vegetables

I think a responsible choice deserves a baked good. And I had to clean out the fridge anyway.

~ wellfedemily ~ 9 Comments

I think I mentioned awhile back that we have to move, which makes me a sad panda because I really like it here. Well, I did, at least, until the hallway light died and proved irreplaceable (for the lazy) and the faucet stopped stopping water from dripping all day and night. But it’s nice and cozy and we have a patio that looks out at trees and I liked that. So we picked a place, and it was on the high side of barely-within-budget and had a dishwasher and in-suite laundry and a pool but they wanted us to pay the rent on the 30th of each month and I haven’t had that kind of money on the day before payday in a very long time. In fact, I haven’t had money the day before payday in a very long time.

And there were other hidden surprises, and we could have taken it and made it work but we didn’t. Why do I feel so much better all of a sudden? Sigh. Of. Relief. So, big girl making big choices that I am, I felt like I earned a baked good. Also, there were leftover yams.

This recipe is for Nick’s favourite baked good. I think I invented it, but who knows. I don’t Google stuff anymore because I feel entirely unoriginal and it always proves I’m not as smart as I think I am and there are enough opportunities for that in real life without having to search for it. It’s called “Yam Bread” because Nick named it. He’s a writer. Can you tell?

Yam Bread

(Makes one 9″x5″ loaf.)

  • 3 cups flour
  • 1 tbsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 2 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1/4 tsp. cloves
  • 1 cup dark brown sugar
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 1 cup pureed yams (or sweet potatoes … or you could even use squash, if that’s what you had. Or, of course, pumpkin)
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup melted butter

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Thoroughly grease a loaf pan. Note, if your loaf pans are smaller, just use two.

Combine your dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix thoroughly.

I dunno ... ingredients?Whisk together your yams, eggs, milk, butter, and vanilla, and then pour over the flour mixture, stirring to combine. This mixture is going to be dense, and it may seem unyielding. Don’t give up. You may want to take the electronic route and throw this all into a stand mixer – that’s okay too. I was just lazy and didn’t want to set mine up.

Stand-up spatula.Scrape the almost dough-like batter into your prepared pan, and bake for one hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

As this bakes, it will smell exactly like pumpkin pie. The best part? When you eat it, it will TASTE exactly like pumpkin pie, only a million times better because there’s no soggy crust and you can put butter on it. Let cool on a wire rack once it comes out of the oven. It will be crisp and crunchy on the outside, and fluffy and pie-tasting in the middle.

Looks like loaf.And so, baking comes to the rescue again. And the blogosphere, actually, although I hate calling it that because it sounds scientific and science is not fun. I call it Blogdom, because it’s like there’s a kingdom and everything’s magical because you type your problems into it and people respond to you in ways you didn’t expect them to and then you don’t feel like the only one trudging bleakly into whatever sort of despair, and there are unicorns. So, thank you, bloggy friends. You guys are cool.

This little bit made the living room smell like autumn and craft fairs and nice old ladies.

The most wonderful little baby eggplants, and I suppose that now it’s actually officially fall.

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

Much as it’s hard not to mourn the end of summer and its wonderful smells and icy cocktails, it’s impossible not to get excited about fall. In fall, I get to wear my sparkle tights and squeeze my fat noggin into cute little hats and, of course, there are boots. Leather boots, ankle boots, polka-dot galoshes – sartorially, you could even call it my favourite season. Give me a breath of foggy air and a smear of red lipstick over aloe sticky and chaffing thighs any day.

And the eggplants.

Cute, little baby eggplants.

Hee hee!

And it’s the time of year for soothing things like sweet coconut milky curries, spicy/full-mouth-flavourful and soothing. The right green curry paste is important, and I follow Chez Pim’s recipe for consistent success. I like to make a bunch ahead of time and store it in a jar in the fridge for when I need it, but it’s relatively easy for me to do this – I live in Vancouver, where all of the ingredients are not only plentiful and easy to find, but cheap. That doesn’t mean you can’t make this as well, and I wouldn’t frown at you for buying it. One of the things you should always keep in your fridge is a bit of Thai curry paste – red or green. It’s an easy addition to any weeknight repertoire, and you can buy it in almost any grocery store, in the ethnic food section.

