Lovely, lovely carrots

Goodbye Montreal poutine. Hello picnics in Queen’s Park! Which is exactly what I did yesterday afternoon.


It was a beautiful 20 Celsius in my big, new city, and I spend the out walking. I strolled down College Street, Dundas, Roncesvalles, and Grenedier, all the way to High Park, which is beautiful, even in the stern, grey colours of April.


Then, I took the subway to Queen’s Park. The subway in Toronto has terrific names—Landsdowne, Osgoode, Runnymede, Keele—all the more British with their E's, hanging at the end, like a decoration.


But I’d better get to the marinated carrots. They are the first thing I’ve made in my new kitchen, and they turned out to be as lovely in Ontario as they are anywhere else. These carrots are perfect: fresh, vinegary, sweet and spiced with a smidgeon of fresh chilies. And crunchy! A perfect picnic food, really.


The key to these carrots is to parboil them, just so. Too cooked, they’ll lose the crunch. I find that 10 minutes boiling is good, if I keep the carrots whole, or halved. Also, the recipe calls for the carrots to sit for 24 hours. They’re pretty good even after a few hours, so don’t hesitate to make them the same day.


Marinated carrots
Adapted from a recipe in The Silver Spoon (Phaidon Press)


1 ½ lbs carrots, washed, peeled and cut in half, crosswise to fit in the pot
2 cloves garlic, very finely minced
2 or 3 sprigs flat-leaf parley, chopped
pinch of dried oregano
6 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 small red chili, seeded and finely chopped


Cook the carrots in boiling, salted water for 10 minutes, or until just tender, but still quite crunchy. Drain and let sit (to dry) while you chop the garlic, parsley and chili. Cut the carrots into thin batons. In a bowl, combine carrots, garlic, parsley, oregano, olive oil, vinegar, and chili. Cover and refrigerate for 24 hours. Serve cold or at room temperature (or picnic basket temperature, I suppose.)

On fridge duty

We’re moving to Toronto! We’re packing our things, labeling the boxes, and trying our mighty best to empty the fridge and cupboards. That being said, I’m sure you’ll understand that I haven’t got a recipe this week. I’m eating jumbled-like, with occasional trips to Dairy Queen.

What I’m saying, is I haven’t been cooking. More like using.

Just now, I made a ground lamb skillet with a few borderline cheeses from the back of the fridge, a wrinkly onion, some suspicious carrots and a bag of penne pulled from dark corners. It was...okay.

But next week, I’ll be in Toronto. I’ll be basking in hot dog stands, and I’ll have a new apartment kitchen. And I promise recipes.

Lamb, full circle

It arrived in a leather suitcase, on Trudeau International Airport’s baggage claim. It was heavy and cold. It came off the rolling carpet and onto the floor with a thump.

The suitcase was full of lamb! Ground lamb, leg of lamb, lamb chops, lamb garlic sausage, lamb breakfast sausage, and a few delicious misfits: some goose and venison. My dad brought the suitcase, a gift from the farm.

He spent the weekend with me, in Montreal, and I took him to some of my favorites parts of the city. We had a lovely weekend, we walked a lot, stopping every few hours to eat or have coffee. It was a vacation in my own city, and it reminded me of trips to Winnipeg with my dad when I was a little girl. Endless ice cream and hamburgers, treats the whole way. Things have not changed.

But back to the suitcase: I’ve only made a small dent in my now-meat packed freezer, and already, I can feel my red blood cells dancing.

On Friday, we fried some garlic sausage with some perogis. There was some left over garlic sausage, and this caused a kind of chain reaction.

On Saturday, we left the sausage in the fridge, and my dad made a chili with the ground lamb.

On Sunday, we made a delicious leg roast, with maple syrup and rosemary. (Earlier that day, we went back to the market, and my dad bought four litres of maple syrup. It went into the emptied leather suitcase, Winnipeg bound.) We had some friends over that night, so we served some leftover chili as a starter.

With the bone from the roast came a noodle soup on Monday night (inspired by Mark Bittman ). It was packed with vegetables and Friday's garlic sausage.

Those leftover noodles became a chow mein (well, sort of) with a sauce made from Monday’s broth.

The leftover sauce inspired egg foo yung (again, sort of).

By then, my string of leftovers was broken, so I had to dip into the freezer again for some breakfast sausage.

Legume love

As it turns out, my love affair with lentils is not over. I think they love me too, the way they’re treating me (very well, that is). Don’t worry, I’m all right. I’m weaning myself off them. I came very close to writing about them again, in this week’s blog, but I know it would be too much. Too many lentils, too soon.

To compensate, I’ll write you about another legume. Cheap strategy, you say? You haven’t tasted this salad yet.

It’s warm and spicy, with its roasted butternut squash and allspice. Chickpeas are not lentils, and they don’t try to be. They charm me just as much, with their cheeky little bums, those cutties.

Also: My father is in town, and he arrived at Trudeau International Airport with a suitcase full of lamb. And now, I have a freezer full of lamb. So next week, I promise to write about it. No more legumes. I promise.

