Archive for April, 2008
It is a good day when I realize it’s 5:45, I have no idea what’s for dinner, and there’s a bowl of leftover rice and peas in the fridge.
As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, my favorite 5 minute dinner is fried rice. You can make it out of anything. (So long as you have rice.)
Here’s what you do:
Heat up a skillet with a drizzle of canola oil (and sesame oil, if you have some).
Throw in the cold rice, some frozen peas if they aren’t already in with the rice, and a little blob of curry paste or powder. Break in an egg and scramble it up off to one side. Toss in some raw or cooked shrimp - I keep a bag in the freezer and run a handful under the tap to thaw. Pork, chicken or tofu also work well (I wish I had a bit of that tenderloin from last night), but the shrimp-curry combo is a good one.
Season with soy sauce or salt (soy sauce is salty) and pepper. Done.
W is not yet a curry fan, so he ate some chicken tortellini I had boiled at lunchtime, tossed with pesto. Hey, at least it’s green.
I had a few bites of each of their dinners to tide me over until 8, when I’m meeting my friend J for cider and wings.
In other news: the Empty Bowl Benefit Online Auction has begun!
Last week I was one of many who had the opportunity to paint a bowl to auction off to benefit the Calgary Interfaith Food Bank. All the bowls are being auctioned off at the Food Bank website, and can be viewed in all their glory at various downtown locations.
You can bid on my fabulous hand-painted fish bowl here! (I’ll deliver it myself if you live anywhere near Calgary, along with a bag of CBC swag, and of course filled with bacon caramel corn!)
It took me about 4 hours to paint. Seriously. (There are little fish swimming around the base of the bowl too, but you can’t see them at this angle!)
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April 30 2008 | leftovers and one dish and seafood and vegetarian | 1 Comment »
It is purely by coincidence that the day I cleaned out my freezer and discovered no fewer than 5 bags of frozen chopped rhubarb I had squirreled away last summer was the very same day I noticed the first few shoots of rhubarb poking out of the ground.
I didn’t have the gumption to bake a pie, and there was at least 5 pies’ worth of rhubarb there anyway. So I stirred some into muffins; a recipe from Nigella’s Feast that she credits to Bev Laing of Edmonton, and the rest I dumped into a pot with the better part of a bag of frozen cranberries, some sugar and a spoonful of orange juice concentrate, and cooked it into cranberry-rhubarb sauce. (Or compote, if you want to be fancy about it.) I mean, why not? Both are red and tart; it’s like they were meant for each other.
I had a thawed pork tenderloin that needed cooking, so I rubbed it down with a bit of cumin, paprika, brown sugar, salt and pepper, then a little oil, and grilled it. I didn’t really care what I did to it; the pork was a mere vehicle for the sauce. While it grilled (or vice versa) I boiled some brown and wild rice the way I’d cook pasta - in lots of water - for about 45 minutes, and threw in some thawed frozen peas for the last 5 minutes. (W will eat rice, and rice with stuff in it, but the peas cannot stand alone.) A great fiber combo - brown and wild rice are of course good sources of fiber, but peas are even better, containing about 4 times as much as the rice.
The leftover sauce went into a bowl with some plain yogurt, oats, raisins and the grated remains of W’s half-eaten apple, and was stirred together to make muesli for breakfast and to dip into for the rest of the week. (The oats will absorb the moisture overnight, making it nice and thick.)
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April 29 2008 | breakfast and on the grill and pork | No Comments »
Let me clarify: chocolate-dipped cheesecake pops are not something I would typically make for dessert on a plain old Monday night. I made them for the Eyeopener because tomorrow I’m going to chat about food blogs. Thinking I’d choose a recipe from one of my favorite sites, I hopped around a few and found that Cream Puffs in Venice, Tartelette, and another blog I stumbled through were all posting cheesecake pops. As I was perusing them my friend S emailed from Whistler, where she is apparently hooked on something from the local chocolate shop called cheesecake bombs. I took this as an unmistakable sign that I should make some. What a hero I’m going to be in the studio tomorrow morning!
The pie was to make use of leftover spaghetti; I did a few segments debunking common cooking myths on BT this morning, and as a result had plenty of leftover cooked pasta that was used to demonstrate the myth that adding oil to the cooking water prevents it from sticking together. (It’s a large volume of water, kept at a rolling boil with space for the spaghetti to move around, that keeps it from sticking. In fact, adding oil to your water will result in an oil slick on your pasta once you drain it, and your sauce won’t stick very well.)
