Pizzoccheri Valtellinesi (Pizzoccheri of the Valtellina)

You may recall from one of my earlier posts that a few years ago I visited Su and Vivi who were, at the time, living in Mandello del Lario on Lake Como. Like the good friend and foodie that Su is, she had carefully crafted a food itinerary for me including her favourite mountain-top restaurant at the summit of a narrow, steep and windy mountain road, Vivi’s eggplant parmigiano and pizzoccheri.

Pizzoccheri is what I would call a traditional northern-Italian comfort food. It’s essentially buckwheat pasta, potato, butter, cheese, cabbage, sage and garlic. It hails from the Valtellina, a valley in the Lombardia region - a bastion of blonde, fair and blue-eyed Italians who look and act more Swiss than they do like the dark and swarthy Italians of my misperceptions.

I ate pizzoccheri in the Valtellina town of Bormio, where we spent 4 days skiing, eating and sitting in thermal baths. I’d never before set foot in a ski town that in more ways than not resembled the days when the Roman Empire was … an Empire. It was spectacular and surreal.

To be precise, I actually ate the pizzoccheri (and Su something equally as heavy) for lunch at the top of the slopes. Not everyone would encourage eating a dish that has the effect of horse tranquilizer on the body while skiing. And in hindsight, I’m not sure I would either. The good news was that, as it turned out, skiing in Bormio was just sun-tanning at a slope-side restaurant with a glass of wine. Any type of vertical movement that capitalized on gravity was basically a different hobby all together and so, to the extent that Su and I recklessly guided ourselves in semi-comatose states down the mountain after that meal, we really didn’t endanger anyone but ourselves.

On a side note, Su also had the foresight to encourage me to shamelessly smuggle food back home to Toronto. I literally had small wheels of cheese stuffed into my ski boots among the dried porcinis, olive oils and wines that littered my backpack. I lost a sausage, which was en route to my dad, to American Customs but, remarkably, everything else survived the voyage to the New World.

In case my tale wasn’t clear, pizzoccheri is a fabulous, and extremely heavy, dish. This is not to deter you from making it, because you won’t regret it, but also know it’s the kind of meal I would suggest making before settling into a cozy evening of Italian beauty pageants on OMNI or your equivalent local television network, wherever in the world you may be.

THE RECIPE

My pizzoccheri recipe is a hybrid of a few I found online and my own improvisations. I looked to Mark Bittman’s recipe http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/dining/311mrex.html

as well as that of this lady at Delicious Days http://www.deliciousdays.com/archives/2007/02/16/pizzoccheri-della-valtellina-embracing-comfort-food

and to this one http://www.grouprecipes.com/4593/pizzoccheri-valtellinesi.html

and to this one http://fxcuisine.com/Default.asp?language=2&Display=87&resolution=high



BUCKWHEAT PASTA

Ingredients

If you check out the recipes, you’ll notice extreme mixed-messages as to the buckwheat flour-to-all purpose flour-to-water ratios. I made up my own ratio and it worked out well.

• 2 cups buckwheat flour
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• ¾ cup warm water

Having said that, if you combine these ingredients and for some reason don't get a dough, add water until you do.

Directions

• Mix ingredients together until you get a dough
• I didn’t roll out the dough it seemed like way way way too much work. I instead flattened little balls of dough into pancakes with my fingers and threw them into the water.
• You of course are free to go the distance with a rolling pin but I was happy with the outcome.

I’m giving you a few photos of other people’s pizzoccheris so you can see what it looks like when you don’t laze-out and actually roll the pasta.

THE REST OF IT

Ingredients

• 6-12 leaves fresh sage, chopped
• Almost a full head of savoy cabbage or in hindsight a full head
• 2 small potatoes, small cubes
• 1 stick of unsalted butter
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup fontina cheese, grated
• 1 cup parmigiano, grated

Directions

• Boil large pot of water
• In a saucepan on low-medium heat, melt butter with sage and garlic until butter browns. Then remove from heat
• Cook the potatoes and cabbage in the boiling water about 5 minutes, add your buckwheat pasta to the same pot and boil until pasta cooked. Drain off all liquid.
• Add the pasta, cabbage and potato back to the pot and mix in the butter mixture.
• Then mix in the grated cheese.
• Mix on low heat until cheese is completely melted
• Season to taste. FYI, I didn’t add any salt because I found the cheese to be salty enough.

Eggplant Milanesa

I spent a few months in Buenos Aires in 2007 interning at a legal NGO. The experience was one of my more mixed ones travelling. It was, like most travel, enriching, yet those months were not one big metaphorical heap of grilled blood-sausage (remember, we’re in Argentina, so to most people blood sausage is a very very good thing).


Let me start with the more sordid: I got hooked on watching Falcon Beach while drinking inexpensive Argentinean wine alone in my apartment using what was essentially a hospital gurney as a couch. I never really demystified the phenomenon of rampant Canadian TV in Argentina but in all honestly I think that Canadian broadcasting has met more success in the Southern Cone than it has in Southern Ontario. Godiva’s, ENG and Falcon Beach among shows that I didn’t even know existed and whose names I have long since forgotten. Prime time, late-night, reliable and constant, Argentina has met the Canadian-content quota.


