I decided to put a tropical twist on my macaroons. This year our Seder theme is to come dressed as a character from a Tom Hanks movie. (don’t ask!!). I figured that these cookies would be right at home on the set of Cast Away. I started with a recipe from David Lebowitz for coconut pineapple macaroons. Cook down some crushed canned pineapple and sugar until it reaches a jam-like consistency. I ramped up the tropical vibe with some macadamia nuts and white chocolate. It is traditional to utter these words at the end of every Passover Seder, “Next year in Jerusalem.” It’s entirely possible these little macaroons will have us declaring “Next year in Hawaii.”
This tart was created because I had a big bowl of wild mushrooms languishing in my fridge from a photo shoot last week. The mushroom photo below was my homework for the Composition Essentials Course I am taking from the very talented Australian food photographer, Rachel Korinek. Not only does she take gorgeous food shots, but she is an extremely skilled teacher.One of our assignments was to look at our past photos and find gaps, areas we had not explored from certain compositional viewpoints. In reviewing my pictures, I noticed that I shoot really tight, and don’t leave much breathing room. I guess it’s the photographic equivalent of close talkers.
Negative space is naturally calming. It helps to emphasize your subject and provides your image with balance. The second compositional tool I incorporated into my mushroom photo was advanced lines. I used a gently curving arabesque, which takes your eye on a journey from the top to the bottom of the frame.
I wanted to make something springlike, because I’m tired of roasted veggies and hearty soups. Leeks are one of the first signs of spring to appear on the market shelves, and their sweet mellow flavour is a perfect complement to earthy mushrooms. Plus, they don’t make me cry, like onions do, when I slice them.
This galette dough is one of my favourite pastry recipes. I learned how to make it in my very first kitchen job almost 30 years ago. It uses butter and sour cream and it rolls out like a dream. No cracking or shrinking.
Ricotta, gruyere and parmesean cheese are combined to create a base before the mushrooms and leeks are added. Leave a border and then gently pleat the dough to encase the filling.
A drizzle of olive oil before baking.
A generous zesting of lemon after baking.
Although the calendar says that Spring arrives this week, my reality says otherwise. I live in Ottawa. There is no rhubarb poking it’s little head out of the frozen earth, begging to be picked, in my neck of the woods. Yet, I’m anxious for it to be Spring already, so I hurried things along by using frozen rhubarb and imported strawberries. Desparate times, folks.
These yeasted cornmeal waffles are the perfect vehicle to showcase the strawberry-rhubarb sauce. These are not waffles to be made on a whim. You must plan ahead and make the batter overnight. Sorry, but time is the secret ingredient in these sublime waffles. These cornmeal waffles are my spin on Marion Cunningham’s waffles from her classic tome, “The Breakfast Book. Although this little book is over 20 years old, it has stood the test of time. If you love breakfast/brunch foods, you need to add this book to your shelf.
Yeast, warm water, and a pinch of sugar get things going. Add some buttermilk, salt, all-purpose flour and cornmeal and mix up the magic. Leave it on the counter overnight. In the morning, behold a glorious bubbling concoction. Add eggs and baking soda and you’re ready to waffle. Let’s talk strawberry-rhubarb sauce. First, the elephant in the room. Rhubarb is bracingly sour. We need something to tame the tang. Of course you could use sugar, but we’re making waffles here, so maple syrup is my sweetner of choice. It has more depth of flavour than plain white sugar and it really flatters the tart and acidic tone of rhubarb. As a bonus, it helps to enhance imported strawberries.
Roast the fruit with maple syrup for about 40 minutes. This sauce will keep in the fridge for about a week. I have been mixing the leftover sauce into my plain greek yogurt in the morning. So much better than buying flavoured yogurt.
Happy Pi Day (3.14/March 14). Pie making is not my strong suit. I have always struggled with uneven and cracking dough while rolling, and shrinking dough while baking. I’m much more comfortable whipping up a swiss meringue buttercream for a cake or a dozen salted caramel macarons.
