Darjeeling

Shogun

2010-06-24T09:57:00.000-07:00

Hello! Turns out 6 months can fly by surprisingly fast! A glimpse at a few of the delicious experiences of 2010...

The 'Manhattan Blend' coffee from Dean & Deluca...

Assorted macaroons from Pierre Herme (the green tea
and olive oil was my favourite)

Homemade sushi - a fantastic way to spend an afternoon! I realize they don't look beautiful, but they were scrumptious.

It's been a good year for books as well - I definitely need to sit and finally make a booklist though. So far the year has encompassed some Terry Goodkind (I'm not sold on him yet), some George R.R. Martin, The Pillars of the Earth, The Cello Suites (fantastic book!), Sylvia Plath, Richard Yates, t.s. eliot, some James Clavell, The Road, The Reader, and a few biographies.

I wanted to talk about James Clavell - I think his books are fantastic, even though sometimes it feels like an exercise in endurance getting through them. His best by far is Shogun, the first novel in the Asian Saga series. If you're a fan of historical fiction, definitely give this a read. It has adventure, romance, politics, espionage, and culture. The Japanese Samurai culture in the 1600s is beautifully illustrated, and experienced through the eyes of an English sailor. Clavell is fantastic at weaving multiple storylines at once, and explaining historical events at the level of the common man. It's hard to summarize a 1000+ page book, but the beauty of the entire novel is the ending - every detail and motive in the book is wrapped up on a single page.

I realize it may be gauche to pair homemade sushi with the novel Shogun, but try it! Our sushi / maki fillings included salmon / cream cheese / chilli mayo, salmon / avocado / lemon, and roasted yam / avocado / mango. Enjoy.

2010-01-30T07:34:00.000-08:00

This side of the continent is really growing on me. A 2 day mini-trip to New York cemented the whole thing, I think I could live happily between the two cities (gastronomically). Food. Everywhere. Of every kind. I had to restrain myself running through the streets of NYC, itching to eat my way through the city. Definitely my kind of holiday.

No proper book-talk this time, as I'm midway through a handful of books, but I promise one for next time!

I tasted my first challah, stuffed with sweetened cream cheese (!), a few months back, and since then I've been curious about the process of making one. This is far from perfect, but for a first attempt, not bad. I think the heaping spoonfuls of Nutella had something to do with that. The recipe was taken from 'Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day', which is an absolutely fabulous book for carb-lovers in general, especially those in a hurry.

Nutella and Hazelnut Challah

The master challah dough is a mixture of 1 and 3/4 cups lukewarm water, 1.5 tablespoons instant yeast, 1.5 tablespoons kosher salt, 4 large beaten eggs, 1/2 cup honey, 1/2 unsalted melted butter, and 7 cups unbleached all-purpose flour. Stir like a maniac, and let it rise in the refrigerator overnight, or up to 3 days. Pinch off a grapefruit size chunk, and away you go:

Now for the logistics and elbow grease. After shaping the dough into a ball, roll it with your hands into a log. Cut into 3 equal pieces, and roll each piece out into a long thick rope. Indent the middle of each rope with the side of your hand - the deeper they are, the more Nutella you can add.

Generously spread about 2 tablespoons (or more!) of Nutella into the indents.

Once you're done with the Nutella, pinch the dough closed into little tubes. It's not a perfect art (or at least not in my hands), but a few splodges of Nutella peeking through won't hurt anyone.

Now for the braiding! Line the 3 logs up next to eachother on a baking sheet. The book suggested starting the braiding in the middle of the logs and working out, which worked quite well. It's a bit hopeless looking at first...

...but it somehow manages to come together. Tuck the ends slightly underneath the body of the challah.

Cover with a towel and let it rest for about an hour. Preheat your oven to 350F. Once the dough has puffed a bit, brush the top with egg wash and sprinkle with chopped toasted hazelnuts (or nuts of your choosing).

Bake for about 25 minutes. Voila! A Challah! Not as hard as I expected, though my technique isn't quite there yet. The massive batch of master dough is quite generous, so you've loads of dough to practice with. Enjoy!

Of Reading, and Tarts

2010-01-25T13:25:00.001-08:00

I'm in Montreal at the moment, and will be for the next 6 weeks, and the freedom from exams and studying is almost overwhelming. I find myself making lists of things to do each day, and trying to be...productive. It's a little silly, and I'm trying to stop, I swear. So - today's 'goals', find a gym, a grocery store, and get through as many books as possible, with loads of tea.

With that in mind, I've just finished some fantastic green tea and 'The Reader', by Bernhard Schlink. I haven't seen the film yet, but Kate Winslet seems like such a perfect choice for Hanna. I've heard some wonderful reviews of the book (and film), but also some scathing critique of the subject matter. To be honest - I didn't fall in love with the book, but I did find it beautiful in it's clarity and honest, first-person narrative. Many took issue with the pseudo-erotic content, and while any book concerning the Holocaust tends to set off an emotional response, I found myself more interested in the story between Michael and Hanna.

At 15 Michael is seduced by Hanna, and their relationship consumes his teenage years. Then, one day, Hanna leaves him without a trace. This act creates an emptiness in Michael that stays with him through to his adult life. Hanna re-enters his life later on, in regrettable circumstances; as a young law student Michael sits in on a trial of female Nazi guards, of which she is one. What stayed with me in this section of the book was not the moral and ethical crises surrounding the Holocaust and the Nazi guards, but the character of Hanna, and Michael's numb processing of his emotions. This is the essence of the book.

I love that Michael is honest enough to say he doesn't understand the true meanings of good and evil, and that he struggles with the moral issues of Hanna's situation with such innocence. He understands what is 'bad', but refuses to believe that a 'good' person could deliberately be involved with such things. The scene where Michael visits his somewhat estranged father for a different perspective is beautiful; we see Michael yearning for a way to fix the situation, and his father gently stressing that some situations cannot, and should not, be fixed by someone on the outside.