One of the prominent high points was the food. Every economic meltdown has its silver lining (people, I’m joking) and the crisis, which reduced the Peso to a fifth of the value of the Dollar, made eating in Buenos Aires more than affordable for a Canadian gal irresponsible with her student line of credit. I could eat out, often with my buddy Kate, whenever I wanted, comforted by the knowledge that the bill would have no impact on me until one-year after graduation when the grace period expired. Yes, I can now see the error in this logic.

And thus we arrive at eggplant milanesa. I ate eggplant milanesa almost every day for lunch at work for $1.00. While the dish sounds and looks mighty Italian (probably because a large percent of Argentines are of Italian descent), it is unmistakeably Argentinean cuisine (although not necessarily on ciabatta with tomato sauce). And in a country seriously committed to beef, it was incredible to witness how much breaded eggplant those people ate.


In the spirit of food-blogging-integrity, I got the ciabatta and milanesa recipes off of random websites. I wish I could remember who I poached them from so that I could give credit where it’s due. And in that vein, the tomato sauce was my own invention.

Ciabatta Bread

Ingredients
• 1/8 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 2 tablespoons warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
• 1/3 cup warm water
• 1 cup bread flour
• 1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 2 tablespoons warm milk (110 degrees F/45 degrees C) (Note to readers: I just used warm water. Who has the energy for a thermometer?)
• 2/3 cup warm water
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 cups bread flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt

Directions
• To Make Sponge: In a small bowl stir together 1/8 teaspoon of the yeast and the warm water and let stand 5 minutes, or until creamy. In a bowl stir together yeast mixture, 1/3 cup of the water, and 1cup of the bread flour. Stir 4 minutes, then over bowl with plastic wrap. Let sponge stand at cool room temperature for at least 12 hours and up to 1 day.
• To Make Bread: In a small bowl stir together yeast and milk and let stand 5 minutes, or until creamy. In bowl of a standing electric mixer fitted with dough hook, blend together milk mixture, sponge, water, oil, and flour at low speed until flour is just moistened; add salt and mix until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. Scrape dough into an oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap.
• Let dough rise at room temperature until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours. (Dough will be sticky and full of air bubbles.) Turn dough out onto a well-floured work surface and cut in half. Transfer each half to a parchment sheet and form into an irregular oval about 9 inches long. Dimple loaves with floured fingers and dust tops with flour. Cover loaves with a dampened kitchen towel. Let loaves rise at room temperature until almost doubled in bulk, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
• At least 45 minutes before baking ciabatta, put a baking stone on oven rack in lowest position in oven and preheat oven to 425 F (220 degrees C).
• Transfer 1 loaf on its parchment to a rimless baking sheet with a long side of loaf parallel to far edge of baking sheet. Line up far edge of baking sheet with far edge of stone or tiles, and tilt baking sheet to slide loaf with parchment onto back half of stone or tiles. Transfer remaining loaf to front half of stone in a similar manner. Bake ciabatta loaves 20 minutes, or until pale golden. Cool loaves on a wire rack.

Eggplant Milanesa

Ingredients:

• Breadcrumbs: 2 cups
• Eggplants: 2 medium size
• Parsley: 2 tbs.
• Eggs: 3
• Garlic: 2 cloves
• Salt and pepper: to your taste
• Olive Oil: 1 tbs.
• Lemon: 1/2

Optional:

• Tomato sauce
• Mozzarella cheese

Directions:

• Thinly cut the eggplants on the long side, about 1 cm thickness.
• Place the eggplant slices on a plate and sprinkle with salt. Let them sit for about 20 minutes or until you see the eggplants releasing moisture. Pat the eggplants dry with a paper towel.
• Chop finely the garlic and parsley.
• Wisk the eggs and add the garlic, parsley, salt and pepper.
• Place the breadcrumbs on a large plate.
• Pass the eggplants through the egg mixture until they are wet. Cover both sides of each eggplant slice with breadcrumbs (lightly patting the breadcrumbs to have them stick to the eggplant).
• Spread olive oil on cooking sheet and place the eggplants one next to the other. Cook in the oven at 350 until they are golden.


Tomato Sauce

Ingredients
• Canned crushed tomatoes (some? Say ¼ or 1/3 of the can?)
• 3 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
• 1 onion (finely chopped)
• Dried basil and oregano (use a heavy hand)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
• Fry onions and garlic in grapeseed oil for a few minutes
• Add crushed tomatoes
• Add basil and oregano and seasoning
• Simmer for 25 minutes

Fish Cakes

This past August I went to Nova Scotia for the seaside wedding of dear friends. It was an extremely wonderful few days: such great people, so many little bunnies, the ocean and, of course, its progeny.

One of the many things I’d been looking forward to before getting on the plane was the chance, at long last, to eat myself into a cheaper-than-in-Ontario lobster coma.

I had never really eaten lobster and had been acutely aware of it for years. I’d been told legends of lobster eating on a family vacation to Montauk when I was 3, but other than that, it was just the occasional lobster spoon stealthfully eaten at a catering gig. I needed to eat lobster, but didn’t want to pay anything close to what I would have to locally. I had become so desperate that on my bad days I even entertained Red Lobster.

