vegetarian

Meatless Monday, zucchini salsa, and a distressing case of not having anything to say but writing anyway.

~ wellfedemily ~ 5 Comments

I am right smack in the middle of a crippling bout of writer’s block. At work, I’ve just handed off my last contribution to a project that’s taken six months – it wraps up next week. I’m writing reports, strategizing communications, and generally doing serious, professional things, the kinds of things where I can’t just slip in an occurrence or two of “ass” just to amuse myself. It’s all very good stuff, of course, and I quite enjoy what I do. But periodically, professional writing (and editing even more so) can be draining, and all the liquor and free-writing exercises in the world can’t bring back the easy flow of writing when you have something to say.

I’d hoped that sitting down to write about salsa would trigger something. Instead, my head feels completely numb, as if it has run out of words and no longer cares to tell my face to hold my mouth shut. I am pretty sure MFK Fisher never sat slack-jawed and brain-dead waiting for something good to happen.

Fortunately, where the words sometimes disappear, the food is almost always reliable. At the end of a day measured in word-counts and tracked changes, there is the kitchen, and sometimes an ingredient or two to get excited about. Today we had a couple of little zucchini, some red potatoes, a red field tomato, and the fresh brown eggs of free-run chickens. Today, we had Spanish tortilla with zucchini salsa, and slumped onto the couch to let our weary minds wander.

There’s no real recipe for the tortilla – I watched Paul make it once. He lived in Spain so I believe he knows what he’s doing.

The gist of it is that you want to take a couple of tablespoons of oil, and sauté a diced onion until it turns translucent. Then you want to toss one-and-a-half to two pounds of thinly sliced rounds of potatoes (no more than a 1/4-inch, less is ideal) until coated in oil and onion bits. Pour a tiny bit of water into the pan – 1/3 cup  – then cover, and cook for 20 minutes, stirring every so often and scraping the bottom of the pan.

Then remove the potatoes and onion from the pan, cool each for ten minutes (spread out over paper towels and left until there’s no more steam), and heat the broiler. Wipe out the pan. Whisk together six eggs, some salt and pepper, and heat another tablespoon of oil in the pan. Mix potatoes into the eggs, pour the whole thing into the heated pan. Run a spatula along the sides (you don’t want this to stick) every so often, and when the sides are golden (five, six minutes), then shove it under the broiler until the centre sets and the top is golden. Another three minutes, maybe five.

Really, you can do this with anything. Slices of eggplant would be delicious. Zucchini, if it wasn’t already destined for salsa. Sweet potatoes, also good.

And top the whole thing with salsa. If it’s zucchini season and you have a few tender little ones in your crisper, make zucchini salsa (recipe below).

Zucchini salsa

  • 2 cups diced raw zucchini
  • 1 cup diced tomato
  • 1 cup diced red onion
  • 1 clove minced garlic
  • Zest and juice of 1 lemon
  • 2 tbsp. good olive oil
  • 2 tbsp. chopped fresh basil
  • 1/2 tsp. dried oregano
  • Red pepper flakes
  • Salt, to taste

Toss all ingredients together, and stick the whole thing in the fridge for about an hour. Toss again before serving. Serve with tortilla, as above (and also below), or with white fish, or chicken. If there are leftovers, sprinkle them over tortilla chips and cover with cheese to make nachos. Stuff it into tacos. The ingredients cut into larger chunks would make a nice salad.

I’m hoping the storm tonight carries enough electricity in the air to turn my head back on. Something has to, or tomorrow you might find me here, grappling with the basics of subject + verb + object in an embarrassing, futile attempt to regain any semblance of creativity and/or dignity. It is likely that I will turn to liquor, which would of course be completely out of character.

Meatless Monday. Radishes again. But this time, curried with paneer!

~ wellfedemily ~ 11 Comments

I love the local farmer’s market. Love it. It’s a great place to see what’s in season, to meet local vendors, and to buy nougat (the nougat people, Kalley Kandy, do wedding favours!). Unfortunately, it’s also expensive (well, not the nougat. The nougat is very reasonable). Sometimes prohibitively so – I understand why a single bag of groceries can cost $40, but I can’t really justify it for myself. (Especially now that I’ve discovered that prices are better at farmer’s markets outside the city limits.)

