, I'm not actually trying to wedge as many Hawksley Workman song references into my writing as possible. It just looks like it. Really. Ahem. Onward:

Sailu tagged me for a different sort of meme: Natural Home Remedies for the Common Cold. Since colds are viral in nature, it will always take time for the body to fight off and kill the virus. Most remedies are about easing symptoms and shoring up your body's strength so that your immune system can do its job with maximum efficiency.

Preventive, natural, and cabinet-medicine has long been a pet interest of mine, so I'm pleased to contribute my family's time-honoured curative: Switchel.

Switchel is a vinegar-based drink that is served hot or cold, depending on the usage. I've most recently heard its origin ascribed to the West Indies, but most often I hear of it as a replenishing beverage served by Mennonite farmers to their field workers during the long harvest days. An early Gatorade, if you will, designed to quench thirst and restore electrolytes to folks labouring in the hot sun. It's entirely probable, I think, that if it does originate in the Islands it must have originally contained rum - a sort of hot-toddy sort of deal. Many of the original recipes contain molasses, although that fell by the wayside in our family.

The onset of a winter cold is often heralded by an itchy or tender throat, and at the first signs of one my mother would whip out the apple cider vinegar. Her recipe was fairly plain, consisting of water, apple cider vinegar, honey, and a pinch of ground gingerroot. I ditched the dried ginger for a few slices of fresh ginger, making it a sort of augmented ginger tea, I suppose, more than anything else. A couple of years ago I tried adding molasses back in, but found the results quite unpalatable. There are other variations, including cayenne pepper and a host of other herbal tweaks. I like to keep it simple enough that I don't have to measure much or fuss when I'm already feeling under-the-weather - in fact, I often measure this more in freehand "dollops" than anything else.

Switchel

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon honey
1 - 3 slices of fresh ginger root, to taste (peel may be left on)
1 cup boiling water

Mix together and allow to stand (and cool!) for about five minutes. Sip until throat is soothed. Also pretty good chilled, particularly after physical exertion. This is fairly strong, as it is intended as medicine, but if you want to go cautiously, reduce the amounts of honey and vinegar to a teaspoon each. Because vinegar is fairly pungent, the vapours may affect othes adversely. I try not to inflict this on Palle, because he doesn't enjoy being in the same room with the smell of hot vinegar. He doesn't like hot lemon, either. I, however, find it comforting, so it's a good thing that we have a big house...

The honey is soothing, of course, and the vinegar helps clear the sinuses and cuts through the sensation of phlegminess that goes along with a head cold.

Now that I think about it, I'm a little surprised that she didn't feed us garlic tea, as garlic was her very favourite cure-all. She was quite pleased about the time that she had lost her sense of taste due to a head cold, and fixed a peanut butter (for protein) and crushed garlic (for medicine) sandwich for lunch. I don't think she ever had the chance to repeat it, but she is convinced that it spurred her back to health.

Me, in Fours:

Here's my contribution to the "Me, in Fours" meme that's running around. I was tagged my Michele and am soldiering on bravely! So, if you want some revealing and silly trivia about me, read on:

4 Jobs I've Had
1. Make up Artist
2. Network Administrator
3. Veterinary Assistant
4. Executive Assistant

4 Movies I Watch Over and Over
n.b. – this only applies if it is on when I sit down and start flipping channels. I will get sucked into these ones. They’re not necessarily my favourite movies ever. Tomorrow, I would come up with a different list entirely.

1. The Princess Bride
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. The Maltese Falcon
4. Star Wars (the original. You know, where Han shoots first. Yes, I’m a geek.)

4 Places I've Lived
1. Porpoise Bay
2. Roberts Creek
3. Vancouver
4. Backpacking with no fixed address (belongings in storage), Europe

4 Websites I Check Daily
1. Google News
2. This Is Not Over
3. Office Pools (during Hockey season)
4. Damn Hell Ass Kings

4 TV Shows I Love
1. Futurama
2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
3. House
4. X-Files

How sad is it, that three of the four are finished?

