Tag Archives: creative side dishes

Swimming with the fishes

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Ever walk past a tank of swimming fish in a grocery store’s seafood department and think to yourself, “Who the heck actually buys one of those?”  Well, this week, for the benefit of my gazillions of weird food fans, the answer was, “I do!”

There’s something about asking for live food that seems both indulgent and disgusting. As I pointed at the ugly grey fish making sweet little kissy faces and ordered the poor grocery guy to chase him with the big net, I felt a pang of guilt that I would be responsible for taking him/her from a swimming state to a dinner plate, but I had to tell those sucky inner voices of mine to shut up.  I am a meat-eater after all, at almost every single meal, and it’s hypocritical if I get turned off just because I have to watch the inevitable dirty work go down in person.  I just saw someone’s Twitter description say, “If slaughterhouses had clear walls everyone would be vegetarian,” and although I’m sure this wasn’t intended to encourage me to watch my food getting killed, it did make me try to own the fact that I eat meat.  If I continue to do it.  Maybe the conclusion to this blog will be that I eventually become veggie.  But not just yet.

Because I am a food journalist, I’ll describe one more disturbing experience that I had in eating a live fish.  If you’re vegetarian, please turn away and wait for my next post.  Grocery guy took out my flopping fish…

…and put it on the back counter beside a big rubber mallet.  I was horrified, worried that I was about to see the fish get a violent whack on the head, but then I didn’t see it.  Grocery guy lopped off all the fins and gutted and scaled the fish with robot-like efficiency, handing it to me after only about fifteen seconds in a plastic bag with the head on and the rest of the body intact.  So I’m still left wondering – did I just miss the death blow, or did it not happen?  Closer and closer to veganism every day. But why does meat have to taste so good?

And my day just got better and better.  Now I had to prepare a whole fish for dinner that day (to take advantage of the “fresh meat”) and I was having friends over in the afternoon followed by piano lessons for my daughter which meant I wouldn’t be able to prep everything until after seven.  Let me tell you, I wouldn’t recommend lopping off a fish’s head…

…while entertaining three moms and their kids, and I didn’t – I hacked it off with a dull knife feeling like an axe murderer before they arrived, wrapping the rest in foil, stuffing it with garlic, and baking it incognito while we all sipped coffee (aka wine).

I chose a recipe from Jamie Oliver’s Meals in Minutes because I was so pressed for time.  Despite my adoration of Jamie Oliver, this cookbook kind of bugs me because the instructions are jumbled together to help home chefs with efficiency, popping out an entire meal at the end – I find this makes recipes difficult to modify and track at a glance. In this case, though, I needed Jamie’s help to throw a dinner together as quickly as possible, and I loved how it worked out.  I’ll copy the entire recipe below so that you can see how the book works, and then I’ll describe how I modified it to prep as much as possible ahead, throwing the rest together post-piano.  He includes a dessert and drink too, but I didn’t make those so I’ve omitted them.

Branzino (Recently Live Tilapia, for me) & Crispy Pancetta, Mashed Sweet Potatoes and Asian Greens

Mashed Sweet Potatoes

  • 1 ½ pounds sweet potatoes
  • 2 limes
  • A small bunch of cilantro
  • 2Tbsp mango chutney
  • Soy sauce

Greens

  • 1 fresh red chile
  • 1 clove garlic
  • Soy sauce
  • 1 lime
  • Sesame oil
  • 1 bunch asparagus
  • 1 head of broccoli

Branzino

  • 8 slices pancetta
  • 4 x 6-ounce branzino fillets, skin on, scaled and pin-boned (for me this was one tilapia fish plus a few supplemental fillets of whitefish)
  • 1Tsp fennel seeds
  • 1 lemon

Seasonings

  • Olive oil
  • Extra virgin olive oil
  • Sea salt & black pepper

To Start Get all your ingredients and equipment ready.  Fill and boil the kettle.  Put a large saucepan with a lid and a large frying pan  on a medium heat.

Potatoes  Wash the sweet potatoes, trim off any gnarly bits, then stab them a few times with a knife.  Put in a large microwave-safe bowl, halve oneo f the limes and add to the bowl, then cover with a double layer of plastic wrap and microwave on full power for 12 minutes, or until cooked through.

Greens  Seed and finely chop the chile, adding half to a large serving bowl and add 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and ¼ to 1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil.  Squeeze in the juice of 1 lime and add a splash of sesame oil.  Mix, taste, and adjust the soy sauce if needed.  Trim the asparagus stalks.  Quarter the head of the broccoli lengthways from the head to the base of the stalk.

Branzino  Put the pancetta into the frying pan with a drizzle of olive oil.  Keep an eye on it, turning when crispy.  [When the pancetta has become golden] remove it to a plate, leaving the fat in the pan.  Add the fish to the pan, skin side down.  Shake the pan and use a spatula to press the fillets flat for a few seconds.  Pound 1 teaspoon of fennel seeds in a pestle & mortar and scatter over the fish from a height with a pinch of salt & pepper.  Finely grate over the zest of 1 lemon, then cut the lemon into quarters and set aside.

