chavvah

One thing I've been doing while cleaning my kitchen is to organize all my loose recipes into a recipe box. During this process, I found a recipe I have been saving. I am hoping to try it sometime this week, provided the stars align: carrot cake ice cream.

In summary, it is: candied carrots, spiced pecans, and cream cheese ice cream.

Candied carrots:
2 cups diced carrots
2/3 cups sugar
2 Tbsp corn syrup
2 cups water

Combine all in saucepan over medium heat, bring to boil and simmer for 45-60 mins.

Spiced pecans:
1 cup pecan halves
1 Tbsp butter, meltd
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1/8 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and spread in even layer on baking sheet. Bake 7-10 mins until toasted. Cool and chop roughly.

Ice cream base:
1 pint vanilla ice cream, softened
1/2 8 oz package cream cheese, softened
zest of 1 lemon

Whip in stand mixer until blended. Add pecans and carrots. (I am going to try and make it in my ice cream machine as I do not own a standing mixer.)

The recipe also says to add 1/4 cranberries marinated in Crown Royal, but I am ignoring that because the recipe is from a magazine put out by the provincial liquor commission. ;)

I've lived in Canada for as long as I am capable of remembering, but I do find the concept of Thanksgiving a bit perplexing. I know it's about the harvest, etc, etc, but there's something about celebrating Thanksgiving that has the tendency to make me feel a bit awkward, like going to someone else's church. I'm a transplanted person with my roots in one place, celebrating a transplanted holiday with its roots in another. It's easy to see how one might feel a bit disoriented.

I decided to go to Nigella Lawson for help on this one. In her notes on Thanksgiving, she says it better than I could:

"I am necessarily cautious about tackling Thanksgiving. It's not my party--though where there's food concerned, I'm always glad to be invited."

This year, once again, I have found myself in the position of going to a Thanksgiving dinner and having no idea what to bring. A couple of years ago I went to xandersgirl's outstanding Turducken celebration and brought carrot soup, which was well-received but not altogether practical for transportation purposes.

Lo and behold, in her book Feast, Nigella actually has a recipe for sweet potatoes with marshmallows--a dish of mythic proportions (and I have to admit, it sounds kind of horrifying). She gives a brief history of the dish and remarks that when she first came upon it, it gave her, "as a startled foreigner, much cause for alarm". It's her introduction to the recipe that sums up how I feel about this particular holiday:

"To a European reader, no doubt to any non-American reader, it is downright alienating. Although I've become an eater of sweet potatoes over the years, I've never quite taken the marshmallow element seriously, presuming it to be so positively excessive, as unfathomable as a memory from someone else's childhood." (emphasis mine)

So I tried instead to think about my childhood, and what kinds of foods my mum would make to go with a roast chicken (she doesn't like turkey). Yorkshire puddings would probably be my first choice--my mum makes individual ones in muffin tins and she has it down to a science--but I know it's not to everyone's taste, so probably best to go with something a little more conventional. Roast potatoes would probably be the next best bet, but I'm guessing that there will be potatoes at this particular shindig.

As I was pondering, I was flipping through Feast, and I did find something that my mum has made for years, and that is also quintessentially American and very Thanksgiving. Something that, thanks to my years as a heritage interpreter, I could make in my sleep.

Cornbread.

My mum always bakes cornbread to go with a hearty winter meal. She bakes it in a round tin, and then cuts thick slabs of it and puts them in a little basket, wrapped in a red-and-white checkered tea towel to keep them warm.

Nigella uses it for cranberry-orange stuffing, but her recipe calls for you to make the cornbread from scratch. I say, why ruin a perfectly good pan of cornbread by making it into stuffing?

Here--for those of you celebrating the weekend, holiday or no, in whatever style suits you--is Nigella's recipe. (I paraphrase her rather wordy directions.) I even did all the conversions from metric weight to make it easier.

175 g cornmeal (about 1.5 cups)
125 g flour (about 1 cup)
45 g caster sugar (3 Tbsp)
fat pinch of salt
1 Tbsp baking powder
250 ml full fat milk (1 cup)
1 egg
45 g unsalted butter, melted and cooled (half a stick is 56.7 g, so a bit less than that)

Oven to 200 C. Grease a baking tin (Nigella recommends 23 cm square).

