Back to the Start

I still really like the idea of cooking the world.  Getting waylaid by the broken foot put a damper on the idea and then I just got distracted by other things.  So I'm trying again.  Since my random globe trot lacked focus, I decided to start at the beginning with Afghanistan.  Mostly.  By that I mean, there was a little move away from 100% authenticity but I'm ok with that.

The bread and the meat portion of the meal were from Flatbreads & Flavours, a book I've had for many, many, many years and rarely cooked from.  

The bread ... Afghan Home-Style Naan was very good.  It tasted like most whole wheat flatbreads so wouldn't say it distinguished itself in any way.  But it was good.  And looked fancy with the cuts in the centre of the dough.  The downside ... there were sesame seeds everywhere and, despite best efforts to clean them up, I'm confident we'll be finding them around the kitchen for a while yet.

The chicken ... Chicken Street Kebabs with Mint and Yogurt Sauce.  Very tasty.  One of the things that kick started me back into this project was that a number of recipes I was finding in various cusines made use of the grill.  Since warmer weather is here, somewhat, the grill is getting a good workout and I'm always looking for ideas that depart from the same old tried and true recipes.    

Finally, I turned to Global Table Adventure (which I don't want to copy in this project but am going to use as a resource and possible source of some ideas ... why let all of her hard work go to waste!), for Burani Bonjon, or Spicy Braised Eggplant, a very tasty eggplant and tomato combination.  While I enjoyed the whole meal, I would have to say that this was my favourite part.  

At this point, a little bit of cheating happened in my Afghan menu.  At around 5, I got worried that I didn't have enough food.  Since our friends were arriving at 6:30, I didn't have a lot of time to research another recipe and get to the store to buy the ingredients.  So honey roasted carrots came to the rescue.  I rationalized that carrots and honey are part of cuisines the world over and found both in google searches of Afghan recipes.  Also, for dessert, I couldn't pass up the fact the rhubarb is in season, is sprouting in my garden and grows in Afghanistan.  So Rhubarb Crisp it was!  

So while not 100% authentic, most of the meal was as close to "real" as possible.  It tasted great and I'll be making both the chicken and the eggplant again.  

England

I recently bought "Eat the little book of fast food" by Nigel Slater.  I picked it up from the library first and was quite taken with it.  Further to this project, and in general, I want to get more interesting in my cooking especially during the week and this book has already helped me cook outside the box.

While flipping through yesterday for ideas, I saw a recipe for chicken with bread sauce.  I've never heard of bread sauce.  My husband, who lived in England for 5 years, has never heard of bread sauce (but being the type that has never been huge on food, I'm not going to take him as an expert).  But it sounded tasty, Delia Smith and Jamie Oliver both describe bread sauce as an English concoction, I really like Nigel Slater so I was inspired.  My next International night would be England.  No dinner party, just my husband and I, but away we go!  Now, the State Department website lists Great Britain and not the countries within so I've just expanded my list of countries, meaning that instead of the 20 years to complete the countries in my original estimate, I'm now up to 20.5 years!!

With the bread in the sauce, I was on track with my goal of including bread in these international meals.  Along with the chicken, I wanted some vegetables other than the potatoes in the recipe.  Since I was already reading Jamie Oliver regarding bread sauce, I decided to look for a salad in his British recipes section and came up with Root Vegetable Salad - a mix of vegetables I either don't usually eat (radishes and celery) or don't usually eat raw (beets and fennel).  Then there was mint, which is one of my favourite tea and chocolate flavours but not, for some reason a favourite in the cooking department.  And, in my mind, a very English herb.  I think this relates to the lamb and mint sauce stereotype but whatever works.

While bouncing around on Jamie Oliver's site, I noted a crumble/crisp in the British recipes section.  Hah - I thought that was a North American thing but apparently it is British in origin - this according to Jamie Oliver and Wikipedia.  And it is my favourite dessert in the entire world (no exaggeration and not likely to change no matter how many desserts I try during this project).  The menu was done.  Forget the cookies (Jaffa cakes would have been fun to make) but crisp it is.  This is a bit of a cheat because I make it all the time but who cares.  It's my project so I can make the rules!

All was good.  I love the salad (which is good because it makes enough for a large dinner party and we'll be eating it for a few days yet) and the bread sauce was also really tasty.  All in all, a really good dinner and not what I would have expected for the English portion of the project, which made it even more fun.

