Author: wellfedemily

Roasted tomato pizza.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

We’re getting to the best time of the year now. The tomatoes that were so bright and lovely a few weeks ago are now mottled and sweet, and they beg to be roasted low and slow or stewed down for sauces, and since the air outside has cooled a bit I have no reason not to but oblige them. On Alana’s advice, I roasted a whole bunch of field tomatoes last week and stuck them in the freezer, but I still had a few romas, a hankering for bread and cheese, and a resurgence of old lady disease in my limbs, hands, back, and left big toe that made me not want to put in a lot of labour.

This post is mostly pictures, because I made my focaccia bread for the crust (all the ingredients up to the flour, plus salt – the recipe will make two pizzas if you’d prefer not to make one gigantic one), made pesto for the sauce, and roasted tomatoes for hours and hours to put on top. And then cheese. It’s also short because we made a trip to the garden … let’s just say this is a two-post night. (I know. I’m excited too.)

The aroma in the apartment was amazing, and a valid argument for always working from home. Tomatoes develop a sweeter taste as they roast down, but they smell almost meaty, with a lusty musk that is distinctive to this exact moment in the tomato season. Capture it while you can.

You can see how the light changed as the hours past while the pizza slowly came together. The focaccia crust isn’t the sort of thing you’d make on a weeknight ordinarily, but if you’re in no rush it’s perfect for homemade pizza.

There’s a lot to be said for homemade pizza, whether you dawdle over homemade, buy the dough from your favourite take-away place, or just get frozen dough from the grocery store. The advantage to using dough over a premade crust (other than not having to eat something that pretty much tastes like cardboard and has weird speckles of what you kind of recognize as “cheese” all over the thing) is that you get the smell of baking bread, which is the best thing about pizza, aside from all the cheese. Use whatever cheese you like, but (and this will seem completely out of character) I prefer low-fat mozzarella, because it’s stringier and I like my pizza cheese stringy.

The other thing about making your own pizza is that you get to put whatever you like on it, and you don’t have to feel crushing disappointment when Domino’s puts green peppers on anyway even after you told them how much you hate them. So, you get the satisfaction of the smell of bread baking, as much cheese as you want, whatever toppings you want, and nobody cries because there are green peppers.

And if tomatoes aren’t your thing, you should try this in October with butternut squash, rosemary, roasted garlic, and Gruyere. Holy crap, it will change your life. Try it and get back to me.

Update: I am not dead.

~ wellfedemily ~ 9 Comments

I am, however, a novelist. Maybe not in the “published author” sense, but since I’ve been sitting in front of my computer for three days doubting all the life choices that led to this and giving myself osteoporosis with Diet Coke, I figure no one’s going to argue with me.

Holy crap, it was exhausting. But also invigorating. I think I broke my liver.

I just finished my final edit, gave the thing a name, and closed the document. It’s over, I’m done. And I really like it, which is a good sign, even though parts are rushed and I used more swear words than my mother would approve of and I think every three pages someone cries which is either super dramatic or really, really emo.

We celebrated the end of the thing with a dinner of pork ribs braised in tomato sauce with red wine and rosemary, roasted summer squash, and polenta with basil and Pecorino Romano. It made itself, cooking away for hours in the oven while despair over the ending turned into satisfaction and relief.

I am going to spend all of next week sitting on the couch watching TV with my mouth hanging open.


Three days!

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

I have spent the better part of the week whining to Nick about how I had no ideas for my contribution to the 3-Day Novel Contest, but this morning – THIS MORNING – with the sun shining and the liquor store presenting its cheapest treats at every turn, I have had the early stirrings of inspiration, and though I haven’t got the details down, I think I know what I am going to write. I have to go to the office today for a little bit, so I am going to swipe a stack of sticky notes and turn the space above my computer into a wall of ideas. I am not going to spend any time crying on the floor between the hours of one and five in the morning, and I promise, I will take naps and walks to break the time up and save my eyesight.

