Though it didn’t start out that way, this week’s Meatless Monday dinner ended up being an incongruous amalgamation of several ideas and recipes.

Firstly, I wanted something relatively quick that wouldn’t heat up the kitchen too much.  That immediately put my original plan of revisiting last week’s awesome potato salad out of the running because the spuds needed to be oven roasted.

Next, I considered peas because I’d spent all that time shucking 2 quarts of them on Sunday, so I might as well use them before they went bad.

From there my mind wandered to risotto, and initially settled on a light spring pea and parmagiano version.

But before long I started to recall the delightfully nutty braised fennel I’d made courtesy of a Serious Eats recipe (initially sampled for a pared down version of the pizza minus anisette cream, which by the way makes one outstanding pie!).

The dish began shaping up into a pea and braised fennel risotto with shavings of parmagiano.  But then I realized I’d need stock or broth to cook the risotto, but the most recent batch of veggie stock I’d made was much too rich and dark for such a delicately flavoured dish.

Which is about when I serendipitously recalled the quarts of frozen tomato water the Everyman had lovingly prepared for us last fall.  I knew the water was all I would need to round out the meal.  If you’ve never tried tomato water before, it’s like the purest, cleanest, faintly tinged essence of tomato, without all of those messy skins and seeds.

With a clear direction formulated in my mind, I began braising the sliced fennel bulb in a small amount of olive oil and veggie stock.  Meanwhile, I sweat onion and garlic in another pan with more olive oil, then added the arborio and stirred to coat.  Slowly I ladled alternating scoops of tomato water and regular water into the pot of rice and kept stirring until the liquid was absorbed.  Once the risotto was just about ready I poured in a shower of raw peas and stirred until they were well incorporated, but also slightly cooked by the heat of the risotto.  The braised fennel went in next, along with some seasoning by way of parmagiano and peppercorns.

It might not have been the idea I’d started with, but this faintly rose tinged risotto was just what I was looking for.

Foodie’s Tomato, Pea And Fennel Risotto

1 onion, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic

3 c. tomato water*

3 c. water

2 c. arborio rice

1 fennel bulb, sliced

1 c. peas, shelled

0.25 c. vegetable stock

parmagiano

olive oil

pepper

In a hot pan, lightly saute the sliced fennel in a little olive oil until it begins to caramelize, shaking occasionally to brown all sides.  After 7-8 minutes, add the vegetable stock to the pan and cover with a lid, then lower heat to medium low and cook for an additional 7-10 minutes or until the fennel has absorbed the stock and softened completely, then remove from heat.  In a medium pot add a splash of olive oil and heat until shimmering.  Add the chopped onion and garlic and stir frequently.  Once translucent, add the arborio rice to the pot and stir to coat the grains with oil, reducing heat to medium.  Working with about a half cup at a time, add alternating ladles of warmed tomato water and stock to the pan, stirring until each ladle of liquid is absorbed.  After approximately 20 minutes, the risotto should be nearly done, so gently stir in the shelled peas and incorporate the braised fennel.  Shave generous amounts of parmagiano and crack profuse amounts of pepper over top, then serve immediately.

Makes 6-8 hearty servings.

*Tomato water is made by pureeing whole tomatoes in a blender, then straining the resulting clear liquid through a cheesecloth lined chinois or colander.

Until next time…

For Meatless Monday this week, the Everyman was out of town on business, but flying home late that night.

I promised him I would set a plate aside for him, so the obvious question became what could I make that would keep relatively well for an indeterminate period of time?

After pondering for a little bit, I recalled 2 things.  One was the warm potato salad that we both loved at last year’s Outstanding In The Field dinner and the other was a potato and bean salad that I tested while reviewing Earth To Table.  I couldn’t remember much about either, except that a) they were warm, b) they both contained potatoes and c) they came with light, yet creamy dressings.

Given that I was in no mood to excavate my way through the stacks of cookbooks in my house to find Earth To Table (you know you have too many books, when…) I decided to improvise.

Both dishes used fingerlings but I didn’t have any, so instead I cubed a few yukon golds and quartered some shallots and tossed them in some coffee olive oil, then roasted in the oven for an hour.  When they were getting close to being done I melted a little high milkfat artisan butter in a pan until it foamed, then quickly sauteed half a pound of chopped asparagus until it turned emerald, then left it to get slightly blistered and browned.  Removing the pan from the heat, I sprinkled close to half a cup of freshly shelled peas in and let the residual heat of the pan turn them bright green, too.  Next I combined all the veggies in a bowl and tossed with a simple white wine dijon vinaigrette made puckery tart by the addition of a splash of barley vinegar.

By this time the Everyman had arrived home, begging off on the offer of much dinner because of his flight related loss of appetite.

And then he ate 3 bowls of this salad.  Kids, I think we have a winner.

Until next time…

Around this time last year I vaguely recall coming across Annemarie Conte’s glowing description of something called white barbecue sauce over on The NY Times Diner’s Journal that apparently “transforms chicken”.

I am nothing if not an equal opportunity barbecue fanatic, so at the time I eagerly filed it away under the yummy recipes bookmark folder I keep, and then proceeded to forget all about it for the next 9 months.

