Edible Tulip

Red Pasta Sauce

I'm a Gemini which means my moods are sporadic and often erratic. I've come to terms with that but those around me sometimes do a double-take. I can go quickly from feeling desperate and overwhelmed by life to being utterly smitten with a frozen river speckled with quacking playful ducks and feeling like the world is such a magical place. This happened on the weekend: Saturday I felt isolated and lonely and like life was playing a few ungrateful jokes on me to waking up on a glorious Sunday of sunshine and taking a mini driving excursion to Unionville where there happens to be a great natural pond to skate on. And coincidentally a lot of ducks like it too.

Saturday night was a typical 9:30 pm eating event of wine and dinner in front of lit candles and a full bloomed amaryllis. One tubular stalk with an exposed root in a slothful array of dirt suddenly transforms into several trumpet flowers that illuminate the entire kitchen. Oh yes, in February life is all about simple pleasures and delights.

Potato Heaven

Sometimes all you need on a winter night to accompany say a simple dish of fish or chicken or even those yummy chicken sausages from WholeFoods on Avenue Road stuffed with spices and blue cheese is a big green salad and a roasting pan full of tiny red potatoes doused with olive oil, granules of sea salt and needles tugged off the drying rosemary shrub by the kitchen sink.

Friday nights are delicious. Especially with wine and little votives of candles all lit around the apartment.

The past week of flat tires, mounding debt nearing bankruptcy, a heightened awareness of a potential onslaught of stress induced depression, insanity at a new job and troubles in love land have just entirely melted away. If only for a moment, it's a good moment.

Winter Bliss

Well, we should all be pleased we've passed Monday January 24th which is scientifically proven to be the most depressing day of the year. 2004 also proved to be a difficult year for so many people I personally know. Throw in obscene wars, unfathomable natural disasters and a heightened awareness of the discrepency of the quality of life around the world and it makes a little frost on the window in -22 degree C weather a little more manageable.

My advice in these cold times of early darkness is to eat well, imbibe whatever stills thy beating swollen heart and take a lot of baths before bedtime. What I love about visiting flower markets around where I work (that glorious quartet up around Avenue Rd and Davenport) is that at this time of year there are always tiny pots of crocuses, spicy hyacinths and mandarin coloured tulips. If that isn't a hopeful sight, I don't know what is!

Toxic tamarind?

I live in such a diverse grocery neighbourhood that I am constantly stumbling across new and wondrous goodies. The other day I stepped into a small store that serves as a dry cleaner and an asian grocer. There on the counter were these chewy looking brown clumps rolled in sugar and placed neatly in a plastic box. The ingredients read simply: tamarind, sugar and salt. Hmm. I'm all for simplicity so I bought them for $1.19. The first taste that hits you is the granulated sugar and then you begin to taste the exotic appeal of tamarind which is its tart sweetness. The salt I couldn't decipher but it might act as a preserver of the fruit.

Feeling a little more curious about tamarind tonight since I've only really ever used it in a paste before I did a bit of research online and lo and behold the tamarind candy is a mighty FDA red flag for lead poisoning and, ah, contamination of FILTH.

Wine gums from the bulk store, minus the red ones, don't seem so bad after all.

A few of my favourite things

This is my new favourite kitchen baby: the cleaver. I've never had a cleaver before and I just don't know how I managed! It chops so finely I can have shreds of cabbage (really the best way to eat the darn stuff) and the way it has a straight blade means that when you hold it you are pressing in a downward fashion which is different then just slicing through something or carving it. I'm having too much fun lining up items to 'cleave' through. I got mine in Chinatown for under $15. It has stainless steel blade which doesn't discolour and it has a plastic handle which is easier to care for than wood. Buy one. You'll love it too.

These little cans of curry sauce are wonderfully decadent. I've avoided cooking from a pre-made sauce before but now that I'm a working girl again and it's winter and I think I'm suffering from S.A.D. I've decided the hell with it whatever tastes good and I can add fresh ingredients too is a welcome addition to my kitchen. The can contains coconut milk, lemon grass, bamboo shoots, sweet basil leaves, kaffir leaves, fish sauce and maybe a bit of palm sugar. I'm writing this from memory of taste.

I like to cook ginger and garlic in a wok with minced cabbage. Then I add whatever other fresh ingredient: baby corn, slivered carrots, bok choy, bean sprouts, chopped collard greens. I also shred cooked chicken breasts into the wok (I love when the chicken browns a bit with the garlic and ginger). When the vegetables have been heated and coated with the oil, I open a can of Aroy-D and dump it in. Meanwhile, I boil a handful of chinese fresh noodles. This is a wonderfully fragrant and tasty dish and the canned exotica on a Wednesday night blows the Canadian winter right back out the window.

