Yo ho ho, French Toast for breakfast

A while ago, I made some rum syrup, for some recipe or other. And I liked it so much, it stayed on in the kitchen to be incorporated into anything where a traditional maple syrup might have once gone, or really anything that could use some pirate flavours. Such as pancakes ( a frequent flyer, of late) and this time, by special request, French Toast.

I don't make French Toast all that often. It's easy enough, of course, but it seems rather a lot of work for something ultimately fairly ordinary. This time, however, I used a mild sourdough bread, and with the added bananas and rum syrup, well, I can see myself doing this again, and soon. I am always ridiculously thrilled to have fresh fruit at breakfast, a condition which has only worsened since our trip to Mexico last year, and French Toast provides a terrific vehicle - more so even than pancakes, I think.

Since I am almost constitutionally incapable of having an all-sweet breakfast, we added bacon, which is a fine additional to almost any meal.

If you don't have a favourite recipe for French Toast, you might enjoy this one, which is adapted from the Big Book of Breakfast by Maryana Vollstedt.

Basic French Toast

2 large eggs
1/2 cup 1% milk
dash salt
4 large slices of mild bakery sourdough
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
a little butter, for frying.

Mix the eggs, milk, salt and vanilla and pour into a shallow bowl. Dip the slices of bread briefly into the egg mixture, turning to coat, and put aside on a holding plate until they are all done.

Heat a large skillet over medium, and add a little butter (or canola oil). When the butter has melted (or oil heated) lay in two of the slices (or as many as will fit in a single, uncrowded layer), and cook for about three minutes per side. Remove to a rack in the oven to keep warm until they are all cooked.

Delicious with any sort of syrup, I'm sure, but extra pirate-y with rum syrup.

Feel Good Noodle Bowl

I've been sitting on this pic for a while, as it trickily sneaked under my radar when I was processing a large number of photos.

This is wonderfully comfort-foodish, even if your childhood didn't include Chinese steamed noodles, miso gravy, or tolerable vegetables. If you like any of these things now, this will be a go-to staple of those nights when you really feel like something that is simple, healthy, and tasty.

I can't even call it a recipe. It takes about three minutes to cook up some fresh Chinese steamed (or "steam") noodles (around here, they are sold in the produce dept. of most major grocery stoes), or other fresh noodles, dole them into bowls and top with freshly steamed vegetables of your choice. Drizzle with sauce, and devour.

I like snow peas (mangetouts) here, too, and chunks of steamed or roasted yam. You could try fennel bulb, red bell peppers, cubes of smoked tofu, baby corn, or sake-steamed shiitake mushrooms.

You can also switch things up to suit yourself - this is an eminently customizable dish. You could swap the miso gravy for a nice peanuty sate sauce, or perhaps even a little leftover curry sauce that you might happen to have in your freezer. You could change the noodles to your favourite type of rice, for a potentially (depending on the sauce, of course) gluten-free version. Even the sesame seeds are optional.

Best of all, once you are deliciously full, you can feel confident that you've gotten most of your vegetable needs down the hatch, while feeling like you're getting away with something. A little fresh fruit for dessert, should you be so lucky, and you're done.

Bento Greco

Bento, again, or as they might say on Iron Chef, "Bento, Greek Flavour."

The meatballs in the little silicone baking cup are spiced lamb, and the salad is the always fantastic and staple summer potluck salad, Chickpea and Orzo with Dill. I've changed the technique a little over the years, and now I combine everything but the orzo and cold water in a big bowl while the pasta cooks, and then, after running it under cold water to stop the cooking, giving it a half-hearted shake and add it to the rest. Quick toss, and you're done.

The olives tucked in with the meatballs are kalamatas. The cucumber is self-explanatory, but I confess it was going to be a Greek salad, originally - cukes, tomato, red onion, more feta, and green bell pepper. I discovered that the other vegetables were inexplicably not in my crisper, so I just went with sliced cucumbers, which I'm always happy to have with my lunch.

Between the chickpeas and the lamb, it was plenty of food. I removed the meatballs and heated them up in the microwave, but I was using fairly lean lamb, so they could have been eaten cold. They were leftovers from dinner the night before, and as you may know by now, I love taking leftover dinner for lunch.

A Brief Journey in Short Ribs

Spring is coming on fast, but there are still a few chilly days left that lend themselves to beefy braises and slow stews; just time to get in one more short rib dinner. Or three.


