A meatball held together by melted cheese is structurally unsound. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t all kinds of delicious.

June 27, 2009April 2, 2015 ~ wellfedemily ~ 2 Comments

Perhaps by now you’ve noticed a theme: I really like meatballs. And pancakes. In fact, if you were trying to seduce me, a meatball pancake would probably earn you more credit than flowers, which are lovely but inedible for the most part.

It was finally sunny and hot again today, so I thought, “I could totally barbecue meatballs!” And technically, you can. But then I was like, “I could make cheesy meatballs covered in barbecue sauce and put them on skewers!” Which didn’t seem like it would fail at first. Science and I are aware of each other, but we’ve never moved beyond first names. Apparently, as mentioned up there in the title, a meatball filled with molten cheddar is tasty, but not inclined to hold up to flipping or skewering.

I’m going to give you the recipe, and then I’m going to tell you to paint barbecue sauce on them and bake them in the oven. I always forget about the last thing I cremated on the grill, and then when I go to cook something outside, there are fires and I have to use the scrapey brush and Nick gets mad at me for being sloppy and lazy, and doesn’t agree that his repetitiveness could also be annoying.

First, blend yourself a cocktail. You know what’s tasty with alcohol? Strawberries and rhubarb, sweetened as much or as little as you like.

I stewed some rhubarb and strawberries on Wednesday and threw about four cups' worth into the freezer for baked goods, and it turned out that the concoction worked marvellously when used for fruity blender drinks. Success!

Then, do this:

Cheesy Barbecue Meatballs

(Makes 12 to 14 meatballs)

1 lb. lean ground beef
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1/2 cup grated sharp cheddar
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 tbsp. barbecue sauce (plus additional sauce for painting over the meatballs)
1/2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 egg
1 tsp. dried red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper

Preheat oven to 350°F.

I pretty much always tell you to do the same thing here. Mix everything in a bowl using your hands. Perhaps I will attempt to be less repetitive in coming weeks, eating something other than meatballs. You can stuff other things with cheese, after all.

Roll into twelve to fourteen balls, about golf-ball size.

Meatballs. Paint with barbecue sauce. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

Now, I put mine on skewers:

Ball piercing. Which allowed them to get good and charred. If you like the idea of this, throw them on the grill for a few minutes to get all flame-kissed.

I really thought the skewers would work. But I was enjoying my cocktail, as one does, and so called Nick to come help me flip them. (By which I mean, I called Nick to do it for me.) And he broke them. They looked like this:

It's also all his fault that this photo is blurry.

Just bake them. They will maintain their structural integrity that way, and you will maintain your cool. And you will have a lot more time to sip your drink on the patio in the sunshine.

Tomorrow I am going to go cherry picking, and so there will be something new and interesting to tell you about. I promise to show you something amazing that you’ve never seen before. Unless I totally let you down. Because I’ve never done that before. Happy Friday!

Invoking Korea: I am madly in love with all pancakes.

June 24, 2009April 2, 2015 ~ wellfedemily ~ 2 Comments

Much as I love home, every so often (three to six times per week) I consider escape. Sometimes it’s the weather, and periodically it’s people – sometimes it’s both (though rarely is it some of the weather or all of the people). Sometimes the grey is all around and the idea of putting on a coat or fighting back is exhausting and you don’t care enough to do either because it’s the west coast and there will always be damp and because some people are going to rain on your parade whether it’s warranted or not. And that’s when I think of Korea. I’ve never been there. They do clever things with cabbage and have excellent pancakes.

A million years ago now, when I was very small, my grandpa returned from Korea with a pair of pretty dolls in blue dresses. They had marabou fans and elaborate hairstyles and I thought that everything pretty like that came from Japan until Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? And then I found out where Reykjavik was and then I thought I knew everything. I hope you know that those two thoughts are not completely related. Korea. Seoul. I want to go.

Dollies.

Seven years ago I attempted to teach a Korean family English. They’d hired me as a tutor, totally unqualified, and they were so earnest and funny that I couldn’t wait to see them every week. They tried to teach me a thing about Korea for every thing I taught them about Canada or grammar or homonyms, and often that involved food. They had one son, Daniel, who was ten years old and worried that strangers would kidnap him because of his handsomeness. I told him to be wary of vans and free candy. His mother taught me about salty little dried fish and kim chi, and I’ve since tried in vain to find anything as good as the stuff she made at home. Her tofu was not the stuff of hippies.

My love affair continues, and with each passing year I wonder how it’s possible that I haven’t made it there yet. If my bank account contained enough for airfare, or if airfare was forty dollars, which I have, I’d be gone. (Don’t worry: When I go, I’m taking Nick with me.)

But it’s not my turn. This week David is leaving. He’s going to Amsterdam to ride his bike to Istanbul, and then he’s probably going to Germany to get even more educated, and he’s already one of the top eight smartest people I know. I assume he will miss Vancouver’s diverse culinary scene, most particularly the Asian stuff. It’s good here. Very good, every kind. Also I’m kind of selfish and have been harbouring escape fantasies, and so I planned for a room of us to dine Korean and send him off while I attempt to live kind of vicariously through David. Well, kind of Korean. I really wanted the pancake. (I really want all pancakes.)