Spaghetti Pie.
I’ve seen many versions of spaghetti pie, some in which the pasta is tossed with the sauce and cheese, then baked, others that have the crust par-baked first to crisp it up, and others with layers of cottage cheese between the noodles and sauce.
So I improvised: tossed the leftover spaghetti with some egg white (I had some whose yolks had been used to make lemon curd), a bit of grated Parmesan, a grinding of pepper and a big spoonful of pesto, just because there was some open in the fridge and W is such a fan, then spread the spaghetti into an oiled pie plate, pushing it up the sides a bit.
I had requests for spinach sauce, but had hastily crumbled and cooked a couple lean Italian sausages, a red pepper, a few fresh tomatoes that had gone too wrinkly for anything but cooking with and a can of tomatoes before remembering this, and pureed sausage, I imagine, is not a Good Thing. So I decided to proceed as if it were a lasagna - I crumbled some ricotta and thawed, squeezed-out spinach over the crust,
topped it with the sauce…
and some grated part-skim mozzarella, and baked it at 350F for about half an hour, until all was golden, crsipy-edged and bubbly. Yum.
The cheesecake pops were simple, really, mostly because I didn’t make the cheesecake from scratch like the others did. Some advised making a cheesecake and then scooping up balls of it with your hands, freezing them and then dipping the frozen wads in chocolate. Because I couldn’t envision blaspheming a cheesecake that way, nor attempting to cut one into teeny fancy shapes using a cookie cutter (too thick for any in my collection) I decided to buy one of those small plain frozen Safeway cheeesecakes and cut it into wedges. It worked perfectly.
After inserting the sticks (bamboo skewers, although popsicle sticks or the 4″ lollipop sticks you can buy at Michael’s would work brilliantly), I put them back in the freezer to solidify while I melted some chocolate chips in the microwave, then half dipped, half spread the melted chocolate onto the frozen wedges. Some sprinkles or other decoration would have worked out well, but I didn’t really have anything. That’s the beauty of radio; you don’t really need to accessorize.
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April 28 2008 | cake and dessert and freezable and one dish and pasta and sweet stuff | 6 Comments »
After three nights and four days of events, I got home from Banff mid-afternoon and didn’t much feel like cooking dinner. But it occurred to me that W hasn’t had anything green for a long time, and I didn’t feel like take-out or cereal, either. So I sucked it up and made a quick batch of spinach spaghetti sauce while the pasta boiled.
You do this by sautéing a bunch of spinach (or half a bag of the prewashed stuff) in a little canola oil, until it wilts; pour your tomato sauce overtop (or go the other way; heat up the sauce and stir in the spinach until it wilts), pour it into the food processor and whiz until it’s smooth. Voilá - spinach that is undetectable to a two year old.
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April 27 2008 | freezable and one dish and pasta and vegetarian | 3 Comments »
Nik and I did another 2 events today in Red Deer, then drove back to Calgary, picked up W and drove to Banff. Because someone had given her a Starbucks card that was tainting her wallet (she is a tea importer, remember) she insited on pulling over to use it. Probably a good idea; the latte was likely what kept me awake through all that driving.
The Calgary-Banff drive was from 5:45- 7:15, so technically that was dinner, along with the whole wheat tortilla I slathered with peanut butter and wrapped around a banana for W and I to share on the way out the door - my favorite mad dash meal to go. We share one for a snack or he can down the whole thing if it’s lunch or dinnertime; it’s an easy way to get protein, healthy fats and complex carbohydrates into something you can eat with one hand. (Generally I like to use just-peanut peanut butter, but W has become picky about the mouthfeel, so I gave in to Kraft light, which I personally adore… it’s not a whole lot better than the regular stuff, but slightly sweeter and less lardy-tasting. I’m starting to mix them half and half, in an attempt to wean him back onto the other stuff. Now that I think of it, a sprinkle of ground flaxseed between PB and banana would likely go undetected.)
Not a bad dinner, really, paired with the (Venti) 2% latte, which contains 240 calories, 9 g fat (6 of them saturated) and 16 g protein (much better than the white hot chocolate, which weighs in at 640 calories and 28 g fat).
So I should have quit while I was ahead. When we got to Banff we met her boys (4, 6 and 37) at the St. James Gate for something we could actually chew, anything that wasn’t traditionally served at high tea. I didn’t think it was possible to make bad meatloaf and mashed potatoes.
I stand corrected.
