tasty

Feasting on fudge: I don’t know why my party dresses don’t fit anymore either.

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

I’ve never actually written about chocolate. I like chocolate. Love it, actually. But it’s one of those things that I seek out pre-prepared, in bars or handfuls of chips or by the individual truffle every so often. I don’t cook very much with it, because there are so many other things I like to play with, and buying chocolate is mostly a reliable way to go about getting one’s fix. Here in Vancouver, there are several very good chocolatiers. Although, I won’t lie to you. A Caramilk bar goes a long way with some of us.

But it’s December, and my mom has noted repeatedly that I don’t come over enough, and that she probably won’t make as many treats as she usually does, if at all. My mom makes very good treats – another reason I don’t bother all that much with chocolate, or much in the way of desserts, for that matter. She has me beat. Her fudge is very good, but she won’t give me the recipe. I think she thinks I’d betray those fudgy family secrets. She’s probably right – I have no character.

Fortunately, one of the things about being a grown-up and having your own candy thermometer (that your mother may or may not have given you) is that you can find your own fudge recipe and it can also be good. And you can bring it to your mother and ask her if it’s as good as hers, and then she’ll have to make a batch of hers to compare with yours, and then you win because she wasn’t going to make the fudge but then you duped her and now you have extra fudge and she never saw THAT coming. HaHA! It’s kind of fun to toy with the elderly (I think I’m funny now, but I’ll pay). She’ll read this and then take back all my Christmas presents, but the point is that you are an adult now, and you must have a candy recipe or two in your arsenal, for reasons that are varied and complex, not the least of which is showing off. Also? If you’re poor it makes a better DIY gift than, say, noodle jewelry, which I may have considered at one point.

I adapted this recipe from an old Gourmet I found in one of the last boxes still left unpacked. It’s really very good. My version, I mean. It’s a soft, sticky, caramelly chocolate thing that feels dry on the outside but that’s soft inside and sticks to your teeth and reminds you that you need to floss and also maybe go for a run. I call it toffee chocolate fudge because the brown sugar makes it taste like toffee, but you can call it something else if you prefer. Use salted butter, but don’t add any salt. Use the best cocoa you have. And make it on a clear, cool day. Something about humidity causing unfortunate sugar crystals is why you don’t want to make fudge when there are low-hanging clouds. Science. Fudge.

Chocolate Toffee Fudge

  • 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp. heavy cream
  • 2 cups packed dark brown sugar (14 ounces)
  • 3/4 cup cold butter, cut into tablespoons
  • 4 tablespoons (heaping, if you must) cocoa
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar

Combine milk, brown sugar, butter, and salt in a heavy-bottomed pot and bring just to a boil over moderate heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring almost constantly, until your candy thermometer reads 240°F. If you don’t have a candy thermometer, test after 30 minutes by dropping a teaspoon of mixture into a bit of cold water. If the mixture forms a soft ball when pressed between your fingers, you’re done. Don’t rush these things though.

Remove from heat, and remove candy thermometer. Beat in vanilla and confectioners’ sugar, a little at a time, until fudge is thick and smooth, about five minutes.

Spread evenly in a parchment-lined 9×13 baking pan. If you want thicker pieces, use an 8-inch square pan. Refrigerate, uncovered, until firm enough to cut, about 30 minutes.

Cut fudge into squares. Eat, or pack into cute little cellophane bags, tied with ribbons, and gift it to your friends. I’m going to make a second batch for that – it’s December, and you can eat a pan of fudge if you want to.

Another thing? If you made too much fudge and it dried out because you can’t eat as much fudge as you thought you could and it’s not fit for gifting, chop it up and put it into cookies. Same thing if you made it and the sugar went weird because of all the moisture in the air. Fudge chunk cookies? A very good thing.

