Cottage Cooking Club – August 2014

August 29, 2014October 6, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 13 Comments

The drops of rain on this dahlia mark the end of our sunny streak in Vancouver and possibly an early end to summer here. The recipes for this month’s Cottage Cooking Club inhabit the transitional space between summer and fall, as well.

Chard and New Potato Curry

Swiss chard is one of those amazing vegetables that shows up in the spring and keeps on producing right through until winter’s almost begun. Along with some potatoes picked when they’re small and a sauce that’s lightened with yogurt and heightened with Indian-inspired spices, this is a stew that’s welcome in any season. We both loved this curry, eating it without accompaniment on the first night and warming up the leftovers to serve over rice. It’s also one of those recipes that can serve as a template, allowing you to use whatever’s freshest or on hand. We’ll be having this one again and again.

Tahini-Dressed Courgette and Green Bean Salad

This dish hearkened back to my first experiments with vegetarian dishes, when I was in university. We all had jars of tahini in our refrigerators and Moosewood cookbooks on our shelves. Nowadays, I’m more likely to use tahini in Mediterranean or Middle Eastern cooking, but I enjoyed this slightly hippyish salad, especially with the addition of salad greens and tromboncino squash from my garden. The harvest from my first set of green bean vines is over and I’m awaiting more from the second set I planted, so I substituted snap peas, instead. They worked well. I can see myself making variations of this salad for myself (just me – unfortunately, Kevin wasn’t a fan) or using the dressing to marinate vegetables, lamb, or chicken before grilling or baking.

Caramelized Carrots with Gremolata

I couldn’t resist buying some heirloom carrots to use for this dish. These carrots were a deep purple on the outside, with a core of orange – we ate them up too quickly for me to get a shot of that, though. This is another dish I think I’ll be making often, using whatever root vegetables I have on hand. The freshness of the gremolata against the caramelization of the roasted carrots was lovely.

Asian-inspired coleslaw

And lastly, there’s this salad that’s almost like a quick pickle. We loved the combination of flavours in this salad – sweet, tart, earthy, spicy. It felt summery, but the cabbage, carrots, and onions can be obtained at almost any season – this would be a wonderful way to brighten up a late winter meal, too.

Next month, we’ll be exploring vegetarian flavours to pull us into the cooling of the year. I’m eating as much of summer’s bounty as I can, but I admit that autumn’s flavours are on my mind more and more.

Intrigued by this month’s recipes? Buy the book and join us.

Here are the links to the rest of the group’s posts for this month. I encourage you to check them out – you’ll meet some wonderful bloggers and get some great inspiration for vegetarian eating.

FFWD – Quinoa Salad

August 22, 2014August 23, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 33 Comments

I’m a rather mediocre meditator. If I go to a sit or even a day-long retreat, I can meditate successfully and feel as though I’ve gotten a lot out of it (which is entirely the wrong attitude, I know). But, on my own, it doesn’t happen. At least not in that formal, sit and allow your thoughts to pass through, focusing on your breath, kind of way.

My true meditative practice happens when I’m out in the garden or chopping vegetables in the kitchen. It’s in those moments, or in the in-between spaces like a quiet bus ride or a long walk, that I truly reach for a meditative state. The demonstration of this kind of practice is one of the reasons I love the film How to Cook Your Life.

And yes, this week’s French Fridays assignment put me in mind of this, as I cubed or thinly sliced a heaping plateful of vegetables today. Now, I should let you know that the recipe for this week wasn’t actually quinoa salad, it was couscous salad. But, since the other half of the household can’t have gluten, I decided to change it up a bit. It’s a Moroccan-inspired take on a grain and vegetable salad that didn’t suffer at all from the substitution. In fact, I loved the colour the tumeric and other spices lent to my plain quinoa.

You can find the recipe on Epicurious, along with the suggested accompaniment, lemon chicken. Because quinoa is packed with protein, we were able to make a vegan supper of it, along with some corn on the cob.

And as an added bonus, Kevin declared this the best recipe I’ve tried recently. Now, that’s something to contemplate.

Find out what the rest of the French Fridays crew thought about their Couscous Salad

Cottage Cooking Club – July 2014 (with some June catch ups)

July 28, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 7 Comments

I missed last month’s Cottage Cooking Club, so this month I decided to take on only one new recipe and try and catch up on the June recipes I’d chosen.