On Thursday morning, I was trying to decide what I wanted the Everyman to make for our weekly dinner ritual (having already mentioned the possibility of chicken when he asked me the day before) and for whatever reason, I woke up thinking about this white barbecue sauce.  I don’t know why; honestly, I hadn’t given the recipe even a passing thought since I read it last year, but all of a sudden, only the promise of white barbecued chicken would do.  I floated the idea by the Everyman and he seemed game, so I went about retrieving the recipe.

Of course, oddly enough when I went back to the bookmark, the see additional recipe section (which contained the actual white barbecue sauce recipe) was inexplicably missing.  The only recipe I had was for the brine the chicken soaks in, while the hyperlinks to the barbecue sauce recipe had completely disappeared.  Immediately, my heart sank.  After nearly half an hour dejectedly sifting through Google, I finally came across a cached version of the recipe, followed by the discovery of several other variations on the theme.  It was then that I learned that white barbecue is a regional style characteristic of Alabama, one that is distinctly different from the ketchup, mustard or vinegar-based barbecue sauces that people are generally more familiar with from regions of their own around the south.  Sensing that there was no one true recipe, I decided to amalgamate several recipes that looked good into one and hope for the best once it was all done.

That night, the Everyman soaked a package of meaty chicken legs in Conte’s suggested brine, while I offered to tinker with the sauce.  After a few additions and taste tests, I arrived at a white sauce that was rich, tangy, creamy and fairly spicy that was unlike anything I’d ever tasted before.  At that point I knew we were on to something.  After our meat had marinated a bit, the Everyman threw the brined legs on the barbecue and cooked them until they achieved a nicely crisped and crackled crust.  Pulling the chicken legs off the heat, I immediately dunked them into the white sauce and went in for the taste test.

True to the description, this white barbecue sauce definitely transformed our chicken.  It was somewhere between a ranch dressing and a barbecue sauce, with a rich, tingly flavour and a gentle background heat that sneaks up on you, and despite the ingredient list it was creamy but thin, coating the meat without glomming up the surface.  The Everyman thought it might’ve been a little heavy on the horseradish, but even it can be tweaked to suit your tastes.  Overall I was impressed with this newfound barbecue sauce and would definitely make it again.  I see other uses in its future too, but that will be the subject of another post.

Foodie’s Whiteish Barbecue Sauce

0.5 c. mayonnaise

7 tbsp vinegar

1.5 tbsp prepared horseradish

1 tbsp dijon mustard

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

1 tsp sugar

2 cloves garlic, minced

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and whisk until smooth, thinning with water if necessary.  Dip grilled meat into the barbecue sauce until thoroughly coated, then serve.

Until next time…

Last year during grilling season we discussed the extent of my stupidity when it comes to writing shit down.

And last year I also failed to experiment with recreating the magical spice blend because I was so distraught over the whole ridiculous matter.

But, this year I decided it was high time to jump back on the horse and try again.  And because occasionally I do learn from my mistakes, I also took the liberty of writing it all down.

It’s not quite the same, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.  A sniff test next to a sample of the original does come closer than anything else I imagined, though after re-reading some other posts from last year I’m convinced there is no celery seed but ajowan instead, and that the thyme should really be epazote.  I added a few new things to the blend this time too, like the chicory and roasted paprika and I think they may account for the variance.

Foodie’s BBQ Rub (The Second)

2 pieces dried porcini mushroom

3 birdseye chillies

1.5 tsp chicory (the original didn’t have any of this, because I just started buying it recently)

1 tsp celery seed

1 tsp jalapeno flakes

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp cayenne

2 tsp mustard seeds

2 tsp onion flakes or powder

2 tsp thyme

3 tbsp pimenton

1 tbsp salt

1.5 tsp roasted paprika

1 tsp parsley

1 tsp marash pepper

Combine all ingredients in a spice grinder and pulse into a fine powder.  Apply to chicken, beef, pork or tofu and grill, baby, grill!

Until next time…

I’m not going to lie.

When I first decided to try this whole eating more vegetarian meals thing, I was more than a little concerned about whether I would actually be able to pull it off.

As a life long meat eater, I’ve had a tendency to look at the vegetarian option as the deprivational meal, rather than something that might be delicious in its own right.  Of course, that kind of thinking is deleterious to the cause and doesn’t do anyone any good because you’re defeated before you even begin.

Nearly 2 months in, I’ve changed my tune substantially.  Rather than trying to come up with meals that I wouldn’t mind eating if I omitted the meat, I’ve instead turned to ones that I already know I’ll enjoy that (hey, wait a sec) also happen to be meat free.  We’ve done creamy polenta, Trinidadian doubles, homemade pastas, veggie burgers, pizzas and more.  And the more I do it, the more Meatless Monday ideas pop into my head.  For instance, risotto is meatless as long as you cook it in a vegetarian broth.  Homemade noodles and cheese laced with sriracha can be, too.  Perogies are generally meat-free.  A grilled veg and cheese panini can do the job as well.  And the list goes on and on.

So, on this Monday, or the next Monday or any Monday really, why don’t you give the meatless lifestyle a try?  You’re not scared, are you?

Until next time…

As someone who developed a fairly serious allergy to most varieties of shellfish during the past few years (severe enough that I now carry an epi-pen) I don’t often consume much in the way of shellfish.