4 of My Favorite Foods
Randomly,
1. Blanquette de veau
2. Braised lamb shanks
3. Pie (almost any type)
4. Baked beans

4 Albums I Can't Live Without
1. Lover/Fighter by Hawksley Workman (Tough pick, I love all of HW’s albums, and he’s got a new one coming out next month…)
2. Secrets of the Beehive by David Sylvian
3. Dear Catastrophe Waitress by Belle & Sebastian
4. Jordan, the Comeback by Prefab Sprout

4 Places I'd rather be
1. Paris, France
2. Verona, Italy
3. Mexico (because I’ve never been, but I love the food)
4. In a gigantic, claw-footed bathtub full of lavender bubbles and hot water

Too much information?

A Little Spice is Always Nice

My home computer is still on the injured list, so no photos at the moment. Thank goodness for lunch hours!

As I mentioned in my Grinding In the New Year post, I have grown to appreciate the premixing of spices - particularly when they are blended by hand to the taste of the cook. When I mentioned my Cajun spice blend, reader PatL wondered if it was anything like Tony Chachere's. I still can't answer that, although a little internet research suggests that Chachere's has low-salt versions of their regular product. I saw some "look-alike" recipes which contained appalling things like Accent (MSG) and a boat-load of salt, but there are a limited number of recipes out there for Cajun and Creole seasonings, and most online versions that I can find all sport similar ingredients. Certainly the major-players (ground red pepper, black pepper, garlic, onion & thyme) seem to be present in almost every version.

Below is my basic blend, but I confess that I tweak it depending on what I have on-hand, and occasionally, whim. Sometimes I add dried basil, just a teeny bit, but usually I prefer to add basil fresh to the dish that I'm making, if it requires it. There's no salt here - I season my food quite lightly as far as sodium is concerned, so if I'm adding salt to a recipe I will do it separately from the spices.

Dawna's Cajun Spice

4-5 tablespoons ground cayenne pepper
3 tablespoons black peppercorns
2 tablespoons ground smoked paprika (or "hot" paprika)
1 teaspoon ground white pepper
1 teaspoon thyme leaves (1/2 teaspoon if using ground thyme)
2 tablespoon dehydrated garlic granules
2 tablespoon dehydrated onion granules
1 large bayleaf

Place ingredients in the belly of your spice grinder, and grind until a fine, uniform powder is achieved. Be careful not to inhale. This makes about 2/3 cup, or two regular-sized spice bottles full.

A note on the onion and garlic. I use dehydrated granules, which is superior to powder in part because of the way in which they are processed. Powders always smell flat and a little metallic to me, and they are hard to reconstitute into a nice-smelling paste. The coarser dehydrated granules, on the other hand, have all kinds of uses, and work very well in this sort of spice blend.

I have the sudden urge to make Jambalaya, now...

Does Not Compute

If any of you out there are wondering why there hasn't been an update on the non-blog Always in the Kitchen site, we are currently experiencing technical difficulties. A new essay and recipe will be posted once they are resolved.

In the meantime, I am inventing exciting new ways to curse Microsoft, which is probably redundant; I'm pretty sure someone beat me to it...

Grinding in the New Year

I'm a big fan of the spice rack. My particular model was built for me by my father, after listening to me complain about how I could never find one that was big enough to accommodate my frequent flyers. He built it from reclaimed marine hardwood and presented it to me a few years ago as a Christmas present. I installed it immediately, filled it up promptly, and have been using it ever since. Most of the bottles are old, but the spices, I promise (with the notable exception of the fenugreek seed, which isn't entirely... ah, okay. Except that one. And the Herbs de Provence.) are less than a year old and many of them are considerably less than that.

I use a much greater quantity of herbs and spices than my mother did, although some of that is simply because I cook from my fierier cuisines than she did, by and large. I generally prefer flavours to be full and prominent, although I do still enjoy that whispery sense of "Can you identify that?" of more subtly flavoured dishes. Using a goodly quantity of herbs makes for going through them more quickly, which makes for fresher stock all the way around. If you are lucky enough to source a shop that does high turnover in good quality spices, that's a good start. If that same store packages their own into little, convenient zip-top baggies and charges only pennies for them, you've got it made. If the mustard seeds are looking kind of faded, or the dill has lost its scent, it usually costs me a pittance to replace them.