Fortunately, I periodically have to go to the suburbs, where there’s a farm that’s open from May to November, and they label the local food and grow much of it themselves. And it’s cheap. Yesterday we got forty city-dollars’ worth of produce for $14. There were heads of field-fresh cauliflower for 29 cents. TWENTY-NINE CENTS. There is no beating this place. We got huge bunches of radishes for 33 cents apiece.

Cheap local produce is my number-one thrill. I need to get out more.

Anyway, in the spirit of the season and Meatless Monday and because I just love radishes, here’s a recipe for radish paneer. Paneer, if you’re not paneer-savvy, is a type of Indian cheese. It’s very, very good. You can make paneer at home if you can’t find it in stores. Bear with me on this one – it’s weird but fantastic. And no throwing out the greens!

Radish paneer

(Serves four.)

  • 1 lb. paneer
  • 2 to 4 bunches radishes (1/2 lb. radish greens and 1 lb. radishes)
  • 1 bunch scallions
  • 1 cup chopped fresh cilantro
  • 1/4 cup olive oil, divided
  • 2 tbsp. butter
  • 1 medium onion, finely chopped
  • 2 tsp. minced fresh ginger
  • 4 cloves minced fresh garlic
  • 1 tsp. red chili flakes (or to taste)
  • 1 tsp. garam masala
  • 1/2 tsp. ground mustard
  • 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
  • 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 1/2 cup plain yogurt

Heat one tablespoon of oil until shimmering. Cut paneer into bite-size cubes, and fry it in the oil until each side is golden. Yup, I said it. Fry the cheese. You see how this recipe is already a winner?

Remove paneer to a plate. Add another tablespoon of oil to the pan, and heat. Cut radishes in half, then add to the pan, sautéeing over medium-high heat until fork-tender, about four minutes. Remove from pan, draining on paper towel. Wipe pan down before returning to medium-high heat with the remaining oil and the butter.

Add onion, ginger, garlic, chili flakes, garam masala, cumin, coriander, and salt to the pan, and saute until fragrant, two to three minutes.

Meanwhile, chop radish greens and scallions.

Add greens, scallions, and cilantro to the pan, and stir until wilted. Once wilted, add water and yogurt. Reduce heat to medium, and stew for ten minutes.

Taste and adjust seasonings, as needed.

Before serving, return radishes and paneer to the pan to reheat, about one minute. Serve hot, over rice with a dollop of yogurt.

Garlic scapes and chickpeas and tomatoes. Hooray!

~ wellfedemily ~ 9 Comments

Do you know about garlic scapes*? Everyone at work does now, because I snuck out and bought some and brought them back and the stench they created had people on the other side of the place, a wall and forty square feet away, come in asking if it was me who smelled like feet or stale kimchi or dying. It was, and it usually is because there’s a little produce market on campus where I buy cool things that sometimes turn out to, um, pong, but to be fair? Garlic scapes have a very limited season and I can’t be faulted for celebrating their arrival.

Weird how things that smell bad are always my fault, but I refuse to accept responsibility. Someone could use some therapy.

I hope I didn’t scare you off about the smell. Garlic scapes don’t stink. They have a real garlicky smell, and something else – chlorophyll or something – something green. Anything garlic or onion that you leave on the floor of your over-heating office for four hours is bound to fuss about it, you know? But they’re really quite lovely. A quick blanch or sauté is all they really need. There’s a place we go to on Main Street where you can order skewers of them wrapped in bacon and then grilled.

Last night for company they found their way into a salad. Apparently we’re into salads these days, though it’s not hot and currently outside I can see at least three shades of grey not counting the apartment buildings and alley out my window. And salad is what you have when you need a side dish for roast chicken and potatoes. Since Mark, married to Nick’s sister Jess, lives gluten-free, salad was doubly perfect.

I’m sure there will be much more garlic scapery yet – I bought four bunches in a burst of enthusiasm, and they’re living in a vase of water on my counter awaiting their garlicky destiny. But for now – a recipe for salad. Not boring salad. Garlic salad. I promise, you’ll totally love this.