Also, the nice thing about this stuff is that it’s even better the next day, so when you take it to work and reheat it in the office microwave, the smell will make everyone jealous about how awesome your lunch life is.

I’m assuming you’re going to buy the curry paste, because, honestly, life is too short to make it all the time and I linked to Pim’s recipe if you’re keen, but most people have real lives that get in the way of making large batches of this sort of thing. I don’t, of course. But you probably already knew that.

So chop up your eggplants, some ripe bell peppers, and a sweet onion, mince your basil and garlic and ginger, and bask in the smells of somewhere else for a little while. For something so exotic, it sure makes your kitchen smell homey.

Most of the ingredients...

Eggplant green curry

  • 1 tbsp. peanut or canola oil
  • 2 tbsp. minced garlic
  • 2 tbsp. minced ginger
  • 1 tsp. of chili sauce, sriracha, sambal oelek, or Tabasco, or to taste (I always add too much because I likes it)
  • 6 to 8 baby eggplants, quartered, or one large eggplant, cubed
  • 1 large red bell pepper, cut into strips
  • 1 medium sweet onion, such as Walla Walla or Vidalia, cut into strips
  • 1 cup chopped white mushrooms (which I ran out of before I made this … and I missed them)
  • 1 tbsp. green curry paste, or to taste (again, I like it pungent and always use way more)
  • 1 lime, zest and juice
  • 3 cups coconut milk (or two cans, if that’s what you’ve got – no sense in tossing a tiny little bit, right?)
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • 3/4 cup chopped fresh basil
  • 1 cup fresh bean sprouts (optional – again, I was out. Boo.)

Heat up the oil in a large pan, and when it’s shimmering-hot, reduce heat to medium-high, and throw in your garlic and ginger, and saute until the garlic and ginger have turned just slightly golden. Add the chilies, onion. and eggplant. Saute until the onions are translucent and the eggplants have browned slightly. Throw in the peppers, curry paste, lime zest and juice, and give it all a minute or two, until the peppers have softened slightly.

The smell is intoxicating, and reminds me of night markets beside the Fraser River and restaurants where you sip lime sodas while you wait in line and glittered tapestry elephants saddled in gold and pink and red.

Add the coconut milk, and simmer for three to five minutes, until the eggplants have soaked up the sweet milkiness and the other vegetables have sufficiently wilted, but not so long that the peppers lose their verve and redness. The eggplants should not cook so long that they are brown and grey and smooshy. A bit of white flesh means that they are still firm. Texture = good. Season to taste – I sometimes add more curry paste at this point. Stir in half of the basil before serving, and pour over rice.

Curry pot.

Sprinkle with remaining basil and bean sprouts. Serve with a sprightly French Gewurtzraminer and slices of fresh lime. Be wearing a sweater, and, like a Thai elephant, maybe a little too much makeup. For a weeknight, anyway.

Lovely.

Spaghetti squash latkes.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

Oh, I have so much to tell you this week! It’s been busy around here, and we’ve been chopping and canning and roasting and eating, almost nonstop. The weekend was busy, and it’s only Tuesday but it feels like we’ve been going-going-going seven days already. And come to think of it, maybe we have. So tonight seemed like a good night to have breakfast for dinner. (Note: It’s always a good night to have breakfast for dinner.)

But I still wanted to use up the spaghetti squash I told you about last week, and not in the boring way that everyone always serves up spaghetti squash. You know, plain with butter. Which is delicious, of course, but if there’s a way to make anything into a pancake, it’s advisable to try. So, Nick roasted the squash when he came home from work, so that by the time I got here it was cooked. I shredded it, let it cool, and then turned it into batter.

The latkes were delicious, crispy to the bite and creamy on the inside. Squashy and delicate, and a delightful alternative to the traditional potato version.

