The old no-knead

Wow.

Is that bread shot dramatic, or what?

I think I must've been on speed or something today. This morning? Just whipped up some sweet potato-cranberry muffins. Like it weren't no thing. (I always plan to throw in a spare sweet potato when I'm baking other things, and never do. This week I did.)

But as if that weren't enough, I threw together a good-but-n0t-great soup of collards, kale, potatoes and (still cooking my way through my freezer) cannellini beans.

And to top it all off, I threw my most recent attempt at the infamous no-knead bread in the oven. I started it last night while 3 or 4 quarts of beef stock were simmering away merrily. (So come to think of it, the erratic behaviour actually started last night.)

And the bread? Gorgeous. Best rise I've managed. Just look at it! Doesn't it look like it could take on the world?

Oh, my little noodle.

I love making pasta. I love it.

(I made my first pasta last night. Does it show?)

Lordy. I do love it. Pasta is the first flour-related item that has ever come together in my hands as if by instinct. I was a new little spider spinning my first web. I just knew what to do. This is a first.

When I was a kid, most everything in the house was a frozen/canned/boxed delight. (Full disclosure: Despite my "cook it all yer darned self from scratch" tendencies, I still love this kind of food. So much so that I avoid the frozen foods aisle when I happen to frequent a Loblaws.) Which means that I come with no acquired kitchen lore. Kids who never did a lick of cooking but whose moms or dads whizzed around the kitchen licking spoons and dipping fingers in sauces seem to have a grasp of basics that I do not have. Everything I've learned, I've learned by rote. With trials and errors, because I always think I've got a knack for cooking. But I don't.

So I was terribly intimidated by the thought of making pasta (sure it would wind up a flop of playdough sitting on my kitchen table, glaring back at me balefully). But I was on such a roll yesterday, I just kind of decided to give it a whirl. At nine o'clock at night. After having spent seven hours cooking kind of randomly.

And so. I read here and there, I tried to get my head around it. But the words didn't mean much.

Except.

Except when push came to shove, I knew exactly how much flour to add to my little ball. I just kept adding it and adding it and presto! It was right. It was just right.

My kneading leaves something to be desired--maybe a slightly higher table would help--but after a slightly protracted kneading time, things seemed to be working out beautifully.

Except.

Except when I was ready to move on to the rolling out the dough step, I realized that basically everyone out there was saying that you have to be some kind of masochist to roll out your dough by hand. They were basically saying I was crazy and I should just run out to a 24-hour pasta machine store, or throw in the towel then and there. I started to get really scared. But then I said, you jerk. You bought that lovely rolling pin and it's just sitting there, pining away. Look at it, so sad and lonely. It's never even been oiled. (I always suspected I should oil it or something, but never received confirmation until I was doing my research for the hand rolling. Thanks to Marcella Hazan, of course.)

So finally I just threw in the research towel, literally said, "The hell with it," rolled up my sleeves (figuratively here) and got to work.

It initially seemed like those naysayers were right. My little ball wanted to stay a ball. It certainly didn't want to stretch or pull or flatten or any of the things you want pasta to do.

But then, after a couple of minutes, it seemed like maybe it did. Like maybe there was a flat sheet of pasta trapped inside the hulk of dough. I felt like Rodin. "The pasta is already in the dough. I just let it out."

And then, magically, there was.

And it was beautiful.









(And also delicious.)

Things I've learned this month

1. Don't cook an eye of round steak like you cooked up that gorgeous prime rib steak in your cast-iron skillet. It really is a different cut of meat. Listen when they tell you (marinate it, cook it slow like).
   
2. That said, do cook up a nice steak in your skillet. There is no shame in not having a bbq. And that pat of butter at the end, that you thought might be excess? It's not.
3. If you process a lovely batch of something (say, hypothetically speaking, pickled roasted red peppers) and then in the night (but within 24h) realize that while you followed the recipe, in a sense you didn't really follow the recipe, take those suckers out and repack and reprocess them immediately, because it will make you really sad to have to throw them out later because of botulism (or botulism paranoia) (who can tell the difference?).
4. Those peaches? Those peaches you can still taste, from that day you had to walk across the court to pick up your sister at the Hamiltons'? That were so intensely the essence of peach they had you turn around and beeline it straight to the kitchen not once but twice (for a total of three peaches) before you ever made it there? Those peaches? They're Blazing Stars. No doubt in my mind. Don't buy one basket. Buy three. They won't be around next week.
5. For some reason, you can't assume there will be bushels of Romas at the SLM. It is not the Jean-Talon market. Go early. Be there at 5am.
6. Despite having said this for the past five years, mean it next year when you say: Don't be a sap. Draw up a plot outline for the 3-day novel contest.
   

