Luscious Domestic

Dark Days Challenge: Leek with Montaña Cheese Panade

2012-01-06T09:26:00.000-08:00

There is something very comforting about panade on a dank, rainy west coast winter evening. Paired with a blanket, some sherry or wine, and a good movie, one's bones finally have some hope to warm up. After the excesses of the holiday season, panade is a great way to use up old bread and have a dinner that won't leave you feeling like a small anvil has taken up residence in your belly. Panade is a French term that means 'bread mash'. This particular panade recipe is a great way to showcase local Vancouver Island leeks, garlic, SaltSpring Montaña (hard sheep's cheese), and lovely locally made bread for the Dark Days Challenge.

This panade is easy to make and works as a main course for four, or a side dish for eight people.

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds thinly sliced yellow onions
Up to 1/2 cup mild-tasting olive oil
6 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
Salt
1 pound leeks (upper third of green leaves removed), cleaned and cut into 1-inch-wide ribbons
10 ounces day-old chewy rice bread cut into rough 1-inch cubes
Up to 4 cups chicken stock
6 ounces Montaña (a hard sheep cheese or Gruyere will do), coarsely grated

1. Place the onions in a deep 4-quart saucepan and drizzle and toss with oil to coat, about 1/4 cup. Set over medium-high heat and cook until the bottom layer of onions is slightly golden around the edges, about 3 minutes. Stir and repeat.

2. Once the second layer of onions has colored, reduce the heat to low and stir in the garlic and a few pinches of salt. Stew, stirring occasionally, until the onions are a pale amber color and tender but not mushy, another 20 minutes or so. If at any point the onions look as if they may dry out, cover them to trap some of the moisture in the pan. Taste for salt. You should get about 2 1/4 cups cooked onions.

3. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees (or as low as 250 degrees, if it suits your schedule to stretch the cooking time from about 1 hour 45 minutes to 2 hours 45 minutes; the slower the bake, the more unctuous and mellow the results).

4. Place a few handfuls of leeks in a 3-quart saute pan or a 10-to 12-inch skillet with a drizzle of oil, a sprinkling of water (see David Leibovitz's instructions for washing leeks properly), and a few pinches of salt. Let the water start steaming, and stir the leeks about. They should be translucent. Test for salt and correct as necessary. Set aside.

5. Toss and massage the cubed bread with a few tablespoons of olive oil, a generous 1/4 cup of the stock and a few pinches of salt, to taste.

6. Choose a flameproof, 3-quart souffle dish or enameled cast-iron Dutch oven. Assemble the panade in layers, starting with a generous smear of onions, followed by a loose mosaic of bread cubes, a second layer of onions, a shimmering layer of leeks, and a handful of the cheese. Repeat, starting with bread, the onions and so on, until the dish is brimming. Aim for 2 to 3 layers of each component, then make sure the top layer displays a little of everything. Irregularity in the layers makes the final product more interesting and lovely. Drizzle with any remaining olive oil.

7. Bring the remaining 3 3/4 cups stock to a simmer and taste for salt. Add stock slowly, in doses, around the edge of the dish. For a very juicy, soft panade, best served on its own, like a soup or risotto, add stock nearly to the rim; for a firm but succulent panade, nice as a side dish, fill to about 1 inch below the rim. Wait a minute for stock to be absorbed, then add more to return to the desired depth. The panade may rise a little as the bread swells.

8. Set panade over low heat and bring to a simmer; look for bubbles around the edges (heating it here saves at least 30 minutes of oven time; it also means every panade you bake starts at the same temperature, so you can better predict total cooking times). Cover the top of the panade with parchment paper, then very loosely wrap the top and sides with foil. Place a separate sheet of foil under the panade or on the rack below it, to catch drips.

9. Bake until the panade is piping hot and bubbly. It will rise a little, lifting the foil with it. The top should be pale golden in the center and slightly darker on the edges. This usually takes about 1 1/2 hours, but varies according to shape and material of baking dish and oven. (You can hold the panade for another hour or so; just reduce the temperature to 275 degrees until 20 minutes before serving.)

10. Uncover panade, raise temperature to 375 degrees, and leave until golden brown on top, 10 to 20 minutes. (If you aren't quite ready when your panade is, re-tent the surface with parchment and foil and reduce the heat to 275 degrees. You can hold it another half hour this way without it overbrowning or drying out.) Slide a knife down the side of the dish and check the consistency of the panade. Beneath the crust, it should be very satiny and it should ooze liquid as you press against it with the blade of the knife. If it seems dry, add a few tablespoons simmering chicken stock and bake for 10 minutes longer.

Dark Days Challenge (week 2): Cabbage rolls and the Failed Sauerkraut

2011-12-14T11:58:00.000-08:00

It's getting cold in Victoria. Cold enough that the layer of freshwater that sits on top of the saltwater in the Inner Harbour froze. Victorians are not like prairie folks. They like their winters mild (meaning, some rain, some fog, and not much else), their car engines without heating blocks, and they've never heard of socials (usually a fundraising event for someone's wedding). However, I do have something in common with those dear little shops in Winnipeg run by Ukrainian or Polish babas or babcias (grandmothers) that sell borscht nd holubtsi - I love to make (and eat) cabbage rolls.

The fist-sized gołąbki or holubtsi has a shadowy history that probably goes back well before the 15th century, but apparently cabbage rolls had a role in empowering the Polish army to defeat the Teutonic Order in 1465. There are cabbage roll variants all over the world. My mother used to stuff kale leaves with a mixture of meat and sticky rice. In Turkey, they make sarma - large plant leaves stuffed with a meat filling. Another variant called holishkes is considered a traditional Jewish dish served at Sukkot. My own introduction to cabbage rolls began in Victoria well over a decade ago when I worked at a cafe for a Filipino woman who was married to a Mormon Ukrainian. Son of Thunder, we called him. She did make great cabbage rolls though.

Back at the Dark Days Challenge kitchen, I had a beautiful head of locally grown savoy cabbage, light emerald in colour with lovely leaves. Perfect for making cabbage rolls. I cut out its core most carefully as you can see above. I dropped the entire cabbage into a pot of boiling salted water for 5 - 8 minutes until the leaves were softened. I popped the cabbage into a strainer and waited until it cooled down.

Working carefully from the hollowed out core, I peeled off the leaves carefully and put them in a pile on the counter. I used the tiny leaves at the core to line my baking pan. I tucked a bay leaf or two in there for flavour.

If the leaf rib is too thick or knobbly, neatly slice it down. Or you can do what I did. Use your fists of Dark Days kitchen fury and give it a good thwack. One of the objectives of my cabbage rolls is to achieve fist-sized rolls (I've seen tinier rolls the width and length of two fingers. I like mine bigger). A fist sized roll requires about three to four generous tablespoons or one icecream scoop of meat filling. I don't measure, so I'm guessing. At any rate, the filling should look about like that when you plop it onto your cabbage.

Lift the end of cabbage closest to you and bring it up so that it just covers the meat filling.

Fold over the right and left sides of the cabbage. Your little cabbage packet should be forming nicely. If the cabbage doesn't bend easily, it means you didn't steam it long enough. Pop it into the microwave to soften it up if the cabbage is breaking on you.

With your fingers, make sure the meat filling is nicely packed into the folded cabbage. Hold both ends of the cabbage roll and turn it over so that the end of the cabbage leaf furthest from you covers the folded-in sides. Place the roll in your baking pan with the open leaf end facing down.

With all that cabbage in the kitchen, I decided to try my hand at making sauerkraut. We mandolined the cabbage into a fine shred.

We gently crushed some juniper berries and mixed it in with the rest of the ingredients. After a week, it was a smelly, moldy, terrible mess. An utter failure. However, the cabbage rolls were a delightful, delicious success.

Don't be afraid to use two cabbages! Once cooked, cabbage rolls keep quite well in the freezer. Just foil wrap them in meal-sized portions, put them in ziploc bags and they'll be just fine. I ate mine after several months and they were still quite good.

Ingredients

2 cups uncooked long grain rice

4 cups water

2 large heads savoy cabbage

1 cup water

2 onions, chopped and lightly sauteed until translucent

3 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

3/4 cup uncooked long grain rice

1 pound extra-lean ground beef

1/2 pound spicy pork sausage or 1/4 pound kielbasa mixed with 1/4 pound pork sausage

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 teaspoons dried dill weed

1 full tsp smoked extra hot paprika

2 teaspoons of ground coriander

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon white sugar

2 (28 ounce) canned whole peeled tomatoes, with liquid

8 bay leaves

Method

1. Fill your kettle up and get it going. Get a pot big enough to fit one of your cabbages in.

2. Wash rice thoroughly. In a medium saucepan, combine 2 cups rice and 4 cups water. Bring to boil; reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes or until all of the water is absorbed.

3. Get a long thin knife - a boning knife is great for this - and remove the core from your cabbages. Pour your boiling water into your pot and make sure the water comes up to a boil. Salt the water. Put your cabbage into the boiling water and cook for 5 - 8 minutes. Put it in core side down first, and gently turn over once. Repeat with the other cabbage. Put them in a strainer and let them cool down enough so that you can handle them.

4. Peel the leaves as directed above in the photos.

5. Saute the onions in butter and olive oil. Add a bit of caraway seed if you like - perhaps a teaspoon. Don't brown your onions. You want them transcluent.

6. Get your biggest mixing bowl out. Mix the uncooked and cooked rice, onions, meats, and all the spices, salt and sugar together. Get in there and mix it well - I suggest getting in there with your super clean hands.

7. Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Get two 9x13 baking dishes and line with the little abbage leaves that are too small to make rolls with. Nestle the rolls in a single layer, tightly together in the pans.

8. Run your tomatoes through a blender or food processor. You could add a bit of oregano or more dill to your tomato sauce if you like. Check the salt level in your sauce and add as required. Pour sauce over the rolls until they're just covered. Place the bay leaves on top of the sauce, and cover each dish tightly with good aluminum foil (Use good foil - I used the not so good stuff and the acidity of the tomato ate through the foil. Gross.).

9. Bake for two hours. Let the pans cool for 15 minutes before removing the foil. Serve hot with potatoes and borsht.

*All ingredients were locally sourced except for the rice (closest rice growers to me are in California), pepper, paprika, and coriander.