Spaghetti squash latkes

(Makes 15 to 20 latkes. You can freeze any you don’t eat, up to one month.)

  • 2 lbs. spaghetti squash (about four cups), cooked, cooled, seeds removed and flesh shredded with a fork
  • 1 medium onion, grated
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 tsp. pepper
  • 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  • 3 large eggs
  • 3/4 to 1 cup oil

Preheat oven to 250°F.

In a large bowl, combine the squash and onion. Mix together, and then pour out onto a large kitchen towel. Roll the towel up like a jelly roll, securing the ends, and squeeze out as much liquid as you can. Return the squash and onion to the bowl, and add the flour and salt and spices. Mix well, making sure there are no chunks. Break the three eggs into the bowl and stir to combine. When you’re done, it’ll resemble pancake batter.

In a large frying pan, heat 1/4 to 1/2 cup of the oil over high heat until it shimmers. Reduce to medium-high heat, and add the batter by the spoonful, gently pressing down to spread the batter so that it’s thin like a pancake, and two to three inches in diameter. You want the oil to touch the sides of the pancakes, but you don’t want the oil to cover them.

Batter!Fry for three minutes per side, or until the edges are crisp and the latkes are golden brown.

You’ll have to fry these in batches. To keep them warm and crisp, place them on a wire rack on a baking sheet, and place in your oven while the remaining latkes cook.

Serve hot with sour cream and chives. Possibly with other breakfast dishes. Like bacon. And eggs. And maybe eat in front of the TV, because if it’s breakfast for dinner night, then it’s possible that you’re not wearing pants and you don’t care about formal table settings or talking to each other. Enjoy!

Breakfast for dinner!

Beet pickles, zucchini relish, and my fingernails are still stained purple.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

Rose gave me a bag of zucchini this week, and a five-pound bag of beets. And that’s quite a lot of produce, especially around here, where there’s just the two of us, and two very small apartment-kitchen counters, and all our dishes were dirty. So I didn’t cook it all right away, and by Saturday it was time to deal with it all, lest it perish and disintegrate in the crisper. And I really like beets and pickles. And relish.

So I’m giving you two recipes today, because it’s been a busy food week. Yesterday there was pattypan squash and soufflé and we picked blackberries, and today I made jam. Tomorrow, tomato sauce and something to do with strawberries. Here are Saturday’s recipes.

First, beet pickles. Bittersweet spicy magenta pickles. Wonderful with crusty bread, soft cheese, and thin slices of raw onion, or between stained pink fingers, straight out of the jar.

Beet pickles

(Makes four to five 500mL/2-cup jars)

  • 5 lbs. beets
  • 3.5 cups apple cider vinegar
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 2 cups white sugar
  • 2 sticks cinnamon
  • 1 tbsp. whole cloves
  • 1 tbsp. whole green cardamom
  • 1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt

Boil whole beets, unpeeled, with tops and roots still attached, for 20 to 25 minutes. They should be just soft enough for the first millimetres of the prongs of a fork to just pierce the skin. Drain the beets, and dump them immediately into a sink full of ice water.

I want to say “shuck the beets.” Because shuck seems like the right word, though I don’t think it really is. You are going to peel the beets using your hands to strip the peels. Cut the tops and roots off, then strip the peel from each beet, pushing with your thumbs to rub the peel away from the flesh, then running a knife over any spots where the peel won’t tear away. I learned this week that I can record video using my camera, so I’ve taped a demo so you can see what I mean. I thought it was silent, so I didn’t bother talking.

Prepare your jars, using the Procedure for Shorter Time Processing.

Once the beets are peeled, cut them into slices, no thinner than 1/2 an inch thick. Set aside.

Beets. Resting.In a large stainless steel or otherwise non-reactive pot, combine your vinegar, water, sugar, spices, and salt. Bring to a boil, then add your beets. You’ll want to boil your beets for four to five minutes, just as your jars are about ready to come out of their boiling water and be filled.

