Edible Tulip

Whoop, here they come!

Anybody who grows it can’t help but follow its rapid progress: peek, hullo! and then wham, upright and strong, unflappable in the wind. Whereas late April’s eruption in the forest of wild leeks marks the end of winter, the poking heads of asparagus in May are the official talismans of spring.

Asparagus isn’t elaborately fussy about its habitat nor does it need a lot of pampering. It can be found growing on the Steppes of Russia, waving along the train tracks of Poland, or hovering on a limestone cliff or a volcanic hillside. I’ve seen it push through weedy and dense patches of grass. Asparagus officinalis is part of the Lily family; it’s a perennial plant whose harvest is a prudent couple of weeks in late May. When left to seed (it’s a four year process before harvesting) the underground rhizomes develop into feathery clusters of 4 – 5 feet by late summer. Eventually small crimson berries form which fall off and reseed in autumn. This is why asparagus patches are a motley crew of think and fat, short and tall, they have been reseeded at varying points in time.

Everybody LOVES Chicken Marbella

Tonight marked the opening of the Art Retreat Centre where I'm a resident chef (food shopper, menu planner, grocery put-er-away-er, dishwasher, kitchen therapist). It was an exciting event: 12 guests arriving to the country for 6 intense days of painting and drawing with a live model under the tutelage of an award winning artist. Nerves were high, lots of wine was drunk.

I put out platters of pate, cheese, grapes, pumperknickel crackers, pears, vegetables, red pepper dip, and a delicious tomatillo salsa. Dinner was basmati rice, an asian stir-fry (kale, bok choy, leeks, mustard seed, ginger, garlic, sesame, lemon), Ace baguette bread, baby spinach salad with radicchio/endive and a whole grain vinaigrette, and Chicken Marbella to feed an army. Homemade pies followed. People were giddy with anticipation, a little drunk on newness, overwhelmed by the spectacular views of green and rushing rivers and ecstatic with the food. That made me a little proud but not surprised. I've never had anyone dislike this chicken dish. It's a staple. Perfect for a cottage crowd that likes to mill around drinking cocktails because it stews in its own juices and never dries out. There's never any rush to get it to the table.

I like the process of making it too. I am a vegetarian and I've somehow converted most of my boyfriends along the way to eat the foods I do (probably because I'm mostly the one cooking them). So I don't often cook meats of any sort. Chicken I don't mind. I like buying 4 whole chickens in pieces and pulling the skin from the flesh, ripping it back to expose taut tendons, wrapping it around the nobules at the end of each drumstick. It's hard work. Once all the chicken pieces are in the deep steel pan, I get busy on the other finnicky ingredient: mincing a whole head (not clove) of garlic. Then the rest is easy. It's about gathering handfuls of ingredients in your hand and positioning them properly around the chicken pieces: apricots, pitted prunes, green and black olives, a jar of capers, some olive oil and red wine vinegar, coarse salt and black pepper. Adding some bay leaves and then covering up the whole bounty to marinate for 24 hours. An hour before serving you splash white wine over the chicken and then sprinkle brown sugar on top to glaze.

Every plate came into the kitchen looking licked clean except for a few gnawed on bones. That I would say was a successful meal.

Happy Birthday to Me

And so May 28th arrived and as the lilacs puffed out on all the trees along the roads so many years ago and the fragrance carried across townlines I was born.

Today was lovely. I picked up a large produce order from town for the retreat centre as we gear up for Sunday's opening night reception. The sun finally whipped the clouds south of the border to bring the temperature up around 10 degrees C (brrr) and mom and I walked a large exposed field of clover and corn with the dogs. Champagne drinking was held in my honour around 7. Dinner was around 8:30 at a restaurant in a neighbouring town with rumours of big-city-sophistication. Silt/charcoal walls, landscape paintings, an unused fireplace, serrated blinds on the windows, tiny white lights around dogwood in the corner, are we in the throes of winter ladies and gentlement? Where are the draperies, the sexy whiff of spring, the burst of peonies, the flirtation of magenta, or at the very least, the honesty of burning cedar?

The Wehani Way

And you thought rice was just, well, rice. Think again.

