of other comforts...

The heart is an inconsistent organ. Not the anatomical heart (though, even that is prone to palpitations) but rather that proverbial organ we associate with all that the mind refuses to take responsibility for. The same trivial thing that excites and fascinates it one day, will deplete and bruise it the next day. It craves, indulges, ignores, forgives... all in the blink of an eye. Mine was in pretty rough shape a few weeks ago, and since heartache isn't something you can call in sick for, I took my troubled little heart with me to work. Eight hours, many diners, and a few heart-felt conversations later, I was so surprised to be walking home with my heart set on recovery. I knew I was feeling better because the thought at the tip of my mind was how I would go home and try making this soup. The girls I worked with that day, with their timely humor, unassuming wisdom, and genuine conversation, had managed not only to make me feel better about my uncertainties, but given me something to excitedly put an apron on for... Incidentally the two ideas they planted in my head practically spell comfort: baked potato soup and banana marshmallows. At some point that night after a bowl of hearty soup and a cup of hot chocolate (marshmallows as my excuse) I sat on my bed with a book and smiled... and to smile when no one's looking? Well that's really something...


Baked Potato (and leek) Soup

2-3 tablespoons butter or olive oil
4 leeks, washed and sliced
salt
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme; optional
1/4 teaspoon chile powder
3 cups water
3 cups stock
1 1/4-pounds (600 g) potatoes, baked, pealed and cubed (in that order)
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon freshly-ground white pepper
sour cream, bacon bits, and chives for topping

In a large pot over medium heat melt the butter or heat the olive oil.

Toss in the sliced leeks and season well. Cook the leeks over medium heat for 5-7 minutes, stirring until they’re soft and wilted.

Add the thyme, if using, and chile powder, and stir for another minute, cooking them with the leeks to release their aroma.

Add stock, potatoes and bay leaf. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes, then fish out the bay leaves and puree the soup in a blender adding warm water if too thick.

Top with a dollop of good sour creme, a hand-full of chopped chives, and some bacon bits.

Homemade Banana Marshmallows

2 tbsp gelatin

3/4 c water

1 c sugar

3/4 c corn syrup

1/2 tbsp pure vanilla extract

1/2 tbsp banana flavor/extract/essence
1 pinch salt

Line a shallow baking dish with parchment paper or foil and dust the paper with powdered sugar.

In a small bowl sprinkle the gelatin powder over 1/4 cup of the water. Add the sugar to the remaining water in a pot and heat until warm but not hot. Add the gelatin mixture to the warm syrup and stir until fully melted.

Pour this mixture into a large bowl. Add the corn syrup, vanilla, and banana extracts, and begin beating with an egg beater at high speed. Don't be alarmed by the brown colour... if you beat it for long enough it will be good and the colour will disappear.

Continue beating until the mixture cools, increases in volume, and forms soft peaks. Working quickly before the mixture fully sets in the bowl, transfer to the pan that you have prepared. Smooth the top with a wet spatula and let stand for three hours.

Turn out, cut and coat with powdered sugar.

...and as for hearts, well,
hearts will never be practical
until they can be made unbreakable...

A taste of good luck

Finding Sam & Sam Clark's Moro East cookbook while perusing a used bookstore on College street, 'She Said Boom', the day after I'd read a blogpost about their London restaurant on the Guardian site seemed like a good stroke of luck. So, I bought the book, a gorgeous, brand new hardcover with one of those fancy British L's denoting a 25 pound price in the dust jacket, and a tiny, neat primly Canadian 22- pencilled in on the first page. I'm not sure I've ever spent any money more wisely in my life. Absolutely everything I have tried from this book has turned out perfectly and delicious, and usually, like the book itself, strikingly beautiful. Be careful with this zucchini and almond dish though, it will steal the show from almost any main with its combination of sweet, blanched almonds and hearty, garlic bite.