Potatoes  Finely chop the cilantro on a large wooden cutting board, setting a few leaves aside for the garnish.  Add the mango chutney, a good splash of soy sauce, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, the juice from ½ lime, and the reserved chopped chile.  Chop and mix everything together on the board.

Greens  Fill the large saucepan with boiling water and add a large pinch of salt.  Add the broccoli and asparagus, making sure they are completely submerged.  Put the lid on and turn the heat to high.

Branzino  Check the fish – once the skin is golden and crispy, turn the heat down to low – but have confidence to let the skin become good and crispy before reducing the heat.

Potatoes  Get the sweet potatoes out of the microwave and check they are cooked through, then use tongs to squeeze over the juice from the hot lime halves and discard them.  Carefully tip the sweet potatoes on top of the mango chutney mixture and use a knife or masher to chop and mash everything together, including the skins.  Season to taste, adding more fresh lime juice if needed.

Branzino  Take the pan of fish off the heat and flip the fillets over so they gently finish cooking on the flesh side.  Return the pancetta to the pan to warm through, then serve the fish and pancetta on top of the board of mashed potatoes.  Pop the lemon sedges on the side for squeezing and sprinkle over the reserved cilantro.  Take to the table.

Greens  Drain the broccoli and asparagus in a colander, then tip into the serving bowl with the dressing, quickly toss, and take to the table.

 

Results:  These were the best sweet potatoes I’ve had in my life!  They were spicy, though, so if you don’t like spice maybe substitute a sweet red pepper – I can never find red and green chiles, so I substituted a scotch bonnet pepper, and my hands were still burning through the night.  Also, I don’t like cooking in the microwave, especially with plastic wrap, so if you have enough time, be sure to boil or steam your potatoes instead.  But I’m definitely going to make a version of these sweet potatoes for Christmas dinner.  Delish.

But this post was about the fish.  So what I did differently from Jamie…  I wrapped my whole fish (bloody and slimy, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt, stuffed with sliced garlic) in foil and baked it on a baking sheet at 400 for 35 minutes.  Doing this made it easy to pick apart for meat, which I added to the pancetta fat in the pan…

…sprinkling with crushed fennel seeds and lemon zest as Jamie suggests.  And this got me about 4 bites of meat!  I think if you buy tilapia fillets they probably come from monsters, not grocery store fish like mine.  I learned from this experience that swimming fish are mostly there for decoration.  Sorry fishy.  Anyway, I fried my pre-baked meat to crisp it up a little and followed the rest of the recipe, frying the pancetta and washing and cutting veg before my friends came, re-warming the pancetta and cooking everything else post-piano.

Phil loved it.  Jamie Oliver never disappoints.  But I can’t even tell you if there was a difference in taste due to fishy freshness because I had to mix it with more meat.  I won’t ask for a live fish again, but it was definitely “an experience” to cook one.  Rating:  5 Yums for Jamie’s recipe and cookbook, 2 Gags for cooking a live grocery store fish.

Wine Pairing

In honour of the NHL strike, I’ll choose one of winealign.com’s top chardonnay suggestions (which the site says pairs well with pan fried whitefish), Wayne Gretzky’s 2008 unoaked chardonnay, selling for $13.95 in Ontario.

Don’t eat the daisies (but go for zucchini flowers)

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When my daughter was tiny, she asked if she could eat flowers, and I told her that while it wasn’t impossible, most of the time you couldn’t (probably in clearer language that went something along the lines of “not really”).  With the little guys it’s good to go with blanket rules of thumb – in this case, I didn’t want to find her in the middle of a rose bush at breakfast one morning.

Doris Day had the same rule.  I used to watch this with my mom, who loves the oldie but goodies.

Don’t Eat the Daisies

It turns out, though, that if I had found my daughter in the middle of a rosebush having a nibble everything probably would have turned out okay, besides the inevitable thorn injuries.  This article highlights the many different flower varieties that are edible, and roses are one of them.

I didn’t read an article and visit the Botanical Gardens in the middle of the night to get this recipe, but don’t put it past me.  Finding zucchini flowers was as easy as picking them up at my local organic fruit market/store.  I proudly nabbed them as soon as I saw them, partly hoping to impress my daughter who is now old enough to be selective and cautious about which blooms to consume – a mother would hope, anyway.  One can never predict how sensible one’s own progeny may be, always moving forward only on blind faith, a wish and a prayer.  Just last weekend she forgot to bring shoes for a weekend at the cottage, so my mothering skills are not entirely irrelevant just yet.

But back to the zucchini flowers.

The shopkeeper suggested that people buy them so that they can stuff and deep fry them, and when I got to googling I found this recipe that looked interesting.  A little unhealthy, yes, but I’m always more open to clogging the arteries of guests rather than my own family, and we were having friends for dinner and I needed an appetizer (sorry Mel and Bryan).  I prepared the recipe almost exactly as written, but I’ll recap below so that you don’t have to go to the trouble of clicking over to another window.

Goat Cheese Stuffed Zucchini Flowers

  • 1C all-purpose flour
  • 1C sparkling water (plus a little more)
  • Kosher salt
  • 8 zucchini flowers
  • 1/3C soft goat cheese
  • 2Tbsp cream cheese (I used this as directed, but not sure it’s critical to buy a whole $4 tub of it for this recipe.  Use your judgement)
  • 2Tsp cream
  • 1Tbsp fresh basil, chopped
  • 1 green onion, chopped
  • Vegetable oil, for frying

Directions:  Mix filling ingredients in a small bowl.  Gently spoon filling into the bowls of the flowers, twisting the tops of the petals to close.

