FFWD – Chicken Basquaise

September 21, 2012September 21, 2012 ~ Teresa ~ 20 Comments

Chicken Basquaise is the opposite of convenience food. The pipérade alone cooks for about an hour, once all the chopping of vegetables is done. When the chicken is added, dinner is still forty minutes away. All that time is worth it and not just because you can get most of the dishes done while you’re waiting for the chicken to slowly stew in the pipérade.

The flavours intensify over those two hours, creating a broth that no packaged food could hope to match. When you slowly cook peppers and onions, tomatoes and even chiles, you create sweetness that’s not cloying against the richness of the chicken and its juices.

I skipped the green peppers in favour of red, yellow, and orange. I also substituted a quarter cup of sherry for the white wine and a less exalted chili powder for the piment d’Espelette. I think the end result was still quite faithful to the original.

I also set aside two cups of the pipérade to use with scrambled eggs at breakfast, as Dorie suggests in her Bonne Idée. The sauce was just as delicious with eggs as it was with chicken. With turkey bacon on the side and a stack of toast (a toasted gluten-free bagel, in Kevin’s case), it might be my new favourite breakfast.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Chicken Basquaise

FFWD – Spice-Poached Apples or Pears

September 14, 2012May 4, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 23 Comments

I spent a few days out at my parents’ place, picking blueberries and blackberries and contemplating the sheep. Sheep are a perfect vehicle for contemplation, since they don’t have a whole lot going on. They drift from one field to another, in search of something succulent. These sheep only run when they see someone approach with kitchen scraps or garden trimmings. They know a good thing when they see it. The llama rarely joins in, preferring to search out potential breaches in the fence, so that he can get into the vegetable garden or the orchard. He knows a better thing when he sees it.

People aren’t that different, sometimes. We cast about for things to satisfy us, occasionally hitting on a course of action that will bring bigger rewards. A steady stream of small pleasures can help reduce the casting about and help keep us focused on the the bigger picture. It’s one of the things that I like about French Fridays – a regular dose of learning, writing, and (above all) good eating. It’s a habit that’s grounding and creative at the same time.

This week’s recipe isn’t particularly complicated, but it’s very satisfying. Apples or pears (or whatever fruit you’d like, really) are poached in a honeyed bath of spices, flecked with vanilla seeds. You could even add a splash of something stronger, if you’d like. It reminds me of a rosewater sauce I like to serve with rice pudding. The leftover poaching liquid in this recipe could easily be reduced in the same way.

The leftovers this time won’t last long enough to do that – there’s too much ripe fruit around. In fact, my parents’ pear trees are overladen with fruit. I might just have to go and pick some very soon.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Spice-Poached Apples or Pears

FFWD – Eggplant “Tartine” with Tomatoes, Olives, and Cucumbers

September 7, 2012August 31, 2012 ~ Teresa ~ 21 Comments

It’s been a good couple of weeks for eggplant dishes. I went to a friend’s birthday dinner recently and the appetizer was a thick, roasted slice of eggplant topped with goat cheese and ribbons of bell pepper. Today’s French Fridays recipe is another delicious take on roasted eggplant. This time, the eggplant is topped with a tomato salad and ribbons of cucumber.

It’s a “tartine” because the roasted eggplant stands in for bread, making it both a great way to enjoy summer produce and a good option for gluten-free eating. The salad is tossed in a red wine vinegar-oregano vinaigrette and balances the sweetness of the tomatoes with the sharpness of onions and celery and the saltiness of olives and capers. The flavours are well-balanced and the textures are varied and interesting.

We had these “tartines” as a side dish alongside steamed bush beans and spaghetti with homemade pesto. It made for a lovely summer meal. I think I’ll also keep this in mind for the next time Kevin and I have a party – I think it will please our gluten-loving and gluten-free guests alike.

In the meantime, I’m going to use this dish as inspiration to use the remaining weeks of garden season to experiment with summer produce – it’s often too easy to just pop veggies into the steamer and be done with it. I love steamed vegetables, but there really is so much more.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Eggplant “Tartine” with Tomatoes, Olives, and Cucumbers

FFWD – Minted Zucchini Tagliatelle With Cucumbers and Lemon

August 31, 2012August 31, 2012 ~ Teresa ~ 28 Comments

I always find that summer’s reputation as the lazy, relaxing season is misleading. There’s so much going on – in the garden, in the community, among friends – that life can feel a little rushed.

So I was pleased that this month’s French Fridays recipes have been remarkably easy and just as impressive. Today’s dish is no exception – the title is long, but the prep time is short. Chopping onion and cucumbers, zesting and reaming a lemon, and slicing off long strips of zucchini with a vegetable peeler were the hardest steps. The rest is just picking and chopping some mint and making a lemony vinaigrette. (I deviated from the recipe and used olive oil in place of the pistachio oil called for. Splurging at Gourmet Warehouse wasn’t in the cards this month.) The salad marinates in the fridge for a couple of hours and then it’s ready to plate.

