Today would have been my Grandad’s birthday. If he were still around, he’d be 105.
A few things you should know about my Grandad:
He’s the only one I had.
His name was Fred. Not Frederick – just Fred.
He went to University at 90 (or thereabouts) to learn how to use a computer. If memory serves, he finished with 90%. And worried what he’d do if he needed that other 10%.
He started a construction company, and built the Ford factory in Detroit, and Hiram Walker in Windsor. (Now they build wind turbines. He’d think that was pretty cool.)
Whenever he said goodbye, he said “see you on the salmon can!” – to this day no one knows what that meant, but it seemed like a perfectly normal salutation to me as a kid.
He always dressed for dinner, and sat at the head of the long dining room table that looked out on the Detroit river. Once my grandmother had served everyone, none of us could make a sound (in a playful, not a strict way) until he took a bite and approved. Of course he always approved.
These are his hands:
His favourite dessert was a scoop of vanilla ice cream with caramel or butterscotch sauce.
One day when I was a teenager my dad tried to sneak him some low-fat yogurt / frozen soy product. It didn’t go well.
My grandma bought those little tins of caramel sauce, and one can hardly blame her, as she was in her eighties and had spent most of her life making fantastic meals – and pastry from scratch – for my Grandad, my mom and her three brothers, and for subsequent families, aunts, uncles and cousins. She was known for her marmalade cookies, and the plum puddings she’d make at Christmas. But that’s another story. Point is, she’d have made great caramel, too.
Caramel can be an intimidating thing to make. But if it’s something you’d like to master, I suggest giving it a go, playing with sugar over heat, with water or without, just to get a feel for it. The best way to learn anything is by doing it, and sugar is about as cheap a practicing medium as they get.
A few things you should know about caramel:
To make it, all you need to do is heat sugar until it turns golden – into caramel.
Sometimes water or syrup or both are added, generally to help get things started and slow things down – it keeps the sugar from going from zero straight to deep golden.
Despite what many recipes instruct you don’t need to hover over your pot, washing the sides down with a pastry brush dipped in water. In fact, doing this adds more water to the caramel, increasing the cooking time because all that water will have to cook off. (This is done to keep the caramel from crystallizing, but it doesn’t, really – it washes down the crystals that have actually formed.)
If you add a few drops of lemon juice to the sugar-water-syrup mixture at the beginning, it will keep crystals from forming in the first place. Also? You can stir to dissolve the sugar, but once it starts boiling, keep utensils out of it. You need only occasionally lift the pot and swirl it around.
Once it turns golden, it’s caramel – the hotter and more deeply coloured it gets, the firmer it will be when it cools. Once it begins to turn, it moves fast – it will seem to take forever to start caramelizing, and then will darken at close to the speed of sound.
Caramel sauce is made by then whisking a liquid, like cream, into the caramelized sugar as soon as it reaches this point, which causes it to seize up (to set, really), and spatter and steam ferociously. But then it calms down and the hardened bits melt, and it turns into a sauce, rather than firming up into something chewy or hard. And so it’s an easy thing to make, since you don’t have to worry about temperatures or rely on thermometers and such. You just swirl your pan of sugar until it turns a deep golden, then whisk in cream. Butter too, if you like, but that’s it. And what you’ll wind up with is a sublime sauce – as thick or thin as you like, depending on how much liquid you add – and it will be better than any you’ll find on a grocery store shelf, yet cost under a dollar to make, depending solely on the amount of cream you use. You could get fancy and add chocolate or vanilla or espresso or orange or bourbon, but don’t underestimate the flavour potential of pure caramelized sugar and cream.
The problem, I must warn you, is that you’ll then have access to said caramel. And I like to think of it less as caramel sauce and more as spoon caramel, because mostly what I do is pause at the fridge door, pull out a spoon, dip it in, lick it off, and repeat until Mike wonders aloud what happened to all the spoons.
If my Grandad was here, I’d make him caramel for his sundaes.
Caramel Sauce
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water (or thereabouts)
1/4 tsp. lemon juice (or a few drops)
1/2 cup heavy (whipping) cream
1-2 Tbsp. butter (optional)
pinch salt (optional)
In a heavy saucepan, heat the sugar, water and lemon juice over medium-high heat. If you like, stir until the sugar dissolves. Otherwise, just swirl the pan occasionally.
Keep cooking it, swirling it occasionally, until it starts to turn golden. Don’t leave it after this point – swirl the pan more often until it turns deep golden. Have the cream and butter ready and pull the pot off the heat and add them (or just cream) immediately as soon as it turns deep golden – it will spatter and steam. Stir until smooth – if there are any set chunks of caramel in the pot, they will melt back in. If you like, stir in a pinch of salt.
Cool completely and pour into a jar to keep in the fridge.
January 30 2012 | dessert | 34 Comments »
I know I’ve shared plenty of granola here before, but I have a new favourite. This clumpy, crunchy granola is bound together with peanut butter and pure maple syrup. I KNOW!! The peanut butter adds a light crunchiness I’ve never achieved with other granola formulas – like Harvest Crunch, without the over-the-top sweetness. Next time I’ll venture into peanut butter and honey territory.