On my second night in the Maritimes, Katie’s and Jay’s families hosted a lobster fest. I sort of (and sort of don’t) wish I had a keep-sake from that bucket-list evening: I have not a single photo and couldn’t in good conscience keep the bib (they were given to everyone, not just me). I’ll just have to survive with my memories of lobster tails and claws as far as the eye could see.

Back in Toronto, I found myself in a predicament: I wasn’t going to buy lobster for this homage. I also ruled out chowder because I could not bring myself to pour a litre of whipping cream into a pot of soup. Although apparently ordering it in a restaurant is fine as is drinking lattes made with 18 percent cream.

After limited and painless deliberation, I settled on fish cakes. I didn’t eat fish cakes in Nova Scotia but making them did, curiously, bring me back to those idyllic four days.

At the eleventh hour, I decided to make tartar sauce. I still haven’t looked up the recipe, so take this with a grain of salt, but a little voice in my head kept telling me to mix mayonnaise, horseradish and relish. Since I didn’t have relish I chopped up bread & butter pickles instead. Quite honestly, I can’t decide which I enjoyed more, the tartar sauce or the fish cakes. The little voice was trustworthy.



FISH CAKES

Ingredients
• 2 fillets cod (or any other type of fish, typical or not)
• 3-4 potatoes
• 2 eggs
• 2 green onions, minced
• 2 garlic scapes, minced
• Salt and pepper
• Flour
• Vegetable oil

Directions
• Boil potatoes
• While the potatoes are boiling, season the fish and fry until cooked
• In a bowl or food processor, mash together the fish, potatoes, eggs, green onion and garlic scapes and season with salt and pepper
• Make the mash into patties and coat with flour
• Fry the patties until brown.


TARTAR SAUCE

Ingredients
• Mayonnaise, a blob/dollop
• Horseradish, a smaller blob/dollop
• Bread & butter pickles (finely chopped) or yum-yums or relish

Directions

• Mix ingredients in a bowl

Watermelon and Feta

The summer of my 17th year, while sitting at a sea-side café on the beach of Tel-Aviv, feet in the sand, I had a revelation. It was a revelation that spawned not from any conventional religious experience per se but from the simplest of acts: eating a plate of watermelon and feta cheese.

Admittedly, the night was memorable for more than just the food: it was in Israel, where I had also travelled at 15, that I experienced freedom and independence for the first time. In hindsight, I think that every step I took in that country as a teenager was adorned with magic. Having said that, I have had many wonderful and defining moments in Israel over the years, from hiking in the Negev desert, to exploring archaeological excavations, to a short stint studying law at the Hebrew University, to running around Tel-Aviv day and night, to spending time with wonderful family and friends and of course to being asked hilariously personal questions, often very thoughtful, by abject strangers from the nation of people who know no social boundaries, to name only a few.


Of the defining moments, that night was one. When I eat, or think of eating, watermelon and feta, I always think of that summer night and countless others like it.


In case it isn’t clear, the revelation was that watermelon and feta are an incredible combination: my introduction to the sweet and savoury union.


Since my awakening, it’s been sweet and savoury this and sweet and savoury that. I’ve had the underwhelming Nature Valley Bars (be warned! The balance is off! You can hardly taste the savoury!) and the unquestionably successful Lindt sea-salt chocolate. Lindt was right on the money as were the guys who invented maple syrup on bacon. In fact, just last night I had maple bacon ice cream (Ed’s Real Scoop) and while I entered the situation a skeptic, I came out a believer.


To be fair to other sweet and savoury combos, part of what gives watermelon-feta its winning edge is the genius at play with texture and “state”. Watermelon is essentially a sweet liquid and feta the saltiest and chalkiest of them all. The watermelon cuts the intensity of the feta perfectly. It’s catharsis at its best.


That’s really the essence of this post. Perhaps you’re thinking, “Leora, dedicating an entire 500 words to such a simple dish is crazy.” You may also be thinking, “Leora, dedicating an entire 500 words to such a sublimely simple dish is sheer brilliance.” And I think it’s open to debate which of you are correct. Let me get the dialogue flowing: on the one hand it’s true; there is nothing creative or particularly skilful in slicing up watermelon and feta and eating them in concert. On the other hand, simple food is almost always amazing and almost all amazing food is pretty simple.


If you fall in the “crazy” camp, you can jazz up your watermelon and feta as a salad. I’ve in the past added red onion, kalamata olives and a drizzle of olive oil. This time I’ve added nothing. It was smouldering outside when I made this (clearly I did not make this today) so you can imagine how refreshing it was.


No recipe needed this time.

Falafel

I’m the farthest you can get from a picky eater but I’ve never been a fan of falafel. I’ve stared many a falafel square in the eye (I always blink first) but am always more contented with a pita stuffed with an array of eggplant salads, coleslaws, pickled veggies, grilled veggies, hummus, tahina and hot sauces. You can imagine my surprise when I ate that falafel in Amman. … [tangent/flashback begins]


… In the summer of 2005, while waiting on foot at the Israeli-Jordanian border on what I had thought was to be a 3 day excursion to Petra, I met and tagged along with an Israeli off-road jeep tour that did take me to Petra, but also all over the Arabian desert, Wadi Rum, Aqaba and Amman. What an incredible trip. When I think of my time in Jordan, I always think of the listless, silent and smouldering sand dunes of the Arabian desert and the contrasting bustle and vitality of downtown Amman.