Spoon beets into jars, and fill with liquid. Don’t worry about filtering out your spices. Add them to the jars too.

Once you seal the jars, process them as per the instructions linked above. Label them with the date you pickled, and be sure not to open them for six to eight weeks. They will need to soak up all that spicy pickle juice. And then they will be marvelous.

Beet pickles!Since the pot was boiling jars anyway, I also made five little jars of zucchini relish. Each jar held 250mL/2 cups. Easy, and very fresh-tasting, not too vinegary, and gently spiced.

This recipe comes from Epicurious, because I’d never made relish before and thought it’d be a good place to start. The Epicurious recipe makes ten jars; I halved the recipe because I only had half the zucchini. I didn’t peel it or seed it, because my zucchini were very small, with thin skins and soft seeds. Here’s my adaptation:

Zucchini relish

  • 2 lbs. zucchini, grated
  • 1 medium white onion, grated
  • 1 medium red bell pepper, finely chopped
  • 1 tbsp. kosher salt
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/2 tsp. celery seeds
  • 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1/2 tsp. white pepper

In a large bowl, combine your zucchini, onion, and bell pepper. Salt, and refrigerate at least four hours. Drain well, and rinse.

Once drained, put your vegetables into a large stainless steel or nonreactive pot.

Relish, pre-relish.Add your vinegar, water, sugar, celery seeds, nutmeg, and white pepper, and bring to a boil. Boil for ten minutes, and then place into prepared jars. Process as usual.

Zucchini relish.Give this a couple of weeks to sit in a cool, dark place, stewing in its juices. It will be very nice with burgers at the end of the summer, and meats and cheeses into the fall. And perhaps even the winter, if you don’t gobble it all up by then.

Fried green tomatoes, and I think it’s a sign.

~ wellfedemily ~ 2 Comments

Green tomatoes.Fried green tomatoes are kind of weird. You either like them or you don’t. I’m on the like side of things, because I like their salty tartness, those thin slices with the texture of fresh tomatoes but with the bite of something else, coated in spicy crunch, and fried up in butter. Everything crunchy and fried in butter is worth a try. You know I’m right.

And as it happens, today is the anniversary of the passing of my awesome Grandpa, who also liked fried green tomatoes. And he had excellent taste. That today was the day I decided to make the tomatoes worked out strangely – a coincidence, to be sure. But I’m reading The Jade Peony at the moment, and it’s full of dead grandparent mysticism, and it’s making me paranoid that this was a sign, and now I’m kind of embarrassed that I didn’t wear underwear to work today. It’s laundry day. By which I mean, we have to do laundry because I officially ran out of clean underwear. I can’t be experiencing Grandpa-related coincidences on a day when I am all out of underwear. My grandpa would never run out of clean underwear.

My mom, upon alerting me to this coincidence, if this counts as one of those, told me that I should simply fry them in butter and sprinkle them with seasoning salt, which is how Grandpa did it. Seasoning salt is one of those strange things I can’t bring myself to use, because … well, why is it orange? What are those black things? I don’t know. I’m a salt snob. And, besides, I like my spices. My grandma, Cuddles, who I’ve mentioned before, would sneak spices into things and my grandpa would eat them, delighted. He didn’t know what they were. Better not to tell him, she thought.

Though he did eat around, and had a fondness for all kinds of tastes, particularly sweet tastes. He would buy boxes of seconds from the chocolate factory, and would hide them all over the house, so that wherever he passed by, a treat would be within reach. During business hours, he would apparently do lunch right around my neighbourhood – I didn’t realize this, but the company he worked for for years and years used to be located just a block or two down from where I live now. The little Chinese restaurant where my grandpa and his friends would go for lunch and eat so much he’d be too full for dinner? Probably the one I like to go to for lunch sometimes and eat too much at. It’s very reasonably priced, you know, and it’s been there for eons.

