Recipeless Wednesday

A Little Roasted for Your Crunch

There seems to have been a recent glut of broccoli in California. Our local market has literally had tons of it, all shapes and varieties, for cheap. Consequently, we have been eating it a lot.

Looking for a little something outside the steamed broccoli realm, I thought about the ubiquitous Broccoli Crunch Salad. It really is everywhere. It sits on salad bars in every corner of North America. You can buy a kit to make it in your local big box store. 

There is nothing really wrong with it. It is, usually, pretty tasty. A creamy dressing with some sweetness and some tang coat raw broccoli florets (I really don’t like that word), tossed with some sort of nut, raisins or dried cranberries adding some extra sweetness, and usually there is some salty bacon in there. It ticks all the boxes of taste and texture to qualify as a salad. I’ll even admit to scoffing quite a lot of it more than once or twice.

The thing is is that when I eat salad, I want to feel a little virtuous; a little bit like I am doing my body a favour. The creamy dressing and bacon while tasty, sometimes measure up a little heavy.

The raw broccoli is really delicious but I am going to admit that I think it is a little bit like hard work. I know it sounds like I want all the benefits without the effort but my jaw is almost sore after eating it sometimes. I knew that steaming the broccoli would wind up in a big soggy mistake unless it was treated to nothing but the shortest of steam baths. Roasting the broccoli, like I do cauliflower, seemed like a good and flavour intensifying idea though. You can still preserve some of the crunch as well.

To be honest, I have been roasting all of our brassicas, even the cauliflower for cauliflower and cheese. Everyone has been eating it up.

I lightened up the dressing for the salad by using a slightly sweet vinaigrette with a little bit of nuttiness from some toasted sesame oil. There will be twice as much vinaigrette as you need but it is a handy thing to have in your fridge, just store it in the jar you shake it in. The raisins and onions soak in the vinaigrette for as long as you have time to let them. The raisins plump and the onions mellow so the longer they soak the plumper and mellower your salad will be.

I skipped the bacon, to much guffawing, but you could easily toss some in if you need it. 

This makes quite a lot but two adults and two children polished all but a tiny bit off in one meal.

Roasted Broccoli Salad

8 cups broccoli cut into small flowerlike pieces

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

Fresh ground black pepper to taste

1/2 cup diced red onion

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup toasted almond slivers

Vinaigrette

2 tablespoons grainy mustard

1 tablespoon honey

1/4 cup white wine vinegar

1/3 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil

1/4 teaspoon salt

Fresh ground black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 450º.

Toss the broccoli pieces with 2 tablespoons olive oil, salt and pepper. Place on a baking sheet and roast for about 15 minutes, until they are spot browned. Remove from oven and cool.

Put the ingredients for the vinaigrette in a jar that will hold at least 250ml (1 cup). Put the lid on the jar and shake until the vinaigrette is emulsified. Check the bottom of the jar and make sure that all the honey is mixed in and isn’t stuck to the bottom.

In a medium bowl, use whatever bowl you want to serve this in, soak the raisins and onions in about 1/2 cup of the vinaigrette.

Just before serving, toss the roasted and cooled broccoli and the toasted almonds in the vinaigrette.

Recipeless Wednesday

An Unrecipe

I made something the other day. I have been debating whether to post it or not. It isn't nice. It was pretty but not nice. It was delicious but not nice. Even as I write these words, I wonder whether I should do it or not. I have been lucky enough to be spending the last few months in a seasonless oasis. But, I have decided, if things like this make their way into my market basket, there is little i can do but share it. Throwing caution to the wind, I am going to post this. Not in a nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah way. In a please enjoy and share and remember there is only five more weeks of winter.

***

You don't need a recipe to make hash. It is a pretty simple thing. It can be made plain or fancy. It can be eaten any time of day. It fits every meal.

You take some potatoes and onions and sauté them. You add some meat or fish or, in this case, beautiful green goodness and you sauté it a little more. Add some green onions near the end of the cooking time, almost no matter what kind of hash you are making.If you are want to get carried away, you can top it off with something. It would be the rare combination that a soft poached egg wouldn't suit. Poppy and Stephen think bacon is pretty nice too. Tilly even eats the green bits, but only because they are covered in egg yolk.

Anyway you put it together, it is simple and good and wholesome. It makes you feel good and cozy and that is important.

Rainbow Bread Pudding (almost)

The other day, over at sweet salty, Kate said I was all rainbowy. Well, not me exactly, but my house. And, I am pretty sure she was referring to what we eat and not how we decorate. At least I hope that is what she was saying. 

Well, just as she was saying that, I went and posted this. Then I read what she said and felt all embarrassed and immediately wanted to post something cleaner and brighter, more orange and green, good for the body as well as the stuck in the depths of February soul.

Problem was, we were in no fit state for contact with the general public. We were at the stage of the cold when trying to wipe away the green nasal discharge (am I really talking about this in a post about food? Yes, but I am going to blame it on the fever.) creates shrieking one could easily associate with murder by chainsaw. That and the fact that I could not bring myself to put pants, and by pants I mean trousers, on let alone shoes, jacket, find the car keys (yes, I know the supermarket in less than a block away), load two children into their car seats, etc, etc. This meant that we were cooking with what we had.