An Affair to Remember: Brussel Sprouts

2011-12-04T19:26:00.000-08:00

With some trepidation, this year, I decided to take up the gauntlet thrown down by the Dark Days Challenge to cook one meal per week that features SOLE (sustainable, organic, local and ethical) ingredients. And blog about it. And keep this up between November 27, 2011 until March 31, 2011. Did I mention I live on Vancouver Island? (Vancouver Island is not known for grain production, so helloooo potatoes.) Did I also mention I just moved house with Ck and changed jobs?

Enough with the explanations and caveats. Among all the things I love about the late fall/early winter are brussel sprouts. It's a love that came to me recently. My memories of brussel sprouts as a child involve muddied green vegetables that verged on the bitter and profane. Little did I know then about the miracles of high heat, olive oil, and good local salt. After buying an enormous stalk of brussel sprouts grown at the local family-owned farm, Michell Farms, I considered the possibilities.

First I washed, trimmed the ends of these beauties, and cut them in half. With the first batch, I simply tossed them with a good cold-pressed olive oil and locally made salt from Vancouver Island Salt Company. I popped them into a 400 degree Fahrenheit oven on a cookie sheet. You cook them for about eight minutes, flipping once. Don't crowd the sheet like I did. After I flipped them, I popped a little sliver of goat cheese I obtained from the Saltspring Island Cheese Company on each piece. These brussel sprouts are both delicious and an incredibly addictive finger food. I found serving them to people while they're drinking and watching you cook is an effective way to stave off the hangry [hang-ree]. Urban Dictionary defines 'hangry' as the state of being so hungry that one either becomes angry or frustrated or both.

With the second batch, I did something a little different. I tossed them with lovely local honey my good friend Matthew Tooley purveys at the Cottlestone Apiary, a bit of olive oil, and a smidgen of sesame seeds (yes, not from the island, but I'm going to cry 'Uncle!' and say it's the spice I needed). This is my most favourite way to cook and consume brussel sprouts. I hope you love them too.

Honey-Sesame Roasted Brussel Sprouts

4 cups brussel sprouts, trimmed and halved
2 tablespoons of honey
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 tablespoon of walnut/grapeseed/peanut oil
salt to taste
2 tablespoons sesame seeds

Method:

Preheat oven to 400° Fahrenheit.

Toss brussel sprouts with a mixture of olive oil and honey. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt.

Bake for 20-25 minutes on a cookie sheet. If you want lovely colour, be a bit precise and finicky and flip them each over at the 10 minute mark.

Remove from the oven when they're well browned and toss with the sesame seeds.

Serve immediately. Serves four.

Seduction by Dinner: Asado Negro with a Salad of Palm hearts and Avocado

2011-09-27T07:56:00.000-07:00

Tamils say love begins in the eyes. We have terms of endearment that involve use of the word "eye." It's the same with Mandarin. I suspect other languages probably make the linkage between the eyes and love - even English does with its idiomatic phrase "apple of my eye." It's not particularly fair to people who can't physically see, but maybe it's the metaphysical eye they're talking about. The third eye that sees things your physical eyes cannot.

I think this plate of asado definitely inspires fierce love even though the photograph hardly does justice to all the other things about asado that appeal to the senses - the long wait while it transforms into something divine, the intensely aromatic waft of slow-cooked meat, caramelized vegetables and vinegar cooked down to a muted punch. Asado is the best pot roast you could ever eat - the meat is perfectly tender, the texture is heavenly, and the darkened, fulsome and robust flavour of all the things it's cooked with goes right to the centre of each bite. It defies description.

Inspired by my recent return from South America and its extraordinary parrilla restaurants (grilled meat restaurants) and mighty outdoor chivito (baby goat) fire-side grills, this blog post is about my first attempt to make asado negro (black roast). Asado is a generic term for a range of barbecue techniques or can be used as a verb to describe having or attending a barbecue.

More importantly, it's easy to make and as long as you don't let on, you'll come across as an absolute culinary genius when you serve this to your closest friends with some strong dark beer or a decent zinfandel (or Malbec).

Cooking asado negro is a process that requires a bit of committment. It's the sort of recipe you tinker with on a Sunday afternoon while you drink a fine Chilean wine, or one you frantically prepare on a Friday afternoon to impress someone (in my case, Ck). I adapted my recipe from the New York Times, who got its recipe from the Mohedano Restaurant in Caracas, Venezuela. You begin the entire process by browning off your roast in a dutch pan. Ck couldn't locate a bottom round roast, so I worked with the top shoulder roast he dropped off the night before. After that was done, I browned the leeks, onions and the rest in the pot.

As the object of the game was to impress, I had to do candied nuts. After a careful inspection of all my recipes involving nuts, I settled on doing a variation of the famous Union Square Cafe nuts. As the meat browned, I popped the pecans into the oven. The recipe was a bit funny - the sugar went all runny and it appeared for a while that the nuts were cooking in sugar soup. Not so. The sugar seized when they were done and these, my dear, were delicious to nibble on as I finished doing dinner. It was difficult to save some for Ck.

I had decided on a meringue sort of dessert for the asado dinner. My meringue was mostly ok looking as I piped it out, but it wasn't perfectly perfect. Here's what it looked like going in.

There was far too much eggwhite leftover after piping the shape out, so I made the rest into little baby meringues while the leeks took their time to soften the way they should.

I made a little salad with baby tomatoes, artichokes, palm hearts and avocado with a simple lime and olive oil dressing. As the asado cooked in the oven for the requisite number of hours, the air filled with the acidic vapours of the vinegar. My eyes burned. No one warned me about this. However, let me assure you, it was well worth it. When the asado was nearly done, I popped a small pot of rice of the stove to serve with it.

And we finished off with a little sweet dessert - the chocolate meringue swirl topped with blueberries and fine little threads of orange peel, cooked very quickly with a bit of Cointreau and melted apricot jam.

Here's the recipe I used for Asado Negro with some of my notes:

1 cup white sugar

2 teaspoons brown sugar (I used a 3/4 cup of chopped up gula melaka or palm sugar instead of both sugars. You can also find piloncillo - unrefined cane sugar - at the Mexican House of Spice on Douglas Street in Victoria)
2 cups white-wine vinegar (don't be scared - you really do need all of this)
1 cup dry red wine
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 pounds beef bottom-round roast (or top round)
5 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
1 large Spanish onion, peeled and thinly sliced
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 leeks, white and light-green parts only, washed well and thinly sliced
2 bay leaves
1⁄3 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 green bell pepper, stemmed, seeded and thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded and thinly sliced

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Combine the white sugar and 1 cup of water in a heavy saucepan and cook, without stirring, over medium-high heat until the sugar dissolves and turns dark caramel, 8 to 10 minutes (don't need to do this for as long if you use gula melaka). Carefully add the brown sugar, vinegar and wine, and cook, stirring, until all the caramel has melted. Set aside.

2. Heat a Dutch oven large enough to hold the meat over medium-high heat. When hot, add the canola oil and butter. When these begin to shimmer and foam, sear the roast on all sides. Transfer the meat to a platter and set aside.

3. Add the garlic, onion, celery, leeks and bay leaves to the Dutch oven and cook over medium-high heat until they have softened and almost begun to brown. Add the Worcestershire and soy sauces and stir to incorporate, then return the meat to the pot and season with salt and pepper. Cover with the bell-pepper slices and pour the caramel sauce over the top. Cover, place in the oven and cook for approximately 2½ hours — basting and turning the meat every 45 minutes — until it is very tender.

4. Remove the meat and allow it to stand on a platter, tented in foil, for at least 30 minutes. If the sauce is not syrupy and thick, remove the vegetables (discard the bay leaves) and arrange them around the meat, then place the Dutch oven, uncovered, over medium-high heat and allow the sauce to reduce. My vegetables were almost melted, but the sauce was too runny. I cooked everything together on the stove and the result was this marvellous molten sauce.

5. When the sauce is ready, slice the meat and return it, along with the vegetables, to the sauce and reheat in the oven or, covered, on the stove. Check the seasoning. You're supposed to serve this garnished with cilantro, but I don't like it so I didn't do it. Serves 6 to 8.

Spherical Pancake Culture Collision: Gluten free Cashew Kunukku and Æbleskiver

2011-05-09T18:17:00.000-07:00

That's right. Spherical pancakes. It's not a gimmick either. It's a global phenomenon.

We recently acquired an Æbleskiver pan. To be a bit more precise and inject some cultural relevancy (to me), Ck acquired a kuzhi paniyaram pan (aka Æbleskiver pan - that's what they called it at the shop) and generously shared his new toy with me. Intrigued by this odd little pan and stories about my maternal grandmother making some sort of pancake like item in this pan, I got down to doing some serious food research. Pancakes are a very serious matter to me. They're among the easiest things to muck up and the most difficult things to do really well. After poking about for a bit, I discovered that this odd looking little pan is used in places like Holland, Scandanavia, and Denmark to make little pancakes called poffertjes (Dutch) or Æbleskiver (Danish). It's known as a monk's pan, pancake puff pan or an abelskiver pan in western shops.

Intrigued, we decided this Æbleskiver pan was the only appropriate thing to use for breakfast on Saturday. Note how shiny and new it looks here. My parents had given me some apples and Meyer lemons that were languishing away in my fridge. I chopped them up and made a sweet-sour-bitterish filling that was something between marmalade and apple butter.

We beat the poffertjes batter up and carefully dropped half spoons of it into the oiled, gleaming wells of the pan. They hissed satisfactorily. I quickly dropped a little spoonful of the apple-meyer lemon marmalade and then topped the little pancake up with batter until the well was three-quarters full. Adding the apple in the centre is a very traditional Danish approach to this, which I suppose makes what I did more Æbleskiver than poffertjes.

Learning how to cook them was a bit tricky. If you tried to flip them before they were properly golden on the pan belly side, they wouldn't budge. If you were careless with your fork (that was the first implement of choice), you'd ruin the shape of the uncooked top side. I dug about in my research and discovered a Danish recommendation to use a knitting needle for this task. I hauled out my bamboo knitting needle and hastily washed it up. It worked like a charm. We'd carefully push down on one cooked edge with the knitting needle and the Æbleskiver would somersault over with the greatest of ease.

The finished Æbleskiver or poffertje is not only a thing of beauty, it's also scrumptious.The dough is light and airy, and the centre filling (you can pick anything!) is a happy surprise to the tongue. I dusted the poffertjes with a bit of icing sugar to pretty them up a bit and to add a bit of sweetness to the bitter meyer lemon rind.

