FFWD – Swiss Chard Pancakes

April 26, 2013May 4, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 28 Comments

Misunderstandings are like thunderstorms that move across our lives, leaving little trace of the chaos they caused once they’ve disappeared. Unless they linger, but luckily most don’t. My reaction to chaos is to do something grounding, to find a simple task that results in something solid and good to counter the havoc.

Making pancakes certainly fits the bill. It’s one of the things I remember learning to make when I was very young, just after toast and pan-fried eggs. I also remember making pancakes for my parents for special occasion breakfasts in bed, along with the aforementioned toast and eggs and cups of instant coffee.

Pancake-making didn’t follow me into adulthood, except for occasionally on camping trips or weekends away with friends. I’m not sure why, because they’re almost impossible to get wrong and there are so many different combinations of batter and toppings that it’s hard to get bored with them. (They also convert beautifully to gluten-free.) I think I’ve made more pancakes since I started French Fridays than I have in the previous decade. All Dorie’s pancake recipes have been keepers, including this week’s Swiss chard version.

These are really Dorie’s take on farçous, a specialty of southwestern France, and her recipe can be found here. The herbs in my garden aren’t ready for harvesting yet, so I substituted dried marjoram and cilantro for the fresh chives and parsley. Those flavours went well with the Middle Eastern-ish lamb burgers I served with the farçous. (I’m still using up the quick preserved lemons I made for the cod and spinach roulades.) I also used a gluten-free all purpose flour mix. I think my pancakes were a little bigger than they should have been, as I only got 25 from a recipe that makes 40, but I liked them at that size.

Making the pancakes yesterday was a welcome distraction in the midst of a small crisis and then, when the crisis disappeared with the misunderstanding that had caused it, I was left with the better part of dinner already made.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Swiss Chard Pancakes

FFWD – Cod and Spinach Roulades

April 21, 2013 ~ Teresa ~ 10 Comments

Sole stuffed with kale and quick-preserved lemons, with roasted asparagus in the background.

This dish was not a success for me, which has been rather rare for this cookbook. Perhaps it was because my roulades were sole and kale rather than cod and spinach. My presentation was terrible and my photograph even worse, but it was the taste that underwhelmed me most. On a positive note, it was fun to put the roulades together and much easier than I thought it would be. I overstuffed them a little, but they still held together well enough, if not prettily.

The roasted asparagus was fantastic, though. There’s nothing better than simply prepared spring vegetables. I also served this with some of last year’s pesto, which I’m trying to use up before basil season begins again. It helped the dish.

I know that others had more success with this week’s recipe than I did, so I’ll point you in their direction: Cod and Spinach Roulades.

Aquatic Inspiration

April 16, 2013April 18, 2013 ~ Teresa ~ 3 Comments

Vancouver Public Library, along with about twenty partners, has introduced a new way for locals to experience the attractions that are usually left to visitors to Vancouver. Over a two-week borrowing period, the Vancouver Inspiration Pass allows patrons of the library to visit local attractions and recreation facilities for free. It’s a nice way to play tourist in your own town.

My friend Tricia has one of the passes right now and today she took me along with her to the Vancouver Aquarium for a photo visit. It was a challenging environment for photography and I only got a few shots that I was really pleased with. I’m sharing a few that I like for photographic reasons, and a few more that I’m fond of despite their flaws. (You can find some more professional shots from Tricia, here.)

Blossoms

April 9, 2013 ~ Teresa ~ 3 Comments

Someone once said to me that that the flowers of spring are the most beautiful. I don’t know if it’s because the contrast to winter’s muted colours heightens their beauty, or because they are more delicate and less obvious than the big, blowsy blooms of summer, but spring flowers are my favourites, too.

Now that the trees are in full bloom, it’s time for the Cherry Blossom Festival, including Bike the Blossoms and the Cherry Jam.

How does your community celebrate the first blooms of spring?

FFWD – Pierre Hermé’s Olive Sablés

April 5, 2013 ~ Teresa ~ 13 Comments

My parents’ freezer is full of various French Fridays and Baking with Julia projects. I make a lot of French Fridays dishes at home, of course, but if I’m visiting my parents, I like to cook for them, so they’ve gotten their fair share of Dorista bounty. It’s great for my mom, who is as busy as she was before she retired. She still enjoys cooking and baking, but it’s less of a priority for her now – there’s so much she wants to do with the grandkids, her friends, and her volunteering. I only baked a dozen of these sablés today and packed up the remaining 2 1/2 logs of dough and put it in the freezer for her. Next time she gets together with her friends for wine and nibbles, they’ll be ready for baking.

I think her friends will enjoy these as much as we did. A little savoury and a little sweet, olive sablés are surprisingly delicious. The recipe is a little unusual, too, incorporating grated egg yolk, potato starch, and cured olives into the usual sablé mix. The dough is much softer than traditional sablé dough, but when it’s baked, the cookie somehow achieves the familiar sandy texture.

Some members of the French Fridays crew were unable to locate potato starch (though scheduling these right around Passover made it much easier than it might have been at other times of year), and corn starch was the substitution of choice. Check the link at the bottom of this post to see how that worked out for folks.

I hope that last week’s long weekend was relaxing for everyone and for those who celebrated Passover or Easter, that it was filled with family, friends, and food.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Pierre Hermé’s Olive Sablés

Fort Langley, Again

April 2, 2013April 2, 2013 ~ Teresa ~ 4 Comments

Last week, I wandered around Fort Langley for an afternoon, while waiting for my mother to get her hair done. I took Roxy to Brae Island Park, then met my mother for lunch. It wasn’t as leisurely a stroll as we’d been expecting – there was a new television program filming up and down the main street. I’m pretty sure that Roxy’s barking ruined at least one of their takes…

What we thought was a new ice cream shop turned out to be a set for a new series called Cedar Cove, which was filming all around us as we looked for a place to have lunch.

I think I may have offended one of the actors, who was leaning against the glass of this sandwich shop, when I asked her to move a little out of the frame. You can see the crew in the reflection. It was a busy day in Fort Langley.

Say Cheese is tiny, but their sandwiches are good – we opted for the Butter Chicken, which wasn’t as Indian-spiced as we’d hoped, but enjoyable all the same.

The sandwiches, in all their glory.

We took a look down Gasoline Alley, which has small shops, including Cranberries, Naturally (famous for being included in the Oscars gift extravaganza last year). We stopped in at a new store, Mangia e Scappa, then popped in to watch the beans pour out of the roaster at Republica Coffee.

We walked away with two pizzas (one was a gluten-free treat for my partner) and a small sample of bread. Giulia, the owner, makes everything herself, even growing the herbs she uses.