I Think I'm Ready For Summer (Iced Tea)

Even if summer isn't quite ready for me.

In summer, I'm always fighting dehydration. Water is essential, of course, but really, a girl can only drink so much water without wanting something flavourful, not to mention wanting to be able to move about without sloshing sensations.

Sugar, however is the issue. I like real sugar. I approve of sugar, especially where the alternatives and fake sugars are concerned. I do not, however, need large quantities of it. For some reason, most summery drinks are filled to the brim with sugar, far in excess of the quantities I find desirable, or worse still, "sugar-free" sugar substitutes which may or may not lead to health problems unto themselves, while still tasting uncomfortably sweet. Juices, lemonades, iced teas, and "virgin cocktails" are all quite sweet...usually, too sweet.

In parts of the United States, one can blessedly get iced tea that has not been pre-sweetened. That does not appear to be the case in most places in Vancouver. I can, however, make my own so that at least when I return home, hot and exhausted from tripping around farmers' markets and beaches, I can drink something delicious that doesn't feel like it's going to kill me in one way or another.

Despite my crankiness above, I do like a little hint of sweetness in my iced tea. A little simple syrup, or even a couple of teaspoons dissolved in a half-cup of hot water and then added to the steeped tea as it cools does the trick nicely, and doesn't leave me feeling like I've just mainlined a candy bar. I can get it just to my taste, and just to my comfort level.

I have a couple of favourite iced tea recipes that are both easy to make and delicious, and a little unexpected. Make the tea as strong or as weak as you generally like it hot. If you like adding ice to your drinks, but don't want to dilute the flavours, make a batch of iced tea just to freeze into ice cube trays and use them in place of ordinary ice cubes.

Isis Tea

1 litre freshly brewed black tea, cooled
2 tablespoons simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water, boiled for one minute on the stove, then cooled)
1 teaspoon rosewater
Juice of half a lemon

Chill thoroughly. Serve in a tall glass, with a mint sprig

Lavender Iced Tea

1 litre freshly brewed lavender-scented black tea, cooled
2 tablespoons simple syrup
2 drops 100% pure lavender essential oil

Chill thoroughly. Shake well before serving.

I wouldn't keep either of these for longer than a few days in the fridge, due to the botanicals added, but that's not usually a problem, for me. I drink these up pretty quickly.

Basically, any tea, whether black, green, or herbal, can be made into a delicious iced tea. It just takes a little preparation to have some on hand, and a jug to keep it in.

Frittata

Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Breakfasts.

I must protest the suggestion that eggs are culinary velcro. While you can certainly add almost anything to eggs, it does pay off to make sure the flavours and textures are harmonious. My mother, otherwise an excellent cook, had an unfortunate habit of adding cooked rice, baby shrimp and green onion to scrambled eggs, and attempting to pass it off as brunch. The texture was unforgettable, and not in a good way. I do not mean to suggest that you cannot make interesting omelettes or frittatas out of your leftovers, but for goodness sake, there are limits. Sometimes, things work best if you only select one of your leftovers, and build around it.

Frittatas (frittati?) are a favourite simple breakfast. Sure, not as simple as cheese on toast, or avocado on toast (a weekday staple) but they come out of the gate rather quickly, and divide nicely into two portions. This one made use of leftover roasted asparagus, with the addition of some crisp-fried bacon, fresh thyme, and parmesan cheese that was just hanging about in the fridge. I didn't salt the eggs, because bacon and parmesan are already salty, but I had fleur de sel standing by in case it was needed. I did add a pinch of ground mustard seed and a couple of tablespoons of half-and-half to the eggs, just to give the flavours a little punch-up.

Making a frittata is pretty easy, although there are diverse methods. I melt a little butter or heat olive oil in a small, non-stick pan, briefly saute whatever bits of meat or vegetable are going to be the "filling", and pour the seasoned eggs over top. A little judicious stirring, lifting the edges of the egg-mass up for the uncooked liquid to run underneath, a good sprinkling of cheese, and then under a broiler to finish it off, which causes the eggs to puff up around the edges. It takes only a few minutes from start to finish - really, the dicing and grating of filling items and beating the eggs takes the same amount of time as the cooking, if not longer, so have the coffee ready before you start.

So, breakfast was ready very quickly, allowing us more time to lounge around and discuss everything from the black plague to the (suspected) difficulty involved in raising genius offspring. We also figured out a plan for dinner, and made some lofty projections about meals for the coming week. We shall see about the latter.