The food, on the other hand, is one of the last things to come to mind … with the exception of the goat brain (and the falafel, of course). The goat brain can be chalked up to the fact that I’m not one to shy away from eating something new and maybe more so that I could not say no to the exuberant and friendly restauranteur at what appeared to be the only restaurant in the world, planted somewhere in a seemingly endless desert. I always think of the goat brain. Not because I liked it but because I didn’t. It was the texture. If you are interested in preparing goat brain at home then I suggest you google a recipe as this gal is not inspired to recreate that experience. …


… That 25 cent Amman falafel sandwich was hands-down my most delicious meal in Jordan (I already feel guilty writing this I mean I DID eat other decent meals it wasn’t like I was nauseated left right and centre just nothing other than the goat and the falafel really wowed me – for different reasons - and maybe I was eating in the wrong places, who knows). I remember my surprise at how delicious the falafel was, which by then I had been consciously avoiding for probably 15 years. Thinking back, the spice blend must have been impeccable and the chickpeas fresh (or at least freshly fried) but at the time I could only attribute the agreeableness of the flavour to its un-constant variable - the fried onion centre of each falafel ball.


My Amman experience gave me renewed faith in that great Middle Eastern street food. While falafel is pretty abundant in Toronto (to grossly understate its presence), I have never since had falafel that I liked as much and have continually made sense of this as the absence of the fried-onion centre. … [foreshadowing].


I therefore set out to recreate my perfect falafel, stuffed with fried onion. Along the way, I decided to make the pita, babaganoush and tahina that you see in the picture too. I've adding another very similar photo to the one above to break up the post.

Making falafel was easier than I had expected. Other than soaking the chickpeas overnight, the dough took little time to prepare. The only unpleasant part of the experience was the frying. For some reason the oil kept detonating and splattering everywhere which is scary. It was only when all the balls were ready to meet their certain death in that pot of crackling and blistering oil that I realized that I had totally forgotten about the fried onions. In an adrenalin-induced reaction, the kind reserved for executing extraordinary physical feats in the face of mortal danger, I chopping some red onion and stuffed it, raw, into the centre of some of the balls. After all of my efforts, it wasn’t going to be like in Jordan at all.


The happy ending is that I had been wrong! The secret was not in the fried onion! The symbiosis of the garlic, the parsley, the savoury spices along with the sweetness of the chickpeas was an absolute success. The falafel was completely delicious. I’ll be making them again but next time in the oven. The pita, babaganoush and tahina were not nearly as treacherous.



Falafel

Ingredients

• 1 cup dried chickpeas
• ½ large onion
• 2 tablespoons parsley
• 2 tablespoons fresh cilantro
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon chilli pepper flakes
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 6 tablespoons flour
• Soybean or vegetable oil

Directions

1. Put chickpeas in bowl and cover with cold water. Soak 12-24 hours and drain. (You can also use canned chickpeas).

2. In food processor, blend (not puree) chickpeas, onion, parsley, cilantro, salt, chilli flakes, garlic and cumin.

3. Add baking powder and flour and blend. Dough should not stick to your hands. Add more flour if need be. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours.

4. Form dough into small balls.

5. Heat 3 inches of oil to 375 degrees in a deep pot or wok. Fry balls in batches - a few minutes on each side until golden brown. Drain on paper towels.

Pita
Ingredients
• 1 1/8 cups warm water
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 ½ teaspoons white sugar
• 1 ½ teaspoons active dry yeast

Directions
1. Mix ingredients together and let rise 2 hours (or if you are like me, add way more active dry yeast and let it rise for ten minutes)
2. On a floured surface, divide dough into 8 balls.
3. Roll each ball into a 6 to 7 inch circle. On a floured surface, cover with a towel and let rise about 30 minutes until slightly puffy.
4. Preheat oven to 500 F. Place 2 or 3 pitas on a wire cake rack directly on oven rack. Bake 4 to 5 minutes until puffed and tops begin to brown.
5. Remove from oven and immediately cover with a damp kitchen towel until soft.

Babaganoush

Ingredients
• 3 eggplants (small)
• Olive oil (for brushing eggplants)
• Salt and pepper
• Red chilli flakes (to taste)
• 2 tbsp cilantro
• 2 tbsp oregano (fresh)
• 1 garlic clove
• 3 tbsp lemon juice
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• Sea salt
• Ground pepper

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 450 F.
2. cut the eggplants length-wise into halves, brush with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper
3. Bake for 15-20 minutes until eggplants are completely soft
4. Blend the eggplants with the chilli flakes, cilantro, oregano, garlic, lemon juice and olive oil in the food processor.
5. Season to taste

Tahina
Ingredients
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup tahina paste
• ½ cup fresh lemon juice
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 tsp salt

Directions

Mix ingredients together in a bowl. Got it?