As with all my plans, what started off as a quiet little evening soon grew to include all the people who actually ought to have been invited, and soon there were ten. In my mind, that was a totally reasonable number to try and feed, so I estimated that dinner would take a total of twenty minutes to prepare. In future, I will make time for what I like to call “inevitable realizations,” or: “I have no pans big enough to make this much food.” Thankfully, Greg offered his place across the street as a venue. I bought four pounds of Chinese noodles, many little bags of baby bok choy, and too many green things that I would have to accommodate in some way, probably the oven. I also had to double the pancake recipe, and because of that, bake it instead of fry it, which turned out more than okay, like Korean Toad in the Hole.

I’ve decided that you really ought to have my doubled-up recipe, and that you should probably bake it.

Pa jun or pajeon, or: “That really good pancake I like.”

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups rice flour
4 eggs, lightly beaten
3 cups cold club soda (or beer)
1 tbsp. plus 1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup green onions
1 cup carrots, peeled and julienned
1 cup zucchini, julienned
1 small onion, sliced into thin strips
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. black pepper

Grease a baking sheet with 1/4 cup of the oil. Preheat your oven to 400°F. Add your baking sheet and let the oven and the sheet heat up together.

Pull the baking sheet out of the oven once the “it’s not ready” red light goes out (which means it’s ready). Add your vegetables.

I tell you to julienne things, but then I don't do it myself because I kind of hate doing that because it takes too long. I guess you don't have to. Just cut everything really thin.

In a large bowl, mix your flours, your eggs, your soda, one tablespoon of oil, your salt, pepper, and chili flakes, and whisk to combine. Pour over the veggies, tucking any strays into the batter blob.

Batter blob. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until golden brown.

Large tray of pancake. Serve with a quick little sauce, and a bit of kim chi, which I’d meant to include but totally forgot about. The sauce?

Cho Ganjang

4 tbsp. soy sauce
4 tbsp. cheongju (Korean rice wine) or sake
4 tbsp. rice vinegar
2 tbsp. sesame oil
4 tbsp. lemon juice
Salt, to taste

Serve to others. Because there is no love like the love between people who love pancakes.

Of course I am excited for David and his magical adventures. Though it is beginning to feel like time for my own adventures. Sometimes you fall into them, and sometimes your life pushes you in – I’ll let you know what compels me, once something finally does.

In the meantime, eat pancakes.

And then smile, lay on the floor, and be full.

Today was also the best day ever, and I know that you’re going to stop believing me when I say that. Here, have some strawberry shortcake.

June 21, 2009April 2, 2015 ~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

I know that yesterday I said today I was going to tell you all about clams, but the thing is I was a little drunk by the time dinner struck and all my pictures turned out blurry, and Grace brought her camera and tripod and took photos but I don’t have them yet so I’ll tell you all about clams tomorrow, or possibly the day after. Today we went out to Westham Island to pick strawberries.

Westham Island is way the hell out there off the highway beyond Ladner, and while it’s not actually that far away in kilometers, to get there you have to travel several long and winding roads and cross a couple of bridges and once you get there you have to try and decide which farm you will go to, and Grace and I wanted to go to the one with the winery. Of course, that’s at the end of another long road, but when we got there, we beheld many wonders. To our delight, it was Strawberry Fest this weekend. In addition to the startling variety of fruit wines available for sale, I was pleased to discover a company that custom-tailors tuxedos for wiener dogs. I don’t have a wiener dog yet, but when I do, he will ALWAYS be snappily dressed.

But that’s not the important thing. The important thing is that it’s now officially strawberry season, which means that it’s summer.

The place we went to was a u-pick kind of place, and you bring your own bucket – pretty standard stuff.

It took me forever to get started, and I grabbed several sharp weeds with my bare hands before getting into things. Agriculture isn’t for me, I decided, and also I don’t much care for squatting. In no time I was using my galoshes as a seat, ambling along the rows with prickly sleeping feet. I’ve revised my dream career to include “not outdoors” in its descriptors. It smelled very nice, like leaves and the odd whiff of berry musk.

And soon I was well into the whole process, shouting across the field to James and Grace whenever I felt so compelled – “OMG, look at these retard-berries!” I’d shout. “Developmentally challenged berries,” Grace would correct. And then when the troupe of annoying British children turned up, I decided I’d best stop shouting “retard!” into the fields, and James agreed.

This plant has too many chromosomes or something.

It didn’t take very long to fill a whole bucket. For me, that is. James ate three times as many berries as he picked, and Grace anal-retentively only picked perfect berries – her berries were all of uniform colour and size. Grace is a better editor than I am, and has a keener eye for detail. My bucket showed an open-minded preference for diversity (read: a tendency toward rushing and impatience).

By the end of it all, I had picked four pounds of berries, paying less than I paid yesterday for half as many.

I am less awesome in real life than I am in my head.