While living in Toronto I was lucky enough to live in walking distance of both Chinatown (and therein Kensington Market) and Little Korea. This meant if ever I needed rice I had ample opportunity to buy large thatched bags of jasmine, basmati, sweet, sticky or wild rice. I also lived in amongst a few bulk and natural health food stores where once you could only find Uncle Ben’s converted or non-converted rice you can now pick from at least 15 varieties including the Lundberg Family’s organic products. These are my favourite specialty types of rice (especially good since they’re free of chemical contamination). The Lundberg Farm grows and nutra-farms rice varieties like black japonica, wehani, a wild blend, jubilee, country wild, long and short grain browns, and Arborio. I like their philosophy and it translates into the taste you get from the final cooked result. This family run farm originated in the Sacramento Valley in 1937. They use only sustainable farming methods that you can read about here.

One of my favourite types of Lundberg rice is the Wehani. It’s a reddish almost rust-coloured long grain rice that isn't milled and therefore needs to be cooked like a brown rice. The best cooking results for this rice is 1 cup raw rice = 2 ¼ cups water. Once the water is absorbed, the rice needs to stand untouched in its pot for another 30 minutes in order for the rice to firm up.

This rice is a little bit sweet and slightly nutty. Its texture is chewy and moist. I recommend using it in place of arborio when you can match its heart with something earthy like asparagus (roasted) or mushrooms (grilled or fried). Otherwise, it’s a great addition to something stewed and musky. Although it’s not what I call a summer rice, it’s been a cold spring where I live and I’ve loved the depth of this rice the next day as a salad tossed with cucumbers and fresh herbs.

Baked Halibut

Unfortunately preparing a rice dish for the latest ISMBB edition didn’t pan out as I had planned. Unexpected visitors, an extraordinary amount of thunderstorms and power outages, and last minute emergency outsource cooking duties all got in the way of making Chinese red rice (the colour is leached into the sweet rice from the skins of adzuki beans) as my entry.

Instead, I cooked a mean chile for 175 people and accidentally used Indian spices instead of the traditional Mexican ones and nearly burnt holes in the esophogus of all who innocently dug in to the steaming pot. Oops. I curdled a crème anglaise that was intended to accompany a fig compote for a dinner of 85 out-of-town guests. I was tired. I had chile lawsuits on the mind. It's a single moment on a too hot flame that is the distinction between custard and curdled. I know this now. Then there was a day of thunder and lightening and tree shaking all around my little cabin. I cooked fish, had a friend over, drank a few bottles of wine and stayed up watching the sky and listening to the river gorge its outlying bed. We're all living in the swamp now.

Saturday night's meal was so simple and I prepared 99% of it before anyone arrived. The potatoes, called tattooed potatoes because of the way the herbs emboss the flesh, are crispy and tender at the same time. You take a cuople of potatoes per person (I used new red potatoes), cut them in half, press some fresh herbs (rosemary and thyme work best) into the cut flesh, and place face down in several tablespoons of olive oil in a roasting pan. Cook at 400 degrees for 40 minutes. We also ate the halibut (recipe follows), a pan of roasted asparagus with balsamic and fresh Parmesan, a salad of endive and radicchio (seasoned with coarse salt and wine vinegar) and a latticed raspberry pie for dessert.

The Art of the Anchovy

The artistry lies in the ability to delicately flavour a dish while remaining anonymous. Of all the times I’ve slipped anchovies or anchovy paste into a pasta sauce or dressing nary a soul has been able to attribute the slightly salty zing. This is probably a good thing. People seem to have issues with anchovies. I agree. An elongated worm-like purple stretch of a fish with spiky hair follicles is not perhaps the most appetizing presentation but their magic works. They add such an incredible depth of flavour to the simplest recipe they are worth tricking even your loved ones.

I confuse sardines and anchovies. I know biologically they are different species. And I know sardines come in cans where you pull the lid back and they are basked in oil whole. Anchovies are always in fillets (the ones I buy anyway), usually salted, and in a brine or oil. I wouldn’t substitute sardines for anchovies in any of my recipes because sardines aren’t particularly welcome at the dinner table but in Europe I saw many more sardine dishes than I did anchovy ones.

