Food52

Do you know about Food52?

If not, get yourself over there. It’s where one of my favourite food writers and cooks, Amanda Hesser and her friend Merrill Stubbs cook up a storm and then tell us how they did it.

I made Merrill’s Crab Toasties for dinner last night and we loved them! I really appreciated the note about blending it lightly by hand because I would have just used a fork out of habit.  I liked being one with the crab, as it were, at least for a little while.

What surprised us was how filling they were. My fella and I can eat a heckuva lot, and when we’d each had 2 (1 english muffin, halved) and set our plates down with finality, it was a little disconcerting. Only two? But they were so delicious!!

I had read about the toasties earlier in the week and by yesterday, I couldn’t take it anymore:

Must. Have. Merrill’s. Crab. Will. Spontaneously. Combust. Without. It.

The only changes I made to it is I used only mayonnaise (no sour cream) and I added purple Thai basil (inspired by the corn chowder I had at RaviSoups in July).

Ooh was it good!

And now it’s got me wanting my Mom’s Creamed Salmon. You add canned salmon and either fresh or frozen peas to a roux and serve it hot over english muffins. It’s insanely good and soo simple to make, just like the toasties.

Today I got a notice about Jenny’s Just Good Chili, but it’s over 30 degrees outside. Give me another month and I’ll be making chili every week.  For now,  I’m in search for something savory and satisfying for dinner.

I have some Merguez sausages in the fridge.  Hmmm… I’m off to have a look and see what I can do.

Orzo with Merguez Sausage and Chickpeas, it is.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Pining away

It’s not that my kitchen is so great.  It’s narrow and there’s little to no counter space and our stove is wonky and the fridge and freezer are too small.

But it’s mine and it’s mostly functional. and I miss it dearly.

See in this immense heat, it has become a place that I go only to get cold drink after cold drink and in the late evening, take out some salad or cold chicken to eat because really, you’ve got to eat something.

I miss the serenity cooking gives me.  Even when things are going badly with a dish, there is always hope that it can be saved.  I love the zen mind that happens when I’m chopping, stirring and whisking.  It’s like waves lapping against the shore.  It’s peace and quiet.  Mostly, anyway.

It is only the beginning of July and it’s been weeks of such intense heat, even my appetite has faltered (good lord, will it never end?).  I am trying to accept that it’s just too hot to cook and enjoy restaurant fare for my food book clubs and restaurant reviews.  I am trying to enjoy the “extra” time that I have now that I’m not in the kitchen for 2-4 hours a night.  I am trying really, really hard.

But it’s not working.

I guess that’s how I know it’s serious, that it’s complete and utter love, that it’s something that while I can live without it now, I can’t live without it forever.

Once that cool weather hits, you’ll be lucky to find me doing anything else.  I’ve got lists in my mind of dishes I want to conquer, pies I want to try and bake and meals that I want to create to sell to a nearby cafe.

And for now, I will try to be patient while the sun pours in our windows, heating up the joint and giving our cat various placed to sprawl until 9 p.m.  I will begrudgingly have salads and sandwiches and cold chicken (pictured above) for dinner as sweat pools in the crease of my arm.

But I’m telling you, that first hit of crisp, cool air – the place is going to be stacked to the ceiling with homemade food.

Just try and stop me.

Scrabble night – part 3

I had to throw most of the chicken out.

We tried to whittle down the mountain of poultry that had taken over the fridge, but it was a feat way beyond us. We needed my old gang of cadets – teenage boys that could drink 3 bags of milk and consume dinner plus 2 sandwiches for “dessert” in a single sitting.

I used to feel so guilty about having to throw out food. After all, not only had I carefully shopped (read: put a lot of time into it), I had lovingly spent umpteen hours prepping and chopping, sauteeing and broiling. But I have come to realize that in today’s crazybusy world, you can’t plan the way you used to. Some nights I am certain (and in the mood) I’ll cook and instead I have to do a restaurant review or a meeting runs late and I grab something where I am. And some nights things go awry, a phone call goes well into the night or a neighbour drops by and we open a bottle of wine and, well, dinner gets waylaid.

Since then, because of the heat,  we’ve had a lot of simple foods:

- corn on the cob

- salads topped with organic sprouts and sunflower seeds

- stir frys, pasta, sandwiches. – anything that doesn’t require the stove to be on too long

The most complex dishes I’ve made lately are veal scallopini and stuffed pork chops.

Most disappointing.

Especially since I’ve had the food book clubs and been dying to get to the stove to make some of the dishes we’ve been reading about.

It is 19 degrees tonight. Cold enough for 3/4 sleeves and a jacket.

Cold enough to cook.

Hell’s kitchen – part 1

Well, it’s been awhile, hasn’t it?

That’s because it’s been so freakin’ hot out that in our little apartment, cooking anything on the stove means creating a sweat lodge in our very own home.

As you know, I tried there for awhile, drops of sweat plopping into my casseroles and roast dinners., but once it hit 36 degrees, I had to concede like and eat like sane folks – which meant little or no cooking.

Which hits me hard. It’s during these times of stove moratoriums that I want to cook and create more than anything else.

