FFWD – Shrimp and Cellophane Noodles

January 25, 2013January 25, 2013 ~ Teresa ~ 20 Comments

I’m not entirely sure I should be claiming to have made this week’s recipe, but I’m certainly not alone in this. Once again, our Problems & Questions thread was very busy and this week’s subject was tomato purée. Those who’d made the recipe early felt the purée overwhelmed what might otherwise have been a perfectly good stirfry. Those of us, not naming any names here (particularly mine), who tend to do things a little last-minute mostly decided to reduce the amount of tomato or eliminate it altogether.

I eliminated it and didn’t really have to tweak the rest of the flavours at all. Next time, I might squeeze some lime juice over the stirfry just before serving, but I was quite happy with tonight’s results. I did play with the recipe in other ways – substituting a mix of fresh wild mushrooms for the dried tree ear mushrooms and brown rice vermicelli for the cellophane noodles, but the seasonings in the original recipe were quite well-balanced, so I stuck with them. The five-spice powder was especially good with the shrimp and sesame-soaked noodles. If you’d like to see a delicious-sounding adaptation of this dish, here’s Patty’s version.

I’m not sure what it is about this month’s recipes, but our Dorista discussions have really taken off. Perhaps it’s because we’re getting close to the halfway mark of our project, or perhaps it’s just because January was chosen as the month to get a few challenging dishes out of the way. I suspect that it’s also because we’re becoming so intimately familiar with the style of cooking in this book that we’re going to see ever more creative riffs on each week’s recipe. I’m looking forward to it.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Shrimp and Cellophane Noodles

No Doldrums Here

January 22, 2013May 4, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 1 Comment

It may seem counterintuitive, but January and February are busy months in Vancouver. Years ago, restaurateurs got together and created Dine Out Vancouver to help combat slow post-Christmas sales. It’s become a tradition and there can be fierce competition to get reservations for the discounted, set course meals at some of the swankier tables in town. One of the most anticipated events, though, is not all that swanky. Street Food City is a four-day gathering of some of Vancouver’s hottest food trucks and many of them have added Dine Out exclusive dishes. I suspect there will be line ups around the block again this year.

Other events have grown up around the Dine Out frenzy, like Feast Van, which offers prix fixe meals at a nice selection of mid-range restaurants, with $1.00 from each meal benefitting the Strathcona Community Center Backpack Food Program. I admire their model – great food for a great cause.

Another favourite of mine is the Hot Chocolate Festival, which runs until the middle of February. It’s a great way to wait out the last of the chill and sample some of Vancouver’s finest chocolatiers.

It’s not all about food, though. This weekend, the Museum of Vancouver is presenting their annual Winter Wander, which allows you to visit all six Vanier Park venues for a total of $5.00. It’s a great way to explore these out-of-the-way attractions and I suspect a lot of people buy yearly memberships after their visits – a boon to venues and patrons alike. It’s also time for the PuSh Festival of Performing Arts, which seems to get bigger and more innovative every year.

In sadder news, the legendary Ridge Theatre will be screening its very last films in the coming weeks as they present their Last Film Festival. Vancouver has lost so much of its cultural capacity and heritage to out-of-control, cookie-cutter condo development. The Ridge and The Waldorf are just the latest casualties.

Though it’s true that venues come and go, in Vancouver they seem to go and go and go. Affordable space for upcoming musicians, actors, and dancers seems increasingly endangered. I don’t think the solution is for ‘everybody’ to move to New Westminster, either.

My worries about the future aside, I’ll leave you with something to look forward to – the 2013 Vancouver Poutine Festival has just been announced and it’s going to be bigger than ever. You might want to make some travel plans for early March, as at least one of my out-of-town friends is trying to arrange.

FFWD: Chicken Liver Gâteaux With Pickled Onions

January 18, 2013January 20, 2013 ~ Teresa ~ 21 Comments

It’s been an interesting month for us at French Fridays. Last week’s recipe caused controversy over technique; this week’s recipe provoked one of the liveliest Problems & Questions thread that we’ve ever had. Liver is a challenging ingredient for many and this recipe seemed doubly challenging for some because the chicken livers are blended into custard cakes. (Meat custard…mmm…)

The results, however, are wonderful, at least for those of us who love pâté. This isn’t the pâté of my youth, a hearty country version that my mother’s family used to bring to us (safeguarded in their carry on luggage) when they were visiting from Manitoba. That pâté, Del’s, is famous amongst those who grew up in St. Boniface and gets shipped around the world to nostalgic Franco-Manitobans. Dorie’s Chicken Liver Gâteau is a much lighter affair, with subtle hints of sage, thyme, and rosemary.

I elected to ‘lighten’ it even more by using a lower fat milk in place of the whole milk and heavy cream, but it’s still very rich. There are several eggs in this recipe (and that’s before you add more yolks). I also put the custard into smaller molds, since I was serving these as an appetizer. My mother suggested baking them in mini-muffin pans for a Christmas buffet. I’ll have to put a note in my calendar to remind me of this ’round about mid-November.