Heat a pan full of oil over med-high heat for a few minutes.  Combine flour and sparkling water in a bowl so that it is runny enough to easily coat flowers — I had to add slightly more sparkling water than 1C to decrease thickness of batter.  Gently dredge flowers in flour mixture (homonyms are cool in this recipe) and fry until flowers are golden brown.

Sprinkle with kosher salt and serve.

Fried zucchini flowers

Results:  This recipe was a winner!  Deep fried cheese of any kind is always a treat, and the flowers added a surprising freshness to each bite.  Even Mel ate and enjoyed them, and she is one of the pickiest eaters I know (this wouldn’t offend her – she owns it).  My daughter ate a plain flower dipped in honey because she’s not into cheese.  Fun.  Rating:  5 yums, the highest offered by my very technical ten point rating system.

Suggested wine pairing:  Wine pairing is a new feature of my blog because…well…who doesn’t like wine?  And in this case it’s extra relevant, because my dinner guest for the flowers, Bryan, created the site that I’ll be using to research appropriate pairings: winealign.com.

I would suggest the 2011 Errazuriz Estate Sauvignon Blanc from Aconcagua Valley, Chile, found in Ontario for $11.95. 

I got this result by using the food/wine pairing feature of the site, in combination with searching for the highest rated Sauvignon Blanc at my local liquor store for less than $25. Cheers!

Rind Slop Salad

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Now this title isn’t very fair, because today’s dish was entirely edible.  I was just struggling for a good heading and feel like I’ve been a bit too free with rhyme and alliteration lately.  But it’s true that the title came about as I was considering how many dishes I’ve cooked for this blog using parts of foods I normally would have thrown out (or fed to piggies, if any were handy). I’ve cooked beet greens, lamb bones, garlic greens, fish heads…  pretty soon I’ll be serving up corn cobs and pineapple tops, probably in the same meal.  Today though, I went for watermelon rinds.

We just got back from camping with my friend Hong, who happened to mention that watermelon rinds are edible.  She’s a legit foodie; the type whose house you go to for dinner where you’re fed apps, salad, coconut shrimp soup (where the shrimps are so big you only need two), blackened cod over grilled veg, and then just as you’re trying to figure out how you’re going to make room for dessert she informs you that your meat course is on its way.  Just as a not-so-random example.  The dessert was either homemade bread pudding or profiteroles that day, I can’t remember which, but the fact that she has served me both before proves my point.  This weekend at the campsite she cooked pulled pork over charcoal (ALL DAY) and then topped it with coleslaw and our choice of peach flavoured or traditional homemade barbeque sauce.  Homemade s’more brownies for dessert, in honour of the camping theme.  Bet most of you would be willing to sleep sans-tent in bear country for that kind of treatment.

Anyway, she mentioned that you could eat watermelon rinds, and so since she’s a walking culinary encyclopedia I knew I could trust what she was dishing out (figuratively, for once).  She proceeded to tell me that most people eat it pickled, and here was where I had to exercise caution.  I love pickled stuff as much as the next hog, but I know it’s an awful lot of work.  She continued, “Oh no, it’s really easy…” but then I tuned her out.  Maybe physics is easy for a rocket scientist, but for me it was something I had to make a LOT of time for, and the payoff wasn’t really worth it.  I quickly decided to write ‘pickling watermelon rinds’ after ‘physics’ on my “for a very boring rainy day,” list.  A few earlier items on that list include ‘golf,’ and ‘become bilingual.’  Too busy to can, reader-san.

Instead I found this recipe that suggested steaming the rinds and using them in a salad, which is what I based the recipe below on.  Unfortunately, I’ll spoil the ending and tell you that the results were only pig worthy.  Keep reading, though, and I’ll make suggestions at the end.

Watermelon rind slop salad

  • Rind of one half of a watermelon, white only (green peeled off with peeler).

    (throw out stuff on right)

    My melon had a very thin rind which apparently is how they’re breeding them now.  Stop messing with my melons, geneticists, no one asked you!  I miss seeds.  Anyway, if you get a higher rind yield and want to try original recipe, increase spices

  • 2 green onions, chopped
  • 2Tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and chopped finely
  • 1/2C cilantro, chopped
  • 1Tbsp lemon juice
  • 2Tbsp olive oil
  • 1tsp ground cumin
  • 1/2tsp paprika
  • 1/4tsp cayenne
  • Salt

Steam rinds in steamer until soft.  They will change colour slightly.  Allow rinds to cool.  Combine all ingredients, sprinkling spices over so that they’re evenly distributed.

Results:  Pretty, but not delicious.  The rinds tasted a little like cooked cucumber, which, as I told my husband when he once added it to spaghetti, is a bit wrong.  The recipe didn’t taste terrible, but it definitely wasn’t interesting, even though I love cilantro in almost anything.  Rating:  1 gag.  But I’m not ready to throw the rinds to the squealers just yet.  Here is a totally different recipe that I have imagined after knowing what the steamed rinds taste like.  Please try it and tell me how it works!