Courgettes (zucchini) with almonds

6 to 8 medium zucchinis, sliced into coins
2 cloves garlic, sliced thin
5 tbsp olive oil
1 C, blanched almonds, preferably whole
2 sprigs of mint, chopped

Season the sliced zucchini and sit to drain in a colander for a few minutes, then pat with paper towel. Heat the oil over medium-high in a large pan, add almonds and saute until they turn a peachy pink colour. Remove almonds from the pan and set aside. Saute the zucchini coins for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Next, add the garlic and half of the mint. Continue cooking for 15 minutes, until the zucchini is almost melted into a single mass. Return the almonds and stir through out, reheating for 3 to 5 minutes. Plate, salt and pepper, garnish with the leftover mint and serve with your favourite lamb or beef dishes, or a couscous or pilaf. Or try it with this Moroccan fish tagine, also, from Moro East.

Fowl cookery

This might be some kind of blasphemy, but I don't really like turkey unless it's been deep fried whole. I have to admit though, at a friend's cabin this past Thanksgiving--- it's mid-October on a Monday in Canada, as opposed to the upcoming last Thursday of November down south---, we tried leftovers from a gobbler that he'd roasted on a charcoal barbecue that was succulent, flavourful, smoky and so tender as to almost not need chewing. It was scrumptious, but the rest of my family is vegetarian and I have no interest in standing over a hibachi for five hours slowly tempering the flames to avoid blackening the bird. So, for those of us with smaller appetites, here's a recipe for roasted fowl (chicken, quail, cornish hen or pheasant will all do just fine.)


Herb encrusted Roast Bird(s) with autumn vegetables
All measurements are for a whole roaster chicken, adjust accordingly. You'll also need twine or skewers.


For the rub

3 sprigs rosemary, stemmed and finely chopped
2 tbsp coriander seeds, cracked (put them under a tea towel and smash them with something blunt)
1 tbsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp paprika
1 tbsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried parsley
1tbsp olive oil

For the veggies

2C pearl onions, peeled and halved
2 bunches baby carrots, cleaned and sliced lengthwise
2C new red potatoes, quartered
1tbsp olive oil

Take your bird out of the fridge and let it sit on a plate to adjust to room temperature. Put a bowl of soapy water in your sink for later. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.

In a roasting pan, coat your vegetables in a tablespoon of olive oil, salt and pepper generously and toss everything together. Mix all of the herbs and spices for the rub in a bowl and set aside. Pour the olive oil directly onto your bird, or into your palms, and rub thoroughly on the skin and underneath directly onto the flesh of the bird. In the soapy water, wash and dry your hands.

Salt and Pepper the bird. Now rub all of the spice mixture into the bird until it is completely coated above and beneath the skin. Tie the bird's legs tightly together and skewer its wings into the body, or alternatively, twine the whole bird. (I try and avoid doing this because the twine tends to tears the crispy skin after its removed, and make the bird look like it's been cooked in a waffle iron.) Now place your bird into a well of vegetables in the middle of the roasting pan and put it in the oven for 20 to 75 minutes, depending on the size and variety of fowl you've used. Some indicators: it should be golden brown and crunchy on the outside. You can take the bird out after twenty minutes to stir the veggies and check the temperature with a thermometer to gauge your its progress.

Also, here's a link to cooking time chart

Enjoy your fowl and be thankful for all the good eating, it's always a privilege.

Why not do it upside down?

Tarte Tatin is French for upside down tart and if you've never made one, you've missed out. You're gonna read the recipe and think it's missing a step but it's not. It really is that easy and it looks so damn gorgeous when it's done. It's also an ideal recipe to use up that little ball of left over pastry you have in the freezer because you only need one thin sheet. You can use whatever firm fruit you prefer. We've tried apple and pear and both turned out well. I've also seen quince tarte tatins, which should be delicious, too.


Recipe: Tarte Tatin

3-4 Firm Pears or Apples
Juice of half a lemon
1 tbsp butter
1/3 c Dark Brown Sugar

One thin sheet of pastry dough

Wash, peel, core and quarter Pears. Toss in bowl with lemon juice and set aside. Melt butter in a small cast-iron skillet or baking tin. Stir in brown sugar and remove from heat. Arrange pear quarters in the pan tightly packing them in overlapping concentric circles. You really want to cram them in because they'll cook down a lot. Cook over medium heat 20-25 min. Do not move or stir pears while cooking, but gently press them down with a spatula as they soften. If you don't have a cast iron skillet and are using a cake pan, cook the pears in a preheated 350 oven using the lower oven rack for about the same time.