My favourite passage from the novel -

"I reread the Odyssey at that time, which I had first read...as the story of a homecoming. But it is not the story of a homecoming. How could the Greeks, who knew that one never enters the same river twice, believe in homecoming? Odysseus does not return home to stay, but to set off again. The odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile."

I think this is the central dilemma that Michael, and many of us, grapple with - in a world that tries to understand the purpose and meaning of life, how can we make sense of the purposeless, the futile? I don't know, and I'm not sure if I ever Will know - but Bernhard Schlink elegantly portrays a young man trying to come to terms with this.

It's difficult to segue into a recipe after a somewhat serious book, but here goes - I made this tart a few months ago for Thanksgiving, and forgot to write about it. It's really, really good. As a warning, a thin slice of it is enough to slip into a food coma. This was my first time making anything with caramel, and that turned out to be the most difficult step - afterwards it's simply a matter of assembly and baking. Enjoy!

Caramelized Nut Tart

adapted from Epicurious

Crust Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

2 tablespoons sugar

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup chilled unsalted butter, cubed

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 tablespoons ice water

The Filling:

1 1/4 cups sugar

1/4 cup water

2/3 of a cup whipping cream

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed

1 tablespoon honey

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped

1/2 cup pecans, coarsely chopped

1/2 cup hazelnuts, coarsely chopped

9 inch tart pan with removable bottom

1. Mix flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a large bowl. Add butter. Use your fingers to rub the butter into the mixture, until it resembles wet sand. Mix in the vanilla and ice water. Gather the dough into a ball, and flatten into a disc. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 2 hours, until firm.

2. Preheat the oven to 375F. Roll the dough out on a floured surface to a 12 inch round. Transfer carefully to the tart pan, and fold in the overhang. Pierce dough all over with a fork. Freeze 15 minutes.

3. Bake the crust until set, but still slightly pale, about 10 minutes. Let cool. Increase the oven temperature to 400F.

4. Combine the sugar and water in a heavy medium saucepan. Stir on medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Increase the heat, and boil for 10 minutes without stirring, until the caramel is a deep amber. Reduce heat to medium again. Gradually whisk in the cream until the mixture is smooth, then add the honey, butter, and vanilla. Mix in all the nuts.

5. Pour caramel mixture into the crust. Bake until the filling bubbles, about 20 minutes. (Mine bubbled over quite a bit, so put the tart pan atop a baking sheet with wax paper).

The originally recipe says to cool completely, but I preferred to eat it warm.

2010-01-07T23:49:00.000-08:00

Gadzooks it's 2010! Happy New Year all!

I've been piled under a throng of textbooks, consuming tea by the gallon and brainstorming ways to avoid the outdoors. Somehow -30 in Canada doesn't seem as bad as -3 in Dublin today, the entire city is covered in a thick sheet of ice making it impossible to get groceries or a much needed coffee.

I find myself having very specific cravings during exam season, and always justify setting time aside to make them as I start obsessing over the idea of 'brain food'. Yesterday it was bran muffins with applesauce and honey and blueberries, today it's anything with spinach, and loads of the du hammam from the palais du the. Tomorrow I'm hoping for oatmeal almond muffins, and a loaf of herb du provence and olive oil bread. I figure it's food for thought.

Unfortunately, not much time for proper reading over the holidays as textbooks were on my concsience, but the plane ride book deserves a mention. I was intrigued by a book review in last year's RCSI student medical journal critiquing Samuel Shem's 'The House of God'. It came out in the late 70s, and is unforgiving in its satirical and absurdist portrayal of intern life - the interns are caricatures of insecurities and disillusionment. The book is loosely autobiographical and revolves around the BMS (a thinly veiled Harvard medical school) and The House of God (I'm told this is supposed to be Beth Israel Hospital). I found it hard to relate to, as at this point in the curriculum we haven't had rotations and sleepless, ER filled nights. Something in it did strike a chord though.

The main character, Dr. Roy Basch, starts the first day of his residency with naive good-intentions and nerves. Each new character serves to slowly unfurl Basch's ideas on medicine and morality, until he embodies the cynicism he originally loathed in the system. Central to this change is the senior resident, 'The Fat Man', an obese, charismatic, lazy physician, whose 'Laws of the House of God' are completely shocking in their open negligence and laissez-faire attitude, but completely necessary in order to retain any semblance of sanity. The only real foil to the Fat Man is Jo, another senior resident, who manages to alienate everyone through her overly ambitious, do-gooder attitude, and whose worship of rules and order barely covers her intense loneliness and exhaustion.

The entire book is a circus set in a hospital, laden with dark humour and impossible moral codes. I feel the only way to approach the book is as a satire - although Shem at one point argued his book is devoid of humour, and is as realistic as it gets.

(In all honesty, I'd rather see this book as fiction, and rely on Scrubs for accurate portrayals of my future!)

Anyway. Enough on that for now. Here's something much more enjoyable - Mango Cranberry granola. It's terribly easy to make, nutritious, flexible, and makes a perfect gift or luxurious snack. I've made it a few times now, and haven't quite gotten the right consistency for granola bars, but am more than happy with crumbled granola for breakfast instead.

Mango Cranberry Granola

2 cups rolled oats

1 cup sliced almonds

1 cup shredded coconut

1/2 cup toasted wheat germ

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/3 cup honey, melted

1/3 cup maple syrup

1/4 cup light brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup cranberries

1/2 cup dried mango, chopped

1/2 cup chopped dates

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C.

Mix the oats, almonds, coconut and wheat germ on a rimmed baking sheet, and bake for 5-7 minutes until lightly toasted.

Transfer to a large mixing bowl to let cool.

In a small saucepan, combine the butter, honey, maple syrup, sugar, and vanilla extract. Stir over low heat until just melted. Add this mixture to the dry ingredients, and mix to coat. Add the dried fruit, and mix until combined.

Reduce the heat to 300F. Spread the mixture into a 13 x 18 baking dish, a few inches deep, and bake for 30 minutes.

Let cool for several hours. Lightly break up with a wooden spoon, and store in an airtight container until peckish.