Chickpea, tomato, and garlic scape salad

  • 1 19 oz. can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
  • 2 to 3 cups cherry tomatoes, rinsed (sliced if they’re larger, whole if they’re bite-size and fantastic)
  • 1 lemon, zest and juice
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1 cup chopped garlic scapes
  • 1 tsp. red pepper flakes
  • 1 tbsp. chopped basil
  • Salt and pepper, to taste

In a bowl, combine chickpeas, tomatoes, and lemon zest and juice.

In a pan over medium-high heat, heat olive oil until shimmering. Add garlic scapes and red pepper flakes, and sauté until scapes turn bright green – about a minute. Pour the whole thing, oil included, over the other ingredients, tossing to coat. Chill for an hour.

Before serving, add basil, salt, and pepper. Adjust seasonings as needed.

It’s so pretty, and very bright-tasting. The oil picks up the garlicky taste of the garlic scapes, and as it chills with the lemon zest it develops a delightfully clean taste. This is a great picnic salad, and if there are leftovers you don’t have to worry about lettuce wilting or sucking the next day.

Also? PS? LOOK AT MY BABY RADISHES!

That is all. Happy Canada Day!

*These may be garlic chives. I have been operating under some confusion forever. Oh well? Garlic scapes should work the same.

Savoury strawberry salad: More awesome than alliteration!

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

I could not get out of bed fast enough on Saturday – it was strawberry day! And maybe I was a little too excited, because it was only the first day of the u-pick season, and there were frustrating turns of events. It all worked out in the end but the berry farm we meant to go to, Krause Berry Farms? Apparently that’s where everyone goes because they have pie and there were more cars parked there than I’d seen in a long time and three people told us we probably wouldn’t get any berries because all the ripe ones were gone. But just across the street, there was a berry farm and almost no cars, and lots and lots of berries. You win, other berry farm.

Grace, Corinne, and I set out among the rows to pluck berries, only mildly irritated that we’d have been wiser to wait a week, and collected as many berries as we could.

I ended up buying some, because we got whole buckets but decided to quit there because the day had not met our expectations of magic and grandeur, which actually happens less than you’d think. It’s possible that we’re easily pleased.

And then we went home, because some of us had jams and ice creams to make.

But before that, I desperately wanted a salad. Caprese-inspired, I wanted a heap of strawberries and burrata and basil and pepper and oil, and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Use burrata cheese if you can find it, or if you’ve got the time and inclination to make it. If not, use the freshest softest mozzarella you can find. This is another case where I don’t have a recipe for you, but a list of ingredients, and you can play with it until it’s to your liking, or until you have enough to serve everyone who’s eating with you.

Strawberry salad

  • Fresh, local strawberries (room temperature)
  • Burrata or fresh mozzarella
  • Basil, cut into thin strips (chiffonade)
  • Fresh ground black pepper
  • Extra-virgin olive oil
  • Balsamic vinegar (a splash)
  • Salt, if needed, and to taste

Chop everything choppable. Assemble on a plate. Sprinkle with pepper, and drizzle oil and vinegar to taste. Serve.

I love using fruit in savoury applications, because it’s not as desserty as you’d think. Strawberries can substitute nicely for sweet summer tomatoes, especially since they mimic the meaty texture of tomatoes, and because they’re as tart as they are sweet and play so nicely with the creamy cheese and citrusy basil. Try this dish with peaches, or nectarines, or plums later in the season. I promise, it will not be weird, and you will love it forever. I wouldn’t raise and then dash your expectations of magic and grandeur on purpose.

Cucumber salad.

~ wellfedemily ~ 9 Comments

I always worry that one day you’re going to realize that we drink an almost unacceptable amount of wine, more than we need to, and that your response is not going to be “I should come over!” See above for exhibit A, and the equivalent of four bottles for four people. Summer is for laughter and sharing.

To be fair, there was enough food for eight people, and once I got going on a simple meal of fried chicken and cucumber salad, the menu somehow spiralled until it included candied sweet potato and apples, whole-wheat baking powder biscuits, peas in butter with scallions, and macaroni and cheese with chipotles for Jaz, Tracy’s boyfriend, who is a vegetarian. Somehow, it all got eaten. The night ended earlier than usual because we all needed to head to our respective beds to sleep it all off.

