This weekend, I was lucky enough to attend EAT! Vancouver, courtesy of tickets I won from Bee VanCity and EAT! Vancouver. My Mom was my trusty tasting buddy and we ate and drank our way through a delightful afternoon.
Some favourites:
The bites we had from Ebo
The caviar on brioche and the delicious chocolates from Secret Location
Kitchening & Co.’s macarons
The folks at the Swiss booth setting up a lovely raclette photo for me
Schokolade Artisan Chocolate
Maple liqueur and chocolate wine
The variety and quality of the gluten-free goods we sampled
We’re doing something a little different for this week’s French Friday. The group is participating in Food Revolution Day, which was started by Jamie Oliver to get people into the kitchen and around the table together.
I decided to do something a little different this week, too. Since this year’s Food Revolution Day theme is Cook It, Share It, I thought I’d ask my partner to take the lead on this week’s recipe and share his thoughts with all of you. I chose one of the recipes I’d missed when the rest of the group posted about it, Warm Weather Vegetable Pot au Feu, because it seemed like a perfect match for the ethos of Food Revolution Day. I also thought it was a good fit for my partner. I helped a little with the chopping and pot-watching, but Kevin made the dish. Here’s what he had to say:
I thought that the Warm Weather Vegetable Pot Au Feu was excellent, though I would have preferred it without so much of the vegetable broth. While the veggies tasted good with the broth flavouring, I didn’t finish all of the leftover broth in the bowl. In fact, it was almost better the second night when my partner made quinoa, which soaked up the broth nicely. I think my partner Teresa chose this meal for me to make because, although I was once a vegetarian for about eight years, I’m no longer one and would like to get back to eating this way the majority of the time. Not only was the dish tasty, but it was also cheap and easy to make, which I appreciated. This will inspire me to cook vegetarian more often. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about agriculture and food lately and I hope to do more in the kitchen and garden soon.
It’s been wonderful watching Teresa take part in the French Fridays with Dorie group. We have tried so many dishes that were new to us. If my memory serves me correctly, I’ve loved all the dishes but one. For the last few years, I always know we are likely trying something new on Friday and that element of surprise has been neat. It was great to finally make a dish. My partner Teresa does most of the cooking in the house, but I do cook occasionally – I have my usual dishes. For the most part, we cook separately. It was nice for Teresa to guide me though this recipe, as we keep talking about sharing more of the cooking, along with cooking more vegetarian meals. This dish accomplished both of those things for us. I hope we will do more of it together.
Food Revolution Day sounds amazing. I think we need a food revolution on a number of levels, but Cook it, Share It is a fantastic start.
For my part, I thought this dish was delicious, on the first night when we ate it as a pot au feu; on the second when we used the leftover broth to cook more vegetables, which we served over quinoa; and on the third when we used the remainder of the broth to gently heat up some lamb burgers I’d made. The broth made a very good gravy in the end.
You can participate in Food Revolution Day too, by contributing posts or pictures, or by commenting on those of others. Here’s how, as outlined by our own Mardi Michels, one of Food Revolution Day’s Toronto ambassadors and instigator of our French Food Revolution Friday with Dorie:
“Follow the Food Revolution
Make sure you’re following #FRD2013 online for up to the minute news, updates and messages to share, re-post and re-pin to your followers.
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 mademorepancakes 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
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.
Steamed spinach with olive oil and lemon zest – hardly a recipe, but it’s good to have a reminder of how lovely simply prepared vegetables can be. We had the spinach with the Chicken Breasts Diable from the beginning of the month. It was a good choice, along with celery root purée.
I did mine in a stand-alone steamer, which is one of my favourite kitchen gadgets. I love being able to set the timer and leave it to do its work. I’ve had it long enough that I know how long each vegetable takes and it’s nice to spend my time in the kitchen on more interesting cooking tasks. (I’m totally trying to justify keeping a probably unnecessary electric appliance – hey, at least it was a gift. Tune in next week for my essay on the joys of electric can openers…)
Spinach has always been a favourite of mine (I was one of those weird kids who liked liver and onions, brassicas, and cottage cheese.) and I’m glad that my partner loves it, too. Speaking of spinach-lovers, I thought I’d share an old Popeye cartoon with you. I have to say, though, it was hard to find one that I felt comfortable posting. Those old cartoons are a lot more problematic than I remember. I’m guessing they don’t show that many of them any more. Here’s one that’s not entirely problem-free, but enjoyable for its presaging of our current food wars.