Young Hearts

2009-12-01T09:16:00.000-08:00

I'm curled up in bed with some kind of a pre-flu, trying to study but thinking about Richard Yates instead. Is anyone else a fan of his? I suppose it depends on your definition of fan - I've read 1.5 of his novels, and have made up my mind that he's fantastic. I say 1.5 because I've been halfway through 'Young Hearts Crying' for about a month now, and for some reason can't just sit down and finish. I'm halfway through about 5 books (I swear I'm not fickle) and feel like reading Yates calls for a very specific mood. As an aside - being halfway through numerous books is a lovely, lovely feeling, not in a quantitative sense, but because it feels like a 'choose your own adventure' month, dropping into whichever narrative and era I want, whenever I want to - very pleasing.

So, Yates. His writing reminds me of Fitzgerald for some reason - it's poetic but clean, and often involves fabulously wistful beautiful people. Young Hearts Crying (so far) is good, but not great. Revolutionary Road on the other hand was fantastic. It's another succinct portrayal of 'men living lives of quiet desperation...', of young optimistic lovers seeking "to be wonderful in the world", while quietly wilting into the suburbs. Frank and April Wheeler have endless Parisian dreams of realizing their true potentials and living artfully - the entire novel documents their suburban yearning for something exotic and freeing, while simultaneously exposing their collective thwarted ambitions.

I swear I don't have a thing for depressing books. The themes and subtleties in Yates' writing are so easy to relate to - everyone at some level is afraid of mediocrity, and wants to be more than themselves.

The film is actually quite wonderful as well - the acting is controlled and sincere, and the score is beautiful in its minimalism.

More to come on Richard Yates once I finish Young Hearts Crying and Easter Parade. Till then, snack on some prime literary-scones - fantastic with tea and a side of Yates.

Strawberry Scones
Makes 9 large scones!

1 cup chopped strawberries
3 tablespoons sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter, in cubes
2/3 cup cold buttermilk

Topping:
1 tablespoon sugar

Preheat the oven to 400F

Sprinkle the strawberries with 1/2 tablespoon of sugar and set aside for about 10 minutes.
Combine the remaining sugar with the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add butter and combine, using a pastry cutter or your fingers. You want to crumble the butter into the flour until it resembles damp sand. Stir in the fruit, then add the buttermilk and combine with a spatula gently.

Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead a little bit to incorporate everything. Add a tablespoon more flour if the dough is too sticky. Pat the dough into a circle about 3/4 inch thick, and cut into wedges.

Transfer wedges to a cookie sheet (leave at least an inch between each scone!) and bake 15 minutes. Sprinkle lightly with sugar, and bake 5-10 more minutes.

Enjoy, with tea.

Wanderlust

2009-10-10T23:07:00.000-07:00

"...we saw a far-away town sleeping in a valley by a winding river; and beyond it on a hill, a vast grey fortress, with towers and turrets, the first I had ever seen out of a picture.

Bridgeport? - said I
Camelot. - said He."

Well, we're in Dublin. We managed to get our lives sorted out and folded into 4 overstuffed suitcases (in true tradition I forgot to pack my toothbrush, toothpaste, and running shoes) - and arrived in Dublin on a grey non-rainy day. I could go on about mixed emotions, giant bouts of happiness fused with a slight claustrophobia at such a densely populated city, but instead I'll do what I'm good at - list making.

Edible, Fantastic things in Dublin:

i) Laduree apparently opened here over the summer, which is happiness beyond words! the packaging alone does me in, nevermind the macaroons.

ii) Coco and Busyfeet cafe - small, unpretentious, friendly, wonderful soup and chai.

iii) The Bald Barista / Milk and Honey Cafe - haven't decided which one I like better, but astoundingly good coffee at both, and located serendipitously next to my morning bus stop...

iv) Fallon and Byrne - foodies unite! Imported goods from all over the place, the only place you can get your hands on both Aunt Jemima's syrup (and other north american fare) and balsamic vinegar from an obscure village in Cyprus. Amazing take-away food.

v) Butler's. All I need to say is this - they melt down best-quality chocolate and sell it under the guise of 'hot chocolate'. Heavens.

vi) General, fantastic ethnic food. Really really. The influx of ethnicities in the past decade makes Dublin an interesting city for food - the whole first year I was here, I don't think I tasted 'Irish food', as everything edible down the road is Bengali, Punjabi, Persian, Arabic, Polish, French...

vii) Avoca. Their bread and scones have gotten me through dire exams - gastronomically and emotionally.

We definitely miss Canada though. There are too many things I could list on that one, family and Tim Hortons being in the top 5. But being back on this side of the ocean is exciting, I suddenly slip into new skin and feel braver here, as silly as that sounds.

We wandered down Grafton and up and down the wee side-streets and came across a beautiful old bookstore, with first edition James Joyce all over the place. All I could think of was my first experiences with literature when I was younger - we lived through Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Asterix and Obelix, and Tintin. Vicariously.

Enid Blyton's writing was optimistic in the most absolute way - you could always identify with someone in her stories, and the adventures and general tomfoolery that was had was relentlessly cheery and so very pure. We always had an Enid Blyton in our school bag, and on our bedside tables. Things seemed to base around either a group of children at boarding school (The Malory Towers series, the St. Clare's series) or a group of kids that happened to come across, and solve, mysteries of every nature (The Fantastic Five, The Five Find-Outers).

I realize that trends change, and that we're apparently in the middle of a vampire-literature-frenzy, but I hope Blyton's writing isn't being replaced - all her novels were reliable to us as children, steady anchors in the ocean of adolescence.

This is a recipe from the summer - the most optimistic dessert I can think of at the moment, bright and clean. If you have pastry crust in the fridge, this really doesn't take long to make, and nectarines really should be roasted more often as the results are spectacular.

Nectarine and Coconut Galette.