I seem to recall learning all kinds of other things this month, but they are not coming immediately to mind. One thing I can add is that if you are going to spend the day cooking (arancini and eggplant balls and roasted peppers (hot and sweet) and then a soup of roasted peppers and fresh sweet corn and other exciting things, and also another stuffed baked eggplanty thingy and some random peach cleanup dessert sauce and also now, incredibly, handmade, hand-rolled pasta?!?!) and you also happen to pretend to have a food blog, you might want to make sure that the batteries for your camera are charged.

Just sayin'.

Halve the pasta, double the veggies

This is my new way. For the classic rapini and shells, for example, I'd take an embarrassment of garlic, a head of rapini and a package of pasta. But I have seen the error of my ways. Forget the old school proportions. Take a half package of pasta and TWO heads of rapini. Not only will it be better for you, I guarandamntee that it will be more delicious, too. You may be increasing your prep time by a third, but you won't regret it.

All that to say that my proportions for this:








were perfect. Well, actually it was the previous version that was perfect, but this was close. Sitting on the subway trying to visualize my cupboards made me realize that aside from a grumpy sweet potato and dried legumes, I didn't have much. (Not having much meaning, of course, having five packages of pasta of varying sizes.) Later in the day, I did a search for something like "sweet potatoes" "pasta" and Google generously brought me to this recipe for penne with oven roasted sweet potatoes, pecans, and goat cheese.

And while I didn't have everything, I certainly had the key ingredients. The recipe's author highly recommended including the optional green beans. I thought she was crazy, but decided (after spotting a special on green beans at a stellar grocery store on the Danforth) that she was probably right, or at least not wrong, and anyway, I'm trying to add more vegetables to my diet, right?

It was amazing. I highly recommend it. I will not, however, include it on my list of simple recipes, just because there is an extra step that would have put me off in my previous incarnation. (Yes, Catherine, Michael and Scott, I will be posting those other recipes I promised.

Such a good idea at the time

If you had seen these photos, you would have agreed with us (us being two ex-pat pseudo Montrealers living in Toronto on a poutine quest that has been languishing for quite some time). With winter arriving here with a vengeance (here being Canada), it somehow became that much less appealing to venture into lands unknown in search of poutine that was almost certainly bound to be disappointing. Our quest was back-burnering until I saw Mrs. Marv's post. She (no poutine aficionado let it be said) whipped up a picture perfect poutine that set our minds a-working. If Mrs. Marv (a poutine virgin) could fashion a poutine of the gods, we could certainly pull off something approaching a 2 am Ashton special.

Or not.

The day started with a quick run-down of the ingredient list, and we set off to remedy what we were lacking. Aviva insisted that we check out her Saturday-only pupuseria, and thank god we did, because that was the culinary high point of the day. I would link to it if I knew its name (Latin Grocery maybe?). In any case, if you're in the Bloor/Ossington area on a Saturday, definitely stop in for a couple of pups. Aviva loved the tamale (it was good), but the pups were amazing. A day-saver.

In any case, we stocked up on what we were missing at her local grocer, completely forgetting the key ingredient on our first run-through: Potatoes. Luckily, upon our return, we learned that Carlos and Alicia are well-versed in deep-frying techniques (and in potatoes). They pointed us in the right direction. (Of course, since we didn't end up deep frying anything, who can really say if the potatoes we ultimately purchased would, in fact, have been suited to frying. For another day.) In all: One outing, four stops (including chicken stock at the bulk joint).

And so to home to await the pups. (When we had tried to order our pupusas, the owner gestured towards the back of the dep (it's really more of a corner store than a restaurant) and indicated the masses of people hovering at and around the three tables-for-two. They had all placed orders and were well ahead of us. Luckily, Aviva lives close by, so a return run for pickup wasn't a problem.) When the time came, I headed out to pick up the pups plus a tamale. At that point we hadn't yet become aware of everything we were lacking.

Cut forward several hours.