Morocco

In an effort to reenergize my cooking, get together with friends more regularly and reenergize my interest in blogging, I've copied an idea I first heard about on a podcast which referenced Global Table Adventure.  The idea is to cook food from every country in the world over a certain period of time.  On Global Table Adventure, Sasha cooked a different country every week.  Since I'm not that ambitious, and we're getting into the time of year where curling takes over most of our spare minutes, I'm going to aim for once a month.  Twice if I'm really lucky.  This means it will take me about 20 years to complete this project.  We'll see if I can stick with it!

The other thing Sasha did was cook the countries in order.  This was my original plan.  I went to the US State Department website and picked up the list of countries and started to comb my cookbooks for ideas.  I was all set to start with Afghanistan until I thumbed through The Slanted Door cookbook I had in the house from the library and decided that I don't really want to wait 19 years for the Vietnamese dinner!  So I've decided to wing it, crossing off countries as I randomly journey the globe.

The other thing I want to do is use recipes I already have stockpiled.  This may mean some issues with complete authenticity but I'm not sure randomly selected web recipes (which I will also use as a source) offer a complete guarantee either.  So here goes.

First up, Morocco.  Why Morocco?  We were in the car when we set up a dinner date via text message with my in-laws.  So my first thought was, why not take advantage of this opportunity to kick off my project.  And Morocco is quite straight-forward.  I have a tagine, I've made Moroccan food before and it doesn't require a full day in the kitchen.  Since I had less than a full afternoon, this seemed to make sense.  So, I searched Eat Your Books, Pinterest and Paprkia and came up with a decent menu.  

As an aside, I'm going to try for two common themes as I cook around the world.  Bread and cookies.  I am guessing all countries make some sort of bread (I'm counting rice paper wrappers in the case of Vietnam).  And I'm hoping most also make cookies.  This is a selfish hope because I really think the cookie is the perfect dessert.

The cookies for this meal, called Moroccan Sugar Cookies by food.com were simple to make.  I did run out of vegetable oil so combined it with another oil that made the cookies taste a little grassy.  Lesson learned but they did taste really good with the North African Mint tea we enjoyed with them after dinner.

The bread, ksra, or Moroccan Anise Bread is from Flatbreads & Flavours, a cookbook I've had since 1995 and rarely cooked from.  It was delicious.  The book has really interesting essays and stories about the food too.  One item I found interesting is that people often take their homemade breads to the bakery for baking, covered in a distinctive cloth so that they can tell which bread is theirs when they go back to pick it up.

In terms of the rest of the meal, I made Moroccan Carrot and Red Lentil Soup from A Cedar Spoon, which had a very nice blend of flavours.  The last minute addition of lemon juice and a fresh coriander garnish gave the soup a hint of freshness.

The tagine was from a go-to winter book, All About Braising and was quite similar to a few other recipes I found.  Chicken, olives, moroccan spices and preserved lemons combined to make a warming, flavourful dish.  Along with couscous (with some sautéed onions and pistachios), this was really satisfying and the chicken was fall-off-the-bone delicious.

So, off to a good start.  Next stop might be Vietnam.  Or maybe something from the Southern Africa cookbook we got when we were in Botswana and Namibia a few years ago.  Decisions, decisions.  All I know is that the plan will include bread and cookies!

Whiskey in the Jar

It never fails that my biggest harvests are ready on the hottest day of the year.  So yesterday, I contributed to the unnecessary burning of fossil fuels by:

1. Decreasing my pile of tomatoes to make my most favourite savoury relish … tomato jam from Food in Jars.  After 5 pounds of tomatoes, I still have a good number for munching. And this jam in January is like a ray of sunshine on your tongue. 
2. Justifying the extra peaches I picked up at the Farmers' Market on Saturday, I whipped up Peach Barbecue Sauce from Williams-Sonoma.  Any recipe that includes a half cup of bourbon can't be wrong.  And peaches and whiskey just seem to make sense.  I was a bit hesitant about the called-for cupful of Worcestershire sauce.  It sounded like it would be overwhelming but it blended in really well with the peaches and bourbon.  We had the sauce on barbecued chicken and it doesn't have an overpowering flavour but instead enhanced the flavour of the chicken.  Yummy.  And four jars on the shelf for another winter pick-me-up.
3. Using some sour cherry rhubarb jam from last summer that I boiled too far, making it relatively unspreadable on top of my peanut butter toast, I used Eat Your Books to locate the recipe for Rye Crumble Bars from Molly Wizenberg's blog Orangette. These are fantastic.  The jam provides a perfect contrast to the shortbread crust and oatmeal topping.  I can't remember how many jars of this jam I made but I'll be watching out for them in the jam cupboard to make this again soon.
4. Further decreasing the pile of tomatoes, since the oven was on anyway, for lunch I made the Sweet Cherry Tomato and Sausage bake from Jamie Oliver's Jamie at Home book.  This recipe was also found through Eat Your Books, my favourite cooking website.  I am exploring so many recipes that I just wouldn't have found the old fashioned way.  This was a tasty wrap to a very satisfying morning of cooking.

