Two things I cooked but ate too fast to photograph

It’s been busy times around here – my class at Ryerson started last night and work is crazy. So while I’ve been cooking, I haven’t been pausing to take pictures.

I’ve made a couple of batches of these fantastic cornbread muffins from Smitten Kitchen. The first time around, I made them exactly. The second, I used an egg white instead of an egg yolk (I had it left over, after all) and added a cup or so of frozen cranberries. Delish!

And today, while using up what was left in the fridge (squash and kale), I made an awesome stuffed squash recipe partly inspired by this one and partly made up. I cut the squash in half and roasted until soft, and filled with a mixture of cooked quinoa, stir-fried black kale and onion, pine nuts and tons of grated Grana Padano. Threw it back in the oven until the top browned a bit and voilà! An easy way to impress guests.

Although to be honest, my guest was more impressed by this take on Rice Crispie squares. What can I say, they’re pretty good. Different enough from the original that they taste better, but only so much that people think you must have a “special touch.” Well, either that or access to a great food blog.

Tasty whole wheat apple muffins

Plan B delivered this week: our delivery included three kinds of squash, potatoes, kale, spinach, lettuce and tons of apples. They’re fantastic fresh but we’re having friends over for brunch tomorrow so I made a batch of whole wheat apple muffins from Smitten Kitchen. They’re really good, and I love that they have chunks of apple instead of grated apple (easier to prep and more apple flavour in the muffins). She claims they keep well for several days so I hope that’s true – even with guests, 16 muffins is a lot!

We’re also going to try this puffed German apple pancake, and serve both with a cherry sauce from cherries I froze in the summer.

And speaking of local breakfasts, I had a great brunch at Calico Cafe this morning – butternut squash and pecan waffles with an apple compote and maple syrup. If you haven’t made your way there yet, I highly recommend it – this is the second great meal I’ve had there.

Thanksgiving

My parents were in town for Thanksgiving last week, and together with my sister and her boyfriend the six of us put together a pretty fantastic Thanksgiving meal – although unfortunately I didn’t take pictures of everything. We enjoyed it so much (and had so many recipes we wanted to make but couldn’t) that we’re thinking of doing a second Thanksgiving next month.

I let a turkey in the house this year, ordered from Fiesta Farms – at $60 for 9 pounds, it seems expensive, but when you consider that it served dinner to five people, plus leftovers for many sandwiches, plus the makings of a few litres of turkey soup, I don’t think it costs much at all – per portion, certainly less than a turkey sandwich or soup at Tim Hortons. You may have been following the articles on thestar.com by Margaret Webb about the perils of organic turkey farming in Ontario – if not, here they are for your reading pleasure. Good luck to the farmers.

But it was the side dishes that really shone. To start with, we did our standard baked mashed yams (spiced with mace) topped with marshmallows. But this year, to make it more of a foodie affair, I made homemade marshmallows, which were divine and puffed up and melted far better than the bought ones. They’re actually quite easy, too, if you have a couple of mixers on hand. (I used my stand mixer for the main mixing and my handheld for the egg whites.) I got the recipe from Smitten Kitchen, of course, and here’s a close-up of the marshmallows post-baking.

We also did a couple of recipes from the November issue of Bon Appetit: a brussels sprout slaw with mustard dressing and maple-candied pecans that are to die for, and a beautiful butternut squash kale bread pudding from the kitchen of Orangette. (I’m not always the biggest fan of brussels sprouts, but the ones my sister picked up at St Lawrence Market were divine – both green and purple and full of flavour, and no bitterness.)

And here’s a close-up.

And for dessert, a butternut squash pie with a ginger cookie crust courtesy of Canadian Living. I used ShaSha cookies for the crust, and tripled the spices in the filling. This is the second time I’ve made this and I’ll make it again.

What did you make for Thanksgiving?

Pumpkin cookies with lemon icing

I don’t know that these count as local in my kitchen, unless you count a can of pumpkin that’s been sitting around since last fall as local, but they’re certainly seasonal, and there’s no reason you couldn’t make them with puree from fresh pumpkins or even butternut squash. It’s a recipe I got from my mother, I’m not sure where she got it from. Don’t skip the icing, it’s an essential component.

The original recipe calls for walnuts, but I’m allergic so usually use pecans, but today I didn’t have enough pecans so I used half peanuts (local, from the market). The verdict: different, but not at all bad. I also didn’t have enough raisins so used half dried cranberries, which almost works better in my opinion. Whole wheat flour works fine, and I tend to add way more spices than any recipe ever calls for, but do it to taste.