I’ve had a big baking sheet of this on my kitchen counter all afternoon, and when I had to leave the house I got all panicky for a minute that I had to leave my new bff, and wound up filling a ziplock bag of it to tuck in my pocket and sneak handfuls of. You could of course spice it up with cinnamon or a pinch of ground ginger, but I kind of like it straight-up. Of course feel free to take liberties with nuts, seeds and dried fruit, too.
Extra Clumpy Peanut Butter & Maple Granola
4-5 c. old-fashioned (large flake) oats
2 c. sliced or slivered almonds
1 c. shredded coconut
1/4 t. fine sea salt
1/2 c. creamy peanut butter
1/3 c. brown sugar
1/3 c. maple syrup (the real stuff!) or liquid honey
1 c. dried fruit, such as raisins, cranberries, cherries, chopped dried figs, dates or apricots
Preheat the oven to 325F. In a large bowl, mix together the oats, almonds, coconut and salt.
In a small saucepan, combine the peanut butter, brown sugar and maple syrup over medium heat and stir until everything is melted and smooth.
Pour over the oat mixture and toss until well combined. Spread the mixture out onto a large rimmed sheet pan and bake for 30-40 minutes, stirring once or twice, until pale golden and crunchy/clumpy. Let cool and stir in the dried fruit. Store in an airtight container or in individual zip-lock baggies. Makes about 6 cups.
January 27 2012 | breakfast and grains | 21 Comments »
I’ve been running a pretty tight ship, refrigerator-wise. I’m digging right through to the back, taking inventory. On one such spelunking mission I came up with a bag containing 6 overripe pears. Pale yellow and dented, they were far too delicate to travel any distance in a lunch bag. There were too many to grate into muffins or pancakes. My freezer, which unloads the same container of pesto and a few disks of pastry dough every time I open the door, had no room. So while W sat at the table and did his home reading out loud, I chopped them into a pot with some water, sugar and ginger and made a compote. Or jam. Or something that looks great in a jar and is delicious on toast.
It’s not as sweet as most jam, which is why I felt the need to call it a compote. I dumped in a handful of cranberries from the freezer as an afterthought, which made it irresistibly sweet-tart and blushed. It might have been raspberries, or rhubarb. Whatever’s falling out of your freezer.
I admit I winged this. If you cook fruit and sugar it’s inevitable that at some point you’ll wind up with something jam-like. But this is roughly how it was done. (And no, you don’t need to peel your pears. Too much work, and those ripe skins are so thin you don’t even notice them. Plus they have fibre, which is a good thing.) By the way, those are Weck jars, from Crate & Barrel Southcentre!
Cranberry-Pear Ginger Preserves
5-6 ripe pears, cored and roughly chopped
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup water or apple juice
1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger
1-2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries
Put everything into a pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, occasionally mashing with a large spoon or potato masher, until the mixture thickens, looks more uniform and jam-like. (Remember it will thicken as it cools.) Transfer to clean jars and refrigerate.
Makes 3-4 cups.
January 25 2012 | breakfast and preserves | 7 Comments »
Wait – don’t go. Hear me out.
Last week I made a resolution to use the food I have in my kitchen, rather than go shop for more, deciding what’s for dinner depending on my mood or the (near-constant) desire to try something new. I go for milk and eggs and come home with bags full of whatever was inspiring or on sale at the time, and then can hardly cram it into my cupboards and freezer. I think this is pretty typical, considering the fact that walk-in pantries and chest freezers are standard issue in most houses.
I hear a lot of people refer fondly to their fridges as that place produce goes to die. And it’s true – in North America (Canada very much included) it’s estimated that we throw out 40-50% of the food we buy. Half! Can you imagine the spending on groceries that takes place across the country on a daily basis? And that half of those purchases are tossed out? (Or composted, but still.) Besides the actual food waste, consider how much time and energy went into growing or producing all that food, transporting it, stocking shelves, even driving to the store to buy it. And it winds up tossed. A study last year estimated the annual cost to be $27.7 billion. Billion! That pipeline project everyone is talking about costs a measly $7 billion in comparison.
Alright, I’ll get to the point. Didn’t mean to get all preachy.
So what do you do when someone brings over a hunk of caraway Gouda so big it’ll keep you in cheese and crackers for a month? And you can’t do grilled cheese because of your six year old’s reaction to little bits in his cheese? You turn to the all-knowing intra-net and search for something to make with caraway and cheese in it. You go to Epicurious and punch in “Gouda” and “caraway”. If you’re lucky, something will pop up that makes use of that enormous bag of coleslaw you bought with the best intentions.