But what to do with all those berries?! I immediately counted out the prettiest, reddest ones from among the berries at the top of the bucket and dropped them into a bowl and drizzled them with a touch of sugar and just enough cream. They were so soft that they didn’t need to be chewed – I could smash them just by pushing them with my tongue against the roof of my mouth. They tasted precisely how strawberries are supposed to taste, with not a streak of white anywhere inside of them.

Nothing belongs in my stomach more than these.

As too many strawberries will leave you with a terrible case of the scoots, I’m beginning to wonder what I’ll do with the rest – I think I’d like to make strawberry shortcake, and maybe a batch of muffins, and then freeze some for margaritas. The rest I will eat as they are, or dipped in pepper or sugar or maybe both – I don’t remember at which point the laxative quality of strawberries begins to take effect. Only one way to find out!

In the meantime, here’s my favourite base for strawberry shortcake. It’s a James Beard recipe, and it produces a biscuit, not a cake. But it’s sweet, with a crusty top that contrasts nicely with soft berries and whipped cream. I add cardamom because I like it, but you can omit it if you’d like.

Cream Biscuits

(makes four to six, depending on how big you like them)

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. baking powder
2 tsp. sugar, plus additional for sprinkling on top
1 tsp. cardamom
1 – 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/3 cup melted butter

Preheat your oven to 425°F.

In a bowl, combine your flour, salt, baking powder, sugar, and cardamom. Mix it up, and once it’s mixed, slowly add one cup of the cream. Stir constantly, adding more cream if the dough doesn’t seem like it’s holding together. Once it’s formed a dough, turn it out onto a floured surface, and knead for about a minute. Divide the dough into four to six pieces, and pat down until each is about half an inch thick.

Paint with melted butter, all sides. Place on an ungreased baking sheat, and sprinkle the tops with sugar. The coarser the sugar, the better – I like a nice crunch.

Bake these for about fifteen minutes, or until golden brown.

I have to half recipes around here - they're always too much for two people. — I have to halve recipes around here - they're always too much for two people.

Serve warm, with fresh berries and a generous dollop of whipped cream.

And now, it’s time for another handful of berries, a glass of wine, and a nap, because agriculture is hard work and squatting makes you tired.

Chana masala, eight years ago, and the only thing I miss about Surrey.

June 17, 2009April 2, 2015 ~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

A quasi-Indian feast.

My first encounters with chana masala were from a place off the highway in Surrey called Kwality Sweets, a tiny little shop that sold samosas by the paper bag, three for a dollar, and you could pay any way you liked unless Mrs. Sekhon was working, and then you could only pay cash. I think Kwality Sweets provided me my first taste of chick peas.

Later, when I began spending weekly evenings in Burnaby with my grandmother, we’d go to the Himalaya in Vancouver at Main & 49th with my aunt and uncle, and the chana masala was heaped onto a plate with the samosas, which I think you got two of. My grandmother liked that place, and the waiter, George, who had been raised in India.

Ever since George, I cannot think of men like Rudyard Kipling without imagining anyone’s old dad or grandfather, grey slacks belted high on the waist, and the accent. If you closed your eyes when George spoke, you’d have thought he was turbaned and bearded, not blue-eyed and balding. His syllables, mottled and pleasant, undulating like a car rolling downhill on octagon tires, reminded me of the way that the chatty men spoke, those men always dressed in colourful turbans and white dhotis or Umbro tracksuits and dress shoes, seated on Kwality Sweets’ plastic deck chairs, nice men who would always ask if this was my first samosa, and had I had the jalebis? Yes, of course, I’d answer – they’re my favourite. George never asked me what I liked. It didn’t matter, and I was okay with that – I was a teenage girl, and he was more interesting than me.

George did not seem to be a fan of most of his customers, but Cuddles found him curious, and soon, like John and Chris of the Penny Farthing, he knew her order and they would chat. He would bring her the fiery pickled carrots and the minty green chutney, and he would almost, almost smile. Indian food was a kind rebellion, she told me once, a thing my grandfather would never have eaten. He liked curry, she said – he just didn’t know it. She would sneak hints of the yellow powder into his food. A trace of it in regular old potato salad makes all the difference in the world.

After my grandmother, my aunt and uncle remained familiar to George. I did not, though we would still stop in for a samosa, a plate of chicken tikka, and a little square box of jalebis and gulab jamun, and maybe a slice or two of barfi, which I think must be Indian shortbread. The last time I was there, George was too, although there was no small talk. He served Nick and I quickly, if disinterestedly, and I left a very large tip.

Indian food in the city is not like it was in the suburbs, where little sweet shops with the same blue and white and red signs that were all or almost all in Punjabi are pretty much everywhere now. The Himalaya is a rarity out here, where places like Vij’s, Maurya, and Chutney Villa turn out delightful delicacies that, while fantastic, are not what you’d qualify as comfort food. And they cost too much. Mrs. Sekhon would not charge you eight dollars for a small plate of chana masala. George would give it to you for free.

