Leftovers #4: Curry Thingy

Sometimes there isn't much in the category of food in the fridge when you have teenage sons. Strangely, there are just bits of previous meals that seemed like the last forkful would be too much. Of course, later empty bags of chips or cereal boxes can be found in the house in places unexpected like under a couch, on the toilet tank or in a hallway. Maybe it's a half empty jar of peanut butter that I swore I just opened...

Anyway, there will be odds like a few mouthfuls of pasta. Maybe you have an end of an opened package of luncheon meat or sausages of some type. Sometimes, I find a package of frozen vegetables with a few tablespoons that is slowly becoming freezer burnt. Okay, that last one is often my fault. What do I do with this stuff. Maybe I am done with omelets or maybe I am just out of eggs. 

I get home and that is basically all I see aside from the pantry which seems to demand more work than I want to spend cooking for me. 

Now, I hate cooking for one sometimes but this is somewhere between cooking, warming up and being a little inventive. I call it curry thing. It requires that you have some curry powder or mix of some sort. Most masala mixes would work as well. 

The point is simple. Warm those few bits and pieces up with some liquid. Add a curry roux and serve it in a bowl with beer out of a can. Preferably some rye or red beer. Or a lager. Or whatever is in your fridge. 

The big leftover technique here is the thickening technique. Simple sauce thickener here. Mash equal part fat and flour. Mash in spices. Add to liquid that is warm. Cook it until you have the thickness you want. 

I usually use flour, butter and for this thing; yellow curry and a few spices. That's it. Like the frittata leftover thing, it is putting a bunch of ingredients together and making harmony with a sauce. 

Here are a few more in the series that I have been developing to deal with food waste. The first deals with spreads, sugars and syrups. The second with vegetable and vegetable soups. The third with odd bits into an omelet. 

More Leftovers:

Leftover Breakfast

Leftover Beet Soup

Leftover Oven Baked Omelet

Thanksgiving (Canadian)

So, I got invited to a Thanksgiving by some Americans through my partner. I couldn't help but tweak the noses of the guests. I had an inkling that there were days of thanks that existed before the so-called American Thanksgiving.

I knew about the Order of Good Cheer (L'Ordre de Bon Temps) instituted by Champlain in what is now Nova Scotia in 1605. Basically, it was a drunk fest carried out in the winter to prevent scurvy. Riiiiiiight! More likely a good reason to party to prevent them from going stir crazy. That is before the first Thanksgiving in United States of America in 1621. Was there even an earlier date?

According to some historians, there is a feast of Thanksgiving made by Sir Martin Frobisher in 1578. He is the guy that brought fool's gold to Europe and got a bunch of people excited to go. Also, another fool looking for the Northwest passage. He had tried two times before and was trying again. He was thankful that they got that far and weren't dead yet. That's something to be thankful for, I guess.

There had already been Thanksgiving days before. Monarchs were thanking the Lord for victories in wars and stuff, so it wasn't strictly the harvest festival that we attach to the day now. Even on that strict idea, there were already folks here who celebrated the end of the harvest.  Maybe it was the last big blast before winter. (Nah, see Champlain above. It wasn't all his idea for the feasts. I seem to recall an article in the Believer or maybe Lucky Peach which suggested part of the idea was from the indigenous folk.)

Anyway, that all predates 1621. The argument was that was the first date that a harvest festival by Europeans with the indigenous people exist. I call foul. Hell, there is American contention over that date on whether there was a church service or not. Always moving goal posts. But in Canada, we have our feast earlier in the year and probably earlier in history.

So, from some accounts, if we use Fool's Gold Frobisher, there was a meal of salt beef, mushy peas and biscuits. What the hell could I do with that?

Test Pie. See below for the rest of the story

Well, there is meat pie. Instead of a recipe, I am going to put together the dish in front of you. Couldn't find salt beef, so used corned beef. I already wanted to make it more or less period without adding a lot of modern frills, so no onions. Corned beef does have black pepper but black pepper isn't from the "New World". Seems funny in this day and age to say things that New World, so we will stop with that. Most spices were from North America, South America, and a lot of the islands between the two. So, it was just corned beef. 

Corned beef with a gravy

Remember they used to have barrels of this stuff on ships. I remember seeing corned beef in plastic pails labelled salt beef. Just couldn't find it this time round. I should have went to the Newfoundland grocery store. I'm sure it still has the stuff in stock most times.

The cooked corn beef 

So after that was cooked, I made a gravy with butter and flour roux and added the water that I cooked the beef in. It had salt, pepper and all the good stuff from the beef. 

Tasted good just like that. I could have added mustard and maybe some vinegar but wanted to keep it super simple.

Mushy peas next.

Mushy peas. They aren't quite what I thought they were. They are dried split peas that are soaked and then cooked. Add some salt and butter and there you are. They were starchier that I thought and were very hearty. I could imagine how this could be a feast food when combining with meat and fresh bread. But my, is it heavy. If you cook the peas too much, well, that's your Habitant soup in a can. I have some of that. Homemade but still pea soup. Like it but it isn't something that I would say is a thankful dish unless you are cold, spent a long time on the water and almost died. 