Surprising Me

Several years ago, I worked at Bay and Bloor and they opened a Williams Sonoma store across the street.  A big Williams Sonoma store that I still love visiting.  I am pretty well stocked in the pots and pans department but, as mentioned time after time, I love cookbooks.  And I was enticed by the small Williams Sonoma cookbooks that are built around a theme.  My favourite Whole Wheat bread recipe comes from the Bread book.  There are others for Pasta, Salads, Steak and Chop and so on.  I have at least a dozen because they sold them in boxes of 4 which built the collection pretty quickly.  Add to that, Costco sold them later on too so I picked up some there too.

Anyway, I bought some (sustainable) sea bass from my local Longo's the other day and was looking for something to do with it from my cookbooks through my new favourite website, Eat Your Books, and stumbled across a recipe from the Seafood book that I don't think I realized I owned.  Obviously, I realized it long enough to enter the book into Eat Your Books as I was building my library but when I pulled all of that together, I was hardly paying close attention.  Anyway, the recipe was Sea Bass on a bed of Fennel and it was excellent.  Fennel is one of my favourite veggies and roasting is my favourite way of preparing it.  The recipe has you roast the fennel for 20 minutes (next time I would go longer) at 400 and then putting the fish in the pan for 10 minutes to finish.  While the fennel is cooking, the fish marinates in a lemon juice honey mixture to give it some extra flavour.

A very tasty result and another cookbook found.

Everyday is Like Sunday … or I wish it were

I decided to stop blogging.  And then Natalie said that reading this is the best way to keep up with what is going on with me since we rarely see each other.  So here goes.  We'll see how long it lasts.

I discovered a new, and totally meant for me website, thanks to Chocolate & Zucchini.  It is Eat Your Books and is exactly what I need.  Before I explain it, I should say that I have 181 cookbooks.  And I have saved hundreds of recipes from magazines on my Paprika app.

On Eat Your Books, you enter all of your cookbooks by name and when they have been indexed in the website, you have a searchable inventory of all of your recipes by ingredient.  It is awesome.  The only, rather large issue … they are pretty terrible at having indexes for Canadian cookbooks.  The good part, members can index books.  I am going to contribute to this but it will take time.  I started indexing a book a couple of weeks ago and am only about 1/4 of the way through.  So eventually.

Anyway, ever in search of a theme, I decided to write a blog about tonight's dinner, sourced from my cookbook collection, courtesy of the Eat Your Books index, partly.

Since it has been a fabulous weekend, barbecue was in the air.  We had Honey Whiskey Glazed Chicken from Lynn Crawford at Home (not a book indexed in the website), Freekeh Pilaf from Plenty by Ottolenghi and Roasted Cauliflower from the Gourmet cookbook.  I improvised a little in all.  Everything was great.  I pretty much improvised a bit on everything.  This is how I made the Freekeh Pilaf:

1 medium onion, chopped
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup freekeh
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground allspice
1 cup chicken stock
salt and black pepper
chopped beet greens
a handful of chopped mint, parsley, basil and chives

Saute the butter, olive oil and onions over medium heat for 10 minutes until onion is soft.

Soak freekeh in cold water for 5 minutes.  Drain in a sieve and rinse well under cold water.  Drain well.

Add the freekeh, cinnamon and allspice to the onions, add the stock and salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat to low and cook for 15-20 minutes.  Throw the beet greens into the pot and put the lid back on the pot.  Remove from heat and leave covered for 5 minutes.

Stir herbs into the warm pilaf.

Enjoy.

Ottolenghi adds some pine nuts and uses a lemon flavoured yogurt to serve.  Both would be good but I forgot the pine nuts and didn't have any yogurt.  It was all very tasty without.

Rise up

It is rather cruel that when you spend a couple of days and a few hours making bread that you aren't supposed to taste it until it cools for an hour.  Fortunately, I have a braise in the oven and the bread will go very well with it so I'm not too upset.  And the little bit of crust that stuck to the pan when I popped the bread out onto the rack was enough to tide me over for a little bit longer.  We'll have to see if I can hold out all the way to dinner.