After experimenting with chocolate-filled poffertjes and plain poffertjes, I continued with my research. I came across interesting Japanese and Chinese versions of pancakes that use a very similar pan - Takoyaki and gai daan jai (eggette) respectively. I'll report out how those recipes turn out when I try them.

As I was doing research on a totally unrelated topic one day, I stumbled across something quite extraordinary. I nearly fell off my chair. The abelskiver pan has its own name among Tamils who use it to make their own rounded golden delicacies - a kuzhi paniyaram pan. At that moment, it became clear to me that everyone loves pancakes. If nations and people can't agree about territorial sovereignty or global warming, by the gods, we can all agree about pancakes.

Pancake love notwithstanding, this question remains: how did northern Europeans, East Asians and South Asians end up with very similar pans to make spherical pancakes? It's a good question. When I find out the answer, I'll let you know.

I found a brilliant recipe for cashew kunukku - think comfort food for rainy days or for days when you're too lazy to cook dinner but you want a quasi-substantial nibble and a movie. Kunukku was designed to be portable and is great for picnics. This dish is popular in South India, Sri Lanka and wherever there are Tamils with kuzhi paniyaram pans or deep vats of hot oil. Cashew kunukku is savory whereas Æbleskiver strays to the sweeter side of things as a result of the delightful things served with them. You could make a sweet variation of kunukku if you wanted to. I love both equally.

I especially adore kunukku with some tomato chutney - it's one of my ideas of heaven. We made kunukku over at my parents' house and enjoyed them with some lovely tomato chutney and coconut chutney. Rather, I should say I ate too many kunukku at my parents' house and was too bug-eyed and full of kunukku and taro root to go to bed later.

Don't be worried when you see the ingredients for kunukku. They're easy to find in any Indian shop, extremely inexpensive, very healthy for you, and so easy to cook with. They're far more easy to work with than beating up egg whites for Æbleskiver, let me tell you. Be brave. Most importantly, have fun with it.

Æbleskiver Recipe (adapted from Lindgren's Bed & Breakfast in Lutsen, Minnesota)

4 separated eggs
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3/4 cup apple cider plus 1 cup yoghurt plus 1/4 cup water)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups rice flour
oil

Method

1. Beat egg whites until stiff; set aside.

2. Beat rest of ingredients until batter is very smooth. Fold in egg whites.

3. Heat your pan over moderate heat with 1/8 teaspoon oil in each of the 7 holes. Fill each hole about three-quarters full with batter.

4. When browned on one side, turn with knitting needle [or two-tined fork] and keep turning until needle comes out clean after piercing through the cake. Generally, you'll only need to flip the cake once.

5. Add a few drops of oil to each well in the pan before the next round of batter.

Serve with flavored butters, such as maple or cinnamon honey, syrup, jam and brown or white sugar.

Servings: plan on each person eating 7-10 cakes. Makes approximately 48 pancakes.

Cashew Kunukku (Sourced from Chef in You. Bless you, woman, for posting your marvellous recipes.)

2/3 cup plain short grained rice

1/3 cup par boiled rice

1 cup toor dal (pigeon peas)

1/4 cup channa dal (bengal gram)

1/4 cup whole urad dal (black gram)

2-3 dried red chillies ( or as per taste)

1/2 cup broken cashews

1/2 tsp asafoetida (as per taste)

1/4 cup grated coconut

1-2 green chillies (optional)

salt to taste

few sprigs of curry leaves

Method

1. Wash the lentils and the rice in cold water. Then soak them along with dried chillies for at least 3 hours.

2. Drain the water from the soaked lentils and rice. Grind them with very little water along with coconut, salt and asafoetida to form a coarse batter.

3. Add the curry leaves, green chillies along with the broken cashew pieces. Stir well.

4. Meanwhile heat the pancake puff pan (kuzhi paniyaram pan) with 1/4 tsp of oil in each of the depressions. Drop spoonful of batter inside each of the holes.

5. Cook until the underside gets brown and then turn it upside down and cook for another 2-3 minutes.

Test the first batch. It should be crunchy on the outside, but soft and bread-like on the inside. If it’s a bit dry, add a bit of water, and keep trotting along. I found I had to add a bit of water to my batch. The difference in texture that's achieved by adding a bit more water is significant, so do taste the first bunch you cook! I served these with coconut chutney.

Kicking boring oatmeal in the teeth: Lemongrass infused oatmeal

2011-03-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

I swore a solemn oath to myself at the beginning of this year. I have a fat hot pink binder full of recipes I've collected from the vast stretches of cyberspace. They're meticulously indexed by recipe type, and I swear I'm writing up a proper index to show at a glance what's in each section. I swore that I'd work through every recipe this year, and wouldn't, on the pain of gastronomic shame, repeat a single dish, no matter how much I love it.

This was the oath I fecklessly swore to myself at the beginning of this year. It was a dangerous oath for someone like me to take. I already have a habit of listening to a favourite song on loop. On top of that, I love, absolutely love my trashy quick dinner of frozen chipped hashbrowns pan fried up with frozen vegetables and a muddled egg. It's my comfort food go to. I adore my chips, ribena mixed with soda water and the frosted flakes (not all at the same time!). All these vices involve repeats depending on the weather, my mood, and whether anyone else is around to witness the food debauchery. On the other hand, I also love a fine lamb biriyani, a steaming bowl of tom yum goong or the always elegant sole meunière. There's tyranny in only worshipping the divine. I like the profane things too.

The beginning of the calendar year is always a good time to plot future projects. For instance, I was checking out madame tigress' blog and saw her recipe for confiture des vieux garcon. By a fortunate stroke of luck, I managed to find a vintage rumtopf/pickling jar. A future post is coming up as soon as the first fruits of the season come in.

Now onto the subject at hand. I've been finding ways to subvert the deeply ingrained boredom that generally accompanies a bowl of morning oatmeal. I began with the simple addition of some of the peach marmalade I made last summer. I just chucked in a tablespoon and a bit of it into the pot as the marmalade cooked. Delicious.

Then I took some blueberries I froze last summer and plopped a few of those in with a dollop of honey, some ground flaxseed and some freshly grated nutmeg. The main thing is to incorporate your flavours while the oatmeal is still cooking. I loved the vivid colours of this bowl. and its velvety sweet blueberry flavour. This particular variation of oatmeal was inspired by Lottie and Doof's breakfast porridge.

We experimented like madmen. We added candied ginger with fresh apple pieces and Saigon cinnamon to the oatmeal pot another morning. Flaxseed meal. Lots of it. Luscious atulfo mango with dried ginger and brown sugar. Blueberry with dessicated coconut and sliced almonds. The version I'm going to give you the recipe for excited me so much that I forgot to take a picture of it. It's a great way to use up those ends and bits of lemon grass leftover from making a lovely Thai, Indonesian or Malay dinner. We licked the backs of our spoons, examined the pot for more and then resigned ourselves to sipping tea and watching the local elderly people take their morning consititutional stroll.

Lemongrass Infused Oatmeal

1 3/4 cups of cold water

1 really good pinch of salt. I used kosher salt.

1 cup of large flake oats (the yellow label on the Quaker packet or the sort that take about 10 - 15 minutes to cook)

1 - 2 teaspoons of flaxseed meal (or ground flaxseed)

3 inch piece of lemon grass bashed up with the flat of your knife

1/2 a very ripe banana, smashed with a fork
1/2 cup chopped fresh strawberries
1 - 2 tablespoons of honey, depending on how sweet you like your oatmeal

Method

1. Bring the water to boil in a medium sauce pan with the lemon grass. Chuck the salt in.

2. Drop the oats into the boiling water. Cover the pot with the lid cracked open. Give it a bit of a stir, but don't fuss about it too much. Add the ground flaxseeds or flaxseed meal.

3. After five minutes, add the banana, strawberries and honey. Stir occasionally to ensure the oatmeal doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot and burn. Cook to the desired consistency. I like my oatmeal fairly stiff, but Ck likes his a bit more fast and loose.

Do you have your own oatmeal variations? Do tell and share!

My Mother's Malaysian-Sri Lankan Style Tomato Omelette

2011-03-11T10:58:00.000-08:00

My mother's Malaysian/Sri Lankan style tomato omelette is a staple in our household. It's go-to comfort food, it's the food you make when you're too tired to come up with a fussily cooked protein source for dinner, and with all that, it's damn good. Mom made it for Ck and I a little while ago when we stopped by after work, famished and exhausted.

You start by chopping up some white onion, spring onion, a bit of tomato, a bit of shallot, a bit of garlic and a bit of ginger. Chuck it all into a nice frying pan that's got a bit of oil in it. Add a dried chili if you like. Fry it up until the onion is translucent and the tomato has softened up.

Beat a few eggs up in a bowl, temper it with a bit of cold water (it makes your eggs lovely and fluffy), salt, white pepper and whatever spice you like. You can add a bit of chili powder to give your omelette a kick. In true Malaysian-Sri Lankan homecooking style, Mom cuts her omelette up into four and flips it over to give it last bit of a cook.

Serve with hot rice, a vegetable side and you've got a fabulous light weeknight supper!

On the Subject of Winter Produce: Persimmon Cake

2011-03-01T11:19:00.000-08:00

Dear readers, I have a great deal of catch up to do and a significant number of stories that need to be told about the pictures I've been taking for the last few months. We'll start with persimmons and fast forward to the present. This will include tales about asado negro and how my eyes wept from the vinegared fumes, to preserved lemons and the furious pounding of cherry pits for sour cherry liqueur. But back to the persimmons. My parents went a bit mad buying persimmons back when Victoria was teetering on the cusp of winter. They ended up sharing some of the spoils of these persimmon shopping trips with me.

There are two kinds of persimmons - the astringent (e.g. hachiya) and the non-astringent kind (e.g. fuyu). Both types are high in fibre, contain tannins and are supposed to be good for your heart. The heart-shaped hachiya persimmon is not pictured here because in my haste to mash it into a pulp, I forgot to take a picture.

Unless you like furry tasting fruit, for consumption, the hachiya has to be ripe, so ripe that its skin becomes translucent and the fruit feels almost like mush. You can blet persimmons by simply putting them out in sunlight or by wrapping them in paper. My hachiya lived in my kitchen so it was alternately exposed to sunlight and temperatures hovering around zero. The tomato-shaped persimmons pictured here are the fuyu variation. The fuyu persimmon can be eaten when it's quite firm, and it's still lovely to eat even when it has ripened into a supple softness.