The biscuit topping uncooked

And finally, a biscuit crust. Simple biscuit recipe. Not much to say. I use this often on leftover meats like turkey or chicken. Which reminds me, that is something you can do with leftover turkey. Maybe this isn't a late Thanksgiving post but rather a prescient leftovers post. Hunh! Yeah, you are making this for supper this week. The whole thing takes as much time as to make the biscuit mix and cook it. (350 for 45 minutes plus prep time). About the same amount of time to get your kids away from video games or television. 

After all that. I didn't take a pic of the final coming out of the oven. I could take a pic of the two leftover pieces in my fridge but that is unfair to it. Seriously, try something like this with your leftovers. Really good. 

Sometimes too much is... too much

I've been trying to think of a way to add more vegetables into the diets of a teen and a preteen. This used to be easy as both my kids loved veggies. I think they still do but with age comes wisdom and my eldest has become less enamoured while my youngest still does. So, I keep on keeping on with trying to find a balance between clean plates and healthy food.

This recipe isn't a good compromise but it was an attempt at stretching the ideas of what can happen within certain idioms. A plate cleaner is Manwich. So, I made Manwich one day but added sweet potato and carrots. They were visible but cut up and added tomato sauce because tomato is a vegetable (or is that a fruit). Yes, the sodium counter is through the roof. The first night we served it on a bun but I had an aha moment of serving it in pasta shells and adding a little more tomato sauce. 

So, I proceeded to do that. It is still high in sodium and there is less carbohydrates but it is still meet intensive and the plates got clean. I found it too much. As in there were too many flavours too much. My kids seemed to enjoy them. 

I think the next step is to remove the Manwich and replace the filling with a better meat to veggie ratio and use non canned sauce. Make it a bit simpler. Make it a bit healthier. I have taken away the skepticism of the stuffed pasta meal that I have been trying to make and replaced it with a "That's okay from the eldest." and a "Thanks a lot, daddy" from the youngest. This means that I can sell the other idea.

Sometimes, you have to go to the too much in order to get buy in for a simpler and more delicious and nutritious meal. And now my eldest was curious enough to wonder how you make it. Maybe it will spark his interest enough to get him to try making it himself. 

One Smart Trick ... :Martini

Gin Martini using a Red Vermouth

I love me some booze forward cocktails and one of my favourites is a gin martini. I almost feel like regurgitating all those cool factoids and stories that are easily found with the google-fu. Ideas of bruising, mixing, and dryness are all over the internet tubes. Examples include: Churchill opened the vermouth bottle, bowed to France and drank the gin. Julie Child put a lot of vermouth with a touch of gin. And the Vesper... that's James Bond's martini.

It amounts to the idea that either straight gin or vodka is a cocktail or some variation on the proper ratio of vermouth to the white liquor. I don't think that I can add much to that conversation. I love me some booze and there are many variations that make me happy, satisfied or tipsy. Sometimes even all three at once.

I haven't gotten to the problem with my home mixing yet that was solved by a conversation with Ryan, a bartender at The Clocktower and occasional barista at Boxcar Social, but I will.

Firstly, my own idiosyncratic ideal of a decent martini, are really two different approaches. Either a generous amount of vermouth with a little bit of gin or a more modern 6:1 ratio or less. At home, I accomplish this with ice. Ice everywhere; glass, shaker, and bottle. I end up shaking it slow because I want to get it cold but not dilute it too much. If I stir it, invariably, it comes off as three separate boozes with a sometimes harsh edge or some watery, vaguely piney and juniper thing. The only way I have made it work is to shake to integrate it. Sometimes there is a slight harshness but it is imminently drinkable. People like my martinis.

So I lamented this flaw of getting the edge on my home martini and Ryan suggested a simple trick. The first issue was identifying the problem. The problem was that the dilution was either too much or too little when I tried to stir it and shaking kind of muddies the flavours of some gins. Supposedly, the perfect amount of stirs is forty or about 30 seconds. The point is to get the right temperature and the required amount of water into the drink.

Ryan suggested mixing the vermouth and bitters in for about five or ten stirs first, pour it off into the glass and then put the spirit in and stir it for the remainder of time/stirs. So far, this approach has worked incredibly well. I have tried it with both variations of martini listed above and proceeded to try it with another cocktail or two that was vermouth based. Speaking of vermouth, it is important and I am thinking about messing around with making my own but that is another topic. I'll leave you with that thought and two cocktail ideas.

Using the technique above, I tried two off the cuff ideas.

2 oz Crown Royal Harvest Rye
1 oz Lionello Vermouth
2 dashes Dillon's Ginger Bitters
Grated lime peel

Tasted Christmas-y.

The second was more vermouth heavy. I had a little bit of sour cherry juice from another experiment so I wanted to do something with that. Yeah, I know you should shake anything with citrus juice but this was just a little bit to make the cherry taste come to life. I could have added the smallest amount of citric acid to accomplish the same thing.