We got things started, and our spirits were high. By the time we had prepped our potatoes (only to realize that the Meijer's special potato fry-cutter I had imported for Veever was a piece of junk), we realized that we were a little low on oil. (Yes, we had considered that possibility on our previous purchasing venture, but decided that we were all to the good and that we surely had enough oil to deep fry a couple (four--four?--though I suppose it's possible that portion sizes hors-Québec are slightly different than what we're used to) (we went with six) of potatoes.)

So we're standing there with two half-drained 1L containers of oil - canola and safflower (sunflower?). It seemed like a good idea to combine them.

Seemed like.

So we did. But despite our frankensteinesque recombinant oil, we were still a far cry from deep-frying depths. So Veever ran out to pick up some more bastard oil (of unknown origins) and we added it to the pot.

At this point, one thing we were pretty sure of, though, was that we were painfully ill-equipped to guesstimate the temperature of our oil. Our initial recipe had us starting at 325, then cranking it to 350. It seemed difficult to imagine how we might approach these temperatures by eye-balling oil (which, you may have noticed, always looks pretty much the same, which is one of the reasons grotesque restaurant kitchen accidents like hands-plunging-into-hot-oil happen so often), so Aviva ran out to buy a candy thermometer. (Yes, I have one.) (Yes, I considered bringing it.) (No, I did not bring it.)

She came back with a cutting-edge piece of machinery, though. It's amazing. It might actually force us to make candy.

Now, the pan really did appear to have been dried properly, but the oil kept heaving and bubbling. Aviva has basically never deep-fried anything, as it turns out, but I myself have no small love of the fried, and am known to deep fry at the slightest opportunity (for which reason I do not and will not own a deep fryer).

But this oil. It was a menace. It kept bubbling sporadically. Sporadically but viciously. When it bubbled, it exploded. (Did I mention Aviva has a small baby?) After it attempted several times to maim or kill us, I decided to stir it, thinking that any remaining dampness at the bottom of the pot would be the cause of our problems and of the erratic behaviour of the oil. So I took the candy thermometer and give it a big (but gentle stir).

The goddamned thing exploded. By that point, we were all terrified. We decided that the problem had to be the oil admixture, so I went out to get more to replace what was in the pot. A couple of stops later, I returned with a 3L container of corn oil. (Corn oil? I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine.)

It turns out that, in the interim, Aviva had discovered that our sauce brun was, as she so succinctly put it, "vile." I headed back out to see what I could muster up in the way of store-bought "chicken gravy."

Not much. Carlos and Alicia's was closed. The Portuguese chicken roasters stared at me blankly when I asked after chicken gravy. (It was at this point that I remembered that the only other time I had attempted to make my own poutine was an embarassing escapade in Mexico-of all places-which would really be better off if forgotten.) I did finally find a can of "Heinz chicken gravy" at the Ethiopian dep.

So that's what I brought home.

Aviva labelled it "Cream of chicken soup" (not something you'd ever want to drown your fries in) and ran out the door to find something more suitable. She came back with a can of "Campbell's chicken gravy." It tasted like "Cream of chicken soup."

So we returned to the drawing board and made a similar version of our initial "vile" gravy, omitting some pepper, omitting some (all of the?) wine, adding some balsamic vinegar, and winding up with something vaguely edible after countless steps involving combining and recombining various elements.

(Did I mention that in the meantime Aviva's youngest pointed at our oil and the candy thermometer spontaneously threw itself into the hot oil? At which point I made the executive decision to abandon all attempts at frying, pursuant to which we decided to bake (bake???) our fries.)

In any event, the (baked) fries were ok, the (cheddar) curds were ok, the (what kind of) gravy was ok, and the ketchup was excellent.

I think we'll abandon our quest for a while.

How's that for a birthday cake?

See, the ever-lovely Veever et all hosted a wonderful birthday evening for me, full of delights.

But the capper? The cheese cake. Note how much got et (not much). Note price tag No. 1. Note price tag No. 2. Note price tag No 3.

The topping was delicious. But we didn't try to salvage it.

(Aviva is a much better cook than this would lead one to believe, she of the cassoulets.)

By popular request: The funniest mutter paneer ever

I don't think this picture does the dish justice (since four eaters had already picked it over trying to get any little mutters they could find) but can you see what I'm getting at? Look at the ratio of sauce (gravy? curry?) to mutter. Look at the ratio of sauce to PANEER!