In 1993 my friend Virginia and I traveled from Paris through Spain and Portugal by train. For the most part, we spent our days exploring and then either took an overnight train where we tried to catch up on some sleep or else we bunked up with a local family. I was not yet convinced of the safety of this second arrangement when we arrived in the Algarve and Virginia immediately sidled up to an older man and starting walking up a remote hillside in silence with him heading out of the village. I trudged along behind cursing that we were never going to get out of Portugal with all of our appendages intact (if you’ve ever been to Lima you’ll notice that quite a lot of that city’s population aren’t equipped with all of their flailing limbs. Did you ever wonder why?). Anyway it all worked out just fine. We slept in a double bed on the rooftop of this man’s house. We watched the stars and ate cookies in bed while writing by oil lamp in our journals. We were also awoken at the first sign of daylight to the smell of frying fish. The Portuguese love their sardines. And they seem to cook them all day long. If they weren’t being cooked over an open fire directly under the rooftop we slept on then they were certainly being cooked in every one else’s open fire within shared air space. To this day you couldn’t get me to eat a fried sardine but I love a good anchovy.

A Legume from Babylonian Times

Produce is so utterly expensive in the country. Shopping at the local Foodland (formerly an IGA) means mediocre choice and ridiculous prices like $4.99 for a smallish sized honeydew melon. Driving to the larger grocery chain, Loblaws, ½ an hour away, means a much larger selection but mediocre quality of produce and again outrageous prices (4 lemons for $1.99). I’ve been spoiled by all the ethnic markets and neighbourhood green grocers in Toronto where $7 bought me a couple days worth of fresh supplies. So in a bit of a rebellious rage against the corporate grocer today I decided to just buy a few necessities like herbs and tofu and organic milk (I also complained to the customer service desk that I found it a little bit unethical that the PC brand, Loblaws’s no name label, of organic milk was placed in the dairy section of the grocery store because that’s where 99% of grocery shoppers go to find milk and the small independent suppliers of organic milk were shoved off in a corner by the vitamins and vats of powdered protein drinks where nobody goes) and instead try and eat from what I already have in my cupboards for the next week. This resulted in tonight’s dinner: mung-bean dal with basmati rice.

My mother introduced me to Indian food. She once led treks to India and Nepal and returned home determined to replicate the simplicity and heart warming fulfilment of the rice and bean staple they ate while climbing mountains. Over this past winter I dated someone who spent his childhood in Singapore, Iran and Japan and has a diverse ethnic culinary palette. He taught me a lot about Asian food in general and owing that I lived a few blocks from Korea Town and then a few more blocks from Chinatown we made it a weekend event to visit the asian grocers where I would walk around aisles picking up various unidentifiable objects and squeal "what is this?". It was usually something along the lines of puffed out fish guts or some strange animal organ or precious quail eggs.

After attempting different kinds of dals with different kinds of beans I’ve come to rest upon two favourites: the tiny bright orange Turkish lentils and the dark green split-mung beans. The red lentils produce a creamier slightly richer dal while the split-mungs are heavier and full of an almost bland earthiness. With a hint of limejuice, they’re both delightful.

The Aid of Lemon and Ginger

Sometimes when the spring weather suddenly turns garish you need the help of something other than sun or drink. Baking helps. And the combined flavours that are both medicinal and soothing of lemon and ginger can also be turned into a delicious tea bread. Both ingredients also make a good steeping brew for tea: just peel a knot of ginger or an arm of its pretzeled body, chop up into pieces, halve a lemon and squeeze into a tea pot, add honey for sweetness and pour boiling water over. Eating and sipping tea while reading the weekend papers is an utterly acceptable way of spending a Saturday afternoon in my world.

A Girl's Gotta Eat

At 7:30 tonight I hadn't even thought about dinner. It was 30 degrees today and wet with humidity. A storm's brewing to be sure. I was writing all day, dealing with a leaky-under-the-sink-tap, wondering why my hot water tank keeps mysteriously shutting off in the fuse box, hanging oranges for the orioles, and driving the pickup truck around cautiously due to last week's breakdown on a rural road whose only inhabitants seemed to be frightened yet terrifying dogs. So, onto dinner.