I also have four potent bottles of creative juice, two boxes of macaroni and cheese, chocolate milk, five pounds of stone fruit, a chunk of Cheddar, a loaf of bread, and a fresh jar of peanut butter. I think I have pickles in the fridge, and there is a bag of chocolate chips hidden at the back of the left bottom cupboard underneath several bags of lentils which I have been saving in case of emergency. Tomatoes are roasting and stock is defrosting, which means actual nourishment will be possible with some help from Nick.

The cat has food, Nick has plans, and I have washed all of the pajamas and comfortable underpants I’ll need to remain mostly clothed. The countdown is on, there are ten hours to go! Wish me luck!

Love,

Emily

If you’re going to tart up your veggies with cheese sauce, do it with this cheese sauce.

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

Important news: Paul is back.

Last night, the team (Grace, Paul, Nick, and I) reconvened for our first dinner since Paul returned from Montreal, and we pretty much picked up where we left off.  Though it’s probably a fairly normal thing for most people, I thought we’d do something novel and have a dinner of meat, potatoes, and a vegetable – I called it a Dad meal, because it reminds me of the kind of meal you’d serve to a Dad, yours or otherwise.

It’s hard to have this many things for dinner when it’s just me and Nick, but with Grace and Paul in attendance, there were fewer leftovers and it was like a family dinner that didn’t involve any actual relatives. I made Hank Shaw’s Easy Duck Confit, a big dish of fluffy mashed potatoes, and broccoflower – straight out of 1992 – covered in cheese sauce.

As we’re heading into fall now, the temptation to cover everything in cheese is probably growing for you too. As hardier veggies start popping up in markets, I suggest bringing them home and covering them in this sauce. The sauce is most conducive to broccoli or cauliflower (or the weird genetic hybrid that is broccoflower), but you could put this over carrots, asparagus, spinach – whatever you’ve got. Also, this is pretty much the base I use when I make baked macaroni and cheese – obviously you’d add more cheese to that (obviously), but there you go. Look how versatile!

Cheese sauce

  • 3 tbsp. butter
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 3 tbsp. all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup dry white wine
  • 2 cups half and half (or cereal cream – aim for about 10% milk fat)
  • 1 tsp. grainy Dijon mustard
  • 1/4 tsp. white pepper
  • Pinch nutmeg
  • 1 cup shredded Gruyere, sharp Cheddar, or other delicious, bold-tasting cheese (lightly packed – not pressed into a wad)
  • 1/2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
  • Salt, to taste
  • 1 tbsp. chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt butter over medium-high heat until it foams. Add garlic, then add flour, and whisk until the three ingredients form a paste.

Whisk in wine, then half and half, then mustard, pepper, and nutmeg. Reduce heat to medium, and whisk frequently until thickened, about three to five minutes.

Add cheese and Worcestershire sauce, and taste at this point. Is it good? Does it need salt? Add salt if you need to. Is it too thick for your liking? Add more wine or dairy. You get the idea. Whisk in the parsley right before you’re done.

Pour into a pitcher and then serve, dousing your veggies as much as you like. It will be just like you remember, only better, because now you can have as much sauce as you want. 

Enjoy, and may the cheese-sauce season bring you warmth and please you.

Catching up, the 3-Day Novel, and Sushi Shelter 101.

~ wellfedemily ~ 5 Comments

You know how sometimes a week or more goes by and then you start to get these friendly reminders about that blog of yours that you enjoy writing that you’ve been neglecting because you’re busy lately and you’ve not just been neglecting the Internet but also your whole life? This week we actually ate a meal of bacon and deep-fried cheese bread. I’ve been totally wrapped up in work fatigue – the two weeks before school starts at a university are busy and insane and frustrating and holy hell why didn’t I plan my time around going to bed early and getting up on time?! – and my own whiny brand of anxiety over a little contest I’m participating in this weekend.

What contest, you might ask?

For some reason I thought it would be fun to participate in the 3-Day Novel Contest, in which I spend the Labour Day weekend on lock down, pounding out a novel in 72 hours. Not only that, but I paid $50 to do it, so, given my temperament and inability to function after a certain hour in the evening, I’m either an idiot or a masochist but it’s too early to tell which. I’m thinking of taking the Hunter S. Thompson approach to writing this thing, so if you find me bug-eyed and jabbering incoherently, clutching a quart of cheap dark rum and nine tubes of pickle-flavoured Pringles in the garishly lit aisles of Shoppers Drug Mart at 3:00 in the morning on Sunday, just hand me a sack of grapefruits and a hunting knife and point me in the direction of home. I’ll draw a map on my arm, just in case.