The onions take a very short time to prepare and after a day in the refrigerator, they’re addictive. It’s a little dangerous knowing how easy pickling can be. I have to be careful not to make too much, since we’re a two-person household. Or, I could just make them for the rest of the family, as I did this week.

The gâteau is meant to be plated on a bed of mixed greens, with the pickled onions on the side, but I served it on a plate with olives and herb crackers along with the onions. It made a lovely savoury appetizer plate and was absolutely not as scary as our P&Q conversation might have led you to expect.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Chicken Liver Gâteaux With Pickled Onions

FFWD – Long and Slow Apples

January 11, 2013May 4, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 12 Comments

You wouldn’t think baked apples were controversial, but this recipe caused a lot of consternation amongst the French Fridays crowd this week. It wasn’t the long bake at 300° or the layers of melted butter and spiced sugar. It wasn’t even figuring out what to use to press down on the apples as they cooked. It was that the recipe asks you to wrap the ramekins in a layer of plastic wrap under another of foil.

I’ve long been scared away from using cling wrap in the microwave, for fear of leaching chemicals, so I was also dubious about putting some into a conventional oven. My brother (a chef) advised that there are two kinds of wrap – restaurant-grade wrap that’s oven-safe and the cling wrap most of us have at home, which isn’t. I decided to brush the leftover melted butter onto foil and leave it at that.

That seemed to work just fine. My layers of apples were reduced to about a quarter of their original height and their texture had changed, too. They’d absorbed the butter and sugar and had become dense and rich. I used homemade vanilla sugar, skipped the zest, and added ground cardamom along with the ginger. It was a nice mix of flavours.

The apples are meant to be served with whipped cream, but I decided to dust them with icing sugar instead, which promptly melted into the apples, which were still a little too warm. This (relatively) quick apple confit made a great late night snack last weekend and I’d happily make them for a dinner party (with whipped cream, of course).

I’m curious to see what choices the rest of the Doristas made when they wrapped these for the oven. You can find their links here: Long and Slow Apples.

In the meantime, this week’s recipe was published here.

First Person Imperfect

January 8, 2013 ~ Teresa ~ 5 Comments

Friendship in the face of the differences and inequalities in our culture can be a tricky thing. Working through our various political and social struggles can be exhausting, sometimes. What’s hardest, though, is really seeing each other and truly hearing what each of us has to say. Not excusing one another when we’re just not getting our areas of oppressiveness, but also not deliberately misinterpreting what someone says in order to seem more politically evolved. Trust-building, communication, and clarification are tools that can get us past the noise, but we need to remember to use them.

Like the message in the photo above, beyond the imperfection, there can be something beautiful.

FFWD – Herb-Speckled Spaetzle

January 4, 2013May 4, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 32 Comments

As you can see, my spaetzle are a little creamier than they are supposed to be. I made them gluten-free and though I think they’re pretty good for a first attempt at converting the recipe, they’re not exactly what you’d expect if you were ordering spaetzle from a menu.

Most cuisines have a comforting dumpling or pasta and this German version was tasty, if a bit messy to execute. I pushed the batter through a flat grater to shape them and it seemed to work well enough. Though you can’t tell from the photo, the spaetzle held their shape through boiling and pan-frying, though they never lost the creaminess that came from not getting the proportion quite right in my gluten-free flour substitution.

I served the spaetzle as I would rice, alongside the pork version of Dorie’s Chicken, Apples, and Cream à la Normande from a few weeks ago. The next day, I sprinkled a few of the leftovers in red pepper and tomato soup, as I was heating it up. Noodles and dumplings are something my partner doesn’t get much of since his celiac disease diagnosis, so the spaetzle have been a nice treat for him. Still, I don’t think I’ll be making spaetzle often. Maybe it’s a post-Christmas abstemiousness, from so much rich food over the holidays, but I’m leaning more toward soups these days. (This carrot soup, for instance.)

I don’t feel finished with desserts, though – I finally caught up on the chocolate mousse from November and am trying to come up with an excuse to serve it again. So good and far too quickly put together for something so elegant. It’s also much prettier than my version of the spaetzle. Not that we stopped to admire it long before eating it.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Herb-Speckled Spaetzle

Here’s everyone else’s take on the Top Secret Chocolate Mousse

And so it begins…

January 1, 2013January 1, 2013 ~ Teresa ~ 8 Comments

I’m not one for resolutions, but I do have some hopes for the coming year. Hope that Harper will relent and meet with Chief Theresa Spence before her hunger strike takes any more of a toll on her health. Hope that non-indigenous people take note and take action in support of the Idle No More movement. Hope that 2013 brings good news for social and environmental justice. Hope that the balance between joy and sorrow tips toward the former.

For myself, I hope to fill one of those jars you see at the top of the post with plenty of good things this year.

I’ll leave you with an image of the year that’s passed and one of the new year’s beginning, both taken today. Happy New Year!