Still not having much luck with pictures. A virus ate my computer this week, and so we’re experiencing some technical difficulties. Maybe my resident non-saint Nicholas will gift me with a little laptop this season, and maybe a camera that doesn’t suck? Maybe if I stopped mocking my relatives I’d have better luck?

Buttermilk apple fritters: Breakfast of big-boned champions.

~ wellfedemily ~ 6 Comments

I kind of felt bad, a little, because it seems as though I am mainlining fat these days, which is not usually a big deal to me because on the one hand, obesity is a serious illness and bad things happen to you and you can’t buy clothes at regular stores and diabetes and blah blah blah.  But on the other hand, if I get super fat, maybe I’ll qualify for disability benefits and then I won’t have to go to work or worry about clothes – I’ll get to sit around eating deep-fried stuff all day while wearing a muu muu and completing that novel I keep pretending I’ll ever finish, and maybe the government will even pay for cable. If I get Nick super fat too then I won’t even have to worry about him leaving me for someone with a neck.

These were my thoughts this morning as I pondered the last of the buttermilk that I inherited from my neighbour and Grace’s friend, Ayesha, who is heading to Kenya suddenly and needed help emptying her fridge.

I started a little batch of crème fraîche on my kitchen counter (one cup heavy cream to two tablespoons of buttermilk, left to sit in a jar at room temperature for 18 to 36 hours until thickened), and then there were leftovers. And I have two apples, which I was going to eat the way one normally eats apples, but then I realized, I’m on vacation and we’re moving in two weeks so any time I am not spending feeding us or checking the mail or procrastinating should be spent packing and that’s when I got out the grater and started heating the oil.

I can justify pretty much anything, by the way, in case you hadn’t noticed. Anything.

Buttermilk Apple Fritters

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
  • 2 tbsp. maple syrup
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1/3 cup buttermilk
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup grated Granny Smith apple

Topping:

  • 2 tbsp. confectioner’s sugar
  • 1 tbsp. cinnamon

Mix together all ingredients except for the apple until well combined. Fold in the apple, and let rest for ten minutes.

In the meantime, in a heavy-bottomed pot, heat about two quarts of oil to 350°F, or until a little splotch of batter dropped into the oil fizzles immediately and rises to the top.

Now you get to decide how big you want these things to be. I used a spatula to awkwardly ladle these out, but you can make them as big or as little as you want. My way made eight. Keep in mind that the cook time will vary, but I fried my fritters for about two minutes per side, until they were deeply golden and crunchy-looking.

Once the fritters are fried, cool on a few sheets of paper towel. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar mixture over top of hot fritters, and serve immediately. If you are also on holidays, feel free to crack open a chilled bottle of Gewurztraminer as well. Maybe don’t eat them all in one sitting. This kind of thing is good for sharing, which is great, because it’s the kind of thing that people will love you for sharing with them. They’re crispy, spicy, appley, and wonderful – better than store-bought, and they’ll be gone almost as soon as you put out the plate.

When I was a kid, waffles meant it was a very good day.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

Making breakfast.And KFC meant we were on vacation, and my mom’s jelly roll with the meringue mushrooms meant it was January 1. Now that I’m a grown-up I can have waffles whenever I want, which means I really should have more very good days, but for whatever reason, same way that I don’t own a pie plate, I don’t have a waffle iron.

Today we babysat my nephew at my parents’ house, and waffles are one of his favourite things too, more so than ice cream, which I told him he could have for breakfast if he wanted and he thought about it. He showed remarkable maturity in declining the offer.

We only ever had one recipe for waffles when I was a kid, and the recipe came from The New Purity Cook Book, which purports to be “the complete guide to Canadian cooking,” though I’m not sure what that actually means.

Cover shot.Apparently Purity was (is?) a company that made flour and assorted other baking products, and they put out a cookbook, though I’ve never seen any of their products for sale anywhere. And for some reason, my parents had the cookbook. I happened upon the same cookbook (in hardcover) a couple of months ago in a thrift store, so I picked it up and now I have the waffle recipe as well.