And so, periodically, when it seems like time again for a chick pea, I like to whip up an easy batch of spicy goodness, served with rice, and sweet potatoes and spinach simmered in coconut milk and nutmeg and lime, and a lazy sort of raita. It’s as satisfying a feast as I remember, even if it is my own spin on things, because it would feel like infidelity to produce the same meal exactly. Like ratting out your mother’s rumball recipe, it’s a thing you don’t do without at least a dozen years’ distance. So, stay tuned. As my moral fibre unravels, you can expect a perfect reproduction and detailed instruction in about a decade. (Not quite as soon for the rumballs. My mom insists that she will endure.)

Chana masala is a very easy thing to make. My version is utterly inauthentic, but it’s soothing and wonderful, and tastes enough like the stuff to pass, even if you cannot find your garam masala, which I couldn’t. So this recipe doesn’t call for it. Which makes it all the easier to make at home. I wonder if that means it isn’t chana masala? Maybe not. But I wouldn’t bother trying to come up with a new name.

Weeknight Chana Masala

1 tbsp. butter
1 tsp. coriander seeds (if you don’t have coriander seeds, ground coriander is fine, although if you’re using ground, then add it later, with the other dry spices)
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves minced garlic
2 tsp. finely minced fresh ginger
1 14 oz. can (about 1 1/2 cups fresh) diced tomatoes
1 tbsp. chili powder
2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper (I use a full teaspoon, but Nick told me that I should tell you to use less, because you might not expect it to be as hot as it is, which is how we/I like it … I think he thinks you’re a wimp)
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ground black pepper
1 19 oz. can (2 cups) chick peas
1 lime, just the juice
Salt, to taste
About 1/4 cup of cilantro, a third of which is reserved for sprinkling on top

In a pan on the stove, melt the butter. Add the coriander seeds. Give them about a minute, and then add your onions, garlic, and ginger. The smell will be pungent and fantastic. Once the onions have cooked until translucent, add in your tomatoes, juice and all. At this point, you’ll want to add in your dry spices, all of them. And the smell gets a bit stronger, and you’ll feel slightly more alive.

Add in your chick peas, and squish the lime juice over top. Reduce the whole thing until the juices all but disappear. You want it to be thick and rich, not runny. I didn’t add any salt, but here’s the point where you want to taste and adjust your seasonings.

Chick peas getting awesome. Just before you serve this, toss in most of the cilantro. Reserve the rest for topping. Eat with naan bread, and something to sop up the spice (if you used a full teaspoon of cayenne pepper). I also served it with rice, and mashed sweet potatoes and spinach (simmer two medium sweet potatoes in a can of coconut milk, the zest of one lime, a bit of garlic and ginger, and a half teaspoon of nutmeg until the liquid has pretty much disappeared and the potatoes are tender, add a handful of spinach, and then mash).

Chana masala and side dishes. With a crisp sauvignon blanc or dry rosé, this is excellent. Nick forgot what I asked him to grab on the way home, so we had a fresh little pinot gris, and it was also tasty. For dessert, I’ll cut into a fresh, perfect yellow melon I found at the store on the way home, because I do not have jalebi, or gulab jamun, or even barfi, and I don’t know how to make them. I imagine in India, and even in Surrey, that melon is perfectly acceptable when jalebis are unavailable. I may drive out there this weekend, just for a small square box, all my own.

Feasty.

Fish wrapped in grape leaves: Better than fish not wrapped in grape leaves. (Fact.)

June 9, 2009April 2, 2015 ~ wellfedemily ~ 5 Comments

Fish and veggies.

Today we were supposed to have pork tenderloin again, something we eat a lot of during the week because it’s so quick and easy. But then yesterday we were at Nick’s sister Sharon’s place, and she handed me a bag of blue cod, because apparently she was the only one at her house who would eat fish tacos so she ended up stuck with a bunch of fish she had no use for. Cue the thirty-year-old man-child giggles over fish tacos, and I end up with a few free fishies and an awesome plan.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a jar of grape leaves at the market and got all excited – I was going to make dolmades, which are pretty much just Greek meatballs wrapped in briny leaves. And then I forgot. And then I got fish. So I decided that today was a day for white fish and lemon zest and garlic and basil and just a dribble of olive oil, and pretending that we’re anywhere but here. Odd how the heat here is unbearable, but if I were mostly naked and being slathered in oil on some Mediterrannean shore by someone named Nikolas or whatever Greek men are called, it would be infinitely easier to endure. Here, I suffer the heat and Canadian Nicholas and his ongoing love affair with Game Cube Zelda, which he has played for hours and hours, for days on end. He is less Greek than anyone else alive.

“You’ve never seen a real game binge yet,” he says. He is going to wake up to find that a terrible fate has befallen his thumbs. And I will be all kinds of surprised.

But anyway.

I had grape leaves.

Fish on leaves. I can’t tell you how many leaves you will need, because it depends entirely on the shape and size of your fillet. I needed five, because the grape leaves varied in size. You may need more, or less, but fortunately you get quite a lot in a jar.

I topped the fish, which was not frozen, with a little bit of lemon zest, some chopped garlic (perhaps too much), some fresh chopped basil, and just a taste of olive oil. A little black pepper, but no salt. The grape leaves are salty enough, so salt once you’ve tasted the finished product. You can’t unsalt a thing.

Wrap the fish in the leaves, covering it completely.