I've been somewhat out of commission, of late, and consequently (I confess) out of the kitchen. I am currently attempting to find a way to control an unusual type of arthritis and a right trigger-wrist, which has made a substantial impact upon my ability to cook on any sort of regular basis. Much of my time in the kitchen of late has been prowling through the cupboards and trying to figure out what I can eat that takes minimal use of hands and/or wrists. We have had to adjust and accommodate our lives quite a bit to enable me to cook at all, and while Palle has certainly stepped up to the skillet a lot recently, we've also ended up eating out a lot, too.

I can still cook if I have help, especially with knife-work. A sous chef who is on hand to slice and dice things, open lids (!), and manhandle anything that needs to be dealt with in some manner more sophisticated than bashing it into the food processor. Lately, I have been finding new and exciting ways to hold spatulas and spoons and whatnot that accommodate my physical limitations, but I haven't been able to entirely do things on my own (unless I'm having an outstandingly good day, inflammation-wise). We have been developing strategies for coping, and I'm starting to feel a bit more positive about the daily business of getting food on the table.

Some of the things that I've made lately have been simply too dull to post about. Y'all have seen me make risotto, and pasta-with-things-in-it repeatedly through the archives, and really, there's only so much I expect people to want to read about turning leftovers into quesadillas. I've spent a certain amount of time lately returning to old favourites, my comfort foods, but I'm starting to get that twitch again, where I want to explore, experiment, and immerse myself in culinary possibilities.

So, stay tuned. I'll try to start bringing some new things to the table.

Just Another Meatball

I like meatballs. They weren't something that I experienced much of when I was growing up, but we certainly had ground meat patties (usually beef) and sauce, and that is certainly in the same family. Little meatballs, though...that was more work, although I doubt that my mother (who was willing to make individual meat pies with two-crusts and full crimping for our family of five) was afraid of a few minutes' more work. Perhaps she was merely constitutionally averse to the meatball notion, for some reason.

I don't usually use a recipe to make meatballs, but I do try to stick in some sort of flavour-family, and that occasionally requires some sort of organizational decision making. While I once made "Christmas Dinner meatballs" (although for a Christmas party, not for our actual Christmas dinner, I confess) using ground turkey, dried cranberries, and stuffing-seasoned breadcrumbs...if I could have found a way to get yams and brussels sprouts in there, I would have...I usually go with a more "what's around the house" mandate.

They always have garlic. They usually have some sort of egg or egg white binding them together. They always have more seasoning than simply salt and pepper. Sometimes I serve them on spaghetti, in the classic Italian-American fashion, reserving any leftovers for sub sandwiches the next day, but sometimes I like to explore the other alternatives. Most cuisines have something along the lines of meatballs, all varying in size, composition, and serving format. Even my filling recipe for gyoza - is something along the lines of an Asian meatball wrapped in dough.

The above-shown meatballs were a stab at cuisine from northern Europe. I was going something for a Danish feel, borrowing heavily from frikadeller, but I felt compelled to jump-up the seasoning a little with some powdered mustard seed and a wee pinch of allspice. The accompaniment was Red Cabbage with Apples, mushroom sour cream gravy, and basmati rice (my standard, go-to rice around the house). The base for the meatballs was a pound of lean ground pork seasoned with salt, pepper, the above-mentioned mustard seed and allspice, some grated garlic, dried breadcrumbs (panko), a good splash of heavy cream, and an egg-white. Fried in butter, because I am told that is the correct way, but with a little splash of canola oil to help keep the butter from burning.

While I can't make any claims to authenticity of a Danish meal (since the Danish half of my household would certainly set me straight if I did), it did have a lovely, northern European comfort food vibe about it, and was pretty darn tasty. The leftovers warmed up pretty well for lunch the next day, eliciting stares and sighs and outright drooling in the lunchroom. I bet they would have made a pretty good sub, too.

Refrigerator Triage (Broccoli, Blue Cheese & Walnut Linguine)

I'm usually pretty good at dealing with leftovers, whether they are remains of dinners that find new life as lunch (or are converted, via pasta, pizza dough, or tortilla into new dinners) or are the bits and bobs left over from various other culinary ventures. Both require a systematic approach and an aversion to (if not downright dedication to avoidance of) finding such things weeks later after they have mutated on their own.