This is the point at which I want you to think you’re invited over, because you are. Anytime, so long as you’re not planning an intervention. Wear elastic-waist pants. If you think of it, try to call the night before.

We almost never issue invitations, because there are always friends passing through, either to play games or watch games on TV, or to share wine and gossip, or to catch up because somehow we all got very busy and the constant togetherness sort of died off. The latter has been the case with Tracy, who runs a fantastic arts and lit magazine and works four-thousand jobs and still finds time to win awards and go to Toronto and get into grad school to study publishing, and I have got to stop whining about being tired from my one job and my no other things. Tracy has been away and returned, and the night before she came over, she sent me a message to indicate that it’s been too long/forever, and let’s eat.

So we did.

A lot.

And I didn’t realize it, but I make a lot of cucumber salad come summer. It goes with everything – fried chicken and biscuits, with spicy Indian food, with delicate pieces of fish or with big hunks of grilled meat. It’s the easiest thing in the world, and I have been eating it at summer meals since I was approximately an infant. Here’s my spin on it, which you can easily adapt to your own summer table.

Cucumber salad

  • 1 long English cucumber, sliced into very thin rounds
  • 1 small onion, sliced paper-thin
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 cup Greek-style yogurt
  • 1/2 cup chopped herbs (your choice, and depending completely on what you want to serve – I like parsley, mint, dill, or cilantro)
  • 1 lime, zest and juice
  • Pepper, to taste

Place cucumber and onion slices in a large bowl, and sprinkle with salt. Toss to coat. Cover, and place in the refrigerator for two hours.

Drain liquid from veggies, and toss with yogurt, lime juice and zest, and pepper.

Serve immediately, garnished with more chopped herbs. I also like a sprinkle of paprika, sometimes, or a little bit of ground coriander.

See? So easy. So cooling, and so practical. So totally enough for way more than four people.

We’ll be back to much smaller dinners tomorrow, and a weeknight’s ration of wine. Both dinner and wine will be more than enough for more of us if you think you’ll feel like stopping by.

Roasting radishes brings out all the best adjectives.

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know about you, but I love radishes. LOVE them. I like them raw, sliced over baguette with fresh, homemade butter and fresh-ground black pepper; I like them quickly pickled in a little bit of rice vinegar with sugar and hot red pepper flakes. I like them in salads, in egg salad and tuna salad sandwiches, and whole, eaten like miniature apples, each bite dipped in sea salt. I like them in bruschetta. There is no way that I won’t eat radishes. I love their peppery blitz on my tongue, the way they are so bright and crisp and wet, such a perfect red byproduct of water and earth.

Nick is more reluctant, and doesn’t love them like I do. He’s okay with my radishy urges, but doesn’t embrace them significantly, or even properly. I’ve never seen him pick radishes up when shopping. I’ve never caught him popping them into his mouth, as if secretly, in those quiet minutes before tooth-brushing, cat-feeding, and bedtime. I doubt he even dreams about them.

But this is not about Nick’s shortcomings as an eater. I am certain that one day, I’ll find him crouched over the crisper, teary-eyed at the way the radishes look beside the lettuces and lemons. One day, he will look at food the way he looks at video games.

Tonight we got a little closer to that day, and it was radishes that pushed him. He asked for seconds.

We had a couple of small pieces of venison for dinner (the second last package of venison remaining in my freezer from last fall’s hunt), but the main event was radishes, roasted with whole cloves of garlic and tossed with a pinch of fresh parsley and the gentlest squish of lemon to ever occur in my kitchen. The radish greens were tossed in with browned onions during the last minutes of their fast caramelization in the meat juices and cooking fat. There was so much black pepper! Nothing went to waste. And it was efficient – dinner was on the table within twenty minutes.

If you’ve never roasted radishes, once you do this will probably be the way you’ll come to love them most, if you don’t already adore them irrationally. Just a quick sear in a dash of oil in a pan over high heat, then into the oven for 15 minutes, and that’s it. Toss with herbs and pepper and lemon and salt, if you feel like it. That’s it, really, but here’s the recipe anyway. Make them tonight?

Roasted radishes and garlic

(Serves two as a generous side dish.)

