Vietnam Part 1

First off, I really need to figure out how to take pictures of food.

Secondly, since I'm essentially trapped in my house due to the broken foot, I look for any excuse for my resident chauffeur to take me somewhere.  The other day I got a coupon via email from Indigo … buy one book, get the second 50% off.  Road trip excuse found.  I pulled up my Indigo wish list full of cookbooks, created in hopes of winning the "win your wish list" contest and I was on a mission.  And sadly the contest is over and I did not win the wish list contest.

The first choice was easy.  How to Eataly is a book I've heard about, read about, seen various places and the library doesn't have it.  One look and I was smitten.  A lot of that has to do with the layout but it also has good articles on Italian ingredients and tasty-sounding recipes.

The second book took a little more looking.  Other than 3 for Christmas, I haven't acquired a cookbook all year so this was a real treat.  I looked at a bunch of nice books and rejected them all for one reason or another, mostly due to close enough similarity to books already in my library.  Then I spied The Slanted Door by Charles Phan.  This is a book that really appealed to me when I borrowed it from the library.  It is also completely different from others I own and in line with my International project.  In the cart it went.

Of course, I was then itching to make something from one of these great new books.  Since the amount my foot tolerates being stood on is finite, I am not able to embark on anything too ambitions.  So this has been my main recipe search criteria.  Several recipes in The Slanted Door fit the bill.  I've thrown out the bread and cookies goal for now and concentrated on a salad and a main.

The salad was Jicama and Grapefruit Salad and was delicious.  I have never had Jicama before and I am absolutely going to be eating it again.  Along with cabbage, candied pecans and grapefruit, there is a reason this is one of the Slanted Doors most popular appetizers (as it says in the recipe intro).

For the main course, we had Shaking Beef, the signature dish of the restaurant.  I must confess that if the picture hadn't looked so pretty (much prettier than mine, hence the need to figure out food photography) and if it hadn't been the signature dish, I think it might have completely escaped my notice.  But I felt like beef, it didn't require a barbecue (too cold outside to be interested in barbecuing) and off I went.  It is simple to make, the ingredients are all on my shelves, add some beef, onions and watercress and … wow!  So very, very, very tasty.

In terms of the broken foot, I'm now two weeks in, four weeks to go.  I'm really hoping the soft callus is forming nicely and I'll be back to curling before the end of the season.

Detour

My plans to include a couple of international cooking nights over the holidays took a bit of a nose-dive down the stairs on Saturday.  The resulting break in my foot and the related new footwear do not combine to make standing on my feet a very attractive option at the moment.  Hopefully this will improve as the weeks of recovery march on.  

So in the meantime, I have not been cooking extensively.  Still throwing some things together and significantly curtailed a dinner party to a Korean noodle stir-fry.  Since I stumbled on the recipe when looking for something easy, I did not even do sufficient research to determine if it was influenced by the North or the South.  So I'm not sure if this dinner really counts.  Given that we combined the noodles with a pre-mixed Asian slaw from the grocery store and cookies from the freezer, I'm pretty sure that when I have stopped feeling sorry for myself, I will discount this as a meal in the quest.

I am finding time to organize magazine recipes and knitting patterns.  And finally got my home access working for the office so I don't have to lug a laptop around with me.  I am also catching up on TV episodes on Netflix, re-watching sappy romance movies and reading.  

So, while I am really missing my walks, curling and general active-ness, I have at least found some distractions.  I just hope that I don't gain 20 pounds over the 6 weeks I'll be sitting on my butt!

Another thing I have had more time for is surfing in which I found a couple of good articles:

 - Bone Fracture Healing Explained.  Very interesting.  

 - How to Survive a Broken Foot .  I have already tried some made up reasons for my foot.  While skydiving (bad landing) and rappelling (banged my foot on a rock) are two that instantly came to mind, I also think hang gliding as a variation of the skydiving could work too.  There is the soccer injury but, while I have not played soccer since I was about 10, given the number of people who do, this might actually be believable and therefore not as entertaining.