The Crust -
1 cup APF
1/2 tsp sugar
18 tsp salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed

Filling -
1 tablespoon ground almonds
1 tablespoon flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons shredded coconut
4 large nectarines, quartered
1 tablespoon melted butter

The Crust - Mix together the flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Cut the butter in with your fingers, or a pastry cutter. Add about 4 tablespoons of ice cold water, mixing until the dough just comes together. On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough briefly for about a minute. Cover in cling-film and let rest in the fridge for a good 1-2 hours. When it's ready, roll out into a 14 inch disc.

Assembly - Mix the ground almond, flour, sugar and coconut together. Sprinkle into the center of the 14 inch pastry disc, leaving a 2 inch border. Arrange the nectarine wedges on the dough however you like, I did concentric circles with the skin-side down:

Sprinkle the nectarines with the 1/3 cup of brown sugar. Rotate the tart slowly, and fold up the edges of the dough over the nectarines, crimping the dough as you go. It's fine (and prettier!) if the pieces of dough overlap eachother. Brush the entire thing with some melted butter and bake in a hot oven (400 F) for about 30 minutes. If you find the edges browning too quickly, lower the heat slightly and tent the nectarine with foil to make sure the center of the dough cooks through.

Personally I like it best while it's still fairly warm, and a giant dollop of vanilla bean ice cream on the side isn't bad either. Enjoy!

measuring my life in coffee spoons

2009-10-03T08:30:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how other people handle stress/change, but I seem to:

I) Make lists, usually with roman numerals and subheadings
i) Rewrite said lists, which is oddly therapeutic
II) Bake.

I also turn into a sort of indecisive, nervous creature, and then scurry around worrying that I'm being indecisive and nervous. Hmm. We read 'The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock' in grade 12 I think, and later again in first year English at the university, and while I loved it, I was a bit horrified at identifying so much with this self-scrutinizing, harried man. It was a little awkward, especially if you're known to read a tad too much into poetry (ahem). The entire time we were packing up for Dublin, Prufrock was all I could think about as I packed and repacked and made lists and walked in circles.

It really is an interesting poem. T.S. Eliot does the whole disenchanted-with-modernism thing so well - when Thoreau said 'What is called resignation is confirmed desperation', I always wonder what he would have thought of Prufrock, or of The Wasteland (that's a whole other story, good grief). I love how Eliot references absolutely everything in each of his poems - from the Bible to Buddha, Shakespeare to Khayyim, Hesiod to St. Augustine - and how you can find something different in his poems each time you read it.

Everything is interpretive. The epigraph from Dante's Inferno sums up how trapped Prufrock feels by his own thoughts and inaction, while setting up the narrative in storyteller to audience form - in the beginning this is between Guido and Dante, later in the actual poem it becomes '...you and I', Prufrock and the reader. You're suddenly inside his head and it's...resigned - he can't make decisions, he's terribly self-conscious, he wants to say things but spends the entire poem in his head instead of in life. I love the lines 'the women come and go, speaking of Michaelangelo...' - I imagine him awkwardly standing there, neurotic and a little sad, thinking that everyone around him is aristocratic and knowledgeable, the complete opposite of how he sees himself.

A later publication of the poem was in a tiny booklet named 'Prufrock, and other observatioins' - and that's really what it is, an observation on a person that sums up so many other people, captives of their insecurities.

Of course if you're Freudian, the entire thing is about sex and impotence of some kind, and that's that.

[I don't think i'm Freudian.]

So all of this was really to say - I love the poem, and I bake when I'm nervous. Case in point: in the four days before moving to Dublin, I was elbow-high in batter making...

3 dozen strawberry cupcakes with strawberry buttercream icing
1 dozen mini chai cupcakes
1 dozen almond and raspberry teacakes (current favourite)
3 loaves of saffron sultana bread
2 loaves of Jim Lahey's no-knead bread (one regular, one whole wheat)
a dozen banana pancakes with banana caramel sauce
3 dozen ginger-molasses cookies
2 dozen chocolate madeleines
1 chocolate cake

The cupcakes and teacakes are from Martha's Cupcake book which is absurd and fantastic. It's hard not to squeal with glee looking through it - cupcakes that look like tiny sheep, giant sunflowers, blooming roses - I have cupcake fever, and it's fierce. The strawberry cupcake recipe was spot on - not too sweet, fluffy, written clearly. The mini chai's ended up quite dry for some reason, they tasted lovely although decidedly unchai-like (I'm a bit of a tea snob, so there's a slight bias there perhaps).

The teacakes are my favourite so far, hands down - I've made them thrice since then and feel little-to-no guilt in devouring them one after another. I think it's the brown butter - it makes them smell Fantastic and keeps everything ridiculously moist (the almond flour helps with this a lot too). I hope putting the recipe up doesn't incur the wrath of Martha (and what a wrath that would be!) - it's just too good.

Fruit and Almond Tea Cakes

* The recipe uses cherries (the stems stick out the top, totally unnecessary and extremely cute), of which I had none, so raspberries it was!

1 and 1/4 sticks unsalted butter
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup ground almonds
1 cup sugar
1 tsp coarse salt
5 large egg whites
1 tablespoon kirsch, if you have it
about 20 raspberries

Preheat the oven to 400F / 205C. Brush the muffin tin with melted butter, and dust lightly with flour. In a small saucepan melt the butter over high heat, leave it (swirling occasionally) for about 15 minutes. You'll know when it's done - it smells nutty and kind of like toffee (refrain from drinking it).

Mix the ground almonds, flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Add the egg whites and whisk until you have a smooth batter. Add the kirsch if you have it. Pour in the brown butter, whisk until it comes together, and let it rest for 20 minutes.

Fill each muffin cup about halfway full, and add one or two raspberries to the center. With a spoon, push some of the batter over top of the raspberries (don't add more batter on top - it makes the teacakes puff up monstrously). Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown. Let cool for 10 minutes, consume with a cup of tea.