It seems like every day is National Something or Other Day. There is actually a calendar to keep us informed. Did you know that April 14 is National Ex-Spouse Day? Maybe people celebrate it with a smash cake? Some food bloggers are super organized and maintain an editorial calendar to track and feature all these days. Sadly, I don’t fall into that category. But, Pi day is something I feel like I can get behind. Last year we celebrated with Spiced Lamb Hand Pies.
I have a thing for hand pies. They’re just so adorable and I feel no guilt about eating a tiny pie.
The pie dough for this recipe comes from pastry wizzard Stella Parks, over at Serious Eats. She calls for a 1:1 ratio of flour:butter, by weight. Most typical pastry dough recipes use more flour than butter. The extra butter in her dough creates a dough that’s pliable but strong, making cracks and tears a thing of the past. It gets folded once, to create extra flaky layers.
The apple filling is classic and simple. Apples, brown sugar, cinnamon and a pinch of salt. Sharp white cheddar makes a fine companion for apples, but use orange cheddar if that’s all you have. I decided to get fancy and make a decorative braided border on my pies. Ever since I saw this Apricot Pie I wanted to try my hand at dough braiding. I still need a bit of practice, but it was fun to do. You can simply leave them plain and they’ll be equally delicious
Last week, as I was watching TV, this commercial caught my attention. It featured a young woman, staring wistfully, at the bountiful bread counter at Whole Foods. As they panned across the crusty artisan loaves, the tagline, “Maybe bread and you should be a thing again”, scrolled across the screen.
I’m a big believer in Julia Child’s credo, “Everything in moderation…including moderation.” So many people I know are abstaining from bread. While I don’t indulge in it everyday, I believe that if it’s good bread, I have a responsibility to eat it. The burnished crust on the baguettes at my local bakery were too calling my name.Sandwich making is not as simple as slapping a filling between two slices of bread. There’s an art to it. I’ll fill you in on how the pros do it.
Use two sauces instead of just one. Elevate plain mayo by adding a teaspoon of chipotle chiles in adobo sauce. Their smoky mild heat takes plain mayo from drab to fab. Slather this on one side of the baguette. On side two, spread some olive tapenade for a punch of umami. You can make your own, or purchase some from the olive cart at the supermarket.
If it’s not the height of tomato season, roast some little cherry or grape tomatoes. Make sure you oil and season them well. Every layer of the sandwich should be seasoned. Slice some roasted or grilled chicken. A supermarket rotisserie chicken is perfect for this.
Even if you aren’t an onion fan, I urge you to try pickling some onions. It takes about 15-20 minutes and is simple to do. It removes all the harshness of raw onions and becomes quite mellow. I’ve included instructions in the recipe. Don’t forget to show your avocado some seasoning love as well. A squeeze of lemon or lime juice, some salt and pepper are all that’s needed. Finish with some fresh basil and some peppery arugula or a handful of micro greens.Dagwood would be jealous!
If my sweet version of breakfast labne toast with strawberries and honey didn’t convince you to bust out the cheesecloth and make some labne, perhaps this savory version will.
Labne, also known as yogurt cheese, is simple to make. Mix plain yogurt (greek or regular, your choice) with a bit of lemon juice and salt. Put it in a cheesecloth lined strainer, set over a bowl. Leave it in the fridge for 24-28 hours, depending on how thick you like it. You can feed the whey drippings to your pet pig, if you happen to have one. If not, just discard.
Homemade labne will keep in the fridge for 2 weeks, so make a big batch and shake up your morning breakfast routine.
Start with good bread. A hearty artisnal loaf, something substantial, maybe one loaded with seeds and nuts. Please remember to deeply toast your bread, otherwise the labne will soak into the bread like a sponge, and that would be sad. Plain avocadoes are bland. They need to be treated with the magic trifecta of acid, salt and heat. In this case, I used lime juice, flaky sea salt and maras red pepper. If you don’t know about maras pepper, you need to learn about it and get yourself a bag. They are sun-dried Turkish peppers with a slow, subtle heat. They instantly add a hit of brightness to everything you put them on. If you have a Mid-East grocery in your city, they will likely stock it.