While the pears are cooking, roll dough on lightly floured surface into a circle matching the size of your skillet or pan. Aim for a thickness of 1/4". Drape dough over pears, tucking in the edges, and bake tart on upper rack of a 400 degree oven until golden brown, 35-40 min.

Remove from oven and invert a plate or baking sheet over the tart. Carefully flip skillet and baking sheet simultaneously. Lift off skillet, loosen any apples that may have stuck, and reunite them with the tart.

Fishy business

I have an odd sort of relationship with fish, as I was raised by vegetarians who (this is not a joke) refused to let me use their pans when I decided as a teenager that I wanted to start cooking seafood and meats at home. At the time I was working in a bistro (the only one in my Polish neighbourhood) doing kitchen prep., which meant washing dishes, preparing an absolutely revolting amount of squid for calamari (as in gallon buckets of the squirmy little, ink squirting buggers every afternoon after highschool), and last but not least, gutting fish. Lots of them, big ones, small ones, stinky ones, writhing ones, ones that ingested golf balls, and fatlaced pretty in pink salmon bellies were all laid open on my cuttingboard. It was a foul, squeamish experience for an adolescent vegetarian that I will readily admit was eased by a bad habit, smoking. At the time, nobody seemed to make a fuss about cigarettes in restaurants (it was a French place after all), and so preparing fish will forever remind me of having a smoke hanging off my lip and a Frenchmen screaming at me to Hurry up wheat the feckin poisson. For some reason I still can't quite figure out, I have very fond memories of the place and occasionally "sneak" into the gastropub that inhabits my old haunts to stare longingly through the handoff window into the ugly, little ten square foot kitchen of my youth.

You may be interested to know: a tagine is a slow cooked stew of spiced meat or fish cooked over vegetable in an earthenware dish, but the word tagine actually comes from the Arabic ṭājin, which just means frying pan.


Moroccan white fish tagine
(from Moro East)

4 fillets of white fish (monkfish and mackerel both work well)
1/4C Olive oil, 6 tbsp to coat a sauce pan and 2 tbsp to rub on fish fillets
2 onions, sliced whole into thin rings
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
1/2 cup of golden raisins
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp saffron
1 1/2 tsp turmeric
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp orange blossom essence
1 3/4C water
2 large potatoes,peeled and diced to half inch cubes

Preheat oven to 230/425.

Start by frying your onions over medium heat in the olive oil until tender and gold, about 5 to 10 minutes, then add the garlic and raisins and continue to brown for another 3 to 5 min. Now stir in the admixture of dried spices (ginger, saffron, turmeric and cinnamon, as well as a bit of salt and pepper) and fry for thirty seconds or a minute til all is combined in pan. Next, pour in the water and stir thoroughly, while bringing the mixture to a simmer, continue for about 5 min.

Oil, salt and pepper your fillets, in other words, season the fish. If you haven't already, clean and dice your potatoes and salt them well. Now, in a roasting pan stir potatoes into the spiced onion and raisin blend and cover with aluminum foil, then roast in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until the potatoes are tender. Depending on what type and weight of fish you have (check online) the finishing time will vary; either way, the last step is to pull everything from the oven, turn up the foil and lay the fish sections on top of the tangine, recover with the foil, and replace in the oven until your fish is done.

Serve with rice, bread, or any side you prefer as this dish already has a starch and protein, it's rather versatile... enjoy.

