Edible Tulip

Summer Pasta

Monday night was federal election night in Canada and since I do not have a t.v., working radio or any other form of communication with the outside world I thought I had better watch ot from high in the hills where the reception is good, despite the winds, at my parent's farm. When I arrived my father was weaving the pickup truck around the lawn picking up the straw-like grass that was leftover from a previous lawn cutting (we're talking a 5 hour lawncutting job) and had dried and started to rot the lawn beneath. He would rake it and then lift large piles into the back of a truck. Anybody who has ever picked up mounds of wet grass knows how darn heavy the stuff is. The sun was setting. It was nearing 8 o'clock. This man was going to be HUNGRY.

I had brought 4 cobs of corn, some artisanal kamut pasta and a large heady bunch of hot house vine tomatoes. I thought we could incorporate these items into a last minute unplanned dinner but then quickly remembered it was dad I was eating with and cooking for and quickly lost the kamut pasta back into my purse.

While we drank a nice pinot grigio wine (a deep yellow colour unusual for the typically light Italian grape) I boiled the corn in a pot of water. I also picked lettuce from the garden and washed the tomatoes. I began by chopping some large fresh Ontario garlic (truly now the only acceptable kind in my mind: it's large, the cloves and outer papery skin are a strong white with purplish hues and very crisp and not sour tasting), dicing a purple onion and eating some olive oil on the stove top in a large saucer pan. I sauted the garlic and onion, added a bit of salt, and when they were nearing softness I tossed in the corn (by this point now off the cob), stirred everything and then added 4 large tomatoes that had been diced into large pieces. I ground pepper on top, added a Tbsp or so of hot pepper flakes and then put the lid on and let stew for 10 minutes. Meanwhile I boiled a pot of water and prepared to cook the rigatoni al dente.

This sauce is quite delicious. The corn was very sweet and needed something strong and herbaceous or else subtlely salty to counterbalance the sugariness. I didn't want to neutralize the sweetness I wanted to taste all of it but also temper it and complicate it. The hot peppers helped (the sauce, not my father's sweating forehead) but I also chopped fresh basil, fresh oregano and fresh parsley and added at the tail end. I grated fresh parmesan which in its purity is very salty and very alluring. All of this resulted in a deliciously crunchy (o' sweet corn), tantalizingly sweet (stewed tomatoes) and tongue tingling flavourful pasta dish that was enjoyed while watching the Liberal party sweep across the nation (again? Where were all those protest votes or were the people protesting the Conservatives? I think the NDP suffered as a result of the fear). Who can watch Canadian politics without drinking? We can't and so we drank a very good shiraz, Churchill Cellars, out of Australia (~$17 at your local LCBO).

Apple Salad with Sunflower Seeds

Friday's lunch at the retreat centre is usually an "empty the fridge and improvise" affair for me. It's the last day of a 6 day workshop and I want to make sure I don't waste any of the produce I have leftover. I plan fairly meticulously during the week what each day's meal will consist of (it makes me feel less anxious and it also helps me be totally organized in my shopping down to every single ingredient) but Friday I showed up around 10 a.m. and didn't have a clue what I was going to face in the fridge. What I love about cooking in the heightened atmosphere of a 2 hour time frame to complete 5 or 6 different dishes that will feed 12 - 18 people is how I lay my eyes on a quick scan of a fridge and a pantry and in 3 minutes I will have tossed together enough variations to feel confident preparing several things I've never tried but have faith will please.

I ended up making a Tibetan red lentil soup with turmeric, lime and coriander, a large cabbage (2 red and 1 green) coleslaw with roquerfort and walnuts, a stacked platter of tomatoes basil and avocado slices, a large spinach salad with sprouts and a mustardy vinaigrette and, with a bag of leftover granny smith apples, an ad hoc salad of apple, celery, raddichio and red onion topped with sunflower seeds that was a hit. I put out some flax and soy bread and bowls of radishes and crumbled cheese and when I went out to sit by the river everyone said "Oh today was our favourite lunch". Who knew. I love when things come together so perfectly unexected like that.

Blistered Grape Tomatoes

This time of year, before the full fledged tomato season is bursting out of quart baskets at the market, the grape tomatoes seem to have the best flavour. I've been using them in all sorts of salads because they have the remarkable combination of utter sweetness matched wit by wit with a bit of sassy tartness. They hold together well and they are never mealy (which is truly a pet peeve of mine: peaches, tomatoes, plums, melons, blech). Tonight was the closing dinner for 15 plus the odd spouse for this week's group who slaved away under artist Jane Gordon's direction. From what I could tell during my time in the kitchen peering through the french doors the week had a nude model expressing anger in the form of yelps, moans and bashing of wooden blocks, a lot of abstract paintings in shocking palettes, an hour of jazz free paint in the afternoon and then today when I arrived at 4:45 to begin dinner a bunch of dog tired faces.

