Just Because....

Because I need a pretty picture on here.

Baked omelette, salad, and baguette.

Classic Time

I have to apologize for the quality of the photographs lately. These pictures were taken on our iPhone, late at night. They will be getting better: we found the camera, and I'm about to start planning ahead, picture wise.
So this is a picture of a lemon tart that I made a little while ago to take to a dinner with our friends, Steve and Sareh, who I'm sure I've mentioned before.

Tarts, I have learned, are very difficult to take flattering pictures of (unless its a slice of tart). There's something about a big, detail-less, dome, that refuses to pucker up to the camera. In person, however, they are sight to behold.
Lately I've been more of a tart person than I have a cake person. But I don't seem to have much luck with baking cakes, so that may be the reason for the cakes slip to the dregs. I enjoy the dense, fudgey cakes, to the more angel food like cakes, so perhaps I should give flour-less cakes a try.
Crumbles used to reign over all desserts for me, but tarts may have just taken over that position too. From the depths of "I'd never pick a piece of tart over any other dessert," it has become the champion.
There's something about taking a still wobbling tart out of the oven, and having to wait for it to harden up before cutting into it. Its like its a little species of its own, determining itself when it will be ready for enjoying.

I love the contrast between the crumbly buttery crust, and the delicately smooth, buttery filling. Then again, so does everyone else. That contrast is the beauty of tarts.
This Winter I kept hearing all about Meyer lemons, all the time. The original recipe I used for this tart calls for regular lemons, but I used the Meyer variety. I don't think Meyers are still available at this time, so use regular lemons.

Laura Calder's Lemon Tart


1 baked 9 inch cookie pastry tart shell (everyone has their own tart shells they use. I use Laura Calder's. If you don't have a shell recipe, let me know, and I will post the one I use).

2 whole eggs + 4 egg yolks
3/4 cup (155g) sugar
3/4 cup (175 ml) lemon juice (about 3 lemons)
2/3 cup (150ml) creme fraiche or heavy cream (I used heavy cream for my start since it was a spur of the moment creation, but if you can find creme fraiche, use it).
zest of 2 lemons

Heat oven to 350F.
Beat together eggs, yolks, and sugar. Whisk in juice, and then the cream. Strain into a jug and then stir in the zest. Let the mixture sit for a few minutes to let any bubbles subside.
Skim any foam off the top of the lemon filling. Set the tart shell on a baking sheet in the oven, and pour in the filling. Bake the start until set but slightly jiggling in the center, about 25 minutes. The tart will set more as it cools. Serve at cool room temperature.

Morning, Evening, Anytime Pick-Me-Up

I love a good breakfast bar.

I love a good breakfast anything, really. But I normally like to reserve breakfast for just that. Breakfast.
I'm not a big fan of the pancake dinner. If it's sweet and constitutes a meal, it must be the first meal of the day.
But there are certain foods that like to break the rules. They refuse to be relegated to one measly spot. Quiche, I feel, is the captain of this rebellious team. I love a good quiche, morning, noon, and night. And if quiche is the captain, these cookies are its minion. Unassuming, but rounding out the team nicely.

These are hearty little things, so I'll have them as an afternoon snack if I'm having a light dinner. Since they're so incredibly filling, they're great to have around for when you're in a rush, with no time to sit still and enjoy a meal.
But I especially enjoy mine as a no-maintenance breakfast. There's something about cinnamon and nutmeg in the morning that just alerts the senses, and says, "Let's begin." In addition to cinnamon and nutmeg, are molasses and pureed pumpkin. Deep, rich, and oh so tasty. Ideal breakfast material.
I like to add some raisins and nuts (usually walnuts) to keep things feeling healthy, but dark chocolate chips and pumpkin seeds are great too.

I haven't tried freezing them yet, but I don't see why that wouldn't work. Though really, they get better with age so I wouldn't bother with freezing them. They hit their peak about the third day after they've been baked.

Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies

I don't recall where I originally found this recipe, though it was somewhere online.

Preheat oven to 350F

In one bowl mix:
1 1/3 cups of rolled oats
1 teaspoon of baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

In a second bowl mix:
1 2/3 cups of brown sugar
2/3 cups canola oil
2 tablespoons molasses
1 cup pureed pumpkin
1 teaspoon vanilla

In three batches fold bowl 1 into bowl 2. Fold in 1 cup nuts and 1/2 cup of raisins, or 3/4 cups chocolate chips and 3/4 cups pumpkin seeds.
Scoop 1 tablespoon balls of batter and flatten a little. These won't spread much when baking so don't worry about placing them too far apart. Bake for on lined cookie tray for 16-20 minutes. Remove to cooling rack.

