Archive for April, 2008
I was at a meeting until about 5:30 today, trying to pull together the final details of a fundraiser I’m emceeing next Thursday night at the Hotel Arts. (An 8 course dinner, plus wine and oysters, prepared by some of Calgary’s best chefs, for the low low price of $150.) We’re trying to raise money for Nicole Pageau, an Edmonton woman in her 60s who when she saw the plight of the widows and orphans of the Rwandan genocide on TV and thought how awful, I wish there was something I could do, just picked up and moved to Rwanda. With $5000 in her bank account she moved from Alberta to Rwanda and when she got there, just sort of wandered around asking people if they knew where she could find the widows, and when she did, she built a village.
(That was me shamelessly trying to push tickets on anyone interested in joining me for dinner next Thursday night?)
At last years’ fundraiser she brought a few of the Rwandan volunteers with her, and one of them said something to me I won’t ever forget. He was telling me how so many people ask him why he does what he does – devote his life to the widows and orphans – and his answer is, “I’m only human.” He doesn’t understand why we North Americans use that phrase to justify our weaknesses, or wrongdoings, or to excuse bad behavior. He thinks the meaning of the phrase should be the opposite; that it should be considered “only human” to be good and honest and charitable. So he’s sticking with his explanation, hoping the new meaning will catch on.
So I got home at 5:42 without a plan, and it was dinnertime like right now. When I poked through the fridge I discover a jar of peanut sauce I had forgotten I made last week, so I put on a pot of spaghettini – thinner-than-usual spaghetti that I like to make because it cooks faster (because it’s thinner) and allows a greater sauce-to-pasta ratio (because it’s thinner).
The great thing about peanut noodles is that you can add anything to them. I had carrots, which I peeled and then kept on peeling off strips of – all the better to twirl around my fork with the noodles – and a chunk of yellow pepper, and some cilantro leftover from last night’s Indian Hamburger Helper. Peas would have been good, or asparagus, or broccoli (a handful of that bagged broccoli-slaw works great), green beans, sprouts, cucumber, mango… and any sort of leftover meat; roast chicken, pork, or tofu, or even frozen shrimp, dumped straight from the freezer bag into the boiling water with the noodles to either quickly cook or thaw. (Same thing with the peas; just dump them in the water with the noodles for the last couple minutes of cooking time.) I pulled out a bit of frozen shredded roast chicken and did the same – tossed it in the water with the noodles to thaw as they finished cooking. Then drained it all, put some in a little bowl with tomato sauce for W, then ran the rest under cool water and tossed it with the peanut sauce and veggies I had torn and chopped. Dinner was ready by 5:58.
Peanut Sauce
Peanut sauce is a wonderful thing. Double the recipe (leftovers keep well) if you want extra to pour over cold noodles or dip satays, lettuce wraps, rice paper rolls, grilled chicken or shrimp. Use more or less broth to make the sauce as thick or thin as you like. If you like coconut flavor in your peanut sauce but not the saturated fat it contains, add a teaspoon of coconut extract.
2-4 Tbsp. chicken or veggie broth or coconut milk
4 Tbsp. peanut butter (preferrably the just peanuts kind, but any will work
3 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 Tbsp. brown sugar or honey
2 Tbsp. rice vinegar or lime juice
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp. grated fresh ginger
1 tsp. sesame oil (optional)
1/4 – 1/2 tsp. curry paste (optional)
Combine all the ingredients in a blender or jar and whiz or shake until smooth. Refrigerate until you’re ready to serve it. Makes about a cup.
Per tablespoon: 26 calories, 1 g total fat (0.2 g saturated fat, 0.5 g monounsaturated fat, 0.4 g polyunsaturated fat), 0.7 g protein, 3.9 g carbohydrate, 0 mg cholesterol, 0 g fiber. 35% calories from fat
On the downside, W was far too quiet as we were eating our noodles. He came downstairs with a funny rash all over him – a pinky red rash that was greasy and smudged easily.
I asked him if he drew all over himself with lipstick. He nodded, this over-exaggerated nod he does, and added, “and wall!”
April 15 2008 | one dish and pasta and vegetarian | 11 Comments »
Every time people I know move, I am the eager recipient of boxes of old cooking magazines they may have stored in their basements. These then get transported into my basement, or my parents’ basement, to be dusted off and moved again when we do. Mike loves this.
Likewise, I am always the one lugging magazines out of church and garage sales for a quarter apiece. Then they get stored in our basement/garage/bedroom until I have a chance to flip through them and pull out the most interesting pages. Their final stage of decomposition is when said pages are piled into my big yellow milk crate for sorting, and the rest gets recycled.
As I may have mentioned, my parents are moving, so a box of Saveur magazines have been returned to their rightful owner. I stumbled upon this recipe for ground lamb and peas in yogurt: aha! a use for that chub of ground lamb and unreasonably huge bag of peas taking up prime real estate in my freezer.