  • 1 bunch radishes, greens removed
  • 6 cloves garlic (or more if you feel like it)
  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 tsp. chopped fresh herbs, such as mint, basil, or parsley
  • 1 tsp. fresh lemon juice
  • Pinch of salt

Preheat your oven to 425°F.

Trim each radish, top and bottom, removing the root and top. Slice in half lengthwise, if your radishes are of average radish size, or in quarters if they are very large. Peel garlic, and trim the tough ends off if necessary.

In a sauté pan that you can use on the stove-top and in the oven, over high heat, heat olive oil. Add radishes and cook quickly, no more than a minute per side. Add whole cloves of garlic, and put into the oven, uncovered.

Cook for 15 to 18 minutes, turning radishes and garlic each once halfway through cooking. Both sides should turn a deep golden brown.

Toss radishes and garlic with herbs, lemon juice, and salt, and serve immediately. Take a blurry picture, then eat.

They turn sweet, almost buttery. They lose their peppery taste, but take on something different – still bright and springy, but a little more subtle, and silky on the tongue. They are very good as they are (with meat and their sautéed greens), or mushed up with soft cheese on fresh bread. Like cooking cucumbers, this is the kind of thing that everyone should know about by now but for some reason doesn’t. But you do now! Now there’s no excuse. Enjoy!

Good olive oil, run-on sentences, and bread soup.

~ wellfedemily ~ 9 Comments

I have long felt hard done by for the lack of a large Italian grandmother in my life. My grandmothers have all been quite fantastic, of course, but we’re so Canadian that one not-too-distant relative was mentioned briefly in a Farley Mowat book, which I am pretty sure is the Canadian equivalent of boasting ancestors arriving on the Mayflower. Which is not to say that Canadian is a milquetoast heritage – it’s got more than its share of culinary ooh-la-la, and not just what Americans call Canadian Bacon (which is actually just ham). But what it doesn’t have is olive oil.

You know where does have fantastic olive oil, though? San Francisco. So maybe an Italian grandmother is not entirely what I need – maybe I need an American BFF instead.

Years ago I discovered the good olive oil, and it comes from a shop in the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero. It’s made from organically grown California olives, and I would do some very morally questionable things to have access to a lifetime’s supply. Unfortunately, they don’t ship to Canada. It’s like being in love with someone who doesn’t return your calls.

So when we went back recently, I had but two orders of business: get myself to City Lights Bookstore which is the kind of place I nearly fall down weeping at the entrance to which means that I chose the right major in spite of the long-term earning potential I sacrificed; and, get to the Ferry Building for the good olive oil. I misjudged the distance from Fisherman’s Warf to our oily destination, causing my party of five to have to hike nearly thirty minutes in bad footwear, but it was totally worth it. For me.

What I love about the good olive oil – Stonehouse Olive Oil, if you’re too lazy or captivated by my elegant prose to click the link above – is that it tastes how I imagine fresh olive oil in Italy would. They sell each batch the same year it’s harvested, so it’s as fresh as you can get without actually sticking your face under the olive press.

Oh, San Francisco – what scandalous, depraved, excellent things I would do to be able to live with you forever.

Anyway, I got the oil, and I’m hoarding it. Except I used some tonight, a good amount of it for someone who is unsure when they’ll be back to the States to get more. We had soup – an enormous pot of it, because it’s the week before payday and we’re just back from vacation and OMG-broke, like, so much so that I jammed the vending machine at work with foreign money this morning trying to get an orange juice. I make big pots of soup when I’d prefer to stretch a meal into three to avoid starvation, and this, made of pantry staples, will take us handsomely through lunch and all the way to dinner tomorrow. For regular households, that means eight to ten servings. It’s easily adapted to smaller feedlots, however, so fiddle with it until it’s to your liking.

Bread Soup

(Serves 8 to 10.)

  • 1/4 cup good olive oil (I don’t believe I ever specify extra-virgin, but it’s what I mean by good olive oil)
  • 5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
  • 1/2 lb. stale bread, cubed and toasted (about four thick slices)
  • 2 28 oz. cans whole tomatoes, plus juice
  • 1/2 cup red wine
  • 4 cups vegetable or chicken stock
  • 1 19 oz. can cannelini or white kidney beans
  • 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley (flat-leaf is better, but the curly stuff is okay if that’s all you can get)
  • 1 tbsp. lemon zest
  • As much pepper as you feel you need

In a large pot over medium-high heat, warm olive oil. When olive oil is hot, add garlic, and sauté until fragrant and lightly golden, about two minutes.