Sunday Morning Activity

There are some foods I just never think of making. Rosti falls into this category. When I thought rosti, I pictured an entire day spent matchsticking potatoes. But lo, this was not the case.

The first time (and one of the few times) I had rosti was at a buffet, which inevitably meant it was not of very good quality. But it was still potatoes, so how bad could it be? I gobbled the whole thing down. Litre of oil and all.
Now, that hits on what is wrong with most rosti. I imagine most are fried, and so the result is too wet, as well as being a calorie bomb. This rosti, however, is popped in the oven for about an hour, and so it crisps up very nicely. Heck, maybe most rosti are popped in the oven - I am certainly no expert on rosti - but this one tastes like it went in the oven, not for a long dip in canola central.
As I was matchsticking the potatoes (which shockingly, took about five minutes) John said something so perfect. "It's like an aero. The flavour is in the spaces." I couldn't have said it better myself.

We ate our rosti with two poached eggs each and some dressed spinach. The ultimate, unassuming comfort food.
And, just because, I had to add this photo of poaching eggs. They look like little ghosts:

One final note: the recipe says to cook the rosti in an ovenproof frying pan. I didn't have one on hand, so after frying the potatoes in the pan, I transferred them to an 8inch pie dish, and pushed the potato down to fit with a spatula.

Potato Rosti
From Jamie Oliver's Cook With Jamie


olive oil
a small knob of butter
1 1/2 pound floury potatoes, grated and cut into matchsticks
salt and pepper
3 or 4 springs of rosemary, leaves picked
6 cloves of garlic, peeled (this stuff is strong is the rosti, so if you're not big on garlic, reduce amount and cut into smaller bits)

Preheat the oven to 400F. In an ovenproof non-stick frying pan, and about 8inches wide, heat a splash of olive oil. Add the butter and toss the potatoes in it with a pinch of salt and pepper, the rosemary leaves, and the whole garlic cloves. Fry on medium heat for about 10 minutes, stirring all the while, until the potatoes start to soften. Then place the pan in the oven for 25 minutes.
Take the pan out of the oven and cover it with a damp piece of wax paper. Wrap your hand in a tea towel, and press down on the paper to flatten and compact the rosti. Remove paper, and return to oven for another 25 minutes. Cut into slices and serve.

I Introduce To You...

Everyone has some variation of this salad. Whether it is with celery, fennel, mushrooms, pear, apple, parsley, onions, or all of the above, it is near impossible to mess up.

I first discovered what I call "my version" in Laura Calder's French Taste: Elegant Everyday Eating. French Taste is my favourite, favourite, favourite cookbook of all time (do you think I made that clear enough) and I can't believe I'm only getting around to telling you about it now.

I see this book all over town in discount boxes, and I cannot understand for the life of me why its popularity is not more well-spread.
It is a beautiful, helpful, and reliable little thing, and I trust it with all my heart. It has essays on how to shop, eat, and cook (which might seem a bit redundant for someone who has just bought a French food cookbook, but nevertheless, they are still super informative). There is an essay on pastry, which, for me, was revolutionary.
Frankly, I wish it were my own.
The recipes, for the most part, are easy to whip up, and very sophisticated, which I feel a little pompous saying (sophisticated food? I should not quit my day job....if I had one), but it's true. So there. Endorsement over. Let me know if I convinced you.
I recently discovered that Ms. Calder lives in Toronto. Now, I'm not one to care about celebrity spotting's, but I would give up my precious little Fennel and Mushroom salad for a year to meet her... which is saying a lot since I cannot so much as hear the word fennel without feeling an intense urge to out and purchase one, all for the purpose of ending up in this little delight:

What sets this fennel salad apart from the rest is the minced shallot that macerates in white wine vinegar. That vinegar, though drained before being added to the salad, adds a big punch. Get a bite with too shallot and hello 'I just sucked on a lemon' face. But well distributed shallot = heavenly delight.

Laura Calder's Fennel and Mushroom Salad


1 shallot, minced
2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar
1 fennel bulb
1/2 pound button or cremini mushrooms, sliced
leaves from a large bouquet of parsley
a handful of chopped chives (though I do normally skip this part)
olive oil
salt and pepper
lemon juice
parmesan (optional)

Put the shallot and vinegar in a ramekin. Set aside.
Cut stalks off the fennel bulb and peel any discoloured parts off bulb. Cut bulb in half, lengthways, and slice very thinly. Add to bowl. Add in the mushrooms and parsley leaves. Drain the shallot, discarding the vinegar, and add to bowl with the chives. Dress with oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and parmesan.