Wrapped fishy. Drizzle the packet in oil, both sides. Then place it on the barbecue or in a pan on the stove. Three minutes per side over medium heat should be more than enough – less if you have a very thin piece, more if you are working with a big thick chunk.

Fishies on grill. Serve with a drizzle of lemon, with fresh vegetables on the side. I chose asparagus, because I always forget that I’ve bought asparagus and wind up with way too much at any given time. I also made a stuffed tomato salad out of a little chopped tomato innards, some grated cucumber, yogurt, a handful of cooked bulgur (which I have on hand because it makes excellent, filling salads for work lunches), a pinch of fresh garlic, and some mint. Very refreshing, and just enough for a day where the air is still heavy with heat and the clouds have started to roll in and make things muggy.

Dinner It’s started to cool off though, so tonight I will make muffins. If they go as well as I think they will, I will report back tomorrow. In the meantime, I have to go make fun of a 27-year-old boy who’s imagining himself a trotting, dragon-slaying dork elf. This could happen to you:

If I don't mock it in its tracks, who will?

LAMBURGER!

June 3, 2009April 2, 2015 ~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

Oh. Um. YES. Work has kind of sucked lately, and it’s partly my own doing, but it’s made me really tired. When I left the office on Friday, the digital thermostat showed 31°C (88°F, I shit you not). And I get really cranky in the heat, and my thighs rub together so they get all sweaty and I feel slick all up in places you don’t ordinarily want to feel slick in at work, which is super gross, and I’m only telling you this because I want your pity. There is no air conditioning.

So, in a genius attempt to beat the heat, I’ve been showing up at 6:45 am, so that I can blow that melted popsicle stand by 3:30. Except that I’ve been riding my bike, so I have to leave at 6:00 am, which, I don’t know if you know this, is REALLY GODDAMN EARLY. I’ve been coming home, shotgunning an ice-cold beer, and throwing myself naked into bed for a hearty nap. It’s all that’s kept me going these days. That, and the lamb. I acquired some ground lamb this weekend.

And yesterday we did the izakaya-thing (ten dollar pitchers on Monday!), so today was a day for an easy home-cooked meal. Something on the barbecue, because it’s freaking hot all of a sudden, and my blood is still thick from winter and I cannot bear the idea of the stove right now. And so, LAMBURGERS!

Lamb burgers with feta and spinach

(Serves four.)

1 lb. lean ground lamb (approximately – it may have been more like a pound and a half)
1/4 cup dry bread crumbs
1 egg
Zest of most of a lemon
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp. dried rosemary
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
1 cup chopped fresh spinach
Salt and pepper, to taste

Mix everything together in a bowl. Use your hands. Form into patties – this should make about four patties. I made two patties and then rolled the rest into ten meatballs, which I will freeze and then throw into pasta on a night when I’m feeling meatballish and lazy.

Meat on grill. Grill burgers about ten minutes, or four to five minutes per side. Serve on grilled buns topped with sliced tomato, red onion, and tzatziki. I would have added pine nuts and olives, but Nick doesn’t like those, and my blood is too thick for tiffs. I’ve never cared much for sweating.

Lamb burger with grilled zucchini. These are amazing. I couldn’t finish mine, because seriously – that’s a huge burger. But Nick packed in a burger and a half, and then asked for the meatballs.

Meatballs. And now, fed and still very warm, I think it’s naked couch time. And Rumble in the Bronx time. (It’s always naked/Rumble time.) “You got the guts? Drop the gun!” And, “I hope next time we meet, we are not fighting together. I hope we are drinking tea together.” And … good night.

The fish is just a vehicle for the tartar sauce. Obviously.

May 30, 2009April 2, 2015 ~ wellfedemily ~ 6 Comments

Every so often, I think of fish and chips, and of my grandmother, and of the Penny Farthing, the place we used to go. The Penny Farthing was a tattered old restaurant on Kingsway across from the Safeway, and it was my first taste of England. We would go there and order cod, and I would get extra tartar sauce, and I would dump malt vinegar and big chunky salt flakes all over my chips until they were soggy, and then they were perfect. Cuddles (my grandmother was Cuddles – other people call their grandmothers “Grandma,” which is a name for old ladies, or “Nana,” which is the name of the dog in Peter Pan) would order onion rings for us to share. She would pour the salt out onto a plate and dip the rings, because the salt stuck better that way. When there were no more onion rings, she would lick her pointer finger and push it onto the plate to catch the last of the flakes, and then would pop the finger into her mouth, and then the fish would come.

The cook there was named John, and as I understand it, in a previous life he had been a cook for the Merchant Marine. I don’t quite know what that means – I never thought to ask. But he was a large, crabby man with sailor tattoos, and he would smile for Cuddles and grunt a pleasant greeting. His wife, Chris, would come to our table on ceremony, not to take our order (she knew what it was), but to say hello, and to talk about her son or her trips back home. Cuddles understood her through the accent, though it was harder for me, and I only ever collected snippets to refer back to. Later, John would run off to Thailand in scandal, and Chris would return to England, and the shop would be taken over by younger people who never cooked the fish right because the oil was dirty and never quite hot enough. Young people. What do they know? Not a thing about frying fish.