Flour ad.These are best made on a waffle iron with little squares. Not those big, hulking Belgian waffle squares, which are not sufficient if you want ample maple syrup distribution. I wish I could show you but I guess those must be hard to come by now because even Mom and Dad have the big-squared kind of waffle maker. The little squares sopped up the syrup far more efficiently, like a sponge, which is how you want to eat waffles. They’re plain because they’re vehicles for maple syrup, which I guess is why they are included in the complete guide to Canadian cooking. You can fancify these any way you want – add bananas, berries, pumpkin, spices, adapt however you like – I never do, because some things just don’t need gussying up. So here. Make these waffles, and have yourself a very good day too.

Waffles (adapted from The New Purity Cook Book)

  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tbsp. granulated sugar
  • 3 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 1 1/2 cups whole milk
  • 1/4 cup butter, melted

Sift together the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the liquids.

Heat the waffle iron according to your waffle iron’s instructions. You may need to lightly grease the iron before heating, depending on what kind you have or how old it is. I greased lightly, using a little bit of butter. My parents have that spray grease stuff, but ew.

Pour batter into waffle iron, drop the lid, and cook until waffles have stopped steaming, and are golden and fluffy. Don’t lift the lid during cooking, or else they flatten out and don’t work as well for syrup-sopping.

Waffling.Serve hot and steaming from the iron, doused in real maple syrup. Maple syrup is to real waffles as Mrs. Butterworth is to Eggos. It is glorious and perfect and should be used in abundance whenever possible, and waffles make it possible.

I challenge you to have anything less than a wonderful day if you start your morning with waffles. You won’t be able to do it – you’ll be all smiles until bedtime, I promise.

Mmmmmmm.

Dip the fish in batter made with beer and then deep fry it. You know you want to.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

Fish chunks!I’ve probably mentioned a number of times now my powerful love for fish and chips, that perfect pairing of foods that allow me to practically mainline tartar sauce and malt vinegar – 80% of the time, fish and chips with tartar sauce is my meal of choice, though I hardly ever get it because there are only a handful of places that do it right and I have to go a long way out of my way to get it. I’ll attempt to sate my craving periodically with a Filet-o-Fish, but that is never enough, and so I get a little sad sometimes.

And then Paul calls offering to pick up fish for dinner, and I misunderstand and think he means salmon so I start thinking of rice, and he corrects me to say that he is considering codfish and will we need potatoes with that? And yes, yes we will, and I don’t have quite enough oil to fry all the pieces in a way that will keep some of them from kind of sticking to the bottom of the pot, but most of the pieces will come out okay, and also seriously? Is anyone looking for a single, well traveled, virile young man with fixing-stuff skills and excellent taste in food and wine? Because I am very close to injecting Paul with heroin and pimping him out for real (I think he reads this, but I refuse to self-edit). He shoots ducks and hooks trout and catches crabs, kids. I’m going to see if Nick will let us have a third.

Mad digression aside, last night we had homemade beer-battered fish and chips with hand-cut fries (baked to save space on the stove top), tartar sauce from scratch, and salad. It. Was. Awesome. The fish was fresh and perfect, the kind you can tell was just caught that day. If you’ve ever had bad fish and chips (I’m looking at you, Guildford Red Robin – your fish tasted like low tide and your patio has a view of the Walmart and your waitresses will only address Nick and pretty much ignore me so you suck), you will appreciate the difference quality and freshness make. And I am still kind of full, almost twelve hours later.

Here’s what you should do. Be sure you have at least three quarts of oil, and use a thermometer to make sure the oil hovers around 350°F. You may need to top it up – you want the fish to fry at the top, where it can’t possibly use its batter to adhere to the bottom of your pot.