None of the eaters assembled that night could immediately identify the dish as mutter paneer, not even yours truly (whose favorite dish it is and who makes it to varying degrees of success on a very regular basis). After we established that we had in fact received the right order, we sat and stared at the remaining soupy dish, trying to figure it out. Finally someone found a pea. We looked at each other in disbelief. "That's the mutter paneer?" I gasped incredulously, "There are only enough mutter to give us each a single pea!"

It was dismal. I cannot tell a lie. But the weirdest thing is that by and large, all of the other dishes from this restaurant are amazing. It's the best Indian restaurant I've found thus far in Toronto. (Of course nothing compares to you, Bombay Mahal.)

I'll just find me another place for my mutter paneer fix.

Vive le cassoulet!!

It almost didn't happen. My low-grade illin' coupled with my friend's mother-of-two fatigue almost conspired against us. But somehow I found the strength to stop in at Macelleria Venezia (my new favourite butcher) and pick up the sausages and chicken legs (it wasn't so hard to stop in at the liquor store and pick up the wine, somehow) and we managed to pull it together.

I left work late (due in part to an extended lunch--see my previous post) and only got to Veever's a little after five. Then there were offspring to feed and tread underfoot, mise to prepare, meat to deal with (thankfully, I'm not afraid of sausage and she's not afraid of chicken legs) and a recipe to faithfully follow. (We only diverged when we realized that not only did we not have herbs de provence, but we weren't exactly sure what they contained. We made due with a couple of dashes of basil/oregano/thyme plus extra fresh rosemary.)

The only false note, and it's barely off-key at all, is a mild over salting. But thanks to the old scientific method, I've seen the error of my ways, and this error will not be repeated (the recipe will). (I "salt and peppered" the chicken in the same way that I salt and pepper a roast. The issue here is the ratio of surface area to volume.)

The recipe, found through a simple search for something like, "navy beans recipe blog" or something to that effect, is courtesy of Stephanie (I think) over at Half Baked If she doesn't mind, I'll just post it here, for kicks, because I kind of want everyone that could possibly see this to give her a try.

Now, you may be questioning some of the steps. I understand. I did myself. But just don't. Just follow her recipe. She's done right by me and I swear she'll do right by you. Oh, and her recipe is originally from Chris Kimball's The Kitchen Detective, a book that clearly needs to be added to my library.

Quick Cassoulet

serves 4 to 6

Ingredients:
1 pound dried great Northern or Navy beans, rinsed and picked over
1 small onion, peeled and studded with 8 whole cloves
1 bay leaf
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 pounds sweet Italian Sausage, removed from casing and crumbled
6 bone-in, skin on chicken thighs (or 3 legs that have been separated into thigh and drumstick), rinsed and patted dry with paper towels
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
3 medium carrots, diced
4 garlic cloves, finely minced
1/2 cup white wine
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 quart chicken stock
1 teaspoon herbs de Provence
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley, for garnish

Method:
Combine the beans*, clove-studded onion, bayleaf, 3/4 teaspoon salt and 10 cups of water in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then reduce to maintain a simmer. Partially cover, and cook 45 to 60 minutes or just until tender. Fish out the onion and bay leaf and discard.*

Brown the sausage in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat, breaking up any large pieces with a spatula. Remove with a slotted spoon to some paper towels to drain. Pour off all but 1 tablespoon of the fat. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and brown well on both sides, doing it in batches if necessary. Once browned, remove the chicken and let it sit cool down. Once the chicken is cool enough to handle, remove the skin (no rubbery skin in this cassoulet!)**

Adjust the heat to medium and add the olive oil to the pan. Add the chopped onion and carrot and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft - about five to seven minutes. Add the garlic and cook for an additional two minutes. Add the wine, and stir well to scrape up all the brown tasty bits stuck on the bottom of the pan. Add in the tomato paste and stir to combine.

Drain off the beans and add them to the Dutch oven along with the chicken, sausage, chicken stock and herbs de Provence. Bring the whole lot to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer and cook covered for 20 to 30 minutes or until the chicken is done (when an instant read thermometer reads 165 in the thickest part of the thigh). Add the rosemary and cook for 10 minutes or more until the beans and chicken are very tender. If, at this point, the braising liquid is very thin, simmer uncovered for a few minutes more. Season to taste with salt and pepper.***

Serve immediately with chopped parsley and nice big hunks of rustic bread. Enjoy!

*The book says you can forego soaking the beans, but I soaked mine anyway.(We soaked ours too. Why not?) (Veever actually did this in advance, but there's no reason not to let them bubble away while you're doing everything else.)