About the bread itself … I have two of Peter Reinhart's bread cookbooks and I can't decide whether I like them or not.  I regularly and successfully make a really nice loaf from a fairly simple recipe.  Then I crack open one of Reinhart's books and the bread takes at least two days to produce.  The recipes require pre-mixing of certain parts of the dough the day before the double rising process.  And instead of the standard two loaf recipe, his recipes make one.  And I can't say that I have thought Reinhart's breads were so awesome that they were worth the extra time.  But I have had very good success with bread lately, and I'm giving the proofing feature on my new oven credit for that, so thought I would try again.  More to come after the official tasting later today.

And speaking of braising, I'm back into Molly Stevens' All About Braising book.  Yesterday I made a delicious braised tuna with chickpeas and radicchio.  It is a fairly quick recipe; a maximum of an hour from start to plate.

Today a little more involved braised oxtails is in the oven.  I have no idea if I like oxtails or not but I see them every time I go to my local butcher and decided to take the plunge.  If I don't like them, I can always have another slice of bread!
 

It's that time of year

I'm in the soup mood lately and have made two really good ones in the last couple of weeks.  The first was a Sweet Potato Mulligatawny soup from the Flavour Principle by Lucy Waverman, my new favourite cookbook distraction.  I amended it slightly to leave out the coconut milk, didn't have any cilantro or lemon juice and it was still absolutely brilliant.  I sprinkled some pumpkin seeds on top and enjoyed.

Yesterday I made my favourite butternut squash soup.  While butternut squash is one of my favourite veggies, I really dislike wrestling with the peel so, when making soup, I generally cut it in half, drizzle some olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast it for 45 minutes to an hour.  The peel comes off easily and the caramelization of bits on the surface of the squash only add to the flavour.   Here is what I do for my squash soup:

1 large butternut squash
olive oil, salt and pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 apple, roughly chopped
4 cups chicken or veggie stock or water
1 tsp (or more) curry powder
pepper

Preheat oven to 400F.  Cut squash in half and place on a parchment lined cookie sheet.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with pepper and salt.  Roast squash for 45 minutes to an hour.  It might not be quite cooked through but it will finish in the stock.  Remove squash from oven, let cool until it can be handled without pain; peel and roughly chop.

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in soup pot, add onion and cook gently until soft.  Add apple and squash to the pan, stir around a bit in the oil and onion to mix.  Add stock.  Bring stock to a boil then reduce to a simmer.  Add curry powder and pepper to taste and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.  Puree using favourite method (immersion blender is mine) and enjoy.

And drizzle this a few pumpkin seeds too.

And in summary

As I've blogged about again and again, I have been overwhelmed with zucchini.  So, for those in a similar situation and as a record for next year, the top 20 zucchini strategies in my kitchen this year.  Some I've blogged about already but wanted these all in one place.  I should also note when the recipe calls for grated zucchini, I use the grating attachment on my food processor.  In no universe am I hand grating the pounds and pounds of zucchini that I've processed in my kitchen this year.  So here goes ...

1.  Food 52 zucchini bread - a nice change from the traditional chocolate zucchini bread
2.  Lesley Stowe's chocolate zucchini bread - I think I've made about 10 loaves this summer.  I've taken some to the office and the rest has been sliced and tossed in the freezer - easy to pull out for lunch bags.
3.  Zucchini fritters - made up this recipe myself.  Into some grated zucchini, add one egg, a handful of breadcrumbs, some grated parmesan, thyme, pepper and salt.  Mix and add more breadcrumbs until the mix holds together.  Heat a pan with enough olive oil to cover the bottom and drop the zucchini cakes in the pan.  Cook for about 2 minutes a side (until nice and brown and heated through) and transfer to a plate.  Sprinkle with chopped tomatoes and serve.

From the book Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi - so far every recipe I've tried from this man's cookbooks has been delicious and these two recipes are no exception:
4.  Mixed Grill with Parsley Oil
5.  Zucchini and Hazelnut salad

From Bon Appetit magazine, who recently changed their webiste and it is horrible ... slow, my nicely organized recipe box is no longer organized, features don't work ... ugh:
6.  Curried Squash Soup
7.  Squash and Tomato Gratin

From Fine Cooking magazine:
8.  Roasted Ratatouille

From Canadian Living:
9.  Zucchini Pickles - these are really, really good
10.  Zucchini Relish

Quick uses:
11.  Give to friends
12.  Slice and toss in a salad
13.  Slice, brush with olive oil, salt and pepper and grill
14.  Saute with some herbs, maybe a few nuts
15.  Throw into a pasta sauce - ribbons of zucchini with olive oil or mix with tomatoes or other veggies
16.  Add to other veggies in a stir fry
17.  Add slices to a sandwich - really good on a grilled sandwich

Tried but didn't make myself:
18.  Chocolate zucchini cupcakes - pretty much #2, above, in a cupcake form with icing

Haven't tried this year but there's still time
19.  Stuffed zucchini - lots of recipes out there.  I think I like the idea of sausage meat although Ottolenghi has a recipe in Plenty that would likely be a good choice.
20.  Smitten Kitchen's burst tomato galette with corn and zucchini - I think I'm making this for dinner tonight.  Without the corn.  I bought some at the farmer's market on Saturday and we gobbled it down that day for lunch.  Oh well, I think without the corn it should still be tasty.