1 Tbsp sour cherry juice
2 oz Vermouth
1 oz Wiser's Dry Hopped
Squirt of lemon juice
2 dashes Dillons DSB

Near Misses #2: Cheeseburger Ramen

My kids are often the driver for food ideas. Sometimes, I am trying to think of something that they will love and other times, it is me trying to make their idea into a reality. It is when I am stretching for something that I can learn something new and make something incredible or it can fall flat.

Here is a flat recipe inspired by seeing a recipe for cheeseburger soup and wondering if ramen would make a good switch up.

The recipe as made was:

Cheeseburger Ramen

1 slice of ham steak

1 lb frozen italian meatballs

2 sliced green onions

1 cup frozen corn

3 rafts (?) instant ramen noodles

4 cups ham broth

2 cups water

1 tbsp ketchup

1 tbsp mustard

Cheese to top

Fry ham and then add liquid. Bring liquid to a boil. Add condiments. Add meatballs and warm through. Add ramen and corn cook until done. The pkg I had said three minutes. Then add onions and pour into bowls. Top with cheese. 

What worked: Overall the flavours and concept were sound. It tasted just a little bit like a cheeseburger. It was good that the corn was there to provide some juicyness.

What didn't: Lack of concentrated beef flavour. Should have used beef stock and swapped the ham out for bacon. The original idea was a bacon cheeseburger but I got lazy on the bacon. 

The condiments were a nice add but needed a stronger foil of some type of spice or robust flavour. The broth was the thing that the kids actively disliked. 

Should have broken the meatballs down into smaller pieces. This was the kids favourite part but once they were gone, there was not much else to hold the soup together. 

What to do different: 

Use beef stock. Add some spices. Use bacon or eliminate ham altogether. Break down the meatballs.

Now, will I make it again? The kids were lacklustre about the whole affair. My eldest did not finish the broth and my youngest only ate half his bowl. They bowl were not sure that they would want another attempt. Unless I am hit by inspiration, I will give it a pass. 

Lentil Corn Bean Chili

Making something for an unknown crowd can be nerve wracking. You wonder about spicing and whether the kids will eat it. You always hope that yours is not the only one leftover and a myriad of things that are not any reflection of your cooking and what you choose to make. You want it quick, cheap and flavourful.

This is a mild chili that you can bump up. It takes faintly of cumin but has no real overpowering spices. A lentil soup texture broken up with corn and beans seems like a good dish for a chilly day.

So, here is a vegan recipe made for the 2016 Bowmore "Make It!" Fair...

1 stalk celery, chopped  (reserve celery leaves , no biggie if you don't have any)
2 large carrots, chopped
1 large white onion, diced
tbsp of oil
salt

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp curry powder
1 tbsp chili powder
4 cloves of garlic

3 cups red lentils
2x 540 ml (19 oz) cans black beans
2x 398 ml (14oz) cans cream corn
1 1/2 cup of frozen corn
1.8L of vegetable stock
2 bay leaf
reserved celery leaves (chopped)

1. Take the celery, onion and carrots and soften them over medium heat in a dutch oven or pan that will hold about 4-6 L. Add salt.
2. Add the spice mixture and garlic until it starts to smell. Between 30 seconds and 2 minutes.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients, bring to a boil and then down to a simmer. On my stove this is High and then 2 or Low but appliances will vary. Simmer until lentils are soft (25-30 minutes).

This recipe can be dressed up or dressed down with green onions or sour cream added at the last. Add more spices or whole chile peppers. Hot sauce in your bag which I would do. I do think that cooking is one of those DIY and hacks that anyone can get into.

The fair runs today from 11 am - 3 pm. Come see us with your bowl and spoon.

How to Read a Recipe: Carrot Ginger Soup

This is one of those recipes that I learned in university. It was quick, cheap, easy and could be made in a pinch on a hot plate in residence as long as you had access to a blender. My understanding is that there were a few people making margeri... smoothies in some of the rooms. On an unrelated note, it was National Margarita Day on February 22.

The basic recipe is so easy, boil carrots in a liquid and add spices and blend. There. No real reason to read the rest of this post except if you are no longer an university student. Below is a variation I made a couple of weeks ago and you can see how it has changed.

Carrot Ginger Soup

1 lb carrots, peeled and sliced
2 cloves garlic
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 cups beer
2 tbsp minced ginger
2 tbsp miso
2 tbsp of butter (or more)

1. Take carrots and garlic and roast them in a 400 degree oven until knife tender. Check at about the 15 minute mark and check them every now and again until they are on the softer side. Remember you are boiling them later so no need to be ultra precise. 