The gradual instant

2009-09-25T22:51:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to get a quote out of my head - I wish I could put it in context for you but I can't remember which interview it was from - it was in praise of a poem: "...to help believe that language can be made anew." This idea of being made anew - it's so universal, I love it, the basic hope that the ordinary is brought to life extraordinarily. Its at the heart of language certainly (the MO of poetry!), and of religions, and of course - food. Especially food. A hopeless pile of miscellaneous ingredients becomes something wonderful, it's a bit of a mystery, and I love it. It holds true for most foods, but I think bread is the best example (I'm terribly biased, as it's my favourite, favourite thing to eat - Marie Antoinette had it all wrong, who would be satisfied with cake over bread?). Taking a wee living organism and combining it with flour and water and salt, fiddling with the temperature, kneading it, letting it balloon up, punching it down, kneading it again, shaping it, scoring it - it makes no sense that all of this results in something so comforting, artisanal, and sustaining as Bread.

Sustaining really is the word for it. Wasn't Jean Valjean originally thrown in prison for stealing a loaf of bread? Bread is so ancient, every culture has a plethora of bread recipes integral to their customs, rituals and identity. Some cultures and religions use bread as they do language, laden with symbolism and representing histories or intensely personal experiences - the Eucharist in Christianity, the matzoh in Judaism. Others use it to simply feast or commemorate joy - in India puri's are eaten at weddings and festivals in heaps upon heaps.

I've been making things like banana bread for a while now, but in all honesty never really gave it a thought on a molecular level or anything along those lines. This is changing. Just a few hours ago I finally bought a copy of 'The Bread Bible' - and it's a complete revelation, gadzooks! Suddenly things make a bit more sense, and I'm amazed at how complicated and intricate the process is - yeast is apparently a tempestuous creature, the temperature needs to be just so, the salt can't be folded in until later or you actually Kill off the yeast (very counter productive), the kneading forms the gluten, the gluten forms the infrastructure, the carbon dioxide puffs the whole thing up and the alcohol gives it flavour (carbon dioxide and alcohol being given off by the yeast as it greedily feasts its way through the sugars in the flour), the combination of all of this coupled with the temperature and altitude can either blow up your dough explosively or make it completely deflate unto itself.

Who knew?

I'm only on chapter 2 of this book and am convinced that
a) I love it.
b) When I grow up I want to be Rose Levy Berenbaum.

I haven't broached her actual bread recipes yet, so here's a Rosemary Raisin Bread recipe from farmgirlfare that I had tried out a few weeks ago.

Rosemary Raisin Bread

3 and 3/4 cups bread flour
2 tsp instant yeast
1/2 cup warm milk
1 tablespoon rosemary (fresh)
1 and 1/2 cups raisins
5 tablespoons olive oil
4 beaten eggs
1 and 1/2 tsp salt

Mix the flour and yeast together well, and then add the milk, rosemary, raisins, olive oil, and eggs. Mix thoroughly forming a fairly sticky dough - add flour (an extra tablespoon at a time) if at the end the dough is too wet to work with. Turn onto a floured work surface and knead for 5 minutes. Cover and let it rests for 20 minutes. Knead in the salt - be militant with this bit as my bread ended up having a solid lump of salt smack in the middle of one of the slices (sorry mum). Continue to knead until the dough is springy and elastic, around 10 minutes. Put the dough in an oiled bowl and let it rise in a warm place for about 2 hours. Muster up any aggression in your being, and punch the dough down. It's tremendously therapeutic.

Pow!

On a parchment lined baking sheet, divide the dough into two pieces, shape each into a round loaf and lightly dust the tops with flour. Cover with a damp tea towel. Heat the oven to 400F. By now the loaves should have doubled in size - mine were completely flat, but I hadn't read Berenbaums book yet, so I didn't worry about the size. Slash the tops with an X shape and bake in the oven for 45 minutes - they should be golden brown and sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. Cool completely.

The original recipe called for 4 tablespoons of olive oil, but my loaves were a bit too dry so I'd add 5 next time. It's not exactly ideal sandwich bread as it's hopelessly flat (mea culpa though, I left it for entirely too long sitting around the kitchen), but it turned out rather lovely smeared in butter alongside an omelette, and a glass of tea.

2009-09-15T15:01:00.001-07:00

I had plans to write about bread today, and was getting stuck with all sorts of writers block, until I started baking. The kitchen smells...ridiculous. Sort of sweet and heady. Good grief. Saffron! Sultanas! Gibran! I'm getting ahead of myself.

People showered us with generosity at our wedding. Honestly. It's absurd how kind everyone was, even people that couldn't attend. If I could, I think I'd do away with thank-you cards altogether and send everyone freshly baked goods in the mail. If anyone has figured out the logistics behind something like that - let me know. Until then - local guests get thank-you's, plus freshly baked goods.

I really wanted each baked gift to sort of reflect the person somehow, but wasn't quite sure how to go about it. A lovely friend of the family's on the thank-you list is of Lebanese descent, and mentioned a few days ago that Khalil Gibran was actually born in the same village he was. Amazing! I think I read 'The Prophet' when I was in grade 11 and fell in love with the lush writing and illustrations. The Wee Book Inn in Edmonton had a few beautiful, wrecky old copies of 'Tears and Laughter', which was lovely as well. I'm not sure how he did it, but to be able to write poetically without coming off as pretentious or aloof is definitely a gift. It's really... graceful writing, if that makes sense. Everything is strongly paced but at the same time quiet. Our copy of Tears and Laughter has a fantastic preface by the editor - he focuses on how Gibran could write 'from the delicate to the strong...the delightful to the frightening, from the lacy sweetness to the bitter condemnation'.

We used a piece of Gibran's writing as a reading at our wedding, it's simply called 'On Marriage'

'You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.'

Just an excerpt, but my favourite verse. I have a fairly strong aversion to overly mushy writing, or things that resemble anything by Nicholas Sparks (pet peeve), but this really stood apart. He writes like a humanist, a romantic, and a mystic, without being cliché or preachy. I don't know much about Gibran's personal life or experiences, but his writing always reminds me of things like raw silk, gold-leaf encrusted treats, the scent of saffron, women with kohl-rimmed eyes. The main photo on this page (up top) has a french vintage copy of The Prophet in it, it's my favourite photo so far.