So there you have it.  My top 20.  Other than the parts of the year with no local produce unless it is from a greenhouse, I am pretty keen on eating food that is in season.  And in a way it is really easy ... I'm pretty sure after eating my body weight and more in zucchini this summer, I will have no interest in eating it out of season.  Although, I really should grate some and throw it in the freezer.  By February, I might be hungry for it again.

It's always too late to take a picture of food

Because I always think of taking a picture after I have eaten it!  Anyway, yesterday's dinner was a multi-step affair.  It started on Monday with making ricotta cheese from my new favourite cookbook, The Homemade Pantry.  Wow.  It was so easy.  And one of those things that you can have cooking while doing something else in the kitchen or wherever.

Then yesterday I made almond-basil pesto, also from the above book.  I had no success with basil in the garden this year but Longos was selling huge plants last week so I bought one and had been dreaming of pesto ever since.

Next I made pasta from scratch (4 cups flour, 4 extra large eggs, 4 tsp whey from the ricotta process (or water)).  And was reminded again how much I love my Kitchen Aid mixer with its very practical attachments, which include a pasta machine.  I mixed a few tablespoons of pesto into the ricotta and made a stuffed pasta by cutting squares, spooning about 1 tsp of filling on one half and folding the other half over the filling, pressing the edges together to seal.  I was nervous that the little bundles would split apart in the boiling water but had no issues.

The sauce was partially a fridge clean-out combined with a big harvest of cherry tomatoes from the garden.  I quickly pan fried garlic and onion, cooked some shiitake mushrooms for a few minutes and then added halved cherry tomatoes.  I cooked that mix for a couple of minutes,  added some white wine, rosemary and a couple of teaspoons of pesto and let the whole thing simmer.  A little shot of cream and some pasta water at the end and dinner was ready. 

Another New Cookbook or 3

Of all of my addictions, none of which unfortunately are a physical damage to myself or others - well, other than the risk of being buried under my various stashes if the shelves fall down - my cookbook addiction is the worst and most long enduring.  It started in university when I picked up a few of those cookbooks geared to students ... cooking for one, cooking on campus, cooking stuff that isn't chips and pop, etc ... and has continued to this day.  Fortunately, I regularly use them.

I have been pretty good about going to the library first when a cookbook interests me ... the lady who orders the books is a big cookbook fan too so they generally have the books that catch my eye.  This has really curtailed my acquiring because it gives me a chance to really look at the book to see if it gives me anything I don't already have in another book.  Generally the answer is no and I make something from one I already own.

Lately, 3 books have come to my attention that I find unique or interesting enough to buy.  Combined with the fact that the library doesn't have them yet and they are now on my shelves.

Tender, volume 1 by Nigel Slater.  This book ties into my veggie gardening obsession and has really good chapters on most vegetables.  It includes growing ideas, eating ideas and general thoughts by Slater.  New ideas for cooking veggies was the original draw but the gardening tie-in makes it a big winner.  I almost bought the fruit book (volume 2) the other day but decided to hold off until I've at least finished reading the stories in this one.

Ottolenghi by Yotam Ottolenghi was another must-have due to the pleasure I'm getting cooking from Plenty.  I haven't spent much time with it yet but did use a green bean recipe for Christmas dinner.  Very nice.

Pangea - Why it Tastes so Good from the restaurant Pangea at Bay and Bloor in Toronto.  We went there for lunch the other day - which was fabulous.  I had celery root soup with a nice little apple garnish and a beet salad with goat cheese and ginger crisps (which happens to be on the cover of the book).  I had heard about the book, they had copies, it included a recipe for the beet salad and their very yummy mushroom risotto so I was lost.  Last night for dinner I made the black cod with Jerusalem artichokes, tomatoes, mushrooms and spinach (I think the title is something much shorter but don't feel like getting up to look).  It was excellent.  I had some Jerusalem artichokes in the refrigerator, picked out of my abundance in the garden the other week.  I do have to say that I need to find somewhere to take some Jerusalem artichokes next year because, despite giving some to neighbours and a friend at the office, I have at least 2 plants left in the garden.  I like them but can only eat so many.  Read the link and find out why!