Keema matar calls for a technique known as tarka: which refers to sauteeing whole spices – in this case coriander, cumin and chiles—in clarified butter (also known as ghee) to boost flavour. Of course this does not require you to go purchase a jar of ghee; my plan was to simply use melted butter and perhaps scoop the suds off the top. But to be truthful, my enthusiasm for this dish waned with every step as I plodded through the instructions. I thought I had garam masala; I did not. I had to puree the ginger and garlic with turmeric and garam masala and water to make a watery paste. When it came time to do the tarka, I found I had exhausted my stash of cumin seed, and my coriander was missing (this could be due to one of W’s favorite pastimes: to throw my spices out the bathroom window) but I soldiered on. I threw in the towel when I realized I didn’t have chiles de árbol, only ancho and guillano, and who knows if they are similar? I plopped in a spoonful of curry paste and was done with it.
The method – saute onions, add ginger-garlic paste and tomato paste, cook to caramelize (? the onions should be caramelized before the moisture goes in) and then add the lamb and cook it, too, was odd. I’d have done it the other way – cook the onions and lamb, then add the ginger-garlic and spices and tomato paste. I’m not sure what the benefit is of the other method – it was difficult to tell when the lamb was cooked in that mixture, and impossible to pour off the excess fat – but I’m sure if someone with Indian cooking expertise did it it would turn out beautifully.
And actually, Mike thinks it did. I was ho-hum about it, but I found him picking out of the pan after dinner, and he said “this is one of the best things you’ve ever made! It’s like an Indian Hamburger Helper.”
April 14 2008 | lamb and one dish | 5 Comments »
Don’t hate me for making butter from scratch.
Wait, hear me out. I knew if the title read: Day 104: homemade crusty bread and freshly churned butter, the collective groan would be ‘oh come on!’, and everyone would abandon me for getting all Martha.
But seriously, I was desperate. I had mixed up a batch of no-knead bread yesterday and forgotten about it until this morning, and so baked it. (That’s the great thing about no-knead bread; people think it’s inconvenient that it has to sit for 12-24 hours, but it’s the most convenient that way: you have a 12 hour window in which to find time to pop it into the oven, rather than spend hours in its service; kneading, resting, punching and rising.)
I taught an hors d’ouevres class at The Cookbook Company this afternoon, and ate my share of spanikopita and bacon wrapped Medjool dates stuffed with Parmesano-Reggiano (I’m sure those will come up again this year – they have to) at about 5, and got home to find myself locked out. So I sat on the patio for an hour and a half, and by the time I got in didn’t have the gumption to feed myself properly, not that I really needed to after cooking all afternoon. (M & W ate at his mum’s.)
Right, the butter. I didn’t have any, and the bread was all warm and crusty. It was tragic. As I rummaged through the fridge I found about about a cup of whipping cream left over from the strawberry shortcakes, and remembered making butter in elementary school by turning the little pint of cream over and over all day long. The seed, I suppose, had been planted by a video of Daniel Patterson making butter on the current Epicurious home page. Was I really that desperate? Yes. (If you smelled this bread you’d understand.) Besides, what’s the difference between spending 10 minutes (2 minutes actual effort) making the stuff and spending 10 minutes running to the store to buy some?
I quickly referred to the Daniel Patterson recipe, lest I had forgotton some essential detail since 5th grade. I hadn’t. All you do is beat cream for a long time, and it turns into butter. I poured it into my stand mixer, took his advice to splatter-guard the top with plastic wrap, and turned it on high for about 10 minutes while I went about my stuff. (It does tend to spatter once the butter separates from the buttermilk, so the plastic wrap is a good idea.)
In about 10 minutes, I had lovely, soft, pale yellow butter. You can then salt it, although I don’t understand why this is kneaded in at the end, rather than as you beat the cream. I like mine sweet; it reminds me of eating out at a fancy restaurant, so I had some plain and then mashed in a little salt. So I suppose that was technically dinner. (I finished half a banana and a carrot, too.)
Next time, once the butter is done, I’m going to try beating in some Highwood Crossing cold-pressed canola oil, then spread it in a crock and chill it. My theory is that it will stay soft and spreadable in the fridge. I’ll keep you posted.
No-Knead Bread
Adapted from Jim Lahey at the Sullivan Street Bakery in Manhattan
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, plus more for dusting (I usually use half whole wheat and half all-purpose, sometimes with a shake of ground flaxseed added)
¼ teaspoon instant yeast (sometimes I use about 1/3 teaspoon regular active dry yeast)
1 teaspoon salt
In a large bowl stir together the flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 ½ cups plus 2 tablespoons water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap or a plate and let it rest on the countertop for 18-24 hours at room temperature.
The dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice, then roughly shape into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour. Fold it over the bread or cover with another cotton towel and let it sit for another hour or two.
