Artichoke lemonade

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Ann Allchin

Okay, so I didn’t actually make artichoke lemonade. I was just trying to work on my search rankings. Because that title is going to be a home run.

I haven’t blogged for a while, and I’m telling you this even though I read something once that said never start by apologizing that you haven’t blogged for a while. But you know what this post is going to be about? Honesty. Open kimonos. Bet that term will get more search results than my title.

So I haven’t blogged for a while because I’ve had a few food flops lately. I wanted to tell you this because I think it’s important to be open about the fact that not everything you cook will be delicious. If you’re going to cook dangerously. there will be days when food won’t work out. You’ll never learn anything if you keep making chicken fajitas once a week. If I’m ever at your house, and we have to order in, know that as long as you have a very full wine cellar I will never judge. And since I am far from being a top chef, I have had to compensate for my own cooking with the odd extra nip of vino lately (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it).

First I tried Meyer lemons.

They were shining at me from within their highfalutin specialty packaging, so I knew I had to have them. Their PR people say they’re sweeter than regular lemons, so you should use them in lemony baked goods for extra delectabillity. Maybe mine were genetically modified beyond recognition, but they tasted sour on their own, yet didn’t taste lemony in anything I made with them. And I made lots, thanks to this blog post, shared by @HipFoodieMom1 on Twitter.

I made lemon fettuccine. And it was good, but not so lemony.

I made blueberry-meyer lemon fizz. Seems to be missing from White on Rice couple’s blog now, but let’s not mourn it. Although my daughter did ask for it again recently. Blueberry puree, lemon juice, soda water, simple syrup (boiled sugar water 1:1).

And Meyer lemon bars. Again, nice, but not so lemony. I wanted cheek pooching lemony goodness.

Thanks bobbleheadbaby.com

I got something tasty, but not poochy.

And then there were the artichokes (that my daughter proudly chose at the grocery store and insisted I prepare for this blog). I had tasted them “from scratch” once in my life before, where my friend cooked them and told me to scrape the meat from the leaves with my lower teeth, but I thought I’d do them myself. I steamed, but undercooked them. I tried them again, but my guests thought they were too much like work.

I bought some artichoke asiago dip to go with the artichoke the first time, and dipped it in butter the second.

But the heart was delicious (don’t eat the fuzzies, which are the “choke”).

The bottom line is, don’t give up. You can deal with the failures/blahs in your cooking as long as you hold out for the heart at the end of it all (gag, gag, please no one quote me as a cheesy retweetable quote, because it will ruin my reputation).

Next blog post: beef heart. Kidding. So far.

Following Midwesternbite.com’s method, I’ll close with a question for you. What has your biggest flop in the kitchen been?

Toothless Sunshine loves dragon fruit

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Ann Allchin

Our house is all about dragons right now.

The dragon connection started in an odd way. My jeans fell apart, because I’m cheap, and I don’t enjoy buying expensive jeans, but I enjoy wearing them (see frugal article here). So while my jeans had become unwearable due to air conditioning in the nether regions, I wasn’t able to let them go. So I made a pocket purse for my daughter.

In the name of fairness, I offered my son a homemade gift of his choice. His confident request – “A dragon.” I did myself some googling, and found this pattern for a dragon. I was disappointed that the creators of the pattern hadn’t managed to find the perfect dragon fabric that I did – green velour with green sequins – so I smugly walked away from Fabricland and made the very first object of my son’s affection, Toothless Sunshine.

Let me just take a time out to say that I’m a giant feminist, and that I proudly own my love for cooking, sewing, and parenting as a personal choice afforded to a liberated woman. Let’s move on.

Anyway, as we were in the spirit of dragons, I picked up this fruit

at our beloved No Frills grocery store and told my son it was a dragon fruit (pitaya). He begged to try it.

I searched for dragon fruit recipes in an attempt to make something interesting, but didn’t find much beyond sexy fruit plates. I was glad I hadn’t chosen those, because it turns out dragon fruit is quite bland. It looks very cool – fuschia with seedy pulp – but it’s less sweet and tart than a kiwi, which it’s often compared to due to its consistency, even though the dragon fruit is actually the fruit of a cactus.

