Look ma, no fork.

Nothing says Spring like eating with your hands. After the eight month freeze, people in Canada start acting a little funny: Oh, it's four degrees above freezing, you say? Hold on, let me get my shorts and sandals. Ten degrees with and overcast on a Tuesday? Let's hit the patio and get a bucket of Coronas at lunch. I'll admit it, I'm guilty of a little of the crazy. We woke up yesterday morning and Mina looked outside at the gray skies, birds chirping on the barren branches draped with torn plastic bags, preening their feathers of the spitting rain, the damp gray sidewalk littered with a crust of dirt and cigarette butts in the wake of melted snow banks, and commuters heading to work in their rain coats, umbrellas in hand, and she said, "It's beautiful outside." And I thought, "Yeah, it is, isn't it."

So, in that spirit. Why not kick off Spring (there are, literally, snow flakes outside the window, today, on April 5th) with fajitas?



Chipotle Ground Beef Fajitas with Guacamole

1lb lean ground beef (chuck works, but you could use ground sirloin if you're feelin classy)
1 red pepper, sliced
1 green pepper, sliced
2 onions, halved and sliced
1 to 5 dried chipotle peppers, ground (pick your poison: the more pepper the higher the flame)
3 tbsp cooking oil
1/2 C sour cream, for topping
1/2 C cheddar, grated for topping
3 diced jalapenos, for topping
1 diced tomato, for topping
6 to 10 corn fajitas, lightly toasted (use an open gas burner and tongs if you have them)

For the guacamole

2 ripe avocados, halved, pitted and crosshatched in their skins
1/2 a bunch of fresh cilantro, roughly chopped, stems and all
3 green onions, finely sliced horizontally
2 limes, juiced
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp chili powder (or mexicali spice mix)

Start by making your guac. Gently turn the cut avocado out of its skin with a tablespoon directly into a bowl and fold in (just as if you were taking care to preserve whipped egg whites, because you don't want your diced avocado to turn into mush) cilantro, lime juice, green onions, and salt to taste. Then top with the chili powder. My favourite is to use a micro grater to dust the top of the guac with a dried nacho chili - and yes, those are a real variety of pepper.

Put half the oil in a small cast iron (or non-stick) pan and turn the heat to high. In a second medium-sized pan, add the remaining oil and half of your onion and cook for three to four minutes, until onions are soft, then add ground beef and stir through.

By now, your small cast iron pan should be smoking hot. Toss in the red and green pepper and remaining onion. Shake the pan hard once or twice, then listen to the sizzle. Toss every half-minute for five minutes, while keeping an eye on the beef mixture. When your peppers have blackened at the edge, remove from heat (if they stick at all, flick or spray some water into the pan and shake loose). Continue to stir your beef until the moisture has cooked off, then salt, pepper and add the chipotle. Cook for another minute, then remove from heat. The rest is simple: spread all your separate ingredients on a platter and start the free-for-all. Also, if you've got some, serve this dish with hot sauce and cold beer.

Cheers!

A beautiful Beet borani

I found a copy of Sam and Samantha Clark's Moro East in a the nook of a used book shop last week and got so excited that I decided to surprise the other half with something before she made it home from work. Moro is a London restaurant run by a husband-wife team that specialize in Moorish influenced cooking but there happens to be a borani (Iranian yogurt dip) recipe in this book and seeing as how, Mina, the other half of The Salty Pear is Persian, it seemed appropriate. We also had some beets that had been in the fridge and borani recipes are very simple, though this one takes some time for the beets to cook.

Recipe: Beet borani
(blender or food processor needed)

2 beets whole, boiled then skinned
2 cups plain yogurt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 clove of garlic, minced
a pinch of salt
1 small bunch of dill (substituted a teaspoon of dehydrated dill)

Start by bringing 6 inches of water to a boil in a large sauce pan, then place whole beets skin on into the water, covering securely with a lid. The beets will take an hour to ninety minutes to cook thoroughly, so you'll have plenty of time to cook a protein or click around on foodblogs while your home fills with the aroma.

When a fork will sink into the beets they're ready to peel. Set aside and cool in the sink or somewhere they won't stain for 5 to 10 minutes. Next, run cold tap water over them and peel by hand. Get out your blender or a food processor and add 2 cups of plain yogurt, a minced clove of garlic, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, a pinch of salt and some dill, then give the beets a chop and drop them on top. Puree the whole mix until it's got a nice velvety consistency and the gorgeous magenta hue of a hot lipstick. Unfortunately :(because of the weather in Texas) there's no fresh dill in Toronto right now, so I added a teaspoon of the dehydrated dill. But usually you would chop a small bunch of dill and stir it into the blended beet and add a sprig top garnish.

We had the borani as a sauce on top of grilled salmon, but it was just as good if not better the next day as a cold dip for some lavash flat bread. It will also work as a sweet marinade for lamb or goat once barbecue season returns to the Canadian tundra.

Kandy(ed) Sri Lankan Guacamole with toasted coconut

This past Sunday afternoon while the better half of The Salty Pear was breaking a sweat making puff pastry for our Salty Pear tarts and I was casually snapping photos and watching American football playoffs, I realized we hadn't bothered to eat anything. This even though we'd already poached a half dozen pears in Pinot Noir and been to the farmer's market that morning. I decided to quickly stir up this recipe ("Avocado chutney," from Sri Lanka), perfect for dipping nachos, crackers, or flat bread. It's from our hometown recipe faves, Alford and Duguid's first James Beard winning book, Flatbreads and Flavors. Duguid and Alford say they picked up this recipe while hanging in Kandy a town in central Sri Lanka known for hosting Esala Perehera. A lovely place where one half of The Salty Pear once spent some cerebral down time

We should mention two things. One, we completely devoured the whole batch in about ten minutes flat, even after one half of The Salty Pear said, "Oh, I'm finished. I'm not having anymore" halfway through. Two, the original recipe calls for fresh cilantro on top, which we had sitting on the counter and totally forgot to chop and garnish with until after we had inhaled all two pounds of the guac.

Recipe: Kandy(ed) Sri Lankan Guacamole with toasted coconut

2 ripe avocados, halved, pitted and mashed
1/4 C of unsweetened shredded coconut
1 tomato, finely chopped
1 lime, the juice of
2 cloves unpeeled garlic, dry toasted
1 good sized shallot, diced
1 small chile to taste (you know how much heat you can handle)
1 heaping tablespoon dry toasted shredded coconut to sprinkle on top
(forgotten) fresh cilantro, chopped to garnish

To start slice a couple of ripe avocados in half then pull out the cores. You can tell when they're ripe because they're squishier than a baby's butt, and you can core them by slamming a knife blade into the woody sphere while holding it in your palm (but please do be careful). You could also try and pry the slippery buggers out with your hands. Either way mash the avocados in a mixing bowl and set aside. Next step, give a rough chopping to a small ripe tomato and stir it, along with the juice of lime, a quarter cup of dried (unsweetened is better) shredded coconut and the mashed avocado together. Put aside the mashed avocado mixture for later.

Next Heat a small pan or skillet to medium-high and dry toast (no oil, butter or god forbid Pam!) two cloves of garlic in their skin, i.e. do not peel them yet. This should take a couple minutes on either side, you'll know they're ready when they brown and are soft to the touch. Once your garlic is cooked, peel the cloves and mash them in a mortar with a finely chopped shallot, a healthy pinch of coarse salt and a serrano chile. If you don't have a mortar and pestle, go get one already (though you could make this spice paste in a blender if you want). Now stir the spicy garlic mixture into avocado mash and serve garnished with dry toasted coconut and nachos or anything else crunchy and dippable.