I came across a bread recipe a few days ago with saffron in it, and thought I'd try it out as a gift. The result? A kitchen that smells like a faraway place, and plans to make 3 more of these loaves tomorrow.

Saffron Bread - adapted from 'notquitenigella'

pinch of *saffron threads (soaked in a teaspoon of boiling water)

1.5 cups white flour

1T instant dried yeast

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1/8 cup unsalted butter, softened, in pieces

2/3 cup warm milk

1/4 cup sultanas

extra flour for dusting

1 egg, beaten with 2 T milk (for the glaze)

Let the saffron infuse in the boiling water for about 10 minutes - it should smell fantastic. Mix together the flour, sugar, yeast, and salt in a large bowl. Add the butter and rub it in with your fingers until everything looks and feels like damp sand. Measure out the milk, and add it to the saffron-water.

Add this mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well with a wooden spoon until it's well combined. Add the sultanas and mix in gently. Flour a flat surface and knead the dough for about 5 minutes until smooth. Shape into a ball and place in an oiled bowl. Cover with a clean teatowel, and leave it to rise in a warm place for an hour.

Place the dough on a clean surface and shape it into a baguette - don't worry if it's not 'doughy', mine was stretchy and quite soft - I just kept pulling on either end and shaping it with my hands. Shape it into an 'S' by turning each end and tucking them underneath the main body. Cover this with a clean cloth and let it double for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 410F / 210C. Uncover the puffy loaf, and brush it with the eggwash. Put in the oven (center rack) for about 25 minutes. After this time, reduce the heat to 375F/190C and let it bake for about 5-10 minutes. Watch it fairly carefully as it darkens tremendously in the last few minutes. It 'should' be golden-brown (mine was Quite dark), and sound hollow when you rap the bottom. Slice, smear in something buttery, and serve.

Enjoy with tea, and of course, some Gibran.

*I was initially a little wary about the recipe as saffron isn't exactly cheap, or easy to come by. Luckily we bought a few little cases of saffron from our last trip to India, where it's a bit more affordable. If you're having a hard time finding it, or justifying using it in a baking recipe, check out Asian markets or Indian grocery stores, it's usually a bit less pricey. Apparently you can also grow your own, but I lack any semblance of gardening ability, and the cousin of saffron-bearing crocus is poisonous, so I may hold off on that for a while...

No Apparent Scaffolding

2009-09-10T22:08:00.000-07:00

10 days since the last one! How? When? The past week has been a mixture of emotions, though all on the happy-spectrum. Almost. The impending proper move to Dublin is slightly unsettling and oddly making me nervous even though I've been there for three years. Somehow this time is different, it has a finality to it that's weighing on me. But so exciting! 10 days left, to pack and cook and read and regroup and mail out post-wedding-thank-you-cards and hug everyone possible.

I'm beyond impressed, and secretly a little envious, when people can put complex emotions into wee sentences, when you read something uttered by another and go 'aha! that's it!'. In an interview the poet Louis Jenkins was explaining his goal, really, the goal, of poets, writers, people.

"In my own writing I want, as much as possible, for the words to disappear, so that the poem becomes something like a movie in the reader's head...All poems are linguistic constructs of course, but I don't want the scaffolding to be apparent."

Exactly.

I want to move to Europe without the scaffolding being apparent, without the worry about different voltages, small apartments, rain, travel complications, currency converting, internet companies, being away from family.

I don't know if anyone really wants their scaffolding to show through, and I have a sneaking suspicion we spend a lot of time and effort trying to achieve this.

I wonder if everyone feels this way about the separate components of their lives? Wanting all things to be seamless, and for the bigger picture to sweep us off our feet.

This really isn't supposed to be pessimistic, because the rest of his interview reassures us all that these things really do have happy endings. But, in order to shamelessly insert a recipe and some glossy photos, I'll save the rest of the interview analysis for the end of the post!

In the spirit of attempting to bring strong flavours together without the scaffolding showing through - a mushroom galette, with giant portobellos and strong, strong stilton blue.

I've never been a huge blue cheese fan (growing up on loony tunes does that to a girl), but it works! Startling cheese against earthy rustic mushrooms, yes please. I found the recipe at smittenkitchen, a fabulous blog, and tinkered around with it a bit depending on what I had at home. Instead of making her crust, I recycled some leftover pâte brisée (without the sugar) and it worked, hurrah!

Mushroom Galette, adapted from Smittenkitchen

Savoury Pastry Dough - whichever recipe you're comfortable with (I'm not a purist, I imagine storebought would be fine)
2T unsalted butter
3/4 cup sliced green onions
1 minced clove of garlic
1/2 tsp chopped rosemary
1/2 tsp chopped thyme
1/2lb. assorted fresh mushrooms (I used portobellos and button), sliced
5 ounces blue cheese (I used Stilton)

Preheat the oven to 400F.
In a large pan over medium heat, add the butter and green onions, stirring for about a minute (they should get fairly soft). Add the garlic and herbs, stirring for another minute until aromatic. Add the mushrooms and increase the heat. Don't worry if the pan is completely crowded, the mushrooms shrink as they lose liquid - this should happen after about 10 minutes, with stirring. Take off the heat and let cool. Crumble the blue cheese into the mushrooms and stir in.
On a floured surface, roll out the dough into a 12-inch round - transfer to a baking sheet. Pile the mushroom mixture onto the center of the dough and spread out, leaving a solid 1-2 inch border. Fold and pleat the pastry border over the outer edge of the filling (see photo - the center filling is open). Bake for 30-40 minutes until the pastry is golden brown and everything smells lovely. Let it cool for just a few minutes, and devour happily.

I was a bit miffed halfway through the process, as I hadn't quite thought things out and was assembling the galette on a wooden chopping board, in a hot, hot kitchen (without the pan or baking paper underneath). It was melting. Fast. Sticking to everything, deforming, going from something you would order in a cafe to something you would find in the woods. And so I did what I'm apparently good at - I panicked. Then I gave up and contemplated buying sushi from Safeway. Kirk swooped in and painstakingly transferred the whole sticky mess onto a baking sheet, inch by inch, while I tried not to hyperventilate. And of course, it worked.