Beer-battered fried fish

  • 2.5 lbs. fresh cod or halibut fillets, about an inch thick, cut into pieces that will fit comfortably into your pot (I started with three large fillets cut into six)
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/2 cup cornstarch
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • Zest of 1/2 lemon
  • 1 regular-size (355mL or 12 oz.) can beer, such as India Pale Ale

Bring about three quarts of oil to 350°F in a large, heavy-bottomed pot on the stove. Use a candy thermometer to monitor the heat – you will need to do a bit of adjusting throughout the cooking process, as the oil will drop dramatically in temperature as soon as you add the first hunks of fish.

Mix together your batter, adding water as needed to bring the mix to a thick, pancake batter-like consistency. You might end up with too much batter, which is okay because that just means you can fry stuff tomorrow too! (Tip: Deep-fried pickles are pretty much the greatest invention ever … find out for yourself?) Optionally, you can add a bit of cumin or curry powder to the mixture for an exotic twist.

Once the oil has reached peak temperature, dredge as many pieces as will fit comfortably into your pot in batter, and gently drop them into the oil – no splashing, please … you will hurt yourself and then the experience will be ruined. I could fit in two pieces at a time.

FRYING!!!Fry for about three minutes per side, but keep in mind that thicker pieces will take longer to cook, and thinner pieces will take less time. But since you’re deep frying at home, you’ll probably not want to let the pot out of your sight, so just monitor the fish as it cooks, and use your best judgment. Cook until the batter is crisp and golden.

Remove from pot onto paper towel, and salt right away. Repeat steps with other pieces of fish. You could also drizzle a bit of lemon over the pieces at this point, but I waited until I sat down with my plate to do that.

Serve with tartar sauce, lemon slices, fries, and all those wonderful sorts of things. Feel that craving finally get satisfied. And then undo your pants because it’s one of those kinds of meals. Delight.

Fish and chips for dinner.

Rustic pear tart: A thing you can make without a pie plate.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

We’re doing our best to save money, and one of our great ideas was that we would make our own wine. Rather fortuitously, at the same time we had the idea, my parents’ friends, John and Loretta, were cleaning out their basement and purging all the stuff they call Crap. Awesome score for us, and now we have almost 30 bottles of “wine.” I put it in quotations because it’s not good.

But it’s not bad.

Nick and his little helper prep the bottles.
Nick and his little helper wash the bottles.
The dress code for bottling night was brown shirts and hats.
The dress code for bottling night was brown shirts and hats.

We went to Nick’s sister’s and brother-in-law’s place last night to bottle our wine – they live in a house with a basement, so we made our wine there – and I brought pie. You know what’s weird? I don’t own a pie plate. I can’t really explain the oversight, but in the interest of saving money, which we have to do, I’m not going to buy one. You can make pie without a pie plate, and it looks rustic and homey, like you’re better than pie plates, like you’re crazy and clever and do what you want. And I think that comes out in the end result, as the pie is tasty and badass.

Rustic pear tart

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 cup cold butter, cubed
  • 5 tbsp. ice water
  • 1 lb. firm-fleshed pears, whatever you’ve got (four or five large)
  • 4 cups water
  • 1 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup brandy
  • 1/2 vanilla bean, split

Make your dough. Combine flour and salt, and drop each cube of butter in, squishing them between your fingers. The end result before you add the water should be a crumby mixture with larger chunks, some as large as kidney beans or peas. Stir in water, a bit at a time, to form the dough – you may not need all of the water … you want the dough to be just moist enough to hold together. Press into a disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate until pears are done.

In a large pot, dissolve sugar in water and brandy. Drop in vanilla bean, and bring to a light boil. This is inspired by David Lebowitz’s recipe for poached pears, and is, in fact, very similar.

Stir in the pears, and bring back to a boil, boiling gently for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and cool in the pot, 30 minutes.

Pears!Roll out dough on a floured surface until about 1/4-inch thick. Roll the flat dough around the rolling pin, and then unroll onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet.

Lay the pear slices in a circle in the middle of the dough stacking up to two inches high, leaving about an inch and a half border – you’ll want to be able to fold the dough over the pears all rustic-like.