2. In the meantime, you can do each of these steps in a row and spend the next half an hour or so watching a Netflix episode of some cooking show or you could cook the onions in butter at low heat until they caramelize. That's when they get all sticky and sweet and um, caramel-y.
3. Add miso and ginger and cook every so slightly. For a bigger ginger pop, use powdered ginger and add it a little later in the process.
4. Now, if the timing worked out, add onion mixture and roasted carrot stuff (technical term) into a pot that can hold all those and the beer.
5. Add beer, and water, if needed, and bring to a boil and turn it down a few notches, an anti-Emeril if you will. Simmer for those who know those jargon laden culinary terms. Cook until carrots are beginning to fall apart.
6. Blend into desired texture. Add water to thin it out, if you like it thinner.

Seriously, that is all. Nothing to it. I could have written less steps but then it feels like less of a recipe.

Umami Bomb: There is a lot that can be done to boost flavours in the soup. Roasting the vegetables and coating them with miso or tomato paste. Also, just frying some tomato paste with the spices to reduce it a little. If you want to add "meatiness", one star anise is good. Such a slight licorice flavour without overpowering everything else going on.

Spice it Up; Harissa. Carrots love harissa. It is a pepper blend that is pretty freaking awesome. It has caraway which is another natural pairing for carrots along. Other spices that pair well are coriander, cumin and nutmeg. Just a little will change what is happening. Moroccan warm spices.

Change the Liquid: Change up the liquid. I used beer above. Wit or white beer with coriander will work. Add flavourful stock, especially beef stock works well. Remember pot roasts? Almost always cooked with carrots. There is a reason why. Oh, and if you want to boost the carroty goodness, try adding carrot juice.

Sides and Toppings: So remember up there when I talked about harissa? It makes an awesome topping. If you want, add some sour cream and harissa and you are starting to get fancy. I like to add pickled carrots to make the rest of the soup pop because I always like some acid to make veggies taste great. Pesto also works well. Check out what sauces you have in your fridge and try it. I haven't added chili sauce but why not? A few chickpeas or lentils on top add a little protein and some texture.

Refinements: Oh wow. You can get really cheffy with this. Use a food mill to get it silky smooth. Add a bit of butter at the end to make it glossy. Cream. Lemon. Thai ingredients.

I guess my point is that simple recipes can be used as a jumping off point. Since you are using such a humble, by which it is normally read as cheap, you may be able to afford to experiment unlike when you were in university. I guess some of us may have experimented but not with anything that cost money...

Kids Ideas: Breakfast Ramen

Family Day 2016. My kids and I have been trying to make a breakfast ramen for a while. This mythical beast includes bacon, broth, carrot, onions, and egg. 

So, being the dutiful dad, I have had for about three weeks, the essential ingredients handy. The following is a general guide on how to achieve a child's dream.

We took a package of bacon and put it in the oven at 350C to get it to the point where it is crispy; Kid took apart the bacon and loaded it onto the tray. After the tray went in the oven, he cut baby cut carrots into the size he wanted, followed by a green onion per person, whites separated from greens. I poured off the bacon fat and he added both beef and chicken broth and heated to warm. Once it got there, we added the carrots. Then we waited until bacon was done. 

When the bacon cooled a little, we poured some bacon into a fry pan for the eggs. He crumbled the bacon and ate a few pieces. I may have had a few too. Added udon noodles, onion whites. When they began to separate, we added green peas sliced thin and the onion greens. This is what it looked like.

After a few minutes while everything was separating, I fried an egg in excess bacon fat. The bowl went something like this.

 It was really amazing. The original conception called for shrimp and it could be done. The other adjustments would be more carrot and bigger slices of peas. My point is that it got my son into cooking and coming up with a concept that he owned. We ended up spending 45 minutes of time together in the kitchen where it didn't feel as if I was guiding the process but just offering suggestions to what he was doing. Grace notes to his whole piece. If felt good to offer suggestions and help when he needed instead of being about helping me. I helped him. More importantly, he wants to do it again.

Happy Family Day, all.

Leftovers #3: Oven Baked Omelet

The waste series reminded me that a facility with leftovers creates less waste. Part of creating less waste is having a few handy go to recipes in your kit to pull out and adapt. This can be trying if you have kids or picky eaters in the house.

My kids have a wide palate but often resort to not wanting something or not liking a category when they like individual dishes. A good example is red peppers; one kid loves them raw but says he does not like them any other way, except when they are roasted they are good in a sauce or mixed in mayo but not left whole on a pizza. Get where I am going with this?

I'm not a fan of hiding the ingredients and we have adopted a try it once and if you don't like it, that's fine. On those days, I make sure there is something else on the table but not a whole other meal. Remember, this is a post about waste. I haven't forgotten but it seems that getting your kid to eat their food is a step towards that.

Here is one way that works mostly. Turn it into a baked omelet or a fritatta.

So leftover butter chicken sauce is added to beaten eggs. You could use any leftover saucy bits. Leftover rice from Chinese take-out, mixed veggies, frozen peas, almost any tiddly fiddly bits. French Fries. Bits of chicken from a roast. You know, leftovers. 

Anyways, the point is to add something just a bit different that is healthy or going to waste anyways or even both. If they like the whole egg thing, then this will most likely work. 

