Edible Tulip

Fan Mail and a Supper for a Single Gal

I'm single. I live alone. I love to cook, I love to eat, I like simple earthy in-season flavours and sometimes I like to fill up on simplicity rather than extravagance. I cook relatively straight forward food and leave the escargots and filet mignons for the restaurants (last New Years Eve I had my then-boyfriend over for dinner and I cooked steak, I mean I COOKED the steak, I cooked it until we had to saw into it on our plates, it was gray and curled, I was a new carnivore, I was afraid of raw, bloody insides, and I had no idea that meat cooked in less than 5 minutes!). Instead I prepare inventive and creative salads and meals with vegetables, and sauces, and nuts and seeds, and try to glorify the strength of flavour.

It's Wednesday night in November. I'm in the thick of shit at work right now. I feel like we're in the middle of a coup d'etat, like we're extinquishing Communism or some other 'evil' that lurks out there, that's the draining weird energy I'm feeling. How to get rid of it? Wine, a hot bath, and warm, colourful, sweet food.

A butternut or spaghetti squash baked until tender. Flaked apart with a fork. Butter or pesto spread over top. Salt and pepper added to taste.

A blend of thinly sliced cabbage, broccoli, zucchini and green beans chopped and added to a saucepan with garlic and ginger and oil. Sauteed. Cubed tofu added. Once cooked and slightly wilted/slightly charred, add lemon juice and tamari juice.

Dinner.

And if you're still hungry, eat the other half of the butternut squash.

*I got a really nice letter today from Matt in Columbus, Ohio who wrote: "Yeah, I really really like it [the website]. Just wanted to say that. Im not sure why it resonates so well with me, but the pictures and the text you've written make me want to curl up by a fireplace and read lots more." Anything I do that makes folks want to curl up in front of a fireplace is alright with me...

C is for Carrots

Carrots brighten up the produce area of any small green grocer. You've got your dull, leathery beets beside the matte skin of baskets of green beans; you have your various shades of green in a spread of broccoli, endive, frisee, kale, bok choy, leaf lettuces, fresh herbs, brussel sprouts, cabbage, artichokes and green onions and then you see a splash of colour, not just any colour, but ORANGE, and boy does the carrot wear it proudly (not many people can, you see).

The carrot is a colourful, fleshy, undivided taproot full of Vitamins A and C with a blend of sugar and carbohydrates balanced enough to make it one of the most widely cultivated root crops on earth. My family has always had vegetable gardens but I can't remember a time when we had a good crop of carrots. They are a favourite of rabbits and deer and they never seem to grow into full maturation making the ones I inevitably pull small and round. They are also plentiful and fairly cheap in supermarkets so I stick to the bulk baskets with the fresh, oddly shaped carrots that are intensely sweet and hearty compared to the baby carrots that are too young to hold enough flavour and often more watery than dense. Carrots are generally local (i.e. from Ontario farmers and producers) when bought from our supermarkets and farmer's markets.

Carrots belie any attachment to a particular ethnic style of cooking; they are instead a universal vegetable having originated in Turkey and Afghanistan, cultivated in Russia in order to feed the Revolution, and, currently, one of China's main crops. It also happens to be a year round vegetable adding a sense of seasonal touch to dishes from Indian Dahls and Vietnamese spring rolls to summer salads like coleslaw. One of my (and numerous others that I cook for!) favourite salad is made with carrots and cabbage enhanced by mint and cilantro and seasoned with lemon and tamari with both fresh garlic and fresh ginger.

4 cups shredded carrots
4 cups shredded cabbage
handful of mint leaves and cilantro leaves chopped or torn into small pieces
2 Tbsp minced peeled fresh gingerroot
3 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1/4 cup rice vinegar
2 Tbsp tamari
juice of 2 lemons
2 Tbsp sesame oil
1/2 cup canola/olive oil
coarse salt
cracked pepper to taste

Combine the middle 7 ingredients in a blender and pour over the slaw. Toss with sesame seeds and the salt and pepper. Add the fresh herbs and combine just before serving.

Eggs on Top

One of the easiest and most rewarding meals for a Spring dinner is poached eggs on Ontario asparagus with a side of toasted sourdough pada buns. I really only cook this with the super thick meaty asparagus. The spindly kind, not only lacking in the essence of earthy flavour of the thick stalks, cannot make a meal unless you pile them high like spaghetti on your plate. I gently steam 1 1/2 lbs of the thick asparagus, meanwhile toasting my bread in the broiler, and boiling water for poached eggs. When the asparagus is still crunchy but has turned a bright green I drain it and let it sit for another minute while I finish poaching the eggs. Then I place them all feather side one way and broken ends the other way, put a dollop of pesto in the middle, a drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkling of coarse salt, then place the eggs on top and then ground pepper on top of it all like a maniac. It's truly delicious. And surprisingly filling.

Asparagus Season

Asparagus, for all its simplicity in flavour and design, is complicated to grow (despite all the tendrils of wild asparagus you see growing alongside country roads making it look easy!). Once you've planted asparagus plants, you are to let them grow high and reseed themselves for 4 years prior to picking your first harvest. Even then, many people express frustration and say that the asparagus never took. In gardening centres, you may see asparagus roots for sale which claim to guarantee a faster harvest and a more productive crop. Again, not necessarily the case. I was lucky because I moved into a farmhouse one year that unbeknownst to me until the rains of Spring had asparagus hidden in its grasses and hay covered flower/vegetable garden beds. I first noticed them because I was responsible for cutting the grass. We lived on over 3 acres of land and I had to mow the lawn with a small handmower. There wasn't much else to do than eye the land and see what I was coming across (rabbits often nest in the grasses). One day after much rain and a sudden burst of hot sun, I noticed feather tips erupting from various spots in the grasses. When I investigated, I was overjoyed to find asparagus, a favourite vegetable. One of the most beautiful things a person can find when move into a house or rent one is the gift of a garden someone else has left behind.

