Mea [maxima] Culpa

Do you ever do this? Do you ever wake up on the second day of a cold and feel a little better and pretend like nothing ever happened? I do it all the time. As soon as I'm a little better not only do I resume with all things active, but I'm even prone to pushing myself to make up for lost time. Last night I made an impromptu decision to go to my office and catch up on some work. My office, which in spite of the heat wave outside, is set to some unnecessarily arctic temperature that I can't control. So I sat there until 2am and edited poems and thought I was catching up. Well, let me tell you, when I woke up with a fever this morning that sense of achievement was not there... So I have managed to make myself sicker than I was to start with. Good job, right? I know.


I'm gonna call this recipe the Campbell Tomato Soup, not because it has anything to do with the soup manufacturer, but because I'm hopelessly addicted to punning, and the recipe was given me yesterday by my friend Lee Dylan Campbell. Since my soup-making style is usually inspired by the contents of my fridge and random, I decided to really stick to the recipe this time, for kicks. So here it goes...


The Lee Dylan] Campbell Tomato Soup
(recipe copied and pasted from facebook inbox message because I'm sick and I'm allowed to take shortcuts like that)

Chop and Sauté several fresh ripe tomatoes, a bunch of green onions, a yellow pepper, some tender celery and garlic. Black pepper, cumin. Add a generous handful of cilantro and the juice of one lime. When everything is pretty well cooked, add a big can of Heinz tomato juice (reduced salt kind) and either heat or chill – this works both ways. Add more cilantro if that’s your style, salt to taste, and a spoonful or two of maple syrup to balance the tanginess. A little hot sauce wouldn’t hurt either. Serve over a few corn chips.


Mina's sick note: thank you Lee for the soup recipe, Sarah, for offering to take me to the ER if my fever persists, Dale, for making me laugh, and Yalda, for reading me my horoscope. Now I'm going to eat some more soup and watch Christmas movies.

Variations on a Theme

Once again though not much time has passed, it seems the whole order of the universe has shifted since my last post. It's officially spring now, which the Persian new year has kindly reminded me, though for the most part the whether refuses to acknowledge that. On the table these days are a bunch of hard, honest, and essential questions, pending decisions, possible travel, and of course as it always is with these things, so many possible variations. You can get yourself pretty tangled in thinking sometimes as your comfortable grip on things fades farther and farther away and out of reach. This is where food comes to the rescue. It fills your stomach, your mind, and your kitchen. Something about the smell of cooking in the house, a cutting board covered in scraps and a sink full of dishes forces you to stop asking questions even just for a few hours. So here are recipes for chorizo (two ways) to keep you busy. Take a break, you don't have to do everything at once.

Glazed Chorizo Tappas Style

150 g chorizo sausage
1/2 small clove garlic, crushed
1 tbsp honey
1tbsp balsamic vinegar/red wine
olive oil

Slice the chorizo and fry in olive oil until crisp and slightly darkened in colour (photo above). Drain all but about a tablespoon of the oil, add the garlic and cook for a minute. Turn the heat down and add the honey and vinegar/wine and cook on medium until reduced and glaze-like.

Chorizo Pizza

1/3 recipe pizza dough
sliced chorizo
sliced red pepper
hot peppers
sliced red onions
spinach
buffalo mozzarella

Prehead oven to the highest possible temperature.Oil a baking sheet, sprinkle with cornmeal (very important step), and place your thinly rolled out dough over it, pricking the surface with a fork several times. Brush olive oil over the dough and a bit of tomato paste if you like. Arrange the sliced toppings and slip in the oven. Pour yourself a glass of wine as your pie bakes, but careful, it takes minutes, so don't walk away.

WWJD to make nachos?

