In Time

The first time I tried to make Bolognese I nearly broke into tears. I was cooking for six: a few of them I knew well but the others weren't close friends of mine and the whole day at work I was going through ideas of what to cook in my head. By the time I left work I had gone through at least ten ideas in my mind, ruling out each for a different reason: this one would take too long, that one would make the whole apartment smell like fish, another needed so much cooling and assembling, and what if they didn't like sharp cheese? Then I got this lovely image in my head of serving a beautiful fresh pasta with one simple and gorgeous sauce, a bowl of arugula and crusty bread. Everyone would drink lots of red wine and we'd have cheese for dessert and it would be like one of those underexposed rustic Bon Appetit editorial spreads called Rustico Italiano. Two hours later, my whole life covered in flour, I realized I had no wine at home. My Bolognese, which I started making way too late, because I was compulsively changing outfits for a half hour while everything sat in grocery bags on my kitchen table, was runny and not deep red and fragrant and effortlessly brilliant like I had  imagined. to say I was flustered would be an understatement. I turned the burner way down and jumped in my car to go to the liquor store and when I got back I smelled the gas and realized that the wind had blown the flame out; ergo, sauce was soupy and apartment smelled like... gas. I frantically tried to get the gas smell out and i turned up the burner to help my godforsaken sauce along and while I emptied the dishwasher and tried to think of a record to put on, there was another smell: Burnt sauce.

This happened years ago.

Now I know that when sauce starts to burn you turn off the heat and transfer the sauce as swiftly as you can, and whatever you do, you do not stir the pot. Now I also know not to entertain people I don't really like. That night when I smelled the burning meat i quickly stirred, in disbelief, and mixed the black burnt meat into the sauce rendering it completely unsalvageable. I also overcooked my pasta and broke two wine glasses.

I didn't give up on bolognese, though. I tried again and again and I'm not exactly sure at what point over the years this happened, but I can do it now. Here is the thing with repetition: while you repeat that dish, time passes, and as time passes you learn so many things. I now know how to tell good meat from bad, I prefer smaller onions, I know when meat has browned enough, and I know exactly who to share my food with. These days I don't try to stage romantic magazine dinners anymore, but I do make big bowls of pasta and pots of Bolognese that I eat with my favorite person and we soak up the extra sauce with chunks of bread and do the crossword at the dinner table. We even dip right into the pot sometimes. I don't know if you have a Bolognese recipe that you like, I hope you do and I hope it took you many years to get to it, but if you need a little help along the way, here is mine. 

Bolognese Sauce

1 Pound ground beef (my butcher gives me what he calls lean but he winks when he says lean so It's probably medium)
2 smallish medium onions- chopped finely or grated 
2 cloves garlic (minced)
1 can best tomatoes (pulverized)
1/3 c tomato paste 
1/3 c red wine
1 c stock
dry basil and oregano
salt and pepper

Brown the meat in a few tablespoons of oil and season with salt, pepper, and herbs. Add onion and cook together until onion is translucent and everything is mixing up. Add tomato paste and cook for another few minutes. In go tomatoes with juice, garlic and wine.

Finally, add a cup of stock and one cup water and simmer covered for one hour. Taste and season as you go. Uncover and cook on low until you like the consistency. Serve to your favorite person, with your favorite pasta and grated parmigiana, and if it's terrible... try again.  

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.

Parkas and Pasta

How many times have we endured the Canadian winter, and it's still the hottest topic of conversation between November and April. Whether we're surprised that the cold has taken longer to set in, or how long it's lasted this year, or just talking about the bone-chilling, teeth-chattering, skin-cracking cold, we persist. So naturally the first thing I want to tell you about (and the next handful of posts are likely going to start similarly) is that it's freezing here! Now since carbohydrates and fat keep our bodies (and hearts) happy, I propose we eat pasta until April. Think about the variations of pasta and sauce that are available to amuse ourselves with while we wait for the blossoms to grace our snow covered trees...