SDC12123Fold the dough over the pears. Optionally, you can paint the edges of the crust with a little egg and water – that’ll make it golden and lovely. But I’m lazy and forgot. Bake in a 375°F oven for 40 minutes.

Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream.

Pie!

Pie, sliced.

Cake for breakfast.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

Plums, hacked up.I had a lot of leftover plums. I’d bought some close to the end of the season – a few prune plums, a handful of red plums, some of those translucent-looking yellow ones, and a nectarine I bought on a whim that I thought would ripen but never fully did. All were hugely disappointing – I tasted a few of each and found them to be sour and unpleasant. Boo. But tomatoes, when they’re roasted, no matter how sucky they are when they start out, are always wonderful. The flavour intensifies, and the sweetness creeps out. So why can’t that sort of thing work for plums? Discovery: The same thing totally does work for plums.

Fourteen plums of various sizes, and a nectarine, cut haphazardly/however you feel like cutting them, at 200°F over two-and-a-half to three hours, will reduce and caramelize and sweeten up, giving you about two cups of roasty sticky goodness.

Roasty.Scrape out your pan, syrup and all, into a bowl or something so that you can think about what you want to do with these. They’d be great on their own with ice cream or yogurt, or you could top them with crumbly butter, flour, and sugar and turn them into a crisp. I stored mine in ramekins for a couple of days until I’d decided their fate.

Colours!Their fate turned out to be cake. Breakfast cake. Because I’m a grown-up and I do what I want.

You could make this cake with apples, or even a couple of cups of caramelized, sweetened green tomatoes, if you were so moved. Berries or pears would also be delicious, as would rhubarb. You can make this at any time of year, with whatever fruit you’ve got on hand. I like unfinicky stuff like that.

Here’s the cake. It’s adapted from a recipe from the Fannie Farmer Baking Book.

Fruity Coffee Cake

  • 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 cups dark brown sugar
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 2/3 cup chilled butter
  • 2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1/2 tsp. cardamom
  • 1/4 tsp. cloves
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 2 cups soft fruit (such as roasted plums, chunky applesauce, mashed berries, etc.)

Preheat your oven to 375°F. Grease and flour a 9″x13″ baking pan.

Combine the flour, sugar, salt, and mix well. Drop in the butter in cubes, working it in with your fingers to form a coarse crumb. Scoop out about 3/4 cup of these, and set aside.

Add the baking powder, baking soda, and spices to the remaining crumbs, and combine well. Stir in your milk and eggs until a cake batter is formed. This will be a lumpy batter, but don’t worry about it. That’s the butter chunks making it look lumpy, and that’s fine. Once the wet and dry ingredients are thoroughly combined, fold in your fruit.

Spread the batter into your prepared baking pan, making sure the fruit hunks are distributed evenly across the pan. Sprinkle the reserved crumb mixture over the whole cake.

Bake for 30 or so minutes, or until the cake is golden and a toothpick inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean. Serve warm from the pan.

Good-smelling.We ate a bunch of this ourselves, but I also piled some up for Nick and sent it with him to work to make up for his perpetual lateness and hopefully score him awesome points. Since I don’t get awesome points at my work because I’m pretty sure most people don’t like me there, I just brought one piece for one person. He told me the cake was perfect, delicately spiced and actually rather light in spite of all the butter. Good for breakfast, or even dessert after a casual, homey dinner. So there you have it. Cake you can eat anytime.

Stacked cake.

Champion breakfast.

Dinner was fabulous. Wish you were here.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

I didn't chop the mushrooms very finely because I'm sort of lazy like that.

At 6:30 pm, the apartment smelled like butter and garlic, and moist earth, as the mushrooms transformed themselves into duxelles. You could smell it down the hall, to the elevator, little whispers of thyme and bay leaf and a lick of white wine on top of everything, and it was like autumn decided on a signature fragrance and released it here, just for us. By 7:00 pm, it smelled like a grand sort of feast, the kind of thing you’d eat in a restaurant if you weren’t poor.