So I shopped instead, hoping that would sate me. I bought ingredients for salads and cold plates and as many interesting beverages as our fridge would allow.

But it turned out that what I thought would never happen, did.

We lost our appetites.  We ate maybe one small plate a day and spent the rest quenching our neverending thirst.  It’s the first time in probably close to a decade that I didn’t want to eat.

Eww.

Thankfully, after a solid week of intense heat, sleepless nights and lack of appetite, it cooled down and things resumed back to regular scheduled programming.

Balls!

So excited to be cooking again last night, I went for a walk to think through what I’d make.

Do you ever get so wrapped up in something that you can’t see your way out?  I was all over the place – minestrone soup, empanadas, homemade pizza, baked trout, keftas over quinoa salad.  I had looked through some cookbooks before heading out to get some ideas, but went to some fine food stores for further inspiration.

Thinking about how much fresh food I had in the fridge, I bought only an apple to eat on my way back, some sesame flatbreads to snack on throughout the week, some muffins for my fella and some pasta for either pasta salad (in case I just made a bunch of cold salads – it was almost too hot to cook) or to keep on hand for a baked pasta dish I had yet to try.

Since I had many of the ingredients on hand, I came back and decided to make Southern Sausage Stew from Jamie’s America, Jamie Oliver’s latest cookbook.

I loved Jamie when he was first starting out – his take on everything was so invigorating and refreshing.  But these last few cookbooks, I’ve found little to get excited about.  This stew sounded good though.

But after looking at it closely, I decided that some of my own additions would make it even better.

Instead of green and red peppers, I used yellow and purple carrots and I added in a Chinese eggplant, portobello mushrooms, black beans, leftover kale from the night before, along with the ingredients and spices he listed.

I have to say it turned out beautifully.

My dessert however, did not.

Having worked on this dessert for two night and many stages, I can’t believe that the part I couldn’t do was melting the chocolate.

As you know, I do not bake, so anytime anything calls for chocolate, I get nervous.  I mean, I barely eat it to begin with, so handling it doesn’t inspire confidence in me like working with any savory ingredient.

I was making surprise Cake Balls for my fella.  I had made an orange cake and left it in the fridge overnight so that it would be cold enough to form into big meatball size balls.

Done.  B-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l.

I simmered water in a pan and melted really good chocolate over it.

Good.

Now all I had to do was dip the balls into the chocolate and cover them, put them on wax paper and set back into the fridge to chill.

My sexy beau would be having delicious orange delights in just about an hour or two.

Except that the chocolate was so thick it didn’t really cover the ball, but swathed thickly around it, pulling it down into the chocolate.

F————————————–!

Then, I did the worst thing I could possible do – I added a little water to try and thin it out.

I don’t know these things.  I’ve baked about 10 times out of my life, so I didn’t realize this would create an immovable fudge!

I tried adding a little milk to further thin it.  Now I had a Dairy Queen Blizzard on my hands.

So I tried to save it by putting it in the microwave to melt it at least enough that I could hand form it around the balls.

Three fingers on my right hand have chocolate second degree burns and my wonderful little Cake Balls that I wanted to surprise the love of my life with now look like Tim Bits with sad melted fudge chunks on the top.

I was feeling really cocky earlier in the evening, because I thought my version of the stew was more Southern and creative than Jamie’s.

He must have heard me.

I think it will be awhile before I get the confidence to bake again (and I didn’t have any to begin with, so now I’m starting at like negative 10 or something).

Great.  And I just ordered 10 new baking books from the library…

Food, glorious food

I finally made it back to the stove.

After a long day of walking the city, I came back to my hood to do a big grocery shop.

Ahh, so nice to have fresh goodies in the house!  But before putting them away, I cleaned out the fridge – ooh, there’s that lovely chicken chili I made last week and the pesto pasta that I thought we finished…

Then I put everything away.  With one small cupboard and one small fridge, this always means that I have to take out the majority of the items before I can make room for everything.

Really, it’s a whole thing.

Two hours after I had come through the door, everything is finally put away and the kitchen looks pristine.

It’s now time to make dinner.  I pull everything out and start the assembly.

My menu for tonight is:

- Roast skinless, boneless chicken breasts stuffed with wild leeks, fresh basil and lemons.

- Boiled new potatoes with olive oil and fresh dill

- Organic kale with garlic and horseradish

- Chopped salad of romaine, yellow peppers, endive and radish

I was tempted to do a big soup as well, but all that chopping and cooking took another hour or so, and I had started on a dessert (yes, I’m trying to learn to bake) that is going to take a couple of days, because you have to let things cool in the fridge in various stages. So despite how tired I was from the whole process, I was very close to just cooking all night.

However, I remembered that there is still tomorrow and Monday is a holiday here, so I may take a couple of hours in the afternoon to do something slow-cooked.

It is so good to be home, cooking again.  I am like an actor who just found out she got the part.

Tonight’s audition: finish the 3-part dessert (it’s a surprise), homemade soup (I think something minestrone-esque) and something from the new Jamie’s America cookbook.