**This is the step that I thought was silly. It's not. You get all the delicious chicken fat in the bottom of the pan and this is key. Do not omit this step. I don't care how tempted you are. We take no responsibility for any missteps that may result. Just don't salt the hell out of your poor chicken, like I did. (Incidentally, I had to add a teeny bit of olive oil while frying the sausage. For what it's worth (if you're following this recipe to the letter and all, I don't want you to be scared if your sausage isn't giving off enough fat.)

***We simmered the hell out of it for like two hours. With the amount of liquid this has you adding, it'll just be soup otherwise. You can decrease the amount of stock you add, but I vote for the longer simmer. All of the individual components of our cassoulet positively melted into something considerably greater than the sum of their parts. Oh, and obviously this could go in the oven and that would be wonderful and hands-free. Just adjust to suit your schedule.

Finally, I only got to Veever's a little after five, and I swear to god that dinner was on the table by 7:15, all the interim craziness notwithstanding. We could even have eaten a little earlier. So by no means an impossibility on a weeknight, my friends. All things are possible.

In the same vein

I had the opportunity to be taken out for the loveliest lunch this week. It was not visionary. It was not innovative. What it was was impeccable.

Normally that's not so much my thing, but when a light salad topped with mixed berries and goat cheese is followed by a succulent honey-dijon salmon steak, I'm not one to complain.

And the gravelox? Divine? And le tout served by an adorable, charming and knowledgeable server? Sigh. Bring it on. The only other patrons were a table of elegant seniors who have been coming there since they were knee-high to grasshoppers, I'll bet.

This hushed and intimate little restaurant couldn't possibly seat forty. Thirty? Maybe. Did I mention it's another secret location? That I never would have noticed, nestled as it is on the ground floor of a condo tower? Maybe. Actually, I'm not even sure that I know where it is. I probably couldn't find it again (except for the fact that the name of the restaurant cleverly doubles as its address).

Did I mention the velvet flocked wallpaper? Classy, elegant, yet somehow bordello chic at the same time? What's not to love?

Unsung

I kind of don't want to say anything, because I don't want the word to get out. Maybe the word is out, and I just don't know because my ear isn't exactly to the ground, but still. I stumbled into what I had assumed might have been a cafeteria-style restaurant almost entirely by chance tonight, but which turned out to be, well, exactly that, but also a very nice surprise.

First, I wasn't sure it was a restaurant. From the window (there is no sign, there are no hours of operation posted) you can see a long counter with some beautiful pastries displayed in front of what appeared might be, could be some sort of dinner-type fare behind it.

I admit it. I was intimidated. I didn't have the secret password, and many of the other joints I've stepped into on that uppity stretch of Yonge north of Rosedale have given the distinct impression that no password, no service.

Today, with the mercury hovering a around 60 degrees, the front door was open and I found myself sauntering in.

I'm glad I did. I wound up with a simple salad combo, but I'm sure that everything else on the menu is equally delicious.

My salads? It was the green bean salad that seemed to be calling my name, but it was the most pedestrian of the bunch. Avocado, red pepper, a light, creamy dressing...no complaints, but it paled in comparison to the:

Endive and apple salad. I kid you not. Endive twice in two weeks in two wildly various guises. It was the sharpest, cleanest, most refreshing thing I've eaten in months. But even then...

I don't normally care for "curried anything" salads. Yet I was drawn to the curried chicken for some mysterious reason. And I was not disappointed. It had a sweet edge, with two kinds of apples (!) and strawberries (!) and (I even asked, and was proved right!) manadarin orange juice (mine had a sliver of mandarin orange in it, the canned kind I guess--let me tell you, I'm not complaining).

I was a little leery when I got my plate, because it didn't seem as though there was any place to keep a kitchen. I guess they hide it downstairs.

I can't tell you where exactly it is (north of Rosedale station, west side) or what it's called, but the lady's name is Linda.

There is no secret handshake.

My apologies to the escarole

The thing is, I have a very complicated relationship with beans. They are an unpredictable beast. But every time I make a batch of dreamy, creamy beans (from dried) I figure I've got them licked.

I don't.

With regards to the infamous case of the cannelini and escarole, I had just come down off of the adrenaline rush of making perfect (but I mean perfect!) garbonzo beans for something else entirely unrelated and for which perfection (in a bean) wasn't even required. So feeling just a little cocky, I'm standing stovefront thinking I can turn a bag full of dried-up, wrinkly old falling-apart beans into something majestic.

