Posts Tagged ‘Recipes’
Sometimes I come across strange recipes on the internet that I just can’t help but test out in my own kitchen. I become inordinately fascinated by these culinary oddities, with a fixation that won’t be satisfied until I taste them for myself. Of course, in order to get the Everyman to try many of them, I generally have to leave out certain salient details that might give him pause.
Case in point would be when this particular recipe popped up in my RSS, gleaned from the Serious Eats column The Crisper Whisperer. I’m sure that by the time he finishes reading this post I will have received a call or an email about this particular cake and his personal thoughts on it, but when he asked me what it was last night I simply uttered “spice cake”.
Over the years we’ve all come to acknowledge carrot cake, sweet potato pie and zucchini muffins as relatively commonplace dessert-type offerings, but up until this point I’d never seen or heard of a parsnip cake before. Between the fact that I was vaguely intrigued and disgusted by its very existence, and the fact that I had a half bag of parsnips lounging around our crisper not getting any younger, I decided it had to be done.
The recipe began simply, calling for all the usual suspects that come to a batter party (flour, sugar, eggs) but I immediately began making changes and substitutions. Where there was once flour I replaced it with spelt, and a cupful of allergenic walnuts became a measure of porridge oats, while white sugar was traded for brown. Then, just because I felt the guilt of attempting something healthy (yes, I suffer from the opposite form of guilt, not for eating badly, but from trying to eat too good) I threw in a small handful of dark chocolate chips – just because.
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Tags: Baking, cake, New Projects, parsnips, Recipes, Serious Eats
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When I was younger, comfort food took on many forms.
Being half Trinidadian, if my mom was cooking it often meant some sort of roti and curry preparation to warm our hearts and bellies. After my parents split and my dad took over the cooking for our household, it was a Sunday roast chicken redolent with paprika, garlic, onion and pepper with a side of fluffy stuffing. Once I was considered old enough to cook on my own, my foods of choice were often plain, bland and white, including tall glasses of cold milk, hot buttered rice and large piles of creamy mashed potatoes – clearly my love of starchy white carbs was cultivated at a young age.
These days comfort food in our household usually means homemade macaroni and cheese (prepared with creme fraiche, parmagiano, manchego and chevre instead of nuclear cheese food), baked panko crusted sriracha nuggets or my aunt’s Christmas morning poached chicken salad that the Everyman fell in love with while we were there for the holidays. While the spirit of the dishes remains the same, the ingredients and methods have certainly gone more upmarket to account for our more refined tastes and preferences than what we would have settled for as kids.
The one comfort food genre that I’ve never really dabbled much in was Southern food. I like cornbread, fried chicken, BBQ and all the other stereotypical fare as much as the next person, but I generally don’t make much of it at home. But between this article about Hank’s new Southern dinner menu and the return of more wintry weather recently, I was suddenly craving something heartier and more rib-sticking than normal. Over the years I’ve enjoyed all of the components of the dish I made last night separately, but I never bothered to put them all together as one before. It’s far from authentic Southern or Caribbean fare but dang, it does taste good.
To begin I soaked half a pound of red beans overnight, then simmered them in several inches of water until they were mostly tender. In the meantime, I sautéed several links of a homemade spicy poblano sausage I had in the freezer with some chopped celery, onion, thyme, cumin and cayenne until the whole upper level of our house was nose-tinglingly fragrant. Once the sausage and veggies were well browned, I added a handful of frozen stock cubes and scraped the bottom of the pan with a spoon. At this point I put on water to boil for a pot of brown rice. Draining the beans in a colander, I added them back to their pan with the remaining sausage/veggie/broth mixture as well as a few fresh bay leaves, then covered and simmered again. In the interim I mixed up a cornbread batter and slid it into a preheated blackened frying pan. Once the cornbread was mostly cooked through I grated a large dusting of peppered pecorino on top of it and returned it to the oven to brown. When everything was ready I served the sausage and bean mixture atop a mountain of brown rice with a wedge of crispy cornbread on the side.
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Tags: beans, Cooking, cornbread, Hank's, Recipes, Restaurants, rice, sausage, Scott Vivian
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Last night when I got home from work I was itching for a spectacular batch of cookies.
You see, the Everyman and I visited Sweet Flour Bake Shop on the weekend to make customized cookies, but the ones I made for myself just didn’t satisfy my cookie craving. There was nothing wrong with them per se, I just didn’t figure out that they weren’t what I wanted until after we’d already left, negating my ability to correct my mistake with more cookies.