I wasn’t going to tell you about the burgers, because I figured they’d just be burgers like any other burger except with deer, and because I didn’t chop the mushrooms very finely, or even very well, so a lot of them were still in large chunks which means I did duxelles wrong. But they were marvelous, and sometimes things are better when you share them. If you have access to ground deer meat, you should absolutely make these. If you have a brother-in-law who hunts, hug him all the time.

Venison burgers with duxelles and brie

(makes four)

  • 1 lb. ground deer meat
  • 2 tbsp. butter
  • 1 tbsp. olive oil
  • 2 large garlic cloves, finely minced
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. pepper
  • 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 1 small round of brie, about 1/2 cup
  • 1 batch of duxelles, made from 1/2 lb. mushrooms (I used garlic instead of shallots)
  • 4 hamburger buns

In a large bowl, working with your hands, combine the meat, butter, olive oil, garlic, seasoning, and egg yolk. Form into four equal-sized patties, and grill over medium heat, four to five minutes per side.

Spread buns with the condiments of your choosing. I minced some basil into some mayonnaise, and spread that on one half, with a bit of sweet Bavarian mustard on the other side. Maybe don’t use ketchup. It wouldn’t be right.

Divide duxelles between the four buns, placing them on the bottom. During the last minute of cooking, place two slices of brie on the tops of each burger, then remove from heat and place on top of duxelles. Let sit two to three minutes before serving, so that the cheese melts somewhat and the meat rests a bit.

The smell is magnificent. The taste? Oh, wow. It’s a wild sort of taste, big flavours with grassy touches from the cheese and the mild game-flavour in the meat. The basil adds to that, perfumes the whole thing. Drink a big red wine with this, a zinfandel or something like that. It’ll stand up nicely to the whole thing. It’s earthy and homey and wonderful, something you’d imagine eating if you were dating a lumberjack who lived in a log cabin but who also had excellent taste in wine and cheese. Just like that. And wouldn’t that be nice?

Anyway, I just wanted to tell someone about it. When you share a meal with boys intent on watching hockey, you don’t get to wax ecstatic about stuff like you would if you were eating with anyone else. Though I noticed that when the game was over, they were hardly heartbroken that the Canucks had lost. I’d like to think it had something to do with the meal.

Perfect.

An abundance of green tomatoes.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

I scooped out the red ones and used them for something else.I have about a five pound bag of the things, which my mom donated to me after she made use of the other five pounds she’d been given and exhausted her list of possibilities. There’s only so much you can do with green tomatoes, right?

Actually, there’s lots you can do. You can make relish, cake, pie, and even mincemeat out of green tomatoes – things that all probably evolved out of necessity, once first frost loomed and people realized that their plants were still loaded with unripe tomatoes.

They act a lot like apples, these tomatoes, and you can use them like that if you want. But I like things to act like the things that they are – so how best to play up the taste of an unripe tomato? I like fried green tomatoes, and they’re great if you roast them low and slow and put them onto pizza. But it’s getting chilly these days, and soup is nice. I did promise you soup, though it’s probably the only promise I’ll actually follow through with this week.

Green tomato soup

  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 lb. green tomatoes, chopped
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 3 jalapeño peppers, seeded and minced
  • 2 tsp. ground cumin
  • 1 tsp. ground coriander
  • 1 tsp. chili powder
  • 1 tsp. black pepper
  • 1 soft, ripe avocado
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • 3 cups chicken stock
  • 2 cups water
  • 1/2 cup plain yogurt
  • 1/2 cup chopped cilantro

In a soup pot, saute olive oil, onions, and tomatoes over medium heat until wilted and tomatoes are mostly dissolved, ten minutes, scraping the browned bits from the bottom as you go.

