We’re halfway to Tofino, spending the night at Sue’s. Remember Sue? They conveniently live halfway between Calgary and Vancouver, where they run a private bed & breakfast just for us. They are on standby at all times should we decide to pop by the top of the mountain on the way to Vancouver.
It hasn’t been a bad drive so far, with the exception of Lou’s gas.
I’m already eating well, but can’t prove it until I dig the camera cord out of the bottom of the suitcase. Tomorrow.
Meanwhile, check this out. If these guys can grow gardens out of hanging bottles in their apartment windows in NYC, I should be able to pull something edible from my plot alongside the fence in our back yard.
OK, this is a good one. I have little mental capacity left, and am holding on to my reserves in order to get necessary work done before bed, never mind packing for Tofino (we leave tomorrow – I hope), but I can offer up this. (I’ve been up before 5:30 for almost two weeks, and not compensating at bedtime – I feel like I’m 90, with far fewer IQ points. How do people function on no sleep?)
The good news – Ataulfo mangoes are here, which means there’s a case of them ripening on my kitchen counter, and I’m cutting one for W approximately every five minutes. (Ataulfos are the slightly smaller, slimmer, yellow-green mangoes you might start seeing in the produce section – they’re creamier, smoother and lack the sinewy fibers you may associate with the big green-red Haden or Tommy Atkins varieties that are hardier and thus available year-round.) There are a ton of things I’d love to do with them, but I suspect most are destined for a spoon, or W’s Empire Strikes Back bowl. But one did make it into a batch of quinoa salad:
Curried Quinoa Salad with Black Beans and Mango
1 cup quinoa
1-2 ripe mangoes, peeled and chopped
1/2 red or yellow pepper, chopped
1/4 English cucumber, chopped
2-3 green onions or a chunk of purple onion, chopped
2 cups (packed) baby spinach, torn or sliced (optional)
half a 19 oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained
handful of torn cilantro (optional)
Dressing:
1/4 cup canola oil
2-4 Tbsp. white wine or white balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp. mango chutney, chopped if chunky (optional)
1 tsp. honey
1 tsp. curry powder or mild paste
1/4 tsp. cumin
Rinse quinoa well under cool water in a fine sieve, then cook in a pot of boiling salted water over medium heat until tender but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes. (Just like you’d cook pasta.) Drain well, return to the pot, put the lid back on and let it steam – this will produce fluffy quinoa – until cooled.
Combine the oil, vinegar, chutney, honey, curry and cumin in a jar or small bowl and shake or whisk to blend. If you like, season the dressing with salt and pepper.
Put the quinoa, mango, vegetables and beans in a large bowl, drizzle with dressing and toss until well coated. Serves 4-6.
Yesterday morning – Saturday, that was – I woke up at 5:20 am, went downstairs and made Chana Masala. This was not my plan, but a serendipitous silver lining to my week of 4:30 am wake-ups – on Saturday I bolted awake at 5:20, instantly panicked that I had slept in and they were about to go to World Report without me standing by with my scrawled notes on the status of Deerfoot Trail. Because I had my alarm set for 6 am Saturday in order to be in Red Deer for 8 to teach two back to back brunch classes, I got up instead of trying to milk that last half hour of sleep. While packing the ingredients I needed for my classes, I noticed the Roma tomatoes I had bought a week or so ago with the intention of making Chana Masala, now a nice deep red and about to go over to the dark side. Curries like C.M. always do taste better after spending some time in the fridge, so I thought I’d be on the ball and get dinner ready to reheat upon my return at around dinnertime.
I hadn’t anticipated the agony that would come when newly-awakened eyes, still devoid of contact lenses, were subjected to strong chopped onions. I’ve always worn contacts, and the few times I’ve had occasion to chop onions in my glasses were a nasty shock. So this is what everyone makes such a big deal about! All this time I thought they were all just being wimps. Turns out those teeny (but expensive) thin plastic discs that help me see better also act as an effective defense against onion vapours.
Then I chopped a jalapeño pepper, before going upstairs and putting in my contacts. What a rookie move. All just a little too much drama before 6 in the morning.