Oddly, my last apartment was right around the corner from my grandparents’ first house, or at least the one where my mom spent her formative years. Coincidences. Or, perhaps a weird kind of parallelism, or I’m reading too much into things. I never find out about these things until after I’ve settled on a place, or a thing. And I don’t look too hard for things like signs. It’s probably just that I am predisposed to good ideas. Yes. That must be it. Heredity. Green tomatoes.

Green, with sheen.

Fried Green Tomatoes

(Serves four as a side dish.)

  • Two or three large green tomatoes (make sure they’re very firm)
  • 1 cup cornmeal (the finer the grind, the better)
  • 2 tsp. ground cumin
  • 1 tsp. chili powder
  • 1 tsp. ground coriander
  • 1/2 tsp. white pepper (black is fine too)
  • 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
  • Salt, to taste
  • Two large eggs, beaten’
  • 1/4 cup of butter, melted

Slice the tomatoes into rounds about half an inch thick.

In a large pan over medium-high heat, melt the butter.

Combine the cornmeal with the spices. Dip each slice into the beaten eggs, and then dredge in the spicy cornmeal. Place into the pan of butter, and fry, two minutes per side, until the tomatoes are soft, about the texture of a ripe red tomato, and the crust is golden and crisp.

Buttery.You may have to fry your tomatoes in two batches, like I did. In that case, feel free to refresh with more butter. More butter. Have two more perfect words ever been uttered together, or typed side-by-side? I don’t think so.

When the tomatoes are done, move them onto a plate covered in paper towels, and salt immediately, while still very hot. Serve right away.

And eat a box of very good chocolate in your favourite chair afterwards, for dessert. Luscious.

Warm cucumbers? A good idea, actually.

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

One of the benefits of being so beyond-excited about food is that people like to give me stuff. My sister-in-law periodically gives me her overstock, or things she’s bought but has no real use for. Rose, at work, has given me lovely fresh basil, a jar of her homemade pesto, and a selection of delightful jasmine teas from her personal collection. I’ve come by garden-grown zucchini, green beans, cucumbers, and tomatoes. And on Friday, Nick came home with a bag of fresh goodies harvested from the garden of one of the ladies he works with. For me. For me! There was still damp soil on the squash, that’s how fresh it was.

Included in the bag of goodies was a rather round cucumber. Nick had thought it was a zucchini, but it was, in fact, a short, stubby cucumber, about two inches in diameter with no tapering. A fat little guy, with firm flesh … the kind that stands up to a bit of braising.

From here, this looks like a close-up on a pickle.
From here, this looks like a close-up on a pickle.

I’ll admit, I hadn’t really thought about this until Julie & Julia. I’ve read recipes for this dish before, but kind of skimmed over them, barely reading, having always considered cucumbers a raw-eating vegetable, a thing suited to salads, and generally a pleasant sort of bland. I see now the error of my ways. And given that this dish is low-risk, requiring little investment of either time or money, it’s something you really ought to try. And it’s summer, and you might even have cucumbers in your garden; if not, they’ll be all over your local market.

Braised Cucumber

  • 1 large cucumber
  • 1 tbsp. butter
  • 1 tsp. lemon juice
  • 1/2 tsp. salt, or to taste
  • 2 tbsp. heavy cream
  • 1 tsp. chopped fresh mint (if you don’t like the sound of mint, you could use fresh dill, which would also be lovely, or a bit of fresh parsley … anything you like)

Peel cucumber. Cut in half, and scoop out the seeds. I find that scraping them out with a regular old spoon works great. Chop cucumber into one-inch pieces.

In a pan, melt the butter. Add the cucumber, make sure it’s coated in the butter, cover, and let cook covered for about five minutes over medium heat.

Remove lid, and add salt and lemon. Cover and cook for another minute. Remove lid, add cream to coat the cucumber, and cook for another minute.

Before serving, toss with mint. And then dive right in.

So fresh-smelling!
So fresh-smelling!