Meanwhile, whizz bread cubes in a food processor or blender until you end up with coarse crumbs. You don’t want to grind the bread too finely, or you will end up with a soup with boring texture, and no one wants that.

Add bread crumbs to the oil, and stir to coat. Immediately begin squishing tomatoes into the mix, adding juice quickly and scraping the bottom of the pot to ensure nothing burns to it. Add the wine. Stir again. Add the broth.

Reduce heat to medium, and simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes.

After a half-hour, add beans, cheese, parsley, lemon zest, and pepper. Simmer an additional five minutes, until parsley has wilted and the whole thing smells magnificent.

If it’s a dark and stormy night and the water runs down the window so fast your cat can’t keep up with the drops, serve piping hot, with a swirl of your favourite olive oil, a lemon wedge, and a fat hunk of crusty fresh bread. And wine. Red wine. If it’s not, this is pretty nice chilled, like a hearty gazpacho, but serve with a charming white wine, a Pinot Grigio or a Sauvignon Blanc instead.

It’s delicious on the first round, like a bread and bean stew, but even better the second day. The hallmark of a quality meal, if you ask me and my imaginary Italian grandmother.

Green soup.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

I haven’t been around very much, and I haven’t been cooking. I’ve been busy, which after having been very not busy for over a month has proven exhausting, and even my weekends have been full of things. The past week has blown by and in its aftermath the weather? I am being pulled under it. By tonight I was an antisocial, horizontal mess and my main objective was to eat something restorative, something soothing that would put me back in my right place.

Soup.

Vegetables are greener and brighter these days, and green things are all kinds of restorative. For soothing, an avocado. And if you’re feeling flat and beige, like I am, this is the kind of thing you can make with whatever you’ve got in your fridge – if your green things are chard or kale or even lettuce, it will be more than okay. My favourite leaf is spinach, but you can use what you like. Watercress, arugula, and dandelion greens are in season at the moment. It’s vegan and easily adapted to include other ingredients – the components are only part of the experience and are easily modified, subbed out, or dropped all together.

And it’s smooth, so there’s none of that complicated chewing to be worked out. You can eat it as close to horizontal as is comfortable.

Green soup

(Serves four to six.)

  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 4 cups vegetable stock or water (plus one or two cups additional water, as needed)
  • Juice of one large lemon, about 2 tbsp.
  • 2 to 3 cups leafy greens, packed
  • 1 bunch scallions, chopped
  • 1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley
  • 1/3 cup chopped basil or cilantro
  • 1 avocado, diced
  • 1 or 2 large jalapeño peppers, diced (if you prefer less heat, remove seeds and membrane before dicing)
  • 1 tsp. dried oregano
  • 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
  • Salt and pepper, to taste

Sweat onions and the white and light green parts of the scallions in olive oil, then add garlic. Sauté for a minute or two, until you can smell the garlic, then add four cups of stock, water, or a combination. Bring to a boil.

Stir in green things, allowing them a minute or two to wilt. Add lemon juice, and blend until smooth with a blender (in batches) or a hand blender. At this point, add liquid to reach desired consistency.

Stir in oregano, nutmeg, and salt and pepper. Taste, adjusting seasonings as needed – I used more water than stock, and found I needed about 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt.

Garnish with yogurt, if desired, and serve hot or chilled.

Radishes are the new whatever we were eating all winter.

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

Today was supposed to be another errand day, but laziness and that pesky but inevitable St. Patrick’s Day hangover took hold in the morning and I ate one of Grace’s magnificent cupcakes (from this recipe here) for breakfast and thought that I could probably spend most of the day in the bathtub reading Kerouac and imagining I had the oomph to find and follow adventure someplace else. And then, I realized that the breeze blowing through my window was warm, and thought that today was a day I could venture outside in a sundress, with a sweater, of course, so I hopped on my bike and crossed the errands off my list like a champ.

