Edible Tulip

Frozen Kernal Corn: A Winter Necessity

Two things I always have in my freezer are frozen peas and frozen corn**. The peas can be used in all sorts of ways and sometimes I make the quickest dinner involving farfalle pasta, quickly blanched peas, olive oil, raw garlic, hot red pepper flakes, hint of lemon juice. They are equally delicious and just as easy tossed with spaghettini and pesto. Both recipes are for those nights when you want to eat healthily but can't  be bothered to prepare anything complex. Frozen corn kernals are just as marvelously adaptable. I prefer buying the bag to buying the cans of corn because then you simply use how much you need and keep the rest in the freezer and I also like the purity of the flavour of frozen corn without the syrupy, sweet juice that comes with the can and is hard to rinse out entirely. Kernal corn can be tossed into risottos, added to bean or meat chilis, used in stir fries, tossed with pasta and olive oil and diced tomatoes, or simply quick boiled and added to a salad at lunch. I love the nutty chewy taste of warm corn tossed with buttery red leaf lettuce and a half a cup of garbanzo beans. Add a rich virgin olive oil, some sea salt, and a sprinkling of sesame seeds.

**The No Name brand is okay to buy for the kernal corn but I tend to go with Green Giant, or one of the other big vegetable producers, because their peas are a noticeably better quality - smaller and tastier.

Stir-fried Yams, Bean Sprouts & Bok Choy

This is my new super easy single girl vegetarian fix for supper. Recently, I've discovered how much I like the taste of yams/sweet potatoes, but how rarely I cook them, apart from in soups. So one night I experimented with cutting half a yam into smallish cubes and adding it to a wok and cooking it in a mixture of water (about 1/2 inch) and a few dollops of oil. It took about five minutes for the water to seep into the flesh and for the sweet potato to cook through enough that stir frying it would simply complete the process. So, this new dish is easy as pie - when you're using store bought crust and ready made fruit!

It involves peeling and cubing half of a medium sized yam. And then cutting into bite sized pieces a few florets of broccoli. Toss these 2 ingredients in a wok and add about 1/2 inch of water. Set over high and cook for 5 minutes until the water has almost been entirely absorbed. Add a few swirls of olive oil, or canola oil, some red pepper flakes, some cumin seeds, and toss again to coat. Cook on medium-high heat for another 5 minutes until the yams look golden and are beginning to slightly brown. I then add some chopped bok choy, leaves and all, a handful of bean sprouts, a few cloves of garlic, minced, and a wedge of firm tofu all chopped up into near crumbled rectangles. Toss everything together and cook for another 5 minutes until the bok choy stems are beginning to soften. Spread over brown rice**, and season with lemon juice and soy sauce.

** I found a bag of Dainty brown rice at the supermarket that I have come to love. It's a basmati/long grain but it's been slightly parboiled so all you need to do to prepare it (for one) is place a half a cup of rice in 2 cups of cold water. Bring to a boil and let the water continue to boil for 10 minutes. Strain. Perfect chewy brown rice with none of the goopy residue junk that so often accompanies cooking rice in a steam method in a pot that doesn't have a super-tight lid.

Apart from all the ethical and disgusting reasons to not eat meat, I love eating vegetarian because you come to truly appreciate the complex flavours of complementary vegetables, seeds, grains, and fruits. The food takes on a world of abundance all its own and loses its side kick status. I also to love to eat enormous bowls of food - 5 lb. salads and mixing bowls worth of rice and steamed veggies. I was at my parents the other night for dinner and we had chicken pot pie. Well, the size of food on my plate could fit in the circumference my thumb makes when touching my fore finger and I'm very small boned. Then we had salad alongside. But at 2 a.m. I was downstairs digging around in the kitchen looking for a snack. I ended up taking a bowl upstairs full of pureed squash. I read and ate and finally felt sated.

What To Do If you Have EXTRA Squirrel Meat On Your Hands

  

Some might think "Aww, cute, look at the ducks!" whereas others would look at this as an inlet with a shitload of duck meat sitting pretty.