For advanced food waste management, use leftover food grease. Bacon fat is amazing. Above, I added the fat from stock making. I suppose the official name would be schmaltz. It is the fat from chicken. The stock had some seasoning that remained in the fat. If you are not looking for bonus points, just use butter or oil. 

Normally, I start the eggs on the stove, add the bits and then once the bottom has set, put the whole pan into the oven until it cooks all the way through. Is this gourmet cooking or the Jacques Pepin way? No. Is it delicious and good enough for my kids? Is it quick and easy for any schlub getting home from work with no ideas left and a half hour from taking one kid out to swimming while the other is getting back from karate? Most definitely. 

In short, this is a recipe idea to keep in your back pocket for those type of nights where you have some small containers of almost nothing, a few eggs, and a deficit of time. 

Kids Ideas: Breakfast Pancakes

I know, "Aren't all pancakes, breakfast pancakes?". Well...

It's Canada Day and my son's birthday. This is the first year of living apart and I have enjoyed making things with the kids in the kitchen. Both of them are in the early stages of recipe creation. They have passed the whacky ingredient stage of putting a pile of things together. Now they are headed into the substitution stage. It is interesting to see how they develop their own sense of how recipes work and how you cook. I'm learning a lot about how people see cooking and recipes.

The substitution phase: You take something you know and swap out ingredients. It is an easy thing but it shows them how stuff works. My son wanted to make pancakes for his birthday breakfast but a cold and the lure of computer time interceded. His idea was to have something like a chocolate bar or jam in pancakes. So, dutifully I brought home a bunch of chocolate bars and several cans of pie filling. Hopefully, one of them would catch his fancy. On this day, his capricious self choice the Fruit & Nut bar. I'll leave the pictures to tell the story.

Look it even says on the back of the package that you an add stuff. Funny, I don't see any chocolate, candy or jam on the back. Most have been an oversight on the whole grain pancake mix. I could be all defensive and say the only reason that I bought the mix was the losing battle with grain moths but the real reason is the obvious one. I don't trust myself to get everything together enough to make pancakes in the morning. That gives me an idea on making my own pancake mix.

Also, when you have too hot of a pan and the butter starts to burn, turn down the heat and call it beurre noissette or browned butter. Tell the kids you pay extra for that in restaurants. Also note the lumps of treasure. Treasure pancakes is a good family name for this recipe, I think.

And this is what the final one of the batch looks like. I am sure there is a scientific explanation why the first few turn out a bit dodgy but by the end everything seems to work out. In reality, it is probably practice.




And this was our Canada Day and Birthday breakfast. It was fun to come up with the recipe with the kids. They do have a few more ideas for this one and a whole lot more.

Recipe: Pepperoni & Eggs

I've been wanting to do a "Pepperoni is the New Bacon Post" for a while but never seem to get it together enough to write one. Pepperoni is one of my son's favourite flavours. It may not seem it but I would argue that pepperoni is its own flavour. Anyways, when I finally write that post, I will argue for the versatility and utility but in the meantime, my kids made me a breakfast for Father's Day.

The pepperoni was fried first to render the fat off a little bit. In went a knob of butter and then an egg. My son is trying to figure out frying so we tried to do a sunny side egg. He plopped the egg in and I showed him how to spoon the hot fat over the egg to ensure the albumin got cooked.

The toast went into the toaster for a second time. Note the darker shade. All that was left was to plate and eat. The salt and fat from the pepperoni gave eggs the kick it needed. No need for seasoning. Pepperoni, in the breakfast egg context, could be used in omelets, quiche, like a meat side or as a crust for baked eggs.

Really pleased with my Father's Day treat of breakfast.

Recipe: Better Than Twinkies

What is better than Twinkies? This of course...

Made a quick sauce with butter, bananas, salt, and rum. First you melt the butter and add a pinch of salt. Put in cut bananas. Fry to brown (which I didn't do a great job) and add a little bit of rum. (151 proof cause I want the kinders to sleep well tonight). Added a splash of lime juice too to stop it from becoming too rich.

When the sauce comes together, remove Twinkies from package and put bananas over. Spoon sauce and then listen to your son say that he ate too much of the bananas and might be too full for the Twinkies. He goes on to finish it because, it is a Twinkie.

Just an easy way to schmancify a dry cake dessert.

Notes from an Eleven Year Old

This is how my eleven year old son views the idea of a recipe. There are several attempts at moving away from standard way of presenting recipes with title, headnotes, ingredients and techniques. Several cookbooks and blogs have experimented with styles and we are getting some interesting results. But look at this start.

Let me translate the writing for you. 

Fried

Onions

cucumber

peppers

chicPeas

herbs

dill

paprica

fresheners

Slice of lime/lime juice

As you move left to right, these are the actions you do to these ingredients. The part that is not written down was the inspiration and the discussion we had around creating this recipe. It comes from an episode of Mind of A Chef where they are working on a succotash recipe. Originally, this was to be a fried salad but when we started breaking down the idea, he wasn't as interested in cooked lettuce as he was at the beginning. 