Cookbooks

Last week I stumbled on the blog 101 Cookbooks.  I have seen this blog before but have never really looked at it closely.  Essentially the focus of the blog is that the author had a cookbook buying problem and decided to start cooking from the books she owns rather than buying new ones.  Since I have somewhere in excess of 101 Cookbooks, I recently started taking ones that interested me out of the library and spending some time with them before buying.  This strategy has resulted in a nosedive in the number of cookbooks purchased in the last year or so.

One of the cookbooks I took out of the library and fell in love with is Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi.  After trying a couple of recipes during the loan period, I realized this is one that I had to own.  I made a few recipes from it immediately after buying and loved all of them but the book has been on the shelf for a couple of months.  I pulled it out yesterday and have started exploring it again.  The first recipe in that exploration used one of the heads of red cabbage waiting for me in the garden.  It is called Sweet Winter Slaw and combines the cabbage with sweet elements from maple syrup and mango with asian ingredients of soy sauce, sesame oil, coriander and chilies.  It was absolutely delicious.  I modified it a bit to sub peanuts for the macadamia nuts in the recipe.  I also left out the papaya which would have added a nice touch but the store only had huge ones and since I'm not a big fan knew some would have gone to waste.

For lunch it will be Puy Lentil Galettes.

Plenty

The veggie garden has been so satisfying this year.  While the tomatoes have been smaller than usual, I think due to the lack of rain, they have been very tasty.   The zucchini, which I have never had an overabundance of in the past, despite their reputation, have come through with flying colours this year.  And I picked another lot of green beans this morning for dinner tonight.  Last weekend I made the best ratatouille I have ever tried.  It takes forever but is so very worth it.  Most of the ingredients came from the garden.  I had to buy an onion and an extra eggplant to supplement but otherwise, all home grown by me.  And it was delicious.

My latest cookbook purchase is Plenty which came to my attention just when things were ripening in the garden.  There are so many recipes in here that I want to try and the ones I have tried have been wonderful.  Last night it was a bread salad with tomatoes and cucumber.   I'm looking forward to a green bean concoction tonight that looks very tasty.

On the knitting front, I'm making progress on some of the projects I have lined up.  I do have to try felting the slippers again but I'm waiting until we have some laundry to do with them before I plunge them into the water again.  They have started felting but need to shrink a few more inches to be worn by anyone but Bigfoot himself.

Summer Produce

I am obsessed with my vegetable garden.  And it has been really productive this year, starting with so many lovely peas and onward to my current crops of green beans, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers and zucchini.  I've never really had the problem of too much zucchini and I wouldn't say the plants have been that productive this year either but I do have slightly more than we can just eat for dinner a few times a week.  So I dusted off the oven which hasn't been on much lately due to the heat and baked some zucchini products.

The first was a bread recipe from High Plains:  The Joy of Alberta Cuisine, a book I picked up randomly a long time ago, which has several really good recipes.  The bread is very tasty.  I substituted chocolate chips for the raisins which makes it even better.

Next were muffins from Flour, the cookbook that I'm going to work my way through because all of the recipes look amazing.  The muffins are also good.  Again, substituted chocolate chips for the raisins.  Clearly this is not the healthy option but I've been eating so many veggies from the garden, what are a few chocolate chips?

Ssshhh, I'm making progress on Rock Island and a few other things

1.  I'm quietly excited that I've made some progress on my Rock Island Shawl.  I'm on row 10 and things are looking good so far.   Touch wood, of course.

2.  Baking from my new favourite cookbook, Flour, has resulted in a very nice banana bread.  As promised by Joanne Chang, the author.

3.  It is starting to get hot out but we have so far managed to survive without air conditioning.  I really hate the air conditioning but I also hate being hot so it is always a contest in our house on who can outlast the summer heat without being the first to turn on the air conditioning.  We're thinking sleeping downstairs might be the way to go tonight.

4.  The veggie patch is starting to grow.  Nothing much to harvest yet.  Except chives and rhubarb.  I think I've over exhausted the rhubarb with a frenzy of items in May - a pie, a couple of crisps, jam, muffins - but it looks like it's starting to recover.  I had 4 asparagus sprout from the crop I planted last year.  My neighbour shared some with me.  Hopefully by next summer I actually have some I can eat.

5.  I love, love, love sitting outside after dinner.  It is so relaxing.  I also love wireless internet so I am able to sit outside and type a blog post.