Optimism and pessimism in the kitchen are curious concepts. I love to cook, but I'm a sheepish pessimist at most of my own abilities, especially in the culinary ring. As is often the case, the Writer's Almanac (and a patient husband) soothed things over. The interviewer asked Louis Jenkins if his poetry was essentially optimistic or pessimistic. His reply (if I may paraphrase) was that all poetry and creative acts are in essence optimistic, as we take the chaos present in the world and attempt to order it in some way. Even the most abstract poetry is an act of order, an act of taking thoughts and emotions and categorizing them in symbols and letters that are familiar to us.

Isn't that fabulous? And so comforting! Applicable to innumerable things, including culinary adventures, which can result in creative afternoons whether we planned for them or not.

Ode to Autumn

2009-09-01T22:43:00.002-07:00

I love the word autumnal. It looks the way it sounds and it sounds the way it feels and it feels comfortable, and slightly hungry, and slightly chilly but happy. I woke up this morning and thought it was autumn, the sky was a pale grey and everything was so very still. And then the day rolled on and the sun covered everything in heavy heat, and (apologies, summer-lovers) I was a bit grumped. Obviously reverse psychology was the only thing left to do. I put on a cardigan, found 'autumnal music' (Jeff Buckley, Iron and Wine, Leonard Cohen, all things soft and lush), and made soup. Take that, September sun! Your move.

2 giant butternut squash were idly hanging around the kitchen, so I put them to use. By 'I', I mean my sous-chef, who can manoeuvre a giant santoku through a gourd like butter. We picked up the squash a few days ago and apparently autumn was already on my mind - I have a slight habit of bursting into song or prose in grocery stores. There were piles and piles of manicured fruit, pyramids of peaches and, off in the distance, a sturdy hill of squash and pumpkins. And so, eyes closed - 'SEASONS OF MISTS AND MELLOW FRUITFULNESS!' - I love Keats, and anyone that can make gourds and hazel shells sound sexy. My husband had meanwhile run off to hide in the egg/cheese/butter aisle (excellent taste) until I was done. Hmph.

Man cannot live on squash alone, so we found some gruyère and grainy mustard for a tomato-tart-thing. There was a recipe online that looked good, and another in one of Laura Calder's books (French Taste) that looked Good.

The soup was a tiny but too thick but a touch more broth fixed that up. The only other thing - fiddle with the bacon to your liking. I tried being a good girl and followed the recipe exactly but good grief it was too bacony (the husband assures me there's no such thing as too much).

Butternut Squash and Apple Soup! - adapted from Fine Cooking
8 slices of bacon, crisply cooked and sliced
2.5 lbs cubed squash
1 diced apple (I used granny smith with happy results)
1.5T chopped sage
1tsp salt
half a tsp pepper
1 quart (about 4.5 cups) broth

Over medium high heat in a large pot sauté the squash until browned, about ten minutes. Stir in the chopped apple, sage, salt and pepper, and cook for another 5 minutes until the apple softens. Add the broth and scrape up any browned bits stuck to the pot. Bring to a boil, and then lower the heat to a simmer. Cook barely simmering for 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool somewhat. Add the chopped bacon to the soup and puree in batches or with an immersion blender. Season, and serve right away, garnished with whatever you have on hand!

Now about this tomato thing. Laura Calder's recipe is more of a free-form tart, slightly more informal and quick to make. Thing is, I needed an excuse to make a proper formal pastry crust because...I've never made one. I've been carrying this around for most of my life with terrible shame. For some reason proper pastry crusts always had serious gravity in my mind, the kind of thing only professional chefs and ancient grandmothers can make properly. So, momentarily courageous after reading Keats, I did it. Not to sound like an culinary egomaniac but it was fantastic, and oddly therapeutic.

I used Martha Stewart's Pâte Brisée recipe, found on her website. Assembling the tart took a bit of time, and so I cheated, and skipped skinning and seeding the tomatoes. Whoops. Don't skip this! Learn from the error of my ways! It made the whole thing a bit soggy and the skins turn slightly bitter after so long in the oven. Universal solution to such situations - smother in grated cheese. Mmmmmm. If only that applied to everyday life.

The tart seems perfect for a light lunch, and it followed the soup well. It's so...light somehow, and french, and comforting. So thank you Keats, for your Ode to Autumn, for a day of cooking, and overcoming fears. The only downside to the day? I have a primal urge to make crusts one after another, smother them all in warmed nutella, and see what happens. It would make for an interesting post, no?

Roasted Tomato Tart, from the illustrious Orangette
4lbs plum tomatoes, halved
Quarter cup olive oil
1T thyme (I used dried, fresh would be wonderful)
salt
2 cloves garlic, sliced
half a batch of savory pastry (I used the aforementioned pâte brisée)
2T devon cream
1T grainy mustard
Half a cup grated gruyère

Ideally, seed the tomatoes right at the start. Toss them with the oil, thyme, and some salt. Bake them (skin down) at 350F for about half an hour. Remove from the oven, let them cool slightly, and remove the skins. Put them back on the rack, toss the garlic over them, and bake for another half an hour. Set aside and let cool.

While all this is happening - line a 9-inch tart pan (with a removable bottom) with the rolled out pastry, folding in the overhang and trimming any excess. After the tomatoes are out of the oven, blind bake the pastry for about 30 minutes with pie weights, and for another 5 minutes without, until slightly golden.

Mix the cream and mustard together, and spread over the bottom of the tart, sprinkling the cheese on top. Arrange the tomatoes (cut side up) in pleasingly concentric circles (or whatever pattern fits your obsessive-compulsive side) and bake for 30 minutes.

Yum.