One thing that I never really got into, despite a fascination with the spice drawer in my mother's kitchen and a predilection for mixing things together, was spice mixtures. At least, not the commercial ones. The spice mixtures available when I was a kid were usually "Italian Seasoning" (much of which would be salt) and similar convenience packaged things for people who didn't want to measure from more than one bottle, or don't know what sort of herbs were complimentary with each other. I disliked them for the perceived laziness, but also for the lack of control over the quantity of each herb or spice in the blend. Chili powder evaded my distain solely because I was too ignorant to know that it was actually a blend, and not just straight powdered chile.

I still use chili powder, because I found one that I like. I also use a Herbs de Provence mixture, pretty much because we bought it in Provence, which means that it's the oldest thing on my rack. Clearly, I need a trip to France again, and soon! I've unbent on the pre-made mixtures enough to appreciate ones that are well made, but I tend to make my own spice blends. I have a blend for Cajun, one for South West flavours, and perhaps the best one of all, garam masala.

I was disenchanted with commercially purchased garam masala, and intrigued by the recipe that I found in Seductions of Rice by Alford & Duguid. I promptly scaled the recipe down and gave it a cautious try - to my absolute delight. The house was so thoroughly perfumed with Indian spices that eating anything else for dinner was unthinkable. When I recently made a fresh batch - same thing. Even just thinking about it makes me hungry.

There are a lot of variations out there on garam masala - some include chiles, or fennel seeds, or other ingredients. The great thing is, you can play with the mixture until you get one you like. I think this one is terrific as is - it's certainly a great starting point.

Garam Masala
Adapted from Seductions of Rice

1/4 cup black peppercorns
1/4 cup whole coriander seed
1/4 cup whole cumin seeds
1 tablespoon whole cloves
1 teaspoon cardamom seeds from the inside of green cardamom pods
1 inch of cinnamon stick, broken

Place a medium skillet over a medium flame and add all of the spices. Dry roast them until fragrant, stirring constantly, and continue to roast for another minute or two after the scent becomes strong. Remove from heat and pour into a bowl to cool for a couple of minutes before grinding.

Place the slightly cooled spices into a spice grinder and grind until a fine, uniform powder is achieved. Allow powder to finish cooling, and then store as you would any ground spice - in a jar or sealed bag, preferably away from light.

This makes just exactly the amount of garam masala for me to fit the whole spices into my grinder all at once. The ground yield is about 3/4 cup.

Have a snack on hand - this will make you hungry.

The Remains of the Bird

Part of the ritual of Christmas dinner is dealing gracefully with the leftovers. While I am no stranger to turkey soup (and quite a fan, I assure you), I seldom find myself in possession of a turkey carcass these days - even at Christmas and Thanksgiving. This is the benefit/detriment of being the one doing the travelling on the holidays.

My extended family gets together on Boxing Day, and that's the day of Turkey. For just the two of us, Christmas day has become the day of Any Other Bird (and once, a ham), although I did do a classic roast turkey the year that we hosted the Boxing Day dinner, and one year I made a braised, stuffed turkey breast roulade with cider gravy from Eating Well magazine. We've had duck, goose (twice), Cornish Game Hen, Pheasant, chicken (that first year, before we actually started dating), and the aforementioned ham (done Alton Brown city ham style, and boy! Delicious!).

This year, we returned to the duck. I employed last year's new knowledge regarding fatty game birds, and plunged the little darling into boiling water for a minute to kick-start the rendering process, and a heckuva lot of fat was rendered into the roasting pan, at the end of it. Enough that I'm seriously attempting my own duck confit - purely for the education process, you understand.

Your average duckling is supposedly food for two to four people, so we had rather a lot of meat leftover. At first, the possibilities seemed kind of endless, but we finally settled on a two-with-one-stone. The duck meat was divested from the bones, which were then simmered into a thick broth, which was put on standby for Duck with Wild Mushroom Risotto. I looked to my classic Wild Mushroom Risotto recipe for guidance, and added the chopped duck meat just before returning the mushrooms to the pan. We were very, very happy with the results.

There's still rather a lot of duck stock in my freezer - I've since used all of the meat, but I'm sure that I will find a use for it. There's always, after all, duck soup. Easy, right?