These long, meandering, seemingly pointless paragraphs do not bode well for success in this competition, and if this was to be practice, I’d have failed. The point of this blog post is a weird little restaurant called Sushi Shelter 101.

Last night we met up with a friend of Nick’s from work, Aaron, and went 90 minutes away from home to Port Coquitlam and this Sushi Shelter 101 place. Odd name, and I got the sense that the decor was themed along the lines of a luxury fall-out shelter. In the nuclear/zombie apocalypse, a hideaway like Sushi Shelter 101 is where I want to be. Even better if they bring me a steady supply of Ocean Delight, which is a deep-fried crab cheese thing that I am devastated I don’t have right now.

They have different things here, and Aaron classified it as non-traditional, modern Japanese. The Red Bamboo and White Bamboo were two things I can no longer live without – tender, beautiful cuts of salmon and tuna wrapped in nori, tempura-battered, and then quickly deep-fried, rarely have I had such a succulent bite of fish, so perfectly barely cooked.

I wish every single picture I took wasn’t a horrendous mess of blur, but the lighting was dim, and for it we were all infinitely more attractive. The beer also helped.

OH! And it would qualify as neglect if I didn’t tell you about the oyster, which isn’t on the menu, but which you can ask for with a wink and they’ll know what you mean.

The oyster comes on a tin-foil pedestal, cut into bite-size chunks and gently fried, then reassembled and topped with Japanese mayo, shredded seaweed, and something else which I couldn’t put my finger on, but which I need you to go and taste in case you can solve the mystery. There were also California rolls covered in peanut sauce, which was odd but good and I don’t know what to make of it yet. There were these vegetable croquettes, and this chicken yakitori … there was so much. And it wasn’t expensive.

The service is unparalleled – the nice waitress would ask if she could remove every single scraped-clean plate, and she would bring special treats if for some reason the chef thought we were waiting too long. We were gifted a plate of vegetarian spring rolls, a small bottle of warm sake, a plate of lamb maki, and a dish of mango ice cream that had the purest mango taste I’ve had in a dessert ever. If you are in Port Coquitlam for any reason at all, make a trip and go to this place. I am sure that you will come out of the whole experience equally as gut-busted full and delightfully perplexed as I did.

So, yeah. Sushi Shelter 101. Do it. And wish me luck in my contest. With any luck, I will win, become a famous author, achieve that rare combination of literary acclaim and obscene wealth, and then open my dream restaurant, the opening of which you are all invited to.

Garden report: We have so much chard, and the threat of too many cucumbers.

~ wellfedemily ~ 7 Comments


Finally, thunder and lightning! I thought the air pressure had changed, because I’ve had a few bad nights in a row now where I’ve woken up terrified, haunted by bad dreams of the worst kind. The cat is screwy too, and her schedule is off and now she’s madly in love with me at all the wrong hours of the night and early morning, and there is no telling her she’s wrong when she announces with claws that it’s time to wake up and play.

The neighbourhood dogs are barking more, there have been car accidents outside my window, and the power’s been failing in spots all over the city. We had a full moon, which maybe means something.

But anyway, there are big noises outside, and piercing light every so often, and we’re at home with a hoard of chard and the garden is getting summer storm water and all is right with the world. We planted more chard, and played in the dirt, and my cucumbers have begun to flower and are taking over everything and what are we going to do with it all when the plant bears fruit?!

I ended up sticking a whole bunch of chard in the freezer, because there’s just so much of it right now, but the rest I chopped into soup with white beans, some fresh from the ground little carrots, celery, and red Okanagan field tomatoes. And herbs, rosemary and parsley. Did you know if you sprinkle a few tablespoons of cornmeal into a soup, it thickens it just slightly which makes the whole soup seem even heartier? Definitely more stew-like, which is excellent if you don’t have a long time to let a pot of soup boil and reduce.