Pumpkin cookies

1/2 cup/125 mL butter
1 cup/250 mL sugar
2 eggs
1 cup/250 mL pumpkin puree
2 cups/500 mL flour
2 tsp/10 mL baking powder
1 tsp/5 mL salt
3 tsp/15 mL cinnamon
1 tsp/5 mL nutmeg
1 tsp/5 mL ginger
1 cup/250 mL raisins
1 cup/250 mL nuts

Cream together butter and sugar; add eggs and pumpkin and mix well. Combine dry ingredients and add to butter mixture. Stir in raisins and nuts. Bake at 350F on greased pan for 15 mins. Cool and ice.

Lemon icing

Combine 2 cups/500 mL icing sugar and 1 tsp/5 mL lemon juice; add milk as necessary. (Well, that’s what the recipe says – I just use lemon juice.)

Grated beet and carrot salad

Plan B is back to sending me tons of carrots, and I improvised this salad to help use them up. (Excuse the terrible picture, I made this when it was already dark out.)

Mix together (all to taste):

• Grated carrots and beets
• Sunflower seeds
• Olive oil and lemon juice
• Salt and pepper
• Crushed garlic
• Chopped fresh parsley
• Chopped beet greens (optional – if your beets came with them)

This makes a delicious side dish, or you can make it a full meal – serve with a hard-boiled egg and some black bread and pickles to make it really Russian-style. You can embellish it in a number of ways, too – tonight for my dinner I tossed some with mixed greens, a chopped apple and a spoonful of sour cream.

Also, I picked the rest of my beans from the garden today. Aren’t they pretty?

Fall French toast with stewed plums

I was very hungry at brunch time today so didn’t take pictures, but I very much enjoyed the French toast I made (standard – leftover bread, eggs, milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, maple syrup) and served with plain yogurt (Pinehedge) and stewed plums. I had one of those baskets of local plums – despite eating 5 or 6 a day, I couldn’t seem to make a dent in them – so just sliced them all in half and simmered with a bit of water. Easy.

Zucchini pesto noodles

As I’ve said earlier, I’ve been experimenting with raw food lately, and one cool new tool I’ve picked up is a spiralizer, which slices vegetables into noodle shapes. It’s very cool if you’re into fun gadgets and I finally pulled it out this evening to make zucchini noodles for dinner, served with pesto and sliced tomato and orange pepper from my garden (the basil was from the backyard too). Excuse the fuzzy picture, I think the black bowl confuses my camera.

Served with corn on the cob and steamed okra, all from the market. Delish!

Amazing raw coconut ice cream, and some thoughts

This is so not local, but I’ve had a couple of requests so I’m going to post a recipe for raw vegan coconut “ice cream”. But first a digression: while I started this blog mainly to share tips on local eating in Toronto – and especially what to do with CSA veggies in the winter – I’ve been experimenting with raw foods lately, which is harder to do locally because so many of them (especially desserts) rely on tropical ingredients like coconut, avocado and bananas.

So I want to emphasize that while I believe strongly in eating locally as much as possible, both for environmental reasons and to help local farmers, I don’t like to be a fanatic about it. I don’t like to be a fanatic about any eating philosophy, because following a strict set of rules is boring, way too simplistic, and prevents you from having to think about your food. I’ve been vegetarian since I was a teenager – no meat, no poultry, no fish – but I’m not going to freak out about a bit of fish sauce in a restaurant meal, or my grilled eggplant sitting next to someone else’s grilled chicken. Life’s too short, and really, neither of those affects any of the reasons I chose to stop eating animals.

In the same way, while I refuse to buy strawberries out of season (they don’t taste good, anyways), I’m not going to refuse them if someone serves them to me. And supporting Ontario peach growers doesn’t have to mean depriving yourself of bananas. I try to buy things locally if they’re grown locally, but sometimes, I want fresh pineapple, too.

Which brings me to the coconuts. Young coconuts are an amazing food, and extremely versatile when it comes to creating dairy-free desserts. Coconut water is high in electrolytes, making it a perfect post-exercise (i.e., post-sweating) drink, and the meat blends up nice and smooth and creamy.