Casarecco with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

(If you have a really good jar of roasted peppers, feel free to substitute)

250g dry Casarecco (or pasta of your choice)
2 Sweet Red Bell Peppers
1 clove Garlic
1 shallot
small bunch of fresh basil
olive oil
good pinch of salt
cracked black pepper
Parmigiano Regiano

Roast the red peppers, garlic, and Shallots (skin on) in the oven and peal when cool enough to handle. Blend/food process peppers, shallot, garlic, and basil with a pinch of good course salt and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Taste the sauce and tweak seasoning to taste, then transfer the sauce to a medium pan on medium-low heat.

In the mean time, boil the pasta in plenty of well-salted water (salt the water after it comes to a boil, as salty water takes longer to boil) until al dente and drain, keeping about 1/4c of the starchy pasta liquid.

Toss the pasta and 1/4c liquid in the pepper purée and mix gently until it all comes together and the pasta is well coated with sauce. Grate some Parmigiano right into the pan and move around gently to enrich the sauce.

Serve with additional grated cheese and a glass of hearty red wine and count down the days until picnic season with us!

A rare slice of summer

After a lovely weekend off for a camping get away to one of Ontario's many gorgeous lakeside parks, spent eating the simple stuff: fruit, oatmeal, mac n' cheese from a box and wieners roasted on a stick, I was in the mood for something a little more elegant. An herb-crusted rib eye steak, picked up around the corner at a Kensington market butcher, topped with caramelized shallots and slices of king oyster mushroom fit the bill perfectly. A good bottle of bordeaux, cracked purple n' fingerling potatoes, and a side salad and we were a couple of happy campers sated and ready for sleep in our urban flat.




Grilled herb-crusted rib eye steaks with caramelized shallots and mushrooms; plus, cracked fingerling and purple potatoes

For the steaks

2 rib eyes, at room temperature
2 tbsp coriander seeds
3 tbsp mustard seed
1 tbsp black peppercorn
1 tbsp pink peppercorn
1 dried chili
1 tsp sea salt
4 king oyster mushrooms, sliced vertically
8 shallots, sliced
2 tsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter


For the taters

1C small purple potatoes, whole
1C fingerling potatoes whole
3 tblsp veg oil
2 tbsp, fine salt
1 tsp dried rosemary

Start off by taking your steaks out of the fridge and letting them acclimatize. In a bowl, salt the raw potatoes and let stand. Heat the oil on high in a large pan (that must have secure fitting lid or a plate that you can use to cover it), and add the potatoes, they should sizzle and snap if the heat's right. Turn down to medium-high and stir often for ten to fifteen minutes, covering in between. When the potatoes start to split, press them flat into oil with your spatula to crisp and brown their skin. Turn down to medium heat, sprinkle with rosemary, and let the taters continue to cook as you prepare your steak.

In a small pan, heat olive oil and butter over low until they're mixed. Add your shallots and stir for five minutes, until completely translucent. Now add your mushrooms, stirring occasionally for another fifteen minutes. The key to caramelizing is to keep the heat low and allow the sugars to cook without burning them.

Smash all your whole herbs in a mortar with a pestle, then rub the surface of your meat until its well coated (don't be afraid to use your fingers to get in there). Grill the steaks for a few minutes on either side 'til they're done to your liking (Mina likes them crisped and I like them bloody); you can search for all kinds of charts and tests and what not online, but it's simply a matter of taste. Top your steaks with the caramelized goodness, plate taters on the side and crack black pepper on the top. A dollop of sour cream and chives never hurt anyone either.

