FFWD – Lemon-Steamed Spinach

Posted on March 29, 2013 by

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Steamed spinach with olive oil and lemon zest – hardly a recipe, but it’s good to have a reminder of how lovely simply prepared vegetables can be. We had the spinach with the Chicken Breasts Diable from the beginning of the month. It was a good choice, along with celery root purée.

I did mine in a stand-alone steamer, which is one of my favourite kitchen gadgets. I love being able to set the timer and leave it to do its work. I’ve had it long enough that I know how long each vegetable takes and it’s nice to spend my time in the kitchen on more interesting cooking tasks. (I’m totally trying to justify keeping a probably unnecessary electric appliance – hey, at least it was a gift. Tune in next week for my essay on the joys of electric can openers…)

Spinach has always been a favourite of mine (I was one of those weird kids who liked liver and onions, brassicas, and cottage cheese.) and I’m glad that my partner loves it, too. Speaking of spinach-lovers, I thought I’d share an old Popeye cartoon with you. I have to say, though, it was hard to find one that I felt comfortable posting. Those old cartoons are a lot more problematic than I remember. I’m guessing they don’t show that many of them any more. Here’s one that’s not entirely problem-free, but enjoyable for its presaging of our current food wars.

By the way, I’m flu-free now – thanks for the well-wishes from the Facebook Dorista crowd. Now, I just have to find time to catch up on the Ispahan cake.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Lemon-Steamed Spinach

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FFWD – Orange-Scented Lentil Soup

Posted on March 15, 2013 by

Lentil Soup in a blue bowl with a dill seed pattern, on a white plate atop a wooden table

East End Food Co-op is where we do a lot of our grocery shopping and it’s long been a neighbourhood hub in our area. It’s hard to go in there without running into someone we know and some of the staff know us so well that they’ve memorized our member number. The co-op does a good job of stocking organic produce, along with products that cater to the various tastes and needs of their customers (for instance, they sell a very good gluten-free all purpose flour). When this soup came up in the rotation, I headed over to the co-op to pick up some more of their beautiful organic French green lentils. Though I have to go further afield for some ingredients (like next week’s rose syrup), I’ve always felt grateful that I have such good options a five-minute walk away.

This soup was well worth using those lentils. One expects earthy, savoury flavours in lentil soup, so the brightness brought by the fresh ginger and orange peel in this recipe surprised me. There have been a couple of recipes from the book that I thought had a little too much orange in them, but this one was perfectly balanced, I thought. I made this with olive oil and vegetable stock, so it made for a nice meatless meal.

Yogurt and lardons are suggested as toppings, or in Cher’s case, homemade labneh. I was so pleased with this soup’s flavour that I ate it just as it was. No toppings needed.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Orange-Scented Lentil Soup

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Lifelong Learning

Posted on March 12, 2013 by

Crocus shoots from this January

Lifelong Learning has become a given for many of us in our post-millennial culture, in order to keep up with the knowledge economy and to promote intellectual and emotional health. This can mean going back to school to finish a degree, to pursue an additional level of education, or to take a brand new direction altogether. But, traditional routes to further education, like university and college programs, are becoming increasingly financially inaccessible, leaving many folks behind. Even famed tuition-free college, Cooper Union, may begin charging their students.

While the loss of widely accessible education is deeply troubling for our culture, there are new educational resources that are attempting to fill this gap, particularly online. Coursera is one of the more promising start ups in this area, offering free courses from well-regarded universities around the world. I’m also impressed by this list, 12 Dozen Places To Educate Yourself Online For Free, for the autodidacts among us.

I suspect that credits from institutions like Coursera will begin to carry more weight on resumés, but I also worry that they’ll become part of the demarcation between elites who can afford traditional routes to higher education and the rest of society. We shall see.

But what about those of us who want to add to our skills without committing to a two or four year program? Free resources like Coursera or reasonably-priced versions like Udemy are great for online learning, but there’s also in-person options like Trade Schools popping up here and there. (At Vancouver’s Trade School this month, they’re offering classes on Career Planning, Writer’s Block, and Performance Poetry.)

As for me, I’ve signed up for Codecademy, where I can top up my web skills for free. I’ve wanted to do that for a while, but haven’t wanted to commit to a course. Now, I can do it at my own pace, in my spare time.

What are your tips for lifelong learning?

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FFWD – Cheesy Crème Brûlée

Posted on March 8, 2013 by

“Cheese has always been a food that both sophisticated and simple humans love.”
M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf (1942)

Cheesy goodness

I simply love cheese. I guess I know which side of Fisher’s equation that places me on. Though I’m not a fan of processed cheese. There, I just retained my dignity.

This week’s dish was a cheese lover’s dream. Well, it was this cheese lover’s dream. My partner, who loves cheese even more than I do, decided that he wasn’t a fan of this savoury cheese custard. “I prefer my cheese sliced,” was his verdict. My reply: “More for me!” And I enjoyed these all through last weekend. I guess there are some advantages to recipes that don’t win universal popularity…

I used a mixture of Gruyère and Dubliner, which worked really well together. The Gruyère was the last little bit of a beautiful cave-aged variety that appears occasionally at our local food co-op. This brûlée was a very good last use of the cheese. I chopped my cheese into tiny cubes (measurable in millimeters), which disappeared into the custard while baking. I had to turn up the heat from 200° to 250° for the last fifteen minutes of baking time, as my ramekins aren’t as shallow as those called for in the recipe.