We talked about what would happen to each ingredient and what he was trying to do. It turns out he wants to learn how to fry and wanted to make a recipe that works that way. This was an interesting experience and collaboration where I give what I know and honestly remove my biases by talking through what happens with ingredients. If I don't know, I let him know and he can make that decision. I've had fried lettuce in a dish and deep fried greens and boiled lettuce soup. Cooked cucumbers exist in Asian cuisine. Chickpeas are one of his favourites. And so on.

This is how I hope that our relationship outside of the kitchen works too. He explains what he is doing and why he wants to do it. I give my experiences and he takes it away and decides. We will be making this recipe this weekend and I will be the sous chef. At some point and time, you need to walk away from the stove and give your kids the opportunity, both in life and cooking. 

Bowmore Make It Fair Curried Beet and Coconut Soup

Went to the Bowmore Make It Fair and brought along this soup. Had a few requests for the recipe, so decided to do up a post for posterity.

The thing is, there is no real recipe...and I hate purple beets but I like this recipe. I first tried doing this for Valentine's potluck at work. I decided to leave out the blue cheese whipped bits but if you are interested, it is described in the link above. Anyways, I will try to break it down for you and just let me know if you have any problems.

Curried Beet and Coconut Soup (Vegan version)
makes a 6 quart (5.5 L) crockpot full

8 Large beets (2-3 lbs)
3 tbsp miso paste
1 tbsp curry powder
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp garam masala
1 can (~400ml) coconut milk
750 ml apple juice
15 ml lemon or lime juice

Okay, here is what I've done with all the riffs included.  I may include an unannotated version afterwards but this reflects how I actually cook.

Cut up the beets in reasonable chunks for roasting in a 350 oven for an hour. If you don't cut them up, it will take longer. A neat trick is just to put them in any time you are cooking something else. I added a few carrots to roast as well. Cool slightly and peel. In a dry pan, add spices to toast lightly on a medium heat. Or if you don't want to bother, just skip this step. Basically keep the proportions so that no one spice mix dominates. You can skip the garam and just keep cumin and curry in equal proportions. Once it starts to smell, add a little water and the miso paste. Cook until dissolved. Add beets and carrots, coconut milk and apple juice. The liquid should just come up to the beets, you need enough to cook them in. If it doesn't, add some water until it does. Don't worry about adding too much water because you will have to thin the soup later when blending. Cook until beets are soft enough to blend with a stick blender or whatever blendy thing you are using. (about 45 minutes). Make sure not to boil the soup too hard. If it starts rapidly bubbling turn it down. I guess that is a simmer, as in simmer down. Blend the soup and add water to desired consistency. Add lemon or lime juice before serving.

All said, I know the time looks long but I often add beets or other roots vegetables to the oven when I am cooking something so I tend to have them on hand in the winter. In the summer, forget about it. That is the time for things that need less heat. And they can cook unattended. Go watch an episode of Game of Thrones when they are in the oven. Same with the on the stove thing. I finished cooking the soup while I was having my morning coffee and getting ready for the Fair, looking for cords and tweeting and FBing and other nerdish stuff.

Anyways, enjoy. Let me know your riffs, if you do any.

Near Misses #1: Frittata and an attempt at Garlic Bread?

One of the comments I hear from people when they are listening to me talk about making supper or cooking something new is that they could never do it. Behind that is an assumption that somehow, cooking is a talent rather than something to work at and explore. It also doesn't help that there is always an idea that to make a good meal, it takes a lot of time.

So, going to start breaking down some of those myths by sharing my near misses and failures. It is only in the failures that you learn something. We had two near misses in my household this weekend; the first was a frittata that used goat cheese and the second was... interesting.

Frittata

Frittata is just an Italian word shortcut for puffy omelet. Take some eggs and milk or cream. Beat them together. Put them in hot pan that can be put in the oven. Put in some carbs and other tasty things. Wait for a bit of setting and then put it in the oven. I generally put it in at 350 for until it's set and then broil it for browning or cheese melting.

We always make extra pasta and serve our sauce on the side so as to have enough leftovers to make this omelet. This time there was butter sauce on it. That's just plain butter and a little salt. The filling this time was adding a little goat cheese. Also, had a little leftover mushroom soup that I flicked on. The kids did not like it. Even though, they both have had soft goat cheese before, this time it did not go over well. A couple reasons other than that the only substantial flavour was the tang from the cheese could have been the all day sucker that they finished only hours before. Trying something out of the box at the end of the day is always risky but even worse when you have tired and strung out boys. But we did agree to try a better grade of cheese sometime in a different manner to make sure it wasn't the cheese.

Something Else

At the cheese shop, the kids tried Lankaaster cheese and really liked it. So much that they wanted to do something with it for supper. The intention was to try Mark II on the Frittata and serve it with baguette. Somewhere along the way, the plan morphed.

We got this.