On learning not to brûlée Everything

2009-09-01T10:16:00.000-07:00

Old habits die hard, apparently. I probably shouldn't have dipped back into brûléeing, but it was too delicious to resist. When I first made crème brûlée, I was so excited, nay, euphoric, about it all that I made it repeatedly, put on a few pounds, and vowed never to eat anything without a crystallized sugar top, ever again.

This posed a great deal of problems for everyday life. Breakfast was doable, as brûléed oatmeal is a thing of beauty. Lunch was harder to figure out, and dinner nigh impossible. I hit brûlée-rock-bottom when, after a proper workout, I tried brûléeing cottage cheese. I had healthy, protein-filled intentions! Honestly! Unsurprisingly, it was awful. And so began the weaning process - I gave my demerara sugar to a neighbour to abolish any and all temptation.

That being said, one of my first truly Happy memories in Dublin centered about crème brûlée. I know it's a pretty fantastic thing, to be able to live in Europe, really I do. But when I first started out in Dublin I was...overwhelmed. Everyday had a strange sense of inertia, if that makes sense. Kirk came to visit right around his birthday, and I wanted to show him my gratitude the only real way I knew how - through food. I was focused and militant in my prep work, but apparently slightly distracted by my company - I forgot about time, time to cool the custard, time for the water bath, how much time it takes start to finish. By the time I was ready to let it cool in the fridge, it was 2am, I was tired and a little weepy. And embarrassed. I may have bragged slightly about said brûlée to said man. So, dejected, I went to sleep with a wee sad space in my stomach (and ego).

But. Jet lag reared its head, and we were up around 6am, and famished. Opportunity is best appreciated when it presents itself as an edible thing. We fired up the broiler, threw in the chilled brûlées, and had an absurdly decadent post-birthday-breakfast.

There's a sentence in The Hours (Michael Cunningham) where Clarissa Vaughn, the modern Mrs. Dalloway, says to her daughter -

"I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself: So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then."

Our poor stomachs ached from the cream, egg yolks, sugar, coffee, more cream, more sugar. Jet lag struck again, and we slept till noon, impossibly full.

It was happiness. Right then.

'de duivige duizel...'

2009-08-31T09:00:00.000-07:00

This summer has been a whirlwind, in a happy laugh-till-you-cry way. I planted my feet back on Canadian soil in June, and - being a reluctant creature of habit - promptly burst into tears over an absolutely Perfect small double-double. I need to get a handle on this weeping-over-inanimate-objects-and-food thing.

I also got married, which is ABSURD to see typed out like that. Married! We planned for a year and it still came out of nowhere! And just like that my Indian family blossomed into an Indo-Scottish-Dutch clan, and I love it. Tonnus Oosterhoff, a Dutch poet, captured my summer in one of his poems with the line: 'the dovey dizziness' - I love this.

So the other day I was assigned the task of making dessert for a get together with the newly joined MacKinnon clan and Grandma Betty - quite the mixing of cultures and traditions - they perfected chicken vindaloo and coconut rice, and I drank scotch (woohoo! I'm getting better at it - 2 Christmases ago I had 4 sips of scotch and felt my toes curl, thinking my throat was on fire).

I knew I wanted to make something sort of french, but crème brûlée seemed a tad heavy. So instead - petit pot au chocolat, with a bruléed top. Mmmmmm. With a generous glug of Kirsch underneath it all.

The recipe worked! Jubilations! It felt...healthier, although let's be realistic about the caloric consequences of chocolate, cream, brown sugar. But still. It's not overly sweet and still worked well as a dessert, and as always, cracking through the top made me smile.

Recipe - Chocolate Strawberry Brûlées (for 6)

250g strawberries, halved or quartered (about a cup and a quarter)
2T Kirsch
2 cups cream
115g semisweet chocolate, melted then left to cool
1/2 cup brown sugar

-Divide the strawberries among 6 ramekins (preferably cute ones!) and sprinkle with the Kirsch
- In a large bowl whip the cream until fluffy, add the cooled chocolate and whip until thick. Spread the mousse over the strawberries, cover with cling film and freeze for at least 2 hours
- Preheat the broiler to high, sprinkle sugar fairly thickly over the mousse and place under the broiler until the sugar caramelizes. Be sure to watch it lest it burn! It only takes about one and a half minutes. Let the brûlées sit for about ten minutes, spruce up with fresh mint or strawberries, and feast!

One last thing. Dutch women above the age of, say, 40, should be allowed to say whatever they want, at all times. The cracking of tops, cluttering of spoons, and soft chocolate sighs were followed with one of the most whimsical compliments I've ever heard, courtesy of Betty:

Alsof een engeltje op je tong piest
[As if an angel peed on your tongue]

They have a way with words.

calloo callay!

2009-08-30T20:46:00.000-07:00

This is the beginning (of what I'm not quite sure yet) and I'm giggling nervously, which is usually a good sign. I miss writing. I miss writing, and I love food, tea, and teetering stacks of books (not precisely in that order) - so here we are. It's not so much the individual things - the act of eating vs. the act of reading a book - but all of it at once, done over and over again. My husband/photographer/guinea pig (a winning combination!) describes it as 'atmospheric eating', in the most flexible way...how certain books need a good snack, how certain teas pair with specific writers, how certain poets make me want to feast for days.

As a very serious disclaimer - these are in no way strict pairings, as a scone devoured in the morning requires a literary counterpart entirely different from the midnight-snack-scone, and t.s. eliot seems to make me hunger for new things each time.

I was reading about whirling dervishes in Istanbul yesterday, and in the interview one of them had said something profound...which I can't remember. In a nutshell - it frees him, and it makes him feel connected to the world in ways that standing still can't. All of this, the reading, the eating, (the eating my way through books?) echoes that, in a small, small way. And its fun. I've been stockpiling cookbooks like its my job, and am tinkering here and there with recipes - sometimes clumsily, often hungrily, and always with gallons of tea.

That seems like a far too serious beginning. Round two: Feast! Read! Share! If I know you, come over for food - I need more people to feed (how does banana bread sound? hot chai? pancakes with obscene amounts of butter and love!). If I don't know you - hi!

With that, it begins.