And I don’t know a thing about it either. But sometimes, when the weather is hot and I’m in the mood for beer and nostalgia and the best parts of Britain, I like to fry up a piece of fish in my humble little pan, mushy up some peas, and dream of fries soaked long in malt vinegar, studded with large flecks of salt. I rarely make fries at home: Some things are best left to the experts, and it’s always good to have a reason to go out.

And because it has been hot all of a sudden and beer has been on my mind, and because of late I have found myself writing about Cuddles, today was a day for fish and cold coleslaw and minty mushy peas. And extra tartar sauce.

My recipe does not purport to result in anything like the fish part of fish and chips, because I don’t own a deep-fryer. Even if I did, today would not be the day for it, because my apartment is already too hot, even with all of the windows open. If I were at Cuddles’ house on a day like today, she wouldn’t deep-fry either – she would arrange two Highliner tempura fish sticks and a piece of cheddar cheese on a bun smeared with homemade tartar sauce (using homemade pickles) and piled with shredded iceberg lettuce. And we would eat this and then watch Keeping up Appearances on PBS and the evening would proceed as usual.

I seem to be wandering off topic. I wanted the fish, and the tartar sauce, and the Englishy bits like the peas and the coleslaw that I remember, and I thought about picking up a bag of Miss Vickie’s Sea Salt & Malt Vinegar chips to mimic the flavour I missed, but I didn’t: I resolved instead to visit somewhere real and English that will do it for me right, even if that is days or weeks away. So I wandered down to the market and bought a me-sized fillet of halibut, some pickles, an onion, a bunch of fresh dill, a bottle of English salad cream, and a bag of shredded cabbage and carrots. I bought some beer, because that’s just what you do, and Nick is out of town so it won’t be a race to drink my share – I can enjoy them.

The tartar sauce is the important part, and I underestimated the importance of texture.

Tartar Sauce

1 egg (at room temperature)
1 tsp. dijon mustard
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 cup oil (whatever kind you like: I wanted a neutral taste from the oil, so I went with canola)
1/2 cup of roughly chopped dill pickles
1/2 cup roughly chopped onion
As much dill as you like, also roughly chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste

Crack the egg into a food processor and add the mustard and the lemon juice. If you don’t have a food processor, you could use an electric mixer, or, if you have strong, non-lazy arms, you could whisk this in a large bowl. I recommend the food processor. Because it’s way more fun. Press down the button that makes the blade go all whizzy – you don’t want to pulse. Constant motion is the thing.

While the egg is in blending motion, slowly dribble in the oil. SLOWLY. I don’t know why – science is why, but that’s all I’ve really got and I can’t expand on it. You’re making mayonnaise at this point. Isn’t it marvellous? It is.

When the mixture has thickened and looks like mayonnaise, season with your salt and pepper. At this point, you have a judgment call to make. I was just super excited about everything, so I added my onion and pickles and dill and puréed the shit out of all of it, and it was delicious, and since I now have two whole cups of it, it’s going to make potato salad and a lovely marinade for grilled vegetables, but it wasn’t chunky, like tartar sauce is. I added capers to mine because I thought it needed texture – if you like a smooth tartar sauce, throw your onion, pickles, and dill into the food processor and whiz away. If not, then mince the pickles and the onion and stir them into the mayonnaise separately. Both ways would be good.

Whiz/blend/sauce! When it’s done and you’re happy, pour it into a bowl, cover with plastic, and refrigerate until you’re ready to use it. At this point I made some coleslaw (which wasn’t a challenge: I toasted some sunflower seeds, spilled them all over my stove, floor, and into the heating element, and poured them and some jar sauce over some bagged salad mix).

Coleslaw: Convenience food. I also made some peas. I meant for them to be mushy, but forgot I had baby peas, not the big, hearty peas I had planned on using. The result was that my peas wouldn’t mush – you need to be able to mash them with a potato masher. No matter – they were still tasty. I threw a couple of teaspoons of butter into a pan, melted it, added a cup or so of peas from the freezer, and sauteed for five minutes with a small handful of fresh spearmint. You could use regular mint if you like. But you should always use mint with peas.

Minty peas. No mush. And then I pan-fried a little panko-and-lemon-zest-crusted-halibut in some butter for about seven minutes (it wasn’t a very big piece) and topped with the tartar sauce and a smattering of capers. Served with ice-cold beer, this was very much the combination of tastes that I love and remember. A satisfying evening, all the way around, and the perfect way to end a busy, sweltering week, even if it wasn’t how Cuddles would have done it. But more on that another time.

A me-sized feast.

Bitochki stroganoff. Or, fresh herbs really shine through in a meatball.

May 28, 2009April 2, 2015 ~ wellfedemily ~ 2 Comments

Grace once said that fresh herbs really shine through in a meatloaf. It was right before the karaoke portion of the evening, so she was a little drunk, and the expression on her face, and the seven whiskey sours I’d had (Grace makes excellent whiskey sours), was enough to convince me that she was right, even if that same expression caused Nick to explode whiskey sour out of his mouth. On another evening, she made the fresh herb meatloaf, and it was true: Fresh herbs really do shine through in a meatloaf. Also, Grace makes fantastic meatloaf.