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April 26 2008 | eating out | 1 Comment »
Tnik and I are in Red Deer teaching a series of three tea party classes at The Cooking Room and the Women’s Conference at Red Deer College tonight and tomorrow (after which we head to Banff to the Girlfriend’s Getaway at the Banff Park Lodge. We’ve just arrived in our hotel room and are watching Cyndi Lauper on TV and munching from a ziplock baggie of the crusts we trimmed off of all those cucumber sandwiches (we are extremely high class).
Our first tea party ran from 4:30-7pm, so technically I suppose dinner was tea - bites here and there of currant scones with strawberry preserves and real clotted cream, balsamic mushroom crostini, curried coconut mango chicken in wonton cups, lemon curd tartlets and Earl Grey shortbread. Oh, and some of the chocolate that exploded all over me as I tried to dip a too-taught balloon in too-hot melted chocolate to make fancy chocolate tulip bowls. (Nicole neglected to let me know it was still all over my forehead and neck when we stopped at the wine store - where I asked the clerk where I could find the Moscato - and when I checked into the hotel.)
The shortbread was a successful experiment - I whizzed a spoonful of Nicole’s cream Earl Grey loose tea in the food processor with the flour, sugar and butter, dumped it out and gathered it into a ball, pressed it into the bottom of a 9″ round pan, pressed around the edges and poked the surface with the tines of a fork the way you do with shortbread, and baked it until it was pale golden around the egdes, then cut it into wedges. You could do this with any sort of tea in any shortbread recipe, really. Grinding it a bit first releases more flavour and makes it look peppery.
Currant Scones
3 cups all-purpose flour, or 1 ½ cups all-purpose and 1 ½ cups whole wheat
1/3 cup sugar
1 Tbp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda (if using buttermilk)
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 cup butter, cut into pieces
1/2 cup currants
1 cup buttermilk, milk or half & half
extra buttermilk or milk for brushing on top (optional)
coarse sugar for sprinkling (optional)
Preheat oven to 425°F. In a bowl or food processor, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add the butter and pulse to combine or blend with a fork or pastry cutter until the mixture is crumbly, with bits of butter no bigger than a pea. Stir in the currants.
Stir in the buttermilk and mix just until combined. Gather dough into a ball, then pat it into a circle that is about 1” thick. Brush with a little milk or buttermilk and sprinkle with sugar. Cut into 8 wedges and pull them apart so that they will bake on the sides as well.
Bake for about 20 minutes, until golden. Makes 8 (or more if you cut them into rounds or smaller triangles.)
Curried Coconut Mango Chicken in Wonton Cups
24 wonton wrappers
a drizzle of canola oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger
2 cups chopped cooked chicken (I like using leftover roast chicken - a great way to use roasted deli chickens)
1 tsp. - 1 Tbsp. curry paste
1/2 cup light or regular coconut milk
1/3 cup mango or peach chutney
Juice of 1/2 a lime (about a tablespoon)
Salt to taste
Chopped fresh cilantro (optional)
To make the wonton cups, press fresh wonton wrappers into mini muffin tins, pressing any folds firmly to the sides, and bake at 350 F for 5-10 minutes, until pale golden. Set aside to cool.
To make the filling, heat oil in a medium nonstick saucepan and cook the onion, garlic and ginger for about 2 minutes. Add the chicken, curry paste, coconut milk, chutney, lime juice and salt. Cook, stirring often, until bubbly and thickened. Cool slightly or chill before spooning into wonton cups. Sprinkle with cilantro.
Makes 2 dozen cups.
Per cup: 69 calories, 1 g total fat (0.3 g saturated fat, 0.3 g monounsaturated fat, 0.3 g polyunsaturated fat), 7.1 g protein, 7.3 g carbohydrate, 16.8 mg cholesterol, 0.1 g fiber. 13% calories from fat.
Earl Grey Shortbread
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. - 1 Tbsp. loose Earl Grey tea
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour
pinch salt
Preheat oven to 350°F. In a medium bowl, stir together butter, sugar, tea and vanilla until creamy. Add the flour and salt and stir until you have a soft dough.
Press the dough into an ungreased 9” round pan or place it on an ungreased cookie sheet and pat it into a rectangle. If you like, press down around the edges with the tines of a fork, and poke all over the top.
Bake about 15 minutes, until golden. Cool for 10 minutes, then slice while still warm.
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April 25 2008 | appetizers and bread and breakfast and cookies & squares and sweet stuff | 3 Comments »
Tonight was the fundraising dinner at the Hotel Arts I was emceeing, so dinner was made for me (and 120 others) by 8 of the city’s best chefs. It was a fantastic evening with spectacular food, and we raised plenty of dineros for the 150 widows and 600 children and youth who are assisted through Ubuntu.