And besides, even though they’re shipped from Thailand to my local Chinatown, it’s not impossible that they have a lower carbon footprint than locally produced dairy – especially if it has sugar added. (I made the recipe below with local honey.) After all, as the Washington Post reported on last week, “a study out of Carnegie Mellon University found that the average American would do less for the planet by switching to a totally local diet than by going vegetarian one day a week.” That’s food for thought.

But back to the coconuts… as I said, I bought them in Chinatown, 3 for $5. These are the ones that you can get in the Caribbean with a straw in to drink the coconut water, and now that I know how amazing the coconut meat is, I’m appalled at how many get thrown away there and here after the water is drunk. You can find tutorials online for opening them, but basically, you chop them open, drain the water, then split them in half and scrape out the meat. I would estimate that you would need two or three to make this recipe, and if you don’t have access to coconuts, you can make it with dried coconut and regular water. A regular blender worked fine for me, and I used honey instead of agave syrup. I don’t have an ice cream maker so I made it with the first set of directions.

The recipe comes from the cookbook Ani’s Raw Food Desserts, but I got it from a British raw food magazine called Get Fresh (I get an electronic subscription).

Ani Phyo’s Coconut Ice Kream
(makes 4 servings)

1 cup cashews
1 cup filtered water or coconut water
1/3 cup agave syrup (I used honey)
1/4 cup shredded coconut or 1 cup fresh young coconut meat
1/4 cup liquid coconut oil

Combine the cashews, water, agave syrup, coconut and oil in a high-speed blender and blend until smooth. Scoop the mixture into a container and place in the freezer for 3 to 4 hours. Every hour or so, remove and mix well. Place back in freezer to chill. Repeat until you achieve the desired consistency (5 to 7 hours).

To make in an ice cream maker, chill the mixture in the freezer for an hour or two, until cold. Scoop the chilled mixture into the ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer’s instructions.

Will keep for several weeks in the freezer. Variations: swirl in a sauce, like raspberry or chocolate, or try folding in a fruit, like blueberries or chopped strawberries.

Off topic: Banana soft serve

Bananas are certainly not local in Toronto. But I had to interrupt your regular programming to share this amazing recipe that’s been circulating lately, from choosingraw.com (but I discovered it via Plentiful Plants).

Take a couple of bananas, frozen and in chunks. Put them in your food processor. Process for a few minutes, scraping the bowl down as needed. Devour.

This stuff is creamy and sugary like ice cream, but with none of the guilt. And it’s made my food processor suddenly the most popular appliance in the kitchen. I’ve tried it plain and drizzled with melted chocolate (which hardens again – so good!).

So… how to make it local? Well, I read one blog where the author added peanut butter to the bananas. And… check out what I found at Karma the other day! Local peanut butter! (I believe you can order it online as well, but that’s not as much fun.) Guess what I’m having for dessert tomorrow night?

Raspberry picking!

Last weekend I went berry picking with a friend of mine at an organic place up in Markham. Our goal was raspberries but we were also hoping they’d have blackcurrants, which are my favourite. As has been typical this summer, thunderstorms were threatening that day so we were hoping the rain would hold off until we could pick enough.

And, in fact, we got in over four hours of picking before the skies opened. Between us (and her husband’s help for part of the time), we gathered two baskets of blackcurrants (they are slow picking!) and 12 of raspberries. Check out the haul (including some green beans and butter tarts we bought from the farm stand):

As I’m lacking in the deep freeze department I made all of my blackcurrants and many of my raspberries into jam, which for some reason I took no pictures of. Blackcurrant jam is super easy, as they’re naturally high in pectin so you don’t need to buy any Certo to help them set (which is what I usually use for other jams). I used the recipe from my Edmonds cookbook but with less sugar. I ran out of sterilized jars so also did a jar for right-away eating of a blackcurrant-raspberry blend, which is pretty damned good.

I froze some of the raspberries for later, but I also made some amazing raspberry “breakfast” bars from Smitten Kitchen (of course). They’re easy to make and travel well, so they’d be good for a potluck or party. As far as adaptations go, they worked with part whole wheat flour and if I were to make them again, I’d use more raspberries (maybe an extra half?) and cut back a bit on the crust. They might be messier that way but I think they’d be more flavourful. I also cut the sugar out of the raspberry layer completely and cut the sugar in the crust to 2/3 cup.

And now that I look at her picture, her raspberry layer looks thicker than mine did. I measured the berries by weight as suggested, but for reference, it was just over 2 cups that I used of slightly crushed berries.