Feta Tomato Rind Salad with Basil and Walnuts

  • Watermelon rinds, prepared same as above
  • 1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
  • Good hunk of feta cheese, crumbled
  • Handful of walnuts, toasted in pan or under broiler until fragrant (3-5 minutes)
  • Handful of fresh basil leaves, torn
  • Good glug of olive oil
  • Salt and pepper

Steam rinds and cool, as in previous recipe.  Combine remaining ingredients.

I might even prepare this one for Hong!  Wish me luck.

 

Hellova Jicama (HIH-cuh-muh)

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I ran into a problem at the grocery store this week that I often do while buying foods for my blog, but this time it was taken to the extreme.

I was standing in line to pay for my full cart of kid yogurt, hotdogs, and odd dangerous foodie ingredients, trying to prevent my kids from strangling one another, when the acne ridden checkout teen lazily called, “override please, checkout 5,” into his phone/PA.  Everyone in line took a deep breath trying to ground themselves in patience they didn’t have, but who’s kidding who, I had it worst because I was the only one with kids.  Forget self-checkout and express lanes, there definitely needs to be a “hey I’ve got kids get me the frick out of here,” line.  Even if you don’t have kids you’d appreciate that for the second-hand good it would do you.

Anyway, it turns out that the old woman in front of me had a coupon for adult diapers that she thought would get her two packs for free without putting a single cent down when in fact it was only a BOGO, and the matter was complicated by the fact that she didn’t speak English.  The manager of the store took more than ten minutes to show up at the register to put her magic Alice in Wonderland key in to undo whatever the clerk had done before he was finally able to ring through all of my purchases that were splayed across the grocery belt, having prevented my escape previously.  I rolled my two children who were now blind from having poked one another’s eyes out up to the cash and got ready to pay, only to be faced with what always happens when I buy stuff for this website.  The clerk held this up…

…and said, “What is this?”

By now there were about eight people in line, and they were in no mood for me to run to where I had found it.  Luckily I usually take a picture of the sign posted above my strange food items so that I don’t forget what they are, so I was able to show him this, the sign that was posted over my round tuber veggie roots:

To which he said, “No, I know what Cocoes are.  These are not that.”

I’ll tell you, dear reader(s), that at least 60% of the time the sign posted above a strange veggie does not describe what it should.  You may have read in my blog previously that once I picked up horseradish that was labelled taro.  If it had been taro and I had prepared it as horseradish I would have poisoned my husband.  Thanks to google photos, he lived to tell the tale of how I make the best horseradish ever.  When I say I cook dangerously I mean it literally.

Anyway, when the guy didn’t know what my veggie was, I considered throwing it at him and telling him to forget it, as I watched his face wonder how badly I really needed something that I couldn’t identify.  But I stood my ground.  I’m telling you this story because even though I wanted to end my grocery store pain, I fought for my little cocoes that turned out (with the help of a senior grocery checker professional who said they were something that started with “j”) to actually be jicama.  And I want you to remember this story and do the same, the next time something won’t scan or your item is strange or your checker is incompetent.  You make them call that manager, and you cross your arms and look smug as the whole line swears at you over Twitter into their phones.

I say this because it turns out that jicama is a delicious wonder food, and so obviously I was rewarded for having had the patience of the Dalai Lama and the perseverance of Rosie MacLennan that day (the latter being our only gold medalist in these Olympic games, in the death defying art of the trampoline).

Jicama Hash Browns

  • 3 jicama, peeled and sliced into matchsticks
  • 1 small red onion, peeled and sliced thinly
  • 1Tbsp butter

Directions:  I talked so long telling an anti-climactic story that I’ll let you off easy with a simple recipe.  Melt the butter in a pan.  Sautee the onion until translucent over medium-high heat.  Add the jicama and continue to sautee until slightly brown, about 10 minutes.

Results

Shockingly good.  I “adapted” the recipe from one in the Diabetes Daily  which said that it’s a great low carb substitute for potatoes.  I just found it tasty!  When I tasted it raw, jicama was fresh, almost like an apple crossed with a potato (but less sweet), and cooked it tasted crispier than cooked potatoes.  I will stump grocery checkers with them on a regular basis and throw them into salads raw or cook them as a side dish.  Rating:  3 Yums

Just as an aside

On our recent vacation driving from Calgary to Kelowna we stopped at a rest stop candy store that had everything.  I was tempted to try these and write them up for the site, but I used the fact that I wouldn’t have to do anything to prepare them as an excuse not to:

The ugliest veggie ever

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Sometimes when I think about the premise of my blog, I worry.  This isn’t a shock to anyone who knows me, because I worry about just about everything (unless it’s something that actually matters in which case I’m pretty calm and collected), but in this case I worry that I’ll run out of exotically strange foods to cook.  This week I planned to drive to a far away market to find a rare culinary treasure, but then I walked to the fruit market at the end of my street and found this…

…the vegetable version of the Borg sphere.  Prepare to be assimilated.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen celery roots (celeriac) in my grocery travels, but I’ve always passed them up because they’re pretty ugly.  And big.  And dirty.