People often have the misconception that painting is freeing, relaxing, liberating, passive. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Just like writing poetry or a play is. Ha, try it. Creating anything is often mind numbingly difficult because there is no right or wrong and you are pulling from tendrils of inspiration that sometimes disappear. I think sitting in an office doing the same job day after day gets to be not only mundane and lacking in what one might call acting upon instinct it also becomes easy. I don't mean that meetings and projects aren't maddening and hair pulling and stress inducing but there is a sense of fluency to it. Whereas in art, I can see it every week during the workshops, these folks have no idea where they're going or where they came from and they are beaten down and yet elated. This is what I like to think of as a nice state to exist in.

People have been raving about the food which makes me pleased. But two people said things this week that resonated with how I've been feeling about my food. On Wednesday someone said "You know, true excellence lies in simplicity and your food is all about excellence". And then tonight after dinner another woman said "You know your food is so misleading. Tonight when I saw the large roasting pan of potatoes I thought oh, well they're potatoes, but then I tasted them and I was like OH POTATOES! Your food has been like that all week, beautiful, unbelievably tasty and almost monastically simple". These comments made me think deeply about how I cook. I realize I cook exactly how I like to eat: being able to taste the essence of each ingredient. I also realize my food is not nearly as photogenic as it is flavourful and edible. Such is a fact of being a vegetable or a grain standing unadorned in front of the lens and not a spring chicken in purple taffeta stuffed and swimming in its juices.

Every week I've been utilizing the bounty of asparagus we have around here and trying to cook them in different ways. Feeding 15 - 20 people perfectly done asparagus isn't always the easiest but I've figured out a good technique: signal that dinner is ready and then drop the asparagus into the boiling water (only if boiling is the method of cooking, obviously). Tonight I decided to use the rest of the grape tomatoes, blister them in a bit of oil and sea salt, and then set them aside to add to the platter of asparagus just before serving. They blister and pop and sizzle and brown and sweeten in their own pulp. If you've never pan roasted tomatoes before or slow cooked them it's quite an experience.

1 cup grape tomatoes
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp coarse salt

Heat the oil over medium, add the tomatoes, turn up the heat to medium-high, when the tomatoes begin to pop, turn the head down to medium and cover the frying pan with a lid. Let cook, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes or until they have collapsed and browned. The blackness on the pan is from the crystallization of the tomatoes sugar; they do not however taste 'burnt'.

Arctic Char & Simple Steelhead

I missed the latest incarnation of IMBB again. There's truly no acceptable excuse except I forgot my camera when I cooked fish for 18 people last Thursday, I then cooked an opening dinner Sunday followed by a very late night drinking wine and eating celebrating Father's Day with my folks and frankly I was fried.

This simple dish of arctic char and steelhead trout didn't look entirely appetizing to me at first. I like my fish grilled (which I find adds sweetness) and then balanced out with an acidic sauce: citrus, capers, coriander chutney, whatever, rather then a sweet asian influence but mother was cooking and so I ate. And it was indeed tasty. She used a blend of coriander, cardamom, cayenne, cumin, black pepper, and sea salt and just patted the dry spices into the flesh of the fish. Father then grilled as only father does on his grill.

Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus) is a northern cousin to salmon and it resides for the most part up around Labrador and Nunavut. And just like the Inuit have over 100 words for the english word "snow" they also have an admirable list of words that all apparently mean arctic char: iqalugaq, iqaluk, ilkalupik, ivisaaruq, kisuajuq, majuqtuq, nutiliarjuk, situajuq, situliqtuq, tisuajuq. The arctic char has a subtle sweetness to it and is much flakier and less oil saturated than a typical wild salmon fillet. The Steelhead, although a trout, I found rather fatty and not nearly as appetizing as the arctic char. I personally like my fillets fishy and flaky and chewy not meaty and rich and dissolve-in-the-mouth.

Strawberries and Mint

Last Thursday I went to the apple factory to buy their last harvest of asparagus, picked that morning and laid to rest in huge plastic containers of water. The spears were between 1 - 2 feet long. I bought 8 lbs worth. However, while ruminating over and repenting the end of my beloved vegetable's season for another year, I noticed a few quarts of strawberries. The charming girl in braids behind the counter confirmed that, yes, indeed, these were the first pick of the season. Nature always sneaks up behind you with another sun kissed promise just when you start losing hope.

Fresh strawberries are good in all sorts of preserves and pies, cakes and tarts, but they are also exquisite trimmed and tossed with lemon juice, a sprinkling of sugar and chopped fresh mint. Delicious for breakfast and perfect after a summer dinner and a glass of gewurztraminer.

The Green Angel -- or absinthe unveiled

Vintages (the fine wine and spirits division of the LCBO in Ontario) has a pastis in its June release (release B, June 21 2004) called Pastis Janot. A pastis is made from macerating herbs and spices in a neutral alcohol base. Pernod, also an anise seed flavoured alcohol, is made from distillation rather than maceration. Both were created after the banning of absinthe in Paris around 1910 and both have that distinctive aniseed/licorice flavour. Of course you can still find absinthe in bars in Europe and elsewhere but its made from the leaves not the root of the wormwood plant. Thujone is a toxic chemical that is found in wormwood and it has the same molecular make up as THC (the chemical found in marijuana). Absinthe is also made from distillation using wormwood, aniseed, hyssop, fennel (aniseed), angelica root. Absinthe is a lovely _wizard of the oz_ emerald green in its pure essence but, like pastis, turns a murky white when mixed with 2 parts water. Hmm, a perfect pre-dinner drink, great for digestive reflexes.