This was the menu, generously donated by each chef and their restaurants:
1st Course – Zuppa di Pesce with halibut, manilla clams and prawns in a spicy tomato broth
Chefs Spencer Wheaton and Steve Smee of Mercato
2nd Course – Fresh Spaetzle Pasta with patty pan squash and grape tomatoes
Chef Peter Swarbrick of Saint Germain
3rd Course – Pan Seared Arctic Char with oven dried roma tomatoes and wilted greens
Chef Xavier Lacaze of Muse
4th Course – Sliced Duck Breast over a house made mushroom ravioli and soya reduction
Chef Duncan Ly of Raw Bar at Hotel Arts
Muscato sorbet
Pastry Chef Karine Moulin of Hotel Arts
5th Course – Slow Braised Beef Ribs with smoked fingerling potatoes
Chef Shaun Desaulniers of Belgo
6th Course – Pavlova with chantilly cream, passion fruit curd and fresh seasonal fruit
Chef Rebekah Pearse of Nectar Desserts
7th Course - Brie de Meau wrapped with house cured Broek Farm’s pork belly, hemp seed biscuit and a wild Alberta bull berry jelly
Chef Scott Pohorelic of River Cafe
Premium loose teas specially imported from Rwanda by Nicole Schon of Tnik Tea
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April 25 2008 | eating out | 4 Comments »
I can feel the beta carotene coursing through my veins. I think my eyesight is improving. Is that a gnat on the window in the next room?
As I may have mentioned a few days ago, I’ve been working on an article for City Palate on the subject of carrots. Not the most inspiring ingredient, but it’s always interesting what I come up with when faced with a deadline! It’s a timely assignment, actually; as of late my house has been littered with wilting carrots, their tips chewed off in gleeful homage to Bugs Bunny. W can’t say his own name, but is able to clearly enunciate “eeeeh… what’s up Doc?” At least he has his priorities straight. (An interesting tidbit: Bugs Bunny’s blasé carrot-munching demeanor was inspired by a scene from the movie It Happened One Night, in which Clark Gable leans nonchalantly against a fence, eating carrots while talking to Claudette Colbert.)
And here’s something else you should know: although carrots seem relatively low-maintenance, it’s important to note that fruit (apples in particular) should not be stored alongside carrots; fruit expels ethylene gases that are easily absorbed by carrots, making them bitter.
If you’ve never tried couscous (not a grain, but teeny bits of pasta) before, come on, it’s the most amicable starchy dish out there. So much easier to make than rice. You pour boiling water over it in a bowl (1 1/4 cups water to 1 cup couscous), lid it with a plate and leave it for 10 minutes. You get extra points for buying the whole wheat stuff, which (unlike other pastas) tastes exactly like regular couscous.
Moroccan Braised Carrots, Squash & Chick Peas with Couscous
a drizzle of canola or olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger
2 tsp. sweet paprika
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/8-1/4 tsp. dried chili flakes
1 19 oz. (540 mL) can diced tomatoes, undrained
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 small butternut squash, peeled and cubed
3-4 carrots, peeled or scrubbed and sliced ½” thick
1 19 oz. (540 mL) can chick peas, rinsed and drained
1/3 cup golden raisins
plain yogurt, for serving with (optional)
1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro or mint, or toasted sliced almonds to sprinkle overtop (optional)
1 cup couscous (plain or whole wheat)
In a large saucepan, heat oil over medium-high heat. Sauté the onion for about 5 minutes, until soft. Add garlic and ginger and cook for another minute. Add the paprika, salt, pepper, cumin, turmeric and chile flakes and cook for another minute.
Add the tomatoes and then a full can of water (use the tomato can), the lemon juice, squash, carrots and chick peas. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes, until the vegetables are tender.
Stir in the raisins, taste and season with salt and pepper. At this point you can cool it completely and refrigerate for a day or two, to allow the flavors to meld; rewarm on the stovetop or in the microwave. To make the couscous, put it in a bowl and pour 1 1/4 cups boiling water overtop; cover with a plate and let sit for 10 minutes. Fluff with a fork.
Serve hot over couscous (or rice or quinoa), topped with a dollop of yogurt and a sprinkle of chopped cilantro or toasted almonds.
Serves 6-8.
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April 23 2008 | beans and one dish and vegetarian | 3 Comments »
We watched the Flames fizzle out tonight over pocket dogs.