That said, the finished product, while hardly majestic, was also less bad than I previously thought. And the dish as a whole is pleasant in a not-much-in-the-house-but-dammit-I-should-really-eat-some-dark-and-leafy-greens way.

But should you want to make it yourself? Do it. Just buy real beans. In bulk, if possible, but at the very least something that's been packed in-house. (Just don't buy anything that comes with a label, unless maybe the label is in a foreign language from a place where beans are revered as they should be.) I guarantee, if a place is taking the time to measure out and package their beans, it's 'cause they're selling them. Don't do it for me. Do it for yourself.

Right. So soak:
1 cup beans overnight or whatever you do.
Drain and rinse and add to a pot with:
1 c stock/water/you know the drill
enough water to cover by 1 in (in a medium-sized pan)
1 small onion (quartered)
1 small carrot (quartered)
2 smashed garlic cloves (smashed like with the side of your knife or a rolling pin or something, not smashed like crushed in a garlic press)
1 bay leaf
1 T oil
salt
Bring to a boil, cover and reduce to a simmer 1-1.5 hrs.

Do this whenever. They'll kick around in the fridge for a couple of days just fine:
1 head escarole
1/4 c oil
3 cloves garlic, sliced
Generous pinch red pepper flakes
s and p, 1/2 lemon

Get ready to braise.

Clean that escarole like nobody's business. They're dirty little buggers. (I love dirty produce.) Rip it into little-ish pieces. Heat oil, toss in garlic just a couple of minutes, then start adding escarole 'till it wilts. Bit by bit. Then add a little s and p.

Now take the carrot, onion and bay leaf from the beans and spoon the beans and their liquid (not too much) into the escarole. Bring to a simmer, cover, adjust to a low simmer and braise about 20 min.

Squeeze lemon, add more s and p if necessary, and drizzle good oil, if desired.

Absolutely serve with bread. Good bread. A baguette from the North Pole, slathered with butter, does me fine.

More later about how, while I aspire to be Rev. Biggles or Mallika or Kevin, I always seem to wind up making pseudo-vegan fare.

Escawhat?

I also made the escarole and cannellini bean thing (braise thing) that I mentioned, but the beans turned out so lame (How many times do I need to remind you not to stop in at the dep on the way home and pick up a bag of Unico (or whatever) dried beans? Just don't do it. It's not worth it.) that I am holding a grudge against the entire meal.

I'll try to keep an open mind and try some for lunch tomorrow, and maybe report back. It's not the escarole's fault that old beans suck.

The best cabbage I ever made

While strictly speaking the title of this post is accurate, it's also a misnomer since it's also the only cabbage I have ever made. I don't know if I'll be making this recipe again, but who knows? Weighing in at almost 4 lb and ringing up for $1.29, it seems like you can't hardly go wrong.

Now, cabbage doesn't happen to be a vegetable that exists in my repertoire because it isn't a vegetable that ever entered my home as a kid. I sometimes exaggerate that the only vegetables that came in the front door were either frozen or canned, but it's pretty darned near the truth. Cabbage, rutabaga, parsnip...in my world, these are the exotics. I'm having fun getting to know them. I've officially added cabbage rolls to my to do list, having seen that they aren't as scary as I thought.

The recipe? ("The Best Braised Cabbage Ever" is also care of the lovely Miss Molly Stevens and her braising wonderland) (I'm approximating here)

1 2-lb cabbage, cut into 8 wedges
1 carrot, in 1/4-in rounds
1 onion in chunks
Some olive oil (3 T?)
1/4 c stock
1/4 t chili flakes (this is me doubling her amount)
s and p

Could this be easier? It's ridiculous, really.
Throw the veggies in an oiled baking dish (9x12). Drizzle the oil. Add the stock. Sprinkle the chili flakes s and p. Cover with foil. Slide in the oven (350 degrees). After an hour, grab some tongs to flip the cabbage. (I wonder if this step is necessary). After another hour, tear off the foil, crank up the heat (she says 400, but I broiled it for a bit because I really do like things black) and let everything get all nice and photo-worthy.

I served with those amazing potatoes I made the other time (new this time, rather than fingerling) (the fingerlings were better, but these were still amazing) (I think this may be the only way I make potatoes from now on).