But last year, after eating smoked prawns at The Black Hoof, I fell head over heels in love with one of the few crustaceans I’m still capable of eating.  BC spot prawns are generally sold fresh (read: alive) and are only available for a few brief months each year, starting in May and usually stretching through to July or August.  I can’t quite explain it, but there is something so much more creamy, sweet and delicately briny about spot prawns than any other shellfish I’ve ever sampled before.  Being that they also don’t induce anaphylaxis in me doesn’t hurt either.

I’ve tried in vain to find them frozen on several occasions, only to come up empty handed.  A few weeks ago when I searched for them at the St Lawrence Market, 2 out of 3 fishmongers had no idea what I was even asking for and the third outright said they didn’t carry them.  Faced with being at a loss for a second season in a row, I half-heartedly reached out to the obsessives on Chowhound who were surprisingly adept at pinpointing several places in the GTA that could help a sister out (I’ve had mixed success with reaching out for help on Chowhound, so I honestly wasn’t expecting much).  Most of the suggestions were out of the way for this non-driver, in the burbs of Scarborough and such, but one happened to be right downtown.  The T&T Supermarket on Cherry St even had spot prawns advertised in their circular, so I emphatically coerced the Everyman into letting me take my practice drive for the day over to said grocery store.

Once we got there, we found a large tank at the back of the store teeming with the vibrant pink beauties.  The tank was overcrowded though, so the spot prawns didn’t seem as lively as I had expected them to be, though they were certainly still alive.  Asking for 2 pounds, the fishmonger deftly scooped them out of the tank with a net, which set the previously docile prawns to wildly thrashing about.  Once bagged and tagged, I didn’t waste much time before exiting the store and returning home.  Live stuff generally doesn’t stay alive for long when trapped in a small plastic bag.  As a last ditch effort at giving me the finger, the spikiness of the prawns managed to pierce a hole in their bag unbeknownst to me and leak seawater all over the floor mat of my car.  Note to future intrepid purchasers of live prawns – always place them into a cooler or some other hard bottomed storing device when travelling, so as not to suffer the same fate, unless you enjoy washing floor mats for fun.

At home, I had no concept of how to prepare live prawns, and after turning to the internet I was faced with the realization that I had to rip off their heads.  The picture above is what was left of the prawn heads once I accomplished that task; an experience I found more than a little chilling since they were still moving about.

Once I finished, I didn’t want to mess with the flavour of the prawns too much, so I grilled them briefly on the barbecue so as not to corrupt their fragile texture.  I have to say, for a first attempt at cooking them myself, I wasn’t overly impressed.  They didn’t taste much different than any other shrimp, which caused me to wonder how fresh they really could be and if they were even spot prawns at all (it wouldn’t be the first time a grocery store pulled a bait and switch).  Grant’s prawns were so amazing by comparison that I’m certain something must’ve been off.

I still have about a month and a half before the season is over, so perhaps before it concludes I will attempt to source some fresh spot prawns again – possibly even for smoking!

Until next time…

For Meatless Monday, I thought it would be fun to try meatless pizzas for a dinner that would be vegetarian without feeling spartan or limiting.

When the Everyman and I used to live at our old house, we did pizza nights all the time because we had a grocery store in the bottom of our building with hot and cold running toppings at our fingertips.  We still occasionally make homemade pizza, but prepping dough tends to require advance planning, so it’s generally not as often as either of us would like to.  Yet every time we do, I kick myself for not thinking to do it more often because aside from dough time it’s a quick, easy dinner that’s adaptable to any variety of tastes and styles.

Yesterday I was on the ball (both literally and figuratively) and mixed up a batch of dough before leaving for work, so by the time we got home all that was required was to warm the dough to room temperature, preheat the pizza stones and determine what would make for a tasty veggie combo.  After discussing just that on the drive home, it sounded like a more prudent idea would be to make 2 individual pizzas suited to our unique tastes rather than trying to compromise on 1 larger veggie pizza.  While the Everyman ran out for some last minute extra cheese, I assembled a toppings bar for us to build our ideal pizzas.

My pizza (above) is like me; complex, off-beat and unique.  It begins with a blend of pesto and blue cheese forming a tangy green base, then it’s scattered with asparagus tips, smushed figs and bocconcini.  A shower of mozzarella shreds, cracked pepper and oregano finish it off.  It wasn’t until after the pizza was done that I realized I’d accidentally left off the shiitake mushrooms I re-hydrated.  No matter.  This pizza was a thin crust marvel, and though non-traditional, it struck just the right balance between savoury and sweet for me.

The Everyman on the other hand, is more of a purist when it comes to pizza.  If we’re ordering in he’s the one who generally orders pepperoni, with the occasional Hawaiian pizza thrown in to keep it interesting.  His pie was a very simple affair, dressed with a blend of pureed tomatoes and pepperoncini paste, green peppers, onions, oregano and mozzarella.  It looked a little plain to my taste, but he must’ve disagreed since he finished the whole pie in a single sitting.

So as you can see, our tastes are like black and white, oil and vinegar, night and day.  Yet somehow the Everyman is still my lobster (a Simpsons reference if you’re confused).  When I’m over-complicating things, he helps me simplify, and where he might be staid I encourage him to explore something new.

In short, we compliment each other like peas and carrots.  And we make some pretty kickass pizza, too!