Standard baking procedure: mix the dry together, mix the wet together, then add the wet gradually to the dry. Don't worry about lumps. Pour the batter into the tin.

Bake for about 15-20 mins. The cornbread should be starting to pull away from the sides of the tin.

Best of all, I have most of the ingredients in stock. I just have to nip to the store to get whole milk and I'm in business!

I am making some deliriously simple coconut chocolate tarts for a pot luck at imperfectmedium's this afternoon--hopefully they turn out! The shells are baking now--the kitchen smells heavenly.

( recipe under the cut )

In the foodie category, here's what I plan to make with my daikon radish:

Ginger, carrot, and daikon salad
(A recipe that came with my Freshbox)

Salad part:
1-2 daikon radish, julienned
3 carrots, julienned


Dressing part:
3 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 Tbsp chopped ginger (I will probably grate it as I don't like chunks of raw ginger)
2 cloves garlic
1 Tbsp sweet chili sauce
splash of soy sauce
1/3 cup veg oil
1 tsp. chopped cilantro (I will omit this as I don't care for cilantro)

Basically, you pour the dressing over the salad and let it marinate 30 minutes in the fridge.

I am going to make this for a barbecue I am going to on Saturday--provided I can get a ride! prairiedaun, is it possible that you are going to this shindig now that your social is on Friday night?

In the TMI category, I have heat rash at various points along my panty line and I am not pleased. Basically my choices are to continue having heat rash until it cools down or not to wear underwear. Neither of these are acceptable.

And in the random observation category, I like that in English crime dramas, the police rarely shoot anyone. I watched four hours of Wire in the Blood (at my mum's behest) and never once did anyone even draw a gun.

I had previously conceived of a super thoughtful post about stuff that has happened this week, but it got derailed by the late hour and my inability to form coherent thoughts. So this is what you get instead.

I just concocted this with stuff leftover in my kitchen, and seriously, it's so good you won't even need syrup. (Although I did have a small dollop just on principle.)

French Toast For One
(Two slices)

1 egg
1/3 cup milk
2 Tbsp brown sugar
dash of cinnamon
splash each of vanilla and dark rum
tiny pinch of salt

Mix this all up into a batter. Soak the bread in it, then fry in a skillet in butter until the outsides are golden brown. Then put in a 200-degree oven for a few minutes. Then eat! I had mine alongside a few slices of bacon.

I'm still hard at work on my "using up the contents of my cupboard" plan, although I did buy a couple of cans of soup this weekend because the brand I liked was on sale. I have already drastically reduced the amount of money I am spending on groceries, which is pretty awesome, since most staples have gone up in price.

Recently I went to a friend's sister's restaurant, where I was served a delicious raw beet salad. I have never much cared for cooked or pickled beets, but I really enjoyed this salad and I was hoping to recreate it with some beets I got in my Freshbox.

I have found a recipe that I think is pretty close, and am recording it here for posterity.

Grated Beet Salad With Citrus Herb Dressing

Ingredients:
1/4 cup (50 mL) fresh orange juice
3 tbsp (50 mL) olive oil
1 tsp (5 mL) each of grated orange zest and fresh lemon juice
liquid honey and Dijon mustard
Salt and pepper to taste
3 peeled and finely grated raw beets
1 tbsp (15 mL) mixed chopped fresh herbs (parsley, tarragon, chervil and chives)

Preparation:
Whisk together orange juice, olive oil, grated orange zest, fresh lemon juice, liquid honey and Dijon mustard, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir into beets to coat evenly. Add chopped fresh herbs.

This will be perfect because I have an ass ton of Valencia oranges and I find them too pithy/seedy for eating, but great for juicing and zesting.

Things I will probably change: I think I will julienne the beets rather than grating them, and possibly also throw in some julienned carrots as I have several carrots to use up. The salad I had also incorporated a soft goat cheese, which was super awesome, and I would like to include that. If I can find a herby cheese, so much the better. I will have to see what I can find at Fenton's after work tomorrow. Failing that, I know I can get a really nice herb and goat cheese spread at Tall Grass that will probably work.

I will let you guys know how this works out!

I have a great little Thai cookbook that I've been getting a lot of use out of lately. It's a wonderful book because the recipes are all super basic, and yet create the most amazing results. Many of you will be familiar with my traditional offering of spicy shrimp wontons--that comes from this book.

Thursday I made an old favourite from this book: carrot-mango salad.

