Excuses won't do

Before you say anything, I know haven’t been updating very regularly. And I do apologize, sincerely. I’ve had the word "blog" scratched into my agenda everyday. It just hasn’t been crossed out.

Today is a day to get back on track. Today is Saturday, a good day. Things have been so busy, with a great CBC internship on weekdays, and with my new job at Good Egg (link) on the weekends (more about that, later).

Oh, and I have more excuses! When I left Montreal, I also had to part with the school camera. Since then, I’ve been struggling to take good pictures with my pocket camera.

Because it’s been two weeks since I last posted on La Cuisinette I have so many things to tell you about:

Good Egg
I started a part-time job at a shop called Good Egg. It’s a lovely way to spend my weekends. It’s a food bookstore / cooking emporium in Kensington Market.

Good Egg is packed with cookbooks, food politics essays, biographies of famous chefs, books on foraging, books on fancy chicken breeds and on picking mushrooms. And books on anything else related to food (including "Kama Sutra in the Kitchen" and children’s books on poop). It’s also full of kitchen nicknacks, like bibs, peanut shaped erasers, rubber chickens, and lapel pins shaped like shrimp. You know, the kind of thing you might not know you need, but you do.

Parcel
My mum sent me a parcel. It was full of goodies: jars of preserves that my Grandma, Marge, made the summer before she died; a packet of arugula and spinach seeds from my parents’ back porch planter; and, to go along with those seeds, two small bags of sheep shit compost.

You know your mother loves you when she ships shit half-way across the country.


Tinga de pollo
Adapted from a Diana Kennedy recipe

Also, here’s a recipe. I can only preface it by saying that I just finished a pile of tinga tostadas, and they were grand. This recipe is the closet thing to the ones I used to eat with Emma, in Coyoacán Market, Mexico City.

Tinga is sloppy, smokey tomatoey meat, usually pork or chicken, eaten on tostadas or in tacos.

180 grams (3 links or so) chorizo
½ cup chopped onion
2 or 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 cups shredded green cabbage
4 tomatoes, finely chopped (or even pureed, if you have time)
3 canned chipotle peppers in adobo
2 tbsp sauce from can of chipotles
2 medium chicken breasts, poached and shredded (or 2 to 3 cups of shredded left-over

roast chicken)
1/3 cup of the poach water from the chicken (1/3 cup chicken broth)
salt to taste

Skin and crumble the chorizo sausage. In a large skillet, cook on low heat until cooked through, but not brown. Discard any excess fat. Add the cabbage, onion and garlic, and cook on medium-low heat until the cabbage is soft and onions are translucent. Add tomatoes, and turn the heat up to medium. Add the chipotle chilis (whole) and the chipotle sauce, and cook until the tomatoes are fully cooked and the skins have curled. Add the chicken and the broth. Adjust the salt. Serve on tostadas with sliced avocado and crème fraîche.

This week:
The photo of the mountain sheep is only linked to the tinga recipe in the sense that I took it in Mexico City, at the zoo, probably after having eaten tinga. I can’t bring myself to post the pictures I took with my point-and-shoot.

I will practice.