I often leave out the mushrooms, or parsley and add is celery. Sometimes I even add chickpeas. But I always add the macerated shallot.

What beats beets?

I had the tastiest, most beautiful dinner last night. Here it is in all its splendour.

Beets in a garlic walnut dressing and a sauteed kale and poached egg sandwich. A glass of red wine, two chocolate chip cookies, and couple episodes of The Sopranos. What more could a girl want?

I first tried the beet salad, a Mark Bittman recipe, at Steve and Sareh's place. It was devastatingly good. It was Laura Calder who pointed out that beets, when cooked nicely, can taste like candy. 

By the way, when we had this salad at Steve and Sareh's it was accompanied by two other Mark Bittman recipes that have found their way into my kitchen numerous times now. Definitely worth checking out his broccoli rabe pasta and the Mexican tofu chocolate pudding (when serving the pudding do not mention it is tofu - they'll never know!). 

But back to the beets. You scrub them, wrap them in tin foil, and bake for about an hour. They're so sweet and soft once cooked. They kind of remind me of turkish delight... though the actual flavours are nothing alike. Pop a piece in your mouth while they're still warm and just let it melt, the juices running down the back of your tongue. I love a good dinner like this, where just the memory of it is oh so satisfying.

The sweetness of the beets is balanced by the strong and stinky garlic-walnut dressing. Quite a lot of garlic goes into it, but you fry the garlic before adding it to the food processor, bringing out its natural sweetness, so the contrast between the garlic and beets is not so severe.

We had our salad with a sandwich of boiled (5minutes), and then sauteed (salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon) kale, with a poached egg on a lightly toasted baguette. If you make this sandwich, which I highly, highly recommend you make to go with the salad, make sure the yolk is still runny. That way, when you put the top piece of baguette down to complete the sandwich, tasty yolk saturates the bread and kale. 

Things got barbaric on John's plate:

Beets With Garlic-Walnut Sauce

2 pounds red beets, about 4 large beets, greens trimmed

1/4 cup olive oil

6 cloves of garlic

1/2 cup walnuts

2 tablespoons to 1/4 cup fresh orange juice (I used apple juice last night - worked great)

salt and pepper to taste

fresh parsley for garnish

1. Wash beets. While still wet wrap in foil. Bake at 400F for 60-90 minutes on a cookie sheet or roasting pan.

2. Meanwhile, heat oil in a skillet over medium-low heat. Add garlic and cook until fragrant and softening, about 6 minutes. Add walnuts and cook another four minutes. Put mixture in a food processor and process until you have a relatively smooth paste. Scrape sides as you go. Add juice, salt and pepper, and process one more time until well incorporated.

3. When the beets are done you should be able to pierce with a knife with little or no resistance. Let cool, and the peel and chop into cubes. Toss with dressing, and serve with parsley.

Spaghetti Cacio e Pepe

I've had this recipe for a while now, and I've been dying to write about it here. But no obvious story springs to mind when I think about it, so I've been putting it off. But I can't any longer. It's just so good, I feel it is selfish to keep it to myself any longer.

I first had it at an Italian restaurant where a friend works. The restaurant's ideology is simple, traditional food.
My friend had the cook come out and tell me how to make the dish. It's incredibly easy, and incredibly delicious.

Spaghetti Cacio e Pepe

I don't have exact measurements here. I just eyeball how much of what goes in. Actually, when I asked the cook how much cheese he uses per dish, he scoffed, "how ever much you need."

Cook your spaghetti. Reserve some cooking water.

Heat a large, heavy skillet over high heat. Once hot, add a few glugs of olive oil. Crack in some fresh pepper. You need quite a lot of this as you want it to cover the pasta (I hope this is clear in the pictures).

Once scalding hot, reduce to medium-low heat and toss in the spaghetti. Toss to cover pasta with oil.

Add a few handfuls of pecorino cheese (preferably good quality pecorino toscano), stir to melt. Add reserved cooking water if needed.

Enjoy!

Mr. Terry's Chocolate Orange Cake Disaster

Ugh.



Ugh always needs an answer. "How are you?" "Ugh." "Aw, what's wrong?"
Meh doesn't get this kind of treatment. "How are you?" "Meh." "I hear that!"

Well today I am feeling ugh, and I'm not going to answer for it.

What I do have to discuss, however, is a certain little cake I mentioned in my last post, Mr. Terry's chocolate orange cake. There he is, up at the top. I mentioned that I was going to bake the cake for the food bank volunteer party, which I did. Things went smoothly with the cake, though I baked it a little too long. But, then came the icing. I melted some chocolate, and in an effort to make it smoother I added cream. Maybe you were already aware of this, but cream does NOT make melted chocolate smoother or creamier. Instead, it makes the melted chocolate coagulate. Not that that's bad, but it was just a bit of a surprise.