I’ll make this again, certainly (though for a dinner sans Kevin). Creamy, cheesy, mostly made-in-advance, and a little unusual – sounds like a perfect start to a dinner party.

Happy International Women’s Day, everyone!

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Cheesy Crème Brûlée

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Aural Atmosphere

Posted on March 5, 2013 by

When we think of the soundscape of a city, we think of engines and sirens, footsteps and voices, and car alarms, always car alarms. But each city has its own catalogue of sounds that help to define it.

I was reminded of this a few weeks ago, when we went through a period of unusually heavy fog. Fog horns sounded through the night, confusing some. Vancouver is touted as a recreational paradise of mountains and seaside, but it’s also a working port.

Those fog horns are a fickle, seasonal addition to our soundscape, but we have a few more reliable components. There are two, in particular, that define Vancouver’s soundscape. The Nine O’clock Gun can still startle me after all these years of living in the city, if I happen to lose track of time. It can be heard across the city and beyond its borders into the surrounding municipalities. The Noon Whistle, which you can hear in the video at the top of this post, brings daily relief to office workers downtown and serves as a rallying cry to weekend late sleepers. They aren’t as famous as Gastown’s Steam Clock, but they pace out life in this city for its residents.

Other Vancouver sounds that come to mind for me: the beeps and whirrs of our trolley buses, the sound of trains moving, the Carnival Band, and the roaring of the cranes at the Port of Vancouver. Oh, and I can’t forget crows. There are so many here that they’ve become a sort of emblem in art and music.

I’ll leave you with a video that uses more Vancouver sounds and a question: What are the sounds that define the place you live?

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FFWD – Chicken Breasts Diable

Posted on March 1, 2013 by

Chicken Breasts Diable

We are well into Raincouver season here and I’ve just finished towelling myself off after taking the dog for a walk. Water is running over every surface outside, streaming down the sidewalks, making lawns resemble a beachside network of tidal pools and rivulets, all leading to the shallow seas forming around the storm drains at the corners of each street.

It’s the sort of weather that demonstrates the exact extent of water resistance in outerwear, but the temperatures are mild and the rivulets of water streaming through my hair were cool, not frigid. I’m grateful that it only takes one cup of tea to warm up, but it’s still not the sort of weather that would tempt me to run out for a forgotten ingredient.

Enter Chicken Breasts Diable. Though it sounds adventurous, as long as you remember to pick up the chicken, it won’t send you running out into the rain for anything you don’t already have in your kitchen. The devil in this dish is Dijon mustard and it forms a very mildly piquant pan sauce when combined with shallots, garlic, white wine, and cream. I substituted milk for cream, as I often do. I also skipped the Worcestershire sauce, because I haven’t been able to find a gluten-free brand (admittedly, I haven’t tried very hard). I did add a very small dab of HP Sauce to the pan, since both Worcestershire and HP are tamarind-based. I think it worked pretty well as a substitute, but it really has to be no more than a dab, or it could overwhelm the sauce. Someday I’ll remember to look for gluten-free Worcestershire sauce beyond my usual haunts, but until then, I’m glad my favourite breakfast condiment can pinch hit for it. (In case you’re wondering, HP Sauce is to the Commonwealth what ketchup is to North America. Canadians often play for both teams.)

Searing chicken in a cast iron pan

It’s not my favourite one-pan recipe from this cookbook (that would be Chicken, Apples, and Cream à la Normande), but it’s another recipe that’s going to be making repeat appearances. It doesn’t hurt that it’s comforting and warm without being heavy – perfect for this in-between time of year. With the lemon spinach that’s coming up later this month and celery root puree, this was a lovely meal.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Chicken Breast Diable

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FFWD – Cheating-on-Winter Pea Soup

Posted on February 22, 2013 by

Pea Soup. Olive drab in a pretty blue bowl.

A few years ago, the Vancouver Art Gallery exhibited a piece called Ought Apartment, which consisted of a stack of apartments reaching up through the centre of the building. Each apartment was decorated in the style of a particular decade, right down to the knickknacks and the contents of the drawers and cabinets. So many of the objects (and decorating schemes) resonated for me. The fifties apartment had the same sort of ceramic fish that my grandparents hung in their bathroom, there were some questionable young adult design choices in the eighties/nineties range, and so on up through to the millenium. It was the seventies apartment that fascinated me the most – it replicated the landscape (or carpetscape, anyway) of my childhood.

Why am I telling you all this in a post that’s supposed to be about pea soup? It’s all in the colour. The olive drab of the soup was a dead ringer for the avocado green of the kitchen appliances of my youth. The house that I grew up in had orange shag carpet in the living room, and olive green appliances in the kitchen. It may seem horrible now, but in the seventies it was de rigueur. Just as Ought Apartment had, this week’s soup carried me back.