It’s an odd thing, and at first you may be a bit surprised – cucumbers are not all that notable, and they can often go without notice on your dinner plate. When turned into pickles, they are a thing to celebrate. And when they are freshly plucked from the garden and cooked in butter, they are a lip-smacking revelation, a buttery blend of flavours, with a satisfying touch of crunch. And the mint makes them even more lovely. I’ll be adding this to my list of staple side-dishes immediately.

No, really. Go make this right now.
No, really. Go make this right now.

The best tomato sauce you’ve ever tasted. For real. I’m not even exaggerating. Yes!

~ wellfedemily ~ 18 Comments

Love.I bought the tomatoes because they were lovely, but also because I was super-excited at the possibilities for solar tomato sauce. A fascinating idea, I thought, and what a way to have dinner ready in a hurry, just boil some pasta et voila! And then the sky turned grey for the first time in a long, long time and the heat wave broke and the long-range forecast whined rain for the next seven days and I still had the tomatoes, and then Rose at work brought me a bouquet of basil. And then everything was glorious.

Basil from Rose.So, inspired in part by a recipe in this month’s Gourmet and in part by an unsatisfied desire to get to the essence of tomatoes through a batch of solar sauce, I’ve improvised some. And it worked out well. Very well. You will soon find an abundance of little tomatoes at your local market, and this is what you should do with some of them. About 1.5 pounds of them.

(If you’re like me, you’ll want a meatball or two to go along with things. Use this recipe. Add a little bit of spinach and lemon zest. Make the peperonata another time, and eat it cold with crusty bread.)

Make this in a pot you can use on the stove AND in the oven. It works better that way, and is less mess. Also, while I insist you try this with little tomatoes, you don’t have to. I was just lazy and didn’t want to bother with the whole blanching/skinning thing, which I kind of feel obligated to do when the tomatoes are bigger.

Tomato sauce that tastes like tomatoes

  • 1.5 to 2 lbs. fresh cherry tomatoes (or other small tomatoes)
  • 1 bulb of garlic
  • 1/4 cup good olive oil
  • 2 tsp. salt (or to taste)
  • 2 tsp. red chili flakes

Preheat your oven to 400°F.

Halve your little tomatoes, and trim the top off the bulb of garlic. Place your tomatoes in the pot, with the garlic right smack in the middle, and then drizzle the oil over top. Add a teaspoon of the salt, and toss into the oven, where you will bake the whole thing, covered, for thirty minutes.

Lusty.Place the pot on the stove, over medium to medium-low heat. You don’t need the thing to reach a rolling boil. Remove the garlic, and squish the cloves out into the pot. You may want to wait until it’s cool enough to handle – I used a clean dish cloth as a barrier against the heat. The cloves should pop out easily.

At this point, you are going to want to puree the contents of your pot. I recommend using a hand blender, because that’s the best way to keep a bit of texture – you could also use a food mill, a food processor, or a blender. If you’ve removed the mix from the pot to blend, return it to the pot. Taste, add the remainder of the salt and any more if you feel it needs it, and your pepper flakes, and simmer over medium to medium-low heat for another 30 to 40 minutes.

Sauce.Boil a pot of pasta (about one pound uncooked) until cooked to your liking, and then toss the noodles into the sauce pot and make sure every noodley strand is covered in fantastic tomatoey goodness.

Sauced.Serve with chopped fresh basil, a dollop of ricotta, and/or your favourite shaved parmesan cheese. And meatballs. But you knew that.

Mmmm. Mmm!I am completely in love with this tomato sauce, because it tastes exactly like tomatoes, which, especially at this time of year, taste exactly like meaty summer sun, to me. And the garlic adds a nice bit of body, and is not aggressive. The roasting and simmering makes it sweet, so that it plays a supporting role here, heightening the taste of the tomatoes. It’s really very lovely. Go out and make this. Especially if it’s raining – the smell … the smell! The wafting, beautiful aromas of this sauce will make your home smell like all the best parts of your garden, roasting. It’s compliment sauce. As in, everyone who eats this will compliment you on your awesome talent and probably also your incredible good looks, and you will taste it and fall in love with yourself all over again. Sigh!