Persimmons can be eaten fresh, dried or cooked. I prefer the persimmon when it's still firm. I'm not generally a huge fan of mushy fruits although I did recently try a grenadilla and instantly fell in love with its crunchy seeds and sweet viscous flesh. Since my hachiya had ripened into the golden pulped treasure pictured above, I decided to make cake with it.

As for the rest of the fuyus, I made a darkly spiced persimmon paste out of them and froze it. I have plans for this paste. It will likely be used at some not too distant point in the future for meat dishes and perhaps another cake. Here's my recipe that I adapted from Fresh Approach Cooking:

Persimmon Cake

1 to 2 very ripe hachiya persimmons, yielding about 1 cup fork-mashed pulp
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 cups unsifted rice flour

1 tsp xanthan gum

1/2 tsp guar gum
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp each fresh nutmeg and ground cloves
3/4 cup butter
½ cup white sugar
½ cup brown sugar
1 egg
½ cup balkan style yoghurt, slightly diluted
1 tsp orange zest

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350F.

2. Fork mash the persimmon into a pulp. Don't worry if it isn't perfectly smooth.

3. Sift together the flour, xanthan and guar gum, baking soda, baking powder, nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon.

4. In an large bowl, beat butter and sugar until fluffy for about 3 minutes. Add the egg and combine well. Add the persimmon pulp. Add half the flour mix and mix to just combine.

5. Add the yoghurt. Add the remaining flour and stir until it just comes together, then stir in the orange zest.

6. Grease your baking pan of choice with butter. You can use a bundt pan or cake ring or 9 inch cake pan. Spoon the batter in and bake for 45 minutes or more until knife comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto a platter to cool completely.

This is best served slightly warm. Before serving, dust lightly with powdered sugar. I loved eating this cake for breakfast!

Food for Political Discussions and Tight Budgets: Tunisian Tuna Frittata

2011-01-22T15:45:00.000-08:00

I'm going to confess. I'm rather smitten. Although the state of being actively smitten has done nothing to arrest the amount of cooking in my kitchen - in fact, it has increased it - I find my blog has suffered a serious lack of attention. I considered this abdication from diligent writing and the cause thereof. The cause is known to my friends as Ck. A man who can interrupt Luscious Domestic blogging activity surely merits that mention before I launch into a telling of the Tunisian Tuna Frittata.

This fritatta seems especially timely given the significant upheaval happening in Tunisia in the last few weeks. Unlike the complexity of the political happenings there, this tuna frittata is not only brilliantly simple, it's divinely tasty and a clever way to make an economical one dish meal on a hectic weeknight. I had found this recipe in the New York Times some time ago and had been waiting to make it for some time.

I decided to make this dish for a very beloved friend and old acquaintance one wintry night not so long ago. Nathan is the sort of friend who possesses an unusual thoughtfulness and perception, which is an excellent asset in a friend on a regular basis, but is especially valuable when you require a minister of war. He also has fantastic taste in music and is a fairly adventurous sort. I was feeling rather tired after a day of driving my mouse, working for the fine people of British Columbia. Tunisian Tuna Frittata it had to be.

Now don't get fussed when you see the ingredients below for things like harissa and caraway seeds. Harissa is a chili paste that's generally made from Piri Piri chili peppers or whatever chili pepper is on hand, blended with olive oil. It comes in wee little tins and is a standard element of North African cooking (places like Algeria and Tunisia but not so much in Morocco). It's not expensive at all and it's not particularly spicy. It's not nearly as hot as sambal olek but it is distinctive tasting. I would not recommend trying to replace it with whatever chili sauce you have on hand. I doubled the amount of harrisa specified in the recipe and found it quite pleasant.

Caraway is also quite distinctive in its flavour and shouldn't be replaced either. Caraway is also known as Persian cumin. Its seeds are decidedly black and lend a lovely anise-like flavour to foods. It's a key element in rye bread, it's found in a number of European foods (Akvavit and Havarti cheese are the most notable), and it's also used in this frittata. You can find caraway seeds and harrisa at Middle Eastern food shops. I found both these items at the Blair Mart on Pandora Street in Victoria.

I highly recommend grinding whole caraway seeds for this recipe. I'd also strongly suggest using tuna that's packed in light olive oil, not water. The tuna that's packed in water tends to dry out and its flavour is significantly diminished. Lastly, don't be shy about the salt and use good eggs. Good eggs make a significant difference in the final product. If you can get your hands on local farm eggs, do so!

We demolished a good part of the frittata before we abandoned it to nibble on the persimmon cake I whipped up prior to the business of frittata making. I'll definitely share the recipe for that cake with you in the next post. The leftovers - if there are any to be had - are very portable and make a great lunch. I tried eating it cold, and it suited me just fine. But then again, I like cold frittata. Do try this recipe. It's wonderful comfort food on a cold mid-winter night and a happy addition to your lunch box.

Ingredients

1/2 pound boiling potatoes, peeled and cut in small dice (about 1/2 inch)

3/4 pound carrots, peeled and cut in small dice (about 1/2 inch)

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 large garlic cloves, mashed with a pinch of salt in a mortar and pestle or finely chopped

2 teaspoons caraway seeds, ground

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

2 tablespoons harissa dissolved in 2 tablespoons water, or 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne (to taste)

1 6-ounce can of olive oil-packed light tuna (not albacore), drained and broken up with a fork

1/4 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

8 large eggs

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Steam the potatoes and carrots above 1 inch of boiling water until tender, about 10 minutes.

2. Place the oil in a 2-quart baking dish or a 9-inch cast iron skillet. Rub the oil over the sides of the pan, and place in the oven. Meanwhile, whisk the eggs in a large bowl. Whisk in garlic, caraway, salt (about 1/2 teaspoon) and pepper to taste and harissa. Stir in the potatoes, carrots, tuna and parsley. Remove the baking dish from the oven, scrape the egg mixture into the hot baking dish and place in the oven.

3. Bake 30 to 35 minutes until lightly colored on the top and set. Allow to cool for 10 minutes or longer before serving. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Yield: Serves six to eight.

Sunday Morning Granola

2011-01-11T13:27:00.000-08:00

One morning, after taking advantage of the morning light to photograph "the twins" - the newly-filtered cherry liqueur and the orange peel liqueur, I realized it was time to start Sunday breakfast. I abandoned my plan to continue reading my copy of Ottolenghi's brilliant cookbook, and wandered into the kitchen.

The twins posing on Ottolenghi's cookbook.

We hadn't partied or entertained the night before, so a full on breakfast of eggs, hashbrowns, bacon seemed excessive. Oatmeal seemed like the stuff for work mornings and camping weekends. It had to be granola.

I'll be honest, I'm not too crazy about sprouting mung beans or any of the other hippy things I was surrounded with when growing up on the west coast of Canada. For the longest time, I lumped granola in with the rest of the foods I associated the word "hippy" with. To my uninitiated palate, these foods seemed flavourless, perhaps even joyless.

However, granola has quickly become mainstream in the last decade, with wee but fashionable boxes of the stuff demanding high prices. I will admit that my palate and appreciation for granola evolved in step with the mainstream trend. Many boxes of commercially available granola usually have some form of wheat or gluten in it. Between the allergies, being too lazy to walk to the store, and too cheap to dole out the dollars for a tiny bit of oats mixed with dried fruit, I decided to make my own.

The results? Oh hello, tasty, flavourful granola. Quick and easy to make, it's lovely (I'm told) with some milk.

I used this lovely honey!

Sunday Morning Granola

2 cups regular oats
1/2 cup flake or dessicated coconut
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup sunflower seeds (didn't have any, used up some trail mix)
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup honey or maple/agave syrup
1/3 cup grapeseed oil (Or use something like canola. If you try olive oil, let me know!)

1. Combine all the dry ingredients and mix well.

2. Add in the wet ingredients and mix well. Spread in an even layer that's no thicker than one inch on a well-greased cookie sheet (I used a giant tray, but you can use two smaller sheets).

Granola before I baked it.

3. Bake in 350 degree oven until golden. After about seven minutes in the oven, take the tray out out, and flip the ingredients around using a spatula. Another seven minutes, move it about again. Let it be until it looks golden.

This granola stores well in an air-tight container for up to two weeks. Some people keep it longer. Mine never lasts that long!

Granola is a free-form creative exercise. Try adding things like minced candied ginger, any sort of dried fruit, or different sorts of flaked grains or flaxseed meal. It's a great way to also use up those bits and ends of trail mix that no one seems to want to finish.

Do you have a favourite granola recipe or item to add to granola?

Sri Lankan Christmas Cake

2010-12-25T15:24:00.000-08:00

This year, I tried my hand at making Sri Lankan Christmas cake. My mother, the family keeper of all Christmas cake recipes of the past and present, was the obvious person to refer to for this exercise. After years of waiting, the time had come. I was presented with the recipe for rice flour Christmas cake this year. As I noted in my previous post, it was like getting knighted or something.

I tweaked the recipe in some ways. The first tweak came with the fruit and nuts. I let them sit in liqueur for nearly four weeks. Mom would usually let them sit for no more than five days. I added more liqueur as needed, starting with the traditional rum and brandy. As the weeks passed, the fruit would look thirsty from time to time so I moved on to things like calvados and homemade Italian cherry liqueur to keep them soused.

On the first night of December, the night of the Parisien leek soup, I decided it was time to make the cake. The cake, after all, has to age for at least three weeks before you can think of eating it. We industriously whipped butter with sugar, zested oranges and lemons, and mixed the drunken fruit into all of that.

We painstakingly lined cake tins with wax paper, trimming the edges and slitting the corners to ensure the most perfectly lined cake tin. They were popped into an oven with a bowl of water to keep things steamy and hydrated. We retired to the living room to watch a movie and shamelessly eat large amounts of almond roca and peanut brittle.

When the cake was nearly done, it was time to make the glaze for the top of the cake. Too late for regrets that I didn't artistically decorate the tops of my cakes with carefully cut maraschino cherries or slivered almonds like my mother would. I whipped out a jar of peach marmalade I made this summer, dumped its contents into a pot, added a wee bit of water and cornstarch and fired the stove up. Mum would have used apricot or raspberry jam. I was going to use boozed up peach marmalade. It bubbled and became translucent. I added in rum. Lots of it. The glaze was ready.

