Put You in Your Place Pilaf

In cooking school, one of the first things you learn about is mise en place. You learn all about a brunoise and a mirepoix and mincing and dicing and julienning. You learn about peeling and boning and filetting and all sorts of helpful techniques that will allow you to do your job in a more efficient, organized and, hopefully, flawless manner.

It is all very important, in a culinary sense, not so much in the getting along in the world sense. It is also widely thought to be mind numbing stupid work -not so creative, very monotonous and very time consuming. Secretly, I have always felt that there is no shame in wanting to julienne tomatoes or mince shallots for hours. I found myself, every now and then, envious of the dishwasher's fifty pound bag of potatoes and paring knife. It puts you in your place. You can think and chop and daydream and peel and pay attention to whatever is on the radio and slice and after, all is right in the world, or at least in your part of it.

The best, and in the weeds, the worst, thing about being alone in your kitchen, or galley, is that you have to do it all. There is no choice, unless you can corral an unsuspecting deckhand or small child into doing it for you when you don't have the time.

There is not a whole lot of mise en place that goes on in our kitchen. Meals are made on the fly with at least one chair getting drug across the kitchen floor on its way to 'help out' and at least two hands tugging at whatever cloth they can grab at knee height and the ever-loudening, 'up, up, up,' coming from the same area. Sometimes I like to pretend that I am more organized and that supper is a cooking-show-fabulous display of ramekins and tiny bowls with perfectly prepared ingredients being effortlessly thrown together to make something superb. I am sadly out of practice and easily distracted so what used to take five minutes now takes almost three full episodes of Pinky Dinky Doo, three, 'take that out of your mouth,' interventions (shoe, china tea pot lid and rubber band), a complete tidy up of all the chalk and the multicoloured drool on the floor from discovering that not one of the colours is delicious to eat, a rescue of the pile of 'precious artworks' being torn into tiny pieces and two trips over the contents of everything thigh level and below in our kitchen.

So, while I like to think that cooking like this is therapy, I am closer to needing therapy if I haven't saved the prep for nap time. It does make the witching hour easier though and supper has uniformly cooked pieces and looks a little prettier when you can manage it and, despite all the distraction, it still feels good to slice and dice and peel and chop everything into little bowls, even if it is in forty-five second intervals.

You can do all the prep work for this ahead of time, or as you go. You can then throw it all together, pop it in the oven and walk away for the better part of an hour.

The barley makes a great change from the usual rice and it is delicious. Little Daughter ate this for about three days. Big Daughter had seconds and asked for more a few days after it was all gone.

This makes enough for two adults and two children with a big salad as a main course. It might serve six people as a side dish and would be just fine with a roast chicken.

Barley Pilaf

1 finely chopped onion (3/4 cup)

1 large carrot finely chopped (1 cup)

2 ribs celery finely chopped (3/4 cup)

1 cup mushrooms finely chopped (1 cup)

1 large clove garlic minced 

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup pearl barley

3 cups stock (I used chicken stock because I had it, use whatever you have)

1 bay leaf

1 large sprig fresh thyme

Handful of chopped chives

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350º. Sauté onion, carrot, celery, mushrooms and garlic with olive oil over medium high heat in an oven proof pot with an oven proof lid, stirring occasionally, until onion is translucent. Add barley and reduce heat to medium. Stirring occasionally, let the barley get ever so lightly toasted. Don't let it burn. Add stock, bay leaves and thyme and bring to a boil. Cover the pot and place it in the oven for forty-five minutes. Remove the lid and leave in the oven for fifteen minutes more. Remove from the oven and check the seasoning, stir the chives through and serve.

Saturday's Bounty on Sunday

For most of the winter, our weekends are missing something. We are left wondering what to do with our Saturday mornings. Sure, we could make the hour long drive to town and enjoy what is over-wintering at the Halifax Farmer’s Market but, Poppy can’t fish for sharks in a small stream there. She can’t run around, hand in hand with her best bud, charming vendors and, we assume, safely disappearing down trails through the woods. She tells me that the cupcakes aren’t as good as at our market. And, there is no burly German baker man to give her cinnamon buns just because she happened to pass by and say hi.

So, now that our Saturday mornings are peaceful and we are no longer at a loss for things to do, we get to spend the rest of the day thinking of how we will use our market bounty. It is early days for most produce here in Nova Scotia but we managed a decent haul in spite of our not-quite-warm-enough-yet days.

I found cremini and portobello mushrooms, radishes and some crunchy sprouts, which I was compelled to buy even though I have about five kilos of unsprouted crunchy sprout mix here in my kitchen. I got spinach and mixed greens and beet greens with gorgeous almost baby beets on the bottom . I got whole wheat bread with poppy seeds, of course, from Chris, the above mentioned burly German baker man and, to Poppy’s great delight and despite arriving late-ish in the morning, a package of his always-sold-out-it-seems juniper ham.

The ham is always gone by the time we arrive, even if we get there shortly after eight, Chris is inevitably selling the last package to the person in front of us. To his credit, he has tried to steal the last package back out of the unsuspecting person’s basket just to try and please Poppy, but in the end he had to fall back on the cinnamon bun to cheer her up.

We like brunch at our house and Saturday’s haul, rounded out by a few local eggs, left us well set up to breakfastize something we saw Anna Olson cooking up on TV.  She made her mushrooms with brandy and cream and her bread was a sourdough rye from Ravine in St. David’s, around the corner from my grandmother’s which is where we were staying when we saw the TV show. And, Anna used a mixture of wild mushrooms but we had nothing in the house except for what we got at the market on Saturday and sometimes, simpler is just better.

Poppy Seed French Toast with Sautéed Cremini Mushrooms and Juniper Ham

400 grams (4 heaping cups) quartered or halved, depending on size, cremini mushrooms

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon butter

Salt and pepper to taste

4 slices of good bread (use what you like)

2 large eggs

2 tablespoons milk

Salt and pepper

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon butter

4 slices of really good ham (optional)

Fresh chives, chopped

Heat heavy bottomed pan and add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 1 of butter. Add mushrooms. I like to add the salt at this point when I sauté mushrooms, it is one of the few things I season before I am finished cooking. Cook the mushrooms over medium high heat until they start to brown. They will go a bit grey and get a little watery first and then the water will evaporate and the flavour will concentrate and they will start to brown. Remove the mushrooms from the pan.

While the mushrooms are cooking, whisk eggs with milk and a little salt and pepper in a shallow dish. 

In the same pan, without washing, heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 1 of butter. soak each side of each slice of bread in the egg mixture and transfer them to the hot pan. Cook until golden brown, about a minute on each side.

Transfer each slice to a plate, top with ham and share mushrooms between the four slices. Sprinkle with chives.

Poppy had her’s with ham, I had mine without and next time, I will be putting a little wilted spinach on mine.