marmalade jar

pickles - yum

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 18:18:56 -0400

Roasted Egglplant with Honey, Lemon and Za'atar

Mon, 14 May 2012 00:02:09 -0400

Roasted Eggplant with Honey, Lemon and Za’atar

Za’atar is sometimes available in specialty stores, or you can make your own. Combine 2 tbsp each dried oregano, thyme and sumac, 1 tbsp each toasted sesame seeds and marjoram and ½ teaspoon salt. Crush lightly in a mortar and pestle, or give a quick whiz in a mini-chopper. Store in a sealed container.

2 large eggplants, sliced into 1/2-in rounds

¼ cup olive oil

½ tsp kosher salt

freshly ground pepper, to taste

1 small clove garlic, finely minced

1 tsp za’atar

2 tbsp liquid honey

juice of half a lemon

¼ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley

Preheat oven to 390 degrees F. Arrange eggplant slices in a single layer on a large baking sheet or two smaller ones. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt, pepper, garlic and za’atar. Roast for about 30 minutes, or until golden brown.

Drizzled honey and squeeze lemon juice over hot eggplant. Sprinkle with parsley, and serve.

Serves 4 people.

M's Day Musings

Sun, 13 May 2012 09:58:52 -0400

It’s Mother’s Day and I can’t help but think of the women in my family and our complicated, passionate relationship with food.

My only grandmother, who died when I was 14, fully understood the power of food. At 240 pounds, you could see she was a lady who knew how to love what she ate! But that wasn’t all she knew. From the cheesecakes she churned out at our restaurant to the cabbage rolls she whipped up on weekends, my grandmother was a serious cook, and just about everything she touched turned to culinary gold.

During the dark winters of my Edmonton childhood, when my parents went on vacation, Baba Sarah would come to take care of us. I don’t know what time she got up to bake her porridge bread – a dark sweet loaf made with oatmeal and molasses – but it was always ready before school. My sisters and I would get out of bed and swoon from the smell, running down to the kitchen in our nightgowns where Baba would cut us thick steamy slices, heavy with melting butter.

In the summertime, I would help her roll out the dough for veranykas. Carefully, we would spoon in wild blueberries and sugar, then pinch each pouch closed and drop it into boiling water. You have never tasted blueberries until you’ve had them intense and molten, squirting into your mouth from the centre of a hot veranyka.

There were more delights: blintzes fried crisp in butter; potato knishes baked in a flaky crust. And her cinnamon buns? Studded with nuts and drenched in caramel, they were so sticky you needed to keep a damp cloth nearby.

Most of these pleasure were lost on my own mother, Sarah’s youngest daughter. To her I think my baba’s prodigious culinary output was overwhelming — even embarrassing — as she associated all that cooking with her mother’s girth, which was a mild source of shame for her.

Not surprisingly, my mother came of age and forged her own path - distinct and different from her mother’s. Sort of. She studied food science in school, and went on to work briefly as a registered dietitian. Like many of the women of her time, my mom quit her job the day she got married, but she put her education and considerable intelligence to good use in her role as a mother, feeding us four girls carefully. Way ahead of her time, my mother worried endlessly about carbs and fat - both the kind in your diet and the kind on your hips. She put us kids on skim milk, and served a lot of lean-steak-and-salad meals. Like her mother, she used food to express her love, but differently.

My three sisters and I are as obsessed with food as our mother and grandmother. We love to eat, to cook, to share recipes, ideas and food memories.

It would be logical to think this sensitivity toward food has been learned… and maybe it has. But I look to my own daughter, who can taste when I’ve made her scrambled egg with salted butter instead of her preferred unsalted, and last week detected the flavour of orange blossom water in cookies my sister brought over, and I feel pretty sure our family foodiness is actually bread in the bone.

maple taffy

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:37:14 -0500

Smoky BBQ'd Stew

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 13:07:00 -0500

Last fall, I took my two adorable parents up to our cottage. They are not young, and our cottage is very rustico, so this was a big event.

I had planned everything carefully - putting them in my bedroom because it is on the main floor instead of down a somewhat treacherous set of stairs - and of course bringing all the groceries and figuring out the meals ahead of time. We watched the weather carefully, too, because I wanted it to be sunny and warm for what could end up being their only visit.

We arrived and it was lovely outside, so they decided they wanted to walk the 100 stairs (yes, really 100 - my kids have counted) down to the dock. As the sun went down over the lake, we started the climb back up to the cabin. It took a while - a long while - and lots of rest stops, but we made it.

Time to start dinner. I had planned a simple veal stew, with a base of onions, carrots and celery, veal pieces seasoned and lightly floured, and some stock, herbs and wine for simmering. Easy peasy. Cottagey. What I didn’t plan was for a big wind to blow in and knock the power out.

Ok, no problem. The power is always going out at the cottage. It was only about 7, so we took out some cheeses and olives, and the frozen bottle of Grey Goose, and we sat on the deck playing cards for a while.