Funny how things come full circle back at you. A while ago, 2 1/2 years ago to be precise, I did a post on freeganism (foraging) called Urban Foraging or How To Skin and Dress a Squirrel. I had been reading about freeganism as the new veganism and was curious as to the type of person (well, I knew there would be some sort of radical anti-capitalist manifesto attached to the philosophy. Which there is.) would dumpster dive, and eat road kill, to survive. This bit of research led me into another peripheral group of food activists who forage for food in their urban environment.** Those of us who are familiar with Toronto know that even though it's not the back woods of rural Quebec plentiful, there are still ample opportunities to eat both pretty respectable thrown-out food from back alley dumpsters as well as lots of edible plants. Obviously you can't legally pack a shotgun and holster it out to the local parks, but I did have several wild animal sightings in Toronto, including beavers, deer, partridges, ducks, geese, rabbits, and various vermin, like moles. I have run into women (mostly older Chinese women, typically the Queens of garbage picking) skirting around the community gardens picking bits of greenery that had seeded itself on the public side of the fence. Back when I wrote my original post, in 2006, I had thought the excerpt from the FoxFire book on how to skin then dress then cook squirrel was outdated and more typical of the anything goes Appalachian culture than anything around here. But then, the other day, I was out walking my dog and he took off into a grove of trees. Long story short, when I went into the deep snow to try to dig around and find his ball, I caught him moving snow around with his nose, and thought "ah ha", he's buried his ball before, so I rushed over, and knealt down, and began furiously burrowing into mound he had created. I saw something dark. At first, it looked, and even felt, like a large man's mitton filled with soft powdery snow. But the more snow uncovered and the more I tried to pick this "mitton" up the more I realized this was a once live creature. It was still warm. My dog must have killed this little animal in the seconds beforehand. I had  flash of "this is so wasteful to leave this freshly killed possible food source here in the snow to freeze without purpose" but I had nothing to put the squirrel in and I honestly wasn't that keen on skinning the thing. I only began eating meat again, after a 15 year hiatus, a few years ago, and squirrel meat carried a huge ick factor.

I came home and was cruising facebook and I put up as my status: "Daphne has some squirrel meat on her hands, what to do? What to do." Now my friends mostly know I left Toronto last summer and moved up to the country south of Georgian Bay. They also know that I moved up here with a partner but now live alone and that things - between 7 day long blizzards, arctic temperatures, 24 hour black outs, undrinkable water - can get a little kooky and that my possibly eating roadkill out of desperation is not exactly entirely hard to imagine. I got a flurry of emails with suggestions on what to do with my squirrel meat. Apparently Gordon Ramsay had a show on about squirrel. And the New York Times just that previous weekend had squirrel meat as the new venison. And I got another tip that a CBC radio program had just spent the hour discussing the eating of squirrel meat. It makes sense. They are fat little buggers full of protein rich foods like nuts. It's like they already have the perfect stuffing! I don't have any recipes yet on squirrel meat, but here's the original excerpt from FoxFire which might come in handy to a few folks more brave than I:

“The most common way of skinning a squirrel in the mountains was to ring the back legs at the feet, and cut around the top of the base of the tail. The hunter then put the squirrel on its back, put his foot on its tail, grabbed its back legs firmly, and pulled. The hide would come off just like a jacket right up to the neck. Then the front legs were pulled up out of the skin and cut off at the feet, and the pelt cut off at the neck. Usually, the head was not skinned out, but if you wanted to, it would be done about the same as with the coon. Cut off the head, back feet, and tail. Then gut.” Straightforward enough directions.

“After soaking the squirrel long enough to get all the blood out, cut it into pieces and roll the pieces in flour, salt, and pepper. Fry until tender and brown. If the squirrel is old, you may want to parboil it in water containing sage to take out the wild taste.”

Page 269. The Foxfire Book, Anchor Press/Doubleday 1972.

**I got an email from a food blogger (Michael Gebert of Sky Full of Bacon) in Chicago who aired a recent podcast about urban foraging and he kindly sent me the link. He went on a tour led by a few people who forage in the city, and in a few of its more natural areas, and he was introduced to all the things that grow in the city that can be foraged and safely consumed. Here's a link to the video. His blog has some interesting gems on it and you can find it here: Sky Full of Bacon.