Anyway. This is shaping up to be a terrible garden report, and I haven’t even squealed or abused an exclamation point yet.

In case you were wondering, because it sort of seems that way, Nick does seem to do most of the labour-intensive garden work, while I stand around taking pictures.

I had never seen a chard root before, but isn’t this cool?

I don’t know why he lets me get away with all this slacking off, but I do have dirt under my fingernails and I did make the soup, so maybe it evens out in the end. So, there you go! You’re all caught up, and isn’t it exciting? Have a happy Friday!

Meatless Monday: Shepherd’s Pie, sans shepherd.

~ wellfedemily ~ 7 Comments

I think the thing I like best about Meatless Monday is that it comes at just the right time. Monday evening is when some of us need a hearty helping of veggies to undo some of the weekend’s damage; indeed, I spent the bulk of mine throwing back rich dishes and cocktails in between naps.

Today’s Meatless Monday dish is meaty in spite of itself. It’s filled with garlicky mushrooms, rosemary, leeks, and just enough red wine. It’s topped with potatoes whipped with eggs, cream, and olive oil. And then it’s baked until the potatoes are golden and the mushroom sauce has bubbled up around the sides. Use a variety of mushrooms, if possible; I used regular white mushrooms, a couple of fat portabellas, and a few oyster mushrooms, but feel free to use whatever’s available to you. Be sure to scrape the gills from the portabellas before cooking (if using), and chop these into cubes.

It’s rich and satisfying, fragrant and delicious; it’s the sort of thing you could serve to a ravenous meat-eater and he wouldn’t know there wasn’t a spot of beef in it. Even the cat was interested, and she won’t give a sniff to anything that isn’t 95% protein.

Mushroom Shepherd’s Pie

(Serves four to six.)

  • 2 lbs. Yukon Gold or other yellow-fleshed potatoes, diced
  • 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
  • 4 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, divided
  • 1/4 cup + 1 tbsp. heavy cream, divided
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tbsp. butter
  • 1 shallot, minced (about 2 tbsp.)
  • 2 to 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 cup finely chopped leek (white and light-green part only, about two medium leeks)
  • 2 1/2 lbs. mushrooms, assorted varieties if possible
  • 2 tsp. chopped fresh rosemary
  • 1 tbsp. all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup dry red wine
  • 2 tbsp. soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp. Dijon mustard
  • 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tsp. black pepper
  • 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1 tbsp. chopped fresh parsley
  • Salt to taste, if needed

Boil potatoes in a large pot of water until tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Drain and mash until almost no chunky bits remain, then whip in parmesan cheese, two tablespoons of olive oil, 1/4 cup of cream, and two eggs. Taste and add salt as needed; I chose not to add salt, as the parmesan lent sufficient seasoning. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil and the butter over medium-high heat until butter begins to bubble and foam. Stir in shallots and garlic, sautéeing for two minutes until translucent. Add leeks, and saute until shallots have melted down and no longer hold their round shape, about three minutes.

Meanwhile, again, chop mushrooms. It is not necessary that the mushrooms be of uniform size; different sizes will allow the mushrooms to achieve varying textures, which is ideal. Add mushrooms and rosemary to pan, stirring to coat in fat. Allow to sweat, but do not salt the mushrooms. It will take about five minutes, with occasional stirring, but the mushrooms will release their liquid and it will be awesome.

Once mushrooms have sweat and wilted, about five minutes, sprinkle flour over top of the mushrooms and mix until flour disappears. Add wine, soy sauce, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, and nutmeg. Reduce heat to medium and allow to thicken slightly, two to three more minutes. Stir in parsley and cream, and taste, adjusting seasonings as needed.

Remove mushrooms from heat and pour into a 1 1/2- to 2-quart casserole dish. Top with mashed potato mixture, spreading to cover completely.

Place in oven and cook for 20 to 25 minutes, until potatoes are golden on top and mushroom sauce is bubbling out from around the sides.

Serve hot from the oven. If you have leftovers, this dish is even better the second day, when the flavours, especially the rosemary, garlic, and pepper steep and meld together. Nick can’t wait for lunch tomorrow, and I am looking forward to the smell of this scenting my office. Yum!