Since then I’ve understandably had cookies on the brain. But, I had a very particular cookie in mind. I wanted something akin to what I remember the Chewy Chips Ahoy from my childhood to be like, only not full of preservatives and trans fats.
Surprisingly, I don’t often (read: never) make plain chocolate chip cookies, so I was a bit stymied by the prospect of finding a place to start. Usually I am seduced by wonderful additives like oatmeal and peanut butter, etc and never make it to the good old fashioned triple C (chocolate chip cookie).
But last night nothing else would do, so I hauled out all of my recipes and cookie books and started poring over my options.
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Tags: All Recipes, Baking, Chewy Chips Ahoy, chocolate, cookies, Purveyors, Recipes, Sweet Flour Bake Shop
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Last weekend I visited Fiesta Farms to do a little shopping for that aforementioned rabbit, among other things.
While I wandered the aisles, one of the other treats I came across was a lovely 2 pound clamshell of those alluring Meyer lemons. Surprising even myself, I resisted the urge to buy up the whole stand on sight.
You see, I’ve been enjoying the taste of Meyer lemons in restaurants for ages, but until now had never seen them at the grocery store. Of course, since I use an organic delivery service I rarely go to a grocery store to begin with, so I should hardly be surprised. I’ve been pondering where to find Meyers (as well as the more ornate Buddha’s hand) for quite some time, so when I spotted these I immediately had to snap some up.
Coincidentally, days later I happened on a fellow Torontonian’s entry in Tigress’ Can Jam who had managed to find Buddha’s hand lemons (Whole Foods apparently carries them – go figure!) in Toronto, so I imagine I will be visiting them soon, too. I’m not entirely certain what I intend to do with a Buddha’s hand lemon yet, but I’ve been rolling a concept similar to limoncello around in my mind along with the possibility of infusing it into some rye. But that is a different tale for another day. Back to those Meyer lemons…
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Tags: Baking, cookies, Epicurious, Fiesta Farms, frosting, lemons, Purveyors, Recipes, Restaurants, The Hoof Cafe, Whole Foods, whoopie pie
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When I was growing up I wasn’t exposed to much in the way of game meat. Aside from the occasional curried goat roti (a nod to my mother’s Caribbean heritage) or a festive Cornish rock hen (often my father’s answer to preparing holiday meals for 2) I didn’t really develop a taste for wilder fare until I was in my early 20’s.
Without a doubt, the one meat I’ve been an exceptionally slow adopter to is rabbit. This is partly because the skinned carcass of a whole rabbit too closely resembles that of the small felines that share my home. I make no bones about eating cute, fuzzy animals if they taste good, but the possibility of questionable provenance has held me back in the past.
It’s taken a few years, but I’ve gradually warmed to the idea of rabbit. It may have started during a meal at Cowbell or perhaps tasting a terrine from The Black Hoof, I’m not quite sure. While we were in Quebec City in the fall I enjoyed shredded rabbit confit linguine at Le Lapin Saute, and for our anniversary I consumed a similar dish at Splendido. I’m still not a fan of rabbit rilettes, but I think I’ve made substantial leaps and bounds (har har!) towards getting over my mental distaste for it.
Recently, I even went so far as to buy a saddle of rabbit at Fiesta Farms, a place I know I can steadfastly trust not to sell me skinned kittens. But for several days the packet of rabbit sat on the bottom shelf of the fridge, taunting me.
At first I’d considered using the Ratio app to make another batch of dough for tagliatelle, but pasta seemed an awful lot of work, and also not very far outside of my past 2 rabbit experiences. I briefly toyed with confit as well, until I realized the duck fat was frozen. (more…)
Tags: Cooking, Cowbell, Fiesta Farms, grainy mustard, Grant Van Gameren, Le Lapin Saute, Mark Cutrara, Michael Ruhlman, New Projects, Purveyors, rabbit, Recipes, Restaurants, Splendido, The Black Hoof, Victor Barry
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On a recent Sunday morning I had a bit of spare time, so I chose to do one of the things I love to do best; sit down and be entertained by James Chatto on Gold Medal Plates 2008. I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but there is something so soothing about listening to that man talk that it practically lulls me to sleep.
Whilst watching, a glaze on one of the competitor’s dishes (I think it was Patrick Lin’s) inspired me to prepare a few quails I had lying around the house for dinner. I had a bunch of new spices I wanted to test out, so I started brainstorming how I would likely blend them together.