A Bodacious Banana Bread

Evan claims I've made Banana Bread 30 times in the last year. I really hope that's not true, but I do admit I love banana bread. Some little part of me gets really happy when I discover a few brown bananas at the bottom of the fruit bowl or sitting on the counter. They may not be bright yellow but they're full of good sugars and at the peak of their nutritional value. I have a few recipes that I've used over the years and each yields a slightly different banana bread but this one is wonderful because it's so healthy. It's great to slice up and take to work, or toast and have with butter in the morning. For added yum, shave some bittersweet chocolate right into the batter and you will end up with a chocolate spotted loaf of banana delight. Oh and that's right, there is no oil in the recipe, but should you prefer a more decadent loaf, replace the applesauce with softened butter.


Recipe: Banana Bread

4 really ripe bananas (the riper the sweeter)
2/3 c brown sugar (use 3/4c if you prefer sweeter)
1/2 c applesauce (here is our recipe)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 1/2 c all purpose flour
1/2 c whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
2/3 c chopped pecans
(optional: 1/4 c semisweet chocolate shavings)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mash the bananas with a fork or a potato masher. Add the eggs, applesauce, vanilla, sugar, and salt. Mix well.In a separate bowl, mix the flours, baking powder and soda. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in thirds, gently working it in with a spatula. Stir until the mixture is uniform and no dry flour is visible but do not over-mix. The batter should be clumpy and fairly thick. Fold in the buts, and set some aside for the top(if you are adding chocolate, this is your cue).

Grease a loaf pan and pour in your batter. Bake in the preheated oven for 50-60minutes or until a toothpick or paring knife inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Remove from pan and bake naked in the oven for another 7 minutes to get a golden loaf.

Cool on a rack, slice, and serve.

Apple and spice and everything autumn

Winter in Toronto has been suspiciously gentle this year. We've barely dipped into double-digits below zero and snow sightings have been rare. So, I find myself entertaining autumn notions and craving spiced cake and apple pie and pumpkin things... My seasonal cravings are confused. When I found the recipe for this spiced bundt cake the other day, I couldn't resist. It's a moist and crumbly cake that's simple and elegant and keeps well. And it's ready to serve with a simple dusting of powdered sugar.
Recipe: Spiced apple bundt cake

1 1/2 c all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 c (1 stick) room temperature unsalted butter
1 c brown sugar
2 tbsp honey
1 large egg
1 c apple sauce (here's how you can make your own)
confectioners' sugar to dust

Start by preheating your oven to 350 degrees. In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt and spices and set aside. In a separate bowl, using an electric mixer or egg beater, beat butter, sugar, and honey until fluffy. Add egg, and mix until the consistency is smooth.

With the mixer on low, sift in the flour mixture and beat until the wet and dry ingredients are just combined. Finally, stir in the applesauce. The batter should be a little lumpy and thick; especially if your applesauce is home-made. Generously grease or spray and flour a medium bundt pan and spoon in the batter. Bake in the oven, preheated to 350, for 50-60 minutes or until a knife comes out clean but moist. Dust with sugar and impress your guests. We don't have a cake dish, but I cheat by inverting a small china bowl and placing a large china plate over it (no one will ever know).

A is for Applesauce

Here’s the thing with applesauce: it’s awesome. And you want some. It’s so easy to make and you can eat it in so many ways. Put a bit of it on your yogurt and granola in the morning, serve it on top of latkes, or add it to your baked goods. If you’re looking for ways of reducing fat in your baking, applesauce can be substituted for oil or margarine and will still produce moist and tasty results that are great for everyday snacking. There's two basic varieties, so you might want two try both by making a double batch: chunkier applesauce will be fruitier and more noticeable in baked goods, while smoother applesauce blends better if you don't want your guests to no your baking without butter.

Recipe: Stove top applesauce

• Peel, core, and quarter 4-6 apples. Use whichever type you like eating or baking varieties, or a combination. But granny Smiths are the best for savory dishes as they have the least amount of inherent sweetness.

• Put the prepped apples in a medium saucepan and immerse in water and bring to a boil.

• Once the water is boiling, turn your element down to medium and let simmer 30-35min. To check if the apples are ready, poke one with a fork. When they are soft, drain the water and transfer apples to a large bowl to cool.

• When cooled, mash them with a potato masher or blend with a food processor to achieve your desired consistency.