I kept it simple, to start. Rubbed the meat with a little kosher salt and olive oil, browned it well in a Dutch oven, deglazed with a cheap and cheerful Chilean carménère (Éstacion, $12, surprisingly drinkable), added a 400 ml tin of plain diced tomatoes with their juices and a half-cup of chicken stock. For seasoning, a sprig each of rosemary and thyme from the garden, 3 bay leaves, a few cloves of garlic (quartered lengthwise), and a dash of allspice. Once the dish was at a simmer, I put it in the oven, covered, at 300℉ for three hours. The last half-hour of waiting was pure agony, but the wait was worth it. Rich, meltingly tender, and with a deep, wonderful beefy flavour. Baked potato (since the oven was on anyway) and coleslaw rounded out the meal.I made extra, not that we'd have had the room for larger servings. No, the extra was for conversion purposes. I figure that any time I am waiting three hours for something to come out of the oven, I'm making it count. So, I cooked double the amount that we needed, and stored the leftovers in the braising liquid in the fridge.

The added bonus of advance preparation and chilling is that all of the lovely suet comes up to the surface, and an be quite easily lifted off (to feed the birds, or save for some other purpose), leaving a lean gel of braising liquid surrounding the still-on-the-bone meat.

So, what to do with the leftovers? Sandwiches, of course! I warmed up the meat and shredded it with a couple of forks (pulled pork style), and put it on toasted buns with a few pieces of the tomatoes from the braising liquid, topped the whole thing with a layer of edam cheese, and served with a spinach salad for super-fast dinner.


Since there was still a little shredded meat leftover that I couldn't cram onto the buns, and the rest of the braising liquid, I used the liquid as a base for a soup, adding a little extra broth, some carrot coins, corn, lima beans(!), and barley. At the end, the shredded meat went back into the pot to warm up. Embarassingly easy, and very delicious with a big hunk of bread to mop up the last bits.

Bring on spring. I'm feeling fortified.

Salad Tweaking (Pasta Salad Primavera)

If you have check out my Reviews blog, Much Ado About Diet, you'll see the test recipe for Dilled Pasta Salad with Spring Vegetables from the newly released Mayo Clinic Diet & Journal. As noted, we like all of the ingredients, and so we enjoyed the salad, but we also identified some issues for this recipe in terms of its end result on the plate, as well as the overall health scorecard. So I decided to give it a little salad makeover.


Right away, we were surprised by the amount of oil in the original dressing recipe. 1/4 cup seemed rather high for the amount of salad to be dressed and, in fact, it delivered an uncomfortably oily result. In the revised recipe below, we cut the amount of fat in half, using only two tablespoons of olive oil. That took care of the excessive greasiness, and still easily provided enough dressing to adequately season the salad.

The second thing we noted was that the use of both asparagus and green bell pepper gave an overall bitter quality to the entire salad, not to mention contributing to a rather monotone appearance. The few cherry tomatoes did break up the green and white pasta-scape, but left me thinking that the whole dish could benefit from more colour, and more natural vegetable sweetness. I switched out the green pepper for orange and red bell peppers, which are much sweeter and do not have that unripe bitter quality of the green.


I also felt that the amount of pasta could really support a much greater quantity of vegetable matter, allowing for larger portions that really only increased the fresh vegetable intake of any serving. More vegetables is generally considered an improvement, health-wise, so I increased all of the feature vegetables: 2 more asparagus stalks, an extra half bell pepper, extra tomatoes (the exact number is going to depend on the size of tomato you choose).

Finally, I thought the amount of fresh herb could use a boost, so I roughly doubled the chopped herbs. In the second iteration, I used tarragon instead of dill, but that was simply because I had it handy, and it plays well with the same vegetables.

I think the final salad was more visually appealing (the change of noodle was strictly due to availability at the time) with lots of colours and a nice balance between the astringent asparagus, the sweet peppers, and the acidity of the tomatoes. The flavours were bright, the pasta tasted seasoned, but not greasy, and this recipe has earned a place in my spring and summer repertoire. It's versatile, vegan, stores well in the fridge for a day or two, and is about perfect for potlucks or picnics.

Pasta Salad Primavera
adapted from The Mayo Clinic Diet & Journal
Serves 4

3 cups uncooked short pasta, such as rotini
10 asparagus stalks
1 orange bell pepper
1/2 red bell pepper
2 green onions
10 - 12 cocktail tomatoes

Dressing
2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 Tablespoons rice vinegar (or white balsamic vinegar)
2 Tablespoons olive oil
large pinch kosher salt
black pepper to taste
1/2 cup fresh green herbs of your choice (e.g. tarragon, dill, basil, or parsley)

Trim the asparagus and slice into approximately two-centimeter chunks. Dice the peppers into medium-small dice. FInely slice the green onions. Cut the tomatoes as needed - quarters for strawberry tomatoes, halves for cherry tomatoes, and whole for grape.

Stir the dressing together while the pasta boils.