By the way, I’m flu-free now – thanks for the well-wishes from the Facebook Dorista crowd. Now, I just have to find time to catch up on the Ispahan cake.
You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Lemon-Steamed Spinach
East End Food Co-op is where we do a lot of our grocery shopping and it’s long been a neighbourhood hub in our area. It’s hard to go in there without running into someone we know and some of the staff know us so well that they’ve memorized our member number. The co-op does a good job of stocking organic produce, along with products that cater to the various tastes and needs of their customers (for instance, they sell a very good gluten-free all purpose flour). When this soup came up in the rotation, I headed over to the co-op to pick up some more of their beautiful organic French green lentils. Though I have to go further afield for some ingredients (like next week’s rose syrup), I’ve always felt grateful that I have such good options a five-minute walk away.
This soup was well worth using those lentils. One expects earthy, savoury flavours in lentil soup, so the brightness brought by the fresh ginger and orange peel in this recipe surprised me. There have been a couple of recipes from the book that I thought had a little too much orange in them, but this one was perfectly balanced, I thought. I made this with olive oil and vegetable stock, so it made for a nice meatless meal.
Yogurt and lardons are suggested as toppings, or in Cher’s case, homemade labneh. I was so pleased with this soup’s flavour that I ate it just as it was. No toppings needed.
“Cheese has always been a food that both sophisticated and simple humans love.” M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf (1942)
I simply love cheese. I guess I know which side of Fisher’s equation that places me on. Though I’m not a fan of processed cheese. There, I just retained my dignity.
This week’s dish was a cheese lover’s dream. Well, it was this cheese lover’s dream. My partner, who loves cheese even more than I do, decided that he wasn’t a fan of this savoury cheese custard. “I prefer my cheese sliced,” was his verdict. My reply: “More for me!” And I enjoyed these all through last weekend. I guess there are some advantages to recipes that don’t win universal popularity…
I used a mixture of Gruyère and Dubliner, which worked really well together. The Gruyère was the last little bit of a beautiful cave-aged variety that appears occasionally at our local food co-op. This brûlée was a very good last use of the cheese. I chopped my cheese into tiny cubes (measurable in millimeters), which disappeared into the custard while baking. I had to turn up the heat from 200° to 250° for the last fifteen minutes of baking time, as my ramekins aren’t as shallow as those called for in the recipe.
I’ll make this again, certainly (though for a dinner sans Kevin). Creamy, cheesy, mostly made-in-advance, and a little unusual – sounds like a perfect start to a dinner party.
We are well into Raincouver season here and I’ve just finished towelling myself off after taking the dog for a walk. Water is running over every surface outside, streaming down the sidewalks, making lawns resemble a beachside network of tidal pools and rivulets, all leading to the shallow seas forming around the storm drains at the corners of each street.
It’s the sort of weather that demonstrates the exact extent of water resistance in outerwear, but the temperatures are mild and the rivulets of water streaming through my hair were cool, not frigid. I’m grateful that it only takes one cup of tea to warm up, but it’s still not the sort of weather that would tempt me to run out for a forgotten ingredient.
Enter Chicken Breasts Diable. Though it sounds adventurous, as long as you remember to pick up the chicken, it won’t send you running out into the rain for anything you don’t already have in your kitchen. The devil in this dish is Dijon mustard and it forms a very mildly piquant pan sauce when combined with shallots, garlic, white wine, and cream. I substituted milk for cream, as I often do. I also skipped the Worcestershire sauce, because I haven’t been able to find a gluten-free brand (admittedly, I haven’t tried very hard). I did add a very small dab of HP Sauce to the pan, since both Worcestershire and HP are tamarind-based. I think it worked pretty well as a substitute, but it really has to be no more than a dab, or it could overwhelm the sauce. Someday I’ll remember to look for gluten-free Worcestershire sauce beyond my usual haunts, but until then, I’m glad my favourite breakfast condiment can pinch hit for it. (In case you’re wondering, HP Sauce is to the Commonwealth what ketchup is to North America. Canadians often play for both teams.)