This is a baguette smeared with bacon fat, topped with pasta and cheese. The kids loved it. It didn't hurt that my eldest came up with idea. It was quite rich and should have been served with fresh veggies or something to cut the fat. It wasn't. As the meal went on, there were some concessions after the initial chowdown that maybe some garlic could have been used and yes, maybe a sauce would make it better. Regardless, there is a good germ of an idea here that merits exploration.

Recipes: Family Day Sandwiches

We had bologna sandwiches and chocolate bar sandwiches for Family Day. I'm going to blame David Chang and Quebec for the first and Food & Wine for the second. 

This is a straight up recipe post with only a bit of setup. I've been messing around with bologna sandwiches for quite a while. One of my favourites is to grab mortadella which is the original bologna from, well, Bologna in Italy. It looks like our favourite except with specks of black pepper and spackled with fat nodules. My son requested this sandwich after watching an episode of In The Mind of a Chef.

Instructions:

Fry some thinly sliced mortadella and reserve any grease. Place on bread with provolone cheese, Italy's favourite processed cheese. I like rye bread for the bread, as it gives it that Montreal flare. Smother with mustard. Hot mustard helps cut the fat. Take sandwiches and fry them until cheese is melted or bread is at desired colour. Take it out and eat 'em. Serve them with ketchup if you must.

Now, about that chocolate bar sandwich... A friend talked about his Scottish childhood and how he would go to school with candy bar sandwiches and trade for fresh veggies and regular sandwiches. I'm beginning to question my choice to limit my kids' intake of sugar right about now. Also, in January's Food & Wine there is a recipe for Grilled Chocolate Sandwiches with Caramel Sauce. So, I tried two takes on that: one with Laura Secord's nutella homage (Nutella is better but next time) and another with a Caramilk bar. 

Instructions: 

Put ingredients on bread. Toast them in a frying pan. Serve them with another set of liquid sugar such as caramel sauce or Mapo Spread. That's what I used. It is an incredibly sweet, maple flavoured spread. Pretty freaking awesome. The kids preferred the candy bar one as the caramel and chocolate had seeped into the bread. This is an easy dessert but you will have to have candy bars on hand. In some houses, this is an impossible task.

That was lunchtime for Family Day...

Valentine's Potluck

Two weeks ago, work decided it was putting on a Valentine's brunch but we had to tie our food to Valentine's with colour or something. The first thought that passed through my head was to do up some beef heart in some fashion - tartar or a stew.

I didn't do that. Maybe some Texas red with heart shaped biscuits? Beet sandwiches cut into hearts? These gimmicky things are both a nuisance and a time to shine. I just couldn't figure it out. Part of it is that I'm just not into this holiday this year. With the dissolution of my marriage last year, it seems more hokey than normal. So many sites talk about food to get you in the mood or romantic food.

The thing is that aside from heavy meals, I find that any meals can a bit of eroticism to them. In turns watching someone eat can be disgusting or evocative. A lot of that is, of course, the meal companion. If you find someone attractive, there are so many things that you can forgive and overlook. So, the idea that red food somehow shows more love than a well cooked and intentional meal is a little hollow.

Any meal cooked with love and explicitly for someone is sexy.

But back to what to bring to a potluck. I'm making a beet, coconut and lime soup with a blue cheese cream. The soup base has beer and coconut milk stirred into sweating onions where guajillo chili, cinnamon, chili powder and turmeric have been added. Then the beets were added and cooked until tender. The soup was blended with vegetable stock as needed.

Blue cheese was whipped with whipping cream.

This will be served chilled in a small cup with a dollop of whipped blue cream and a toothpick dragged through to make a white heart on top.

Leftover Breakfast #1

Almost New Year's and I'm thinking about starting a new series of blog posts and reviving some older ones. Hopefully, it will last longer than most resolutions that die before a month is over. Anyways, I have been reading too much of Ideas in Food blog because once again their type of thinking has inspired me to look at my leftovers a bit differently.

Today, using some leftover naan, we had French toast naan. There were several aha moments and I could and should milk those insights for multiple posts but I'm so excited how the whole thing came together that I am going to do all of it right now.

French toast is like fried custard 
On some level, I know that but soaking some of the bread for a while in the egg mixture reminded me of how alike french toast and bread pudding are. I wonder what frying leftover bread pudding would be like?

Bread is Bread
Speaking about frying bread pudding, there are so many breads that are non traditional for french toast. Makes me want to make a spice loaf or a pumpkin loaf just to toast and the dip it in egg mixture and have a desserty french toast. The texture of the naan was pancake like. I wonder how pancakes or bannock would taste. Sometimes this is a case of more is more and this piling on of flavours will collapse into turducken territory. But these were leftover naan and definitely stale.

Sugar is Sugar
Had way too much apricot gomme from a review I did for beer cocktails for eatdrinktravel. Apricot gomme is just a simple syrup that is thickened with a gum, or in this case, I used apricot paste. It is thick and sugary with a light apricot taste. It is a syrup and tasted great poured over the naan. Reminds me of the time that I made a smoke simple syrup to be poured over fried leftover oatmeal.