More Flour

I'm really loving this cookbook.  In fact, it could be one of those cookbooks that I'm motivated to make most, if not all, of the recipes.  I really don't like Creme Brulee and most pies so might skip those chapters but everything else looks awesome.  And so far, the book hasn't disappointed.

Yesterday's dessert of choice was Oreo cookies.  There were several stages of letting the dough sit but these were very easy to make and yummy.  So much better than the commercial version.

The cookies followed a very good dinner of Beef Tenderloin steaks with Blue Cheese from Chef at Home and a salad with squash, toasted almonds and pears from Bite Me.

Another satisfying day in the kitchen.  I really don't want to go back to work.

It looks like rain this morning but I'm hoping to get in the garden today to finish planting my tomatoes which are now officially hardened off.  It is supposed to be relatively hot tomorrow so I'd like to plant them today to give them a bit of time to adjust at cooler temperatures in hopes they won't get to baked tomorrow.  Even if it rains today, I'll have to bite the bullet and get out there.

I also need to finish my planters.  I picked up a few more things yesterday and that should be it.  The rest of the summer will be about weeding and relaxing, not necessarily in that order.

Not sure which magazine Monday

Yesterday was new recipe day.  It started with some lovely scones from a new purchase, Flour.  These were Oatmeal Maple Scones and were very, very tasty.  A little sweet with the glaze of maple syrup and icing sugar but tasty never-the-less.

For dinner it was fish and potatoes from The River Cafe's Italian Too Easy, a book I picked up 1/2 price last summer.  Likely because it appears to be out of print.  I liked the fish, which is baked with anchovies on top but the potatoes were unexciting.  Despite being boiled beforehand, roasted under the fish for 6 minutes and then poached in white wine, they weren't that tasty.  I think if I do this again, I'll roast the potatoes first and then put the fish on top.  This method has worked well in the past.

Back to the anchovies.  I don't believe that, other than in Caesar salad, I've ever had anchovies.  I'd have to say that it is a shame that I've reached this age and not enjoyed these frequently.  I'll have to make up for that going forward.  Delicious.

Finally, the magazine part was Roasted Sesame and Panko Crusted Asparagus with Soy-Ginger Drizzle.  I have no idea what magazine this was from but it was yummy.  Basically you coat the asparagus in a mayo, soy sauce, rice vinegar mixture and then dip in Panko.  Bake for about 15 minutes in a hot oven and then drizzle with a soy sauce, rice vinegar and chili sauce blend.  Yummy, yummy, yummy.  And likely even better if I had remembered to include the sesame seeds.  And the asparagus was fresh from Rebecca's father's farm.  Can't get much better than that.

Muffins

I had another baking extravaganza last weekend, making 2 kinds of cookies and 1 batch of muffins and squeezing them into the freezer.  The cookies were ones I have blogged about before from Regan Daley's In the Sweet Kitchen.  The muffins were from an undiscovered, meaning an issue I had put in my handy magazine holder never to be seen again, issue of Bon Appetit magazine.  They are simply called Oatmeal Muffins which would likely have made me pass by the recipe.  The only reason I paused is because oatmeal was on sale a couple of weeks ago, 2 for some good price, so is contributing to my crowded pantry issues.  I really have to send my husband grocery shopping with a list.  The most he comes back with that isn't on it are apple turnovers.  Anyway, these muffins are a little more than just oatmeal muffins.  They have nuts - I used hazelnuts because I didn't have the called for pecans.  And they have blueberries.  I had some nice wild ones, where else, in the freezer.  And the end result - a very nice muffin.  Highly recommend them.

I always seem to blog about beef

And I don't even enjoy beef that much.  But here we go again.  I guess the reason is that I don't remember to write about food that often and when I have a beef dish that I really like, I tend to remember to blog about it.

Anyway, at curling the other night a couple of people were talking about this great dinner they had made from this great cookbook.  I asked what the cookbook was thinking that there is at least a 75% chance that I have it and ... I do!  And I haven't cooked from it forever, need a bit of a kickstart in the cooking department because lately I've not been that inspired so pulled it off the shelf yesterday morning.  Before I went grocery shopping so could pick up the ingredients.  This may be part of my uninspired problem.  I have been randomly buying things at the grocery store and then trying to figure out what to make.  It's hard to get excited about cooking something when you don't have half of the ingredients.  So lately, I've just been throwing things together.  Still tasty but not inspiring.