Warm butternut and chickpeas with tahini dressing
Adapted from a recipe by Molly Wizenberg in orangette.blogspot.com

For salad:
1 medium butternut squash (2 to 2 ½ lbs), peeled, seeded
and cut into 1 ½ inch pieces
1 medium garlic clove, pressed
½ tsp ground allspice
2 tbsp olive oil
salt
1 can (19 oz) can chickpeas, drained and rinced
½ of a red onion, finely chopped
1/4 to ½ cup fresh cilantro, corsely chopped

For tahini dressing:
1 medium garlic clove, finely minced with a pinch of salt
4 tbps lemon juice
3 tbsp well stirred tahini
2 tbsp water
2 tbsp olive oil, or more, to taste

Preheat the oven to 425 F. Combine the squash, oil, garlic, salt, and allspice and roast for 10-15 minutes on a baking sheet, until soft. Let cool, but not completely.

Meanwhile, make the dressing. Whisk together the garlic, lemon juice, tahini, water and olive oil.
Combine the cooled squash, the chickpeas, onion and cilantro in a bowl. Toss with the tahini dressing and serve (or toss with half of the dressing, reserving the rest so each person can add dressing to taste).

A quick note on Pavlov's dog

When I make dinner, I like to listen to CBC Radio’s As It Happens.

Andrew told me that when hears clips from As It Happens any other time of day, his stomach grumbles.

Pretty, though

Also, here is a picture of a cake I made on Sunday. It wasn't very good, honestly, but I did think it was pretty. Here's it's glamour shot.

Touski, or the secret to soup

I don’t really have a recipe today, but I’d like to tell you about a soup I made on Sunday. It’s my favorite kind of soup, the kind that can only happen when you’re interested in cleaning your fridge. In French, or at least in my family, it’s called a “touski” soup— on y met tout ce qu’il y a dans le frigo— an “everything-in-the-fringe” soup. A plethora of the weekend’s leftovers and of nearly forgotten bits and bobs. In other words, a heartfelt attempt to get to know your fridge.

You have to use your judgment, but these soups are often are beautiful, and strangely perfect. And I always feel rather independent making this kind of soup: Because I've marched ahead with no recipe, and because I’ve managed to salvage and recycle what might have gone to waste.




This particular soup is made of leftovers from a weekend with friends. We had a party on Friday, which became more of a potluck. We also had some friends, Tim, Michelle, and Julia, who stayed at our place for a glorious weekend of eating and drinking.

For our party on Friday night, Red brought a Portuguese roasted chicken. It was delicious. We had bones and meat left over. The bones eventually became broth, along with some onions, garlic and a few sprigs of oregano. And the chunks of meat adds to the soups heartiness.

On Saturday night, Michelle made tacos. She’s a fantastic cook, and had the wonderful idea of making mashed yams as one of the taco fillers. We were left with some of that, and with some chopped tomato. I added the yam in the pot, just after sauteeing some more onions and some diced potato. In went parboiled lentils, too. I found them at the pack of the cupboard, left over from a previous week long obsession with lentils.

In our fridge, we also had some near-goner spinach. That went into the soup at the last minute, just to wilt.

On Sunday night, in the wake of our wonderful weekend with friends, all these leftovers came together and became a warm oregano and chicken soup, heavy with vegetables and lentils. The mashed yam turned it into a thick and hearty soup.

Now, we are in our quiet apartment, our friends are gone, and it feels a little empty. But we’re still enjoying the leftovers, thinking of all the good times and good food we had.

This week

I’ve never told you about my favorite food blog, Orangette. Last Sunday, I made a batch of her butterscotch cookies. I made them again on Friday. And then I made them once more last night, with my good friend Caroline and a bottle of wine. You should try them too.

Cake and half-truths

The summer before last, when I lived on Braemar Street in Winnipeg, there was an apple cake that I made a lot. My parents’ crab apple trees were heavy with fruit, and I came home from the farm with loads of apples several times in late August.

I have to say, this story isn’t really about cake. It’s about those little secrets that are best kept to yourself. It’s about little accidents that should be left untold.

I had been invited to a supper with people I didn’t know very well. Keen on impressing, I made my cake the night before, so it would be well set and I wouldn’t have to scramble in the kitchen after work. It would be a hit, I knew it. It’s a beautiful cake, light, not too sweet, and packed with apples.

And apples, I had.

The problem, you ask? It wasn’t just the summer of crab apples. It was also the summer of ants. They were all over the kitchen that year, ransacking everything while I wasn’t looking, laughing at me when my back was turned.

On the dinner night, while waiting for the bus, I inspected my carefully saran wrapped cake. And then I saw it. An antenna sticking out of the icing, squashed against the plastic.

Shit. An ant in the cake. I got on the bus, sat down, and carefully unwrapped the cake. There were a dozen ants, smooched into the sweet icing. Diabetes kills, I thought. Bastards.

I picked all the bugs out before my stop.

Everyone enjoyed the cake, no one ever knew. Except me, of course. And you, now.

Insect-free apple cake
adapted from a recipe in the MCC Simply in Season

5 cups tart apples (peeled, cored and chopped)
1 1/3 cup sugar
½ cup oil
2 eggs, slightly beaten
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp salt

Icing

2/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cream
1 tbsp flour
1/3 powdered sugar

Combine the sugar and the apples and let stand while mixing other ingredients. In a separate bowl, combine oil, eggs and vanilla. Set aside. In a third bowl, mix flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Alternating between the egg mixture and the flour mixture, pour and stir into the apples. Pour into a greased cake pan (3.5 L). Bake for 50 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

For the icing, bring brown sugar, cream, and flour to a brief boil in a sauce pan. Remove from heat and stir in the icing sugar, briskly. Pour onto slightly cooled cake immediately.