This kind of reminds me of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, in a good way.

You know when your week has sucked and it’s Wednesday and you smell and you don’t feel like trying hard over dinner? Make pizza. Everyone will think you like them way more than you actually do.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

A few delightful things occurred today.

It was hot again still at work, and it sucked, but finally the powers relented and admitted that they also felt that it sucked, so now we’re allowed to go home at 3:00 pm until air conditioning arrives, and this is fantastic news. Soon, I will not smell like a foot a mere two hours after my morning shower. I hosted a brainstorming session this morning, pouring sweat and smelling like low-tide scattered with a city’s worth of fusty sneakers.

The good things:

  • I was home early
  • I did some dishes
  • I harvested my first tomato
  • I made pizza dough

Which is not something I usually like to do on weeknights, because my recipe for pizza dough is a three-hour process, not including cook-time, and that simply won’t do on a Wednesday. But one of my favourite local bloggers posted a recipe for the easiest pizza dough in the world on Monday, and I found it last night, and it changed everything.

And I harvested my first tomato from the plant on my deck.

My first tomato!!!So it went without saying that I would have to make pizza tonight. There is simply no point in buying take-out or delivery pizza in the City of Vancouver, because it is all a total waste of time. Ghetto slice is only good for the kind of indigestion and scoots that makes you stay home from work the next day, and the good stuff costs more than pizza is actually worth, which is okay sometimes, but only if there are drink specials, and we enjoyed too many of those last night.

Once you have the crust down, you can top the thing with anything you’d like. I topped mine with a sauce of olive oil, sea salt, finely minced garlic, and black pepper, and then piled on my tomato, some lamb salami, basil leaves, asparagus, mozzarella, and the last of the parmesan, which was not enough for anything but turned out to be just enough for pizza. And you must make the crust. It takes no time at all. I can’t think of a reason not to. I’ll bet you can’t either.

“The easiest pizza dough in the world,” courtesy of everybody likes sandwiches

(Serves four. Or two with leftovers.)

  • 3 tsp. yeast (I used fast-rising, but she mentions in the comment section that she used the regular kind. I liked the fluffy/crunchy effect of the fast-rising stuff, so go ahead and use that.)
  • 1 cup warm water
  • 1 tsp. honey
  • 2 1/2 cups flour (I used 2 cups of all-purpose flour and 1/2 cup of spelt flour. Fibre, you know.)
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 2 tbsp. fresh rosemary, chopped (optional … I didn’t have rosemary)
  • A sprinkling of cornmeal

Put your yeast in a bowl, pour the water into it, and add the honey. Let it sit until the thing gets frothy, about five minutes. Add your flour, salt, olive oil, and herbs if you’ve got ’em. Stir until the mixture forms a dough, dump out onto a floured surface, and knead quickly, just to make sure everything’s mixed together, and then put it back into the bowl and cover to let rest, 10 to 20 minutes.

Sprinkle cornmeal on a baking sheet, and move your dough onto the sheet, stretching and pressing the cornmeal in. You don’t want any loose cornmeal or it will burn and smoke and then your fire alarm will go off and you’ll get even more noise complaints.

Dough.

Preheat your oven to 400°F.

Top with toppings, any kind you like. That’s the thing about homemade pizza – you always like it, because it’s always got stuff you like on it.

Uncooked.Bake on the middle rack for 20 to 25 minutes, until crust is golden and cheese is bubbly and browned.

Pizza.Serve hot on the patio with a cheap/tasty bottle of prosecco. Attempt conversation, but don’t be disappointed if the heat makes it impossible. It’s not like you can’t talk to each other in the wintertime. The way I see it, the food will be there long after you give him the heart attack that gets him. Or her. Or them? So love the food. Everybody likes sandwiches? Everybody likes pizza too.

Pizza. Prosecco. Pretty.

Moussaka is not a character from the Lion King.