Marinated Courgettes (Zucchini) with Mozzarella

My pick for this month was one I knew Kevin and I would both like. Zucchini is one of our favourite vegetables and this marinated salad is perfect for a hot summer’s evening. Even if it requires turning on the stove for a short while. The zucchini is supposed to be cut into long, thin strips, but I picked up some zebra-striped courgettes at the market and didn’t want to lose the stripey effect, so I cut them into thin medallions instead. My favourite part of this salad was how intense the lemon zest and garlic become once infused into the olive oil. Those flavours permeate the zucchini, along with the basil I’d picked from my garden. I also enjoyed the contrast of the cold bocconcini (in place of buffalo mozzarella) against the room temperature salad.

Once my own zucchini moves beyond the blossom stage, I’ll be making this salad often.

My June was busier and more eventful than I’d like, so cooking and blogging had to take a bit of a back seat. I didn’t have time to make all of the dishes I thought I would, but here’s a short round up of the ones I did get to try.

Vegetable Tempura with Chilli Dipping Sauce

First up, gluten-free vegetable tempura. I used Dorie Greenspan’s recipe for tempura, substituting a gluten-free flour mix, and then served the tempura with the River Cottage dipping sauce. You can read about my mishaps in this post, but the tempura, once we were able to sit down to it, was a hit. I loved that Kevin had an opportunity to eat something he hadn’t had since having to go gluten-free, but I’m not a fan of deep-frying, so I don’t think we’ll be revisiting it any time soon.

Honey Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

I’m a huge fan of simple treatments for summer produce. It comes and goes so quickly, why hide its flavour? That said, I can always get behind a technique that doesn’t mask flavour so much as intensify it. Roasting tomatoes does just that. The River Cottage method is simple, tomatoes tossed in a bit of honey, olive oil, and garlic, then cooked in a slowish oven. But what you get is even more amazing than the tomatoes straight off the vine. I used cherry tomatoes, unseeded, and got a lot of delicious juice with my roasted tomatoes. That’s something you might want to avoid with bigger tomatoes, but here it was a gift.

I made these for my parents, taking a little taste for myself. The tomatoes reminded me of a honeyed sauce and that’s how Mom and Dad used them – they made a big pot of pasta and tossed it with the tomatoes, juice and all. A heart-healthy, flavourful meal.

Frittata with Summer Veg and Goat´s Cheese

This is my favourite dish from River Cottage Veg so far. I used a big pile of spinach, along with radish leaves, garlic scapes, thinly sliced radishes and green onions, and fingerling potatoes. I added some rosemary and thyme, then finished it with goat cheese. There’s nothing better for brunch than frittata, as far as I’m concerned. This one was so full of vegetables, it didn’t need any accompaniment, really, but I served it with salad from the garden, anyway.

I love how easy it is to eat healthily in the summertime, don’t you?

Intrigued by this month’s recipes? Buy the book and join us.

FFWD – Zucchini Blossoms

July 18, 2014July 18, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 10 Comments

I’m a week behind with French Fridays, once again. Everyone else is writing about their adventures with Coddled Eggs with Foie Gras, but I’m going to tell you about deep-fried zucchini blossoms.

There was a little drama involved in collecting the blossoms for this recipe. I have two zucchini plants in my garden this year, but I wasn’t sure whether they would be ready in time for last week’s posting or not. At the beginning of the week, I could see that there were about six male blossoms getting ready to bloom – I thought I could safely take four and leave two for the bees. I watched them carefully and when they seemed like they’d be ready the next day, I went and got a variety of vegetables to batter and fry with them, along with the ingredients for Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s
chile dipping sauce.

I went down to the garden the next morning and all six blossoms were gone. I don’t know if they dropped off the plants and shrivelled into nothing, or they got harvested by another creature who knew how good they were. In any case, I was disappointed.

Luckily, I only had to wait a few days more before I could try again. I harvested four blossoms, carefully laid them on paper towel and kept them in the fridge until it was time to stuff them. I used an herbed goat cheese to stuff mine, instead of the titular shrimp. I was surprised at how easy the blossoms were to work with – I had them cleaned and stuffed in much less time than it took to prepare the rest of the vegetables. I also substituted an equal weight of gluten-free flour for AP flour and the batter turned out perfectly.