To braise

I've finally managed to start braising. This lovely combo of the easiest-ever braised potatoes and endive braised with prosciutto was a huge hit (with my guinea pig going nuts for the endive and your humble chef preferring the potatoes). Both of these recipes come from All about Braising by Molly Peters (the art of, you know, uncomplicated cooking).
I feel kind of foolish for almost never having braised anything before (with the exception of the Reverend Biggles' famous pork which is going to get made again soon). Braising is ridiculously easy, but more importantly, what you're doing is just basically cooking things shitless, which is always my preference. Charring, braising, it's two sides of the same coin, really.
Tonight I made the braised escarole with cannelini beans, but my beans were kind of subpar. So no photos. But let me just say how proud I am of myself. This week I bought three, count 'em, three different vegetables I've never bought before (the aforementioned Belgian endive and escarole, plus a cabbage that I'm going to, hold on...braise!).

Just a little OCD on a Saturday afternoon

I am becoming increasingly obsessed with the St Lawrence market, to the point that when the owner of the hot-sauce shack (That rents out space to the "Mad Mexican" whose salsas et al are outstanding and who is actually trying to open up a tortilleria here in Toronto and is looking for financing--go talk to him. Seriously.) starts trying to convince me to buy a condo in the neighbourhood, I start thinking that it might actually be a good idea.

What's even crazier is that I don't even like it that much. I mean, I love it. It's fabulous. But really. Am I going to pay $6.99 for veal shank? Even if it is the prettiest darned veal shank I've seen in the city? (And believe me, since that whole osso bucco fiasco last week, my eyes have been peeled. I venture into 'hoods I have no reason to visit just on the off chance that there might be a butcher that might have some veal shanks in the window that I can ogle. Not buy, mind you, just ogle.)

And somehow I managed to spend $40.00 on cheese. And not that much cheese. But I did stumble, completely fortuitously, across some aged cheddar with caramelized onions that I have been looking for since last summer, to no avail. Of course I got three times as much as any reasonable girl needs.

In general, the market is a little too rich for my blood and staffed by people half of whom don't know their stuff. I didn't even dare ask if the ready-made (and 'famous') crab cakes are lump. (Forget about it. I'll just order from Faidley's.)

But still. It's intoxicating. And to be fair, some of them do know their stuff. They just tend ot be at the small and crazy expensive, homemade specialty items stalls. But they're good.

Anyway, who cares why I love it/hate it. Basically, what's not to love about anyplace that is predicated entirely upon food...

That said, now that I've discovered the charms of Chinatown East ("Fake Chinatown" to some), that may become my mainstay. No fish over $3.99/lb? Most in the $0.99-$1.99 range? Conch shells? Red peppers $0.59/lb? I may be completely unhinged, but I find that I prefer to split my food-buying dollars halfway down the middle. Local organic Brussles sprouts? Grass-fed, free-range, hormone-free beef? Yeah, and I'll top that off with two bags of "old" chicken bones and two loads of unidentified and unidentifiable "legumes en vrac."

Sounds about right to me.

The mystery of the flour - revealed!

I was very confused for a very long time. My amazing loaf (see sidebar) turned out perfectly, despite appearing to have been made with all-purpose flour, rather than bread flour. Now, that shouldn't have happened because the yeast needs a certain amount of gluten to do its thing (or at least that's my understanding). But do its thing it did.

I was determined to make an even better loaf the next time, and so used what I was pretty sure was bread flour. But my loaf came out almost as flat as a pancake and much, much denser. I steadfastly ate about half of the loaf, but it was slow going. Fine, fine. It wasn't bread flour in the plastic container. (I thought I had labelled all of my containers...?)

Fast forward several weeks, and I set about making lazy Sunday morning biscuits. My first-ever batch of biscuits (cheddar) were ethereal and bursting with flavour. This second batch? Hard as rocks. Something was rotten in the state of York.

Though it pained me deeply, I decided to throw out all of that lovely flour (it wasn't that much really). I figured it would hurt me more to put all of that effort (and ingredients) into more baked goods that aren't fit to eat. So toss all the flour I did. First the bag of what I thought was all-purpose, then the container that I thought was bread flour...and as I was dumping it in my filthy organics container, it all became clear. The label had somehow slid around to the side. The label that read Pastry Flour.

I had made the 'bread' with pastry flour and the 'biscuits' with bread flour. No wonder the results were abysmal.