Garlicky Rapini Pasta with Navy Beans

For a long time, I didn't like pasta. It didn't sit right with me. I hated the bloated feeling I felt after eating it and I didn't truly enjoy, like most people I knew, the mashed up flavours in a sauce, how there never really was one distinguishable fresh taste in a sauce. But then I began to experiment with my sauces, taking tomato pastes, sauces, dices, whole plums entirely away, and inserting instead simple flavours that I enjoy - simple olive oil with garlic and hot peppers, spicy shrimp with arugula and a squeeze of lemon, pesto with fresh barely cooked peas. I realized it was the heavy manufactured taste of tomato pasta sauce out of a can/jar that I came to detest, not the pasta itself. So I continue to experiment with flavours and textures and try to cook pasta the way the Italians do - subtly, simply, divinely.

This is a wonderful, dry pasta sauce full of the earthy flavours of navy beans, olive oil, and slightly bitter greens. If the taste of rapini isn't your thing then you could easily switch in some chopped red/green chard which is much more mild.

Sauce, serves 2

2 Tbsp olive oil
5 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 bunch of rapini, washed and spun dry (I separate the mini broccoli flowers from the leaves; the former I leave whole, the latter, I chop into long strips)
1/2 can navy or small white beans
optional: hot pepper flakes, squeeze of a lemon, ground pepper, grated parmesan or other hard cheese

Heat the olive oil over medium-low heat. Add the garlic and salt and cook, stirring constantly, until it begins to soften but not brown. Add the broccoli florets and cook for 1 minute until they begin to turn a deep green colour. Add the leaves, and stir for another minute. Add the beans, and let everything simmer for about 3 minutes, or until heated through.

I use rigatoni because I like the density of the noodle against the rich but pleasantly bland sauce.

Off Season at Wasaga Beach

In a non-food related post, as I sit at nearly 9 p.m. (I can just not get myself to contemplate supper prep before 8) digging into a dinner of bean sprouts, cumin seeds, broccoli and brown rice, I am feeling a bit reflective on the places I've seen the past year. I've always had a love of nature, of feeling immersed in a magical moment in time of such vivid aliveness and feeling entirely undisturbed, but it hasn't always been easy to find. I've lived in the city a lot where there's so much activity underfoot, let alone at eye level, that one's vantage point doesn't always shoot skyward. And where meeting friends for brunch or cocktails is often easier, more fun, more consequentially sense-making, than going to sit under a tree with a book some where or taking the bus down Dufferin to cross the foot bridge over the 4 lane highway to see the Lake. But then you begin to lose your connection to the rhythms and thus the satisfactions that watching provides. And after too long of that, I start to feel like I've got one foot dangling dangerously over the edge of a cliff.

Getting my dog has made me deliriously happy on so many levels. But I'd say one of the best parts of it is that somehow our match of hyper dog and restless owner was made in heaven and both of us are better behaved once we've had our share of rabbit chasing.

In Toronto, I used to wake up early in order to hit the large parkettes before another soul even contemplated it. Where I lived around Bloor and Dovorcourt, I had, within walking distance, 4 great parks: Dovercourt Park (sometimes a ball game at night in the summer but otherwise a large green space full of trees and pot smoking teenagers and not much else, unfenced, surrounded by cute houses and friendly neighbours, and my favourite dog folk), Christie Pitts (not officially off leash but we were there in such inclement weather and such off hours that it didn't matter, large bowls of green grass, some treed areas for squirrel chasing, although a large contingent of Falun Gong began arriving at sun up and Simon did not like the kung fu moves nor the mitten wear and so it was mutually agreed we stopped going to Christie Pitts), Dufferin Grove

Bitter Greens in a Salad with Pumpkin Seeds and Gorgonzola

Never go into a Bulk Barn hungry. Honestly. I went in once for some dark brown sugar for baking purposes; I came out, 20 minutes later, with bags of things. Edible things. Spicy cassava chips. Mustard-flavoured pretzel nuggets. Sesame sticks. Corn nuts. Organic quinoa. Wild rice. Dried Goji berries. Mixed nuts. Pumice soap. Good god, the aisles were full of everything I toss and turn over figuring out how to use it in a recipe. Having lived in an urban centre for the past couple of years, I was used to my health food bulk store a block away, and the various spice-focused bulk places in Kensington Market, and the rice and flour and nut bulk joints down at St. Lawrence Market, but to a true Bulk Barn Orgy I had not yet been. I fear for myself now, as I am a bit addictive. Tonight I'll probably dream about Tasmanian crystalized ginger, and sleep walk the few blocks over.