Until next time…

For a long time now I’ve had a growing fascination with Italian cuisine, namely pasta in particular.

I constantly marvel at the innumerable shapes and sizes of pastas that Italy has created, and the myriad uses they have unique to each one.  For at least 6 months I’ve wanted to take a course that would teach me more about the intricacies of a subject I know precious little about, but as far as I can tell, such a course does not exist.  It’s unsurprising really, as I’ve noticed that Italians generally tend to be quite cagey when it comes to passing on their culinary know how to non-familial brethren.  If you are lucky enough to gain mentorship, I bet you sure as hell had to prove yourself first.  I’ve not yet found a person who thinks I’m worthy of what is to most a cultural birthright and so I continue on, on my own.  Perhaps when I make it to Italy one day I will track down a willing nonna who will share all her secrets with me.  One can always dream!

Barring any sort of official instruction, I’ve been messing around with pasta dough on my own more and more lately.  I’ve been meaning to buy the Encyclopedia Of Pasta ever since it came out, but my local bookseller never has it in stock and it’s definitely the kind of tome I want to page through before I buy it, just so I can make sure it’s really what I’m after.

In the meantime, I’ve been perfecting my stamped and ribbon pastas on and off for the past few months, so last night I thought I’d try something completely different.  Using Ruhlman’s pasta ratio I prepared 4 servings of dough in the morning and left them to rest in the fridge all day.  When I arrived home I started the basics of a red meat sauce on the stove by combining half a jar of my home canned tomato sauce with a lingering hothouse tomato, 4 grated zucchinis and half a pound of ground beef.  While the sauce simmered, I split the dough in half and began rolling out long, snaky tubes.  Snipping them down into 1 inch lengths, I rolled them a bit longer and thinner between my palms, then used a bench scraper to gently drag the dough nubs across the surface of the table until it formed either cavatelli or capunti.  I can’t say with certainty which one I made because so many pastas are so nuanced that they have only the faintest whisper of difference between them.  In this case, I think what I made is capunti, because I’m pretty sure cavatelli is usually made with a ricotta enriched dough.  As you can see from the above photo, some turned out rather well while others are an embarrassment to real pasta.  For a first attempt though I thought they were magical, and once they floated to the top of the briny, boiling water, I tossed them in a meaty tomato sauce and allowed the whole to soak in a little bit.

Like fingerprints, they’re all a little different, but definitely not quite perfect just yet.  The fun part about experimenting with pasta (or anything, really) is that in the end you can just eat your mistakes.

And let me tell you, these were some tasty, tasty mistakes!

Until next time…

When I was at the market this past weekend, 2 of the other luxuries of spring that I came across were fresh fava beans and fiddleheads.

To the best of my knowledge I’ve never eaten a fresh fava bean before; I’m actually trying to grow purple favas on the roof, but in the meantime these seemed like an acceptable substitute to test drive.  And we all know how much I love fiddleheads, so of course I had to buy some of those too.  Is there anything that signifies spring more than these dainty and curly ferns?

But soon after I paid for the goods, the question became what to do with such delicate beauties?

The asparagus bounty was easy enough to tackle, and in a move I’m not necessarily proud of (yet wouldn’t do any differently if I had to do it over) the Everyman and I consumed 4 pounds of the stuff in less than 72 hours.  In case you’re wondering, that’s a heck of a lot of asparagus salad.  It was only a pound that went into this dish, courtesy of our most recent Meatless Monday.

Over a gentle simmer I combined milk, veggie stock and water in a pot.  Then I added a cup and a half of polenta and began the furious stir.  As it approached a bubblingly critical mass, I briefly stopped churning and grated a few ounces of mixed cheeses (pecorino pepato, 1608, manchego and mozzarella) into a pile that was then incorporated into the polenta.  Allowing it to cool and firm up slightly, I sautéed a pound of asparagus with some fiddleheads, fava beans and a few sliced mini red peppers for colour.

Served over top of the oooey, gooey, cheese-soaked polenta, it was pretty much the cure for anything that could possibly ail you.

Until next time…

Every year for Mother’s Day, the Everyman and I go to a brunch buffet with all of his extended family at his grandfather’s golf club in the K-W.

And every year, we come home from these smörgåsbords of deliciousness full of so much good food to the point of illness, as does most everyone else in the family.

Of course, this year was no different, and even I gorged myself on buttery soft rare roast beef, oodles of chilled shrimp and mounds of pea and asparagus salad.  Generally, after these events if we end up eating dinner, it’s bound to be something light.

Several hours after the feasting, the only thing I felt up to was the gentle taste of spring.  Luckily for me I’d made a stop at the St. Lawrence Market on Saturday, and picked up 4 pounds of asparagus and a few pints of figs, among other things.  Sautéing a few pounds of stalks in a beurre noisette until they bloomed a vibrant green, they were then tossed with salt, pepper, halved figs, parmagiano shavings and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.  If you wanted to add some more protein to it, you could always wend a few slivers of prosciutto around the spears, but personally, I love it just the way it is.

Vive le printemps!

Until next time…

On the drive to work the other day, I was catching up on my feed reading with my iPhone (as passengers are wont to do) and came across a post on Mark Bittman’s new slog (that’s salon/blog to the newbs) about a dare he threw down to Ed Schneider to make a ramp pizza.