However, I wasn’t quite finished with drama yet. My over-sensitive hard-wired smoke detector went off when I was about halfway through the vegetables I deep-fried along with the blossoms, so I had to abandon my cooking and wrap bags and tea towels around the alarm until it stopped.

All of the blossoms had been cooked and there was a plateful of vegetables for us to dip in the chile sauce, too. It was an enjoyable snack and the blossoms were delicious.

I’m not going to be repeating it, though. I’m not enough of a fan of deep-fried food to wrap towels around the smoke alarm very often at all. And the rest of my zucchini blossoms are being put to work producing enough zucchini to overwhelm me at the end of the summer.

This month, French Fridays is doing something a little different – four Doristas were asked to pick recipes and this perfectly seasonal, perfectly elegant pick was courtesy of Diane, from Simple Living and Eating – drop by and thank her for me, won’t you?

Find out what the rest of the French Fridays crew thought about this recipe: Shrimp-filled Zucchini Blossoms

Guacamole and Tomatoes – A French Fridays Catch Up

July 11, 2014July 12, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 11 Comments

Today’s post should be about delicate zucchini blossoms in a tempura-like batter, but I’m not there yet – or rather, my garden is not. I am short on blossoms as yet, but that should correct itself by tomorrow or Sunday, latest.

Instead, I’m catching up on the two previous weeks’ dishes, which were so simple it makes me wonder how I let life get in the way of making them before today. They were perfect for a hot summer’s evening graze, which also included hummus, salsa, and crudités. (Not that it qualifies as hot here by the rest of North America’s standards, I’m aware.)

Guacamole with Tomatoes and Bell Peppers

This recipe came up in the rotation on the last Friday of June and was whipped up in my kitchen in less than fifteen minutes today. The recipe calls for the guacamole to be presented chunky or smooth. I chose smooth and used my food processor to make it, instead of a mortar and pestle, as Dorie does – mine isn’t big enough.

I used a little too much jalapeño for Kevin’s taste, but I enjoyed the bite. The inclusion of the tomatoes and red pepper made this guacamole reminiscent of a green avocado salsa, though I think I like this recipe better. Tomorrow, it’s going to be even spicier than it was today, so I’m going to pick up some sour cream to cut the heat. Along with corn tortillas and some vegetables sautéed in cumin and oregano, I think we’ve got tomorrow night’s dinner covered.

Tomatoes Provençal

For the month of July, the choices for each week’s assignment were made a little differently than usual. Four of our regular participants were each asked to pick one recipe and to start the month, Kathy of Bakeaway with Me chose Dorie’s Tomatoes Provençal.

Local tomatoes are starting to show up in the markets and roasting them is such a nice way to deepen their flavour. I was especially pleased with the topping – minced garlic with a mixture of herbs from the garden. I love being able to go outside and take as much as I need from the plants in my backyard. It’s one of the many pleasures of summer, isn’t it? I used basil, thyme, oregano, rosemary, and chives. Nothing else was needed but a little salt, pepper, and olive oil.

We loved these tomatoes, so much so that I saved the leftover juices to use for salad dressing or cooking down vegetables for the frittata I’m planning for later this weekend.

If I were you, I’d give them a go and then visit Kathy’s blog to tell her what a great choice she made.

Find out what the rest of the French Fridays crew thought about the Guacamole with Tomatoes and Bell Peppers.

You can find links to everyone else’s posts on last week’s recipe here: Tomatoes Provençal

Cottage Cooking Club – May 2014

May 28, 2014May 28, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 11 Comments

Today brings something new to my blog, which will be happening monthly over the next ten months or so. I’ve teamed up with a few of my favourite bloggers to cook our way through River Cottage Veg. Our little group has been organized by the wonderful Andrea of The Kitchen Lioness and you can join us at the Cottage Cooking Club. Each month, we’ll be cooking up to ten recipes from the book and sharing our versions of the dishes. What we won’t be sharing is the recipes, unless there they’ve been shared online by the author or publisher. Some of us may also provide recipes inspired by the month’s choices.

This group came along at the perfect time for me, as my partner is moving toward vegetarian, and ultimately vegan, eating. I’ve always incorporated a lot of meat-free meals into my life, but it’s great to get some new recipes into my repertoire right now and see which ones appeal to Kevin the most.