Apologies for the exceedingly blurry photos of late – I discovered after I uploaded these, after lunch had been snarfed down gluttonously, that the lens was dirty, because I am a slob.

It’s so warm and pleasant right now, it’s as if summer is just around the corner. Everywhere I looked, there were rhododendrons and cherry blossoms, and occasionally I caught sight of tulips with petals splayed so wide that spring might as well be half over. It was a glorious seventh day of unemployment, and at this point, I’m not sure I ever want to go back to work. I wish there weren’t so many rules for working – I would be the happiest, most productive worker bee ever if I could follow my own schedule, eat something fresh and homemade at lunchtime, and nap in the sun when I felt like it. There has to be a way to do that. If there is and you’ve figured it out, let me know.

Because it is now spring, and a new season of veggies is upon us, today’s something homemade was radish bruschetta, loosely assembled and flung onto a few crusty slices of rustic baguette. I ate the overflow with a fork, and sipped sweet German Riesling all the while.

And I’ll tell you the ingredients, but there’s not really a recipe, because all you do is throw in a bit of this and that, to your taste, and dump it all out onto a few slices of bread. You can make as much or as little as you need, and you can add anything you like. If you cut the radishes bigger it can be more like a salad, and if you chop them a little finer, they could pass for a sandwich filling.

Radish bruschetta

  • Bread
  • Radishes
  • Feta cheese
  • Mint
  • Parsley
  • Lemon, zest and juice
  • Good olive oil
  • Coarsely ground black pepper

Slice the bread, and into a bowl slice the radishes, crumble the cheese, chop the mint and the parsley, and zest and juice the lemon. Drizzle with olive oil, and grind as much pepper as you like into the mix. Toss. Then spoon out onto bread. This is nourishing springtime lunching at its best.

I think it’s time for a nap now, then a wander to the wine shop, and then to build a fort in my living room.

Red bean soup.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

We’re going on a little vacation this weekend, so it’s nice to not have to buy groceries and also use up the stuff in the fridge. Also, periodically, I like to make a ton of soup, which can be frozen in containers for lunches. The timing was perfect for this soup, which is equal parts cheap to make and tasty to eat – the sweet potato gives the soup great texture and a touch of sweetness, and the combination of chipotle and lime makes it seriously flavourful.

It’s super good for you – low in fat, high in fibre, and filled with healthy stuff. Also, it goes very well with cold beer. So, no one loses!

Even if you don’t have this stuff in your fridge, I recommend a trip to the market to make this one on a weeknight. It’ll take you about an hour, not including the time to soak the beans – just plan ahead a bit, setting the beans to soak before you leave for work. And the leftovers are even better the next day.

Red bean soup

(Serves four to six.)

  • 1/2 lb. dried red kidney beans, soaked for eight hours
  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 small sweet potato, diced (about one cup, but if you end up with a bit more, just use it)
  • 1 cup chopped celery
  • 4 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 5.5 oz. can tomato paste
  • 2 to 4 chipotles (or to taste), chopped
  • 1 tsp. ground cumin
  • 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
  • 1 lime
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • Water

Drain and thoroughly rinse beans. Don’t use the liquid you soaked the beans in, because that liquid contains something like 80% of the farty compounds that make beans so unpleasant sometimes. If you drain and rinse, you’ll wash that away. Set aside.

In a large pot, sweat onions, sweet potato, and celery in olive oil. Add garlic, and pour beans into the pot. Fill pot with four cups of water.

Bring to a boil over high heat. Maintain a boil for about five minutes, before reducing to medium-high heat, and stir in tomato paste. Let cook, uncovered, for thirty to forty minutes, until sweet potatoes are soft and beans are easily cut in half. Add chipotles. (Note: You can buy chipotles in cans in the Latin section of the supermarket, or in smaller Latin markets. They’re cheaper there. Or just get them for free from your friends who go to Mexico.)

Remove pot from heat, and blend until smooth with an additional two to three cups of water, adding extra water for thinner consistency, if desired.

Return to heat, and stir in cumin, coriander, and the juice of the lime. Add salt and pepper, taste, and adjust seasoning as needed.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream, topped with shredded cheddar cheese and chopped cilantro. A side of tortilla chips is a nice touch. And don’t forget the beer.