At the precise moment I was reading it, the Everyman happened to ask me what I was reading about, but when I told him he seemed non-plussed (though I was extremely intrigued) so I knew I’d have to file this one away for some future solo supper.  Of course, ramp season only lasts for so long, so I knew it would have to be sooner rather than later.

Several days later an opportunity presented itself, so the morning of I mixed up a batch of plain pizza dough using my handy dandy Bittman app.  That night, I started by following Ed’s general instructions by separating ramp leaves from the bulbs and sautéing them individually in a little beurre noisette.  I had rummaged around in our fridge and freezer for other things to put on the pizza and came across some errant artichoke pesto cubes, so once the ramps were cooked I melted the pesto into them too.  To finish the stinky, vegetal sauce I thwacked in a dollop of creme fraiche, then set to work trying to spread the mess onto half a ball of pizza dough.  Once it was mostly dressed, I showered it profusely with shredded mozzarella and tried to artfully snap the pie off my pizza peel with a flick of the wrist.  Let’s just say that part’s a work in progress.

A good while later the dough had reached my desired degree of doneness in the meekness of a 500* oven, and the ramp greens had acquired occasional spots of char as I had hoped for, so I fished it out and set to work cutting and munching it.

It would certainly have been better if I’d had a blazing hot pizza oven that could cook a proper pie in closer to 2 minutes than the 20 or so this one took, but otherwise, the flavours worked astonishingly well together.  Make no mistake though, this is not a pie for people who are on the fence about ramps, because even with the pesto and creme fraiche to temper them this is clearly a dish where their funky, pungent flavour is the primary star.

That being said, you could just make it for a date and you’d both stink so much that you wouldn’t be able to tell anyway.

Until next time…

It’s funny how nostalgia sneaks up on you sometimes.

For instance, the other day I was completely overtaken by the urge to eat cinnamon toast.

Cinnamon toast, which is similar in concept to that cereal of the same name, only less disgusting and preservative-laden, is a foodstuff that has not crossed my lips in nigh on 20 years.  Not only that, but I hadn’t even given it a second thought since I was little, when I used to eat it all the time; being second only to a heavily slathered piece of peanut butter toast in my young mind’s library of deliciousness.

But, for whatever reason it was on my mind, so of course I had to relent and revisit it.

Over the years there have been several nostalgic foods of my childhood that I’ve returned to and found wanting, most recently the saccharine pastry known as Jos Louis, but my cinnamon toast (unsurprisingly) stood the test of time.  After savouring the first few bites, I couldn’t get enough, and have indulgently returned to it several more times since then.

Amazingly, as I was making it, the Everyman confessed that he’d never heard of it before, so in case there are others out there who have no idea what I’m talking about, cinnamon toast is made by combining about a tablespoon and a half of sugar in a small bowl with about half a tablespoon of cinnamon.  You swish it around until the 2 are well blended, then you toast yourself some bread (brioche is excellent for this).  Once it’s toasted to your liking, you prodigiously butter the toast until it almost seems sodden with deliciousness.  Sprinkle a teaspoon or 2 over the buttered bread, let sit for a minute to melt and soak in, then eat!

Believe me, such a simple pleasure must be experienced at least once in your life, because it’s truly one of life’s sweetest, easiest, simplest treats.

Excuse me while I go help myself to another slice of Sunday morning delectability.

Until next time…

Though it’s not yet May, this year I’ve often worried that I might have missed the window for Ontario ramps and wild fiddleheads.

With a warmer than normal March and April, these edible delicacies have been popping up much earlier than usual, which leaves me without farmer’s markets to buy them from, since all of the markets in my area don’t start up until mid May or June.  Last year we found them at The Cheese Boutique several times, but given my tendency to grossly overspend every time I cross their threshold, I wasn’t keen on the idea of heading over there just to get a couple pounds of ramps.

But then, on the way home from the Green Living Show yesterday, the serendipitous happened.

As I was walking along Dundas West, huddled against the wind and the rain, I noticed a lone sandwich board announcing a grand opening.  It turns out that Provenance Regional Cuisine has rented out some space in the existing Palmerston Cafe and is now a mini pop-up style grocery store.  I walked in to investigate, but since the Everyman and I were about to hurry off to a Cowbell brunch, I only made the most cursory glance of the products on offer.  Promising the counter staff that I would return, several hours later the Everyman and I did.

And what a bounty we found.  Not only is the place gorgeously curated, but it finally offers a place to buy local, sustainable meat that’s only a 3 minute walk from our house, as opposed to the 20 minute jaunt it takes me to get to The Healthy Butcher.  After a few minutes I managed to procure a bundle of ramps, as well as some homemade crostini, dried cranberry beans, sweet potato flour and more.  With the ramps firmly in hand, all that was left was to devise how to use them.

I’ve been seeing papas arrugadas a lot online lately, so I decided I would boil a few and then coat the salt-wrinkled potatoes with a compound ramp butter.  The leaves of 10 ramps provided just enough vibrant pungency to enhance a quarter cup of softened butter.  Once it was evenly mashed together, I formed it into a chubby log and left it in the fridge to permeate for a few hours.