In the afternoon class I met some lovely followers of this blog – hey guys! so nice to meet you in person! – which was completely fantastic. One of them, from Texas, told me about a Cuban dish she makes with browned butter, in which eggs are fried in said butter and set atop rice, with the extra browned butter drizzled overtop. The eggs are then cut roughly up so that their yolks have a chance to ooze into the rice. I fantasized about this for my entire drive home. No really.
Which was fortunate, because the Chana Masala I had so ambitiously made was far too hot to eat – Mike sweated it out for several bites, but I gave up after one or two and made myself another egg. Having started with cold rice, I quickly browned some butter (this is just a fancy way of saying I put a blob of butter into a hot skillet without oil, so that it turned brown straight after it melted) and reheated the rice by way of sautéing it in the butter. I tipped the rice out and added a tad more butter (it was a long day) before cracking in a couple of eggs, and they made everyone happy.
Tonight I made a quick pizza out of a flatbread I picked up at a Greek grocery store – two enormous oval flatbreads for $3.50.
Tomato paste + cheese + heat = pizza. W is in his cheese-pizza-only phase, which meant we couldn’t sully it with pepperoni or mushrooms or roasted veg or anything of the sort. The best thing about the big long oval slabs of dough? Cutting them – I love making angled slices, so you wind up with big triangle slabs, as if you had a big ol’ round pizza to begin with.
Think I may be getting punchy – best go arrange my mangoes. Don’t watch tomorrow morning –
I have bad hair.
Remember when you were a kid, and you begged your mom to buy you a coconut so that you could put straws and teeny umbrellas into it and drink cocktails like Thurston Howell III? And then maybe go build a car out of bamboo, or just sticks from your backyard? Because it’s totally possible, right?
W did the same a few days ago – begged for a coconut he saw in the produce section – minus the Gilligan’s Island reference. (An odd request – I don’t recall ever seeing Spiderman, Batman or Yoda drinking from a coconut.) When we got home Mike drilled holes through its eyes and poked in straws for the boys to drink.
They thought it was disgusting, and forgot it on the countertop. $3.50 for a couple sips of organic (do they use pesticides when growing coconuts, anyway?) coconut juice just seemed like too huge a waste for someone who typically bends over backwards to make use of half a bunch of wilting cilantro in the fridge.
We chipped away at its innards and snacked a little on the coconut meat, but hardly made a dent in the mound of it. I would have loved to have baked a pie, but I need a fresh coconut cream pie in my vicinity like I need a drill in the eye. I made muffins instead – banana-coconut, as banana is a safe sell around here.
I grated the coconut using my Grandma’s old mouli grater. It was more than a little dull. I muscled my way through it. You could of course begin with the shredded stuff.
They were nice and moist and friendly. The boys naturally thought they were weird and wouldn’t eat them. More for me.
Coconut Banana Muffins
If you want to turn up the tropical flavour factor, stir in some chopped dried apricots, dates and/or candied ginger.
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4-1 cup shredded or flaked coconut
2 mashed very ripe bananas
1/2 cup sugar – white or brown
1/3 cup melted butter or canola oil
1/3 cup buttermilk or plain yogurt
1 large egg
1 tsp. vanilla
Preheat oven to 375°F and line muffin cups with paper liners.
In a large bowl, stir together the flours, baking powder and salt. Toss in about 1/2 cup of coconut. In another bowl whisk/mash together the bananas, sugar, buttermilk, egg and vanilla; add to the dry ingredients and stir just until blended. Don’t overmix.
Divide batter among lined muffin cups and sprinkle with remaining coconut. Bake for about 25 minutes, until puffed and golden, about 25 minutes. Makes about 10 muffins.
I have something cool for Free Stuff Friday – a genuine Whirley-Pop popcorn popper! I found them at Lee Valley a few weeks ago, and they’re just too much fun. For those who like popping their corn the old-fashioned way, in oil, Phineas Whirley’s hand-crank machine has a stainless steel stirring system that coats and cooks kernels evenly while preventing them from sticking to the bottom of the pan. The hinged lids allow steam and moisture to escape, ensuring a crisp, light, flavourful pop.
I liked it so much I bought another, just for one of you.