While the bread is resting, preheat the oven to 450°. Put a 6-8 quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When the dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and flip the dough over into the pot; it may look like a mess, but that’s OK. Cover and bake for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake another 10-15 minutes, until it’s nice and golden. Eat up!
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April 13 2008 | bread | 16 Comments »
Mike and his gut are not getting along tonight, so when W and I walked back to the corner store to return The Darjeeling Limited (worth a rent) we stopped in at Valta Bison (their Ramsay locati0n) and picked up a log of bison pepperoni. W, carnivore that he is, ate a good third of it on the way home, peeling back the paper and chewing on it as if it were an ice cream bar, and then we sliced it thinly onto pizzas built on whole wheat pitas with garlicky tomato sauce and part-skim mozzarella. Baked at 400F for about 10 minutes. With a bit of salad and the last of the lentil-sweet potato soup from last night.
April 12 2008 | bison | 1 Comment »
There’s nothing wrong with reheated leftover mashed sweet potatoes. Until you’ve been eating them for 3 days and hardly make a dent in them. I decided they needed to be transformed into something else.
Fortunately, one of the jars on my shelf contains tiny orange lentils, which I hardly ever use but reminded me of the soup I made way back on day 2. So I chopped and sautéed the usual onion-garlic-ginger trio in a little canola oil until it smelled nice, then threw in a small spoonful of curry paste, two handfuls of lentils, a 1L tetra pack of chicken stock and a little extra water, and let it simmer. (The great thing about lentils, besides the fact that they are so good for you, is that you don’t need to pre-soak them like you do other dried legumes.) When they were soft, I scraped the last of the mashed sweet potatoes into the pot, warmed it through and blended it all, right in the pot on the stove, with my hand-held immersion blender. (I’m not the gadgety type, but this is one of the kitchen tools I could not happily live without. I don’t have the patience to transfer hot soup in batches to my blender in order to puree it.)
I wasn’t going to add any coconut milk. It was good on its own. But it needed thinning, and I couldn’t stop imagining how well it would take to some creamy coconut milk. I settled on half a can of light coconut milk, with a drop of coconut extract to boost flavor without adding any more saturated fat.
The soup was tasty, but not quite enough for dinner. Besides, when I cleaned out my freezer yesterday I pulled out a pork tenderloin to thaw, committing myself to do something with it. I haven’t made chipotle pork peanut chili recently, and had also enearthed a few chipotles in a baggie in the freezer (you never use an entire can at once).
I would probably not have called this chili had I come up with it completely on my own. One might argue that this isn’t really chili because it doesn’t contain beans, and I suppose they’d be right. But it was inspired by the Georgia chili in Jane & Michael Stern’s classic cookbook Chili Nation, which doesn’t have beans either, and it still made the cut. Who am I to argue with Jane and Michael?
You start by browning a pork tenderloin, finish it in the oven (browning adds flavor and a crunchy, caramelized exterior), then slice it and stir it into a peanutty tomato sauce that is meanwhile simmering on the stove. (For some reason the spicy peanuttyness of it reminds me of the swimming rama we used to order at Thai Away Home in Vancouver.) Serve it with a spoonful of rice, and dinner’s done in under half an hour.
Chipotle Peanut Pork Chili
1 pork tenderloin
canola or olive oil, for cooking
1 small onion
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 14 oz. (398 ml) can diced tomatoes, or 2 fresh ripe tomatoes, diced
2 cups tomato sauce
1/2 cup all natural peanut butter, or 3/4 cup plain or salted peanuts
1-2 chipotles en abodo, finely chopped
1 tsp. cumin
salt & pepper to taste
steamed rice, to serve with
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Brown the pork tenderloin well in a drizzle of olive or canola oil in a skillet set over medium-high heat. Pop the skillet in the oven and roast for 15-20 minutes, or until just cooked through.
Meanwhile, cook the onion and garlic in another drizzle of oil in a medium pot set over medium heat for about 5 minutes, or until translucent. If you are using fresh tomatoes, add them and cook for another few minutes, until softened.
Add the tomatoes, tomato sauce, peanut butter, chipotles, cumin, and some salt and pepper. If you have whole peanuts or want the chipotles blended completely into the sauce, pulse them along with the tomato sauce in a food processor until smooth, then add to the pot. Simmer for 10-15 minutes.
Slice the pork tenderloin about 1/4″ thick and add to the pot; serve over rice. Serves 4.
As I was about to make a little pot of basmati rice I remembered the half can of coconut milk leftover from the soup. Perfect! A cup of rice to a cup of coconut milk and a cup of water, and we had coconut rice that, it turns out, was delicious piled into a bowl with the soup ladled overtop. I ended up eating that for dinner, and then a few slices of pork, retrieved straight from the pot with a fork.
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April 11 2008 | pork | 6 Comments »
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