By 9, the power was not on, and I started to worry. My mom was lobbying hard for a trip into town and a restaurant meal. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but the restaurants at the cottage are just so bad. And my dad and I were up for an adventure.

So I went into the cabin for a bag of charcoal, and we started up the old Weber. When the coals were glowing, I dumped them out of the chimney, and put an old Dutch oven over the BBQ grate. I threw in a messy mirpoix, then I browned the meat. In went the stock, the wine, the herbs, and a handful of olives since they were already out. I resisted the urge to add vodka.

I was worried the coals wouldn’t generate enough heat, so I kept the lid on while the stew simmered. At about 10:30, we decided to try it.

I ran into the cabin again for plates, and fleece jackets for all of us, and a few candles. We dined there, at an old wooden picnic table, high above the lake. The stew was steaming hot, and tender, and the most smoky, delicious mixture we had ever tasted.

The power came back on in time to do the dishes.

My rustico cabin in the woods.

Don't throw out those pumpkin seeds!

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 08:47:12 -0400

The are delicious, and good for you. And the smell of them roasting is what fall is all about!

Sweet and spicy pumpkin seeds

Whisk one egg white in a large bowl until foamy. Add 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper and mix until combined. Add two cups pumpkin seeds and toss until the seeds are coated. Tip the contents of the bowl onto a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Roast in the oven at 325 F for 30-45 minutes, gently mixing and breaking up the seeds every 10 minutes or so.

jelly and butter - finally

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 15:45:18 -0400

It’s hard to keep up the discipline of blogging. Maybe that’s super obvious, but that doesn’t make it less true. It’s a lot like working out.

Here is the jelly I was working on a little while ago:

Isn’t it jewel-like and gor-g-ous? The flavour is crisp, sweet, clean and, to me, sort of old country, if you get that reference point at all? Of course that’s totally subjective and no doubt due to the fact that my grandmother made crabapple jelly.

Nevertheless.

The butter is softer in colour and flavour:

It is 100 percent wonderful because you make it using the pulp leftover from the jelly, it takes about 10 minutes, and my children adore it.

I can post recipes if you want.

crabapple extravaganza

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:36:17 -0400

Finally, those poor crabbies waiting in my fridge got hauled out, quartered, tossed into a big pot and covered with cold water. They simmered away until they gave up all their rosy pink juice, and they started to fall apart - maybe an hour? Then their juice was strained out with cheesecloth (to catch every seed and stem). Now it looks like this:

But I didn’t throw away the pulp, and I usually do. (Yes, OK, compost I mean.) Today I saved it, because my sister said you can turn it into apple butter. Free apple butter! I love the whole use-the-by-product thing. So here is the pulp I’m going to turn into apple butter:

I’m pulling out my potato ricer, because that’s what my sister said to use. My sister - what a gal!

Stay tuned and I’ll let you know how the jelly and butter come out.

up too early

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 07:00:00 -0400

I guess being able to get up really early could be looked at as a blessing or a skill, but if you do it all the time, if you can’t help it, if you go to bed praying the clock will pass 5 am before you look at it again, it can be a bit of a curse.

I’m trying to learn to look at it differently.

It’s important to try to spend that first hour or so doing something pleasant, with a clean mind. I don’t mean that as opposed to a “dirty mind,” (he he), I mean that you don’t come into your new day dredging up all the garbage you were feeling and worrying about the day before. Fresh thoughts! A fresh attitude!

It’s easier said than done.

I read recently that every sixty seconds you spend with your eyes closed is one minute less you have to fill your life with light. I’m going to try looking at my sleep problems that way from now on.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, I hope to have my work done today so tomorrow I can move on to crab-apple jelly and apple butter. Now that’s a happy thought.

Rabbit Weekend

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 11:03:00 -0400

The weekend that just passed was so beautiful, it was almost hard to bear. The leaves really seemed to glow gold as we drove down the winding road to the cottage, and even the very rustic aspects of our cabin (quirky bathroom, lakewater kitchen with no dishwasher, primitive heat) were adorable in the warm autumn sun. I cooked and cooked - short ribs, candied squash, blue plum tart, eggs ‘n chili and… rabbit. Yes, I bought a whole rabbit and cut it up the way we learned in culinary school (with a book on the side to help me). It was quite terrifying but in the most wonderful way. It was fun! It was exciting! It helped rekindle my curiosity and sense of adventure in the kitchen, which was a bit depleted from a heavy week of work.

Perhaps more amazing, my kids were totally into the rabbit adventure. We braised it in stock, balsamic vinegar, cranberries, thyme, green olives, walnut oil, onions… and when I mentioned that I’d learned in culinary school that you should cook a forest animal with stuff he might himself eat, my son pointed out that we had to add carrots. So carrots.

I served the rabbit over orzo, to soak up the incredible braising liquid, which was like a thin gravy. I couldn’t stop thinking about the stories of Rick Bass, an author we used to love. I felt like I was inside one of his books. It felt great.