Add some toasted pistachios for a little crunch. And if you happen to have a jar of dukkah in the pantry, a sprinkle of that will really take this breakfast to the next level deliciousness.
I first made these hamentashen six years ago. Inspired by cinnamon buns, I stuffed the hamentashen with brown sugar, cinnamon, butter and chopped almonds and pecans. What could be bad about that? I used my Aunt Carol’s traditional oil based dough and once baked, I drizzled them with an icing sugar glaze. They were a big hit.
But then, last year I had a hamentashen epiphany. I discovered Israeli bread baking guru Uri Scheft‘s almond butter shortbread dough . He wrapped up his poppy seed hamentashen with this gorgeous buttery dough. I made them and I was hooked!
I wondered what would happen if I put the cinnamon bun filling into the almond shortbread dough? I mean, I knew it would be good, but I had no idea how seriously good it would be. That chewy cinnamon filling wrapped up in a crumbly cookie dough is off the charts good!
Hamentashen are the traditional treat baked for the Jewish holiday of Purim, which, this year, falls on Thursday March 1. The Festival of Purim commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in ancient (4th century BCE) Persia were saved from extermination.
The celebration of Purim will be bitter-sweet for me this year. Sweet because, well…. Hamentashen! Bitter because this will be my first Purim without my Aunt Carol. She passed away, suddenly, a few weeks ago. She is actually my husband’s aunt, but from the very first time I met her, over 36 years ago, she always made me feel like a part of the family. I miss her very much.
It was from Aunt Carol that I learned that all hamentashen didn’t come from a bakery. (I also learned that it is rude to stack dishes at the table when clearing.) Until I met her, I’d never had a homemade hamentashen. My reaction was not that dissimilar to when I found out, from my big sister Faith, that babies don’t come from the stork.
Every year, Aunt Carol and her sister-in-law, Aunt Jen, went into factory mode and produced vast quantities of tiny little triangles of dough filled with a prune and raisin filling, dipped in honey and walnuts. They shipped these hamantashen off to all their children, nieces and nephews across the universe. Sadly, Aunt Jen died about 26 years ago, but Aunt Carol soldiered on alone, continuing the tradition of making hamentashen for everyone in the family. We all looked forward to our little parcels in the mail. It’s possible that my addiction to online shopping is her fault. She conditioned me to get happy when boxes arrived in the mail.
I spent some very happy afternoons in Aunt Carol’s kitchen learning how to master hamentashen. The dough for this recipe is hers. The filling recipe for these hamentashen is my creation. While I love the traditional flavours of poppyseed and prune, I like to play with different flavour combos.A few years ago year I made Cinnamon Bun Hamentashen. Last year I baked Salted Caramel Apple Hamentashen, Poppy Seed Hamentashen and Dried Cherry and Pecan Hamentashen.
I love the combo of maple and pecans. I blitzed some toasted pecans, maple butter and some cream cheese together to make this delicious filling. If you can’t find maple butter, a combo of brown sugar and maple syrup would be a good substitute. In the recipe link below, I give proportions.
Once cooled, the baked hamentashen get a dip in a maple glaze and some finely chopped pecans.
While this is ostensibly a post about a Brassica Grain Bowl, what I really want to tell you about is a new habit I have adopted. If you are a friend of my daughter, you know not to call her on a Sunday afternoon. That’s when she does her weekly meal prep. She chops, roasts and steams various vegetables and grains and fills her fridge with the component parts she will need for healthy meals all week long. That way, when she gets home from work, she is less likely to call a glass of wine and a bag of chips dinner, as her mother has been known to occasionally do, At some point, many children’s intelligence surpasses their parents and they start teaching us. I have decided to take a page out of my daughter’s book and start doing some weekly meal prep, so that my occasional solitary meals will be a bit healthier.
At the beginning of the week I fill a big zip-loc bag with chopped raw vegetables. My blend includes raw broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale and sugar snap peas. Shredding Brussels sprouts is admittedly a fiddly task. Do it by hand to work on your knife skills or go ahead an bust out the Cuisinart.