The cookbook is A Matter of Taste by Lucy Waverman and James Chatto.  Lucy writes the recipes and James provides drink ideas to go with them.  Unfortunately, I tend to drink something different from what James recommends because I never remember to add his recommendation to the grocery list, get home and find I don't have a California Pinot Noir (in this case) or any other country's Pinot Noir for that matter.  Fortunately it tasted pretty good with a red Zinfandel as recommended by my beverage and food matching encyclopedia.

This book is set up in menus and it is my goal to actually make one of the full menus at some point but I don't think I have yet.  This one is called Japanese Influences and the beef part was Steak with Mushroom Miso Sauce.  Yummy.  The mushroom sauce smelled a lot like Miso soup (surprise) in the pan but when poured on the steak which had been marinated for 1/2 hour in soy sauce and other stuff, the flavours blended very nicely together so that you couldn't pick out any one element of flavour.  As I said earlier, yummy.

I also made the Soba Noodles with Spicy Greens.  This was also very good and contained a lot of veggies.  The spicy came from Wasabi paste, ginger and hot pepper flakes, although again, I didn't really notice the spiciness and thought that the flavours blended together really well.

Tonight it's Roasted Halibut Tagine from A Dinner of Lemons.  Considering that I'm likely only making the Halibut  and possibly the Israeli Couscous, if I have some in the back of my cupboard and it hasn't gone stale, it isn't really going to be a dinner of lemons.  More like lemons and some other stuff.  I'll try to remember to blog about it later.

Cookbooks!

I am addicted to cookbooks.  I have many.  I refuse to count them because I don't want to know what the exact number is.  I did hear Nigella Lawson quote the number of cookbooks she has the other day and, while I don't remember the exact number, know it is more than me so feel better that there are levels of obsession greater than mine.  The fact that she is in the business might giver her a more valid excuse but I'm not going to think about it that way.

The few in the picture are ones I've been using lately or are ones I want to pull some recipes out of soon.

The top one, "Bite me", is a fun cookbook with funny little recipe intros, goofy pictures and tasty recipes.  My favourite so far is the rack of lamb.  On my "how much does it make me want to lick the plate scale" - 5 out of 5

"In the Sweet Kitchen" has the best chocolate chip cookies going.  Since I'm a wee bit of a cookie snob, I feel like I have some credibility as a chocolate chip cookie judge.  I should explain that I like soft chocolate chip cookies so am judging them with that frame of reference.  They are loaded with chips and are enormously addictive.  And the double chocolate chip cookies are probably my favourite cookies ever.  I like having a cookie (or two) with my lunch and prefer to make them myself.  The only problem, I can't stop eating these.  I've tried freezing them and discovered they taste good frozen too.  Actually, I have always known that frozen cookies were good, I just counted on myself to be too lazy to trip downstairs to get them out of the freezer after dinner.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  As a result, I don't make them as often as I would like to and, when I want a cookie at lunch, go buy a substandard one for more than it is worth and start thinking about baking them again, eating too many, stop baking them and then go through the whole circle again.

On a healthier front, "Fast, Fresh and Green" is a new discovery for me and is providing me with some new ideas to make veggies more exciting.  I made roasted broccoli on Friday (the secret seems to be a very hot oven) with a yummy garlic butter.  The only thing about making fancier veggies - the things that make them taste better aren't as good for you as plain steamed veggies but they sure make things more interesting.

My newest book is "Quinoa 365".  I've eaten Quinoa off and on for a while now but became much more enamoured with it when we went to Peru.  So far I've only tried one recipe from the book, a pilaf-style which was very good.  I'm looking forward to more.  I bought a huge container of Quinoa at the Organic Garage and need to work my way through it.

Bonnie Stern is one of my favourite cookbook authors.  This one, "Friday Night Dinners", needs deeper exploration beyond the few recipes that I've tried.  The best so far are the fabulous Chicken Tagine and the Humous (the best I've ever tried).  The book is set up in menus which I always find fun.  This might be why I haven't dug into it because I keep wanting to try a whole menu.  This obviously needs a decent chunk of time and I always feel like I should be inviting people over which we've been hopeless at lately.  There is absolutely no reason why I need to make a whole menu but it makes me think in that direction when I dive into it.

"All About Braising" was a book I heard about on the podcast "Spilled Milk" about 2 days after I bought a new braising pot.  I felt the cooking gods must be telling me something so I ordered from Indigo and have been loving it from the first cook.

Finally, "Baking from my Home to Yours" has about 10 brownie recipes and the ones I've tried to far have been great.  I've also made some excellent chocolate and hazelnut cookies two Christmases in a row now and I think they will be on my Christmas "must haves" going forward.

So I have just finished proof reading this post and I think I'm going to have to go make some of those double chocolate cookies!