Butchering for the barbie

I was sitting around with some friends on a patio after work yesterday and they start chatting about an old coworker of theirs in Ghana who they thought was weird mainly because his favourite animal was a goat, as opposed to say a giraffe or elephant. Now, I'm not sure what this guy liked to do with his goats, but I have to say, just the mention of certain animals brings a Pavlovian dribble of saliva to my tongue. It might be odd that a guy raised as vegetarian for fifteen years would love meat so much, but I figure I'm just making up for lost time. And especially in Toronto where our barbecue season is shorter than the hair on a peach, the time to dust off your grill and get cooking has long passed.
Pork Chops with sauteed mushrooms and ricotta on a bed of greens

4 x 1 1/4" pork chops from your local butcher
2 onions, halved and sliced
3 cups of oyster mushrooms, roughly chopped
2 tbsp sweet balsamic vinegar
1 lemon, quartered
4 tbsp of ricotta cheese
1C baby spinach
1C arugala (rocket)

Salty sweet spice rub

2 tbsp kosher salt
3 tbsp hot paprika or 3 dry chillis
1 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp mustard seed
1/4 coriander
1/4 tsp nutmeg

If you have all the your spices whole, it's best to make the rub by toasting everything (except the sugar) in a dry pan over medium for 45 to 60 seconds. Let it cool down then grind the ingredients together with a mortar and pestle.

Start off by wiping your grill with a rag or paper towel soaked in olive oil and then preheat your BBQ to 450, or leave all burners on medium high for ten minutes if you don't have a thermometer built in. Inside, saute the onions on medium heat for 3 or 4 minutes until they're soft, then add mushrooms and let them cook down for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, season with salt and pepper and turn down to minimum heat.

Rub your chops in the spice mixture and then bring them outside and place on the BBQ with at least an inch of space around all of your pieces of meat on the grill, to allow the hot air to circulate and cook evenly (they'll need to be flipped in four minutes). Close the lid. Inside, add a healthy splash of balsamic vinegar to your mushrooms and onion and stir throughout leaving on low heat to cook off excess moisture. Back outside, flip your meat and close the lid again allowing the chops to cook for another 4 minutes... if you want crosshatched sear marks to impress your guests, give the meat a 90 degree turn 2 minutes into cooking on each side and keep the heat just a touch higher to make up for opening your grill over and over.

Prep the plates with your greens, lay the meat on top, garnish with your balsamic reduction, and then finish with a healthy dollop of ricotta. Serve with a slice of lemon if you prefer. Or better yet, a slice of lemon on a tom collins. Cheers to Spring.

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.

Cassoulet à la Child

After watching one of the competitors on Top Chef plate a spoon full of 'garbanzo beans' (i.e. chickpeas) and call it cassoulet the other night, I was inspired to try and make our own version of the traditional French pork and bean stew. We had some pork and liver sausage, some ribs and lots of beans (feel free to substitute any legumes you like), so the rest was actually quite simple. To make cassoulet, it really just requires a bit of patience and lots of tasty, hearty ingredients as well as the right herbs, and some bread crumbs to dust on top. There's a lots of different versions out there, but we roughly followed an old Julia Child recipe for ours.

Recipe: Pork and beans cassoulet

4 pork & liver sausages, parboiled and sliced into medallions
1lb spare ribs, parboiled and sliced
1 red onion, diced
4 celery shoots, chopped
2 large carrots, chopped
1 large can of whole tomatoes, pureed (or buy already crushed tomatoes if you don't have a food processor. But they'll taste way better if they're whole and you do the pureeing at home)
1C lima beans, rehydrated or canned
1/2C fava beans, rehydrated or canned
1/2C kidney beans, rehydrated or canned
1/4C drinking wine
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2C of bread crumbs
1 bunch of fresh thyme, tied tightly

First off, parboil your ribs and and sausages in a large pot for about half an hour or until they're cooked through and starting to get tender. Set meat aside and save the liquid to add as stock later. When the meat is cool enough to handle, slice sausage into medallions and tear the ribs into small pieces. Next, Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

In the same pot, add the olive oil and adjust to medium-high heat. Saute your chopped onion, celery and carrots for 3 to 5 minutes or until they start to soften.

Add the meat back to the pot and stir briefly. next, dump in all of the beans and stir the pureed can of tomatoes throughout the meat, beans and vegetables. Now add whatever wine your drinking and then pour in enough of your reserved meat stock to fully submerge everything in the pot by about a half inch or so. Drop in the bunch of thyme, tied tightly in twine, and simmer on medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 10 to 15 minutes or until the mixture has thickened.