I finally found a recipe for dragon fruit salsa over scallops, which I won’t even credit because their creation had so few ingredients it was basically dragon fruit and lemon juice (and we’ve already established that dragon fruit has a super boring flavour). I used their scallop/salsa idea, though, and created this:

Seared Scallops and Dragon Fruit Salsa (serves 2)

6 large scallops
A few Tbsp olive oil
1 ripe dragon fruit (gives slightly to touch, like a ripe mango or avocado), diced
1 small handful of fresh cilantro, chopped
2 green onions, chopped
1 small handful dried cranberries
Juice of 1 lime
One chopped chili if desired

Directions: Heat oil over med high heat, approx. 2 mins. Add scallops and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Cook 2-3mins per side, until white and firm on the exterior (scored and slightly darkened if barbequing, but it’s winter and I was cold, so I chose the pan). Meanwhile, combine salsa ingredients. Serve scallops topped with salsa.

Results: Nice! My husband said, “Let’s keep this in mind for when we’re entertaining.” (Or something like that, I wasn’t totally listening). I included the dried cranberries to add a touch of sweetness where the dragon fruit was lacking, and the onions and cilantro answered that salsa freshness expectation. The dragon fruit made the whole thing pretty, and added a cool, crisp texture. Exotic, fresh, and tasty. Rating: 3 Yums

Toothless Sunshine will serve this recipe to his fire breathing friends for sure.

Wine Pairing: Winealign.com suggests that scallops pair well with pinot gris, so I’ll suggest Bestheim Réserve Pinot Gris 2011, Alsace, selling for $15.95 in Ontario.

Swimming with the fishes

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Ann Allchin

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.

Bystanders choke after the Jerusalem Artichoke

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Ann Allchin

Is it wrong that I knowingly made my husband gassy purely for my own entertainment?

Let me backtrack a bit. This week, my strange, dangerous food was the Jerusalem Artichoke. They look like this:

As usual, I decided to eat them because I had no idea what they were. I’ll have to ask my mother if I was always that kid everyone had to childproof against because I was always eating mysterious objects off the carpet. At least now the fact that my foods are found in markets and grocery stores suggests that they’re edible. Most of the time (see guava post).

Anyway, their name is kind of interesting. It turns out that Jerusalem Artichokes (also called sunroot, sunchoke, earth apple, or topinambour) have nothing to do with Jerusalem or artichokes, but were named that because they are the tuber of a sunflower, which Italians call girasole; (kind of like Jerusalem) and because they taste kind of like an artichoke, although they’re not one. Might be best to use one of their other names going forward.

And as for their taste? I found this quote about them early on in my research, post-purchase, but pre-preparation:

“which way soever they be dressed and eaten, they stir and cause a filthy loathsome stinking wind within the body, thereby causing the belly to be pained and tormented, and are a meat more fit for swine than men.” John Goodyer, 1621

Mmmmm, that’s good eatin. Apparently they’re a great source of inulin, which we can’t digest, so it needs to be … exited. So I fed some to my husband, because he was about to get on a plane.

Now you may find this mean. You may wonder why I would knowingly sabotage my husband’s digestive system as he was about to enter a confined space with a few hundred innocent passengers. Innocent children. The elderly.

I’ve narrowed it down to the following three reasons:

Gas in a confined space is funny, especially if you’re the one who doesn’t have to observe it in person.
Phil always sniffs food I prepare for him before he eats it, partly because he thinks I’m frugal and that I push the boundaries of food freshness. I admit to the former, but not the latter. My bitterness about his mistrust for my cooking despite having cooked for him daily for well over eight years may have peeked through
I was sure that he would tell me proud stories afterward about how he had successfully blamed his gas on someone else for the duration of the flight, and I wanted to see how well I knew him

But before you think I’m evil, I did read something that said that if you add an acid to your Jerusalem artichoke dish it reduces its “effects,” so I did this, preparing a salad in a vinaigrette. Which brings me to reason #4:

4. I wanted to see if vinegar really reduces the gaseous effects of the sunchoke

So you see, it was all done in the name of science. Here’s the recipe I improvised based on what else was in my fridge:

Bold Sunchoke Salad with Truffle Vinaigrette (serves 2)

2 small handfuls arugula or other greens
1 handful fresh basil
5 sunchokes, washed and quartered (no need to peel) (substitute radish if you can’t find)
1 handful cherry tomatoes, halved
6 small wedges brie cheese
Feta cheese, crumbled
3Tbsp Truffle Balsamic Vinegar (or plain balsamic vinegar, but the truffle one is delicious)
3Tbsp Olive Oil
Pinch of brown sugar
Salt and pepper

Directions: Mix the arugula and basil together, adding sunchokes, tomatoes, brie, and topping with feta. In a small bowl, whisk vinaigrette ingredients together with sugar, salt and pepper, and dress the salad.

Results: This was a bold, fresh salad. Flavourless salads bug me, especially if I’ve paid for one at a restaurant. The truffle balsamic combined very well with the earthiness of the root veg. Phil naively ate the whole thing.

After effects: TBD. Check in later for Phil’s commentary. I thought I got off scot-free until that night when I was a bit “windy” (Isn’t that just a pretty little British term?), but that could have been because my daughter insisted on pizza to console herself after her daddy left on his flight.

Rating: 2 Yums for the salad, 1 Gag for the Jerusalem artichoke. If you come across these at a market, make sure to “cut them loose” (FYI: Wiktionary says that’s a synonym for fart and I’m trying to be cute). Substitute something else earthy like radish or beet in the salad and you’ll have a winner.

Beverage pairing: Usually I choose a wine from winealign.com to go with my recipes, but in this case I believe the best pairing would be…

Persimmon, Pom and Prosciutto

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Ann Allchin

This is going to be a very short blog entry for two reasons:

I just downloaded Gimp photo editing software and spent an hour trying to get some glare off of a pomegranate seed. I feel strangely fulfilled, yet very tired
Tomorrow is the US election, and I don’t want to be that idiot in your Twitter feed where everything is all deep and meaningful about the future of the World as we know it, and I tweet something that says, “Hey, check out persimmon and prosciutto!” So my deadline for this post is about ten minutes from now.

Here is a persimmon:

There are two kinds, the Jiro and Hachiya. Both should be ripe before eating, but the latter should be almost mushy. Mine was the former.

Our wino friends were having us over for a steak dinner where they were sharing their considerable wine collection the other night. Bryan (their home chef) called me and said, “You bringing wine here is like bringing sand to a beach, so just bring some cool appetizers and we’re good.” I had some guilt about this, so had to make sure I brought something especially creative. These are good problems to have.

One of my favourite appetizers involves fig, arugula, mascarpone cheese, and prosciutto. Truth be told, it doesn’t involve those things, it actually is those things. So I thought of that and made this:

Persimmon Prosciutto Bites (Appys for 12)

1 persimmon, hull sliced off, remainder sliced into mini fry-sized slices
Soft light cream cheese
Greens (whatever is on hand – I’d suggest arugula if avail, but I used spinach)
Pomegranate – 3 seeds per app
Prosciutto, cut into long strips

Directions: Slice persimmon. Slather each “fry” with creamed cheese, topping with pom seeds.

Wrap in large green leaf, then prosciutto.

Results: Tasty, but kind of tame. Persimmon is very nice, almost similar to a firm mango. This appetizer would work well with any sweet, distinctive flavoured fruit as the centrepiece (fig, mango, peach…). Don’t use too many pomegranate seeds – they contribute a nice juicy pop, but too many pithy seeds can be annoying. Rating: 1 Yum

Seriously though, thanks to Gimp and my new white plate from the dollar store, I don’t think the people who ate the appy would recognize it based on my hot picture.