I think the Russians should be introduced to absinthe in its original incarnation. When I was there the aura was excessively moody and intense. There was a sense of desperation in the kids (oh, because they were about 15 and looking like they should be playing with fireworks) who guarded each bank terminal an AK47s to the babushkas selling grated spicy carrots at the metro. I think in Red Square every Friday night they should have gigantic pitchers of absinthe for the public to drink while the military band practices. I say this out of pure love for the complicated passionate spirit of Russians who need a little something to rejoice in. If we can’t cure the Russians of their malaise we might as well drink to them.

Martini Europa

½ oz Pernod
2 oz vodka
2 oz cranberry juice
shake DO NOT STIR and garnish with an orange peel

Silicone Bake Ware

I saw these muffin holders high on a shelf and I just had to have them. My muffin tins are rusted with bits of batter burned into hard to get to places. I rarely buy myself baking supplies but these were robin’s egg blue, flexible, and made with an FDA approved silicone. Silicone, you say, isn’t that what goes into things like Pamela Anderson’s … and you’d be right… from breasts to bake ware, silicone has come a long way baby.

I give the muffin tins two thumbs up after multiple uses. There is a bit of discolouration but there is no odour or flavour retention. They had equal heat distribution and a fast cool down period. When the baked goods were still warm, I could pinch the bottom of the muffin cup and the muffin would just pop up out of its shell totally intact (silicone has a naturally inherent non-stick property but I use a bit of canola oil spray as well). The silicone can withstand freezer temperatures all the way up to 675 degrees F in the oven. It also wipes down easily and if you have a dishwasher well you can throw it in there too. No rust. No metallic aftertaste. Its best to put the bake ware on a cookie sheet because it is rubber and it does flop.

Mushroom Omelette

My parents live in a stone farmhouse that sits high on a hill overlooking a barn and pasture replete with grazing horses and a stallion, two ponds with a few adult geese and their goslings, a large stretch of swampish marshland that is home to migrating birds and apparently, as of two days ago, pregnant turtles, and a large airport hangar they inherited with the property that they haven't figured out what to do with except hold stompin' birthday barn dances in it. The cabin I am currently living in is only 5 kms from my parents farm. I'm in the valley and they're on the hill; around here you are known as a percher or a squatter. I'm a squatter which means my cabin is embedded in a grove of towering cedars and I have to pull a chair out to the middle of the river to see any sun after 5 o'clock.

Double Zucchini Loaf

When spring first arrives I become enchanted with everything it seems. It's one thing to go wild with the first whiff of earth after the retreat of snow or the sight of apple blossoms climbing the hillside horizon or drinking by the river after 7 in daylight still WITHOUT a parka on. But I suppose it's quite another to not be able to chill out at the supermarket while standing in the produce section. Zucchini got the best of me a week or so ago: it had clear, taut, blemish-free skin the colour of deep emerald and they were all lined up in rows piled atop one another. What could I do but destroy the pyriamid and take them home with me. What I had forgotten was how much I dislike eating the same vegetable in repeat. Of course, there are a few exceptions to this rule but the zucchini is not one of them. Unless it's baked into a sweet bread, that is.

Tomato Salad

Tomatoes scream JULY as much as corn signifies August: the last of the dog days of summer when the sun starts sinking into the horizon and you smell nostalgia in the air. Tomato plants in this part of the country (Ontario) aren’t producing fruit yet but the quality of store bought tomatoes has dramatically improved in the last couple of weeks. I’ve been buying on-the-vine medium sized clusters of greenhouse tomatoes and they’ve been really flavourful and juicy with no trace of mealiness. I don’t eat tomatoes in the winter at all so when June arrives and I’m hankering for summer fruit these do.

This tomato salad is composed of on-the-vine tomatoes. I tend to choose slightly firm fruits that have a deep red hue because I like tartness in my tomato. I do not like a squashed worn out nearly fermented tomato.

I chopped three medium sized tomatoes into cubes
put them in a bowl with olive oil, sea salt, a bit of lemon zest and a drizzle of red wine vinegar
I halved and then halved again Greek jumbo pitted green olives
I crumbed a few spoonfuls of local sheep's milk feta onto the tomatoes
and then I took a few sprigs of fresh thyme and ran my fingers up and down the stem to release the floral herbs (an addition of chopped mint and the spicy globe basil is good too)
then I took my large pepper grinder and ground and ground

A pretty simple lunch with a nice piece of chewy bread. I must note that when I make salads for an entire meal I generally make enormous amounts for myself and eat it out of a deep clay bowl. I don't just eat 1/2 a tomato, I'll eat 5.

For a historical perspective on the tomato you can view