I used my pastry brush to glaze the cakes as soon as they came out of the oven. I loved the sweet sheen of the molten marmalade and the warm, heady smell of newly baked Christmas cake.

I left the little cakes out to cool overnight. The next morning, I wrapped the cakes as the oatmeal bubbled on the stove. Leaving their wax paper wraps intact, just as my mother has done a hundred times, I sheathed them in saran wrap, and then again in aluminium foil. I put them away on the shelves next to the rhubarb schnapps for a beauty sleep over the next three weeks.

Three weeks later, the cakes were ready. We sampled a bit a few days before Christmas and agreed the cake was worthy of sharing. On Christmas day, the cake had a place on the family plate of Sri Lankan Christmas sweets.

Happy holidays, dear readers. I wish you all a holiday filled with joy and a new year filled with love and good food. :)

Parisien Leek Soup for James

2010-12-20T11:50:00.000-08:00

There's a lot of history behind this recipe. At the request of an old acquaintance, James, whose memory of this soup remained intact twenty years after I first made it, I unearthed this recipe from a small box of childhood keepsakes.

The soup was made for an elementary school French class potluck. My classmate, James, sampled it and dropped a leek soup reference many years later when he saw my food blog. Gary, my first crush, was also one of the people who sampled it. He ate three bowls of the soup and told me how much he loved it. I made this soup with my class partner who was also my best friend. Ten years later, my soup-making partner-friend seduced the man (a little reductionist here) I was madly in love with for most of my twenties. But what do you know about these things or the future when you're a kid. You're not wise enough then to see visions of the future and other portents in the making of soup.

Really, there's a lot to making serious soup. And this recipe, baby, it's got history. Love food with a twist.

When I examined the recipe, scrawled in my childish hand, I marvelled at its simplicity. There is no pureeing of the soup to create an easy to photograph, perfectly groomed soup that one adorns with walnuts or ash-cured chevre or artistic drizzles of olive oil. Inspired by James' request, I went to the market and bought some leeks, lovely with their groomed tips.

The soup is simple enough to make. I say this because the night I made it, all I had to do was chop up the leeks and potatoes, essentially chuck it all into the soup pot, and then get on with the making of the all important Xmas cake. My mother recently parted with some of the family secrets and bestowed upon me the family recipe for rice flour dark Xmas cake. In our family universe, it's like getting knighted or something.

Here's the historically dramatic, but drama free original leek soup recipe:

Parisien Leek Soup

3 - 4 leeks
3 potatoes (I used red because I didn't have russet and they worked fine)
4 cups of water (I used the leavings of some broccoli water from my experiment with Gordon Ramsey's broccoli soup. Paired this with chicken broth)
1/3 cup of uncooked rice
1 tablespoon of butter
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 teaspoon of salt
2 - 3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Method

1. Trim the leeks, halve them and then slice thinly. Whichever way you decide to chop, just chop evenly. The original recipe says to throw the green bits away, but I always disobey and include them.

2. Heat your soup pot up and melt the butter over a low heat. Add the olive oil to minimize butter burn.

3. Cube the potatoes thinly. Don't do instant hashbrown thin. Chuck the leeks in the warmed up soup pot and saute them. When I made this twenty years ago, Viviane and I riffed on the original recipe and browned about half a pound of lean ground beef before we began to saute the leeks.

4. After the leeks have softened and look a bit transparent, add the potatoes and let them have a conversation with the leeks for 2 - 3 minutes.

5. End the leek-potato conversation by adding the water/broth, salt and rice. Bring it up to a boil, then turn the heat down and let it gently bubble on your stove for about 25 - 30 minutes. The key to this is that you shouldn't let your potatoes fall apart. I found the stated requirement for liquid isn't quite enough. I added more liquid as it pleased me - mostly to maintain a state of soup liquidity that worked for me.

6. Near the end of cooking, add the parsley. If you don't have parsley, add tarragon. Just don't go too crazy. Test the soup for salt and doctor as needed. Serve it with French bread and milk. This soup is very simple but very tasty.

Argentinian Blueberry and Chocolate Slab Cake

2010-12-15T18:30:00.000-08:00

I know many food bloggers are all about the local, the fresh and the 100 mile diet, but I thumb my nose at the environmentally friendly and sustainable practice of the 100 mile diet. And I mean it. I'm not about to give up my bourgeois tastes in a multiplicity of things that must come across the sea to get into my belly. The lovely Persian dates that Ciaran recently brought me are a scrumptious example of that.

If it came to it, I would be reasonable, buy as many gai lan and Indian eggplant seeds as possible, attempt to grow my own curry leaf tree, and adopt the 100 mile diet. For now, I will indulge in certain naughty excesses like buying Argentinian blueberries at the end of November when I'm actually on a mission to buy leeks for Parisien Leek Soup. Buying blueberries from Argentina is something of a joke on the west coast of Canada. We're massive seasonal producers of blueberries. You can buy them by the crate for practically nothing during the summer.

What does a Canadian Sri Lankan Tamil do with fresh blueberries at the tail end of fall that really feels like winter? She uses it to crown her morning bowl of oatmeal, paired with freshly grated nutmeg.

Or, she could stud a decadent chocolate slab cake with them. I found the cake on a food porn site and was so taken with the image, I felt the need to replicate but modify the cake so that I could eat it. The results were deliciousness on levels that bordered the profane.

I feel the need to include a warning or disclaimer with this cake recipe. Once you finish slathering on the icing and studding the cake with blueberries, you will find it difficult to stop even after eating two pieces of cake. We found it nearly impossible to step away from the cake. I suggest wrapping the cake and putting it in the refrigerator to halt excessive cake consumption. This cake is guaranteed to seduce any man or woman, and might even possibly save marriages.

Here's the modified recipe I adapted from Picnics by Australian Woman's Weekly.

1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup boiling water
2/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
3 eggs
1 2/3 cups rice flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
3/4 cup Balkan style yoghurt
2/3 cup fresh blueberries

Chocolate Icing:
2/3 cup dark chocolate, chopped coarsely
1 3/4 tablespoons butter
1 cup icing sugar, sifted
1 1/2 tablespoons hot water

1. Preheat oven to 350 ºF. Grease 19cm x 30cm lamington pan; line with baking paper. Be sure to cut the corners of the paper on a diagonal so that the paper sits flat in the pan. Otherwise, your cake will have rippled corners.

2. Blend cocoa with the water in small bowl. Add the water a bit at a time to prevent lumps. Cool.

3. Beat butter and sugar in small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Transfer mixture to a large bowl, stir in sifted flours and soda, and yoghurt in two batches; stir in cocoa mixture.

4. Spread mixture into pan. Bake about 30 minutes. Cool cake in pan 20 minutes before turning, top-side up, onto wire rack to cool. Don't remove the paper just yet.

5. Make chocolate icing: melt chocolate and butter in small saucepan, stirring, over low heat. Remove from heats; stir in sifted icing sugar and water until smooth.

6. Spread cold cake with icing, top with blueberries. Don't forget to take the paper off first. Cut cake into squares.

Serves 20.

The Epic Viewing of Carlos Part II - Luscious Brings Beetroot Poriyal

2010-12-09T14:11:00.000-08:00

For the epic viewing of Carlos part two, we decided that we would bring a Tamil dinner over to Sharon and Thom's place. Ciaran and I did most of the cooking at my place before bringing the food over for the final polish. I decided to fry up some Madras style pappadum I brought back from Toronto. Pappadum in its raw form is a dried thin disc made from chickpea flour and spices. When fried, it expands into a crisp cracker. It is incredibly addictive nibbling food. I love breaking it up into my rice.

In favour of the gentle vegetarian, Ciaran, I decided on egg curry and beetroot poriyal. Egg curry? you say. Egg curry, I say. Yes. It doesn't sound like it should work, but in fact it does. It's one of the most marvellous vegetarian inventions in the Tamil culinary lexicon. Sharon took care of her pot of chai and the beets while I performed tricks with hot oil. I loved the luxury of cooking on S & T's fine gas stove.

Sharon's choice of Barefoot's Moscato wine went really well with the spicy beets and egg curry (Sharon and Thom agreed that the curry was "Hong Kong spicy"). Sharon and I share a love of sweet things. Moscato definitely tickles that sweet spot. The men opted for something less sweet. Sharon also helped break down my irrational distaste for brown rice by making some to accompany the curry.

Full of curry and the delicious bread pudding Sharon and Thom whipped up for dessert (I got a persimmon to myself in place of bread pudding), we flipped on the projector to watch the last half of Carlos. I'll confess that I was comfortable enough by the fireplace and philistine enough to doze through part of it. My culinary partners in crime were kind enough not to razz me about it.

When I attempted to come up with the specs for beetroot poriyal, I realized why I was struggling. There's a French term for this - au pif. It the context of cooking, it means cooking by the nose, or by sense. If you cook that way, writing down precise measurements is ... a challenge. Here goes.

Tamil Beetroot Poriyal

3 medium sized beets

3/4 teaspoon black mustard seeds

6 curry leaves

4 - 5 gundu molzuka chilis

1/3 cup dessicated coconut

1/2 teaspoon curry powder

1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder

1 tablespoon coriander powder

salt to taste (about 1/2 teaspoon)

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Method

1. Peel the beets and then grate them coarsely. If you have someone around with big muscled arms, I highly suggest recruiting them for this job. I know I did. Heat the oil in a heavy bottomed frying pan or pot.

2. When the oil is hot, add the mustard seeds, curry leaves, and chilies. Fry until the mustard seeds begin to pop. Add the grated beets immediately.

3. Add the curry powder, turmeric, coriander and a 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Stir well and add a quarter cup of water. Cover the pan and cook until the water is almost evaporated.

4. Add the coconut and some more water. Continue to cook the beets in this manner until they are tender. Taste and adjust for salt and spiciness as required. The beets should have a taste that's balanced between sweet and spicy.

Note: Gundu molzuka is Tamil for "fat chili." They are also known as mundu chilis. They are moderately pungent and much like their shape, impart a rounded heat to food. They are available at Indian grocery shops, but if you can't find them, any dried or fresh chili that's moderately hot will do.

Unreasonably Tasty Tapioca with Gula Melaka

2010-12-04T17:27:00.000-08:00

I love tapioca. I love its coy starchy ways, the way it obligingly adopts flavours, and all the happy memories I associate with tapioca. It made bleak, rained out days bearable when sailing up the west coast, it is an unforgettable part of my childhood, and recently, it was the sweet end to hot pot night at Sharon and Thom's.