Wine Pairing: A friend at the party, Sandy, who has a highly respectable palate (dead on in blind tastings and likes the finer things in life but not in a snobby way) looked at me meaningfully to give me his opinion, saying only, “It pairs perfectly with this wine.” Unfortunately for you this stellar wine is no longer available, but you can probably substitute a nice buttery Chardonnay of your choice. This one was so good that I had to wonder if it had gone bad because it was unlike most other wines I’ve ever tasted. Find a highly rated Chardonnay substitute at www.winealign.com, which is Bryan’s website.

Guava coconut ice, hold the guava

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Ann Allchin

Guavas suck.

There. I said it. I’m sure I’ve just pissed off thousands of people in the guava industry in the middle of droughts and global warming and all the rest of it, when they need every little guava they can hawk just to be able to afford the basics of their Hawaiian existence – grass skirts, flower necklaces, and red Magnum PI Ferraris.

Thanks backtotheeighties.net

But as much as I feel bad for all those guava growers, I cannot tell a lie. They’re terrible. The ones I got were hard like little dehydrated limes, so I you wouldn’t even be able to use their juice. You couldn’t eat a slice of one, because they’re all completely saturated with hard little seeds that are uncrunchable – I guess you’re supposed to swallow them whole like they’re teensy pills, but there are so many of them that you’d end up having to swallow the entire slice. The skins are edible, so maybe you could peel and eat those, but they’re sour, and not in a good way. I thought maybe their redeeming quality was some insanely great flavour that you could somehow extract through highly complex top secret guava processing methods, but when I licked the inside of one it didn’t taste like anything at all, so unless there’s great flavour that’s unleashed after you answer a skill-testing question, I must be missing something.

My impressions were confirmed when I mentioned to a friend that I had tried them, and she said, “Oh. Is it just me, or do they taste like puke?”

Earlier, I had gone to my Twitter foodie gurus to ask what paired well with guava, hoping that their answers would inspire me to throw a few complementary flavours together into an amazingly original culinary creation and they gave great suggestions, like chilies, goat cheese, lychee, strawberry, citrus, vanilla, custard, and coconut. I prepared to go with coconut, picked up a few ingredients, and dragged out my ice cream maker, ready to wow my family with an exotic ice cream I knew they would beg me for for the rest of their lives. Then I licked the guava, and you can guess the rest.

Blechsville.

I still made the coconut ice, inspired by methods in the cookbook, “Ice cream and iced desserts,” by Joanna Farrow and Sara Lewis:

Coconut Ice (serves 4)

1 can light coconut milk, chilled in the fridge
Simple syrup (1.5C water and 3/4C fast-dissolving sugar, boiled until dissolved then cooled and chilled)
4Tbsp sweetened shredded coconut

Directions: If you have an ice cream maker, add coconut milk to syrup in the machine and churn until firm. If you don’t have an ice cream maker, combine liquids and freeze for 4 hours, beating once with fork, electric mixer, or food processor and fluff with fork before serving.

Sprinkle ice with shredded coconut.

Results: This was a simple, tasty dessert that my kids loved, and it was much lighter than a traditional ice cream. It could easily be dressed up with additional pureed fruits, although guava should be avoided at all costs. Rating: 4 gags for the guava, but 2 Yums for the coconut ice

Wine Pairing: Let’s choose a dessert wine for dessert – I’ll go with Lakeview’s 2010 Vidal Icewine, recommended by Winealign.com, sold for 19.95 in Ontario.

PS – Maybe I got some old, dehydrated guavas, just like when you open a giant orange and it’s very unjuicy and tasteless? You tell me, if you’re not a guava-phobe!

The Great (Green) Pumpkin (Squash)

Posted on October 20, 2012 by Ann Allchin

A few days ago I wrote about cute little grape kiwis, and said that everyone likes to eat something if it’s extra mini. Now, only two days later, I’m going to entice you with something big. I’ve been seeing super huge squash around, and I knew immediately that I needed to add them to my weird food addiction…I mean, food freak show…or whatever. My blog.

Thanks Brain4rent’s blog

Well, they weren’t that super huge. Damn, do you think when they grow those things the pumpkin patch sucks the whole county dry? The squash I’ve been seeing are big enough, though. But go big or go home, I always say, unless I’m talking grape kiwis or kumquats, in which case I change my tune faster than Mitt Romney.

