Edible Tulip

Creamy Carrot Soup

My mother, the intrepid traveler that she is, left for Oaxaca, Mexico yesterday to study Spanish for a few weeks . Last winter, she spent 6 weeks with a local family in Guatemala. She is a wonderful inspiration at 61 years of age to live out your dreams and backpack around areas that might normally cater to youthful travelers. Although she's in the heart of culinary paradise where Mexico is concerned (Oaxaca is notable for its variations on moles) she was served scrambled eggs with chopped up hot dogs for breakfast along with instant coffee!

This particular creamy carrot soup recipe comes from a cookbook she gave me from the Rio Caliente Spa in a different province of Mexico: the Primavera Valley in the area of Montezuma. She marveled at the simplicity of the excellent and nutritious food and we all cook from the simple paper cookbook often. It has straightforward salads and simple soups along with entrees and healthful grain dishes. This is an easy soup to make and you can omit the yogurt if you aren't into dairy in 2005 and it still tastes delicious. I personally like to add a bit of curry powder to my soups and the apple can also easily be substituted with pear.

The Lowly Lima Bean

I know many people have a bit of a problem where the lima bean is concerned but I personally think it's a splendid little legume - sweet, creamy and rich with a meaty flavour. In the southern US they are often referred to as 'butter beans' and they are usually braised or stewed with thyme and salt (much like the Tuscan white bean recipe from Italy). They are excellent in a succotash recipe with onion, garlic, tomatoes, thyme, fresh or frozen corn kernels, salt and pepper.

I bought a few bags of frozen lima beans and boiled them to make a salad with tomatoes and sliced green cabbage and I'm happy to report that they retained their meatiness and depth of flavour. Lima beans are high in vitamins (vitamin B6, niacin, folate), protein, an excellent source of fiber , iron, potassium, and magnesium and of course they have very little fat.

High fiber, low fat, if nothing else the little lima bean sates your belly and keeps you regular.

Mexican Black Beans & Rice

This fall has been so full of ups and downs I've completely resorted to bowl meals for dinner. I am working on reservoirs of energy and imagination so when I scan my cupboard I'm thinking what can I make that is tasty, digestible and soothing. My stomach can't handle any more drama.

Mexican black beans and rice is a pretty straight forward meal if you plan a little bit ahead. It's recommended to soak the beans overnight but I didn't for this dish and it worked out just fine. I just cooked them slowly in a lot of water with a whole onion and several cloves of garlic for a few hours on low tasting them here and there to make sure I knew when they were nearing the finale - a touch chewy but without a grainy centre. Meanwhile you can get together the sauce. I picked out a few different kinds of dried chiles - pancho, chipotle and several small red bud sized ones from Guatemala - and poured boiling water over top of them in a bowl and let them sit for half an hour. Then I peeled back the skin and removed the seeds. The skin went into a small blender with the remaining water and I blended them until they formed a syrup-like puree. I chopped up garlic and onion and sauteed it in olive oil then I added a few teaspoons of cumin seeds, a pinch of oregano and a few teaspoons of oregano and stirred it together. I dumped a can of diced tomatoes and warmed the sauce before adding the chile puree. A dash of wine vinegar came at the end. Then I dumped the sauce into the beans and let it all simmer for 1/2 hour to develop flavour. I cooked rice separately and blended everything in a bowl with chopped cilantro added just before eating. Be generous with salt and then open a beer.

I'm vague with exact ingredients because it depends on how much onion you want in your dish or how strong you want to taste the garlic or how hot you want the sauce to be. Use your own taste alchemy.

Tibetan Red Lentils

The little grocery store around the corner from me sells these bright clementine orange tiny red Tibetan lentils by weight. They cost nothing. And they make a perfectly delicious dal seasoned with turmeric, cumin seeds, chile powder, and coriander. A squeeze of lime cuts the spicy flavour and then I'm lost in the balance of tart and sweet that I adore so much. It's a subtle aromatic spicy sweet not a saccharine sugary sweet. I doled ladles full of thick stew onto perfectly cooked (in my world that means a bit chewy) brown basmati rice, salted the whole thing down and then added a handful of chopped coriander/cilantro for freshness. It's a great fall meal and I go back for bowl after bowl after bowl.

Egg Souffle

Excuse me for my absence (and thanks for all the emails of insight, commentary and recipe sharing!) but I've been away for a week at a house on stilts in the Adirondack mountains on the shores of lovely Lake Champlain. I read a lot. I played a lot of tennis. I took my niece to the beach and I had leisurely afternoon naps. We entertained and we went out for cocktails. We cooked but kept it simple: haddock grilled with a caper dressing, potatoes with slow roasted cherry tomatoes, marinated green beans, salads with nuts and cheese for lunch, open face cucumber sandwiches, uncooked pasta sauces, and lots of fresh fruits (melons, blueberries, nectarines and peaches).

This recipe, for an egg souffle, is so simple and so light tasting (ah, the deception of eggs, whip cream and cheese) I thought it a perfect post holiday entry back into cooking and food blogging. Try to serve as soon as it comes out of the oven because it rises roughly 2 inches out of the pastry shell and looks almost airborne.

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).

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.

3 Minute Lunch - Eggs & Asparagus

I've become quite simply the Queen of simplicity. Although I was always sort of leaning in that direction. When I made my lunch to take to my work at an office job this past year my co-workers would ooh and aah over my tupperware full of shredded bits of vegetables, nuts and cheeses while they ate cardboard tasting sushi from the downstairs deli that cost the price of a fine bottle of wine. But anyway, no time for gloating, my point being good fresh simple food takes more creative exertion than actual prep time. It's about being able to maximize what you already have on hand.

Today I felt like something a little bit crunchy, a little bit bitter and I wanted some protein. So, I found a bag of the gorgeous long firm asparagus from the local Gadway's farm that I bought for $1.99/lb. I saw two heads of radicchio (that red smallish coiled lettuce). And I had half an egg carton full of already hard boiled eggs. Voila. I saw stars. I had two national weekend papers and all I wanted to do was eat and read simultaneously so I needed a quick 3 minute lunch.

While the asparagus steamed in 1/2 inch of boiling water in a frying pan, I thinly sliced one head of radicchio, chopped 3 hard boiled eggs, got out a jar of capers and made a simple dressing of red wine vinegar, olive oil, coarse salt, minced garlic, and a bit of mayo (a simple version of an aioli which traditionally uses homemade mayo). Once the asparagus was cooked, I just spooned them onto a cutting board and cut them into edible 1 1/2 inch pieces and tossed them with the radicchio, the hard boiled eggs, and the creamy dressing. I added lots of fresh ground pepper and a splash of red pepper flakes and voila, Saturday's lunch in sunshine and in style!

The Itty Bitty Pasta that is Orzo

Just as I’m getting a handle on the adrenalin that is cooking for a crowd, the first workshop ends. It was a glorious week of good food and fun had by all and the paintings that transpired from the group of women working in an expressionist mode of space on space from a live model were inspiring. I love being in the quiet of the kitchen fumbling around with bowls and platters, a wonky oven and ingredients piled high on every countertop while through the glass of the French doors that lead into the studio space I witness streaks of colour and magnificence as people create on enormous canvases.

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.