Fresh herbs from deck. And it’s just a few days before payday now, and my arthritis has been a bitch lately, and while it’s tempting just to eat off the McDonald’s extra-value menu for the next couple of days out of laziness and joint fatigue, I think it’s probably better (for our financial state and my general health) to eat food at home. And I have felt like pasta and mushrooms and meatballs, of late, and because we’re down to very few ingredients (but just the right ingredients to have a meal of pasta, mushrooms, and meatballs), it seems like time to use up what we have, and to make the most of it.

Bitochki, which sounds like a crunchy Russian swear, are actually Russian meatballs, and they are excellent in a creamy stroganoff sauce. Add some fresh herbs? Восхитительный!

The great thing about meatballs is that they’re easy to make when your hands barely work and you’re high on painkillers.

Bitochki: Russian Meatballs

1 lb. ground beef
1 lb. ground pork
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp. butter
2 slices bread soaked in milk, squeezed dry and broken into hunks
1 tsp. chopped fresh tarragon (or thyme – thyme would be good too)
1 tsp. chopped fresh parsley
1/2 tsp. lemon zest
2 cloves finely minced garlic
1 egg
salt and pepper, to taste
1 cup of bread crumbs

Stroganoff sauce

1 tbsp. butter
1 cup onions
1 onion, finely chopped
1/2 lb. sliced mushrooms
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 cups sour cream
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. black pepper
Salt, to taste
Chopped chives and parsley, as much as you like

In a pan on the stove, caramelize the onion in the butter for the meatballs. This is important, and also delicious. If these were authentic, you’d use rendered fat from around a cow’s kidneys. But I don’t have any rendered beef kidney fat at the moment. Actually, you wouldn’t use the lemon zest or the tarragon either. Do it my way anyway. Fifteen minutes, minimum. When that’s done, take them off the stove.

Mix together the meatball ingredients, and once cool enough to handle, add your onions. Once again, it’s important to use your hands for meatballs. And if your hands are crippled and sore, the cold meat actually feels kind of nice. When your meatball mixture is, well, mixed, roll your meatballs – an inch in diameter is ideal, or close to the size of golf balls. Before throwing them into the pan, roll each ball in bread crumbs. A little paprika in your bread crumbs would probably be lovely.

Oil the onion pan, and fry the meatballs until browned on all sides. This takes longer for me than most people because I second-guess my playlist and have to keep running back and forth from the kitchen to skip the songs.

Meatballs! When the meatballs are done, put them on a pan and throw it into a warm oven. The idea here isn’t to cook them further, just to keep them warm while you make your sauce. Since I recommend serving this dish with noodles, you could probably put on a pot of pasta right about now as well. I like spaghetti. But you already knew that.

Pour the grease out of the onion/meatball pan, but don’t scrape the solids out. If the pan is quite dry, add butter, and throw in your other chopped onion. Soften, and add your mushrooms, adding water to caramelize the onions and soften the mushrooms. Once the mushrooms have soaked up all those delicious pan flavours (you may want to add a splash of water, just to help things along), add in your wine, milk, and your sour cream, as well as your pepper, nutmeg, and any salt. Stir together, and allow to simmer over medium-low heat until thick, and until your pasta is done.

Meatballs in sauce! Just before you drain your pasta, add the meatballs back to the sauce. Drain your pasta and dump the noodles into the pan as well, and toss to coat. You may want to throw in some chopped spinach, if you feel like your vegetable requirements aren’t being met here. Serve topped with chopped chives and parsley. Accompany with the remainder of the wine. Or vodka. Unless you’re perpetually out of vodka, like me.

Bitochki in stroganoff on pasta. This is good the first day, and remarkable the second day (fresh herbs, you know). And it’s so easy, if you’re really really not feeling well, it’s a breeze to delegate, which I think is the ultimate test of a recipe. Can monkeys do it? Perfect. So can Nick (or whoever you prefer to boss around). And even though it sounds like it would be impossibly rich, it’s really not – you won’t feel disgusting after eating it. I am very much looking forward to this for lunch tomorrow. And now I am going to eat some more painkillers and start in on that wine….

Bacon fat cookiestravaganza. Or, how to make you fall in love with me. Except that I probably wouldn’t tell you what was in these if I was trying to woo you.

May 27, 2009April 2, 2015 ~ wellfedemily ~ 9 Comments

I hadn’t had a peanut butter cookie in a really long time.

And when Nick went out to get dinner stuff, he mentioned that maybe I should do the dishes, and I was like, “If I’m helpful, maybe he’ll come home with a present!” So I did the dishes, and Nick came home, and I pointed out the four dishes I washed, and he wasn’t as impressed as I’d hoped, and then he asked if I bothered to clean out the fridge yet. Of course I didn’t. But I thought, I could at least open it and see what happens. And then it happened. The bacon fat resurfaced!

Mmmm! Please don’t quit on me yet. I promise you, this is worth your while.

