Polenta Fries

A revelation in the side dish arsenal! Not a potato fan? To lazy to clean up the mess from deep-frying? Sure, they take a little advance planning (you need to make the polenta ahead, and let it chill) but they are deliciously different from the usual burger and barbeque accompaniments. The outside turns delicate brown (or striped, if you're patient enough to use a grill or grill pan), and the insides are creamy and delicate. Plus, unlike french fries, you can make extra and re-heat them without feeling sorry for yourself. If you're not keen on the inherent finger-food qualities of the fry/soldier shape, feel free to leave your polenta servings in large squares and grill them up that way.

Parmesan Polenta Fries

1 cup yellow cornmeal (coarse)
3 cups chicken broth
1 cup water
90 grams freshly grated parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons of sour cream (light is fine)
2 tablespoons finely minced fresh chives
dash of ground white pepper
canola or olive oil spray

Bring water and stock to a boil. Add cornmeal in a steady stream, stirring constantly for ten minutes. (Start with a whisk, then switch to a silicone spatula as it thickens). When you set your whisk aside, it helps to be able to soak it in water right away, for easy clean up later.

After 10 minutes, remove from the heat. Add sour cream and stir until smooth. Add chives and pepper, and stir again. Add the grated parmesan in small handfuls until it is all mixed in, stirring all the while (I use the coarse side of a four-sided grater to grate all that cheese - it's faster and works nicely). Pour immediately into a 9 x 13 pan sprayed lightly with cooking spray, and spread to make an even layer (quickly, before it sets up). Refrigerate until cool and firm (or overnight). Make sure you don't cover it with plastic until it is completely cold, or condensation will wreak havoc on the texture.

Once ready to make the fries, lift the polenta block out of the pan and onto a sheet of waxed paper. Cut the block into thirds, cross-wise, then cut lengthwise into 10 equal slices (so you have a total of 30 fries). Spritz the pieces lightly with cooking spray. In a pre-heated grill pan (or a non-stick skillet), lay the fries down with a little room between each. Grill until they have nice grill marks, then flip to the other side, and repeat until all sides are done.

Lemon Risotto

I make a very lemony risotto.

Oh. Hello, there. Is it the end of March already? I'd ask where the time has gone, except that I know (all too well): I've been moving. My last few weeks especially have been a haze of restaurant meals, often at odd hours, and foraged food that is less cooked than it is assembled. We're all moved in, now, which is to say that there are boxes everywhere and loads to do, but the kitchen is up and running (thank goodness!) and I hope to be back to more frequent posting now.

But back to the matter at hand. Risotto! Specifically, a deeply yellow, unabashedly lemony risotto that is neither sour nor acidic, but has wonderful lemon flavour that is dialed all the way up to eleven. A little goes a long way, but even a small serving of Lemon Risotto makes a meal feel like a special occasion.

The trick to all this lemony bounty without the pain and suffering is the sneaky third ingredient in the recipe, that is, preserved lemon. Now, I'm sure there are shop-bought preserved lemons that you can buy, and frankly I don't know whether or not they would do the trick here (perhaps they would serve quite nicely), but I can tell you that making your own preserved lemon is both astonishingly easy and very rewarding. For one thing, it keeps for a surprisingly long time (tightly bottled in the fridge), and you only need a little tiny bit of it to get huge flavour. Essentially, preserving the lemon means that you get all of the intense flavour of the zest, without the bitterness of the pith. The lemon simply becomes a wobbly translucent mass - chutney textured if, like me, you wholly quarter your lemons and then slice them, as opposed to leaving them connected at the base in quarters. The clean, sliced lemons are tossed with kosher salt and the spices of your choice (I like to put a bare pinch of turmeric in there, to enhance the colour), packed into a jar and completely covered with freshly squeezed lemon juice. There's a quick version here, which has a very basic, clean flavour profile, but you can also google your way through Nimbu Achar recipes to get something more interestingly flavoured.

This risotto really has a triple lemon threat: the preserved lemon, yes, but also the zest and juice of a fresh lemon. With all that lemon going on, what do you pair it with? In restaurants, it can sometimes be found as a bed for seared scallops or prawns, which is a fine idea. Or, as seen above, it makes a beautiful plate partner with roasted chicken and braised fennel. But, right at the moment, asparagus is in season, and that's my go-to favourite. Anything that could benefit from a lemony kick, really.

