Still eating. Cooking, not so much.

Look, I know it seems like forever since I last wrote, but it’s not because I haven’t been eating or thinking about food every single moment of the day.

It’s just that it’s still been too hot to cook.

Sigh.  I have had some wonderful meals in restaurants in the meantime: Portuguese on College, a venison burger in Summerhill (pictured above), memorable Indian on King and again on the Danforth, Greek with an long-time friend, Korean with a newer friend, introducing my Mom to North Vietnamese cooking (she loved it!), pizza and wine with a woman I knew 10 years ago and am so glad to be reunited with.

That’s not all, of course, but you get the idea.

I’ve shifted much of my writing now over to food and now that the evenings are getting cooler, I’m starting to prepare menus and defrost things.

Get ready.

I’m back.

If you’re looking for me, I’ll be at the stove.

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.

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.

Longing

Although I haven’t eaten out every night for the past 2 weeks, it sure feels that way.

Between book club meetings at restaurants, my fella’s birthday dinner out, dinner at a new diner with my Mom, I’ve been out a lot.  A ton.  More than I’d like to, but that’s what happens sometimes – no matter how carefully I plan my schedule, there is always a week or two where everything smushes up against one another, leaving me craving to cook at the stove like many women leap outta their bodies for a piece of chocolate.  Then when I was home, I made simple food: soups, salads and pasta.  Quick things I could do in between writing, editing and the various events that have made the last couple of weeks a frenzy.

Last night at dinner with lovely colleagues of my fella, the restaurant “reflected the seasons and regional Pugliese cooking.”  Over neatly procured appetizers and handmade pasta, we talked about restaurants, cooking, barbecuing and of course, work.

What got me is that while our evening was filled with fun and laughter, I felt like the food didn’t live up to the hype.  This restaurant, after all, was supposed to be the “real deal” but actually it was just boring  fare that you could make at home.  You absolutely could.

When we got home, I poured over cooking magazines and some new  recipes I had collected and I so wanted to stay up, cooking my little heart out.

Instead, I went to bed like the responsible adult I am and will try and patiently wait until I can be at the stove again.  At this point, it’s looking like Saturday might be the first chance I get.

In the meantime, I am going to dream and swoon and think about all that I am going to make once I get the few precious hours I need.

I can’t wait.

Surprises abound

What I love about cooking is that you don’t always get it right.

But sometimes you absolutely do.

That beef curry was fanfreakintastic.  Best beef dish I’ve made in years.  YEARS.

I learned two vital things that night:

1.  My method of cooking stewing beef for only an hour and a half is why my stews are never memorable.

2.  Cooking Light Magazine has a piece a couple of months ago about The 25 Most Common Cooking Mistakes that offered a lot of advice I already knew but one that really stuck out – You don’t know your oven’s quirks and idiosyncrasies.

See, a couple of months ago, my sexy fella and I were making dinner together (something that doesn’t happen very often because we both cook very differently and because there’s not a heckuva lot of room to move around one another).  We were making Korean pancakes – MMM! – and I was pouring them into the pan while he flipped them (you’ve got to be quick with those l’il ones) and we noticed that they would slowly cook on 7 but once we upped the element to 8, they started to burn.

We had noticed inconsistencies separately before but not thought much of them – ’til now.

Which I confirmed when I made Beef Vindaloo Curry this past Friday night.

Wanting to brown the beef before adding the other ingredients (did you know that Jamie Oliver no longer believes/does this?  Gasp), I started it on 8 to get a nice seared side, but before I knew it they were blackening.  Oh no, I’ve got like 8 veggies and 5 other ingredients yet to add!  It can’t be ruined already!

I managed to save them by quickly turning the range down, and then up.  Down and then up again, until all the beef was done.

I thought that ordeal was over as I set everything to a low simmer.

Hmmm.  When I turned the dial down to 3 – nothing.  It wasn’t until I brought it back up to 6 that it started bubbling.  So back down to 3 it went.  I left it to stew, literally, while I went back to my desk to do work.

I heard this weird popping noise.  Now, sometimes Cosmo likes to clean between his toes and makes this awesome crunching sound, but he was sound asleep just a few feet away at the end of the bed.

I went out to the kitchen and the stew was bubbling away like it was on 6 or 7.  So I turned it down to 2.  15 minutes later, nothing.

It went on like this for the 2 1/2 hours that it was on the stove.

Our stove is not just quirky.  It’s possessed.

At first, I was miffed.  Great, here I am trying to learn to be a great chef and I’m working with an old jalopy!  But now I realize that if I can cook great meals on this puppy despite its massive weirdness, then I will be a great chef after all.

The roast chicken dinner I made tonight was okay.  The sides were what made it – summer crisp corn, wild and long grain rice and Swiss chard with petit haricots.

That chicken could have been better.

That’s why I’m going to work on figuring out the oven’s quirks next.

Burning questions

I have all of these questions that have been milling about in my mind:

1.  Do you favour a particular burner on the stove?

2.  A food blog asked a great question this week – is there a food that you can’t keep in the house because it’s bad for you or you’ll eat the whole container, etc.?

3. What’s the last exciting dish you made?

4.  How far in advance do you plan your meals?

5.  What’s the last thing you ate?

I can’t wait to hear your thoughts.

Clubbing

Tonight I’m doing up my notes for our book club meeting tomorrow night (I’ve yet to start the ones for my other book club…) and I’m grinning like a crazy person.

Because not only do I get to eat and write about food for a living, but I get to read books about it and then meet with a bunch of folks to talk about it – over a meal.

Ahhh.

And in rereading sections of books about food, I assess and reassess my opinions, my patterns and sometimes even the dishes I make.  All based on things I’ve read.

I wrote awhile ago about making a cabbage dish around the frenzy that is St. Patrick’s Day and just a few nights ago, I went out and got celeriac, after skimming a recent article about how it doesn’t get enough love, and made a beautiful, velvety soup, daubed with fresh herbs and fresh ground pepper.  Now thanks to our most recent book, The Tenth Muse by Judith Jones, I’m craving James Beard cookbooks and simple American food like liver and onions and the hearty dishes of Miss Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock.

I learn something new out of each book and it turns out, I put it to the test in the kitchen, long after the book has been read and put aside.

I fully intend to make some of the recipes from the book – Frozen Maple Mousse, Sorrel and Leek Pancakes and Martha’s Paprikash with Little Dumplings.

But just you watch. I’ll go to the meeting tomorrow and we will be spouting a flurry of ideas, with exchanges of ingredients, books and recipes flying across the table.

And in a few days, weeks and months, somehow it will all end up as dishes being simmered on my stove.