I'm even better at coming up with reasons not to have to walk home from the grocery store in the rain. These two skills, scarcely related as they may be, were the genesis of last night's dinner.

In fact, I planned the dinner upon rooting through the fridge on Friday, and discovering that not only did I have a nice block of Danish Blue cheese that failed to make it onto the cutting board when we were last entertaining, but that I also had some good-sized walnut pieces and an impulse-bought head of broccoli (I know...) that needed using pronto. Since I also was feeling fairly lazy, it seemed the easiest thing in the world to combine these things into a pasta dish, and darned if I wasn't right! While we didn't have it for dinner on Friday, since it seemed even easier to go out for dinner by the time we were ready to get on with it, I liked the idea so much that I scheduled it for dinner Saturday.

It was a very, very good idea. I've heard of many combinations of blue (or bleu) cheese and walnuts before, including some pasta dishes, but I'd never seen one involving broccoli. It was every bit as easy as I thought it would be (especially with Palle around to crush the garlic and separate the florets), and even tastier than I imagined.

Next time I make this, because it is a keeper, I will probably serve it as a side dish next to a simply-seared strip loin steak (or possibly a chicken paillard) with a little spinach salad and a good glass of red wine. The broccoli adds a wonderful freshness to the dish, and cuts through the heaviness of the cheese and walnuts.

Broccoli, Blue Cheese & Walnut Linguine

serves 2 as a main dish (although, very rich)
or 4 as a side

1/2 lb. dried linguine
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 large cloves of garlic, crushed
100 grams blue cheese of your choice, crumbled
1 head of broccoli, sectioned into tiny florets
2/3 cup large walnut pieces

Cook the linguine in rapidly boiling, lightly salted water. While it cooks, heat the olive oil in a large, non-stick skillet, and saute the garlic gently over a medium-low heat until mellow. Add the walnut pieces, stir well, and allow them to toast in the oil a little. When the pasta is ready, scoop it into the skillet with the garlic and walnuts, and combine thoroughly (a pasta fork is very useful for both the scooping and the combining). In the still-simmering pasta water, quickly blanch the broccoli florets for 20 to 30 seconds (I use a mesh spider-tool to hold them in briefly in the hot water, then quickly raise them) and add to the pasta. Sprinkle with the crumbled blue cheese, and stir through once more. Top with freshly ground black pepper, if you wish.

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.

Hash in the Morning Light

Getting back to my love of all things breakfast, I have to put in a good word for hash. It is necessarily potato-intensive, so I don't have it terribly often, but I do enjoy it. The Cajun Chicken Hash at the now-closed VineYard Restaurant (RIP) is the inspiration for this version, which omits the hollandaise of the original, but features a home-blended Cajun spice mixture. As I am usually too unco-ordinated (and possibly too lazy) first thing in the morning to actually poach eggs properly, these have merely been steamed in little cups. I tend to only make one egg for myself, but the original dish had two, of course.

A close-up of the early stages of cooking illustrates the ingredients fairly well:

The chicken was leftover roasted chicken, skinned and trimmed and tossed with the aforementioned Cajun seasoning. The onions are still raw here, and look pretty fierce, but had mellowed considerably by the time it was served. The potatoes were leftover from some other dinner, where I had deliberately cooked a little more than necessary, just so I could have some sort of hash-y affair on the weekend. The rest - the bacon was diced and cooked up in the frying pan, a little of its rendered fat used to lubricate the whole dish, and then everything else was added and sauteed until just the right amount of tenderness or crunch, depending. A little extra Cajun seasoning was sprinkled over the whole as it cooked, before portioning it out and sliding the steamed eggs atop. Add a little hot sauce of your choice...

This is a pretty hearty breakfast, even without any sort of toast weighing in. I certainly didn't feel like moving for a while after - even with only one egg! Still, perfect for those lazy weekend days when you've got a whole lot of lying around on your schedule.

Hash is a useful way to use up the bits and ends in the fridge (as is frittata, or quesadilla, for that matter) - a sort of "kitchen velcro"- to borrow a term from Alton Brown. You can sneak a few more veggies in than your traditional bacon-and-egg breakfast, too. Highly customizable.