The link provides a pretty comprehensive recipe for the risotto, but a couple of extra notes: take your time, when you're making risotto. You don't have to stir it for every single second, while it cooks, but almost! It pays to have all of your prep done ahead, and any other dishes you plan to serve mapped out.

Give a really lemony risotto a try. It's a great way to celebrate Spring.

Tomato Tarragon Bisque

It's definitely soup weather. In fact, not only was my last post also soup, I am also making soup right now. However, the one that is currently on the stove is my trusty ol' Beef Barley Soup, which I have already told you about. I noticed the recipe doesn't contain bay leaves, so I added some, and I'm also using fresh thyme, but otherwise, no change. It looks exactly like the picture through the link.

Today, instead, I'm going to tell you about a soup that I made a few weeks ago, the last of which I pulled from the freezer and defrosted for lunch earlier this week. Tomato Tarragon Bisque.

I've been using tarragon a lot since my sister brought me a seedling. Turns out, the seedling really, really enjoyed the plant food I gave it, and has been growing fairly abundantly. I've had to cut it back just to keep it off the floor. Now, tarragon likes a couple of things in this world, and two of them are cream and mushrooms. So, there've been a few dinners involving sauteed chicken with mushrooms and tarragon cream sauce, and the like, but that's a whole other post.

Since I can't eat creamy things every day (or I will need to buy a larger wardrobe), I started thinking about things that I could make with tarragon that weren't fundamentally based on dairy. I remembered, long ago, a Manhattan-style clam chowder recipe that I made (in an attempt to impress someone, actually) that had tarragon, and I think that was the first time that I had ever used the herb. That recipe (and the relationship) and I parted ways twenty years ago, and I don't really like clams, so that was out. It did lead me to thinking about tomato-based soups, though, and so that is ultimately what I decided to do.

I started with my Simple Tomato Soup recipe (expired link removed, please see recipe in the comments section below), which is a wonderfully all-purpose soup that can be switched up in a lot of ways. Ultimately, I did very little to change it. I added some drained, diced tomatoes (peel them if using fresh) after the puree stage, and about a half-cup of finely chopped tarragon leaves, stirred right in at the end. I didn't add the allspice, because I wasn't making "that" soup.

The brightness of the fresh tarragon and nice, bite-sized chunks of tomato interrupt the smooth, thick texture texture of the soup made it hearty enough that it didn't really need a sandwich on the side (although a chunk of bread didn't go amiss). Overall, a pleasantly light lunch or part (as they say) of a nutritious dinner...

Definitely on the repeat list.

Mexican Bento

My worldwide bento lunch theme continues with Mexico.

The crumbly meat mixture is in fact picadillo, a ground meat filling used to stuff into things - peppers, tortillas, empanadas, etc. I made this one using the recipe from Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz's slim volume The Mexican Kitchen. It consists of fried up ground beef, onions and garlic, finely chopped green apple, tomatoes, pickled serrano peppers, raisins, cinnamon, ground cumin and black pepper. You can pretty much add as much of each ingredient as you want - I used one apple per one pound of meat, and just a small handful of raisins. It's very customizable. There is often a garnish of sliced almonds fried in butter, but I didn't have any, so I left mine plain, and stirred in a little cilantro instead.

The vegetably dish is the unimaginatively titled Green Lima Beans in Sauce (from the same book). I'm thinking of calling it ¡Hola Frijoles! It is delicious, and this coming from someone who was none-too-certain about the whole Lima Bean thing until very recently. I used frozen baby limas, and chucked them into a shallow sauce pan with a little water, a chopped onion, some garlic, and some tinned diced tomatoes. I added some chopped fresh jalapeños and stirred in a whole lot of cilantro. I cooked them, stirring frequently, until the water had evaporated and the tomatoes smudged down into a chunky sauce, which took about twenty minutes.