Drop the pasta into boiling, lightly salted water and cook until just tender. For the last two minutes of cooking time, add the asparagus to the pot of boiling pasta. When finished, drain and plunge the pasta and asparagus into ice water to stop the cooking process and cool it down. Rinse with fresh, cold water until all the pasta is cool to the touch. Drain well, shaking to get rid of any excess water.

In a large serving bowl, combine the chopped raw vegetables and dressing. Add the well-drained pasta and asparagus and toss so that the dressing gets evenly distributed. Serve right away, or chill until needed.

I'm Back...and I brought a Bento

I've missed you all.

As you can see, my fascination with Japanese food rages on unabated. I've been taking bento lunches to work (intermittently) over the past six months, and I've developed a taste for them. I have noted, though, that often when I make a Japanese-style dinner, it all gets devoured, and I don't have enough to take for lunch. I have not yet hit that point of obsessive wherein I get up an extra twenty minutes early to make a bento from scratch in the morning.

Clearly, I need to make bigger suppers, or starting eating dessert so that I will eat less of the actual dinner, to save the necessary room.

This bento is pretty self-explanatory: I'm still working on my scotch egg recipe (my dear friend Lisa beat me to making them with quail's eggs, darn it!), which is at least one dish that I'm guaranteed to have enough left for lunch, because those suckers are filling. I sliced up a piece of flourless wheat bread to go with, to provide a little grain-based anchor for the protein. (Update: Quail Scotch Eggs recipe now available)

I frequently take sliced vegetables in my work lunches. I don't usually take the time to make them cute, like the little radishes here, but something about making bento boxes inspires the more twee presentation, somehow. Zucchini half-rounds and peppers round things out, and I've got a little bit of Lighthouse brand salad dressing (bacon & blue cheese) to go with. For the record, while the flavours of blue cheese and bacon go beautifully together, the actual bacon particulate matter was kind of stringy and chewy. I'll stick to regular blue cheese dressing in the future.

The apple is unusual, for me: I love apples, but I don't usually eat a whole one, raw. Uncooked apples give me fairly nasty heartburn, so I tend to either slice one up and share it, or cook them into sauce, pie, crisps or crumbles, or other baked goods. However, Red Delicious seem to have fairly low acidity, so I gave it a try. I find that Delicious apples tend to be a bit mealy-textured, but it was a nice change from the usual berries or kiwi that I tend to have.

Diet Reviews

Diets? Really?

Yep. There's a lot of advice and information out there, and I'm doing my best to try and make sense of some of it. While many of these reviews will have content relating to weight loss, I will also be dealing with material intended to help improve and manage one's overall health.

Check out my new blog "Much Ado About Diet", where I'll be reviewing diet books, programs and related materials from time to time.

It is important to me to let you know that I do not, and will not, accept any payment or compensation for these reviews, although some of the items reviewed have been provided to me at no cost.

First up: The Mayo Clinic Diet and Journal (2010).

Ersatz Pizza, with lamb

I needed to use up the tortillas. They were lingering in the fridge a little longer than was ideal, and had gotten stale. If I was going to use them, it was going to have to be immediate, and something over high heat to crisp back some semblance of personality into them.

Fortunately for me, my corner grocery has a small, fresh meat section, and a butcher who comes in for a few hours in the morning to set up the various and sundry cuts necessary in the preparation of Vietnamese and Filipino dishes. This includes very thinly sliced raw lamb rounds which, it turns out, fry up blazingly fast. It's the same place that I get my thinly sliced beef for the Sesame Beef. They do a very nice thinly sliced meat.

In the interests of both creating a nicely sturdy surface to play on, and my desire to use up maximum tortillas, I chose to glue two tortillas together with freshly grated parmesan. After that, a thin smear of spinach pesto, followed by the seared lamb slices, some pine nuts that were also in need of being eaten, and some feta cheese. The lower right side also had a drizzle of pomegranate molasses, which I was initially unsure of, but it turned out delicious. The loaded tortillas were then shoved onto a baking sheet and slid under the broiler just long enough to crisp up the edges of the tortillas, and toast the pine nuts.

The final stage was performed post-broiler: a friend had given me a whole-spice blend called "Grains of Desire" which turned out to be a wonderfully fragrant mixture of black peppercorns, nutmeg (not whole, obviously), cloves, orange rind, rose petals, ginseng, and grains of paradise. The combined aroma reminded me a little of ras el hanout, a justly famous Moroccan spice blend, and indeed, shares an overlap of ingredients (although a good ras el hanout might have upwards of 40 spices within), most notably the rose petals and the grains of paradise.

I had been searching for the perfect dish to crack the seal on the spice mixture, and this was a good call. Lamb provided a beautiful backdrop for the flavours, and tied the whole impromptu dish together in a way that I could not have really predicted.