This month, I chose six of the recipes to try. I probably won’t make that many of them every month, but there were a lot of favourite ingredients on this month’s list.

Arugula, Fennel, and Puy Lentil Salad

First up is a salad so good that I couldn’t help but share it with the group of bloggers who participated in the Canadian Lentils #LentilHunter Twitter chat that happened a few weeks ago. I loved the vinaigrette that was mixed into the lentils and then used to dress the greens. Kevin’s not a salad dressing fan, though, so I just squeezed lemon on his. We were both happy.

This is the sort of recipe I’ll revisit often, changing the ingredients according to the season. I used the organic French green lentils that I always have on hand, but this would be really special with authentic Puy lentils.

Try it for yourself – you can find the recipe here.

Quinoa with Zucchini and Onions

Not a hit for Kevin. I liked it, but would use less onion and perhaps a wider variety of veggies. I sauteed the garlic in butter before adding it, added a bit of balsamic at the end, and forgot the nuts. I think with a bit more experimentation, this could be a better dish for us.

Radishes with Butter and Salt

This one is a summer tradition for me. The bite of raw radishes is a perfect match for the soothing creaminess of butter. And salt just makes everything better. I did this with the first radishes from my garden and completely forgot to take a picture. I’ll add one the next time I do it. Shouldn’t be long.

Asparagus Pizza

I didn’t get a pretty photo of this one, but I loved it, ugly or not. I used a frozen gluten-free crust instead of the homemade pizza dough made with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Magic Bread Dough. Next time, I’ll make it for gluten-eaters and use the dough, as Kevin wasn’t that keen on this dish. He would have preferred a traditional, tomato-based pizza with steamed asparagus on the side.

Roasted Eggplant Boats

I was surprised that Kevin didn’t like this one more – eggplant is one of his favourite vegetables. One of the things we came up against in a lot of the recipes I’ve been trying lately is that he’s not a big fan of sauces or dressings. The plainer the better is his motto. So, I finished this on my own. I enjoyed it, but it won’t be replacing Ottolenghi’s roasted eggplant as my go to any time soon.

Stir-fried Cauliflower

This dish was the winner of this month’s selections. We both loved it. This time, it made a great late night snack. Going forward, I think it will be a nice side for almost any Asian-influenced fare. I skipped the cilantro and added a little five-spice, but I would have been just as happy with the recipe as written. It’s easy to put together and I would be lying if I said I won’t be making this again for a lazy lunch or snack, all on its own.

Intrigued by this month’s recipes? Buy the book and join us.

FFWD – Leeks Vinaigrette With Mimosa

May 9, 2014May 9, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 14 Comments

If the vegetable aisle was a high school dance, leeks would definitely be standing with the wallflowers. While the flashier vegetables and their savoury fruit friends are taking centre stage, leeks are quietly intensifying the richness of the dishes they inhabit. It’s unfair, though, because when they are allowed the spotlight, they don’t need supporting players.

Before I mix my metaphors any further, let me give you an example. Leeks Vinaigrette is a classic French dish, with good reason. Poached until tender and tossed in a red wine vinegar and walnut oil dressing, they are delicious. Topped with a ‘mimosa’ of shredded egg, they’re also elegant.

Dorie’s version is quick to prepare and made a perfect light supper, with an extra hard-boiled egg each on the side. Cut to any number of high school movie conclusions – the triumph of the wallflower.

You can find the recipe here.

Find out what the rest of the French Fridays crew thought about this week’s recipe: Leeks Vinaigrette with Mimosa

FFWD – Baby Bok Choy, Sugar Snaps, and Garlic en Papillote

April 19, 2014April 19, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 13 Comments

We’re having a lot of conversations in our house, lately, about what constitutes healthy eating. Kevin is convinced that going vegan is his path, but there has been considerable backsliding. My position is that moderation, in moderation, is the ticket to a well-rounded diet.

This week’s French Fridays recipe is vegan, but it’s also a side dish. I could have continued down that road, but instead, I served it with one of our favourites from Around My French Table, Roasted Salmon and Lentils. All in all, it was a very healthy meal. Low-fat, high fibre, and probably many other buzzwords besides. What stood out for me was the flavour. Like the salmon, these vegetables are simply seasoned, but surprisingly flavourful. The title gives you the recipe, but it’s the subtle addition of fresh mint and orange zest that really brings this dish together. It’s also a versatile dish, which worked as well with the French flavours of the salmon and lentils as it would with Asian cuisine.