Add your garlic, jalapeño peppers, and spices, stir to combine, and add the liquids. Simmer for five minutes, and then add the avocado and lemon juice and blend with a hand blender, food processor, food mill, or other such blendy thing.

At this point, you can decide to go one of two ways. You can go the lazy way, which is what I did, and just leave it at that, content with the blending and the texture as is. Or you can further smooth things out by pushing the mixture through a mesh sieve, the result of which will be a velvety smooth soup fit for dinner guests or something. But you know what? If it’s just you, or even if it’s not, texture’s a good thing and it’s not like you have to chew even if you do it the first way. It’s very soupy.

Taste and adjust your seasoning as needed, and then stir in the yogurt and the cilantro. Serve topped with a drizzle of olive oil, or a sprinkling of cheddar cheese. It’s a lovely, spicy creamy, tarty soup, with a taste like ripe tomatoes, and it’s completely good for you. I’m pretty sure it cures cancer. A cold, at the very least.

Stay tuned – there will certainly be more, because I still have tons of these tomatoes. And I want to tell you about my plums, which were sticky syrupy sweet and deserve a post of their own. Happy Friday!

Delicious.

I got crabs from Paul.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

Plaid.Saturday was a good day. Crisp, a little chilly because the west coast has decided it’s not summer anymore and now periodically sneezes cold air to remind us that this is Canada and we ought to be wearing jackets. Well, not that cold, but it was a tad nippy at the water, which is where we were. Paul decided to teach us about crabbing. Dungeness crabbing.

Crabbing involves cages and beer. And, to look at my companions, it also seems to involve plaid.

Baited.

Tossed.

Perhaps not enough plaid, as I didn’t get the memo on the dress code, which could explain why we didn’t catch all that much. I DID wear my crabbing socks, though it wasn’t a solid enough effort, apparently.

Hotness.

We caught starfish.

Murky ... can you make out what this is?

Prickly.

And I kept getting excited, because it looked like we were catching the kinds of things we could most certainly cook immediately and eat. I even helped.

Crabbing makes me look fat.

I am squealing with anticipation and glee in the background.

This one didn't measure up.

But every time we caught something, we’d have to throw it back, because of Paul’s “ethics” and the stupid “law.” So we tossed a lot of otherwise edible critters back into the sea, and we waited, and drank beer, and Nick whined about the cold because he’s a bit of a pansy delicate.

Ultimately, we had to quit on Saturday because there was a karaoke dance party I needed ample time to sparkle my cleavage for, and also it got a little windy and we all had to pee.

And then the rest of the weekend happened, and then I promised you I’d tell you all about soup and liar with my pants on fire that I am, that didn’t happen. Because today, Paul went crabbing. And he caught three. And then, not an hour later, he appeared at our front door with a bucket of crabs and a chilled bottle of wine.

Which is infinitely more fun to talk about than soup.

And ordinarily, the first crab or lobster of a given season is to be prepared in its purest form, and that is boiled in salt water and served hot with melted butter. You can get creative with future crabs, of course – I like to wok-fry them in 1/4 cup butter, 2 tablespoons of sriracha or chili-garlic sauce, three cloves of minced garlic, and a handful of chopped scallions. If you’d prefer not to cut into them live, you can pre-boil them, ten to fifteen minutes depending on the size, and then bake them at 500F for eight to ten minutes until everything is sizzling and smells good. Paul likes them steamed in white wine, also with butter. The possibilities are buttery and almost endless.

Paul, avec Crab.

Legs + Butter + My Mouth, please.

Dunk!

Happy unsexy badger.

And we ate and ate and ate and I ate all the parts no one else wanted and we were stuffed, and it was wonderful. I doubt I’ve ever eaten a fresher crab, and I am a contented badger now, at almost 1:00 am as a result. Right now? I’m boiling shells down for stock and making bagels, which is unrelated but also quite exciting. It may not just be soup to tell you about this week, after all. I can’t wait, I can’t wait, I can’t wait!!!