Soup Weather (Brown Lentil & Tomato Soup)

Winter, particularly its snowy, rainy, and slushy bits, is the weather for enjoying a good steaming bowl or mug of soup. I like soup. I especially like soup that has an identity. While I grew up with the ever-evolving (mutating?) pot of "Heirloom Soup", which served a terrific purpose and was generally tasty, there is certainly something to be said for creating a soup that will dependably turn out to be exactly what you are craving.

Lentil soups are often on the uninteresting side - serviceable, but not truly delicious. Oh, there are exceptions, of course, and much depends on the nature of the type of lentil being used. For a hearty yet basic brown-lentil soup that is full of vegetables, I have been developing this particular recipe for a few months now, and have come to the conclusion that it overtakes all others in terms of a go-to, dependable, delicious winter lentil soup. Its foundation is European, somewhat along the lines of an Italian soup, but I've never really tasted one quite like it. The addition of red wine vinegar at the end perks up the flavours remarkably, and contributes substantially to the overall depth of flavour.

It is much more handsome if you add a cup of finely chopped parsley (or indeed, a fine chiffonade of spinach) and stir it in right at the end, and the fresh, scarcely cooked greenery adds a certain brightness of flavour that is very pleasing, too. However, if you are planning to freeze the soup for future lunches and dinners, you may wish to leave those out, and add them upon re-heating. The soup in the photo is greenery free, because I forgot that I was out of both parsley and spinach when I started making it. It was still very tasty.

I have yet to try this as a purely vegetarian (or indeed, as it would be, vegan) soup, which would entail exchanging the beef stock for vegetable, but I am confident that this particular recipe would be delicious either way. Next time I plan to try it as a vegetarian version, with the added spinach as suggested above, and (possibly) with a little hit of cumin.

Brown Lentil & Tomato Soup

Makes about 8 cups

1 cup dry brown lentils, rinsed and drained
1 stalk of celery, strung and diced small
1 medium onion, diced small
1 1/2 cups small-diced carrots
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cups beef stock (I use Better Than Bouillon)
2 cups water
2 bayleaves
1 14 oz./398 ml. crushed tomatoes (I prefer no salt added)
1/2 teaspoon oregano leaves (less, if powdered)
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/2 to 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar (to taste - start small)
1 cup finely chopped parsley (or spinach)

In a large soup pot, heat the olive oil and saute the onion, celery and carrots until the onions are tender and a little translucent. Season with white pepper, bay leaves, oregano, and add the garlic. Stir through. Add the drained lentils, the beef broth, the crushed tomatoes, and the water. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat, and let cook at a low temperature (bubbles just barely breaking the surface of the soup) with the lid on, until the lentils are tender - 30 to 35 minutes. Taste, and add salt if needed. If the soup is thicker than you like, stir in a little more water. Stir in vinegar, parsley (or spinach). Taste, and add more vinegar if you like.

If you like the look of the perfectly round little carrot pieces, use "baby" carrots, and simply slice them into coins. Otherwise, dice as you like. I think that a sort of evenness of size makes a soup like this the most attractive but, certainly, feel free to to adapt as the spirit moves you.

Nigella Express - Macaroni & Cheese

One of my Christmas gifts was the brand-new Nigella Express, which I had been eyeballing in the bookstores. While there are a number of items that jump out as must-make, no-time-to-waste, I happened to notice that the amount of cheese called for in her streamlined macaroni and cheese was exactly the amount that I wanted to clear out of the fridge, having rather a lot of post-holiday cheese accumulation taking up space. Since I couldn't legitimately claim not to have the time to make it, I actually managed to get on this recipe fairly promptly.

While I have long been making my favourite version (adapted-from Cooks Illustrated) of Macaroni and Cheese, which is done entirely on the stove top and really does not take long at all, I know that Palle's very favourite kind is the baked variety. Upon further review, I noticed that this recipe not only calls for slightly less cheese overall than my usual recipe, it does not contain any butter at all! This makes it a somewhat healthier dinner (or side dish, if you must), and increased my enthusiasm for trying it out.

Her method is almost ridiculously simple: boil up some macaroni, and while it comes to a boil, throw some cheese, evaporated milk, egg and seasonings into the food processor. Blitz it up, as she says, and combine it with the now-cooked and drained macaroni. Pour the mass into a shallow pan, and bake for about 15 minutes. Dead simple.