Next time, I’ll take a picture of the rabbit to post here. I was too surprised by this whole first episode to remember to capture it.

Meanwhile, check out Rick Bass.

the point of taking pics

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:11:00 -0400

After a phenomenal summer of travel and BIG milestone events, I’m thinking a lot about photographs and why we take them. We take them to remember, right? To capture, hang on a bit. Stop time.

Of course we can’t stop time.

I have two sets of beautiful photographs from my big summer. They need to be organized into albums, stories, linear timelines. I love to look at these photos, but each time I pull them out, I’ve drifted further and further away from the stopped point in time when they were taken. I find this obvious little bit of truth so poignant and bittersweet, I don’t know how I’m going to get these albums done.

And then I wonder if I even need to. Because it seems to me that once you’ve seen a photo of your experience, the image becomes a part of your visual memory, and the moment become solidified in your mind. Digging up the photos themselves becomes redundant.

Here’s one I’m sure to remember now that I’ve over-thought all of this today:

The photo is only visual, but now I am thinking about exactly how it felt to ride camels in the desert in August with my kids. The smell of the hot air. The taste of the Bedouin dinner that night. And the surprisingly frightening height of these camels!

snowstorm eats

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 08:38:00 -0500

around a week ago i made these chicken pot pies. after having lots of very bad chic-p-pies — freezer burned, drowned in cream, raw in pastry, soggy, tasteless - i decided i should know what they could taste like, so i gave it a whirl. it wasn’t hard work but it took a bit o love. key details: the chicken for the filling was a combo of white and dark meat, roasted first in the oven and then sauteed with leeks, carrots, celery, and folded into what was basically a veloute sauce; 2) i went all butter for the crust and didn’t look back; 3) coarse salt and pepper sprinkled over the crust = delicious. there is nothing but snow out there this morning and all i can think is how i wish i had more of these pies to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner in front of a roaring fire, with a crisp white wine.

jamie o. how can you not respond to him? you might not agree...

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:46:00 -0500

jamie o. how can you not respond to him? you might not agree with everything he says, or the way he works facts to promote his agenda, but what an agenda. isn’t food the very essence of our lives? aren’t kids - and everyone else - entitled to real food, honestly, simply, and deliciously prepared? he is against fast food for sure, but he’s not saying we all need to be eating flavourless non-fat, no-salt, specially formulated cardboard, either. he deserves the TED prize, for making “what’s for dinner?” the most important question you ask today.

salted caramel redux: left the extra caramel in the fridge...

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:00:00 -0500

salted caramel redux: left the extra caramel in the fridge overnight and then smashed it into toffee pieces. yum.

the marmalade chronicles

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:11:00 -0500

it started mid-january. i don’t know where the craving came from, but suddenly, winter had me really wanting bitter orange. not a week later, i found the first marmalade oranges in the stores. i have lots of experience with canning but none with marmalade, which is much more complex than ordinary jam. i started searching for the best recipe. there was this one:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/annas-orange-marmalade-recipe/index.html from the barefoot contessa, but all of the posts said it was too bitter and beside, i wanted to use real seville oranges.

so i made nigel slater’s real british marmalade:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/25/seville-orange-marmalade-recipe

it took two days but paid me back with tons of zing - bitter, sour, sticky sweet marmalade with all the of toothsome peel i wanted. it made my tongue tingle. i liked it but i worried it would be too bracing for anyone else.

a few days later, blood oranges were on special. i watched preserve queen june taylor on chowhound http://www.chow.com/stories/10695 and got to work. (the squeezing out of the pectin is as weird and fun as it looks). the blood orange marmalade was sweeter, the peel a bit softer, the colour gorgeous. next i’d like to try meyer lemons.

salted caramels

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:12:00 -0500

a sunny sunday morning in search of a project - fudge is what we choose. not maple, not chocolate, nobody wants peanut butter… real caramel? yes. with fleur de sel? yes.

everything goes swimmingly. melt the sugar until it’s golden but not burnt: check. add the cream: check. butter, salt, yup, check. we cook it to soft ball and take it off the heat. that’s when i notice the unopened bottle of corn syrup. oops. we add it, rewarm the mix and cool as directed. everything looks fine but of course i’m so busted when i started to beat. fudge is supposed to lose its gloss. this caramel mixture just gets shinier and very stretchy. i pour it into the lined pan and sprinkle salt on top. it never gets fully firm but instead has the texture of real caramels. chewy. buttery. better than anything you can buy. better than fudge. i cut into squares and dip a few in melted dark chocolate (properly tempered, of course - one miss is enough for one day). the rest i wrap into parchment paper squares like the old fashioned, all natural confections you buy at sees candies in the states. i send a bag of ‘em home with my university kid, going back after reading week. the rest will brighten school lunches and cold winter evenings until they’re all gone.