Later that night a slice of said butter made the perfect accompaniment to the saltwater potatoes and a slice of prime rib.  Though several hours rest made merely a subtle marriage of flavours, I can’t wait to see what’s going to develop after a few days.  In the meantime I’ll just have to dream up more uses for this butter and these glorious ramps.

Until next time…

Anyone who’s been reading this blog for any length of time surely knows how much I am a fan of Mark Bittman.

But (full disclosure time) I’ve never really cooked many of his recipes, if only because I don’t generally use recipes.  You probably wouldn’t know considering how many recipes I publish on this website, but 9 times out of 10 I’m just throwing stuff together off the top of my head and trying to write recipes after the fact as best as possible from memory.  As a sidebar on my recipes, you may also have noticed that I never tell anyone to season their food with salt and pepper, which is because I assume that’s a given and you’ll season it to your liking (just sayin’).

The reason I like Bittman is because he does keep things simple, and because the intros to his podcasts are oh-so-hilarious (seriously, you must watch them!)

So, when I heard that How To Cook Everything was coming to the iPhone as an app, it only took me 2.5 seconds to download the thing and start messing around with it.  For the introductory price of $1.99 (I know, I sound like some sort of corny infomercial) it really is quite the steal.  I read somewhere that the app encompasses all 2000+ recipes from the book, which in a sense seems like a terrible marketing idea, but could also be considered very shrewd.  For people who don’t already have the book, you’re potentially losing the customer base, but for ones like me who have the book but are lazy and like flashy, shiny things, we’ll buy it even though we already own the book anyway.

I test drove the app while making a few dinners last week, and it proved to be quite the workhorse.  On Wednesday night I made a version of pad Thai (though not the exact same as the one published as the NY Times Minimalist recently) that was only passable moreso because I had to make so many substitutions than owing to the character of his recipe.  To test it again a few days later, I made one of his streamlined tagines for Friday night supper.  One of the features of the app that I loved outright was the linkage within recipes to other variations on that theme.  Also, the easier to digest screen by screen separation of instructions make any challenge seem much less daunting.  Though I’ve since decided to leave pad Thai to professionals, we were quite taken with the chicken and chickpea tagine served alongside homemade wholewheat pita bread and will definitely be making it again.

Coupled with the fact that the app also includes sections on kitchen basics, featured recipes, quick meals, the ability to make shopping lists and even in recipe timers, I would rate this as a definite buy for your iPhone or iPad.  I mean, come on, it’s Bittman.  You know it’s gonna be good.  It’s just a given that it would be super easy to use, too.

Until next time…

As I’ve mentioned before, I do 99% of the cooking at home.

But several years ago, I got fed up with this arrangement and inferred that the Everyman should cook at least one of our meals a week.

Don’t get me wrong.  Out of the 21 meals we typically eat weekly, I wouldn’t say I prepare all of them.  On the occasional night that I don’t feel like cooking, the Everyman will suggest ordering in rather than cooking anything himself.  Then there are times when we go out to dinner or brunch, at least one of which generally happens once or twice a month.  I don’t go out of my way to cook things for lunches, but I am the one who packs up all of the leftovers with extras in the morning.  To put it simply, I do quite a bit and sometimes the balance seems more than a little unfair.

For a while the Everyman was cooking dinner on a fairly regular basis, and we even christened Thursdays as “survive the Everyman’s cooking” nights, since he’s such a fan of Survivor.  But for the last 9 months or so he’s been taking night school, so these survival dinners fell by the wayside and were more often than not replaced by a suggestion of takeout.  Obviously, not the ideal situation for either of our health or waistlines, not to mention takeout can get boring really fast.

As of this week, the Everyman is finished with his night school courses, so I was only too eager to chide him into returning to this weekly slot in the kitchen.  After a few gentle prods he obliged, so I give you the inaugural meal from “survive the Everyman’s cooking” 2010: roasted tomato and garlic soup!

He started with a recipe he’d made for me once before for a plain roasted tomato and garlic soup, and tweaked it in a few, subtle ways to make it his own.  We’d both enjoyed the soup the first time around, but found it  spare of flavours, so this time the Everyman decided to boost them with the addition of some harissa, epazote and paprika to make the dish truly sparkle.  Because I was extra hungry for dinner that day, I requested some form of protein, so the Everyman tossed in half a can of black beans to fortify the soup even further.  Lastly, he diced a couple of tortillas into strips and browned them in a skillet until they were crispy and charred around the edges.  A sprinkling on top gave the soup great textural contrast and added to my enjoyment when I started animatedly tossing them into our bowls.

I think this one’s a keeper!

Until next time…

Here at Foodie And The Everyman, we’re always trying to find new ways to incorporate more healthy and environmentally responsible meals into our life.

Being virtuous ain’t easy though, and after a tough day at the office, mostly I just want to inhale a cupcake or a juicy steak.  Unfortunately, one can’t live on cake or steak alone, so every now and then I need to boost my vegetable intake to compensate for one too many edible indiscretions.

As part of that, I’ve recently adopted the idea of participating in Meatless Mondays at home.

Normally, my concept of meat-free eating is firmly rooted in either a tofu preparation, one of my hand-rolled vegetable pastas or occasionally a hearty soup.  And since the Everyman is allergic to nuts and won’t eat eggs or seafood, I am somewhat limited in the options available to me, so it seemed important to expand the vegetarian repertoire.  That it would be good for our health and also the planet are somewhat of an added bonus.