What it didn’t do was carry me back to the taste of my mother’s pea soup, which is a solidly French Canadian split pea and ham bone affair. It’s delicious, but so was this soup, made with frozen green peas and romaine lettuce and relying on nothing more than salt, pepper, and softened onions for additional flavour. I couldn’t help myself – I added thyme and a clove of garlic to the onions, a minute or two before adding the vegetable stock. My vegetable stock was almost the colour of beef broth, I think because it has some tomato paste added to it, which might explain the colour of my soup. Others have reported their soups were a bright emerald green. No matter the colour, this soup does remind me of a summer soup, even though it’s also warming and rich enough for a cold spring evening. I’d like to take another run at this recipe when it’s truly summer, with fresh peas and mint. That might bring on another attack of memories, this time of shelling peas and shucking corn for family barbeques, but I’ll deal with it when it happens.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Cheating-on-Winter Pea Soup

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FFWD – Coeur à la Crème

Posted on February 15, 2013 by

Coeur à la Crème

You might notice a distinct lack of heart-shaped-ness in this week’s dish. I couldn’t bring myself to buy the traditional moulds for this dessert, so substituted a colander, instead. We’re not big fans of Valentine’s Day around here. We’d rather celebrate Kevin’s birthday, which is within a few days of the holiday. When we first started dating, we had a tentative conversation about it:

“So, I’m not really into the whole Valentine’s Day thing, are you?”
“No, not at all! That’s so great we’re on the same page!”

Obviously, reconstructing conversations is outside of my skills set, but you get the idea. We’d had partners in the past who celebrated it and it was a relief to both of us to be able to let it go. It’s one of those holidays that engenders the sort of high expectations that can lead to disastrous results – like New Year’s Eve, but with more self-esteem involved. Sis Boom Blog’s Trevor has a story that tells it so much better than I could, so I’ll leave it at that.

I’ve not tasted this dessert yet, though I’ve tasted all its components, so perhaps I’ve tasted it after all. My no coeur in this crème version of this week’s recipe is going to taste pretty fabulous. Instead of liqueur, I added a couple of teaspoons of Campbell’s Gold amaretto-spiked honey. Drizzled on top is more of the honey and Dorie’s bittersweet chocolate sauce. (I should have stuck with just the chocolate sauce for drizzling purposes, as the honey made everything a little bit smeary. Oh, well.)

With this dessert and a pot of chocolate sauce in the fridge, I think we’re set for a cosy weekend. Happy Valentine’s Day to those who celebrate it and a very relaxing weekend to all.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Coeur à la Crème

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FFWD – Fresh Orange Pork Tenderloin

Posted on February 8, 2013 by

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Have I mentioned that I have some envy issues when it comes to citrus? Reading about other Doristas walking into their yards and picking fruit for the week’s recipe emphasizes the drabness of Vancouver winter a little too keenly. I was able to find some lovely Cara Caras today, so that’s some consolation.

Another consolation is that the orange in this dish didn’t wow me. Next time, I’d reach for some apples instead. Cardamom-rubbed porkloin, roasted in an apple cider and balsamic sauce, now that seems more my style. Not that I minded the stove-top method. It gave me more room in the oven to roast some potatoes and garlic, which I smashed with butter and a little milk before serving.

Now, I’m off to enjoy the long weekend. Next week, it’s coeur à la crème and the dreaded V-word.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Fresh Orange Pork Tenderloin

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FFWD – Brown-Sugar Squash and Brussels Sprouts en Papillote

Posted on February 1, 2013 by

Brown-Sugar Squash and Brussels Sprouts

The usual obstacles to a properly chopped ingredient are dull knives (got that covered – there’s a good sharpener in the drawer), poor knife skills (improving every year, thank you very much), or unripe produce (great selection at the local market this week). I have another, quite individual obstacle, in the person of one small dog:

Roxy

Imagine that face staring intently at you while you prepare your meal. Distracting, right?

Roxy’s five now and when she was two, she got quite ill and had to be put on a diet of home-prepared pork and yam for a year-and-a-half. She’s back on dog food now, but is only allowed small quantities of fruits and vegetables as snacks. All this has led to her belief that everything prepared in the kitchen is for her.

This week’s dish included two of her favourites, squash and apple. There was some whining involved and it may come as no surprise that not quite the entire apple called for in the recipe made it into the oven. I also may have hurried through the chopping process a little, rendering my cubes of squash and apple a little less than uniform.

Distraction aside, this recipe was quick to put together and, en papillote, easily left to its own devices in the oven while the rest of dinner is prepared.

I liked the combination of Brussels sprouts, squash, and apple. Sage and brown sugar brought the flavours together well, though I think I might add some nutmeg next time. I also think I’ll forgo the foil – a little caramelization would really make this dish.

And Roxy? She moved on to demanding a portion of the blueberries I added to this banana bread. Everything in the kitchen. For her.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Brown-Sugar Squash and Brussels Sprouts en Papillote

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