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.
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Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Sunday, July 04, 2010
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.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 10: Sakhoo!
Making the dough is very simple and yet was a little nervewracking. All you need to do is boil water, pour a packet of tapioca pearls into a bowl, and stir the water in bit by bit. That's it! But then the recipe (from Alford & Duguid's Hot Sour Salty Sweet) calls for "kneading to a smooth paste". Well. I wasn't sure if the pearls were supposed to dissolve or what, but all that happened was that I turned them out onto the counter and had a therapeutic hand massage pressing down on the pearls, while the liquid gradually thickened and got stickier - not so much of the smooth or the pasty. Eventually I gave up and returned as much as I could to the bowl, letting it rest for the prescribed hour. I figured if it proved impossible to work with I could do something else with the filling.
The filling. The recipe is for sakhoo sai moo, but of course my version would have to be mai moo since I don't eat pork. So, sakhoo sai phak. There were lots of things starting to look a bit sad in the vegetable drawer, so I ended up with a large pot of beet greens, red cabbage, carrot, oyster mushroom, tofu (pressed this time!), and flavoured with onion, garlic, ginge
r, green onion, fresh chile, rice vinegar and fish sauce. I wasn't entirely happy with the result but it wasn't bad either.Moment of truth! I returned to the bowl of dough and to my surprise it was a cohesive entity, albeit a frail-ly bonded one of separate little white balls. Still, I was able to turn it out onto an oiled surface, divide it in two, roll it out to a tube and slice it up into 32 rounds. From there, the assembly: each slice is patted out to a disk between oiled palms, then stuffed with a small teaspoon of cooled filling and sealed into a little round ball.
It's a good thing that the recipe urges patience, saying that little cracks will seal up in the pot, because my dough was cracking and falling apart all over the place. I only managed a few dumplings that were fully sealed with no filling on the outside, but somehow each dumpling managed to stick to itself as a little unit.
I lined a steamer tray with cabbage leaves and put the first 8 dumplings into a pot, and hoped for the best. And, miraculously, it all worked! In about 15 minutes, the dumplings turned translucent and though some did fall apart a bit, I was able to pry them all off the cabbage leaves and cook the remaining three batches.
The result was one of the wei
Anyhow, weird and wriggly they may be, but I feel revitalised by sakhoo, and whether I catch up on the three weeks I'm behind on, or just sally on, the project isn't dead yet.
Labels:
cooking,
dumplings,
food,
noodlemaking,
noodles
Sprouted flatbread
Way back in my bread heyday, circa 2005, I made this interesting bread called pitti, from the Hunza Valley in Pakistan (from an Alford and Duguid book, naturally - Flatbread and Flavours). What's so neat about it is that you don't make it from flour but instead from whole sprouted wheatberries; they are almost the only ingredient, with dried apricots and salt. They were really delicious, but I remembered them being a bit of a pain and never made them again.Looking back with a bit more perspective, I realised that though they do take 2-3 days, there's hardly any work involved (if you have a food processor, that is), and the only thing about them that I had found annoying was having to scrape sticky wheatberries off a dishtowel over and over again while they sprouted. Being the granolaesque West Coasters that we are, in this kitchen we have sprouting trays which would remove that aspect entirely, so I've been meaning to make these since I got back from Asia.
The other day I finally got around to picking up some wheatberries at the local bulk food store and was in business! Wheatberries have nothing to do with berries - they are just whole, dried grains of wheat. You can also soak and then boil them and eat them as a grain, in salads, etc; they are featured in the Ukrainian Christmas dish kutia, mmmm. The cooked grains are also a great breakfast heated and topped with a small spoonful of m
The first step is to immerse the berries in cold water and let them sit for 18 hours. As easily done as said, except the timing part. For the past weeks I have been unaccountably busy and ended up having to let them soak for more like 22 hours. No big deal. After this, you rinse them off, and then either put them in a bowl and cover them with a towel and plate or lid, or if you have sprouting trays you just pop them in. Every 8-12 hours, you rinse and drain them again, until the sprouts are 1/3 as long as the berries themselves, at which point you're ready to make the dough.
This was a little more problematic for me, as try as I might I couldn't summon up the energy to deal with them after work on Thursday when they were already ready (I expected them to take till Friday). When I did get to them at 11pm on Friday, they had sprouted beautifully and the sprouts were now 2-3 times the length of the berries! Oops! I decided to go ahead and make the dough anyhow.
I did have to deal with one hated dishcloth manoeuvre, pouring the berries out and patting them dry, but once I can handle. Then it was into the Cuisinart, 2 cups at a time, with some dried apricots and salt. You process it until it starts moving around the bowl as one lump of dough. The grains are mostly ground up though some unevenness remains. At that point you need to let the dough rest for at least an hour - or, like me, pop it in the fridge, clean up the sticky mess, and collapse gratefully in bed.