This is a great link for those Torontonians who enjoy cooking Asian cuisine and Asian goodies. Many of these goodies come from Kensington Market and the Chinese supermarkets and trading depots around Spadina and Dundas.

Artichokes and Olives

Sometimes I just overdo things (food, passions, obsessions, love) and then I get a bad taste in my mouth. I feel like I've been eating a variation of a noodle and a broth and an Indian pickle for the past decade. In reality, it has really been close to a few weeks. But when I lose my empathy for something it often takes a while before I'll let it creep back in. So, now I'm onto grilled meats and fresh salads.

Last night I was treated, last minute, to barbeque ribs and chicken thighs. I'm a meat eater these days which means suddenly I'm invited out a lot more than I can dare recall. With the leftover ribs I was packed home with (along with a new sewing machine and a wrought iron sewing table!) that I reheated tonight I decided to make a fresh salad. Cucumbers, canned artichokes, black olives, coarse sea salt, fruity olive oil, chopped herbs, and diced green onion evolved into a perfect raw side dish.

Miso Broth and Vermicelli

I realize I've recently become the lady of the bowl. It must be because I'm having a rather bizarre fetish with my ceramic noodle spoon and the spoon likes scooping out of a liquidy bowl more than it does scraping against a dry dinner plate of cooked meat. Tomorrow night I'm having ribs so I'll have to give over to a silver fork but tonight I'm rendez-vous-ing with my spoon for a final flush.

This is another "what do I have in the fridge that can make a dinner" meal (can you tell I'm single and live with 2 cats?). In this case, it has to do with broccoli and swiss chard, some miso paste I had been reluctant to open and make use of (does anyone else have a thing for the beauty of an unopened food parcel?), and a package of thin rice vermicelli in my pantry.

I steamed the broccoli and the chard. And I cooked the vermicelli in a broth of miso paste, a dash of sesame oil and another dash of hot sauce. I ladled the gently done vegetables into the broth and sat down to eat. This dish is so mild and delicate in flavour that any fresh herbs or sliced scallions would sort of rock its equilibrium. I kept it basic. It's a good recovery meal for anyone either feeling toxic or just plain weary.

The Reviled Brussel Sprout

Where I grew up (suburban Ontario) brussel sprouts were a reviled vegetable. I can't exaggerate that enough; we NEVER ate brussel sprouts in my family and so they developed a rather pungent reputation as being, well, nothing less than disgusting.

I decided in my adult years to give them another chance. After all, they are exquisitely lovely in their natural form (see picture from St. Lawrence Market): a sort of burgeoning explosion of buttons down a seam. And I knew that the divine Deborah Madison in her Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone would have a solution for my phobia because that's what she does: she makes the bland and the ordinary appear quite delectable. She even describes them as: undeniably sweet, mild and utterly delicious - a real treat. Well, if Ms. Madison says so.

p.s. There's some wonderful ideas in the comment section on how to make the reviled sound redeemed!

Shrimp & Peas

Boy, am I glad I created a category called Simple One Bowl Meals because that seems to be all that I cook these days. What's a girl to do when she works full time and lives in an altered climate of hail, sleet, snow, rain showers and the occasional burst of January thunder? She's to drink lots of wine despite a recommended post holiday toxic purge and she's to cook wonderful food that takes less than 1/2 hour and costs less than $10 in groceries.

Simple Shrimp and Peas fits the bill, my friends. I had some frozen peeled uncooked shrimp as well as some frozen peas. I also found cilantro, lemon grass and tofu in my fridge. In my cupboard was a can of coconut milk. And I always keep on hand small jars of Thai Kitchen green and red curry pastes for nights like this when I want a ding of flavour without bringing out the mortar and pestle.

Spicy Asian Chicken Soup

Tonight at work, with all of these people sniffling around me, I got the incentive to find a new and startlingly exotic recipe for chicken noodle soup. I sleuthed around on the epicurious website and then amalgamated a few solid ingredients from some appealing recipes to try and recreate my own rendition of a spicy chicken Asian soup. I arrived home and promptly got into my car to drive to the Korean superstore on Bloor St W around Clinton St. This store has everything you could ever want to fill your pantry with goodies from the East but I took a small carry shopping basket so I wouldn't over do it. I work best with boundaries.

After nearly breaking my back carrying around a small basket overflowing with lemon grass, bottles of sauces, fresh herbs, goods with that typical anime packaging, a wide variety of noodles, and some frozen shrimp, I set off for home to prepare the soup.