Shogun

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.

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

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.

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

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

"...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

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.