Sunflower Seed Pesto

A few days ago I was craving a caprese salad with mozzarella di buffola. I’m going to be painfully cautious (and hopefully not insulting) in saying that caprese anything is a combination of tomatoes, fresh mozzarella (think soft, mild, buttery, succulent) and basil. Mozzarella di buffola is buffalo mozzarella in Italian (I am still committed to providing all translations).

Now it is definitely the time of year for abundant fresh and cheap basil. Since I don’t have my balcony garden set up yet (and even when I have had basil plants they are always picked clean to a morbid and grotesque extent) and since I live in the grocery wasteland of Queen West, I try to take advantage of groceries when I see them. This can be as practical as stopping in Kensington on my ride home from work or as ill-thought-through as buying a baguette on my way to the bar. In a tireless quest to perfect the practical, I stopped at the green grocer at the corner of Manning and Bloor on my way home from work the other day. The Manning Market is one of those places where I do what I like to call my carpe diem produce shops. So long as you’re not stock-piling veggies for some unforeseen natural disaster, which you can’t really do anyway, the Manning Market is the place to buy. In stark contradiction, though, there was that one disturbing time when my sister and I road-tripped to Upstate New York, bought a head of lettuce, came back to Canada with the lettuce, which I then proceeded to forget about, and rediscovered it 4 months later, pristine, in my veggie crisper. To clarify, the road-trip wasn’t disturbing, it was great, and the trip wasn’t for the purpose of buying the lettuce. That was just incidental. The very important and eerie message about certain American produce however needs no further explanation.


You may, or may not, be wondering why there are no photos of the caprese or at the very least basil, and why, conversely, I’ve posted a photo of a bowl with what looks to be 7 pieces of rigatoni in it. Well, I’ve done so because today’s post is actually about the by-product of that caprese: the pesto I made with the loads of remaining, and rapidly aging, basil.


Traditional Genoese pesto is made from basil, olive oil, pine nuts, parmigiano reggiano and garlic. In 2007, I spent 10 hedonistic days in northern Italy visiting friends on Lago di Como. Northern Italy is breathtaking and on top of that I ate well. The food at gas stations in Italy (please don’t ask me why I know this) was without a doubt better than many restaurant meals in Toronto and after only 10 days away, eating at home seemed lacklustre and depressing for weeks.

Unlike that of my Genoese soul mates, this evening’s pesto was made by throwing basil, olive oil, sunflower seeds, hemp seeds, flax seeds and small amounts of both parmigiano reggiano and cave-aged gruyere into the food processor. No salt necessary since parmigiano gets the job done. The other photo is of an arugula, toasted pine nut, jalapeno oil (homemade) pesto which I made another night. We’ll call it Pesto 2. I added the photo of Pesto 2 in an attempt to compensate for the photo of Pesto 1.


Pesto 1 (and Pesto 2 for that matter) did not disappoint. Flavourful, colourful, creamy, fresh, simple food.


If you’ve come to the well-reasoned conclusion that I forgot to photograph the meal before eating it, ergo the photo of 7 noodles, I’m not going to sugar-coat it, you’re wrong. The sensational truth is that I made the pesto on the tail of the caprese in that foreboding and pointless attempt to outfox Father Time. I wasn’t hungry, but was also not comfortable with the idea of not trying the pesto while it was fresh. While hunger is typically not something I take into consideration when deciding whether to eat, today I boiled a scant few noodles, enjoyed the pesto, and froze the rest for another day. Cryogenics. Brilliant.

The Breakfast Sandwich

New F@#$%ing York (too soon to swear?). I love that City for just about every reason under the sun. It’s beautiful, it’s old, it’s young, it’s historic, it’s creative, it’s friendly (don’t listen to what they say), it’s colourful, it’s loud, it’s inspiring, it’s fun, it’s international, it’s over-stimulating and it’s delicious.

I got one of those opportunities-of-a-lifetime to spend a few months in NYC in 2008. It was during those months that I fell hard for the City. I hate to say it, but living in New York is about a thousand times better than visiting. That’s because the charm of the City is in the nooks and the crannies that take time to discover and know. The City is so overwhelming and vast that it’s hard to know where to begin with only a short stay and if you’ve somehow managed to figure it out, well, then a weekend’s just not enough time. I’ve definitely considered the possibility that I wasn’t in NY for long enough to become annoyed by all the things that make it so great and that I left while the metaphorical party was still raging. With that disclaimer in mind, every minute I spent in the City was an adventure, and especially a culinary one.


Despite my love for the kitchen, my gas bills were low during those NY months. You can eat (affordably or not, you decide) breakfast, lunch and dinner every single bloody day at different street stands, dives and restaurants and never ever run out of excellent options. The City just begs you to eat out. And that is pretty much what I did. I even kept a log on my computer of all the places I ate at over those months, and now, when friends are heading down to the City, I give them suggestions of where, and in what neighbourhoods, to eat, although I’m sure that 90 percent of those recommendations no longer exist. I guess New York wouldn’t be New York if that weren't the case.