I was expecting a dish that was palatable but unremarkable (I restrained myself from adding cumin), but I had woefully underestimated the recipe. The flavour of the finished dish was surprisingly complex, and very, very Mexican tasting. It was an outstanding vegetable dish that stood up well to the rest of the meal, was good hot and cold, and re-heated beautifully for my bento the next day. (FYI, I do not heat food directly in my bento container, I use proper dishes. It's not safe to microwave the brand of bento boxes that I use.) I would recommend it to anyone, and especially to vegetarians wanting an interesting taco or tostada filling.

Finally, up at the top, you can see the edges of some homemade corn tortillas (recipe nominally also from the same book, except that I added a little lard, and a pinch of salt). I don't have a tortilla press, so I use my heavy, cast-iron frying pan to flatten them out, and that seems to work pretty well. I keep a small rolling pin on had to give them a quick go-over if they seem to need it, but usually they're fine.

More bentos to come...French, North American, (of course) Japanese, and many more! I'm in a zone.

Santa Fe Corn Pie (or, it took me long enough)

I found this recipe whilst surfing around the internet, as one does. I had bookmarked it, and then copy-pasted it into a document of Things I Want to Make, where it languished for about a year until I finally, randomly decided that it was about time. As I set about marshalling my shopping list to make sure I had all necessary components, I noticed that the credited author, Diane Clement, is local to me - a fellow Vancouverite, whose Tomato Fresh Food Cafe I have visited in the past, and whose cookbook "At The Tomato" is on my bookshelf, where it has been for a number of years.

When I got home, I cracked open the cookbook and discovered that the very same recipe had been waiting for me, at home, all this time.

It was delicious. And easy! It's a sort of quiche-y affair, and sort of a cornbread-y thing, and not quite a spoonbread. I will be making this again and again - for brunch, for lunch, for dinner, and maybe even for some kind of snack. It was easy, too - no fussing with pastry (which I enjoy, but don't always have the patience for at blink-o'clock in the morning. I suspect it is a useful make-ahead, where you leave it unbaked in the fridge the night before, and then simply pop it into the oven in the morning. In fact, I think I'll try that next.

The only significant addition that I made to this recipe was to sprinkle some smoked paprika over the top as a finisher. It gave a lovely smokey highlight to the dish without taking over the lovely corn-forward flavour. I also omitted the melted butter from the original recipe.

Santa Fe Corn Pie
(adapted from Diane Clement's At The Tomato)

3 large eggs, beaten
1 cup creamed corn
1 1/4 cups frozen corn – thawed by running it under hot water (in a strainer)
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
3/4 cup sour cream
1 cup Monterey jack cheese grated
5 canned mild green chiles, chopped
1/4 teaspoon worchestershire sauce
few shots Tabasco sauce
3 tablespoons green onions, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon pimenton (smoked paprika)

Spritz a 10" pie plate with canola spray.

In a large bowl, combine all ingredients and stir with a big mixing spoon until thoroughly combined.  Pour into the pie plate and bake, uncovered, at 350 F for about 45 – 50 minutes or until golden and firm in the middle. 

She notes that the pie may be baked ahead and refrigerated for up to 3 days. I did take my leftovers to work for lunch the following day, and it warmed up beautifully in the microwave. Alongside a big green salad, it was a light, yet filling work lunch.

Sweet Potato & Chicken Bisque

Quick, delicious, and a teensy bit unusual: perfect raining weather food.

Sweet Potato & Chicken Bisque
Adapted from Eating Well Magazine, October 2009

Serves 4 – 6
Total Time Prep & Cook: 45 minutes

2 large sweet potatoes (orange)
2 boneless chicken breast halves*
3 cups tomato juice
2 cups vegetable stock
1 tablespoon canola oil
½ cup unsalted peanut butter
1 habañero chile, julienned
1 heaping tablespoon grated ginger
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground allspice
Cilantro or green onion for garnish

Poke the sweet potatoes with a fork and microwave them until tender (approximately 10 minutes, together). Allow them to cool while you begin the rest of your prep.

Heat the canola oil in a large soup pot, and sauté the onion and garlic until translucent. Add the sliced chile, ginger, allspice and tomato juice, and allow to simmer gently for about 10 minutes.

