Biscotti

It's a bit silly to keep harking back to my culinary heyday in Montréal, but the fact is that I had lots of good cooking habits then. One of them was always, always having a large glass jar of biscotti on the counter. I've been thinking of it dreamily for a few weeks, but today I finally got around to making them again.

My biscotti jar held quite a variety over the years, but I tended to make a few beloved recipes over and over. My all-time favourite is the Anise-Almond Biscotti from Epicurious. I make a few changes, such as using at least six times the amount of spice, but using whole toasted fennel seeds rather than ground anise. And putting chocolate in one of the two loaves. But otherwise the recipe produces a crisp, golden, crunchy but not hard cookie that keeps for weeks and goes so beautifully with coffee, with tea, for breakfast, in a long golden afternoon sitting with a book on the balcony...

The biscotti came out of the oven into a golden afternoon, but I was just dashing out. So it was in the golden evening, after sighting the sweetpea, that I sat out in the backyard with my espresso and little pile of biscotti and little pile of books. To good old habits rekindled.

Sweetpea

My poor little garden is mostly quite sad, a combination of my inexpertise and the chilly spring we've had that's extending into summertime. But tonight I got home to a beautiful golden evening after a cloudy day, and when I stepped onto the balcony suddenly there was an explosion of colour. Out of nowhere, from shy green tendrils, the first sweetpea flower! All summer in a blossom.

Vegetarian Fusion #474

Some days I just cook a lot. Fresh pita, with roasted red pepper puree, and sweet potato-chickpea experimental falafelcakes (made from a puree of the salad pictured earlier) with fresh coriander, and Moroccan carrot salad. It was one of those days where everything tastes exactly perfect, and the only sad part was I didn't finish it all till 11pm and everyone else had gone to bed, so I had no one to share it with. Many more experimental falafelcakes are in the offing - but then, anything tastes good with roasted red pepper puree.

My roommate

Despite the weather

At least we can have summer on our plate. Local fruits, all!

Pita Meringue

I had the urge to make pita, which is surely one of those acts that gives the greatest joy with the least effort. Since I was also roasting vegetables and taking names, I let the sponge sit for a few hours and ended up with...beaten egg whites. I have made bread hundreds of times and I have never seen such a light, airy sponge. It really did look like egg white only with gluten-strand patterns in it. Whether it was the ambient yeasts or a really fortuitous set of proportions, it made fabulous pita (which did not taste eggy).

Vegetarian Fusion #473

Or something. Anyway, quick supper inspiration from disparate items languishing in the fridge. A fresh corn tortilla sprinkled with cheddar and then topped with the leftovers of a sweet potato-swiss chard-chick pea salad. After heating it up, I scattered it with chopped farmer's market tomato (so juicy!) and thinly sliced raw red cabbage. Mmm. I didn't make the corn tortilla, alas, but the locally-produced packaged kind are still great to have around. They last for ages and have so much flavour.