PS – check out my recipe for Huevos Rancheros on the Meatless Monday website!

Get yogurt, make cheese.

~ wellfedemily ~ 10 Comments

Last night we went to Zakkushi on Main Street, which for us always means gluttony, depravity, and utter disbelief when the bill comes. The thing that’s great about izakayas is that you can graze all night long while pretty young waitresses bring you large pitcher after large pitcher of cold Japanese beer, but the trouble is that while those two-dollar skewers of meat don’t seem like anything in the first place, by the end of the night you stumble and yell your way out into the parking lot, your belly is swollen and your waistband is the cruelest thing you can think of, you have the meat sweats, and you don’t know how you’re going to find the money to buy groceries or eat for the rest of the week. This all means of course that I had tons of fun and regret nothing.

And when we got home late last night (or early this morning), I was exhausted. I whined to Nick that I never get to sleep in, because the cat loves me most at 6:00 in the morning. He reassured me that he would get up with her and feed her, and that I could sleep late, and that the remainder of the weekend would be flawless and spectacular.

This is what Nick looked like at 12:38 this afternoon. Molly Waffles takes her breakfast at 7:30.

Needless to say, I had to get up and feed the cat and clean the litter box and entertain myself for more hours than I care to mention.

Fortunately, yesterday I put a 750g container of all-natural, organic, 5% milk-fat yogurt into a bundle of cheesecloth and let it drain overnight, thanks to a recipe I discovered at GrongarBlog for yogurt cheese. 750g of yogurt (about three cups) produced a little over a cup of creamy cheese. My goodness, you guys. This just improved my whole life, and why the hell didn’t I think of this?!

The cheese that resulted was creamy, like softly crumbly cream cheese – I put the yogurt up to drain around 7:00 last night, and mashed it into a bowl around 10:00 this morning. I knew at once that I would have to trudge down to Granville Island to Siegel’s for bagels and to the smokery for fish. The effort and patience required to make the cheese was minimal, and the payoff was more than was deserved for so little involvement in the process.

I recommend making this today for tomorrow. Make sure you get good bagels and smoked fish. Watercress, red onions, and capers also help, as does fresh-squeezed orange juice and good enough white wine. More information about cheese-making is available at GrongarBlog, and while you’re there, browse around. Her feta is next on my list, and we’re in the process of trying to track down a cheese press to make that gouda.

Tonight my dad and I are going to see Stompin’ Tom Connors, arguably Canada’s finest and most awesome musician (Celine Dion? Rush? The Arcade Fire? Your argument is invalid). And tomorrow, ribs. I hope you also have a fantastic weekend, and that you get outside and have fun! But first, make cheese.

Meatless Monday: Fried tofu with plum sauce and some rambling.

~ wellfedemily ~ 6 Comments

You see those pretty things? I think they’re pluots. I bought them from a place that labeled them “dino egg plums,” which is why I bought them, but I’m pretty sure they’re pluots. I’ve misidentified produce before, however, so please correct me if I’m wrong. But that’s really not the point.

The point is that today was incredibly challenging, with the temperature of my office soaring to an inhumane degree (which is to say somewhere over 30°C), the servers at work having exploded leaving me with literally nothing to do, and with coming home to disappointment – though, I saw it coming.

A proposal I had submitted for a book was declined, which I sort of expected because it was not the book I was sure of three months after pitching the thing, but still. Allowing delusion to take the place of rational thought has always served me so well, and I had convinced myself that within a year I would be a famous food writer and then the Food Network would offer to throw Guy Fieri off a bridge and invite me to live with Ina Garten if I’d just give them a late-night cooking show on which they’d allow me to swear. But it’s okay. I wasn’t sure of the thing after the fact, and it’s not a cookbook that I really want to write. I have an idea though. I’ll keep you in the loop. I’ll try not to forget.

But anyway, it’s Meatless Monday, and I’d best not let the heat lead my mind to wander, because this beer is hitting me hard and in a few short paragraphs I could forsake the recipe entirely for an unsettling peek into my soul or for a photo I’d surely regret. My goodness, it’s hot. But dino egg plums. They are what’s really important.