Remove the thyme and dust the top of the cassoulet evenly with a quarter inch of bread crumbs, no more and no less. If you want, you can also try cutting the bread crumbs 50-50 with finely grated Parmesan to give it a rich, but decidedly unFrench finish. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes or until the bread crumbs are golden-brown.

This Salty Pear is Sweet

This recipe for our Pinot Noir poached pear tart with sea salt isn't just our namesake, it has pretty much everything we're about: market fresh fruit, lots of vino, perfect pastry, coarse salt, and chocolate to top it all off. To start you're going to need to get a basket of pears (each tart requires a half pear, so 4 pears will make 8 tarts). We used Anjou because they're still in season and keep their shape well when baked, but you could just as easily use Bartletts.


Recipe: Pinot Noir poached Pear tarts with Sea Salt

4 Anjou pears, poched, halved, then sliced

Poaching liquid

1/2 Bottle of red wine, Pinot Noir, Amarone or a personal favourite
1 large orange, zest and juice of
1 stick of cinnamon
1 vanilla bean, sliced lengthwise
2 to 3 sprigs of fresh mint, rosemary or thyme

Puff pastry

1lb all purpose flour
1lb cold, unsalted butter cut into small cubes
1 teaspoon table salt
1/2 C of heavy cream, mixed with cold water
1/2 C cold water, mixed with cream

Almond filling

1/4 C of ground almonds
1/4 C of confectioner's sugar
3 tablespoons soft, whipped butter

For the Poached Pears fill a saucepan (preferably one that's going fit your pears tightly) add your vino, a vanilla bean sliced down the middle, the zest and juice of an orange, a stick of cinnamon, and a few sprigs of fresh mint, thyme or rosemary but don't over do it. If you only have dried herbs that's fine, but just a pinch will do. You don't want your pears to taste like a roast lamb. Next, bring the poaching liquid to a boil, then cover and simmer for 5 to 10. This particular poaching recipe is adapted from Jamie's Kitchen, but there's a million twists out there so just pick a pear poaching recipe that suits if you're not into this one. When the liquids are simmering (or marrying their flavors as the chefs would say), skin and core your pears from the base. Make sure to keep your pears whole with the stem on and in clean, presentable form. You're going to see them when you're done so you don't want to rough them up. Once your pears are prepped, place them base down in the simmering liquid and cover. And if they aren't fully immersed add more wine, it's important that the fruit is covered in the booze. They won't cook evenly if they're not, so make sure they're drowning in the sauce.

For The Pastry (if you're up for making your own) this is the recipe we use. If not, store-bought pastry will do the trick. It comes in two forms: sheets, or blocks. If you buy sheets, simply lay out one sheet and take it from there. The blocks will need to defrost, and you will need a chunk of pastry roughly the size of one good sized handful. This usually means half of one package. On a floured surface, roll out a sheet about 1/4" thick and brush the surface with one egg yolk beaten with a tablespoon of water. Then using a pizza roller, or the blade of a sharp knife, cut two rows of four squares or rectangles, whichever will accommodate your pears nicely.

For The Filling simply whisk together 1/4c ground almonds, 1/4c confectioner's sugar and three tablespoons softened butter. Spread one tablespoon of filling on each of the rectangles, but try to leave a border because the egg-washed pastry will bake into a beautiful golden hue in the oven. Next, take each poached pear and cut it length-wise in half. With the cut side down, cut each half into 1/8" horizontal slices keeping the shape of the half. Using the Blade of a thick knife, transfer the fanned half pears to the pastry rectangles. Bake these beauties on a lined/greased baking sheet in a preheated 350 ˚ oven for 20-25 minutes or until the edges look golden. Let cool on a wire rack. Garnish with a drizzle of chocolate, icing sugar and a sprinkle of sea salt.