I shouldn’t have been afraid though, because it was as easy to peel as a turnip or squash by hacking off its skin with my big knife, and then I was able to chop it up in a jiff.

The hideous thing was so big that I still have half of it left over to use in another meal, and apparently they keep for months.  They’re also low in calories and high in fibre and vitamins C, K, and phosphorous.

I found lots of nice recipes for celeriac soups or potato blends, but these made me feel wintry and I wasn’t sure that these would have made my overheated family very enthusiastic.  I ended up landing on an epicurious inspired recipe for risotto, although mine is quite different, below:

Celery root risotto with beet green pesto and bacon

Risotto

  • 4 strips of bacon
  • 2 leeks, whites and light green only, sliced and chopped into short strips
  • ½ ugly celeriac, peeled and chopped into bite sized chunks
  • 3/4C Arborio rice
  • 3C low sodium chicken stock
  • 1 small handful of parmesan

Directions:  Cook bacon in a deep frying pan until crispy and set aside.  Cook leeks and celeriac in bacon grease (I don’t fry in bacon grease often, so my heart won’t hate me for this.  If yours will be pissed at you, use olive oil instead and switch the bacon topping for sundried tomatoes) over medium heat with lid on until soft, about 10 minutes.  Add rice and cook 1 minute.  Add chicken stock 1 cup at a time, bringing to a boil and then simmering without lid until liquid is absorbed, stirring occasionally.  Stir in parmesan near end of cook time

Pesto

  • One good handful of beet or other greens
  • 1.5 handfuls of walnuts
  • 1.5 handfuls of parmesan
  • Stream of olive oil

 

 

Directions:  Pulse greens, nuts and parm in food processor until combined, but not powdery.  Add olive oil in a stream while processor is running until pesto becomes a paste

(You’ll see from my pics that I like my pesto a little drier to reduce oil used.  You might also notice something else about my oil picture if you look closely).

Top the risotto with the pesto and sprinkle with crumbles of bacon. Extra pesto can be used atop a meat accompaniment.

Results: 

I tried to stay away from a wintry dish, but this turned out to be a delicious comfort food.  What the heck.  Don’t we need to be comforted in the summer?  This would be a fantastic partner for ribs at a barbeque actually, having a really earthy flavour.  That’s it!  Ugly veggie risotto is the hot new alternative to picnic potato salad.

Rating:  2 yums.  Cook it when you need something to stick to your ribs, or to hang out with the pork ones you’re serving

Roasted fiddleheads, carrots, and a mushroom triple threat

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I have a special place in my heart for foods that can’t be played (aw crap, a pun.  I’m leaving it).  With fiddleheads, there’s no messing around.  They show up in the spring, get picked in the wild before they’ve turned into fully fledged ferns, and then they’re gone again.  If you’re eating them and they’re not frozen, they probably recently came from a forest glen near you, and you can be sure you’re eating something that is legitimately in season.

There are many attractive attributes to a fiddlehead.  Its name is cute, coming from that little curly bit at the end of a fiddle’s neck.  It’s healthy, having twice as many antioxidants as blueberries do, while also having its fair share of Omegas 3 and 6.  It’s clearly pretty…

I just wish I had known they could make you puke before I ate a whole bag of them.  Oh, and they might cause cancer.

Yes, after I had cooked the delicious dish below and eaten the entire side as an entrée because my husband is away, I found a Health Canada warning that says that fiddleheads can be the cause of food borne illnesses if they’re not cooked well enough.  I read something else that said that their tight little ferny fists can hang on to bacteria that would otherwise let go while under the tap.  Luckily I had rinsed mine well to try to take pictures of them without any brown bits on them, and had decided to roast them, which works to get rid of salmonella on chicken, so should do the same for the wee microbes on these.  Right?  I’ll let you know in about 12 hours or so.  As for the cancer, I’m not too worried.  The fiddlehead’s seasonality is probably fate’s way of telling you to eat the little curly greeners in moderation.  Also, I mixed them with three kinds of mushrooms which I read in the book Anticancer are good cancer fighters, so I think I broke even.

Anyway, when I read that fiddleheads could be roasted, my mind jumped to other veggies and fungi that I liked when cooked that way, and I threw them all together with some thyme, olive oil, and garlic.  Here are my pretty little carrots.  And yes, I know you’ve probably seen carrots before, but we just got a new camera and I’m excited.

And here is the recipe for Roasted Fiddleheads, Carrots, and a Mushroom Triple Threat

  • 2 handfuls of fiddleheads, washed carefully
  • ½ pint oyster mushrooms, chopped coarsely
  • 1 portabello mushroom, stem discarded
  • 1 pint shiitake mushrooms, stems trimmed
  • 1 small bunch carrots, each peeled and cut into three parts
  • 1 garlic clove, chopped
  • Very good glug of olive oil
  • 2tsp fresh thyme (or 1tsp dried)
  • Kosher salt and pepper to taste

Directions:  Preheat oven to 400.  Prepare all and combine in bowl, dousing generously with olive oil before adding thyme and salt/pepper.  Prepare baking sheet with foil and distribute vegetables evenly.  Roast vegetables for about 40 minutes, stirring once or twice.  Finished when liquids have dried and veggies are beginning to look brown with some crispy bits.