So until I started writing this blog entry, I thought my problems were solved. I was going to talk about hard and soft, bread and pastry and all-purpose flours, and talk about yesterday's purchase of whole wheat, all-purpose flour. That is, until I found out that the 'soft' flour that I bought thinking it was all-purpose is, in all likelihood, pastry flour.

And the serpent bites its tail.

It tasted better than it looked

I swear. The fake pepperonata was pretty good, but the polenta (my first ever!) was great (ok fine, it was instant, but I was afraid of regular old polenta-grits--I'm not afraid any more) and the braised beans were excellent.
I am officially obsessed with braising. It all started with the anti-Kosher delicacy: Pork braised in milk. Go to meathenge for the recipe and mouth-watering photos. So I, who almost never makes meat, managed to put together this work of genius on two different occasions, and have since picked up an all-about-braising book that has since been kicking around my apartment long enough to become overdue, and have I made that osso bucco yet?
(Aside: Blogger's spell-checker suggests "insolent" for "polenta." Also "somnolent," "redolent," and "malevolent.")

Mine weren't so pretty

I adore Brussels sprouts. I have since I was about five years old and my family was over at a friend's house having Thanksgiving dinner. I promptly informed my mother that I wouldn't be eating those green balls (what kid is going to like something that looks and smells like Brussels sprouts?), and she just as promptly informed me that I wouldn't be getting any turkey until I ate five of them.

So I did. I ate all five. And then ten. And finished by filling up on Brussels sprouts and skipping the turkey. (Yet somehow failed to become a vegetarian...)

It honestly never occurred to me that you could do anything with Brussels sprouts other than steam or boil them until I saw what Kevin, over at Closet Cooking, did with them.

So go look at his: Brussles Sprouts with Pancette and Parmigiano Reggiano. I didn't bother to photograph mine. I just et 'em.

On a similar (you'll see once you read his ingredients) yet mainly unrelated note, if you're in the GTA, do yourself a favour and go and pay Maselli's a visit. Pick up some of their home cured prosciutto. And try their homemade tomato sauce and let me know how it is.

World's worst food blogger reprise

So I made two healthy, delicious and beautiful veg. dishes this week, neither of which seemed to evince any desire to be photographed for posterity. Tant pis. Then last night, we re-visited the home of the killer chicken korma, a photo-worthy event indeed, but of course it didn't occur to us to memorialize the meal until the dishes were but a shadow of their former selves. Then Aviva had the brilliant idea to pull out the camera, to document the mutter paneer.

At first, we thought that we might have gotten the wrong order. Baignan bartha? Check. Chicken korma? Check. Biryani lamb? Check. But what is this mysterious creamy dish? We dredged a spoon through the sauce, trying to guess at what it might contain. There were indeed a couple of huge squares of paneer, but was there anything else? Just paneer in a turmeric scented yogurt sauce maybe? But no! A pea was found. And then two! But honestly, the ratio of pea to sauce was about 1:15.

I'll post a picture to prove it. Eventually.

Why am I the world's worst food blogger?

Deciding to be more proactive in the area of food photography (we all know that food blogs are much like personal ads: No picture = no interest), I brought my camera to work yesterday, since my partner and I were planning on eating at Epan before catching the Blue Jays (5-4 over Tampa Bay, for anyone who's interested).

(Aside: Epan is a Chinatown anomaly. Located right on Spadina, it is impeccably clean (Think mirrored walls being fastidiously wiped down, think non-overlooked bathrooms), it's spare and elegant, and it's ridiculously delicious and affordable. I'm on a quest for hot and sour soup, and they have the best I've found since the closure of the Montreal restaurant that served the best ever.)

We ended up going to Banjara, probably the best Indian I've found so far in Toronto. We ordered a ridiculous amount of naan (the menu item of theirs I'm least crazy about, though I hear loads of chowhounders love it), a lentil spinach dish and their chicken korma. Oh, and the thickest straw-sticking-straight-up-until-you-physically-reach-in -there-to-grab-it-and-only-just-barely-have-the-strength-to-move-it mango lassie ever.

But the korma. Everything else I've had there is good, but the korma is to die for. We cleaned our plates (and I joyously ripped out a tupperware container from my bag which I proceded to fill with the leftovers, feeling very pleased with myself for this accidental green gesture), paid the bill, packed up to leave...and I remember my camera.

No pictures of a mouth-watering korma for you.