Tapioca is commercially sold in the form of pearls, just like its counterpart, sago. Sago comes from the pith of the sago palm stems and tapioca comes from the cassava root. They can be interchangeably used in many dishes that include this one.

The secret weapon that makes this dish? That black line art in the bowl is gula melaka. Tamils call it karruppatti. This sugar comes in dark blocks and is from the palm tree. Gula melaka has a dark caramel taste and a distinctive aroma. The threesome of tapioca/sago, coconut milk and gula melaka has its origins in Peranakan (Chinese-Malay) culinary genius. It's a beautiful thing.

The Epic Viewing of Carlos Part I - Sharon and Thom Bring the Hot Pot

2010-11-29T08:59:00.000-08:00

We decided some weeks ago that we would watch an epic five hour movie called Carlos. We realized that we'd need to be bolstered by some serious food and wine. As the weather had reached an appropriate level of chilly cold, Sharon and Thom generously offered to serve us hot pot. I was so excited. In Malaysia, we have the same thing except it's called steamboat. Hot pot is a little like fondue except that food is cooked in a broth that's kept on a low simmer. Thom is pictured here in an action shot at the hot pot table.

Central to hot pot is, of course, the pot that keeps your broth good and hot. Sharon and Thom made a delicately flavoured chicken broth that was kept warm on top of the Storm Buster. I want a Storm Buster.

Equally important is the array of sauces to augment the bits you dip into the pot. From the top, moving clockwise: sesame oil, garlic, soy sauce with garlic greens, red miso paste and chili sauce. Thom hadn't brought out the raw eggs for dipping into just yet. If you're wondering, those are meatballs at the bottom right.

Of course, we're not all about the sauce. There were vegetables too. Bean sprouts, sui choy (also known as napa cabbage) and enoki mushrooms huddled together in the colander. They knew what was coming.

Fish balls, shrimp and fish balls, and raw shrimp, all ready for their bath in the hot pot.

Sharon kicked the cooking festivities off by dropping dried shiitake mushrooms that she had been soaking earlier into the hot pot.

We sat round the table and sipped plum wine and a green Portuguese wine Ciaran brought. This particular plum wine came in adorable little jars with a little plum to nibble on when the booze is gone.

Steam rolled up in little clouds, wafting the comforting scent of chicken broth and fogging the windows up.We readied ourselves for the first bits of food. Thom, Sharon and I cracked our eggs into little saucers.

Next, we dropped the fish balls, the shrimp and fish balls, the puffed tofu and some of the vegetables. And then we waited.

We watched with great anticipation as Thom fished out the first bits of food. Bliss. Loved every eggy, soy sauced, chili-ed, and sesame oil'd bite of hot pot.

Fortified thus with warm bellies and plum wine sweet in our mouths, we watched the first half of Carlos. Despite its length, it was undeniably riveting. I recommend it. Sharon and Thom - thank you for hot pot and your projector-friendly white wall.

Food for Cold Movember Nights - Roasted Spaghetti Squash Risotto

2010-11-25T07:53:00.000-08:00

Oh those cold, rattly, dark Movember nights. Are you one of those noble men who are growing a moustache for November? I tip my hat to you, sirs.

This post documents the life and times of a spaghetti squash that ended up in my kitchen. The squash arrived in magnificent form. It slept on the floor for several days before I posed it next to a Cambodian krama.

I put it in a 375 degree oven for about an hour and ten minutes. I saved its seeds. They were mixed with some olive oil, garlic powder, chili pepper and thyme. They roasted for about seven minutes. I shook them about and roasted them for another seven minutes. They were tasty. I had plans for the shells too.

Before I took a much needed afternoon nap, I scraped all the flesh out with a fork. The little tendrils of spaghetti squash tumbled into the waiting steel bowl. I recklessly left the bowl uncovered and took a nap.

I woke up several hours later and decided it was time for roasted spaghetti squash risotto. Using Biba Caggiano's recipe for roasted butternut squash risotto, I put six cups of Campbell's low-sodium chicken broth (the one that comes in the tetra box is pure genius) on to heat in a small pot. I minced up one small yellow onion and put that into a pot that was foaming with a tablespoon of butter mixed in with two tablespoons of olive oil. After the onion turned pale and soft, I added two cups of Arborio rice.

I stirred the rice until it was well coated with buttery onion. I didn't have any white wine on hand so I used a half cup of Noilly Prat. After that cooked off, I began adding the hot broth half a cup at a time, stirring until it was almost completely absorbed before adding another half cup for twelve minutes.

I added about two to three cups of the roasted squash in small batches. I continued to add half cups of broth, stirring until the squash was mixed in well. I grated half a teaspoon of nutmeg into the pot and added a one-third cup of chopped up goat cheese (I used up the last of le moutier I brought from Toronto). Biba's recipe called for Parmigiano-Reggiano, but as I can't eat that, I replaced it with goat cheese with great success. I tested for salt and finished the risotto with a small teaspoon of butter.

Ciaran honoured Biba by finding a languishing block of Parmigiano-Reggiano in the cheese box to enthusiastically grate over his bowl. I abandoned my plan to serve the risotto in the hollowed out shell and opted for golden bowls instead. The result? Deliciously velvety risotto; the depth of its flavour suitably darkened by the freshly grated nutmeg. Good cold Movember night food.

Smoking West Coast Salmon

2010-11-20T11:15:00.000-08:00

I confess that I entered into the salmon smoking experiment completely daft and ignorant about the mysteries of smoking fish. But I learned. I learned about brining. I learned about the difference between hot and cold smoked fish. I will share this with you in picture format.

I had a coho salmon. It needed to be smoked. I was going to hot smoke it. Hot smoking involves exposing the food to smoke and heat in a controlled environment. Cold smoking refers to the process of curing food with smoke in an environment that doesn't exceed 38 degrees Celsius. Both processes require brining (something between marinading and pickling) before you smoke the fish.

Dan was sweet enough to share his brine recipe with me. His recipe is based on his father's recipe. I added some things to it. The brine involved soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic, celery, bay leaf, salt, and brown sugar. I filleted the fish, dropped it into the brine and popped in the fridge to macerate for 12 hours. Use a non-reactive container like plastic or glass. You don't want to brine salmon for more than three days.

Early the next morning, I woke up and retrieved the fish from the brine. Some people suggest that you should air dry the fish in a cool place with good air flow (you can use a fan) for at least two to three hours so that the fish has time to form a pellicle. The pellicle is a lacquer-like surface that forms on the fish when it's air dried. It helps the smoke adhere to the fish. I was very sleepy at 6 am. I used paper towel. Elegant, I know.

We went outside to plug the smoker in and fill the pan with the cherry wood chips I bought the day before.

Then we put the fish on the smoking racks. I didn't bother to cut the belly bones away when I filleted the fish. The flesh around the belly is the most flavorful part of the fish. You can also tell by my shameless photograph that my filleting job was fairly brutal.

We popped the fish inside the smoker and shivered outside in the damp Victoria early morning.

It was too early in the morning to ponder the postcolonial complexities of smoking my fish in a smoker called the "Little Chief."

Dan told us not to open the smoker door for the first three hours. Every forty-five minutes, Nathan would run out to put more wood chips in the pan.

After nine hours, the fish was smoked. For a first attempt, it was pretty delicious. I tested it out on Sharon, Thomas (a post coming up about them!) and some others. They all agreed it was quite tasty. Sharon told me that her father once smoked an entire turkey. That inspired me. I'll have to do another hot smoking experiment again soon.

Toronto Foodie: Tamil Love Food and Chicken Masala

2010-11-16T14:06:00.000-08:00

The whole reason for the Toronto foodie post series is because of the people you see to your left. I went to Toronto to see Thanu and Sabesan get married. They were married in traditional Tamil Hindu style. They married for love.

Every culture I have encountered has an understanding about the linkage between food and love. It can be an expression of voodoo seduction between lovers, the nurturing demonstration of a loving parent, the happy medium at a meeting of friends, or the subject of a charitable act between strangers.

All I'm saying is that most of us can tell when food was cooked with love. It just tastes different. I had a friend who was a professional baker. She swore her bread always failed to rise or bake properly if she tried to bake after fighting with her lover. Maybe the bread just knew.

As per Hindu tradition, no meat or alcohol was served at Thanu and Sabesan's wedding feast. Meat and alcohol have long been considered to be things that pollute in the South Asian Hindu tradition. We were treated to a lovely vegetarian spread after what was maybe the shortest and most punctual Hindu wedding I've ever cried at. We were sent home with sweet little boxes of palaharams - Tamil sweetmeats. These were all made by hand by the women of the groom's and bride's family.

After the wedding, Sujith, Shanthi and my sisters decided to go to Sujith's family home for tea. We stopped at the Sri Lankan Quality Bakery in Markham. We happily bought up a lot of nice things for a proper Sri Lankan Tamil tea.

From the top right, moving clockwise: mutton rolls, masala vadai and fish patties, butter cake and panakai paniyaarum, and finally, fish buns. Delish. All in all, an excellent accoutrement for a fierce conversation about ethnicity and politics.

The newly married couple rashly promised to cook lunch for Shanthi, Sujith and me in their squeaky new apartment a scant two days after their marriage. It was actually quite an honour to be invited for lunch as this was the very first meal they cooked together in their new home. I arrived uncharacteristically early and watched the two of them cook together.

She chopped tomatoes for the tomato, red onion, coriander and green chili salad.

He industriously peeled hardboiled eggs and tended to the chicken masala on the stove.

As I idly sipped on mango juice mixed with perrier and watched them cook, my eye fell on a virgin jar of tamarind.

Tamarind is an amazing thing. You can make candy with it, shine brass with it, heal wounds with it, cook tasty curry with it, eat its green sour fruit from the tree, and as you see here, make a paste out of it for cooking purposes.

I'm not sure why Tamils never popped out an equivalent of George Washington Carver to do for tamarind what George did for peanuts.

Sabesan and Thanu cooked a lovely lunch that included the hardboiled eggs, spinach keera, tomato salad, rice, eggplant curry and ...

... a delectable chicken masala. Here's a recipe for Tamil love food.