Results:

Excellent!  I would serve this mix as a side any time fiddleheads are in season.  The mushrooms added great diversity in texture and the carrots contributed sweetness as their gift.  Very easy and quick to prepare, while still looking and tasting impressive.  Healthy and vegan too, as a bonus.  The fiddleheads tasted quite like asparagus to me, and I ate every last one and would do it again, even knowing that they are making me take my life into my own hands.

Rating:  4 Yums

 

Albino eggplant (or blanche aubergine)

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I picked up the prettiest veggies the other day – two gorgeously white eggplants.  When I got them they were pristine, but because I didn’t cook them for a few days you’ll notice some brownish spots in my photo.  Mental note – always pose your albino eggplants for their photo shoots before they get old enough to have age spots.  Or at least buy them some Oil of Olay to help them recover their lost youth.

Here is what a white eggplant should look like, photo courtesy of this blog…

And here are my over-the-hill ones:

Now I’m always conflicted when I pass eggplant at the grocery store, because I love it and want to buy one, but my husband hates it.  I grabbed these ones with the excuse that, “well, maybe the white ones taste totally different and he’ll actually eat them.”  One time I tried to serve him Baba Ghanoush, thinking that he only thought he hated eggplant, and that if it was prepared in a different way he wouldn’t know the difference.  He tried a big dollop of the Ghanoush on a pita bread and had to spit it out, asking me “what’s the dip that tastes like ass?” I didn’t have high hopes for the white eggplant, but at least if he didn’t eat it I would get twice as much.

There isn’t much to say about eggplant that you don’t already know, except for two things.  One:  It’s called eggplant because the white ones actually used to be more plentiful than the purple ones, and they looked like eggs growing as plants.  Cool, eh?  Two:  They have the highest nicotine content of any edible plant.  So if you have a teenager, your eggplants are going missing, and you smell funny odours coming from the basement, he’s probably trying to smoke them.  Parents, you’re welcome, dirtbags, you’re busted.  (Don’t try this trick at home, though.  You would have to eat 20 eggplants to get the same amount of nicotine found in one cigarette!)

I found a delicious-looking Korean recipe on this blog for eggplant that incorporated two of my favourite things – sesame and garlic.  I was all ready to go with it, and then panicked.  I had people over, I didn’t have the soy sauce it called for, and I was at least 15 minutes away from a store that might not have even been open.  I had to improvise, and so wracked my brain and my cupboard for something that might do for soy sauce in a pinch.  The best I could do was Fish Sauce.  If you can think of other creative solutions, I’ll send you a prize, no joke.  And yes, that prize may or may not be a packet of soy sauce.  Anyway, here’s what I did:

White Eggplant Gaji Namul

  • 2 white eggplants, sliced into ½” rounds
  • 2Tbsp fish sauce
  • 1 chopped green onion
  • 2 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1/2Tbsp roasted sesame seeds
  • 2Tbsp sesame oil

Directions:  Preheat to 425.  Lay the eggplant rounds on a baking sheet…

(spaced out and flat, though, I was just proud of my picture) and douse them with olive oil.  Roast them for 10 minutes.  Let them cool, and rip them with your fingers into strips, putting the strips into a bowl.  Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl and mix gently.

Results:  My husband ate it!  Enough said.  The “after” photo includes the spoon, passed out from the stress of trying to figure out what could replace soy sauce.

Rating:  3 Yums.  I’m not sure that white eggplant tastes any different from purple, but this recipe would make any colour of eggplant taste great.

Once you go black…(black radish, that is)

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I was pushing my kids in the stroller on a mission to nowhere in my neighborhood this week when a sign on a basket of  round, dark root veggies that looked like beets made me do a double-take, because the sign said, “Ontario Black Radishes.”  Now you have to admit that anything black that you can eat is kind of interesting.  I’ve had black pasta coloured with squid ink that didn’t taste incredibly different from regular pasta, but that looked fantastically dramatic.  When I was a kid, I also had black licorice ice cream, which was different enough to draw stares, although maybe those were because of the resultant smiling black teeth.  So when I saw a basket of giant black radishes, I knew a few needed to come home with me.

Here is my daughter holding two of them:

And here is one all by its lonesome:

I did some reading about them, and discovered that they are typically found in winter, and also that they are stronger than a regular radish, so many descriptions suggested that I tone them down a bit.  I took this advice, which said to wash them, grate them with a coarse grater, and toss them with a liberal dose of kosher salt, which would mellow them out.  I left them in their salt on the counter and went to the library.

When I came back an hour later, my husband, never one to mince words, confronted me at the door asking accusingly, “What smells like a bum???”  I wouldn’t agree with his description of the smell, thankfully, but the main floor of our house was definitely pungent with an overpowering stinky radish odour.  My daughter walked around plugging her nose.  I quickly rinsed my concoction to remove the salt and stuck the radish gratings in a ziplock in the fridge, which contained the smell…to the fridge.  Every time I opened the fridge door for the rest of the afternoon I was met with more gripes my husband, so I ended up telling him to stop whining, that the stink was about to become his dinner.  He prepared to order pizza.