Salad:
4 carrots, shredded
1 small, ripe mango, thinly sliced
7 oz firm tofu (about half a packet), 1/2 inch dice
1 Tbsp chopped chives or scallions

Dressing:
2 Tbsp orange juice
1 Tbsp lime juice
1 tsp honey
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp toasted sesame seeds
(the recipe also calls for 1/2 tsp orange-flower water, which I have never been able to find but because I have no idea what it's like I don't really miss its contribution)

Toss the salad ingredients, then mix the dressing and pour it over the salad and toss to coat. I have had this for three days' worth of lunches and one late-night snack and it was awesome!

Sometime this week I will probably throw together some Pad Thai, provided I have time to pick up some shrimp. If you are like me and love Pad Thai, here is the sauce recipe from the same book:

3 Tbsp Thai fish sauce
1 Tbsp tomato ketchup
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp lime juice

To make Pad Thai, just stir-fry the meat of your choice in a bit of peanut oil and some finely chopped garlic, throw the above ingredients in, then add well-drained rice noodles and a couple of beaten eggs. Beansprouts too, if you dig that (my mum quite likes them but I am ambivalent). Finish with hot pepper flakes and green onion.

So simple, yet so delicious.

Pretty basic stuff. Many years ago, I took this recipe from a cookbook and sized it down, just enough for dinner and a lunch--or to share with a friend.

I normally only make this in the fall, but I had carrots on hand and there are only so many carrot sticks a kid like me can take. I also don't generally care for the texture of cooked carrots (although I occasionally don't mind them roasted).

1 tablespoon cooking oil, your choice
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 medium onion, diced
8 oz carrots, chopped
3 cups stock, your choice (although you will probably only need two cups and a bit)
palmful of curry powder (keeping in mind that I have very small hands)
dash of cayenne pepper
salt & pepper

You can add various other herbs and spices as desired (nutmeg works well) but this is the basic format. You can also substitute or add in cubed squash for/with the carrots, and perhaps other veggies too. It's a pretty flexible recipe. And if you don't have curry powder, you can use curry paste but remember to adjust the measurement appropriately.

Heat olive oil and butter until butter melts. Add onion and carrot and saute, approx. 5 mins. Add 2 cups stock and seasonings, bring to boil, cover, simmer 15 mins. Take all the veggies out with a slotted spoon and puree via hand blender or regular type blender, slowly adding liquid back in, until you get a velvety smooth liquid. Return puree to the pot and adjust seasonings, thickness, etc (this is why you may need extra stock).

If I have it, I sometimes like to pipe sour cream onto the surface of the soup--this helps cool the spice a little if I have been a little over-the-top with the cayenne.

If you omit the butter and use veggie oil/stock, you can even entertain your vegan friends with this!

Do any of you guys have recipes that use kiwi?

I'm asking because I'm about to get 3 kiwis delivered in my Freshbox. While I have nothing against the taste of kiwi, I don't really enjoy hairy fruit. (I know, it's a neurosis, we're all allowed at least one, shut up.)

So the combination of caffeine, sugar, and asthma medication has made me a bit jittery (and posty, apparently). I have been trying to calm down by searching for recipes.

I had decided a few days ago that I would like to make eggplant parmesan for this evening's dinner, simply because, by sheer coincidence, I currently have in my kitchen:

- one huge eggplant
- a chunk of Parmigiano Reggiano
- a chunk of mozzarella
- 3 ripe Roma tomatoes
- garlic
- onion
- olive oil
- oregano and basil from my garden
- various pastas

My frustration stems from the fact that I cannot seem to find a recipe that is not in some way touted as being "light," "healthy," or "diet." You guys, it's fried eggplant covered in parmesan cheese and breadcrumbs and then topped with more cheese. I'm cool with it not being fat-free. Really. But almost everyone on the internet is all over some played-out crap about just baking or grilling the eggplant and breading it with various horrific things--or worse, not at all! What is the point? If I wanted that I would have searched for "soggy grilled eggplant à la boring topped with sauce-from-a-jar and 'lite' plastic cheese." (FUCK I hate plastic cheese.)

I have a recipe for this at home in my Silver Spoon cookbook, so I should be all right. The main reason I wanted to peruse a standard recipe was in case I needed to buy anything on the way home. But I am shaking my head disappointedly in your general direction, internets.