Peel and dice the sweet potatoes. Place half of them in a blender or food processor along with the peanut butter and just enough of the stock to moisten. Process until smooth, gradually adding the rest of the stock until it becomes a smooth, thick liquid. It will look a bit like nacho cheese sauce in colour and consistency. Add the puree to the soup pot, and stir gently. Add the remaining diced sweet potatoes to the bisque, and stir though. Allow the soup to return to a bare simmer, stirring as needed to keep it from sticking to the bottom.

At this point, you can serve the soup as a lovely vegan dish. However, if you want a more robust meal, slice some raw chicken into bite-sized pieces (or cube up some extra firm tofu) and stir it into the soup. Allow the soup to continue to simmer very gently on the lowest setting for another ten minutes, or until chicken is cooked through.

Note: If you have leftover yams from dinner, you can save a step and some time.

Further Note: It is correct that no salt is added to the soup. The tomato juice and vegetable stock are salty enough. If you want more salt, add a pinch right at the end. But you probably won’t need to, and if you used salted peanut butter instead of unsalted, you definitely won’t need to.

* Or prawns. Try peeled, raw prawns in place of chicken, especially if you are going to be eating it all up instead of freezing leftovers.

Rose Meringues to sweeten a milestone

A couple of weeks ago, I had a milestone birthday. It didn't exactly get lost in the shuffle, but it was a lower key event than I had originally contemplated - partly because I had just gotten back from a hectic ten days in Mexico, and was still doing laundry and catching up on sleep.

Fortunately for me, a friend was having a party the night before my birthday, so I got to see all of my friends with only minimal effort. Also fortunately for me, one week later, another friend was experiencing the exact same milestone, and she had a little get-together at her home.

I love to bring food to parties - no real surprise there. This time, I wanted something special, and because one member of the party-household is gluten-free, I needed a gluten-free special birthday treat. Ideally, one that I could put together relatively at the last moment.

Enter the meringue.

I don't tend to post much in the way of sweets, here. I really cut back on sugar a few years ago, and I tend not to do as much baking, anymore. My favourite kind of baking these days is where I get to make something fun and take it to share with other people, which helps regulate how much of it I end up eating. I still like desserts, but I like to share them.

These little babies are simply delicious - crisp shells with marshmallowy interiors. And, happily, gluten-free. Best made on a dry, sunny day, as meringue is hygroscopic, and will become a sticky mess if there's any humidity.

Rose Meringues
Recipe adapted from Laura Calder's French Food at Home

4 large egg whites
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon rosewater
1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar
2/3 cup white granulated sugar
2/3 cup icing sugar (if you want these to be gluten-free, check the brand)
1 tablespoon cornstarch
3 drops red food colouring

Whip the egg whites and salt into soft peaks that only just stands up on its own. Add the rosewater and continue whipping into stiff peaks. Combine the white sugar and the cream of tartar and add by the tablespoon into the egg whites, while continuing to whip. When the sugar has dissolved and the meringue is stiff, combine the cornstarch and the icing sugar and sift into the meringue, folding carefully until it is completely incorporated. Add the red colouring, and continue to fold until everything is a lovely pink and there are no streaks of colour.

Spoon the meringues onto a baking sheet lined with tinfoil (I got about 18 large meringues), and bake at the very low temperature of 225 F for 1 1/2 hours. The tops should be crisp when tapped. Allow to cool on trays (do not try to remove them from the foil until they are cooled, or you will probably wreck them). When completely cool, you can store them for a couple of days in an air-tight container. Theoretically.

These were readily marveled at and devoured by party guests, some of whom were fairly amazed at the sweet and clean floral taste.

Gluten-Free Granola Bars

I'm taking advantage of the cooler weather today to make Pirate Granola, which I have already shown on this site, so I thought that I would share this picture that has been lurking around my hard drive, waiting for its chance.

After the success I had with the granola, I decided to take a whack at granola bars. Of course, I turned to trusty Alton Brown for help. His recipe on the Food Network website looked like a great place to start, so I did.

Making this dish gluten free was actually pretty easy, providing you can get "clean oats" which are certified gluten free. If not, you might want to try substituting quinoa flakes, but I haven't tried that yet. Alton's recipe called for wheat germ, for which I substituted besan, a gluten-free chickpea flour used in Indian cooking.