It’s another of those clever salads that are almost a quick pickle, too. This would do for a condiment or a picnic side, but I think it would really shine as the starter to a more elaborate meal. No one needs to know it was nearly effortless.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Minted Zucchini Tagliatelle With Cucumbers and Lemon

FFWD – Peach Melba, or Our 100th Recipe

August 24, 2012March 14, 2015 ~ Teresa ~ 53 Comments

We’re headed toward the second anniversary of French Fridays with Dorie, but today we’re celebrating another milestone – our 100th recipe together. I think that only Mardi of eat. live. travel. write. has managed to do all 100 so far, but a number of us have come close – my count is 91, currently.

Some of us joined at the beginning and others have joined in along the way. Most are food bloggers, but some of us just like the good food and community that these French Fridays have brought us. It’s the community I appreciate most – the introduction to interesting bloggers across the world who share their stories along with descriptions of their take on our weekly assignments.

That’s not to say that working our way through an entire cookbook, week by week, doesn’t have other advantages. I’ve stretched my culinary wings more than a few times so far and I’ve eaten very well, as have my trusty taste testers – my partner, family, friends, and even our housing co-op neighbours have all tasted a little bit of Dorie’s magic.

This week’s recipe is fittingly celebratory – Peach Melba is visually stunning, delicious, and surprisingly easy to put together. I was going to make ice cream, but didn’t manage to borrow an ice cream maker, so the ice cream is store-bought. I poached the peaches, though, whipped the cream by hand (that sort of makes up for store-bought ice cream, doesn’t it?), and pureed the raspberries. The rest was a matter of assembly. Who knew that giant brandy snifters could actually be useful?

So, consider this Peach Melba (in its giant glass) a toast to all Doristas, past and present. (Thanks, Trevor, for coining that term!) The site is a treasury, not just of great menu suggestions, but of great blogs, too – it’s worth looking through the early entries, as well as the latest ones, as there are some pretty cool bloggers who haven’t kept up with the group, for one reason or another. I’ve appreciated reading through all of them and I’ve especially enjoyed getting to know my fellow Doristas, a little, through their writing.

Thanks to Laurie for creating this group, Dorie Greenspan for her wonderful recipes, and also to Betsy and Mary for taking on admin duties on the site and on Facebook. We (literally) couldn’t do it without you.

I’m looking forward to the next 200+ recipes the group will tackle. I’m also looking forward to seeing the evolution of our little group over that time. I just hope my copy of Around My French Table holds up that long!

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Peach Melba

FFWD – Cafe Style Grated Carrot Salad

August 17, 2012August 21, 2012 ~ Teresa ~ 38 Comments

There’s a restaurant on the west side of Vancouver called The Naam that’s open 24 hours. It’s a vegetarian restaurant that seems left over from the hippie era. When I was in University we’d drive across town to go there in the middle of the night, famished after late study sessions. The staff back then tended to be in a somewhat…altered…state and it could be quite a while before any of the servers noticed you. Once they did, they always got your order right, but it could be up to an hour before the food arrived at your table. Actually, it was a couple of hours more than once. At least there was never any lag between the order coming up and the food arriving at the table.

As long as I could flag someone down to bring me a cup of tea, I didn’t mind. It was that time of life when there was so much to say and hear that sleep seemed like a terrible waste of time. (Funnily, none of us seemed to feel that way about sleep in the mornings.)

The food there is good, in that granola way. In fact, their miso gravy is so good that they bottle it and sell it in stores now. It’s mostly healthy, too – with additions like shredded carrot and beet in their salads and as a garnish for many of their plates. I always enjoyed that, but I’ve recently learned that a friend of mine absolutely did not and as a result, was often frustrated when she went there. She would ask for it to be left off her plate, but the (aforementioned, less-than-fully-alert) staff would always bring her meal with carrot and beet. The hippie obsession with shredded veggies is not a universal taste, it seems.

This salad, though it’s a grated slaw rather than a shredded garnish, reminds me of those days, Even with its slightly sophisticated apple cider-Dijon vinaigrette, it still has the flavour of the sort of virtuously vegetarian fare that a hippie restaurant serves.

I didn’t stray from the recipe, really, though I left out the suggested raisins and toasted the chopped walnuts before I added them. It would make a nice side for a picnic or barbeque, wherever anyone would serve traditional coleslaw. It would make a nice addition to a salad, too. When I make it again, I think I’ll throw in a mixture of the sorts of seeds, nuts, and dried fruits I often add to salads. Another easy, versatile template recipe from Around My French Table to add to my repertoire.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Cafe Style Grated Carrot Salad

FFWD – Warm Scallop Salad with Corn, Nectarines, and Basil

August 10, 2012May 4, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 27 Comments

It’s about time we had another scallops recipe in the group – they’re probably my favourite seafood (though mussels run a close second). I also appreciate a recipe that makes use of height-of-summer produce. Chilliwack corn, farm-fresh tomatoes, and basil from my own garden are part of this salad and the taste is phenomenal.