Tamil Style Chicken Masala

1 pound of chicken cut into 2 inch square pieces
1 large onion chopped finely
2 tomatoes chopped into 1 inch dice
7 - 8 garlic cloves coarsely chopped
3 inch piece of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 or 2 dried red chilis
3 green chilis chopped into1/2 inch rounds
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon red chili powder
1 rounded teaspoon coriander powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon garam masala
1/2 teaspon turmeric powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds
6 - 7 curry leaves
1/2 teaspoon black mustard seeds
reserve Jaffna/Sri Lankan style curry powder
1 tablespoon of curd or Balkan style yoghurt
Salt - as per your taste

Method:

1. Heat the oil in a deep cooking pan over a medium to high heat. Add the black mustard seeds. When they start popping, throw in the red chili, cumin seeds and curry leaves. If you have fennel seeds, chuck in about a 1/4 teaspoon for bit more flavour. Don't break the dried chilis unless you like hot curry.

2. Reduce the heat to medium. Add the onion and fry until translucent. Add the ginger and garlic and fry until everything is well browned. Be brave. Allow your onions to turn a brownish colour. This is key in most Tamil curry making. If you like your masala spicy, add your green chilis now. Add a small quantity of salt (1/4 teaspoon).

3. Turn the heat up and add the chicken pieces, add turmeric powder and another 1/4 of salt. Turmeric must be treated almost like a raw vegetable and cooked to develop its flavour. Add the rest of your powdered spices: coriander, cinnamon, cumin, and garam masala. Fry the spices well but take care not to burn them. If need be, add a tiny bit of water.

4. After no more than 3 minutes, add the chopped tomatoes and mix until the chicken is gloriously coated in masala. If you didn't throw your green chili in earlier, add it in now. Add the curd/yoghurt and two cups of water to the pot.

5. Turn the heat down to medium. Let the masala cook for 15-20 minutes with the lid on. Stir the masala once in a while.

6. When the chicken is almost done cooking (the time for this will depend on your chicken, your stove and your pot), remove the lid and raise the heat. The object is to evaporate all excess water so that you end up with a lovely dry curry

7. Lower the heat when the gravy level drops, and do your level best to ensure the curry doesn't scorch. Some of my friends prefer more gravy with their masala, so if you're a gravy lover, don't feel pressured to cook the masala all the way down. Near the end of the cooking, test again for salt and for curry level. If you need more pow, add a bit more curry powder and cook for a few minutes more.

Note: I've read some blogs written by people who insist that true South Asians don't use curry powder. I resent that. Having lived among Tamils, and grown up with Sri Lankan Tamils, I can assure you that we use curry powder. Not all curry powders are created alike. Buy a good one and be wary of the sorts that are cut with rice flour or are made with spices that should have been thrown away. Ditto for your spices. Use good quality spices that haven't been sitting on a shelf for ages. Your taste buds will love you for it.

Toronto Foodie: Guu Izakaya and Two Asian Girls

2010-11-10T11:13:00.000-08:00

After rushing about to the various markets in Toronto, I met Angelica at the College subway. As we walked to Guu Izakaya, I found myself wishing again I had remembered gloves.

The moment we entered, we were greeted with a raucous welcome from the Guu Izakaya staff at the dimly lit Church street location.

Angelica and I have known each other for a long time and share a mutual love of good food and a reluctance to have our pictures taken. This picture is just how we love it. Blurred and indistinct.

If I could pinpoint where my generally sensible diet went off the rails in Toronto, Guu Izakaya would be it.

Angelica is a serious foodie and something of a food snob. She was photographing food long before it ever occurred to me to do so. She's one of those friends you might not see for years, but the minute you see each other again, you pick up right where you left off.

After re-establishing that I trust her, she proceeded to order our dinner. I sipped on a drink called Bamboo and watched the chefs behind the counter.

We started with gomaae. The spinach was perfectly cooked and bathed with black sesame dressing. Many restaurants offer gomaae with white sesame dressing, but after tasting this dressing, I concede that the dark earthy flavour of black sesame adds depth and nuance that its lighter counterpart lacks. After we politely shared this gomaae that either of us could have easily devoured on our own, I swore a solemn oath to myself that I would attempt to replicate this dish at home.

That was followed with kurage - marinated jellyfish and glass noodle salad. Imagine something like a sunomono salad, minus the vinegary flavour. This salad was characterized by sharp, fresh and unmuddled flavours that did not compete with the delicate taste of jellyfish. Another winner.

At this point, I ordered another drink to fortify myself. I vaguely regretted eating two pakoras on Gerrard Street earlier that day. I should have fasted all day for this. Kurage was followed by oden - a Japanese winter dish of various items cooked in a light dashi broth. Dashi is a type of cooking broth or soup that serves as a building block for tons of recipes.

This particular pot of oden was filled with bamboo shoot, egg, radish, squid and fish cake, puffed fish cake, deep fried tofu, fish cake, and taro jelly. The egg was a bit overcooked for my taste but I loved the fish cakes and the broth. The bill referred to this dish as moriawase. I thought this was interesting because moriawase refers to a celebratory display of sashimi or other food that's artistically arranged.

No celebratory dinner with Angelica is complete without fried chicken - in this case, chicken karaage. Angelica is a serious lover of fried chicken. Prizing flavour above the mainstream preference for white meat, Guu Izakaya used succulent chicken thighs to create a karaage with a lovely crisp outside and a moist, perfectly cooked interior. They got extra points from me for adding a decent little dollop of respectable tasting garlic-flavoured mayo for dipping. I'm an unrepentant lover of mayonnaise.

I'll confess that by this point, my stamina was flagging. I nibbled a bit on the karaage, but when I saw the sashimi salad, I dove in. Laced with wasabi mayo, the dish was a riot of colour and texture. The fish and seafood was surprisingly fresh. As a coastal dweller, I'm always suspicious of sushi that's served at any land-locked location. Huge lakes do not count.

In Japan, an izakaya is a bar where people go after work to unwind with the assistance of booze and bits of food to nibble. Guu Izakaya is client-focused. The service was courteous and prompt. The kitchen staff were delightful. I enjoyed the long benches and decor.

Angelica, thoughtful dove that she is, remembered to order my kakimayo (oyster grilled with spinach and garlic mayo) without cheese.

My oyster looked enormous next to Angelica's cheese-covered oyster. Perhaps the chefs felt sorry for me having to miss out on the wonders of grilled cheese.

Kakimayo was delightfully creamy with a perfectly cooked oyster nestled inside. I could eat a good number of these quite happily.

The pièce de résistance came in the form of black sesame ice cream. They thoughtfully included two scoops for us even though I insisted I was about to die from surfeit and an impending allergic reaction. Angelica insisted I sample this. I caved. I scraped the tiniest bit of the ice cream onto the tip of my teaspoon. I didn't regret caving. Silky smooth, the sultry sweetness of black sesame fulsomely spread itself over my tongue.

At two drinks apiece and a slew of delicious dishes that left us completely satiated and in dire need of a walk, the bill was actually quite reasonable. Guu Izakaya has multiple locations in Vancouver and Toronto. It does get busy, so either make a reservation or show up around 5 pm to avoid waiting in line.

Toronto Foodie: The Things Luscious Domestic Bought

2010-11-06T11:55:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder why your dates are sold with that plastic stick in the middle?

For a foodie with diverse tastes, Toronto is a marvellous place to shop in. From the South Asian shops on Gerrard Street to the vast varieties of produce in the St. Lawrence Market, the fine bread in Little Italy or the Quebecois cheeses of the Distillery District, one only needs a fistful of cash and a large suitcase to lug the treasures home.

First stop: Gerrard Street. Also known as Little India, rumour has it that it's being taken over by Tamils. Being Tamil myself, it seemed like a logical thing to check it out. I couldn't resist fresh dates for $3.99 a pound. Fresh dates are surprisingly good with Hendricks gin.

After picking up some fresh curry leaves I vowed to dry later, I hopped back onto the public limo and wended my way up to the St. Lawrence Market.

Curry leaves are instrumental in southern Indian and Sri Lankan cooking. Curry powder is not made with curry leaves. When they're fresh, they have an aromatic, distinct tannic scent that's unique to the leaf. The Toronto foodie series will have a feature on Tamil love food. Curry leaves will definitely be included.

Lugging my bag of fruit, curry leaves and some miscellaneous steel cookingware I picked up in Little India, walked past the Sultan's Tent and Cafe Maroc (a great place to eat in Toronto) and finally arrived at the St. Lawrence Market.

I was a little pinched for time. I was supposed to meet an old friend for dinner in less than an hour at Guu Izakaya. I had just enough time to wander for a little bit.

The St. Lawrence Market has been around for over 200 years. It is primarily known for its fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses and other fine produce.

After longingly eyeing cataracts of jewel-toned fruit and conceding I could only purchase something small, I came across a stand that specialized in selling only mustard and horseradish.

The word "mustard" comes from the Middle English word "mustarde" which means condiment. Although mustard was first cultivated in India around 3000 BC, Canada now produces 90 per cent of the world's mustard and has the world's oldest mustard mill.

I picked up some eye-watering horseradish whose pungency won me over at first taste.

The proprietor gave me some good advice. Always store your horseradish upside down on its lid. It retains its pungency much longer this way, and lasts for about three to four months in the fridge.

A few days later, I recklessly purchased four types of goat cheese in the Distillery District.

I was so excited to share the cheese when I arrived home that I forgot to photograph them before we opened them up.

However, here are the four types: ash-cured Fromages Chaput Prestige, le Moutier, Fleur des Monts and la tomme du Haut-Richelieu. All from Quebec, all entirely amazing.

Le Moutier is my favourite with its sweet, grassy taste. It's made in the only cheese dairy in North America that's run by Benedictine monks.

The final foodie damage was committed at an unassuming Turkish bakery. There was a marvellous assortment of baklava, pastries and cookies, but as I can't eat them, I settled on lokum.

Three kinds of lokum, to be precise. All delicately flavoured, not too sweet and not too starchy. Lokum is known by many names across the Middle East, Central Asia and Southern Europe.

The sort pictured here are not the jelly-like soft and saccharine squares of Turkish Delight you might find in a North American candy shop. These pieces were almost too beautiful to share. Thanks to Gokhan and Heather for gifting an entire bagful of these to me.

Toronto. How I love your foodie friendly shops.

Toronto Foodie: Ian's Delicious Retro Popcorn

2010-11-02T11:38:00.000-07:00

I recently went to Toronto to see a friend get married. Along the way, I visited other friends and indulged in Toronto's culinary offerings.