Anyway, these are the green giants I wanted…

…but what was I going to do with so much squash, throw a squash party? Sounds weird, but you know you’d still come if I promised an open bar. I didn’t have to entice guests with booze this time, though, because I was happy to find that my local fruit market sold hunks of the great green pumpkins, which actually turned out to be “Zapallo Macre,” (I’m pretty sure, anyway) for the bargain basement price of only $1.99 per chunk. Even this amount was so big that my son agreed to struggle with it in exchange for the fame and fortune my blog brings, but doing so nearly took him down.

I say I’m pretty sure my squash was Zapallo Macre, a squash popular in Peru that looks like a green pumpkin, but my usual identification expert – Monsieur Google – came up short this time, other than providing a few Peruvian photos of the Zap Mac that looked similar to my squash. I think the big greeners must be local because they suddenly showed up alongside pumpkins at many fruit stands and not solely at specialty importer-type markets, but there weren’t any promising results for “green pumpkins Ontario,” or “green squash,” that proved this true. If anyone has further info, let me know.

No matter what they were, I was feeling chilled yesterday so I decided to make my pumpkin slash squash into soup. Here comes the ONLY recipe for giant green Ontario Zapallos currently available on the World Wide Web (hush the crowds, please), which I invented:

Giant Green Pumpkin Soup with Savoury Sweet Sprinkles (serves 8)

Giant green pumpkin/squash (probably Zapallo Macre), peeled and cut into 1.5” chunks. Approximately 14 cups, or filling 2 cookie sheets. Substitute butternut squash or pumpkin if you can’t find the big greens
Knives exhausted from prepping squash
1 very large onion, peeled and chopped
3 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
1/4C sherry
1.5” fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
2Tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
900mL veggie stock
Sprinkles: walnuts, green pumpkin seeds, and Craisins
Olive oil
Kosher salt and pepper to taste

Directions: Preheat oven to 400. Toss squash with olive oil and kosher salt, and spread across two cookie sheets prepared with foil. Roast squash 45 minutes, stirring once. Meanwhile, sautee onions and garlic in a large pot until translucent, about three minutes. Add sherry and continue to cook until it nearly disappears.

Add squash, ginger, parsley, and stock, bringing to a boil. Add to food processor in batches, pureeing the soup. Now. If you prefer a very smooth, comforting soup, you’re finished. If not, pour into bowls and sprinkle with walnuts, pumpkin seeds, and Craisins. If you’re not vegan, you may wish to experiment with bacon, sour cream, or parmesan cheese.

Results: Very good! I didn’t taste anything special about the green squash – would love to taste it alongside a butternut to see if I could tell the difference, but I don’t think I would be able to. If you want a very healthy, vegan soup that will feed umpteen people for a very low price, this is your recipe. Love a dish that I know I could eat a whole pot of and it would still be improving my health rather than adding to my waistline. Rating: 4 Yums

Beverage pairing: Would you believe that this is actually what I drank with the soup by coincidence? It’s true. Apparently my shopping habits were pumpkin themed this week. Happy Halloween!

Even carnivores might like tempeh

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Ann Allchin

Soy continues to amaze me as the chameleon of the food world. Soy can become anything; little green peas (edamame), salty black sauce, Squishy or crispy tofu, turkey, hotdogs, milk, and last but nowhere near least, “Wow Butter,” which my PB loving husband is overjoyed about, because my daughter is allergic to peanuts and so WB has enabled his return to a two-ingredient meal on those days when I’m not around and he can’t figure out how to make anything in the fridge.

And now I’ve learned that soy can also morph into tempeh, my most recent weird food experiment.