So onward.  Five more weeks and counting.

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!

Free to decide

I was half-heartedly thinking about riding in a Mountain Equipment Coop ride this morning but the Knitter's Fair is on.  What to do?  What to do?

The first would have been good exercise and a nice bike ride.  The second, a reward for the big bike ride last weekend and a morning surrounded by yarn.

In the end, it was not hard to choose.  The sudden cold weather and rainy skies, combined with the lure of all things knitting, made the decision even easier.  And now my yarn-buying diet is over.  Although, given that I had to travel an hour to get to Kitchener, could I lump the purchase under the category of travel yarn buying?  A bit of a stretch.

I didn't go too crazy.  Just a few skeins, one sweater quantity, a couple of sets of needles and two really nice bags from Alison Ruth Designs.  And I prevented myself from buying more than four balls of Silk Garden.

I was able to show Rae from Stix & Stones my Foolproof from her knit-a-long.  And hi to Gail and Susan who I saw in line at opening and then never again.  Hopefully they had as much fun as I did.  What am I saying, of course they had as much fun as I did.  Who wouldn't?

Escarpment Blues ...

… and greens and grey, grey, grey roads.  And lots and lots of hills.  Yesterday I participated in the Halton Epic Tour.  It is a bike ride through parts of the escarpment in Southern Ontario.  I rode 80km, at times wondering why I signed up for this.  It is not something I normally do … sign up for these things.  I prefer to hop on my bike and go for a ride from my house.  For as long or as short as the mood governs.  On nice flat roads.

I should also say that I've never been the sporty sort.  I realize the benefits of exercise for the heart so, like taking a medicine, I exercise most days.  But this summer, after really enjoying the Ride for Heart on the Don Valley Parkway in June, my usual summer enjoyment of cycling took on a more obsessive flavour.  I have been riding at least once and usually twice every weekend.  I rode before work until the recent shorter days put an end to that.  I rode a bunch on our vacation.  I have even ridden in the rain!  And I signed up for the Epic Tour.

So off I went yesterday morning and made it through my chosen distance.  I won't say it was easy.  It wasn't impossible, because I have been riding a lot but it was difficult because I live by the lake and there aren't hills readily available to ride.  You have to seek them out.  Which I have done to a certain extent.  But not to an 80km hilly ride extent.

I really only felt like packing it in once.  It was at the top of one of the lesser inclines and I stopped to get a breather and a drink of water.  One of the girls doing the same thing mentioned the upcoming big decline.  If I had the choice between a steep uphill and a steep downhill, I would choose the uphill.  I associate this with a childhood arm break during a flying downhill attempt.  Given I was 9 at the time, I really should have overcome this but, not being the sporty sort and a big chicken, this still hasn't happened.  So after I confirmed that the downhill was worse than the switchback one at the beginning of the ride, I felt like crying and quitting.  I think the only thing that saved me was the check of the GPS that said that there were only 13km to go.  I had to finish.  So off I went, riding both brakes all the way down the big hill.

I automatically assume people that go in these things are the athletes, fitter than fit.  But I realized that there were more people like me than the others.  This became really clear on the: dreaded-the-entire-ride-by-everyone second last hill.  When approximately 75% of the riders were walking it, I knew I wasn't alone.  And it felt good.  And I could cheer the people who were riding it without feeling like I was a failure for not being able to do it myself.

Once at the top, a drink of water taken, I hopped on my bike again and continued, up some more hills, to the finish line.  Happy to be done.  Happy that my husband was waiting at the finish line cheering me on.

I told myself a couple of times on the ride that if I finished, I could go to the Kitchener Waterloo Knitters Fair next Saturday.  It conflicts with a Mountain Equipment Coop Ride in Burlington.  Which one should I choose?  At this point, it will be the knitting but we'll see what next Saturday brings.

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.