For those of you who have never been to the Saddledome, pocket dogs are a delicacy often referenced by George S. on CBC TV’s The Hour. I have never had the pleasure of one; had it not been for George I wouldn’t have known what our neighbor was talking about when he suggested we make them tonight when a bunch of us converged at our place to watch game 7.
To make one, you first gut a section of baguette. At the ‘dome, they have a sort of probe that pulls out the innards and toasts it at the same time. Since this kitchen gizmo is not yet mainstream, I used my fingers. The plan was to torch the insides to toast it, but I just now realized I forgot that part.
You then stuff it with a dog, and, traditionally, any combination of ranch dressing, neon cheese goo, ketchup, mustard, relish and something else I’m not thinking of. We stuffed ours with grilled chicken-apple and mild Italian sausages from Spolumbos, caramelized onions, and of course ketchup and mustard.
My friend A, the forgotten vegetarian, ate the leftover carrot soup from last night, and thankfully brought a killer plate of hummus.
Although I know she ground some cumin seed for it, I don’t have her recipe, so you’ll have to try mine.
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April 22 2008 | sandwiches | 4 Comments »
I am an easy target for fast food. Which isn’t to say I buy it very often, but if I’m out, and hungry, my brain has come extremely adept at talking me into buying something I shouldn’t.
I had another meeting around dinnertime tonight, at a bar that I’m sure serves many varieties of battered and deep-fried things, served with creamy dips in waxed paper-lined wicker baskets. As I was getting ready to go, wondering if anyone else at the meeting would suggest getting something to eat, and pondering its close proximity to Crave Cupcakes, I thought I’d deflect temptation by bringing some soup with me in a travel mug.
I made carrot soup the other day in order to test a recipe for an upcoming issue of City Palate, so reheated a mugful in the microwave and poured it into my insulated Starbucks mug. It worked splendidly. I swirled in a spoonful of plain yogurt before screwing on the top; sort of like a spicy carrot latte. I love yogurt in curried soups; it adds creaminess without coconut milk or cream, and of course protein and calcium. Plus it adds a cool relief to the spicy soup.
I felt like such a grown-up, driving through snowy rush-hour traffic, sipping on my carrot soup and listening to the CBC news on the radio. So you really do turn into your parents.
Curried Ginger Carrot Soup
Canola or olive oil, for cooking
1 Tbsp. butter
1 onion or 2 shallots, chopped
1 tsp. grated fresh ginger
1 tsp. chopped fresh thyme
½ tsp. curry paste or powder (or to taste)
1 lb. carrots, peeled or scrubbed
1 Yukon gold potato, peeled and cubed
2 cups low-sodium chicken or vegetable stock
1 cup apple or orange juice
1 cup water
salt and pepper to taste
plain yogurt, for serving (optional)
chopped cilantro (optional)
In a medium pot, heat a drizzle of oil and the butter over medium heat. Add the onions and sauté them for 3-4 minutes, until they are translucent. Add the ginger, thyme and curry paste and cook for another minute or two.
While the onions cook, chop the carrots in to 1” chunks, and add them to the pot along with the potato, chicken stock, juice and water. Simmer for 30-45 minutes, until the carrots and potato are very tender.
Blend the soup right in the pot with a hand-held submersion blender (or transfer in batches to a blender) until smooth. Reheat if necessary and serve immediately, swirled if you like with a spoonful of yogurt and sprinkled with cilantro. Serves 4-6.
And some variations:
Thyme, Fennel and Orange Carrot Soup: replace the curry paste with ½ tsp. crushed fennel seeds.
Carrot-Caraway Soup: replace the thyme and curry paste with 1 tsp. crushed caraway seeds.
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April 21 2008 | soup and vegetarian | 4 Comments »
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Throw in the cold rice, some frozen peas if they aren’t already in with the rice, and a little blob of curry paste or powder. Break in an egg and scramble it up off to one side. Toss in some raw or cooked shrimp - I keep a bag in the freezer and run a handful under the tap to thaw. Pork, chicken or tofu also work well (I wish I had a bit of that tenderloin from last night), but the shrimp-curry combo is a good one.
I had a few bites of each of their dinners to tide me over until 8, when I’m meeting my friend J for cider and wings.
Last week I was one of many who had the opportunity to paint a bowl to auction off to benefit the Calgary Interfaith Food Bank. All the bowls are being auctioned off at the Food Bank website, and can be viewed in all their glory at various downtown locations.