I’m always suspicious of whether or not very healthy foods can actually taste good. Call me a pessimist, but life is generally about trade-offs rather than holy grails, with the exception of the family I somehow landed myself into. I don’t generally believe in a “win/win.” And when it comes to tempeh specifically, my taste expectations were even lower than for a regular super food, because vegetarians were raving about it online. I mean, vegans have tongues too I’m sure, so I know they must like good recipes and tasty dishes as much as the next humanoid, but sometimes I feel like they play up flavour to prove that they haven’t sacrificed anything by making their lifestyle choice. Is that unfair? Do these opinions make me tarian-ist (discriminatory toward vegetarians)? Maybe slightly, although for this same reason, I believe that a great vegetarian cook deserves even more respect than another because they’re able to make a more limited smorgasbord of ingredients taste great. So I might be more cautious about trusting a vegan’s tastebuds, but the proof would always be in the dairy-free pudding.

I began to warm to tempeh right out of the gate, though. Although it came in similar vacuum packaging to tofu, it wasn’t encased in its own gross liquidy plasma. Nice. It sliced easily

And stayed together as I boiled it, which is supposed to make it slurp up a marinade more completely. I chose this simple marinade (on the advice of this recipe which also helped me with the tempeh), hoping to get a nice lime-salty flavour that would go well with a diverse veggie stir fry. Here’s how it all went down:

Marinade:

1 package tempeh
Juice of 3 limes
3Tbsp soy sauce
Pepper

Directions to marinade and roast tempeh: Slice tempeh and boil the slices, 10 minutes. Let them cool. Combine marinade ingredients and pour into a plastic bag, adding the slices and letting the bag rest in the fridge for one hour. Spread the tempeh across a baking sheet, roasting at 400 for 15 minutes, flipping them, and continuing for a further 15 minutes.

Stir fry (Serves 4, inspired by this recipe, although different)

Glug of olive oil
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1-2 portabello mushrooms
1 head broccoli florets
3 bok choy
2 green onions, chopped
1 handful fresh basil, chopped
1” piece of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped finely
2/3C coconut milk
2Tbsp soy sauce
Juice of one more lime
2Tsp brown sugar
Shake of dried chili peppers
Brown rice, cooked per package instructions

Directions: Mix coconut milk, soy sauce, lime juice, brown sugar, and dried chilis in a small bowl and set aside. Heat oil in stir fry pan over med heat, 1 minute. Add garlic and sautee, 2 mins. Add mushrooms and cook until some liquids are released. Add remaining veg and cook until bright and slightly soft, about 2 minutes. Add sauce and allow to boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Let it go for another 6 minutes or so. Serve over rice, with tempeh strips over top.

Results:

Better than tofu! Who’d have thunk it? Tempeh is much more dense and hearty than tofu (apparently this “wholeness” makes it high in fibre), and has a nutty, almost oaty flavour that was very easy to take – tempeh and tofu can’t really even be compared.

My husband didn’t complain, and trust me, I would have heard about it if I had fed him big strips of something unpalatable. Another great benefit was that I was very full after eating it. I wouldn’t say this recipe was “delicious!” but it could be a good staple to throw into the rotation, especially considering the fact that much of Canada’s beef is at risk for e-coli right now (shiver). I’ve been admiring vegetarians while watching this in the news, actually – it’s horrible thinking about all the animals that have had to be killed for no reason, and I wish I wasn’t knee deep in the industry as a consumer. But I guess that veggies always think animals are killed for no reason. Look out, starting to sound like tempeh is making me consider a change! Except for the fact that my next blog entry is going to be about haggis. Rating: 1.5 Yums. If “Dancing with the Stars,” can increase their scale to include .5s and think it’s a big deal, so can I.

Wine Pairing: Tofu pairs well with Sauvignon Blanc, so I’ll apply that to tempeh too and suggest the Santa Carolina Blanc Reserva 2011 from Chile, which comes across as a great wine at a great price on winealign.com, retailing for only $11.95 in Ontario.

What a hottie – The Pisilla Baijo

Posted on September 30, 2012 by Ann Allchin

Everyone has a hot pepper story, and today I want to hear yours.

Here’s mine. We’re in Mexico, 2003. It’s fajita day at the buffet. The fresh flour tortilla shells are handed to each person by a smiling Mexican in a white chef’s outfit. I’m faced with a long bar full of chicken, fillings, and condiments. I’m a kid in a candy store. I like variety and experimenting with local foods and I’m ready to load myself up.