However, for the inaugural Meatless Monday, I had no tofu in the house, and I’d already packed pasta leftovers for our lunches, which meant that another pasta meal was out of the question.  Thus our first Meatless Monday supper would require a slightly more elegant solution.  After brainstorming for a little bit, I decided to concoct a veggie burger with homemade buns, mashed white beans, flax seed and piri piri sauce for a little bit of kick.  Once mixed together and grilled, the patties proved tender and delicious, if a little sloppy to eat.  Next time I’ll most definitely have to experiment with other ingredients to make the patties firmer.

To accompany the bean burgers, a fresh vegetable slaw sounded lovely and I’d been inspired earlier that day by a Chow apple, endive and fennel recipe, so I whipped out my trusty mandolin and made short work of an apple, a fennel bulb, 3 stalks of celery and 2 shallots.  When everything was shredded, I dressed the slivers with a white wine and basil vinaigrette and tossed it to coat.  Combined with the white bean burgers, it made for a simple but satisfying vegetarian meal, with bold, look-at-me flavors that packed a significant wallop.

Perhaps you can win people over with salad after all?

Until next time…

When I was a child, shepherd’s pie was one of several dishes that my dad could make relatively cheaply and easily, so it was one we had fairly often.

I’m not sure what it was about shepherd’s pie exactly, but for years I’ve mercilessly decried its very existence.  If I had to guess, I’d say it was likely the whole frozen pea/carrot/corn blend that caused me to hate it with a passion, because I’ve had too long and varied a love affair with mashed potatoes for them to be the cause.

That negative connotation stuck with me even after all of these years, and though the Everyman is quite a fan of shepherd’s pie (categorizing it as one of those dishes he never craves but whenever he ingests it he wonders why he doesn’t eat it more often) I have never so much as considered making one.

But, then I concocted that delectable chicken pot pie recipe.  And it got me thinking – why limit a shepherd’s pie filling to that sad, sloppy mess of frozen veggies and ground beef?  Having just recovered from a bout of food poisoning (where the only things I could ingest were mashed potatoes or peanut butter on toast) I had a gigantic bowl of creamy buttermilk mash left over but no semblance of a plan for what to do with it.

Before I knew it I was mentally mapping out a shepherd’s/cottage pie hybrid that had the filling of a chicken pot pie, but was topped with pillowy mash instead of golden puff pastry.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that having all that mash on top meant I should omit the chunks of potatoes from the filling and replace them with something else.  My pot pie recipe typically consists of a carrot, celery, pearl onion and potato blend, and having nothing else in the house I opted to just beef up the other quantities.  To make the hybrid version that much more complete though, next time I would replace the potatoes with those ubiquitous frozen peas and corn instead.

The pie was baked until the top was burnished and crispy, and after a few bites I was convinced that this melange of pies wasn’t all that bad.

It’s still a far cry from the traditional variety, but with a few more baby steps, we may yet get there.

Until next time…

My mother in law is the queen of the newspaper recipe.

Because they often have 3 of the 4 local papers in the house, it’s not unusual to find her kitchen at home or at the cottage littered with clippings of recipes she is longing to try.  She’s pretty open minded, but definitely has a soft spot for Lucy Waverman’s weekly column.  Generally speaking, I don’t usually find recipes for my kind of food in the paper (with the exception of Bittman, that is) so you can imagine my surprise when we all (myself included) immediately fell in love with a dip she’d cribbed from the paper over Christmas.

If I’m not mistaken, the original recipe was also a Waverman, but I can’t confirm because I’ve been unable to find it online.  The recipe in question was for a rather festive roasted red pepper and artichoke tapenade, made unique by the fact that it didn’t actually contain any olives.  I know, it’s technically not a tapenade without them, but I kind of think of it along the same lines as the universe basterdizing hummus.  At any rate, this tapenade was SO good that all of us spending Christmas at the cottage were hooked and slurping it up like crack.  Since then, I’ve regularly made it twice a month in 3 cup batches and find it as a welcome addition to a lunch basket.

However, while recently peeling and turning a 5 pound bag of carrots into sticks, I started to wonder what would happen if I started messing around with the proportions of veg in the recipe.  Before I knew it, I was steaming a handful of carrot sticks and collecting the rest of the ingredients I wanted to play with on the counter.  By the time I was done, the recipe bore little resemblance to the original, but still had the same raw, sweetly pungent bite that the roasted pepper variety had.  The lovely thing about the dip is that it gets better and better the longer it sits, as the flavours have time to meld.

Foodie’s Roasted Carrot Dip

0.75 c. carrots, steamed or roasted

0.75 c. artichoke hearts

0.5 c. parsley

2 oz hard cheese like parmagiano (I used what we had in the house, which was 1608)

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp mustard oil

4 garlic cloves

2 tsp roasted paprika (but smoked aka pimenton would work too)

Combine all ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and blend until creamy and smooth.  Season with salt and pepper to taste, then refrigerate until ready to use or serve immediately.

Makes approximately 2.5 cups.

Until next time…

It’s a fact of life that sometimes what we do (make, are, etc) is mediocre.

Not everything can be fireworks, after all.  If it were, imagine how jacked up on adrenaline or excitement your body would constantly be.