I guess if you fry most leftovers and pour syrup over it, you can call it breakfast? So many interesting (to me) ideas that I may have to purposely make some leftovers.

Ideas #1: Re Imagining Carrot Cake

I'm blatantly stealing this concept from one of my favourite blogs, Ideas in Food. Smaller posts about possible experiments that will fill the gaps in blogging days and at the same time provide a repository for ideas for recipes or techniques. This will, hopefully, replace the scrawly bits of paper that end up in tiny paper mache balls in my pants on laundry days.

Been messing around with drying stuff and creating dusts for a while, mostly fruits. Wonder what would happen if you dried carrots and then rehydrated them using different flavoured liquids. The approach would have to be weigh before drying then rehydrate to the same level if you don't want to change the recipe.

The liquids could be anything:

• Carrot juice - to magnify the carrot flavours
• Spice infused liquid - wonder if adding it to the fibers would make a difference
• Apple Cider - apples and carrots
• Fruit Juice mixture - my wife makes a carrot salad with mango, apple, and raisins. Could some type of this mixture be used to boost the flavour?
• Vegetable Stock - Could subtle flavoured stocks lend a savoury element that would be set off by the traditional cream cheese icing.

This simple idea of coming up with a carrot cake but starting from dried carrots presents some interesting opportunities.

Pimp My Chili

For me, the required element for a good chili is that when you finish a bowl, you want another bowl. I'm going to share a few ways to increase the umami or savoury aspects of your chili.

When I am talking chili, I'm not going to get into the merits of beans/no beans, Texas chili or bust or any of those great and valid debates. I'm going to assume the thing that you get when you go to a soup counter or at the local lunch time place is what we are talking about. Some of these tips apply regardless.

I'm not going to regale you with tales of the new Naga Scorpion hybrid that someone smuggled for me or the latest capsaicin extract or even the relative fruitiness of some of the mid Scoville range peppers. If you didn't understand the last paragraph, then I'm talking to you. Those other food nerds can go to Chile Pepper.

I'm going to share a few ways to increase the umami or savoury aspects of your chili.

Reduce the Water

The enemy of intense, rich flavours is water. For many of your ingredients, you want to get water out and maybe replace it with a different liquid.

Start by looking at the vegetables that you add but let's leave the onions until later. If you add carrots and celery, chop them (it reduces time) and try roasting them in a 250C oven until they have lost some water.

Roast or cook down tomato paste before adding. If you over reduce or find that you need to loosen up the tomato paste, add a liquid that will add depth such as stock, malty beer or that tomato water from the can of tomatoes you usually add.

Toast Stuff

If you are using chili powder, take a few seconds and toast it in a dry pan over a low heat. Keep mixing or swirling it around so it doesn't burn but there you go.

Be brave and make your own spice mixture. Toast the spices and grind them together. Last time I made chili, I took cumin seed and star anise (more on the star anise later) toasted them and then ground just the cumin. I toasted some ground spices; cinnamon, allspice, sweet paprika, sweet-sour paprika, and cayenne. This was my spice base.

Buy your own dried peppers and toast them. Ancho, pasilla and New Mexico are often available in stores. Any of the dry smoky ones are best. Leave the seeds in, if you like the heat. You can even improve these peppers by doing the next hint.

Use Dried Ingredients

This works especially well, if you are using ingredients to build umami. Dried mushrooms, sundried tomatoes and parmesan rinds work well for building flavour. Those are the quick fixes.

Beans. Take the time to soak and cook your own beans. That way, you can get the texture to your preference. Do up extra and freeze or make baked beans. Mix up the type of beans. Colour, texture and flavour differ between beans and these differences can add complexity.

Another great trick is to reconstitute these dried ingredients using warm stock, beer, or even excess bean water from cooking the beans. For instance, using a malty beer to make a mushroom tea and then adding that to the chili pot will definitely add a layer of flavour. You can use the reconstitution method along with the toasting method to compound flavours. Toast dry chiles, reconstitute them and use a blender to make a sauce and add it to the chili pot.

Smoke

A little smoke can add depth. Anything from using smoked chili peppers, smoked paprika, liquid smoke or a bit of bacon can put another layer of moreness into the bowl.

Add Flavour Early


The earlier the flavour is added in the process, the more time it has to develop. For instance, if you sweat the onions, add the spices and the dried carrots. Drying the carrots before adding them is earlier than add the carrots later. I added star anise when browning the beef. Star anise has a slight liquorice flavour when noticeable. When added at a low level, it makes meat tastes meatier. I also toasted star anise with spices and when I took them out, added the stars to the tomato paste that I was reducing.


Cheats Are Additive

This time I added smoked sundried tomatoes that had been soaked in warm beer. I toasted smoked paprika and added them to the onions. You could use a rauchbier which is a smoked beer as the liquid for your peppers, tomatoes or extra liquid. 


You don't need to do all of these to make a chili with depth and umami. If you just do a few of these, they will improve it. There are other cheats but these are the ones that make me happy. Try a few out. Let me know how it goes.