All this chopping takes time. I binge-watch something addictive on Netflix. This month I’m watching Offspring. Shot in Australia, I have become smitten with the protagonist, Dr. Nina Proudman, a slightly neurotic and very funny OBGYN. She is a rockstar in the operating room, but not so skilled in her lovelife. The series showcases her two siblings and parents. While I would not call them dysfunctional, they are decidedly eccentric and unconventional. Good luck watching just one episode! Completely addictive.
This raw veggie mix makes a great base for a grain bowl, an excellent slaw to accompany roast chicken, a delicious stuffer for Tuesday fish tacos, and a perfect foundation for some shredded chicken for lunch. You can sauté it in butter or olive oil and garlic and serve it as a side dish.
After I chop the vegetables, I cook up one or two kinds of grains or some brown rice. I love farro, barley and I’ve really been into wheat berries lately. I adore their chewy texture and nutty flavour. If you like quinoa, go ahead and cook up a batch of that. I won’t judge you.
I like to keep a jar or two of homemade dressing in the fridge so that a salad can come together quickly. For this grain bowl I mixed up a herb-lemon vinaigrette.
I also roasted some butternut squash. Sweet potatoes would also be delicious. Chop it small so it roasts quickly.The last component of my meal prep is a batch of pickled vegetables. Carrots, cucumber and shallots are a nice mix. They last for a while in the fridge and are excellent on tacos and sandwiches.You can top your grain bowl with whatever protein you like. Grilled chicken, skirt steak, salmon, tofu, chickpeas, cheese and eggs are all great options. Avocado is always a good idea and don’t forget the crunch on top. Seeds and nuts of all kind add welcome texture.
I tend to eat the same thing for breakfast everyday, for about 5 years, until I get bored of it (clearly I don’t get bored very easily!) While I haven’t totally given up on my Double Coconut Granola with yogurt and fruit, I am having a brief, but passionate, dalliance with labneh.
Labneh, also called “yogurt cheese”, originated in The Middle-East thousands of years ago. It continues to be a daily staple there, showing up for breakfast drizzled with olive oil and a sprinkling of za’atar to dip your pita into, as a spread for sandwiches at lunch and in mezze platters at cocktail hour. It is made by straining the whey off yogurt, past the point of even Greek yogurt. Thick and tangy, it is extremely smooth, delicious and very versatile.
If you have a Middle-Eastern market near you, they often sell it. In Ottawa they make excellent labneh at Damas Supermarket. If you can’t find it, you can make it easily at home. Just mix a bit of salt and fresh lemon juice into plain yogurt. Place it in a strainer lined with cheesecloth, set over a large bowl, to catch the whey. Put it into the fridge to 24-48 hours. If you are planning to use it as a dip, 24 hours will be sufficient. If you want to use it as a spread, 48 hours will give you a thicker product. I have tried straining Greek yogurt as well as regular yogurt, and I prefer the final texture of plain regular yogurt. Just use full fat yogurt. It will keep in the fridge for up to two weeks.
I decided to pair my morning labneh with strawberries, toasted hazelnuts andf a drizzle of honey. Winter strawberries need a bit of help. I sliced them in half, mixed them with a spoonful of sugar and roasted them for 30 minutes. Leftover roasted berries will keep in the fridge for a week. Toast up your bread of choice. Something dense, and seedy to hold up to the weight of the labneh would be a good idea. Finish with a drizzle of your favourite honey and get ready to face the day.
This year for Passover I wanted to try something a little different for our dessert table. I always make coconut macaroons diped in chocolate. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. They’re practically perfect.
I started with a recipe from David Lebowitz for coconut pineapple macaroons. Cook down some crushed canned pineapple and sugar until it reaches a jam-like consistency. I ramped up the tropical vibe with some macadamia nuts and white chocolate.
It is traditional to utter these words at the end of every Passover Seder, “Next year in Jerusalem.” It’s entirely possible these little macaroons will have us declaring “Next year in Hawaii.”