We love quails here at Foodie and the Everyman, but I find there’s such a dichotomy surrounding them. On the one hand, they’re quite delicate and twee because they are such tiny little birds, but on the other there’s something rather primal and brutish about ripping apart a whole bird to consume all by oneself. Either way, they make an absolutely delectable meal, and in some ways can be considered game “lite” because their flavour is exceptionally mild and not nearly as intense as horse or moose or venison by comparison.
Once I sat down and pondered for a few minutes, the flavour profile I wanted to create became relatively clear.
I began with the base that had sung to me on the show, a mixture of honey and lavender thinned to a glaze-like consistency. To smooth it out I added a little melted butter, then a handful of crushed long peppers, and finally a splash of leftover juice from a finished bottle of pickled balsamic onions. Swirling it all together, the fragrance leapt up and smacked me in the palate; always a good sign. Dipping a finger, I found it was just right. The quails were brushed liberally with the liquid, then left to marinate in the fridge for a few hours.
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Tags: Cooking, Gold Medal Plates, honey, James Chatto, lavender, long pepper, New Projects, Patrick Lin, quail, Recipes, Senses
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A little over a week ago, Larbo over at This Little Piggy posted about his discovery of Fergus Henderson’s trotter gear (a gelatinous porky broth made with (what else?) braised trotters.
Until I read Larbo’s post, I’d never heard of this magical liquid before, but had often contemplated the versatility of a pork-based stock.
There are plenty of recipes out there for beef, chicken, veal and vegetable variations, so why not a similar frenzy for pork, I wondered.
After ruminating on Larbo’s post for a little bit, I started to consider the possible uses for trotter gear.
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Tags: Baking, Books, bread, Fergus Henderson, Grant Van Gameren, How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, Mark Bittman, New Projects, pork, Recipes, Restaurants, The Hoof Cafe, This Little Piggy, trotter gear
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There’s almost nothing I dislike more than waste.
Having a CSA share every summer means that I’ve learned to get pretty creative with its contents so that they don’t end up going into the trash.
But, now that summer has taken it’s final bow, we’ve gone back to receiving what our organic grocer Bob from Clean Food Connection calls a “vegpak” in every order, which basically amounts to a box full of fruits and veggies that his staff will pack up for me, based on my likes/dislikes/preferences. So, while everything we receive is always something we’ll enjoy, sometimes it means we end up with produce that we weren’t necessarily expecting.
And sometimes that produce will sit around my kitchen almost until the brink of decay. Which is exactly how I ended up having 6 overripe bosc pears sitting on my counter with no immediate plans for them yesterday.
At first glance, it seemed like an ideal opportunity to make a pear crisp, but once I started to peel the pears, I realized that there was no way they’d be firm enough to stand up to that. Which is how I ended up making a puree. And once I had that puree, it was only a mental hop, skip and a jump to deciding that a pear-based quick bread was the way to go. Fortifying my general quick bread recipe with the addition of oats and a pinch of camphorous cardamom put the finishing touches on the bread.
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Tags: Baking, bread, cardamom, chocolate, oatmeal, pears, Purveyors, Recipes, The Clean Food Connection
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Some things are unapologetically Canadian.
Like maple syrup. Peameal bacon. Poutine. And, for reasons I’ve never fully understood, the butter tart.
Growing up, we were never really that much of a butter tart family. I vaguely recall my grandmother making (or having) them occasionally, but other than that, we weren’t crazy for them the way many other families are. That’s no surprise to me since butter tarts are typically loaded with raisins, which just happen to be a dried fruit I hate with a passion. The only dessert my family ever went batshit crazy for was mincemeat, and that was really only once a year.
But then I fell in love with a man who loves butter tarts. Actually, as a full disclosure, when I first met the Everyman I found out that he ate a butter tart, banana and chocolate milk for breakfast every day. Mmm. Breakfast of champions, right? Luckily I’ve managed to nudge him in a slightly healthier direction over the years, but he still does love him some butter tarts. But, because they’re still not something I care for, I’d never thought to make them.
But then I came home one day and just felt like it, so I went with it. And of course, the Everyman was happy about that.
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Tags: Baking, butter tarts, Canadiana, raisins, Recipes
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I don’t think it would come a surprise to anyone that I have a slightly morbid curiousity regarding combining garlic and sweet things.
Having fallen in love with Odile’s fleur de sel caramels, I’d intended to make a homemade batch for quite some time. But, I also adore old school Mack Toffee, and had been considering how best to copycat that. As a child it was one of my most favourite treats, and one that I could always count on my dad to buy for me because he loved it, too.