To make this quiche you cook a few slices of chopped bacon with an onion, and when the bacon is crisp and its fat rendered, you throw in a few handfuls of cabbage and cook it down. (A great use of bagged coleslaw – especially the last of the bag, which tends to get wilty.) When I did this, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world – like a fantastic warm bacon slaw. But as it cooked down it became more dense, as cooked vegetables do, and it made a great filling. Especially with the odd thin shard of carrot and purple cabbage – colour is always a good thing.
So yes, a cabbage and caraway quiche is an entirely unlikely thing to ever come out of my oven – but at the same time, MacGyvering my way through dinner pushed me out of my comfort zone, and the results were totally delicious. So good, in fact, that I made one of these a week ago, and then another this morning for my sister’s birthday brunch. The reaction around the table? “What’s in this? It’s delicious!” It wasn’t as easily identifiable as your typical ham & cheese or spinach quiche.
But you know how everything you make just sort of tastes like everything else you make? That you have your spice roster and don’t often edge out beyond it? Caraway is not typically a part of my culinary palette. It’s a fine spice, I have nothing against it, I just don’t really use it. I don’t think I could even locate any among the vast number of small jars and baggies that make up my spread-out spice non-rack. But with the creamy cheese and smoky bacon, it totally worked.
I’m not a quiche maker. But frittata tends to be my fall-back leftovers-user, and they aren’t much different. I contemplated skipping the crust, but then recalled how much I love a good wedge of quiche in a restaurant, and I went for it. I do love a good pie crust, and that you can get away with a slightly softer, more velvety filling when you’re not relying on it to hold its own.
Gouda, Coleslaw & Caraway Quiche
I swapped caraway Gouda for the gruyere and caraway seed in the recipe – you could of course do either. Adapted from Bon Appétit, December 1990.
4 bacon slices, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
2-3 cups coleslaw or shredded green cabbage
3 large eggs
1 cup half & half or milk
1 cup grated Gouda or Gruyère cheese (or more, if you like – just wing it)
1/2 tsp. caraway seeds (optional)
salt & pepper
1 9″ deep-dish pie crust
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line your pastry crust with foil and pie weights (if you have them) and bake for 15-20 minutes, until pale golden. Remove the foil and weights and turn the oven up to 375°F.
Meanwhile, cook the bacon in a large heavy skillet over medium heat, add onion and cook until the bacon is crisp and the onion is tender. Add the coleslaw and cook until it wilts and all excess moisture evaporates, 10-15 minutes
In a medium bowl whisk together the eggs, half & half, cheese, caraway seed (if you’re using it) salt and pepper. Spread the cabbage mixture into the crust and pour the egg mixture overtop. Bake until filling puffs and starts to brown, about 40 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Serves 8-10.
January 22 2012 | eggs and one dish | 17 Comments »
I love butter chicken. In fact, I don’t know of many people who don’t. It’s the sort of lunch or dinner or midnight snack that’s happiness-inducing. There are few foods I really crave anymore, but butter chicken is one of them. Sometimes give in and go fulfill my desires an east Indian lunch buffet where I almost always shame myself on the stuff, with fresh naan.
Contrary to its name, butter chicken doesn’t generally contain actual butter. Heavy cream, yes. It’s rich and wonderful and velvety, but not typically buttery. I made a batch recently, in response to a Facebook request to lighten a recipe that had – gasp – 1 cup of butter and 3 cups of whipping cream! This time, rather than overthink things or turn to my (still totally disorganized) bookshelf or laptop in search of what (some may claim as) the ultimate recipe, I just did it.
Onions and chicken and tomatoes and spices – I might have been making cacciatore if it weren’t for the curry paste and splash of cream at the end. It was easy. And fast. And used up ingredients I usually have in the freezer and pantry. And made just enough to feed everyone, which is a far better idea than the bottomless steam insert of the buffet.
And when I said we were having butter chicken for dinner, there was a lot of grinning and maybe even some jumping up and down. I may do this again sometime.
And next time, make a batch of fresh naan to go with. Think of the glee!
Butter Chicken
canola or olive oil, for cooking
1 onion, halved and thinly sliced
6-8 skinless chicken thighs (with or without bone)
4-5 garlic cloves, crushed
1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger
1 28 oz. (796 mL) can diced tomatoes, undrained
2 Tbsp. tomato paste
1-2 Tbsp. chili powder
2 tsp. curry paste or powder
1-2 tsp. garam masala (optional)
pinch cinnamon
1/2-1 cup half & half or whipping cream
salt and pepper
steamed rice, for serving
In a large, heavy skillet, heat a drizzle of oil over medium-high heat. Add the onions and saute for 5 minutes, until soft. Add the chicken thighs, pushing the onions out of the way, and brown them a bit on all sides – don’t worry about cooking them through. Add the garlic and ginger and cook for another minute or two.
Add the can of tomatoes, the tomato paste, chili powder, curry paste, garam masala and cinnamon and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook for 20 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through. Remove the lid and cook until the mixture thickens and looks more saucy and uniform.
Stir in the cream, season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve hot over rice. Serves 4-6.
January 19 2012 | chicken & turkey | 18 Comments »