Eating chicken pot pie is like stuffing a blanket in the crack of a draughty door.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

I don’t normally like pot pies, because they remind me a bit of those Swanson’s things that are filled with goop and stringy bits and, oh, let’s say “vegetables,” only you can’t tell which ones because vegetables aren’t shaped like that in real life, and what the hell, Swanson’s? I don’t like them, normally, but Nick does, and so I’ve had to devise a clever plan that will allow us all to enjoy the meal. That clever plan? Curry powder and biscuit dough, and large, hearty chunks to bite into. Nothing like those crappy little things you sometimes get talked into buying when your version of Nick comes shopping.

VegetablesAlso, I’m lazy and hate doing dishes and our sink is still kind of broken, so this whole thing takes place in a single pot, save for the mixing bowl you’ll use to mix the biscuit topping. One pot, hearty dish, kind of like a hug you eat. And when you’re chopping your vegetables, make sure you cut them so that they look like what they are.

Chicken Pot Pie

  • 2 tbsp. butter
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
  • 2 medium Russet potatoes, chopped into half-inch cubes
  • 1 1/2 cup chopped uncooked chicken (I prefer thighs, but chicken breast is okay too)
  • 2 carrots, sliced into rounds
  • 1 leek, chopped
  • 4 stalks of celery, including leaves
  • 1 cup frozen peas (or lima beans!)
  • 1 1/2 tsp. curry powder (the regular yellow stuff)
  • 1 1/2 tsp. salt, or to taste
  • 1 tsp. black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp. celery seed
  • 1/2 tsp. dried thyme
  • 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1/4 cup flour
  • 1 cup chicken stock
  • 1 cup milk

Crust:

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 4 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 tbsp. sugar
  • 1/2 cup cold butter
  • 2/3 cup milk, also cold

Preheat the oven to 425°F.

In a pot that can be used on the stove and in the oven, melt the butter and brown the chicken with the onion and garlic over medium-high heat. Add the potatoes, and sauté for a minute or two before adding the carrot and leek. Sauté for another minute or two, until the veggies are brightly coloured and have begun to sweat. Add the celery, and then sprinkle the spices and flour over top. Mix well, scraping up any browned bits at the bottom of the pan.

Aromatic!Add the chicken stock and milk to deglaze, reduce to medium, and allow to simmer while you make the biscuit dough. You want the veggies to simmer and the liquid to reduce slightly and thicken, about five minutes, or until the potatoes can be just pierced with a fork. Stir in the peas. This is the thing I forgot, and I was annoyed, because the peas add a lovely punch of colour to the end result, and also I super love peas.

In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Blend well, and then cut the butter into the mix. You want to work the butter in with a knife at first, and then with your hands, pinching the butter and the flour in your fingers and squishing flakes back into the bowl. You want this to look a bit like the early stages of pie dough, with chunks of butter, in varying sizes. Gradually stir in the milk, and knead to make a dough.

Flatten and roll out to the approximate diameter of your pot. Mine looks to be ten or so inches in diameter, and the dough ended up being about an inch thick. It doesn’t have to be perfect – go for rustic, it’s much nicer. Nothing like Swanson’s. Press the dough into the pot gently. It doesn’t matter if there are little gaps – holes are a good thing. Keeps the juice from bubbling out all over your oven.

A little leakage? That's okay.Stab a slit into the centre, and place in the middle of your oven. Bake for 15 minutes.

Toasty/wonderful.Serve with a green salad, and a cold beer. Everything about this dish is warming, from the actual heat of the thing fresh out of the oven to the hint of curry and thyme, to the steaming biscuit topping that tastes like something your grandma would have served with soup. It’s rich and aromatic, and perfect for a crisp fall evening when you don’t want to do anything but finish a very good book, all huddled up in a blanket.

Like a hug, but you eat it. Would've been better with peas.