Of course, that statement can apply to the act of cooking, too.

Though I don’t spend much time blogging about my kitchen failures, believe me, even I occasionally have them.  I’ve decided I should make an effort to talk about them a little more, if only to illustrate that it’s ok to be wrong sometimes.  When something goes sideways in the kitchen, I don’t think of it as a problem, I look at it as an opportunity to improve my methods and technique for next time.

It amazes me how often people choose not to cook because they are afraid to fail.  But really, that’s just a self defeating attitude.  If you never try, you’ll never grow and gain the experience necessary to make yourself a better cook.  You don’t need fancy tools, artisanal ingredients or an expensive culinary education to make great food (though having quality products to start does improve the end result).  Thomas Keller is arguably one of the best chefs in America, and he never went to cooking school.  In fact, he’s been known to say that he believes practice is one of the fundamentals for making a good cook.  If the end result is at least edible, you’ve won half the battle right there.  Only if your mistake is really really really bad (which is pretty rare) you won’t be able to eat it.  At that point, you just need to dust yourself off, analyze the situation to determine what went wrong and consider how you can do better the next time.

One of my most recent failings was a disastrous attempt at the pineapple upside down cake that you see in the photo above.  I’m not usually a pineapple or upside down cake fan, but we’d received a pineapple in our grocery box and I didn’t want it to go to waste.  I’d thought a caramelized pineapple upside down cake sounded delightfully retro, so I googled a recipe to use as a guideline and began nipping and changing it.  First I’d opted to caramelize the pineapple, then I’d replaced white flour with spelt flour.  I’d wanted it to be reminiscent of a spice cake, so I chopped a bunch of candied ginger to incorporate into the batter, too.  At that point it looked and smelled passable, so I baked it in the oven for the amount of time stated in the recipe.  Once elapsed, I took the cake out of the oven and gave the centre a press.  It looked and felt like it was done, so I pierced it with a toothpick to check the crumb, and when nothing seemed out of the ordinary I left the cake to cool.

The next day when I cut into the cake to sample a slice, I had a rude awakening.  The moisture from the pineapple in the bottom of the pan had left the bottom of the cake baked, but with a texture like soggy mush.  Adding insult to injury, the caramelization on the pineapple made most of the tidbits stick to the inside of the pan when I flipped everything right side up.  Lastly, the spelt flour and candied ginger mixture ended up being overpowering rather than complimentary, leaving the cake with a funky musty aftertaste.  The combination of errors meant that I didn’t think the cake was salvageable, so I composted it and decided to try again another day.

And so I do.

It’s true not every day is fireworks.  But usually, we still have something good to eat in the end.

Until next time…

Firstly, I apologize for having such a one track mind lately, but I’ve really, really, really been enjoying messing around with the new pasta maker.  Heaven knows I already loved pasta a great deal before I started to make my own, so fresh made has only managed to amplify that passion further.

The other night I intended to finish the rest of a batch of semolina dough by trying my hand at ravioli, so I’d carefully rolled out sheets and set them aside as we waited for someone to pick up a set of keys.  I hadn’t wanted to start cooking on the off chance that we’d be sitting down to dinner just as they decided to show up, so I’d only started my prep. Of course, the visitor ended up being late, and staying much longer than expected, so by the time I got back to the pasta, most of the edges and ends were dried out and brittle.  Lesson number one with pasta; always cover the dough when you’re not working on it.  Since we’d been waiting so long to eat neither of us wanted to wait any more, so we ended up getting some takeout that night instead.  Not that it mattered at that point, because I was significantly non-plussed by the whole situation.

After we were sated, I decided to try and salvage what was left of the supple dough and work it into a pasta for the following day’s lunch.  I had a rather large bag of frozen chunks of braised oxtail in the freezer that wasn’t getting used as quickly as I would’ve liked, but given that my grocer had delivered a 5 pound bag of oxtail when I’d ordered them and I’d braised the whole lot because it sounded just as easy to do 1 pound as 5, it was understandable.  Nonetheless, I knew oxtail would form the base of the sauce.  Peering around in the fridge, I also came across the flesh of a roasted acorn squash I’d been meaning to use, and some leftover fennel fronds.  Rooting around a little bit more, I unearthed a jar of pickled ramps from last spring that astonishingly had not been opened yet.  Grabbing a tub of creme fraiche for good measure, I started tossing all of the disparate ingredients together into a pan to warm up.  In the time that it took for the sauce to heat and come together, I cut the pasta dough into rough noodles, and dunked them into the pot of boiling water.  After their quick bath, I retrieved them and tossed in the pan with the sauce.  Adding a sprinkling of chopped pickled ramps and fennel fronds to the top, I portioned it up for lunch and put it away.

The next day at lunch, as I took the first bite I marvelled at the clever combination of bi-seasonal ingredients.  Standing in for winter was the oxtail and acorn squash, giving body to an otherwise lightened dish.  The fennel fronds and ramps practically sung of springtime and the creme fraiche managed to tie everything together.  It probably wasn’t the greatest thing I’ve ever made in my life, but at the time in that moment, with the warm sun beaming down on me through my office window, it was pretty damn fantastic.

I would suggest you try just such a combination to help usher in spring.

Until next time…