It’s not my favourite one-pan recipe from this cookbook (that would be Chicken, Apples, and Cream à la Normande), but it’s another recipe that’s going to be making repeat appearances. It doesn’t hurt that it’s comforting and warm without being heavy – perfect for this in-between time of year. With the lemon spinach that’s coming up later this month and celery root puree, this was a lovely meal.
You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Chicken Breast Diable
A few years ago, the Vancouver Art Gallery exhibited a piece called Ought Apartment, which consisted of a stack of apartments reaching up through the centre of the building. Each apartment was decorated in the style of a particular decade, right down to the knickknacks and the contents of the drawers and cabinets. So many of the objects (and decorating schemes) resonated for me. The fifties apartment had the same sort of ceramic fish that my grandparents hung in their bathroom, there were some questionable young adult design choices in the eighties/nineties range, and so on up through to the millenium. It was the seventies apartment that fascinated me the most – it replicated the landscape (or carpetscape, anyway) of my childhood.
Why am I telling you all this in a post that’s supposed to be about pea soup? It’s all in the colour. The olive drab of the soup was a dead ringer for the avocado green of the kitchen appliances of my youth. The house that I grew up in had orange shag carpet in the living room, and olive green appliances in the kitchen. It may seem horrible now, but in the seventies it was de rigueur. Just as Ought Apartment had, this week’s soup carried me back.
What it didn’t do was carry me back to the taste of my mother’s pea soup, which is a solidly French Canadian split pea and ham bone affair. It’s delicious, but so was this soup, made with frozen green peas and romaine lettuce and relying on nothing more than salt, pepper, and softened onions for additional flavour. I couldn’t help myself – I added thyme and a clove of garlic to the onions, a minute or two before adding the vegetable stock. My vegetable stock was almost the colour of beef broth, I think because it has some tomato paste added to it, which might explain the colour of my soup. Others have reported their soups were a bright emerald green. No matter the colour, this soup does remind me of a summer soup, even though it’s also warming and rich enough for a cold spring evening. I’d like to take another run at this recipe when it’s truly summer, with fresh peas and mint. That might bring on another attack of memories, this time of shelling peas and shucking corn for family barbeques, but I’ll deal with it when it happens.
You might notice a distinct lack of heart-shaped-ness in this week’s dish. I couldn’t bring myself to buy the traditional moulds for this dessert, so substituted a colander, instead. We’re not big fans of Valentine’s Day around here. We’d rather celebrate Kevin’s birthday, which is within a few days of the holiday. When we first started dating, we had a tentative conversation about it:
“So, I’m not really into the whole Valentine’s Day thing, are you?”
“No, not at all! That’s so great we’re on the same page!”
Obviously, reconstructing conversations is outside of my skills set, but you get the idea. We’d had partners in the past who celebrated it and it was a relief to both of us to be able to let it go. It’s one of those holidays that engenders the sort of high expectations that can lead to disastrous results – like New Year’s Eve, but with more self-esteem involved. Sis Boom Blog’s Trevor has a story that tells it so much better than I could, so I’ll leave it at that.
I’ve not tasted this dessert yet, though I’ve tasted all its components, so perhaps I’ve tasted it after all. My no coeur in this crème version of this week’s recipe is going to taste pretty fabulous. Instead of liqueur, I added a couple of teaspoons of Campbell’s Gold amaretto-spiked honey. Drizzled on top is more of the honey and Dorie’s bittersweet chocolate sauce. (I should have stuck with just the chocolate sauce for drizzling purposes, as the honey made everything a little bit smeary. Oh, well.)
With this dessert and a pot of chocolate sauce in the fridge, I think we’re set for a cosy weekend. Happy Valentine’s Day to those who celebrate it and a very relaxing weekend to all.
You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Coeur à la Crème
One Wet Foot 