This recipe is really about small parts coming together well. Lime dressing, basil coulis, chopped tomatoes, kernels of corn, all served with grilled or pan-fried scallops and nectarines. They worked together even better than I’d imagined. My presentation, however, was not as pretty as I’d imagined. No matter, we had a delicious dinner.

Every summer I try to make as much use as I can of the succession of fresh, local fruit and vegetables. Every year I feel like I’ve fallen a little short. A recipe like this certainly helps me feel like I’ve succeeded. A gourmet treat full of summer goodness – we’ll be having this again.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Warm Scallop Salad with Corn, Nectarines, and Basil

FFWD – Tomato-Cheese Tartlets

August 3, 2012 ~ Teresa ~ 19 Comments

I admit, I was prepared not to like these. I imagined they’d be one of those experiences that my partner describes as, “I’m a better person for having tried it, but I won’t be doing that again.” I was wrong.

The idea of preventing puff pastry from puffing was the thing that gave me pause. Why not use a regular flatbread, then? I dutifully rolled the dough out, cut it into six-inch circles, pricked it and gently laid it on a parchment-covered baking sheet, only to sandwich another baking sheet on top of the delicate dough. When they came out of the oven, I was still skeptical – all this work for…crackers?

When it came time to assemble the tart, though, I got a little more excited. I used some radish leaf-almond pesto (my go to pesto recipe this summer, it seems) and some leftover (grated) mozzarella. The tomatoes in my garden aren’t quite ready yet, but the ones at the store were perfectly ripe. I had some leftover bacon, too, so I diced it and added it between the pesto and tomato layers. The basil was fresh from the garden. I hoped the pastry was going to measure up to the rest of the ingredients.

As many of us have said before, trust in Dorie. These were delicious and very worth the unpuffing of some puff pastry. The pastry had a nice snap to it and was a great base for the toppings. In fact, I think I might even be willing to sacrifice some homemade gluten-free puff pastry for this recipe.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Tomato-Cheese Tartlets

FFWD – Lemon Quinoa Pilaf

July 27, 2012 ~ Teresa ~ 11 Comments

The keen-eyed among you will notice that the title of this week’s post doesn’t really match the name of this week’s recipe. I decided to substitute quinoa so that my partner could eat it with me. I love barley, especially when my mother uses it in soup, but it contains gluten, so it’s a no go grain in our house.

Adapting the recipe was easy, though a little fussy. Quinoa is more like couscous than barley and takes only five minutes under boiling water to be ready. The original recipe allows the vegetables to cook in stages with the barley. To make sure that the carrot and red pepper were soft enough for the pilaf, I added them to the pan with the partially sautéed onions and cooked them until they were nearly tender. Then, I added the vegetables to the chicken stock and simmered it for a few more minutes. I strained the vegetables out of the stock and set them aside, then brought the stock up to a boil before pouring it over the quinoa. (If your stock reduces too much, you can top it up with boiling water.)

Once the quinoa was done, I added the cooked vegetables to it, along with the lemon zest and green onions. Not exactly what Dorie had in mind, but with all the flavours and textures intact.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe (many of them ACTUALLY using barley!) here: Lemon Barley Pilaf

FFWD – Salmon with Basil Tapenade

July 21, 2012July 21, 2012 ~ Teresa ~ 14 Comments

The first time I made this dish was not long after French Fridays began. A friend of ours was living with cancer and was slowly beginning to let go. I started going over regularly to cook for her and Kevin would join me when his work schedule allowed. Another friend of hers had organized a rotation using Lotsa Helping Hands, so that folks didn’t show up all at once on one day and leave her hanging another. I was holding onto a lot of denial, which was fed by the fact that this had all happened before – the decline, the rotation – and she’d bounced back miraculously. By the end of the year, though, she was gone. Many of the first several months of French Fridays recipes were shared with her. They have a bittersweetness for me now. I also have her assessment of those recipes in the back of my mind – this one was too oily (I used a lot less olive oil this time), the Pumpkin-Gorgonzola Flans were actually a dessert, she wouldn’t change a thing about the Spiced Butter-Glazed Carrots.

The timing of this week’s dish is perfect – last weekend was the Vancouver Folk Music Festival and she devoured it passionately every year. Jeanne was a foodie, an explorer, a self-described “culture vulture,” and a seeker of healing and wisdom. She was fiercely opinionated, always ready for adventure, and deeply committed to her friends. The world is less for not having her in it, but it seems as though there are traces of her everywhere, in the festivals, art shows and Pride marches; the waterways she kayaked up and down BC’s coast; the roads across the province she knew as well as the locals. I think of her often, especially when I go to an art show or try a new restaurant. Nothing got her as excited as trying something new, unless it was taking off into the wilderness for a while.

Memory is wrapped up in the senses. One of the reasons I love cooking and baking for those I love is that it helps build those memories for me and for them. When Jeanne died, she left me some of her kitchen equipment and some of her camera equipment. I like the connection that’s made between my blogging and my memories of her.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Salmon with Basil Tapenade