We get squash in our CSA, and while I don’t dislike the lovely little orbs, I don’t love them either. It takes a bit of motivation for me to get excited about cooking them up into something good. Luckily, Kate had asked for orange, and since I had a few of these little pumpkin cousins sitting around here, I could do orange.

I could do green, well I guess it is greeny white but greenish anyway. I had some leeks and green onions. I had a slightly stale loaf of bread that hadn’t become the sandwiches it was meant to because preschool and picnics had been called off. While the bread is not very rainbowy, it would have to do for all of the reasons mentioned above.

A one dish, casserole kind of supper was pretty appealing. I couldn’t think to manage getting more than one thing on the table at the same time. Throwing all of my found, and by found I mean rescued from the depths of the refrigerator, ingredients together seemed like the best thing to do. Adding eggs and cheese, I had a Kabocha and Leek Bread Pudding, fodder for the Februariest of souls.

The kabocha can be replaced by any squash you like or have to hand. I chose this one from our ever-amassing collection because it is so niftily neat and easy to peel. I used some myzithra cheese here but, on a higher energy day, when I felt like leaving the house to get some, I may just have chucked it full of little blobs of goat cheese. You could easily substitute some feta as well.

All of this to say that despite feeling like a small person is sanding away at the inside of my throat, I am now challenged to be as colourful as I can be, in the kitchen anyway. So, thank you Kate for the kick in the pants. Unless, of course, you really were speaking of our decorating aesthetic. In which case, please disregard the above.

Kabocha and Leek Bread Pudding (this should handily feed 8)

4 cups peeled, seeded and cubed squash

2 teaspoons olive oil

3 large leeks washed and sliced (about 2 cups)

1 large onion chopped

3 cloves garlic

2 teaspoons olive oil

5 cups cubed french bread (a round boule, a couple of days old is perfect)

4 green onions chopped

1 cup cream

1 1/2 cup milk

6 eggs

1/2 cup myzithra cheese grated

1/2 teaspoon salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Butter a large baking dish.

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Sauté the squash in the first two teaspoons of olive oil over low heat until it is tender. It is packed full of natural sugars, so make sure it doesn’t burn. Browned is okay, burnt is not. Remove from heat.

Sauté the leeks, onions and garlic in the second two teaspoons of olive oil until soft. Remove from heat.

In a mixing bowl, whisk together the cream, milk, eggs and salt and pepper.

In the baking dish, mix together the bread, squash, leek mixture, green onions, cheese and egg mixture. Press the bread down a bit to make sure everything is soaked with the egg mixture.

Bake for 40 minutes.

Enjoy with some sautéed greens or salad or, if you must, some bacon.

Good Bad Cookies

There are times when life gets in the way of pretty much anything else. Visitors, and lots of fun, and travel, and lots of fun, and trying to clean your house up into the no-really-this-is-how-we-live-our-children-don’t-make-mess state required for potential buyers to be able to consider living there gets in the way of just cooking dinner, much less writing about it. Now that the house is tidy and we seem to have tracked down all the odors emanating from behind furniture and all the,’ Oops, I appear to be stuck,’ patches have been scraped off the floor and we have returned from what seemed like a cross country road trip which was, in reality, just a few hundred miles up the coast, and our fridge is empty of leftovers, I am back in cooking mode. At least until my new, but not particularly successful, knitting hobby takes over.

Shortly after New Year and in the midst of my determination to not resolve to do anything, I realized that I had to do something with the jar of a certain chocolate-hazelnut spread that someone, silly person, had put in Stephen’s Christmas stocking. Left on its own, it was going to meet no better end than a teaspoon straight into someone’s waiting, and knowing better, gob. At least if I baked it up into something else, it would disperse the no-goodness and it could be more easily shared around.

I made the cookies but I couldn’t post them, too many resolutions would be swearing them off. Something this bad but good needed an audience. So, I waited and, well, I have waited long enough. It is February people (at least it feels that way at home, I am told), and you all need something to do on your snow days (I miss snow days, I really, really do). Plus, you will deserve them after all that shoveling (I miss shoveling, really I do). Plus, if I had some snow to shovel, I would then deserve to eat more of them.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Hazelnut Spread Cookies

1 1/4 cup crunchy peanut butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup chocolate chips

1/2 cup chocolate hazelnut spread

Preheat oven to 375ºF.

Beat peanut butter, brown sugar, egg and vanilla together. 

Mix flour, baking soda and salt in another bowl. Mix in to wet ingredients.

When wet and dry are fully mixed, stir in the chocolate chips and chocolate hazelnut spread.

Roll into balls and place on baking sheet lined with parchment. Flatten with a floured fork. 

Bake for about 10 minutes. Careful, these are pretty easy to overbake.

Cool.

Makes about 24.

Upside Down Cake - all the way from Paris

I am trying to get better at my photography. More specifically, food photography. Just when I think I have the best light/angles/tricks to make sure there are no children’s fingers way to get that shot in a certain place, we pick up and move to a new kitchen where all the light/angles/tricks change and I need to learn it all over again. Alright, so maybe the tricks for the children don’t change but one quick browse through the blog will tell you that I still don’t have that one down.