This morning I brought the dough back to room tempera
The raw dough smelled sharper and greener for the over-enthusiastic sprouting, but there's not much flavour difference in the baked breads. And they are indeed rather delicious - I might not wait 5 years to make them again this time.
Labels:
baking,
bread,
flatbreads,
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south asia
Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 8: Spätzle
I felt like doing something a bit different, and now that my sister's Joy of Cooking has moved back into this house, knew that there would be at least one spätzle recipe there. For a basic spätzle, you stir together flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg, then beat in milk and eggs to make a liquidy batter (Joy describes it as "elastic"). Boil a big pot of water or stock, drop little squiggles into the water a few at a time, and rescue them when they float to the surface (which happens quite quickly). Finito! Much easier than pie.
Now for the notes. Making the batter was of course easy, the only d
The only real difficulty was shaping the spätzle. It didn't really matter that they were uneven in size, since it's easy to strain each out as it is cooked. It's just that by dropping them from a spoon I ended up with rather distressingly spermatozoidal noodles. I was recounting this to a friend later and she pointed out that I could just push the batter through a slotted spoon - next time!
As for eating - well, they were delicious. We have whole nutmegs in the spice drawer, and grating even that small amount in made a huge difference in flavour - it subtly permeated the mouth without being in any way cloying. My mother and I kept snacking on them plain from their platter, but we also ate them in minestro
So if you visit this blog hoping for a weeknight noodle, this is the clear winner so far - quick, easy, forgiving and pairing well with lots of dishes. There were quite a few other dumpling recipes in Joy, so I'll have expand my horizons. I don't think I've even tasted U.S. Southern-style cornmeal dumplings - unless they're akin to those amazing dumplings at Jamaican restaurants in Brooklyn? Ah, The Islands, how I miss you and and your okra 'n codfish, and your charming staff that make one not mind that one has to wait two hours for supper.
Monday, June 07, 2010
Cake experiment
I can't believe how much I cooked last Saturday. The most complicated thing was inventing a new cake for my mother's birthday. It's shown here in an intermediate stage on Saturday night, about 14 hours after I started cooking that morning.So far, it's a basic white cake from Joy of Cooking, brushed with a lavender syrup I made from the herbs in our garden. The cake layers are brushed with lemon-chocolate ganache and lemon curd, about to be popped into the fridge to let them set a bit before receiving their final coating of lemon buttercream.
The innovation (besides putting a square cake layer on top of two round ones, a decorating choice that was more original than successful but ah well) was mostly in the lavender syrup, since otherwise I just modified existing recipes (replacing orange with lemon). Unfortunately the lavender flavour didn't come through enough. Even though I felt like I'd saturated the cake layers thoroughly, there was room for more moisture there and that would have helped - plus it's too early and cold for there to be lavender blossoms so I just had to use the leaves which yielded a less intense flavour. What I really needed to do was make a lavender buttercream, but after all those hours in the kitchen (and with 3lbs of butter at stake) I wasn't prepared to do it without a recipe...next time.
Brunch date: Birthday feast à deux
The first course consisted of scrambled eggs with fresh cheese, tomatoes, and mint, served with sauteed rainbow swiss chard, and a dollop of the tomato-ginger chutney leftover from the dumpling experiment.
But the real treat was the pain viennois, which I had started at quarter to eight that morning and which baked to a golden sheen just in time for us to eat at 11:30. We had it with fresh rhubarb compote, and a foretaste of the cake to come later that weekend: lemon-chocolate ganache. The bread, while pretty and tasty, was not all I hoped it would be - I think I'll have to go all the way and make brioche next time. But the accompaniments were fabulous - the compote very tart, a soft rich pink that melted into the rich bread. And the ganache was probably the best one I have ever made, so exquisitely bitter with lemon zest that you nearly forgot it was sweet until the chocolate melted on your tongue like honey.
It was a cold grey day, but the table was brightened with vast dark red peonies, and we sat with our coffees dipping baguette points into the little pots and chatting the morning away. Happy birthday Maman!
Friday, June 04, 2010
Brunch date: Fiddlehead Frittata
So, I've decided to take action by inaugurating the Stealth Brunch Party. For the last three weeks, I've made something fancy and/or exciting for brunch on Saturday mornings. It started with Mother's Day, continued when fiddleheads (my preferred augur of spring!) showed up at Granville Island market (albeit for a hairraising $10/lb), and then Maman's birthday was a further excuse. Sure enough, whether we all sat down together or people just helped themselves as they passed through the kitchen, everyone in the house eventually partook. I figure if I'm consistent enough, my brunch parties will become a reality.