NY is a City built on immigrants and foreigners, but there’s no doubt that there are distinctly NY foods. Breakfast sandwiches, for example, are astonishingly ubiquitous. At every turn, you find another café, deli, diner, stall, hole-in-the-wall, convenience stores and fast food chain where coffee and a sandwich (bagel, biscuit or English muffin) of egg, sausage or bacon and cheese will run you $2.50. One of my many favourite NY past-times was waking up, choosing a neighbourhood, choosing reading material, finding one of those purveyors of the breakfast sandwich, spending 2-3 minutes eating the sandwich and another couple of hours drinking coffee and reading. Truth be told, when I wrote the second sentence of this paragraph I was going on observation alone, but now I am also vindicated by my favourite resource: while apparently some guy in Southwest Oklahoma named Harold Moeller invented the breakfast sandwich around 1954, one of the earliest breakfast sandwiches in the U S of A was actually the typical tri-state breakfast sandwich.


Today, in an homage to that great City, which I dearly miss for far more reasons than I’ve listed above, I have made breakfast sandwiches on English muffins. Disturbingly, it turns out that McDonald’s was the first to make the breakfast sandwich on English muffin which teaches me for doing my “research” during the post-production phase.


Let me walk you through that photo. From top to bottom, you’ve got home-made English muffin, melted cloth-bound Avonlea cheddar, home-made breakfast sausage/patty and an over-easy egg (then there’s more muffin but you can’t see it). I think an authentic breakfast sandwich is probably made with a Kraft cheese single (sometimes called American cheese), but that stuff is embarrassing to buy and tastes like plastic. While it looks like I made the sandwich with an ostrich egg, I didn’t. I just made extremely tiny (accidentally so) English muffins. I used the tiniest plate I own to take this photo to make the sandwich look gigantic.

Like all proud mothers (the kind that eat their own offspring, that is) I’m a bit biased, but I think you can tell from the picture that the sandwich was great. Let’s start with the sausage: it was rich with layers of flavour, after having marinated for 24 hours in herbs, and had a subtle sweetness from the pinch of brown sugar that kicked in after a few chews. As for the English muffins, they are apparently cooked on a griddle, and not baked, which I found to be a logistical pain-in-the-ass, and I’m not sure the pain was worth it for a sandwich I’d rather eat on a bagel. The muffins also didn’t expand as much as I had expected during cooking which accounted for their miniature status. Having said that, I now know the secret of the English muffin and so can you if you follow the recipe below.


Which brings me to the end of this post: the rest is just the muffin and sausage recipes for those who are interested (how dare I say “just”!) and for those who aren’t, now’s the time to stop reading.


ENGLISH MUFFINS

Ingredients (20 muffins)
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 1.5 teaspoons of active dry yeast
• 1 cup warm water
• 1/4 cup melted shortening
• 6 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions
1. Warm milk in small saucepan until boils and remove from heat. Add and dissolve sugar and let cool until room temperature.
2. In a different bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water and let stand about 10 minutes.
3. In another bowl, combine milk, yeast mixture, shortening and 3 cups flour and mix until fully blended.
4. Add the salt and remaining flour and knead.
5. Put dough in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise say … 3 hours?
6. Roll the dough to about 1/2 inch thick. Cut rounds with biscuit cutter, drinking glass, or empty tuna can. (FYI I used a drinking mason-jar and it made super tiny muffins I’d go with a tuna can!).
7. Sprinkle waxed paper with cornmeal and set the muffins on this to rise. Sprinkle the top of the muffins with cornmeal. Cover and let rise 1/2 hour (I didn’t do this).
8. Heat greased griddle to medium and cook muffins for 10 minutes on each side (watch the heat these will burn).


HOMEMADE BEEF BREAKFAST SAUSAGE PATTIES

Ingredients (I halved this recipe)
• 2 pounds ground beef
• 2 teaspoons dried sage
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 teaspoons dried basil
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

Directions
1. Mix sage, basil, brown sugar, onion powder, salt, pepper, marjoram and red pepper flakes in a bowl.
2. In another bowl, add the spice mixture to the ground beef and evenly mix. Refrigerate for 24 hours to let the flavours blend.
3. Divide into 8 patties.
4. Cook the patties in a pan on medium heat until cooked through (approx 7 minutes per side).

Baozi - Chinese Steam Buns

My brother lives in Shanghai. Last May I went to visit him and ate for 3 weeks straight. Shanghai is an extraordinary city. You can wander the streets endlessly, never boring, and forever passing another street stall or small restaurant selling some incredible and slightly different version of Chinese breakfast fare: dumplings (jiaozi), shanghai soup dumplings (xia long bao) and steam buns (baozi). My Shanghai routine started each morning with a gentle nudge from jetlag at around 5:30, after which it was off to explore and eat. I mapped out my daily routes based on where I hadn’t managed to eat the day before, and systematically, and with probably the most self-control I’ve ever exercised in my life (but only so that I could maximize on variety), ate my way through the neighbourhoods until my brother finished work and we went for dinner. I’ve heard China horror stories of inedible meals, unidentifiable meats and unpalatable cuts, but this was not my experience at all. I could live in Shanghai for more than just the food but believe me you could make a case on the food alone. While it’s true my Mandarin was essentially non-existent AT THE TIME (now it’s just almost non-existent - there’s a difference), I quickly learned, during those days of wander, that waving an index finger at pictures of food or at other people’s plates is universal for “I want that” and was able to procure myself some delicious meals.