(Note the child sized finger print)

One person who I think does is David Lebovitz. Not in that every shot is perfection way but in the this is what food looks like way. Not to say that his shots aren’t perfect, they are (and who am I to say). His shots are what I aspire to be able to achieve. You know, just as soon as I can drive the camera properly.

The recipes Lebovitz offers up are in the same class as his food shots, so it was to him I turned when we fancied a little Upside Down Cake. 

None of that pineapple stuff though, visions of tinned pineapple rings and glacé cherries bounce around in my head every time I hear the words. I have yet to decide whether that is a bad thing or a fond childhood food memory. I had blueberries to put to use and muffins, pancakes, sauce and cheesecake had all been vetoed.

I barely adapted the recipe, figuring that if David says it’s good I probably shouldn’t mess with it. I tweaked the fruit quantity since I was using all berries instead of something sliced. I also baked it in a pyrex dish because I don’t have a cast iron pan here. I can only imagine how divine it would be in a cast iron pan.

What I got was a very good, no surprises, just what you would expect Upside Down Cake. The cake was very tender and moist and light. The topping was fruity and saucy and sweet. 

I am pretty sure it was the first time I have made Upside Down Cake but it was so easy and the results so good, it won’t be the last. 

It also, as Lebovitz recommends (not that I would ever, even with empty fridge and bare cupboards and two screaming like they hadn't eaten in a month children, be so inclined - and if you believe that, I have a really great used car to sell you), makes a fine breakfast.

Blueberry Upside Down Cake adapted, a tiny bit, from David Lebovitz

If you have a cast iron pan, make this in there. Just cook the caramel and leave it in the pan. Cool it and start from there.

Fruit topping (bottom):

3 tablespoons butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

3 cups blueberries

Cake Base (Topping):

8 tablespoons (1/2 cup) butter

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 large eggs

1 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 cup whole milk, room temperature

(the original recipe called for a 1/4 teaspoon salt as well which I skipped because I used salted butter)

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Melt butter in pan, add brown sugar and stir until sugar dissolves and it starts to bubble. Remove from heat, if you are not using a cast iron pan, transfer it to your buttered 8-inch baking pan or dish.

Arrange the fruit on top of the cooled sugar.

To make the cake, beat the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the vanilla and the eggs one at a time.

Sift the dry ingredients together and gently stir 1/2 into the butter mixture. Stir in the milk and then stir in the remaining flour mixture.

Pour on top of the berries and gently spread to cover the fruit.

Bake for around 45 minutes. The cake will spring back in the centre when you gently press down with your finger.

Serve with ice cream or custard or yogurt.

Grapefruit Guacamole

We got some avocados the other day. Despite being local, they were hard as hard things. I explained to Poppy, our resident guacamole La Jefa, that there would be no guacamole for a couple of days because of the state of the avocados. She, of course, forgot that somewhere in the midst of asking the next eighteen rapid fire questions in our daily never-stopping, seven-to-seven barrage of questions, forty-two minute songs and general, but demanding response, chit chat and she was was pissed when we got home and she couldn’t make guacamole.

Everybody had posted this, and we had also bought some grapefruits, so I suggested that we make our take on that but no, ‘if I can’t make guacamole I don’t want to make anything at all,' was shrieked while stomping up the stairs and threatening to never come out of her room. Yah, because that would teach Mommy a thing or two about making sure the frickin’ avocados are ripe, wouldn’t it? 

Our avocados sat ripening for a very long three days and our grapefruits sat near them, waiting for their time and purpose.

The avocados ripened and we still hadn’t used up the grapefruit and we had some tortilla chips waiting for some guacamole to dip themselves into. 

I had a hankering for something citrusy and I remembered an old school little grapefruit and avocado salad number from somewhere. It has been done but it sure was good. 

After no small amount of negotiation with La Jefa, a promise of three toppings on a chocolate frozen yogurt and three chapters of Ramona Quimby, Age 8 at bedtime bought me permission to guide and assist her in making a sunny tasting grapefruit guacamole.

The chief left this a little chunky and we added lots of the grapefruit juice which made it pretty juicy. I would be inclined to leave some out but she was enjoying squeezing that poor grapefruit so much, I just left her to it. It is so simple it could probably almost make itself and there are only four ingredients.

It was 80ºF that day, that’s around 27ºC, so it was perfect for a no-cook lunch. The ingredients are all pretty local to us as well, I know that isn’t the case for those enjoying a Northern January, believe it or not I am finding myself a little jealous of the snow. You can save this up for a grey day splurge. Add a margarita or two and you won’t be able to tell where you are.

And yes, when La Jefa wants to make guacamole and we can't find the stool, I let her perch on the counter top. You've got to pick your battles.

Grapefruit Guacamole

2 avocados peeled and sliced

1 pink grapefruit peeled and segmented and juice squeezed out of what remains

1/4 cup finely chopped red onion

1/2 cup chopped coriander

Salt and fresh ground black pepper

Mix all the ingredients together and season to taste.

Eat with tortilla chips, on top of fish or chicken or on its own.