Fried tofu with fresh plum sauce

(Serves four, with four large pieces of tofu per person.)

Plum sauce

(Makes about 2 cups)

  • 2 tbsp. vegetable oil
  • 1 small onion, finely chopped (about 1 cup)
  • 1 small sweet red pepper, such as Hungarian, finely chopped (about 1/3 to 1/2 cup)
  • 1 tbsp. minced fresh ginger
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 lb. plums, diced
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar (adjust to taste – if you’ve got very sweet plums, dial it back; if they’re bitter little things, add more to your liking)
  • 2 tbsp. soy sauce
  • 2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
  • 1 tsp. red chili flakes

Tofu

  • 2 350g blocks firm or medium-firm tofu (if you choose medium-firm, it will be softer but more like the agadeshi tofu you get in Japanese restaurants; if you go firmer than that, it’s heartier and denser – chewier, but Nick thinks more filling)
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 tsp. sriracha or other hot sauce
  • 1 tsp. soy sauce
  • 1/2 cup cornstarch

In a small pot over medium-high heat, sauté onion, red pepper, ginger, and garlic in oil until all have begun to sweat and their smells have co-mingled.

Pour the sweaty mess into a blender or a food processor, add the plums, and set the thing to spinning until the fruits and veggies are puréed. Pour back into the pot.

Taste the sauce at this point, and add the sugar in carefully, a little less than is called for at first, adding more as needed. Stir in soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, and chili flakes, and allow to simmer over medium-low heat for 15 to 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, fill the bottom of a large, nonstick pan with oil, about a half-inch deep. Heat until shimmering.

Cube tofu, cutting into roughly 16 pieces. Whisk the egg, sriracha, and soy sauce thoroughly, and dredge the pieces in this. Place them in a large bowl filled with the cornstarch, and toss to coat.

Place cubes of tofu in the hot oil and cook until their one side has achieved a gently golden hue, two to three minutes. Turn and cook the other side for a similar amount of time.

Serve hot, with plum sauce, possibly with chopped scallions if you have them, or minced shiso leaf, which is more elusive but worth the search.

Oh! If you have leftover sauce, which you may because two cups is a lot of sauce, the sauce keeps well in a sealed jar in the fridge, and you can use it for all manner of things. It’s good as a dipping sauce, but it’s also nice with pork, or even with cheese and crackers.

Chocolate zucchini cake: It’s outrageous!

~ wellfedemily ~ 10 Comments

Sometime around the advent of cool fonts and colour printing, my mom brought home a recipe for something called “Outrageous Zucchini Cake,” and the recipe was fantastic (cinnamon! Chocolate! A fat-free variation!) but hand-written (by whom? I still don’t know) so I typed it up in magenta and cyan with MS Word’s “Party” font and thus the recipe was saved for a decade or more in a tattered binder that lives in my parents’ kitchen. It looked so pretty. It still sort of does. Which is why I absconded with it this past weekend.

The cake it produced was delicious, but I forgot about it because I moved out and didn’t take a copy with me, because even then I suspected that making and eating cakes all on my own would turn out to be a bad idea, fat-free variation or not.

I still remember how fat-free was appealing at 17. It is less so at 27.

I’ve revised the recipe, and it’s now somewhere in between really fattening and fat-free – that sane middle ground at which a cake can almost pass for healthy. Also I now rationalize my cake-baking by telling myself that there’s two of us now. I pretend as if Nick ever eats more than a single slice of cake, and it’s a lie I can live with.

“Outrageous” zucchini cake

  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup plain yogurt
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 2 cups grated zucchini
  • 2 1/2 cups all-purpose or whole-wheat flour
  • 1/3 cup cocoa
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1 cup chopped semi-sweet chocolate or chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°F, and grease a 9″x13″ baking pan.

Beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs, yogurt, vanilla, and zucchini, and beat until thoroughly combined.

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Stir dry mixture into wet mixture, stirring to moisten.

Pour batter into baking pan, spreading batter to the edges and corners of the pan. Sprinkle evenly with chopped chocolate or chocolate chips, and bake for 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Serve warm, with a tall glass of cold milk.