Bacon fat is better for you than margarine, if you haven’t heard, and while I can’t actually back that up, it’s a fact, and if you want proof then I would be happy to recommend some literature that will help you along. And we’re in a recession. And I’m saving the butter for mashed potatoes. My grandmother used to make the best peanut butter cookies in the world using schmaltz (rendered chicken or goose fat), which would have been left over anyway, which she kept in the freezer just for baking. And being (constantly) broke, my cold little heart breaks when I have to throw stuff out. I always save my bacon fat.

The peanut butter cookie recipe I like the best comes from Fannie Farmer. I have long been a fan of Marion Cunningham, who is like everybody in the world’s grandmother’s cookbook (but not my grandmother, the story of who’s cookbook is a novel for another time) mashed into one divine being who makes everything you want to eat and is tall (I imagine) and regal and is friends with Jeffrey Steingarten, who is another kind of hero. I make half-batches of this recipe, because two dozen cookies is quite enough for me. The recipe in its full measure claims that it will produce 120 cookies, which I have never found to be true. This is either a gross miscalculation or they’re supposed to be tiny little cookies, and I hate little cookies because they’re a tease and before you know it you’ve eaten two bags of mini rainbow Chips Ahoy and you’re drunk and it’s 3:42 am and you’re crying on the kitchen floor (again) and the reason is embarrassing but also you wish you could carry on a conversation with normal people without saying something wildly inappropriate or them thinking you had tourette’s syndrome, for once, and who the hell let you have the phone in the first place?

Peanut-Butter Bacon Fat Cookies

(Adapted from the recipe for Peanut-Butter Butter Cookies from the Fannie Farmer Baking Book, circa 1984. Makes about two-dozen cookies.)

1/2 cup bacon fat
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
Pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Beat your bacon fat, peanut butter, and sugar together in a large bowl. You want the colour of the goop in the bowl to lighten and get creamy. Once it’s there, crack open your egg and drop the contents in, and keep beating the mixture.

Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt, mix well, and then slowly add it to the mixture in the bowl, beating until all your ingredients are combined.

If you’re like me and you’ve never been disappointed by a hunk of cookie dough in your mouth, then sample away. At first you may think it’s a little weird – and it is. But in a good way. The bacon fat makes the peanut butter seem peanut-butterier.

Roll the dough out into balls about an inch or so in diameter. Place about an inch apart on a cookie sheet, and press the tops down with a fork dipped in granulated sugar.

Raw cookie deliciousness Bake the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes, and cool for a bit on a wire rack before eating.

I have to say I was pretty pleased with myself/these cookies, and not just because I used something in the fridge and therefore made progress toward a cleaner tomorrow. They are TASTY. You really ought to try this. I’m pretty sure a pound or so of bacon will produce enough fat for these, and then some, if you don’t already save your fat. Don’t waste fat. Baby Jesus cries when you wash the fat of the pig down the drain.

COOKIES! Seriously. You need to try these. Go render some pork fat, and then let me know how it all works out. Or, just come over for cookies and milk, and inhale my good baking stink.

An Unbalanced Breakfast.

May 23, 2009April 2, 2015 ~ wellfedemily ~ 8 Comments

Meat pancake? Only justifiable in the dead of winter when there is no fruit and everything is grey and dark and you just want to eat a hug. Or when you’re going to be doing a lot of exercise anyway and you can pass this off as an acceptable morning repast. Actually, I can justify anything, so maybe you can just have this whenever.

This is actually Toad in the Hole, which is something I would look forward to as a child, and which we would have often, mostly when Dad would cook. I used to cry when he’d add onions. Meat pancake. It sounds like a thing a dad would make.

And to be fair, it’s not all THAT bad. I mean, it’s essentially a pancake with the sausage baked into it instead of served on the side. And onions and bacon, and served with sour cream. So, it could be worse. It could be deep fried.

Toad in the Hole

2 bangers (or large sausages … if you’re going to use the little breakfast sausages, use more)
4 strips of bacon
1 small onion, cut in half and then sliced long-wise, into strips
1 cup milk
1 cup flour
2 eggs
salt and pepper, to taste (but because of the sausage and bacon, I don’t add salt. You can. No judgment)

Preheat oven to 400°F. Toss a greased pan into the oven as the oven heats.

Fry sausage, bacon, and onion (I like onion now – no tears!) in a pan on the stove until browned. You don’t need to add any oil. In fact, don’t, because you’re going to pour the entire contents of the pan into your batter (later), so don’t add more grease. Unless you’re into that. I’m not. Surprisingly.

Meat and onions in pan It doesn’t matter too much if your sausage isn’t fully cooked through at this point – it’s going to bake for a bit.

Mix together your milk, flour, and butter in a separate bowl. When the meat is done, empty the whole pan into the bowl, toss lightly to coat in batter. Pull the heated pan out of the oven and pour the contents of the bowl into the pan, making sure that the batter is evenly spread out. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until edges have pulled away from the sides and the top is golden.

Toad! Slice and serve. I like it with a dollop of sour cream and a breakfast cocktail.

Tasty! Eat. Resist the urge to nap. Maybe go for a bike ride, or to play frisbee golf. Meat pancake!

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