Of all the places I've lived in Canada, Ontario wins the prize for the loveliest fall. Ontario experiences autumn in a vast array of piquant scarlet, orange, yellow and faded green hues just as Victoria experiences spring in every shade of pink imaginable.

On precisely such a day like this, I made my way to Ian and Maggie's house. They live on a quiet Toronto street that's lined with late 19th century row houses that look very much like the ones in this photograph.

I should note that lugging a small suitcase filled with gift jars of peach marmalade I made this summer and bottles of raki is not the best idea on the subway.

I should also note that I should have brought a pair of gloves. Despite the sun, it was nippy that morning.

Since I was feeling chilled, Ian made tea for me and coffee for himself on the vintage gas stove.

I admired the shelves of legumes and spices while the coffee pot burbled away on the stove.

Ian is a fabulous cook. Creative and unfettered by convention, he whips up amazing dishes at a moment's notice. He also bakes impressive bread. Ian always sighs with regret when I reluctantly pass up opportunities to sample his baked wares. Wheat allergy. What can I say.

It just so happened to be Ian's birthday when I was visiting. After a day of me running about, we celebrated that evening in simple style with some of the fresh dates I bought and a gin or two.

In the middle of a conversation about the mayoral election in Toronto, Ian hopped up from the table and found the mason jar full of popcorn kernels. Little did I know what was in store for me.

My transition to accepting a wider range of what could be loosely called "health foods" (I quibble about this term. That's another post, however.) or hippy food has been slow, at best. However, due to people like Ian and Ciaran with vegetarian leanings, the transition has been accelerated. Sure, I've eaten things like tofu for decades, but that's because my parents grew up in Malaysia. Back to the popcorn.

Ian stove-popped the corn, tossed it into a bowl, and after sprinkling the snowy kernels with some olive oil, he dressed it with nutritional yeast. Yes. What had been all the rage in the 1970s and 80s was well and alive in Ian's kitchen.

Before you revolt and stop reading because the notion of yeast in anything except your bread is too disgusting for you, let me sing paens to popcorn that has this unfortunately named substance on it. With this yeast, the ordinary flavour of buttered popcorn transforms into something utterly divine; it has all the bite and sharpness of cheese, the nose parmesan presents, an ever so slightly nutty taste, a slightly rounded finish, and yes, I fell in love immediately with it. The ancient Egyptians loved it. So do I.

Ian's Delicious Retro Popcorn

1/4 cup popcorn kernels
Olive oil
Paprika
Nutritional yeast
Salt

1. Add enough oil to cover the bottom of a medium-sized sauce pan with a lid that fits well. Swirl the oil around. Add a 1/4 cup of popcorn kernels to the pot. Cover the pot and put the pot over a medium to high flame. If you have an air popper, use it. The stove top method is more useful for entertaining your friends with your culinary showmanship.

2. Shake the pot occasionally to prevent the kernels from burning and to keep things circulating. As you near the end, shake the pot more frequently and listen for the sounds of popping that's slowing down. Depending on your stove, this could happen a bit more quickly or a bit more slowly.

3. Dump the popcorn into a good-sized bowl. Drizzle the popcorn lightly with olive oil, moving the popcorn about to ensure even coverage. Don't go too crazy with the oil.

4. Start with a generous handful of nutritional yeast and break the flakes up in your hand as you sprinkle it over the popcorn. Season with paprika to taste. I'd suggest this involves about a 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of paprika. Add a bit of salt and a few grinds of pepper. Thyme is also surprisingly good.

5. Taste your popcorn. If a bit more salt, pepper, yeast or paprika is necessary, drizzle a tiny bit more oil over the popcorn and add what's necessary. Then let me know how much you love it.

For my Victoria readers, nutritional yeast can be purchased at the Market on Yates in the bulk food section. Nutritional yeast has the bonus of being a low-fat, low-sodium, kosher, non-GMO food.

Crisp Coconut Cookies

2010-10-29T12:16:00.000-07:00

I dream of convection ovens the way some people dream of Bugatti Veyrons or Mazarati cars. The perfection realized in the way a Veyron hugs the road at high speeds is similarly attained in the perfection of baked goods that come from a convection oven. How does this occur, you might ask. If you've ever lived somewhere like Winnipeg, you understand wind chill. The genius of the convection oven lies in its use of the same physical phenomenon. It seems fitting that I should love something that harnesses the powers of a force that made me suffer for the powers of good.

My regular oven!

You may have gathered by now that I do not have a convection oven. There's a good chance you probably don't have one either. Never fear, it is still possible to bake lovely cookies in the regular sort of oven too! The secret to lovely, crumbly cookies with even edges is butter. How you handle the butter is critical to luscious cookie success.

First, make sure your butter is fresh. Like bread, butter can go stale, especially if it's exposed in your refrigerator. Butter should be about 65 degrees before you cream it with sugar. That means it's cool to the touch (and will take an imprint of your finger), but easy to spread. If it gets any warmer, you start messing with its delicate emulsion and then it's game over. The whole point of keeping butter cool is so that it can maintain structure for you.

If your butter melts, don't try re-freezing the butter and starting again. You can use this destroyed butter for frying potatoes. Lastly, keep your dough cool. Don't work it too much with your warm hands (people with permanently cold hands like mine, rejoice, for you have found a calling in forming cookies). If it seems to be warming up, put it in the freezer to cool it down.

Crisp Coconut Cookies

125 g butter (one stick)
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg
pinch salt
2 cups rice flour
1 cup dessicated coconut
extra sugar

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

2. Cream the butter in a bowl for approximately three minutes. The object of this game is to beat air bubbles into the butter. The baking powder will only work to expand these existing bubbles. If you're using an electric mixer, don't go past medium speed because otherwise, your butter will heat up.

3. Add in the sugar and beat until just combined. Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and mix.

4. Take two or three tablespoons of sugar and spread it around in a small saucer. Take a teaspoon of the dough and roll it into a ball between the palms of your hands.

5. Flatten the dough to about 1/4 inch thickness. Dip one side of the cookie into the sugar. Place cookie, sugar side up, on a greased baking tray. You can avoid the grease by using Silpat.

6. Bake for 10 - 15 minutes on the middle rack. Gently loosen the baked cookies on the tray while still warm.

This is my favourite cookies to nibble while it's still warm, accompanied with a cup of tea. Do you have a favourite cookie? Let me know what it is :)

(yield 40)

Pickled beets and quilts

2010-10-10T23:26:00.000-07:00

I had just finished photographing the newly completed sun-bathed back of my quilt when Tooley mentioned his recent batch of pickled beets.

I was moonlighting as a quilter at Tooley's family home in the posh 10 Mile Point area of Victoria. It's one of the times I get to vicariously enjoy the perks of being a propertied dog owner who lives out by the seaside. But back to the beets.

Beets. How I adore their shades of red and pink, their delectable candied texture when roasted, and their iron-y twang on my tongue after eating the second beet. I promise, absolutely promise to share my roasted beet salad with chevre and candied pecans with you. And a killer Tamil recipe for shredded beet called poriyal.

Tooley's pickled beets are a marvel of unconventionally canned perfection. Sweet and sour with a perfectly toothsome bite, they were too pretty to pass up for a photo op.

After nibbling on pickled beets, I finished photographing the top bit of my quilt. The quilt is a two year labour of love; it's made up of bits of fabric I picked up on my travels. I refuse to accept that quilting is an acceptable activity for middle aged ladies and grandmas. Quilting is a meditative exercise in discerning the algorithm of colours between pieces of cotton; mustering the precision and focus required for sewing the perfect 1/4 inch seam and cutting fabric.

Easy Peasy Pickled Beets

2 bunches small beets – scrub and trim ends
4 small onions – slice and separate rings
1/2 cup liquid set aside from boiled beets
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup honey
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves

Add just enough water to cover the beets and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to a moderate setting boil for about 40 minutes. Add the onion slices and boil for another 5 minutes.

Drain out the beets and onions, and save a 1/2 cup of the liquid that you boiled them in.

Set the beets and onions aside, add the liquid, vinegar, salt, cinnamon, cloves and honey to a sauce pan and bring it to a boil.

Peel your beets and slice according to preference. Place the beets in a sanitized jar and pour the liquid over top. Leave them in the fridge for at least two days. The beets will keep for several months.

Special credit to Megan for sharing this recipe.

Orange Peel Liqueur

2010-10-09T20:18:00.000-07:00

One of the legacies of my time spent as a sous chef is the pleasure I derive from a perfectly peeled apple or potato. There's something smugly satisfactory about a long unbroken line of curling peel. Maybe this is the closest I'll ever get to the sort of superior triumph one experiences after buying a Prius.

I experienced this sense of accomplishment a month ago when I peeled five oranges for my orange peel liqueur experiment. As I coiled the long peels into the jar in preparation for their meeting with 750 ml of vodka, I realized this marriage should be cemented with cloves.

The humble clove no longer gets the respect it once did. They are indigenous to what was once called the Spice Islands (now called the Malukus - a post about my trip there earlier this year is forthcoming). For well over a millenia, cloves were highly prized in Africa, Asia and Europe for their medicinal and aesthetic properties. Entire sultanates crumbled on account of these little flower buds. I considered the clove-studded orange pomander. Ten cloves were dropped into the jar.

I posed my orange liqueur next to the Hungarian pear liqueur I'm trying out this weekend. The pear liqueur is ambrosial and rounded without being cloying. However, the ingredient list does not inspire confidence.

Feeling somewhat concerned about the time I might have to invest in filtering the orange peel liqueur (it took me 12 hours to filter the cherry liqueur), I started the process off by straining the liqueur using cheesecloth. My friend finished this step off by testing his death grip on the peel-filled cheesecloth.

On the subject of orange peels, when you peel your oranges, use a vegetable peeler. The object is to avoid including the white pith as much as possible because the pith will impart bitterness to the liqueur.

I briefly considered filtering with paper towel but that felt like cheating. I can't even change hairdressers; it feels so much like cheating to me. I resigned myself to the rigors of the coffee filter.

Miraculously, it only took two hours to filter the entire jar, make one cup of simple syrup and mix the syrup in with the final product (I heated 1 cup of white sugar and 1/2 cup of water until it just barely boiled. Cool it down before adding).

Now, the wait recommences. Generally, a month is required to introduce citrus to liquor, and after filtering, the liqueur should age at least two months. The longer you wait, the better it gets.