For now, we’ve agreed that increasing the number of meatless meals over time is probably Kevin’s path to success, but tomorrow will definitely be a meatless day. We went out for fish and chips with my parents yesterday and had fish again today. Whatever we end up having tomorrow, there’s still lots of bok choy and snap peas in the refrigerator, so there will be more en papillote cooking involved.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this FFWD recipe here: Baby Bok Choy, Sugar Snaps, and Garlic en Papillote

Quiche Maraîchère & Sablé Breton Galette – A French Fridays Catch Up

April 17, 2014May 5, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 6 Comments

What we can do without and what we cannot is a line that shifts over time. I spent twenty-four hours thinking I’d lost my smartphone and I felt the loss in a way I wouldn’t have been able to imagine even ten years ago. Then, when a phone was just a phone, all that was necessary was to get the service provider to shut down the number. Now, it’s changing numerous passwords, registering the device as missing, and hoping whoever gets hold of it isn’t interested in the data stored there. Luckily, I found it and I was already in the midst of changing passwords to deal with the Heartbleed problem, so there wasn’t too much time wasted, really. It did make me realize how much I rely on that little piece of technology. It’s a cellphone, sure, but it’s also my mobile office, alarm clock, day planner, magazine rack, and way finder.

It’s debatable whether our reliance on cellphones is good or bad. But something that’s not up for debate, for me at least, is how necessary a good tart dough recipe is in my life. I used to use my mother’s pie crust for most everything, but as I’ve told you before, Dorie’s pâte brisée has made me rethink that. Now, I couldn’t do without it, especially as it works beautifully gluten-free.

This past Friday, our French Fridays recipe was Quiche Maraîchère, which makes good use of pâte brisée to hold a tart so full of leeks, carrots, celery, and red pepper that there’s very little room for the custard that qualifies it as a quiche. There are also very few seasonings, just salt and pepper, because that combination of vegetables creates a complex flavour that needs no embellishment. Mine was slathered with shredded Irish Monastic Cheese, as Kevin’s trying to go vegan and our meals last weekend were meant as a farewell to dairy for him. This quiche was so good it may lead to a setback.

For dessert, we had the Sablé Breton Galette you can see at the top of this post. I used homemade lemon curd on it, but skipped the berries. I’ll be revisiting this recipe again when local strawberries and blueberries make their appearance. This was another dough that worked really well gluten-free (just switch out the flour for an equal weight of an all-purpose gluten-free blend). It’s also another dough that I’ll be making often.

I’ll be interested to see what my list of necessaries looks like in ten years’ time. I expect that a number of the additions will be courtesy of Dorie Greenspan.

Now, I’d love to hear about the things (and recipes) that you can’t do without.

See how the rest of the French Fridays crew liked last week’s recipe here: Quiche Maraîchère and go way back to June of 2013 to see how Doristas fared with their versions of Sablé Breton Galette.

FFWD – Hélène’s All-White Salad

February 14, 2014 ~ Teresa ~ 30 Comments

My salad for this week’s assignment wasn’t so much white as spring green, matching the turn of weather we’ve had this week. After a period of cold, damp weather that seeped into the bone, it now feels like time to put away heavy coats and sweaters until autumn rolls around.

It’s also that in-between time where there isn’t much produce that’s in season, save for a few brassicas and storage fruits and vegetables. So, salad featuring cabbage and apples is perfect for this time of year. With mushrooms for meatiness and celery for extra crunch, this salad made for a surprisingly filling dinner.

I wasn’t sure about the lemon-yogurt dressing – it was entirely too tart when I tasted it. The sweetness of the apples in the salad transform the taste, though. I think if I make it again, I’ll add in a shot of apple juice to make it a little more versatile.

Kevin skipped the dressing altogether and sprinkled some lemon juice on his, instead. He’s trying to work toward becoming vegan, or at least vegan-ish, so some French Fridays assignments may get put off until I have a meat-eating audience at hand, as last week’s Boeuf à la Ficelle did. Maybe I’ll do a game version of that one for my parents some time.

If you’re looking for a meatless meal that suits this season, you can find the recipe for this week’s dish here.