Anyway, it's a good place to stock up on nuts because oh there's a selection of about 40 varieties: hulled, raw, roasted, salted, unsalted, flavoured, boiled. I tend to go for the raw nut. My favourites are pumpkin seeds (pictured above), sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, almonds, and cashews (for stir fries).

Pumpkin seeds, or pepitas (way cuter sounding with a spanish accent), are deliciously delicate. They are naturally formed in a hard white shell which when hulled reveal the soft green seed. At this time of year, I just like tossing them into salads. This is a good standard winter salad that goes great with a potato leek soup.

Salad of Bitter Greens with Gorgonzola Cheese and Pumpkin Seeds

1 large bunch of arugula

1 bunch of watercress

2 handfuls of mache lettuce, or other soft, nutty flavoured tender baby lettuce

1 medium head radicchio

1/2 head curly endive

4-5 fresh basil leaves

1/4 red onion, cut into slivers

6 oz. Gorgonzola cheese, or hard, crumbly Stilton (depending on your preference)

3/4 cup pumpkin seeds

2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp. lemon juice

Sprinkle of white balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

Wash and trim all the salad greens. Spin them very dry, and tear into bite-sized pieces. Leave the mache rosettes and the watercress leaves intact if they are small enough to fit in one's mouth without incident. Combine all the greens, including the radicchio, in a large wooden salad bowl. Toss in the red onion.

Break the cheese into small morsels, scatter over top of the greens. Add the pumpkin seeds. Drizzle the olive oil over the salad, and the lemon juice, and toss gently. Drizzle a few sprinkles of balsamic vinegar. Add some sea salt and freshly ground pepper and toss again.

Serves about 4.

I'm Pleased My Dog is Not Dumb But Does He Have To Act Like a Teenager?

So Simon the dog and I are driving to Wasaga Beach, about 20 minutes south east from where I live, for an afternoon stroll along the water's edge just before the sun curves around the distant mountains and disappears, and I hear a sudden roar of traffic, and a cold blast of air whips my hat off from behind. I look back and Simon's got his paw on the arm rest, which he always does while in the car, and he's got the pads of his front right paw on the window switch so his window is going down, then up. He has actually done this at least 4 times before now but I thought they were random occurences owing to the simple physics of weight on an electric switch. But now I know differently: I'm looking back at him, and he purposefully turns his gaze away from me, and looks intently, mockingly, out the window, and then he puts the window all the way down and sticks his head out.

I am now fully expecting to turn around one day to look at him in the back seat and catch him smoking a joint out the window. 

Spicy Nepalese Peanut Chutney

Red-skinned roasted peanuts at the central indoor market in downtown Guadalajara, Mexico. I find it interesting how the concept of regional flavours are actually more universal than we think. My sister, recently back from Israel, was commenting on how the foods she ate there all had Mediterranean and North African accents. I also know Middle Eastern dishes that are similarly cooked in the south of Italy. So, well this chutney is decidedly South Asian, the flavours of the red-skinned peanuts and the ground dried chiles are also rampant in Mexican cuisine.

This chutney , or spread, is adapted from Jeffrey Alford and Naimi Duguid's cookbook: Flatbreads and Flavours, A Baker's Atlas. It is dry and paste-like, in a good way, and can be used like a nut butter on toasted bread, or lavash crackers, and topped with a spicy green like arugula or sorrel for a simple three ingredient lunch!

Spicy Nepalese Peanut Chutney

2/3 cup roasted unsalted peanuts

5 dried red chiles

One 1-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated (about 1 Tbsp.)

1 tsp. cumin seed, dry-roasted in a skillet and then ground

1/4 cup fresh lime juice

1 tsp. sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

You would need, as the cookbook suggests, a four foot tall mortar and pestle to grind all these ingredients together, so I am assuming most, like me, don't have such equipment and I will instruct using a food processor.