It made quite a lot of granola bars, actually. See the link above for the original recipe.

Granola Bars
Adapted from Alton Brown's recipe on Food Network

2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
½ cup raw pumpkin seeds
1 cup sliced almonds
½ cup chickpea flour(besan)
½ cup honey
1 tablet of palm sugar (approximately ¼ cup packed dark brown sugar)
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, plus extra for pan
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ teaspoon kosher salt
6 ½ ounces (total) raisins and chopped dried apricots

Butter a 9 x 9-inch glass baking dish. Preheat the oven to 350° F.

Spread the oats, pumpkin seeds, almonds, and besan onto an edged baking sheet. Toast in the pre-heated oven for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Combine the honey, brown sugar, butter, extract and salt in a medium saucepan and place over medium heat. Cook until the sugar has completely dissolved.

Once the oat mixture is toasted, remove it from the oven and reduce the heat to 300 degrees F. Immediately add the hot oat mixture to the liquid mixture, add the dried fruit, and stir to combine. Turn mixture out into the prepared baking dish and press down (firmly, but not insanely firmly) to distribute the mixture evenly. Bake for 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.

You may need to lever the entire thing out of the baking dish with a spatula in order to cut it, that’s okay. Cut into squares and wrap well in waxed paper. Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a week, or freeze for a month.

Buckwheat Molasses Cookies - Gluten Free!

I wanted to make a good, gluten-free cookie, something that I could give as a birthday gift to friends with wheat allergies, or celiac or, for other reasons, are living gluten-free. I wanted it to be something that I would be proud to serve to anyone, something that didn't have that settling for less quality about it.

Alton Brown has published a gluten-free chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe that looks pretty good, but I don't usually have brown rice flour or xantham gum lying about the kitchen. I do have buckwheat flour, though, and arrowroot powder. I wanted something that I wouldn't have to run to the specialty store to buy (although your pantry mileage may vary).

Buckwheat flour has a more drying effect than whole wheat flour, so I decreased the amount from my usual recipe. Without gluten to stabilize the cookie shape, I added a little arrowroot powder to help control the spread and height.

Buckwheat flour has a pretty strong flavour, and not everyone grooves on it. I decided that it's best bet was a cookie that had a lot of aggressive flavours of its own. Enter the Ginger Snap, one of my favourite stir-up-and-bake recipes. With molasses and ginger and cinnamon competing for tongue-time, the buckwheat taste would be more muted, more sedate, right? Well, as it turns out, almost. It should be noted that I increased the amount of ginger and cinnamon to double the usual amount (and, heck, it should even be noted that this was an accident), but it stands as the way to go, to stand up to the strong scent and character of the buckwheat.

Texturally, they got the lovely crackled tops that I was hoping for, but the interior of the cookie is tenderer than a classic Ginger Snap. Almost fudgy, while they're still warm, and I confess I have yet to try them completely cooled.

I didn't get a perfectly interchangeable version of my Ginger Snaps, the never tell the difference kind, but I got a very, very good cookie.

Buckwheat Molasses Cookies

"Buckies"

Makes 3 - 4 dozen

1 3/4 cups buckwheat flour
1/4 cup arrowroot powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup canola oil
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup molasses
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

Extra sugar for dusting

In a medium mixing bowl, beat the oil and sugar together. You don't need a mixer here, a wooden spoon is fine. Add the egg, and beat until smooth. Add the molasses and beat until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk together the buckwheat flour, arrowroot powder, baking soda, salt and spices. Whisk until thoroughly combined, and then dump it into the molasses mixture. Stir slowly as the dough stiffens up into a thick paste, being sure to incorporate all of the flour. You don't want any white streaks in the dough, it should be completely dark brown.

Use a teaspoon to scoop up a walnut-sized lump of dough, and roll it between your palms until it is nice and round. Dip the top of it in white granulated sugar and place it on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Leave a little room between each cookie, as they will expand.

Bake at 350 F for about 10 minutes - they should be a little underdone when you pull them out. Remove to cooling racks immediately, and get the next batch in the oven. Try not to eat them all at once.

They smell a little bit like pancakes, while they're baking.