I’ve always been a big fan of baozi (which were created by Zhuge Liang, a 3rd century AD scholar and military strategist, says Wikipedia). As a youngun, my mum used to take me to the sadly defunct Baldwin Street bun shop where I developed my appreciation and, nowadays, stopping into the Ding Dong Pastry Shop or Chinese Traditional Bun (my favourite fancy restaurant) are regular parts of my not-so-routine-like routine. In high school, I was also obsessed with Wok with Yan and Yan can Cook – vestiges of a time when cooking shows were not quite as cool as they are today and had live studio audiences that got to eat the food. You heard me. Cooking shows are now cool. In truth, I never actually saw Yan make baozi, but his shows were on for years so I think it’s fair to assume he may have at some point.

I’d never made steam buns before today but I’d spent many hours thinking about them. And since I’ve always believed in really testing boundaries, despite their rightful place beside the cereal box and the orange juice, baozi were on the dinner menu tonight.

Making baozi was not complicated but because the dough needed to rise, the end result was not immediate. The starter of yeast, sugar, flour, and warm water sat for a half-hour and was then mixed with more flour and water, some salt, sugar and a little bit of veggie oil. I hardly kneaded the dough, although I was supposed to, and let it sit in a greased bowl for 3 hours. While the dough was rising, I cooked the ground meat (chicken or pork … I’m not telling you which to use or which one I did) and mixed it with green onions, ginger, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, veggie oil, sugar, water and pepper. When the dough was ready, I sprinkled with baking powder and kneaded for about 20 seconds (because I am impatient and not because that was what the recipe told me to do) and then divided it into 24 balls. I rolled the balls out and filled each one with the filling. I then place each bun on a square of wax paper (just like in Shanghai!) and proceeded to steam, ignoring entirely another “suggested” half hour of rising.

I steamed the buns using a pasta cauldron that came with its very own strainer. Because I didn’t feel like steaming the buns in endless batches, I also tried placing an oven rack over a pot, placing the buns on the rack, and placing the ill-fitting lid on top of the rack. The cauldron-strainer-get-up worked, the oven-rack didn’t. I also wound up boiling off all the water and charbroiling the bottom of my cauldron. I wish I could say I had never done that before.

The buns were unbelievably good. The dough was soft, light and fluffy and the filling was both tangy and sweet thanks to the complement of ginger, vinegar, soy and sugar. There they are in that picture over there. I read on someone’s blog on the internet (a refreshing change from the questionably credible Wikipedia) that Mao’s favourite food was chicken soup with garlic sprouts and pork. One of Deng Xiaoping’s favourites was Double Taste Fiery Pot. Now that does not mean that they did not like baozi, it just means they liked those other things more.

Pan de Yuca

When I was 21, I spent a year in Quito, Ecuador. It was an amazing and formative and life-changing year that left me with a lot of great food memories. Nothing takes me back to those incredible days more than Just Like Heaven by The Cure, Zhumir Limon (an economical 60 proof aguardiente - sugarcane alcohol - that, I respectfully submit, is not destined for the export market) and pan de yuca.

Pan de yuca (yuca bread) is a snack food/breakfast food/light-meal food popularly eaten in Ecuador and, I recently discovered, Brazil (and I use “discovered” in the same way that Columbus and the Conquistadors used it how apropos). I’d say that pan de yuca is eaten in Ecuador the same way that Torontonians would eat doughnuts or muffins or biscuits, except for the inherent flaw in my analogy being that Torontonians don't typically eat biscuits, in truth I have no idea how anyone eats biscuits but am willing to google it, and also that there's actually nothing comparable about any place that would sell pan de yuca in Ecuador and any place that would sell a doughnut in Toronto. Beyond that we’re talking perfect symmetry.

Yuca is a rainforest tuber. It is also known as cassava and manioc and according to Wikipedia has dozens of local names in Africa, Asia and Central and South America. Apparently there is also a band in Vancouver called Yuca. An excellent choice, I say! Back to the tuber, yuca is used in food-making almost like a potato. After being cooked (it is toxic when raw), yuca can be mashed, turned into meal and baked or fried, deep fried as a chip, roasted or turned into chewy tapioca and puddings. I found this photo of raw yuca on the internet I hope that’s cool with whoever introduced this picture to the world.

Pan de yuca is made from yuca flour. In Spanish, the word for flour is harina, and yuca flour is sold as Yucarina. I mean brilliant. Who could help but fall in love with yuca now? The other ingredients are minimal - queso fresco, egg and baking powder. Queso fresco (fresh cheese – haha - confused you!) is a soft, mild and rubbery unripened Spanish cheese that is found everywhere in Ecuador and other parts of Latin America. It is so damn good it is almost irrational to blend it into a dough and here I go doing just that. I had actually really wanted to wait until my Dutch cheese press arrived and I had made my very own queso fresco to blog about pan de yuca but I just couldn't wait.

The pan de yuca-making process involved putting the ingredients in the food processor with a bit of water and baking little balls of the dough at 400 for 15 minutes. When these savoury biscuits are fresh and hot, they are chewy on the inside with a thin crispy crust. Very very good. The chewiness is actually not from the cheese but from the yuca itself which can make, like tapioca, naturally gummy foods. In our home in Ecuador (I lived with a family), we usually ate pan de yuca at around 8pm coupled with hot chocolate. I couldn't do that today because my milk had curdled (that's the picture of my sad milk) but that’s okay because pan de yuca need no bells or whistles.