But thanks to chocolateandzucchini.com, the black radish was absolutely delicious.  Here are the ingredients and recipe link for the best potato salad I’ve ever had:

- 450 grams (1 pound) small waxy potatoes
- 1 clove garlic, peeled and smashed with the side of the knife blade
- 1 medium black radish, about 220 grams (1/2 pound) (when buying, make sure it is firm to the touch, not limp nor soft)
- 2 teaspoons honey vinegar or other mild vinegar (I had to use balsamic)
- 4 teaspoons olive oil
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- a small bunch of chives, finely snipped (I had to use green onions)
- a few sprigs of parsley, leaves roughly chopped
- the meat from 10 walnuts, crumbled
- sea salt, freshly ground pepper

Overall impression:  I tasted the radish before it was salted, and it was spicy and gave me heartburn after only one bite.  After the salt treatment it still tasted very radish-like, but in the salad with the walnuts it somehow acquired a very wintry, earthy character.  The grated shavings gave perfect textural balance to the creamy flesh of the potatoes in the salad.  I liked the black radishes overall, but I would guess that recipes would have to be chosen with care to make sure that such a domineering veggie is treated appropriately.  The centres of the radishes I had were very woody, so I stopped grating when it became difficult to do so and threw out the cores.

Nutritional Value:  Great nutrients.  Supposed to be good for constipation because they’re high in fibre and water, and are also high in vitamin C, B vitamins and sulfur.  Contain chemicals which increase the flow of bile, maintaining a healthy gallbladder.  Also have an antibacterial effect on digestive flora. 

Other Interesting Facts:  Main producing countries are China, Japan, Austria, Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands.  There are Egyptian tomb drawings from 2000BC showing black radishes.

Rating:  I’m going to give this recipe 5 yums, the very highest rating possible.  Loved it!  I would make this salad for company, potluck, and as an alternative to a boring potato side at home.

Bonus info – how to pick a good potato:  I’m shocked at how many people are shocked by eating good potatoes at my house even though all I know how to do is pick the best ones.  If you have a line-up of white, yellow, and red potatoes at your grocery store like I do, squeeze a few of each type and select from the variety that appears to be the most firm that day.  If they have a slightly green tinge, all the better.

Don’t be snobby, try kohlrabi

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Here goes post #2 on my journey to cook unfamiliar, “dangerous,” foods that are new to our family.  Thanks for joining us on our adventures!

So the nicest thing about kohlrabi is that I’m pretty sure it would keep just about forever.  Apparently it was originally bred from cabbages, which keep forever, along with its other hearty cousins broccoli, collard greens, cauliflower, kale, and Brussels sprouts.  Cabbages are parents with pretty good genes, I must say, although the entire family can make one more than a little gassy.  Ugh.

Here is what kohlrabi looks like lounging on our cutting board…

And here is what it looks like smiling, pinched from the simplyrecipes.com website:

One of the other nice things about kohlrabi is that it tastes pretty good.  I cooked it simply, and I cooked all of it, bulbs and greens included (although separately).  Both parts of it were tasty even without using extravagant ingredients to dress them up.

I cooked the greens into a pesto using the following ingredients and recipe on the advice of the good bloggers at withforkandknife.com.  They used walnuts, though, which I swapped for pistachios.  We have a nut allergy in our house, so we don’t have many nuts kicking around, but I did happen to have some pistachios and I find they go well with pork.  I served the pesto over pork tenderloin after having roasted it in the oven only with olive oil, salt and pepper for about 35 minutes.

Kohlrabi Pesto

1 cup Kohlrabi greens, washed and dried
Small piece of parmesan (approx 2 tablespoons), roughly chopped
2 tablespoons pistachios OR toasted walnuts
1 clove of garlic, roughly chopped
1/4 cup olive oil

http://withforkandknife.com/2011/06/30/garlicky-pork-chop-with-kohlrabi-green-pesto/ 

 

As a veggie side for our pork, I peeled and sliced the kohlrabi bulbs according to the following recipe.  It was very basic, but sometimes a basic veggie is nice if you don’t have many other ingredients to draw from at the time.  It also might be nice for picky eaters.  I also served mashed potatoes to fill the bellies of my picky kids.

Braised Kohlrabi

2 tablespoons butter
3 to 4 medium kohlrabi
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup chicken broth, or to cover
1 tablespoon lemon juice

http://southernfood.about.com/od/vegetablerecipes/r/r80401f.htm

Overall impressions:  All good!  Both recipes were easy and quick to prepare.  The pesto was just as good, if not better than the standard basil pesto that I also usually make from scratch in my trusty food processor.  It had an extra kick somehow.  The kohlrabi pesto would be nice on pasta even though I used it over pork, and then the bulbs would keep for another meal weeks (months?) later.  As for the braised bulbs, I think I would choose another recipe next time, and I don’t think I would serve it for guests unless I was looking to be cautious of shy palates, and then I wouldn’t tell them it was kohlrabi because the name would scare them off!  The braised kohlrabi had the consistency of sauteed turnip, but shouldn’t be compared in flavour, being much softer.  My husband ate everything without a grumble, which is important for you to know.  He’s usually not grumbly, but he is quick to be skeptical about what he doesn’t know and doesn’t seek out food adventures.

One final interesting fact – according to Wikipedia, this versatile veggie is eaten three or four times per week by people living in Kashmir.  Apparently dishes using mutton are also popular there, so this might be a good pairing for a future meal.