Well, I didn't have any extra chocolate so this would have to do. It didn't taste bad, it just wasn't the most attractive thing I've ever seen on top of a cake. Then again, I'm not about fussy, pretty cakes. So I slapped the chocolate on top and spread it around.

A little homely looking, but what's wrong with that? Nothing, I say.

So I walked my little cake over to the food bank (which in the rain, is not the easiest thing to do), with the wind smothering my face with delicious gusts of chocolate scent.

I arrived with Mr. Terry safe in my arms and placed him on the counter. Now, I have tried to keep this blog here a peaceful zone. It's to revel in food and the good times. No negativity, please. But to explain this story I have to tell you that the man involved, well, there's only one word to describe his type. He's a bit of a jackass.
 He walked over to my cake, leaned over it, and said, "I wasn't going to say anything, but...."
What does this mean, I wondered? I didn't say anything to prompt this, so what exactly happened that led him to say what he had intended to keep unsaid. Nothing. Nothing at all. Because jackasses don't need instigation to share their mean little remarks. Unlike the rest of us, they enjoy spewing their nastiness upon the innocents.
Of course,  I came to Mr. Terry's defence. "Oh yes, the chocolate did not turn out how I intended it to. I meant for it to be smoother..."
"I wasn't going to say anything.." (again! with a little smirk across his lips) "I'm sure it tastes good," he said with skepticism.
"I hope so," I said. "We'll see."
This is when he offered some advice (or maybe sabotage?!) that in hindsight, I have no idea why I listened to.
"You should heat a spoon over an open flame, until it's scalding hot, and then smooth the chocolate with it."
Silly me, I took that scalding spoon and rubbed it slowly all over my cake. The result? Seriously burned chocolate, and an ever uglier cake (if it was ugly to begin with... I prefer to call it rustic). Another volunteer walked in and said, "something's burning." She was on the other side of the room. Yes, it was that bad.
To top it off, the coordinators gave out awards to each volunteer. I won "Best Baker" award, because I made the dessert for the Christmas party. Well, another volunteer made amazing cupcakes for the party on Thursday. People were raving about them. At the end of the night, as the cupcake baker and I were chatting about our awards (she was asking me about how I won "Best Baker"), the people leaving were walking past us and telling her how amazing her cupcakes were.
Embarrassing? Very much so.

Too much time, too little to do...

Procrastination has never been a problem for me. But, BUT, I have never had a blog until recently, and blog writing has proven to be the chink in my procrastination armour. I cook all the time. Perhaps a little more than I really should, and yet when I sit down with my laptop I find it a real struggle to come up with a topic. This is very, very disturbing, given the fact that I used to take some pride in my writing and timeliness. My only suggestion to myself is to keep writing no matter how hard it seems. How original?
Since December I have been volunteering at a food bank. This Thursday we are having a party for all of the volunteers, and I was asked to bake a cake. I wanted something original, but easy to throw together, and then I remembered a marmalade pudding cake that I made from Nigella's new (kinda) book, Kitchen. 
I first made it back in November and it turned out kinda good. Great flavour, but the texture was off, and it was lacking a little something. The recipe calls to bake it in a 1x24cm square pyrex dish, which made the cake pretty slim and dense, as it did not rise at all when baking. You use quite a lot of marmalade and orange zest in the batter, and so the chewy, orangey strands didn't have anywhere to hide in the pyrex dish. It was all out there in the open, if that makes sense.
I knew with a little tweaking the recipe could be a classic. I remembered the flavour was great: very orangey, but nothing bitter or too intense. But the texture was just too dry and dense for my liking. So for my second journey with the recipe I decided to bake the batter in muffin trays. I got exactly what I wanted: the batter raised as it baked allowing a lighter, more sponge cakey finish. The zest and marmalade completely disappeared, so there was no chewy interruption.
Since I now had a cupcake in my hands, instead of pudding cake, I obviously had to come up with some icing. I'm not a big fan of cakes towered with super-sweet icing, so I decided to keep it simple, since the cake is really the star of this show.
I melted some fine quality bittersweet chocolate (added a little cream as needed) and poured it from a tablespoon over the top of the cooled cupcake, allowing the chocolate to run down the sides.
I'm pretty proud of this adaptation. With a few little tweaks the pudding cake becomes an entirely different dessert. If I didn't know any better I would never have guessed they were the exact same batter.
And so now I present to you the recipe for Terry's Chocolate Orange Cupcakes (or just cake), because this is exactly what they taste like:

250g soft unsalted butter
75 g white sugar
75g light brown sugar
150g marmalade
225g flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder 
4 eggs
zest and juice of 1 orange

Put all the ingredients into a food processor. Process until smooth and then pour into buttered, or lined, muffins trays (I believe I got about 12 muffins).
Put in oven at 350F, and bake for about 20 minutes. Toothpick should come out clean from middle of cakes.
Remove cakes from try and allow to cool .
Melt chocolate (semi or bittersweet) in a bowl over simmering water. Add cream as needed. Pour gently from a spoon over the tops of the cakes. It should run down the sides a little.

I'm going to bake this as a cake on Thursday, which I imagine will need about 40 minutes in the oven.
If you want to give the original recipe a try, bake at 350F for 40 minutes in a buttered pyrex dish. Cool in tray. Melt 75g and juice of half an orange in a small saucepan, and then paint the top of the cake for a glazed finish.

Enjoy!

Me, again.

I have had a furious need for muffins lately. I think about them all the time. Every trip I make to Kensington Market I stop by Urban Herbivore and pick up a sweet potato and dates muffin. At this point I might as well bake a batch and call it a day. So Friday will be an exciting sweet potato date date. Haha.
Anyway, today I made the ginger lemon muffins from a recent Orangette posting. Not as good as I was led to believe. Certainly not a keeper, but I still ate 5 of them. I think perhaps I didn't add enough ginger. I didn't get that burn at the back of my throat that you're apparently supposed to get.
I haven't been posting much because I've been busy with not working. Much of January has been spent job hunting, which means I'm home most of the day. Oddly enough, its when I have the time to write a blog entry that I don't. But still, things are looking up in the job hunt. Fingers crossed.
I've been eating a ton of chickpeas lately, since we're trying to save money while I'm jobless. What an amazing little thing - So versatile! For two weeks straight we had the same lunch everyday: mashed up chickpeas in curry powder, with grilled veggies in a wrap. It's one of those simple meals that make you feel as though you're really treating yourself to something special. But it's so healthy for you. I love it. I can't get enough of it. And I don't want to write a recipe down because this is the best part about the wrap: you just grab whatever you have in the fridge, fry it, assemble, and feast. I haven't experimented with the chickpeas yet. I just add some olive oil and curry powder, and then mash until the mixture is partly smooth, partly chunky. Maybe add some sauteed onion. Or sauteed mushrooms... Eggplant... Bean sprouts.. Shredded carrot.. The possibilities are endless. It's hard to go wrong with this one. Enjoy!

A Very Vegan New Year

It's day 2 of my 31 day vegan journey, and John hasn't killed me. In fact, I just finished making vegan, whole wheat, blueberry pancakes, which I'm enjoying right now. So far I think it is safe to say that vegans do breakfast better. Yesterday I made us tofu scrambled eggs. They ended up a little too runny, but they have serious potential. I'm very excited.
I have a big, enormous bowl of chicpeas soaking in my fridge right now. I'm going to have to keep that thing stocked to make it through. My usual go-to meal (when I don't feel like using my brain) is pizza. It's going to be roasted chicpeas and salad this month. I'm making falafal tonight so that bowl is going to be seeing a big dent.
I used to think doing things like this, hopping on trendy diets, was a little silly. Though I'm a vegetarian who is driven nuts by meat-and-potato people asking what I eat everyday, I still thought vegans were deprived. But since I started working at the raw food restaurant, which perhaps I was judging a little too harshly in the beginning, I've found that some of the best recipes come from these so-called deprived people. Raw-foodists have the BEST ice cream I have ever tasted. Seriously, who would have thought?! We had people over to our apartment for New Years, and 90 percent of the food I made was vegan. Nobody even noticed. It was awesome.
Anyway, I came here to ask one question in particular. Does anyone else have trouble tasting their own food as they cook. John is bewilidered by the fact that while I'm making a meal I don't taste the seasonings, flavour etc. Instead, I just eyeball. it. I feel like it ruins the excitement to taste-test. I like to sit down, like you would at a restaurant, and have your tastebuds surprised by what they're tasting. Now, I have started to taste the recipes that I make frequently and where there would be no surprise, such as, say, pizza sauce, but other than that I am a no-taste-as-you-go kinda girl. So far it's working in my favour.
And as I sign off, I think I will share this little nugget of gold. I learned this over the break, which maybe most people knew, but I had never heard before. That is, you should add blueberries to the pancake once you have poured the batter into the pan. That way the pancakes will still fluff up.