Up near Creemore, where my parents' live, we like to get our freshly picked that morning asparagus from the Giffin's in Glen Huron or at their new market in Nottawa. They have purchased the Gadway's (famous for their asparagus and for their sense of humour!) asparagus patch. In Toronto, I'm delighted to find that my local green grocer on Bloor Street has both fiddleheads and Ontario asparagus - thick meaty stalks of it! Last night's dinner was 3 eggs poached on steamed asparagus. It's a nice amalgamation of flavous and a perfect way to taste the earthiness of the asparagus.

Ramps Online

The wild leeks are ALMOST done. We spotted some up around the Bruce Trail south of Georgian Bay last weekend but they are going to start to get dry and mealy. Now is the perfect time to flush them out of the woods (follow the garlic aroma) and fry them up in place of garlic/shallot/onion in any recipe.

My entry on Ramps/Wild Leeks was published in the online edition that the famous Kripalu Centre for Yoga and Health in Massachusetts publishes monthly. You can read it here.

Vicia Faba and Phaseolus

Samuel II:17, 27 - 29
"And it came to pass, when David was come to Mahanaim, that Shobi... and Machi... brought wheat and parched corn, and beans... for the people that were with him, to eat: for they said, The People is hungry, and weary, and thirsty, in the wilderness."

There are beans everywhere - in the big baskets at the green grocers around the corner and in barrels at the market. I'm drawn to them because they taste so utterly like spring - fresh, dank, dirty, sweet. And if there's anything in this wilderness of a city that feeds my soul, it's crunching into a green bean and tasting the spray of life.

Super Sprouts

There's a super way to spice up salads a la "Fresh" style (the old fit for life way) - all those baby greens and steamed arame and grated carrots and beets and crushed cashews and cubed tofu all taste much earthier with a healthy sidekick of sprouts - alfalfa, sunflower, buckwheat, lentil, chickpea, sunflower... I stopped buying alfalfa sprouts years ago from supermarkets because, for the most part, the plastic boxes of sprouts also contained bits of furry mould or brown swamp-dredge-like substances; sprouts need to be eaten as quickly as possible after they are boxed otherwise they take on that old-lettuce-wrapped-in-a-damp-towel smell. So I was thrilled to see the little boxes of Super Sprout packages at the High Park Farmer's Market which is housed under a tent up near the Grenadier Restaurant. Apart from the sprouts, there was lots of fresh organic vegetables, bread from St. John's bakery (which deserves a post all on its own), and lots (View this photo) and lots (View this photo) of elk meat.

The Super Sprouts store is at the corner of Bathurst and Bloor, just south of Honest Eds. It is "Toronto's first indoor organic sprout farm and living foods resource centre" as well as a place to buy sprouting equipment, sprout seeds and seedlings, or boxes of sprouts ready to eat.

The Rebellion of the Pattypan

When I went up north last to visit my parents their garden was a veritable tangled mass of zucchini plants weaving high and masking the huge amount of flowers and summer squash that existed deep in its interiors. Some, as zucchini often does, witness the 2 foot long cylindars that pile high at farmers markets in early August, had grown quite large unnoticed. While others were perfectly sized and ready for picking giving room for a whole other colony of yellow to grow. We filled our basket with green beans, yellow patty pan squash, cucumbers, herbs and tomatoes.

The pattypan is bright yellow, round and flattish. It has a slightly scalloped edge and it looks like a tiny crown. The skin is soft, unmarred by disease, and the vegetable is firm to the touch.

We usually cube the squash and roast them with cherry tomatoes and sea salt in the oven. But sometimes due to their obvious stuffing capability cap them and then fill them with roasted peppers, tomatoes, diced green olives, bread crumbs and top them with grated parmesan.

Aspargus Tempura

In one of those "oops! I forgot the oven was on at 400 degrees F for an hour with something in it" moments, the outcome was suprisingly delicious. On Sunday night in NYC, my girlfriend and I were cooking a pasta dish and decided to serve roasted asparagus as a sort of side dish appetizer plate. I always like something on a beautiful dish in the middle of the table to pick up with my fingers as respite or compliment from the flavours of my main meal. I thought handling thick in season asparagus crisply done would be perfect. Only when we were tasting the pasta to check for its al dente doneness did I feel the heat from the oven and remember that my poor asparagus were roasting alive in 400 degree heat basked only in olive oil and coarse sea salt and no bowler hat to protect from the sun.

When I took the pan out of the oven, these poor asparagus looked slightly charred and barely green. They held their form all right but barely. I emptied them out onto a square plate and tasted one with the garbage bin open ready to toss them. To my surprise and delight they tasted like asparagus tempura - crisp, salty, slightly battered, a soft interior that felt airy and a satisfying oily sweet vegetable aftertaste.

Genetically Modified?

What's up with the pornographic tomatoes at my neighbourhood grocer coming out of Leamington, Ontario as per the origin on the cardboard box? I feel a little odd taking a knife to these slightly erotic fruits/vegetables, depending on your tomato stance.