To enter – leave a comment and I’ll draw a name next Tuesday, before we leave for Tofino (yes, you’re coming). It’s Good Friday next week (how did that happen?) – is there something you love to make or eat on Easter weekend? And if nothing’s showing up on your Easter radar, what was for dinner last night? Or tonight? or whenever you happen to be reading this?
Wait, I haven’t told you I made baklava yet, have I? No? I did! I made baklava. And it wasn’t scary at all. Actually it was, sort of: the scary part was the sheer quantity of baklava I ate over the course of the morning. The honey and nuts powered me through the 5:30-9am on-air shift and then carried me through work until early afternoon. The baklava-coffee combo is a little like speed. I had to put what was left in the trunk of the car – out of reach – on my way home.
Good news: in terms of working with phyllo, this is as easy as it gets – no folding, no manipulating. You thaw the stuff, unroll it, and slide a couple sheets at a time over onto a rimmed baking sheet. Brush with butter now and then (no need to slather it) and sprinkle a few times with chopped walnuts (or pistachios, or almonds, or cashews), sugar, cinnamon and cardamom (which is totally optional – if you don’t use any you won’t wreck it), then bake. If it makes you feel any better, Mike brought the phyllo home at around 9pm, and I needed to make a batch quick in order to get to bed at an appropriate time for getting up at 4:30 and being coherent on air in the morning. So we tried to thaw it quickly by holding it, hugging it, sitting it on our laps and stroking it (yes, in its wrapper) like a lapdog. I still prematurely unrolled it and it cracked completely – shattered, really – through every layer of its middle. No matter – it still worked perfectly and you couldn’t even tell. With all its layers, phyllo is pretty forgiving. Kind of like Mother Teresa.
Now, I realize this appears to be seriously lacking in the nuts department. It wasn’t, really. It didn’t have the inch-thick of nearly ground nut paste in the middle – the fresh walnuts were chunkier and sparser but in quantities not at all inadequate. This photo is of the piece I managed to hang on to and smuggle out the door after the pan sat for the entire morning beside the studio at CBC – 48 pieces made a great many people very happy (and very sticky) – Donna said it was better than the baklava she had in downtown Athens, but I suspect she was just being nice. Although it was pretty fab, if I do say so.
And – seriously? EASY. And far more delicious than any piece of manufactured baklava that’s been sitting on a shelf for weeks. It makes an enormous batch that keeps and travels well, so you can feed fifty-ish without much effort. Even the syrup is simple – you bring the mixture to a boil, then pour it over the baklava as soon as it comes out of the oven. Snap.
Baklava
1 package phyllo sheets, thawed
4 cups walnuts or pistachios, finely chopped
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cardamom (optional)
1/2 cup butter, melted
Syrup:
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
1/2 cup honey
a thick strip of lemon peel (cut a slice off with a vegetable peeler, getting mostly the outer yellow part)
Preheat the oven to 375°F. In a small bowl, stir together the nuts, sugar and spices.
Make sure your phyllo is completely thawed, and keep it covered with a tea towel or piece of plastic wrap to keep them from drying out. Place 2 sheets of phyllo on the bottom of a rimmed baking pan or jelly roll pan (about 12″x16″) and brush lightly with butter. Add three more stacks of two sheets (it’s easier to pull them off the pile two at a time), brushing with butter between each. Once you have 8 pieces of phyllo, spread a third of the nut mixture overtop.
Place 4 more sheets of phyllo on top of the nuts, brushing melted butter between each sheet or every two sheets. Repeat with another third of the nut mixture, another 4 sheets, and the rest of the nuts. Layer the remaining sheets of phyllo on top of the nuts; brush the top sheet with butter as well. Tuck in any sticking-out edges.
Cut the pastry lengthwise into four strips, then crosswise into six, making 24 pieces (they don’t have to be square), making sure not to slice through the bottom layer of phyllo. (This allows the syrup to soak in better.) Make diagonal cuts through each square, making them rectangles (you’ll end up with 48).
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden. While the baklava bakes, combine the sugar, water, honey and lemon peel in a pan set over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and take out the lemon peel.
When the baklava comes out of the oven, immediately pour the hot syrup evenly overtop. Let the baklava stand at room temperature until completely cool. Slice through each piece completely before serving. Makes 48 pieces.