This certainly won't be my last post on Ecuador: I'm an efficient eater at the best of times so you can only imagine what I was able to accomplish in a year. Let’s just say that pan de yuca is the inaugural kick-off to what will become relapsing nostalgia on this blog. The Cure is blasting, the Zhumir is flowing (a mildly unfortunate yet, fortunately, proverbial consequence of this reminisce) and I’m home.

The Cobb-Nicoise

So summer is starting and I haven’t eaten much fresh salad in months. The winter was you know the gamut of all leafy greens, root veggies in various forms, Bologneses, Octoberfests, soups, gnocchi, dumplings and you know the winter foods. But until tonight I hadn’t had a hankering for a lettuce salad in months. Wait – that’s not entirely true. I have requited a couple of salad cravings in the last while, all of which fell into the same bizarre taxonomical classification: the Cobb. I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, especially on my first blog. I mean the Cobb is some weird American invention and it involves no cooking whatsoever. I’m going to google the history of the Cobb right now … The Cobb was invented in the 1930s (as per Wikipedia) at the Hollywood Brown Derby, an LA-based restaurant, and is named after the restaurant’s owner, Robert Howard Cobb. It is described on Wikipedia as a main-dish garden salad. Apparently it is made from iceberg lettuce, water cress, endives and Romaine, tomato, bacon, roasted chicken, hard-boiled egg, avocado, chives and Roquefort cheese with a red-wine vinegrette. So I guess since America is not a massive mono-culture I’d say that the Cobb is Californian? That just sounds ridiculous, though.

At around 4:00pm today as I was eating my co-worker’s Korean rice balls as I do everyday around that time, I realized I wasn’t going to be going to yoga this evening but was going to be making a Cobb salad instead. Or a Cobb-Nicoise let’s say since I knew that I wasn’t adding chicken and also because I was having another embarrassing craving (I can’t believe this is my first post who will ever follow me) for my childhood comfort food…canned Albacore tuna. (Does it make this any better that I specified Albacore?) By the way, Salad Nicoise (yes, I deliberately placed “salad” before “Nicoise” in a very non-English-grammar sort of way to subtly guide the reader to the assumption that I am worldly) originated on the French Riviera and is named after the city of Nice.

In truth, I really can’t tell if my Cobb-Nicoise looks good at all in these photos but trust me it was. I wish I were a better photographer or had a cool camera or at least knew how to use all the neat features on this point-and-shoot that I’ve got. I’ve been thinking my photos may not do this blog justice but I don’t want to put the cart ahead of the horse on day 1 and commit to improving my photography skills. If no one follows me I’ll obviously know why and invest in my photography.

Enough of my rambling. The salad: it was a bit of the kitchen sink – hence the Cobb-Nicoise-everythingness of it. Romaine, fresh tomatoes, chives, avocado, celery, sunflower seeds, dark raisins, fresh blueberries, canned tuna (teehee), hard-boiled egg, Bleu de Bresse and this perfect fresh strawberry vinegrette I whipped up.

I should talk about the cheese and the vinegrette: I’ve just finished taking this incredible cheese course that has been so informative and has inspired me to pay so much more attention to the cheeses I purchase and also to make my own cheese. Bleu de Bresse is a French blue-veined pasteurized cow milk cheese from the Servoz region of France. It is creamy and smooth and probably cream enriched and has the same texture and integrity as a brie or camembert. It’s gorgeous. Not too piquante for those who hate blues and not too salty for those who like to taste their food. I won’t say much more about the cheese (even though you knooowww I could) because this is getting long and I want you to come back.

The dressing: I blended strawberries, olive oil (a really good one which perhaps I’ll feature on another post), balsamic, honey, Dijon, salt and pepper in the food processor. The sweet dressing complemented the bleu soooo well.

I tossed a piece of some home-baked bread (to be discussed at a future date) into the bowl and dinner was great.

So let’s see: if I really wanted to bring it home (since I have managed on my first post to abandon almost in its entirety my mission statement) I’d say that today’s salad took us to California, the home of the Cobb, and to France, both to Servoz in the Rhone-Alpes and to Nice. I’d say we went back to California for the fresh strawberries and blueberries (since I admit we’re still a few weeks away from Ontario’s strawberry season but man is game on in California right now). And while I’ve never been to Los Angeles or to Servoz (I was in Nice when I was 9 for a few days) I miss all three places dearly.

My Mission Statement

My inspiration for this blog came from my dual passion for food and for the world and its cultures. I experience countries and their essence through their food and drink, plan my days around my meals abroad and in Toronto, and am always inspired to recreate the dishes I’ve eaten abroad when I return home. From the ceviche of the Ecuadorian coast to the mole of Mexico to the soup dumplings of the streets of Shanghai, the concept for this blog is to post on foods that I’ve cooked in Toronto after eating them abroad. It’ll keep me inspired and passionate and help me continue to remember and enjoy those travels. It’s also way cheaper than eating out (and travelling for that matter) and almost always a better meal. And on that note…