Mine did not turn out as lovely-looking in the pan, because I had the oven rack set rather too low to get the seared and blistered appearance of hers before the custardy mass had set. Next time, I will try it on a higher rack, and then it may be as pretty to look at in the pan, as it was on the plate. Instead of the perfectly smooth, impenetrably orange character of the stove-top method, this had little cheesy pockets amidst the generally cheesy matrix, and a perhaps more rustic texture. I don't mean that as a discreet criticism, it should be noted, but rather a careful observation of discrepancy. Both versions are delicious, and the one to make is the one that best fits the rest of the meal (if there is, in fact, another component to the meal).

I couldn't leave the recipe entirely alone, I admit. Those of you who know me, or have been reading my blog for a while, know that I am almost constitutionally incapable of letting a recipe alone, and when I do I view it as some marvelous achievement of self-restraint. That said, my modification to this recipe was fairly minor - I added a dash of Tabasco sauce and a pinch of mustard powder to the milk mixture. I'd do it again, too.

Other Things For Breakfast (Walnut Coffee Cake)

I am generally a fan of the savory side of breakfast. While I adore pancakes, I require a side of something meat-y to really enjoy them first thing in the morning. Crepes, of course, allow for the happy concatenation of the two, but are not always an option.

Still, there is certainly something to be said for a quick burst of food as one is about to fly out the door in the morning, or something that requires zero preparation or refrigeration to be enjoyed once one has arrived at their destination. To this end, there are few things that fit the bill better than a good coffee cake, especially one that is not cloyingly sweet.

While many coffee cakes are tasty, but heavy things, this one is shockingly light and airy and allows for almost infinite variety. Here I have used my basic Buttermilk Coffee Cake recipe (available in the comments section below), but skipped the sugared layering process, and instead scattered well-toasted walnut pieces on top and throughout, and stirred a little nutmeg into the batter.

I enjoy nuts, but I usually tend toward almonds, which are more shelf-stable, rather than walnuts. A walnut that has gone rancid is second only to rotten milk for a heebie-jeebie taste in the mouth that will not be vanquished. Still, a fresh, toasted walnut is so incredibly delicious that it is worth the risk. It also helps to purchase your walnuts from a specialty store that has a high turnover, so you can feel confident that you are getting a product that hasn't been sitting around forever. Also, it is good to purchase only as much as you need, and if you find yourself with a few leftover, you will want to toss them into some sort of endive salad or trail-mix snack in fairly short order.

This cake can also be frozen very successfully, if wrapped in a nice tight layer of plastic wrap, either whole or in serving-sized pieces (which generally will have defrosted completely by the time coffee-break rolls around, if taken from the freezer that same morning). This is one of the endearing features of this cake, because it means that I am not sentenced to repetition (which can be tedious, no matter how good the item repeated may be) in order to use it up while it is still fresh-tasting.

Breakfast & the New Year

I don't really make New Year's resolutions, except for the amusing, off-the-cuff kind uttered for entertainment value only. I have long believed that one should implement any improvements that are needed as soon as possible, and not wait for essentially arbitrary milestones.

That said, in the spirit of fresh starts (now that I am once again able to post photographs!) I do hope that my posts here will be a little more frequent in the coming year than they have been and the end of the last.

Also in the spirit of fresh starts, I cannot recommend the meal of breakfast highly enough. Despite my enthusiasm for breakfast, I will confess to having rather recently choked down a few fast-food breakfast sandwiches of the biscuit-y variety, and I probably don't need to tell you that these occasions were met with a flinchy "I can do better than this." So, in fact, I have.

The biscuit here is a cheddar biscuit based on the lovely cream biscuits recipe from Cook's Illustrated's Fall Entertaining issue, made in my kitchen by my friend Lisa, who is somewhat new to the biscuit-making ranks, although a solid cook in her own right. It was she who came up with the idea of prepping a bunch of acceptable biscuits for breakfasts-on-the-go, and we took some time recently to play with the dough a little.

The rest of the ingredients are pretty much self-evident: a little back bacon (easily fried up and stored in a container in the fridge or freezer, depending on how frequently one wants to slap together a breakfast); an egg quickly-fried in a ring - in this case, a tuna can with the top and bottom cut out and pressed smooth; a slice of good, sharp cheddar - coincidentally, the same cheese as the one grated into the biscuit. Alternate versions saw instead a scrambled egg that had been pepped up with a little granulated onion and garlic, which was also a hit (and possibly even faster on the stove top).

Need I tell you how scrumptious it was, and how desperately I am in need of making these again?