I go big with pico de gallo, guacamole and chicken. I’ve stuffed my tortilla so full that there’s almost no room for anything else, but I know it needs a little something extra. I see one last mini bin of toppings, right at the end. Yes, it has a sign on it that says, “hot,” in italics, but I like a little spice in my life and I’m unintimidated. They know we’re lightweight gringo tourists, so they would never let us hurt ourselves, right? I can take a whole pickled hot pepper at the Olive Garden, and I’m sure I can take this.

I spoon myself one little dehydrated pepper from its oil. One is enough for today. I just want a mini-kick, I don’t need to take away from the enjoyment of my fat fajita with too much spice. I gingerly lay it on the top of all the fillings and sit with my husband and friends.

Giggle giggle, “Oh, that looks nice, I didn’t see that when I blah blah blah.” Polite sit-down chatter. We cheers, “to a good vacation.” Sip for good luck and convention. I take a bite of my fajita. One bite. Molars meet only once, releasing the oils in the pepper to the inside of my cheek and across my tongue. If I was on CSI they would zoom in, and see… hellfire spreading immediately throughout the inside of my mouth.

My eyes go red and I start to cry. At first my friends think it’s funny, but when I stand and nearly choke they get concerned. There’s no going back. The hottest food I’ve ever tasted is in my mouth and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t breathe, and I can’t talk. I drink water and it does nothing to relieve the fire. My friends begin to understand the urgency and start to strategize. “Bread, I’ve heard bread is good.” I try it and it does nothing. “Ice cream, can I get you ice cream?” They run back to the buffet and return with what seem like logical solutions, but nothing helps. I just suck it up in agony, eyes crying, nose running, heart beating, telling myself that no one has ever died from eating a hot pepper, but wondering if that’s true. The heat eventually subsided, but the memory of what a real hot pepper tastes like never did. And my friends’ jokes about me eating weird foods haven’t subsided either. At least now that experimentation has turned into a world famous blog that is showering me in treasure and riches. Ahem.

Since that day in Mexico, I’ve been a lot more cautious about eating hot peppers, so when I picked up some long dark green pisilla baijo peppers at the market the other day, I was sure to ask where they sat on the hot meter. The farmer said they were “medium,” and when we ate them, thankfully, we agreed.

I found this recipe for roasted peppers over lemon ricotta which looked delicious to me, but afterward I found out the the pisilla baijo is used in Mexico to make “mole,” sauce, which I’ve never had, but which includes nuts and chocolate. I was jealous of the recipe I didn’t make, but I’ll try that again next time. This one worked out well too:

Roasted Hot Peppers and Lemony Ricotta (Makes about 12 appetizers)

5 fresh pisilla baijo peppers (or other hot peppers), cut into ring-chunks, seeds included
5 garlic cloves, whole
Olive oil
Kosher salt & pepper
1 baguette, sliced
200g ricotta cheese
Zest of 1 lemon

Directions: Preheat oven to 400. Toss pepper chunks and garlic with generous amounts of olive oil and kosher salt and pepper. Roast peppers and garlic on baking sheet in oven 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and roast for a further 40 minutes. Combine ricotta and lemon zest and spread over baguette slices. Smash garlic and spread over breads, topping with peppers.

Results: Delicious. These had a medium kick, but the spice didn’t overpower the gorgeous flavour of the pepper. This was a simple appetizer to prepare that would be a hit for anyone who likes spicy foods. If I see pisilla baijos again I’ll grab them for sure. Rating: 3 Yums

Wine Pairing: Winealign.com tells me that Mexican food pairs well with Riesling, so I’ll suggest Cave Spring’s 2009 Riesling from Ontario for $12.95. Cave Spring has always done Riesling right.

Share: Please comment and tell me your hot pepper story! Your uncle never saw one he didn’t like? You live in a town where people can take hot and you scared the pants off of someone who couldn’t? Let us know!