One of the most enticing things about small town living is the curiosities of local cuisine, which is really just a long-winded way of saying that there's some awesome pub grub in Peterborough. For instance, Macthirsty's pub, easily accessed as its in the same building as our apartment, serves up some truly kick ass nachos. I'm not saying they rival the Tex Mex kings of Toronto--- Sneaky Dee's infamous Kings Crown nachos (I swear to god, we once watched a guy eat one of those behemoths by himself). But Macthirsty's does have a nice twist for everyone's favorite dippable meal replacement. Like a true Irish pub, they make their own in-house sliced spuds and then pile on nacho toppings, making what they call Irish nachos. It's pretty gruesome and (according to our friend, Dave) maybe even worth the ninety minute drive from T.O. The only problem, like everything in this town, they're closed Sunday. Which means I'm stuck making my own nachos before the game starts. Also, these happen to be vegan, not by design but just because ground beef and cheese turn chips into corn paste, instead of keeping that nice crunch.


The Works Nachos

1 bag blue corn nachos
1 mango, peeled and cubed
1 red bell pepper, julienned
1 green bell pepper, julienned
1 avocado, pitted and cubed
1 quart cherry tomatoes
1/2 C kidney beans
1 medium white onion, peeled, halved and sliced
1 bunch, green onions, sliced
2 jalapenos, thinly sliced
1/2 cup sour cream, for dipping

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Spread out your whole bag of chips on a baking sheet. Now add, in order the mango, the bell peppers, the avocado, tomatoes, kidney beans, white onion and green onion and finally jalapenos. (I do it in this order because I like to have certain things on top when I dig in, but you can experiment). Also, add cheese and meat at your own risk. If you do add beef, please, make sure that you cook it well before hand and drain the fat. Serve with beer, a side of sour cream and enjoy the game. (I'll probably watch the Bills lose, but you can take your pick here).

Viet junkfood

This recipe is another adapted from one of Duguid and Alford's for a kind of Vietnamese street food handroll that they call, Green-wrapped flavor bundles (in their book Hot Sour Salty Sweet) and which I admit the name of totally made me laugh my head off and think, Wow, they need a better translator. Then we made them and ate them (along with my pride) and all I could think was that they were the most appropriately named little flavor bombs I'd ever had. They're stuffed with intensely flavorful pork, and the crunch of the fresh cabbage wrap blows any and every kind of deep-fried eggroll or springroll wrap I've ever had out of the water (or deep fryer as the case may be), and Toronto has a pretty kick ass Chinatown (actually it has three Chinatowns, but that's besides the point). A caveat, these rolls are addictive and for a week after we made them I'd find myself standing with the fridge door open staring at the tuperware full of pork and trying to resist its pull.

Another side note: we've returned the digital camera we were borrowing from our awesome photographer friend, Jason, and are back to using cheap Kodak ISO 800 film, which we buy at a flee market, as in our first post. You may also notice the drugstore did something funny with our scans, creating unintentional diptychs. Yeah coincidence, we love them anyway.

Recipe: Cabbage wrapped pork handrolls

1 cabbage, deleafed and cut to scoops the size of your palm

Filling:

1/2 lb ground pork
3 tbsp oil
1/2 C shallots, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp tamarind dissolved in 1/4C water (or substitute soy sauce in water)
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp ginger, minced
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp unsalted roasted peanuts, chopped
1 tsp salt, or a healthy pinch

Garnish:
1 stalk lemongrass, trimmed and minced
2 tbsp ginger, finely grated
1 bunch green onions, finely sliced
1/2 bunch cilantro/coriander, finely chopped


For the pork filling, add oil and heat a wok or large pan to med-high. Saute the shallots and garlic just until they start to brown, then add ground pork and continue to stri-fry until all of the meat is browned. Now, add liquids, brown sugar, salt and ginger and simmer until the sauce thickens, which should take 4 to 6 minutes (turn down the heat if it starts to smoke at any point, you don't want to burn the sugars!).

For the rolls, take your palm sized cabbage leaf in your left hand and spoon in an overflowing tablespoon of the pork filling, then sprinkle with lemongrass, fresh grated ginger, green onion slices and cilantro garnish.

Now shovel them down your gullet. Mmm, they're so amazingly good. They are the word ZING in a bite.