It's not really pizza, but I really don't know what else to call it. I know I'd love to have it again.

Sesame Beef Rice Bowl with Miso Gravy

My current enthusiasm for Japanese cuisine is clearly alive and well in the New Year.

Miso gravy is the only thing I ever really enjoyed from the famous, wildly overrated Naam restaurant in Kitsilano. They did a very nice sesame fries with miso gravy, and the gravy became so popular that they eventually marketed it to local supermarkets.

However, being fairly confident in my gravy-making abilities, it struck me that this should be pretty darn easy to do, just winging it. After, all, other bloggers have done just fine. Essentially, you get to make gravy however you like best, but using miso paste instead of roast drippings. If you want it vegetarian, use vegetable broth/stock for your liquid instead of meat stock. If you want it gluten-free, use chickpea flour as a thickener. If you want it to further complement Asian flavours, add soy sauce(or tamari), ginger and sesame oil. It is infinitely customizable, and quick to do. An immersion blender helps smooth out the garlic/ginger/onion particulate flavourings that I've used in this one. You can make it ahead, and store it in the fridge. It re-heats beautifully.

The sesame beef was very simple and quick, too. The marinade is from Just Bento, but I used sliced beef from our local Vietnamese butcher - very, very thin sheets, rather than the thin strips you would get from slicing minute steak, per the recipe. However, thin sheets of beef may not be readily available, so do as you see fit. I also didn't have any mirin (although I do now, it is not Hon mirin, which I understand to be the best), so I used sake - what with the brown sugar in the recipe, and my dislike of overly sweet meat dishes, it worked just fine - although, to be fair, I'm planning to re-do this with the mirin, just to see the difference.

To cook the beef, I simply heated a skillet until very hot, spritzed very lightly with canola oil, and sear the meat quickly in batches. It only took a few minutes to get through the lot - about a half-pound of meat, in total. At the end, I dumped the remaining marinade (not much left) into the pan and quickly scraped up the beefy goodness from the bottom of the pan, and then tossed it with the cooked beef.

The asparagus spears were quickly stir-fried, and the enoki mushrooms were steamed in sake. The radish is pretty self-explanatory, and the hint of pink over on the far side is some pickled ginger that I picked up at a local Korean market. Steeply angled green onion slivers complete the garnish (along with a few sesame seeds, for emphasis), and the whole lot is served on top of Nishiki steamed rice (gohan), with the gravy on the side for dipping the asparagus.

I am already planning when to make this again.

Venison Biscuit Pie

Biscuit Pie is one of my winter comfort staples. You can make it with just about anything that you can make into a stew, just like a regular pot-pie, but the topping is not the standard puff-pastry that starts crisp but quickly turns to greasy sog as you pierce the shell and begin to eat, and it isn't the industrial-tough standard pastry shell that tastes floury and has the texture of under-tanned leather. No, the topping here is, obviously, biscuit. If you can make a stew, you can make it into a biscuit pie.

You can get fancy, if you like, and cut out adorable little biscuit rounds and place them with great precision in some kind of fancy pattern before popping the pot into the oven, or you can do it the way my mother did her steak and kidney pie, which is to press the dough out into a single, surface-covering circle (or rectangle, if you use a baking dish instead of the stew pot), stab it vigorously with a fork to allow the steam to escape and promote even cooking, and simply lay it on top of the bubbling stew before shoving the whole thing in the oven. You get to break the crust into appropriately sized chunks with a swift scoop of your dishing spoon as you serve it up.

The bottom of the biscuit, once it is all cooked, will have absorbed just enough of the gravy from the stew to become meltingly tender, like using good bread to mop the bottom of a soup bowl.

My classic recipe is Steak & Mushroom Biscuit Pie, but for this one, I used some venison stew meat procured from the newly re-opened (and fabulous!) Jackson's Meats in Kitsilano, cremini mushrooms, carrot, parsnip, onion and garlic. The gravy is a little thinner here, because I wanted the venison flavour to pop, so it's a bit more jus like and less full-on gravy. The great thing is, you can customize that bit to your heart's content. I used red wine and vegetable stock to make the jus/gravy, and we added juniper berries to accent the venison (although, my juniper berries may not have been very fresh, and their flavour contribution was considerably more modest than I would have liked). The venison was dark and tender and lean, and the vegetables were cooked just through, and some fresh rosemary from my garden gave it a little hit of freshness that perked it, and me, right up.

If I'm feeling the need for a lot of biscuit in my dinner (the comfort food version), I will use a full batch of biscuits to fit my stew pot, but if there's lots of other food involved, salads and side dishes and whatnot, then I'll use a half-recipe, and shorten the cooking time a little.