1. Place the peanuts in the food processor and pulse until they are finely chopped. Break up the dried chiles into small pieces, discarding the stems, and add to the processor along with the ginger, the cumin, and the lime juice. Pulse 4 or 5 times.

2. Stir in the sugar and the salt and blend well. Turn out into a bowl.

Makes about 1 cup of chutney.

Poppyseed Banana Bread

 

This banana bread recipe is a great base. When I make it, about once a month, I just add or take away ingredients depending on my mood and what I have in the cupboard. It's easy to substitute rye or whole wheat flour for all, or half, of the all purpose flour. You can add an entire 1/2 cup of poppy seeds, like I did for the loaf pictured above, or you can mix poppy seeds and sesame seeds, or you can just avoid both, and add 1/4 chopped walnuts instead. And if you don't like nuts at all, then doggone it, do away with them altogether. It's your bread, therefore it's your recipe, so alter it to your heart's delight. The other addition I made to the loaf featured above is I added a cup of cooked red river cereal to the wet ingredients before blending in the dry ingredients. The taste of porridge isn't at all obvious, more so it's a curious chewiness, an earthy nutty contrast to the sweet biting rush of poppy seeds, and an overall moistness that makes the added cereal such a bonafide welcome addition to this bread. Re: sweetening quick breads. I usually add less than recipes typically call for in the sugar department. And I try, unless it's absolutely necessary, not to rely solely on white granulated sugar. So in something like a bread, brown sugar, a bit of molasses, some maple syrup, and/or a bit of clover honey, are all great substitutions when combined with the flavour you like best weighing in heaviest. This recipe makes ONE nice tall robust LOAF made in a 4 x 8 1/2 inch loaf pan and SIX MUFFINS.

Recipe below.

2008 was my Year of the Dog

 

Happy new years to all. I was going through old photos yesterday (long painful story turned very short: I am now on my 5th computer since August with one blowing because of a bad electrical outlet - and that computer was my ancient but stalwart 120 pound best keeper of secrets for almost a decade with no backup - and then two laptops that I was borrowing but using as I do to the fullest each day with no regard to tomorrow and since both suddenly failed to start months after one another I have lost a lot of pictures, a lot of word documents, a lot of intact nerve endings) and I found one of a long ago trip to Mexico and it included a trip to an urban city-centre market, one of those 3-storey, guts and intestines and heads and severed feet on the first floor, all kinds of fruit and nuts and any kind of sombrero you want on the second, and a craft free-for-all "hold onto your purse" on the third, and maybe it was because I was staying at a spa at the time, or maybe it was that after 20 years of eating strictly vegetarian I had introduced meat and fish into my diet, but whatever, the slaughtering area, and its theatrical display, is where I found myself lingering. The point of the story is I found a great picture from my time in the market of a pig's head hanging on a hook like a pinata, eyes a mixture of terror and resignation, one ear flopped over and the other sticking straight up looking like a kite sail. I have no idea what that pig's life was like but in death he sure caught my attention. So I was hoping, solely for my own photo posting convenience, that this might be a Chinese Year of the Pig, but alas, it's the Year of the Ox, which in reading about, is apparently a good thing.

2008 was a year of change for me. To get philosophical, and perhaps annoying, I could mention that well, yeah, every single thing in the world is actually about change, so who cares about a few personal little details, but in a way, our stories form the tethers that support this strange, mad world we live in, so every once in a while it's good to reflect, and to share. 

When I started writing about Simon, my dog, and the influence he's had on my life the past year I embarked on a novella. So I've extended the post below if you care to read about a dog. Otherwise I plan to get to a post later in the week about what was influential for me this past year, food and drink wise, which was I had set out to write about originally. (The mind is so interesting isn't it.) They weren't necessarily 2008 releases. Some, like the book, The Curiosities of Food or The Dainties and Delicacies of Different Nations Obtained from the Animal Kingdom, was actually published in 1859, but I was so happy to find that it had been rediscovered, and republished by Ten Speed Press, and it was one of my favourite reads of the year.