In the fridge I had a zucchini, some fresh asparagus, a few left over snowpeas, a jar of homemade pesto, some grape tomatoes and a few sprigs of thyme. Now I'm a luddite in the kitchen. Meaning I don't do techno food, I don't believe in microwaves, I bring my lunch to work 365 days a year, and I think bothering to make pasta with olive oil and hot pepper flakes and maybe a squeeze of lemon FAR outweighs the convenience of eating something like packaged Kraft dinner. It's not that I'm a food snob I just think the process of cooking with non-processed ingredients is as simple as dumping a package of something pre-made into a bowl. And it tastes better.

This pasta dish tastes of everything spring-ish. I cooked the asparagus, snow peas, zucchini, and grape tomatoes in olive oil with a touch of salt. I cooked it until the tomatoes blistered. Meanwhile I boiled some water and cooked a handful of farfalle pasta (sticking with the butterfly theme) until al dente. I strained it and stirred in 1 Tbsp of fresh pesto and zested 1/2 a lemon into the hot pasta. I then added the vegetables, topped with chopped parsley and thyme and seasoned with salt and pepper. It was divine. And it took about 10 minutes. I drank a Californian chardonnay (Glen Ellen vintage 2002) with it (currently on sale at the LCBO from $11.95 to $8.20 -- run, it's excellent, far superior to many oaky butterscotch laden Australian chardonnays and perfect for summer). Even my dad likes it (his high praise is something like 'it tastes fine').

Disclaimer: I changed my photo from actual dish to dried pieces of pasta. Why? Because I can't make any of my delicious meals look any better than what curdles in a pig's trough.

The Rudiments of Rhubarb

If you happen to have dysentery then I have the perfect remedy for you: ingest the dried then powdered root of rhubarb (witch doctor recommended!). Luckily I have a patch of rhubarb already in full bloom that I inherited with the cabin I’m renting. So in case I ingest amoebic parasites from the river I can at least cure myself (I do hate going to the doctor's).

This morning in glorious 6:30 a.m. sun peering through the trees I decided to photograph my patch before butchering it for stewing. Rhubarb is such a blessed addition to a garden patch because while everything else straggles slowly out of the ground rhubarb’s large leaves act as a canopy (resembling gigantic elephant’s ears). Note the way the stalks erupt out of a small crinkled mass.

Rhubarb’s popularity incidentally rose with the decline in price of sugar. By the end of the 18th century cooked rhubarb stems were regularly featured in Europe and North America in dishes like puddings, custards and crumbles. This makes sense for any of you who have eaten rhubarb without sweetener – very tart indeed. Only the stems are edible with the leaves containing a substance called oxalic acid that is toxic when ingested (cooked or uncooked). The origin of rhubarb comes from the stretch of mountains called the Tien Shan range extending through Mongolia to western China. It is suggested that rhubarb has been used in Chinese medicine since 200 B.C. (this fact is yoinked from a pharmaceutical list of about 500 hundred traditional herbs used medicinally in the 1st century A.D.).

For most of the world rhubarb is considered a fruit and it was legislated by U.S. Customs in 1947 as such however, botanically, like the tomato, it actually is a vegetable. Rhubarb is most often used in desserts but some cuisines do cook it as a vegetable: In Poland rhubarb is considered a tart acidic accompaniment to potatoes and in Iran it is added to meat stews. The Italians, spirit enthusiasts that they are, use it in an aperatif called rabarbaro.

This is a SIMPLE recipe. Easy to make, convenient ingredients, and it’s just as good cold for breakfast with a bit of yogurt stirred in as it is hot.

Stewed Rhubarb

1½ lb. rhubarb stalks
½ cup sugar or honey
Juice and zest of 1 lemon (or 1 orange)
4 cloves

Wash and clean the rhubarb stalks. Cut into small (1 inch pieces) and put in a heavy saucepan with the sugar, cloves, zest and juice. Cook over low heat until the rhubarb mixture reaches a stewed consistency (about 15 minutes).