So now you know - if you're in Vancouver of a Saturday, drop on by. Otherwise you can feast visually, as I plan to post photos on the blog. The idea is that the tradition marks some intersection of the practical (using up leftovers, in the way that cooked salmon from the previous night's dinner wound up in this dish) and the creative (not just brunch but original brunch is what we strive for!). We'll see how it goes, but so far, it goes tastily.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 5: Hand-stretched Kazakh Noodles
The Kazakh noodles, from a recipe in Beyond the Great Wall, were a departure. While the preceding four types were shaped in different ways, they were all quickly cut or torn into small rounds or squares or spheres. These long noodles had each to be stretched by hand into skinny strips, which made them a bit more time-consuming. In the end though, they were still easy and fun - and delicious.The dough was similar to the other Asian noodles I've made so far - eggs, flour, salt and water mixed into a stiff dough and briefly kneaded. Rather than letting the dough rest in a ball before shaping, though, you divide it in four and pat each quarter out into a rectangle, and then cut it crosswise into strips (the dough scraper is very efficient for this) before covering it and letting it rest. Here's where I made my slight mistake - I rolled the quarters out instead of patting them, since the dough was quite stiff and resistant to being flattened. Although I'd read the directions through already, if I'd really pictured the process I wouldn't have done this, since it's not important how big the strips are, and I think it contributed to the problem I had of the dough drying up and thus not stretching as evenly. If you'
After the rest period, the fun begins. You just pick up each strip, and using one hand stable and pulling against it with the other, kind of like drafting for spinning, you stretch and flatten your little strip into a veritable noodle, long, thin, glorious-looking. This step was very exciting for me. As long as the dough wasn't dried out, its egg-rich strength made for a beautiful even stretch, and elegant noodles
up to 40cm long. Unable to come up with an equally elegant drying rack arrangment, I just draped them over cooling racks and a couple of floured cookie sheets for their resting time. This worked fine, but someday when I'm making a big batch I think I'll clean the clothes-drying rack and use that - I love the image of long rows of noodles swaying gently in the breeze!In a rash of enthusiasm, I turned last Saturday into a cooking frenzy, and along with these noodles I made rice and beans and vegetables, and fresh tortillas, for supper; dairy-free chocolate banana cake for our lactose intolerant frien
Having the fondest memories of the exquisite hand-stretched northern Chinese noodles you can get at the Richmond Public Market foodcourt (pictured on the blog sometime in 2008), with their tomato-egg sauce, I made a quick but loving tribute to the more elaborate dish. Just stirfried some cherry tomatoes with lots of ginger and green onion, scrambled an egg into it, cracked some pepper over top, all in the time it took to boil my nice long noodles. Mmmm...the noodles were delicate and soft but not sogg
The recipe also allowed for drying the noodles for a few days before cooking them, so that's what I did with the rest of them. If you see a pinkish tinge to the noodles in the photo, it's because I used swiss chard cooking water in the dough. It disappeared when they were cooked again but showed up well in the dried format - if it affected the flavour at all, it was too subtle for my palate to notice. After leaving the
These noodles were awesome. I can't wait to make them again.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 4: Lhasa Egg Noodle Shells

I don't know whether I made these larger than I was supposed to, but they seemed to take awhile to cook. Tasting the half-cooked ones made me a bit worried as they seemed bland and tough, so I decided to pan fry them to give them a bit more flavour. Butter, the rest of the caramelised onions, and more fresh herbs, plus a bit of crisping from the heat, and they turned out to be pretty yummy after all.
It was family Sunday dinner again, this time with my uncle, aunt, and two boy-cousins, as well as the home group of Mom, Grandma, and both my sisters. We had a huge meal that came together casually with everyone making a few things - the best kind. My uncle, the chef, had brought an enormous halibut, and after making its giant eye wobble at people for a bit, he oven-roasted it with lemon, and served it with an artichoke-tomato sauce. We ate it over a mix of brown rices and wild rice, a

These noodles were nice, but I was expecting them to have a bit more flavour, I think. The egg definitely gives them resilience in the mouth, but it's amazing how different they were from the first recipe, the Earlobe noodles. The addition of just a few drops of oil created a totally different texture and flavour. I liked all these noodles, and I would definitely make them all again, but everyone's clear favourite was the Earlobes.
The day after the dinner, I had the noodles for lunch, with leftover halibut and artichoke-tomato sauce. Homemade noodles. Mmm.
I'm looking forward to being a bit more ambitious in the following weeks. I want to experiment more with different kinds of gnocchi, and I think it's time to try rice noodles for the first time. I'd also like to try noodle sheets and rolled-out-and-cut long noodles sometime soon. I don't know what it'll be next week, but this project is only just beginning.
Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 3: Potato Gnocchi
I peeled Yukon Gold potatoes and steamed them, then mashed them and mixed in an egg, some salt, and some flour. The only tricky part was the first few minutes of kneading - I don't have the asbestos fingers of a chef, and it's important to start working while they're still hot from cooking so the ingredients blend well and the potatoes don't dry out. Otherwise it was fun, that kitchen alchemy that turns vegetables into a smooth firm dough in a matter of minutes.
Shaping the gnocchi was fun too. The dough was dense and responsive, and working quickly with a dough scraper always makes me feel like a pro. I stretched it out into logs, cut them into small pieces, then scored each with a fork before transferring it to a floured kitchen towel. As I shaped, I boiled the gnoc
chi in batches. They only take a few minutes to cook and it was easy to fall into a rhythm. Making massive quantities of gnocchi would be quite doable, I think, as long as you weren't dancing around too many other people on the journey from shaping surface to stovetop!Even though we were only four for dinner, rather than the usual Sunday horde, Maman made a delicious and elaborate seafood dinner. The gnocchi fell in quite well among all the other tastes. I made a simple preparation, since mostly I just wanted to taste the noodles themselves - caramelised red onion, and lots of fresh sage, thyme, and rosemary from the garden, sauteed in a little butter.
They were AMAZING. I assumed it would take a couple of tries to get a good texture, and maybe this was just beginner's luck - but they were really, really good. The recipe warns that while too much flour makes them hard, too much potato makes them fall apart during cooking, and I'm sure it's a fine line that varies depending on your potato type, air temperature and humidity, age of flour, etc, etc. My theory right now, though, is that a good strategy is to not work too too much flour into the potatoes initially, but to flour the logs generously as you roll them out and cut them. This gives you a tender inside but a firm outer layer that keeps the
gnocchi from falling apart in the water. It worked this time anyway - but I'll have to test the theory many more times before relying on it.I only prepped half the gnocchi for supper, making the rest a few days later. By then the texture was not quite as perfect, but still enjoyable. This time I sauteed swiss chard, more caramelised onion, tomato, olives, herbs, and feta for a thicker sauce, different but also tasty.
My sister's response after tasting the gnocchi was, "How do you make potatoes DO that?!" Well, now you know. And now that I know, I suspect I'll be making potatoes do this a lot.
Khachapuri
Lest it be thought that I'm neglecting to bake in the midst of all this noodlery, let it be said that I've made bread three times since I've been back (and also two layer cakes!). This is one of my favourite recipes from Alford and Duguid's Flatbreads and Flavours (their first cookbook).I had an intense craving for them right after I woke up one morning, and because they're not yeasted, making them for breakfast was entirely plausible. You just stir together some cheese and an egg to make a filling, then knead flour mixed with yogourt as the liquid, to make a moist stretchy dough. I always put too little flour in the dough and end up with sticky, unmanageable messes - yet they always taste fantastic anyway.
Khachapuri are a Georgian cheese bread that come in many styles - but I love this one, with just a hint of cheese, a crisp exterior and soft inside. And the smell, so rich and complex from the yogourt. This time it drew my mom down from upstairs and we snacked on the first batch just as it came out of the oven, hardly waiting for it to cool. We have an ongoing debate about whether they taste better fresh from the oven, or toasted the next day, when the outside gets really crisp and the inside seems softer than ever. Since they disappear almost instantly, it doesn't take long to be ready to make another batch...
Saturday, May 01, 2010
Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 2: Amdo Noodle Squares
Since week 1 went so well, I decided to stick to Tibet for the next week and make Amdo Noodle Squares, also from Alford and Duguid's Beyond the Great Wall. The recipe is fairly similar to the last, but with a plainer dough - just flour, salt, and water. Instead of rolling the dough into logs after letting it rest, and pinching off the pieces impressionistically, you roll it out flat and cut it into squares.The dough was fairly easy to work with, and as you don't have to roll it out that thin, it went quickly, especially with the devoted assistance of my niece, who lovingly patted each little square and gently placed it on the floured towel to await its turn in the pot. Ever since she could sit, she has always wanted to be lifted up onto the counter to help whenever the flour starts flying (she's 4 now). We boiled them briefly in a large pot and that was that - quick and easy despite all the commotion going on in the kitchen.
Embarrassing to relate, but with everything else going on, I almost forgot to make the noodles this week - I was just saved by a friend asking how the project was g
The verdict? The noodles with their minimalist ingredients weren't as tasty or as intriguingly textured as the first week's batch, but they stood up nicely in the soup, and they paired excellently well with grated parmigiano. Tasty, if not stunning.
Labels:
cooking,
family dinner,
food,
home,
noodlemaking,
noodles
Friday, April 09, 2010
Sunday, March 07, 2010
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