Then it dawned on me.
I shouldn’t make caramel or a toffee. Gar-amel-ic was the answer; a roasted garlic infused caramel toffee. The real conundrum was how to get the garlic into the toffee without having actual bits of garlic floating around in it. Since my tea infusion worked out so well the other day, it seemed like a smart jumping off point for garlic infusions, too.
I again turned to Alice Medrich as my guide, since her take on brownies hadn’t steered me wrong. (more…)
Tags: Alice Medrich, Baking, caramel, garlic, New Projects, Recipes
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Like the enduring search for a suitable mate, a good brownie is similarly hard to find.
There are fluffy brownies, cakey brownies, nutty brownies and frosted brownies. There are chunky brownies, sweet brownies, crispy brownies and chewy brownies. There are more kinds of brownies than there are hours in the day, and for my money, most of them are not worth the bother. I’ve had success with Alton Brown’s cocoa brownies in the past, but every once in a while I get a craving for something just a little bit different…
To my mind, brownies are the ideal candidate for simplicity. I don’t want nuts, frosting, M&M’s or candy mix-ins. And I most certainly don’t want them swirled with cheesecake or peanut butter or any other heavy viscous substance. When I take that first bite, I want the top to shatter in a mixture of crunchy, caramelized chewy delight, while the interior should be rich without being dense or cakey.
In short, I’m looking for a brownie miracle.
Months ago, when I finally located some 100 Mysteries tea, I’d found it a fantastic ingredient to experiment with. It made its way into a panna cotta, and I’d intended to try additional applications, but other projects got in the way. This weekend, I finally managed to pick up where I left off by producing a batch of 100 Mysteries brownies.
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Tags: 100 Mysteries, Alice Medrich, Alton Brown, Baking, brownies, chocolate, Epicurious, Recipes, tea, Tea In The Sahara
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For close to a month now, I’ve been patiently waiting for Indian summer to set in.
I’ve optimistically/delusionally put off closing up the garden in the hopes that some unseasonably warm weather would drop by and bring the masses of tomatoes on my vines to fruition.
But, with the Everyman and I leaving for a week’s vacation at the cottage, it appeared I would have no such luck, so rather than hoping for the best while we were away and potentially losing all of the tomatoes to frost, I sucked it up and stripped the plants bare over the weekend.
The damage?
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Tags: Cooking, Gardening, jalapenos, Preservation, Recipes, salsa, tomatoes
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Day by day, it’s getting colder and colder, and becoming more and more apparent that summer is long gone. With that shift in seasons, we spend a little less time cooking outside on the grill, and a little more time indoors baking, braising and stewing, etc.
One of the indicators that typically signals the arrival of fall for me is my willingness to spend time making homemade stock. Such a steamy, sweaty endeavour would be out of the question during the dog days of summer, but in the fall when days are brisker and nights hold a chill, warming the air with rich, meaty scents sounds like a wonderful, reflective idea. It also happens to appeal to my waste-not-want-not mentality. Each time I make stock, I continually marvel at the amount of flavour you can extract from little more than kitchen scraps. And with such a small amount of effort, you can improve just about every dish you add it to. Bored of rice? Simmer it in stock. Making mashed potatoes? Boil those in stock first, too. Deglazing pan juices? Stock can do that. In just about any cooking application where you would use water or wine, stock makes a flavourful stand-in.
But, before we get to the meat of the matter, a few “suggestions” about making stock that will make life a little easier.
1) Be organic – I try to buy as much organic food as possible, mostly because I think it tastes better, but also because it’s better for me and the environment. I usually try not to preach to others about why they should too, because I understand that some things about food are very personal matters. In this case I’m breaking my rule, though. If at all possible, try to use organic food to make your stock. With something as simple and elemental as boiled bones and veg, imperfections easily come through, so starting with the best product possible will automatically put you ahead.
2) Save, save, save – If you roasted a chicken, save that cleaned carcass in a ziploc bag in the freezer. Once you’ve amassed a few, you’ll be well on your way to a flavourful stock. And don’t hesitate to add vegetable trimmings to the bag either, as long as they’re cleaned first. Carrot peels, onion skins and celery leaves all make great additions to a stock base.
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Tags: beef, Books, carrots, celery, chicken, Cooking, Food Matters, frugality, Irma Rombauer, Mark Bittman, onions, Preservation, Recipes, stock, The Joy of Cooking, trimmings, vegetables
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