Go Green (Smoothie) or Go Home

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Ann Allchin

A while back, Jerry Seinfeld’s wife wrote a cookbook where she hid healthy food inside kid-type food to pull a fast one on her kids. I think she stuffed organic broccoli inside of donuts or something but I wouldn’t really know because I never bought her book. I admired it, yes, but I didn’t spend my husband’s hard-earned money on it because I have always known that my kids would see through that sneaky little bit of genius.

You see, my kids are the “prince and princess and the peas” of food. If you were to hide a green pea at the bottom of a stack of pancakes my kids would throw the pancakes in my face without tasting them and tell me that something about them was stinky.

Most foods I serve them are entirely naked, and I always have to be sure that no one food invades the personal space of any other on their plates. Once I guiltily made them boiled penne with nothing on it because I had run out of spaghetti sauce and they said something along the lines of, “my compliments to the chef, mom, you’ve really outdone yourself this time,” without a hint of sarcasm. The only green things they’ve eaten in their lives are popsicles. That all changed last week though, when my daughter unexpectedly fell in love a grisly vitamin-packed sludge drink, the green smoothie.

No one was more shocked than I was. I had been browsing the food blogs of my twitter foodie buds when I found a simple smoothie recipe by @damn_delicious that coincidentally incorporated a mess of items that were nearing their due dates in my fridge. Since I often try to cook with the goal of emptying my fridge into bellies rather than compost bins I had to give it a go, but when I saw that it included great gobs of spinach, I envisioned myself as the only one who would be slurping it.

Long story short, my daughter dipped the tip of her tongue into it as cautiously as she could, but immediately loved it (how many times have I told you that now?) so I’ve been making it for her every day and trying to act nonchalant about my excitement while I watch great green gobs of iron and vitamins gloop down her throat and into her nutrient hungry little blood vessels. Her hair is already so shiny that I can style my own in the reflection of it.

And that brings me to my next long story short. I found “ground cherries” at the market this week. They look like this:

I decided to use them in place of the strawberries in my Twitter friend’s recipe. They taste orange tart-sweet (weird description, but I think you’re imagining the taste) with seeds almost like cherry tomatoes.

Apparently they’re a hallucinogen to some (?) and so they’re outlawed in Louisiana. I would like to state for the record that my daughter enjoyed the smoothie before it included this ingredient. I also happened to have picked up some tomatillos earlier which are similar but larger (cherry vs. grape tomatoes),

so I used those too, in the following, modified green smoothie recipe:

Ground Cherry & Tomatillo Green Smoothie

1 banana
1 pint ground cherries, separated from husks
1 pint tomatillos, separated from husks (a pint of strawberries rather than my tomatillos and ground cherries will also get lovely results)
2 handfuls fresh spinach
1 orange
1/3C low fat Greek yogurt
5 medium ice cubes
Dash of honey to taste

Directions: Peel and prep all fruits and veggies and put them in a bowl.

Use a hand blender to mash everything together so that blending is simpler. If you have a kick-ass blender that I don’t have, ignore that last step. Add this slop to your blender and include the ice cubes. Blend for quite a while (5 mins?) until all ingredients are well incorporated and the colour changes to green. Taste the smoothie, and add a dash of honey if it’s too tart for your taste.

Results: I couldn’t be happier. There was very little difference in taste when strawberries or ground cherries were used except that I had to use a little honey with the switch, which means that in future I could sneak all kinds of fruits into this drink for my kids. On the other hand, this also means that the recipe didn’t showcase the full attributes of what the ground cherries and tomatillos had to offer, so I might use them again in something else. Rating: 3 Yums

Wine Pairing: Let’s skip it for this recipe. Pairing a wine with a smoothie might highlight that I need some sort of counselling.

Bonus Contest: I took some photos in this post with my brand spanking new iPhone5 and some with my Canon Rebel. If you are the first to correctly identify which are which, I’ll send you a prize. The prize will be a mystery prize from the dollar store, but it will be a prize nonetheless.

Cooking Dangerously

For home chefs who live on the edge

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