Ratings:  3 yums for the pesto, but only 1 yum for the braised kohlrabi.

Chayote, not to be confused with Peyote

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It all begins with Chayote, or Xuxu, as the recipe calls it on Epicurious.com.

A few months ago, I was walking through the “No Frills” grocery store with my kids as I do every week, when my young daughter pointed at a green vegetable and asked, “What’s that?”  If you’re not familiar with the chain of grocery stores where I was, you may be thinking I’m about to tell a cute story about a little 2-year-old girl who wanted to know what a zucchini was, but if, instead, you have a better understanding of the diverse, hodgepodge of a discount grocery store I’m talking about, your expectations may have taken you somewhere different – you might be able to guess that my daughter is slightly older, and that she had chosen a vegetable (fruit?) that left me without an answer to her question.

Instead of just reading the sign and telling her, “chayote,” which naturally would have made her ask, “what’s that?” once again, I said, “I don’t know,” and tried to move on.  She wasn’t willing to give up, and asked, “Well can we buy one?”

I was in a rush, and I wanted to get out of there.  The store doesn’t really pride itself on offering a heartwarming, indulgent shopping experience – you go because it’s cheap, and you get out as quickly as you can.  I knew that a single vegetable that was the size and shape of a large pear couldn’t be very expensive, so I said, “Sure,” and threw one into the cart.  I decided I would take it home and google it to see how to eat it, and that we would all have fun experimenting with something new.  I got home, unpacked the groceries, and threw it into the metal veggie bowl thingy that sits on our counter, which was where I watched the mystery veg/fruit rot for two weeks while I cooked things I was more familiar with.  Even a broken-english compliment from our beloved Brazilian housecleaner (“You eat? Good!”) couldn’t make me figure out how to eat it.

But the chayote refused to give up.  It chased me.  One day a few weeks after I had thrown it out, I was craving shrimp and had a big bag of them in the freezer.  I am a person who rarely cooks the same meal twice, because I enjoy food, and also because I have a bad memory.  I might have made a fantastic shrimp linguine three weeks ago that a party of ten raved about (unlikely, too much fussing to cook that for a dinner party in my opinion, but it’s just an example) but unless I had really loved it and recorded it in my “classics” album, I would be likely to forget about it and just google something new when I wanted shrimp again.  I cook almost entirely on whims and Internet recipe intuition, and it generally works out, and keeps me cooking new dishes all the time.

So I was going through my psychic assessment of shrimp recipes on epicurious.com when I saw one called, “Xuxu and shrimp with chile and lemon.”  For some reason I opened it and found that xuxu was the Brazilian name for chayote.  I decided that finding that weird veggie twice was too much of a coincidence, so I bought a new one and cooked it.  It was delicious!  Even my skeptical husband, who calls any saucy food he can’t identify “slohrr,” said that the slohrr was good.  The recipe had a very fresh flavour and the chayote added great texture. 

Very soon after, I realized that there are many foods in grocery stores that I don’t recognize, and so I decided to experiment regularly and share with others.  This blog had been born!

Now this first entry is getting too long, so I’m going to wrap up, and write “part II” of the story describing my goals and guidelines for what I’m doing in an “about us,” part of the site.   I’ll finish with what will become tradition for each new blog entry, which is to describe a food that was previously unknown to me, include the recipe I used (which I will never have created myself, because I will have no idea how to cook these things), and evaluate what my husband and I thought of it.  I almost always cook separately for my kids, because I like to eat and they don’t, so their opinions won’t be counted until they choose to expand their palates.  Give it another 10 years or so, I guess.  However, they actually did try the chayote, raw, and were surprisingly receptive to it.

New food:  Chayote or Xuxu

How to eat:  Peeled and pitted, although pit is edible.  Raw or cooked

Taste:  Raw, it tastes a bit like unripe melon.  It’s crispy-juicy like a radish or cucumber, and kind of bland.  Cooked it tastes more like a crispy zucchini to me, although it has a slight tang.

Recipe used: Xuxu and shrimp with chile and lemon

  • 6 garlic cloves
  • 3/4 cup chopped white onion
  • 2 to 3 tablespoons chopped fresh jalapeño, including seeds
  • 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
  • 3 medium xuxu (chayote; about 1 3/4 pound total)
  • 1 1/2 pounds large shrimp, peeled and deveined
  • 1/4 cup olive oil, divided
  • 1 (14-ounces) jar or can hearts of palm, rinsed well, patted dry, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
  • 1/3 cup chopped cilantro

Read More http://www.epicurious.com:80/recipes/food/views/Xuxu-and-Shrimp-with-Chile-and-Lemon-354968#ixzz1mQOa5PYy

Overall Impression:  Not bad.  I don’t know if I’ll run out and try more recipes with it specifically because it was kind of bland, but I think that the recipe was great and will definitely cook it again.  The chayote might offer variety in salads.

Rating:  One Yum (the recipe deserves more, but I’m not convinced that the xuxu was the reason it was good)

Hey, just as an aside, don’t the bottoms of them look like an old man with no teeth?  Or if you want to get nasty, doesn’t the other end look like a frog’s behind?