~ wellfedemily ~ 5 Comments

I returned home from Winnipeg to find a clean kitchen and an empty fridge, and a sky full of dark clouds ominous with the threat of rain. It felt like an appropriate time for some comfort food, for the both of us. After too many days of fast food, we both craved vegetables and a meal prepared at home.

And while I was in Winnipeg, I thought about moussaka, though I am not sure why. I don’t really care for much of what I’ve tasted of Greek food – maybe it’s because almost every restaurant is identical out here, and I don’t really like oregano or whatever is done to the rice or that particular colour blue.

I fantasize about Greece, however, and imagine that the food there is fantastic – not like every Taverna along Broadway or on every corner in every small town in the world. I imagine lemons and fresh herbs and sea salt and perfectly roasted lamb and big, fat, meaty olives. Everything with the sheen of fresh olive oil.

So we invited over Steve and Sooin, and Paul, who gets me in Nick’s will if Nick dies, and served up a hot pan of moussaka. And it was good. Except that it was a tad too salty, so I’ve tweaked this recipe some. It’s much better now.

Moussaka

  • 1 Japanese eggplant
  • 2 medium zucchini So you can see what size vegetables you'll be working with.

Meaty filling:

  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped (about 1 1/2 cups)
  • 1 lb. ground beef or lamb
  • 3 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 tsp. dried oregano
  • 1 tsp. black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp. dried thyme
  • 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1 small (5 1/2 oz.) can of tomato paste
  • 1/2 cup dry white wine or chicken stock

White sauce:

  • 2 tbsp. butter
  • 3 tbsp. flour
  • 1 1/2 cup milk
  • 2 cloves garlic, finely minced
  • zest of 1/2 lemon (or about 1 teaspoon)
  • 1/2 tsp. pepper
  • 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1/3 cup crumbled feta

Topping:

  • 1 cup bread crumbs (preferably panko)
  • 1 cup crumbled feta
  • 1 finely minced clove of garlic
  • 2 tbsp. chopped fresh parsley
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • 2 tbsp. olive oil

Preheat your oven to 375°F.

Thinly slice your eggplant and zucchini, about 1/4 inch thick. Grease an 9″x13″ pan with olive oil.

In a large skillet, sauté your onions until translucent. Add the ground beef and garlic, and cook until browned. Add your oregano, pepper, thyme, and cinnamon, and tomato paste, and wine or chicken stock, stir until everything’s all mixed together and it smells really good, and then remove from heat.

In a small pot over medium-high heat, melt your butter. Let it get foamy, then add the flour, and stir to blend.

 

This is what the butter and flour should look like before you add the milk.
This is what the butter and flour should look like before you add the milk.

 

Whisk in your milk, and reduce heat to medium. Add your pepper and nutmeg, garlic, lemon zest (not too much!), and stir in the feta. Let this simmer until the feta has melted and the sauce has thickened, three to five minutes. Remove from heat.

Line the bottom of your prepared pan with slices of zucchini and eggplant, not too thick, but until you can’t see the bottom.

Pan with first layer.Drizzle the layer with olive oil, and then add half of the meat mixture over the top, spreading to cover. Drizzle this with about 1/3 of the white sauce. Repeat, adding another layer in this order.

Add the final layer of zucchini and eggplant (there will be three layers of vegetables in total). Drizzle your remaining white sauce over the top layer.

In a small bowl, mix up the panko (or regular bread crumbs), parsley, garlic, and feta. Top the moussaka with the crumb topping, and then drizzle with olive oil, and the juice of the lemon.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and you see bubbling along the sides.

Moussaka!Serve with a salad of cucumber and tomato, tossed with parsley and fresh mint, and topped with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper.

Meal!And bask in the joy of vegetables, even if you are wondering where summer went. It’s still raining, so tonight we are going to eat as if we are elsewhere, like India. Or Mexico. Or both?

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

~ 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.
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.

A good-looking chap, yes?
A good-looking chap, yes?
Feasty, on Chinette.
Feasty, on Chinette.

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