salmon with warm tomato basil oil

Last week, I mentioned my love affair with Ricardo videos. (Luckily, Scott also loves the videos, so it's all above board.)

This week, I'd like to tell you about the other chef I let pop into my world on a regular basis: Laura Calder.

There are many reasons I love Laura. Let me count them for you.

1. She always wears dresses.
2. When she says "just a little bit of butter," she puts a huge bit of butter into the pan.
3. She has a somewhat similar background to me: languages, journalism, public relations, appreciation of bacon . . .

Laura has also worked on food in France, as a cookbook writer and helping to run a cooking school. She is a genius with meat and has taught me how to sear and brown and braise.

(My mother is also very good at cooking meat, but I completely threw away my chance to learn from her, since I was a vegetarian during my teenage years at home. Alas. She teaches me things now when I visit.)

Anyway, I bet you're wondering about this fish and these tomatoes and that basil?

Turns out, tomatoes and basil aren't just for pasta! Or bread!

Nope, they're also for salmon. Just take a bit of olive oil, warm it gently, throw in the tomatoes and basil and you have a lovely treat for your salmon, which has been baking in the oven for a few minutes.

We also tried this with a very light salmon that was almost a trout and it was a very happy fish indeed with its slick of tomatoes and basil. (Trout: so close to salmon and yet so different. How does that work? Are they related?)

What to serve it with? I'd suggest new potatoes and a simple green salad with loganberry vinaigrette. Your plate may look like it came from the cafeteria at IKEA, but it will taste a lot fresher. (Don't new boiled potatoes rolling around your plate and bumping into a piece of salmon make you think of IKEA?)

One year ago: Kristina's nuss kuchen (cherry hazelnut cake)
Two years ago: honey orange cream

salmon with warm tomato basil oil
slightly adapted from Laura Calder
serves 4 – 6

a filet of salmon or trout to serve 4 – 6 people (about 600 – 800 g.)
salt and pepper
1/3 – 1/2 c. virgin olive oil
2 tomatoes, seeded* and finely diced
1 handful basil leaves, cut in fine strips

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit (160 degrees Celcius).

Rub a good amount of salt and pepper into the salmon. Bake until it's just cooked through. It should take about 15 minutes; start checking on it after 12.

In the meantime, set a small pot with a heavy bottom over medium-low heat. Pour in the olive oil and warm it. This will happen quickly, possibly in 1 – 2 minutes. Whatever you do, err on the side of not overheating the oil. Remove it from the heat.

Check that you haven't heated the oil too hot. Standing as far away as you can, drop a piece of tomato into it and step back. If it fizzes and suddenly deep-fries, the oil is too hot. Give it a few minutes to cool down. If the tomato just sits happily in the oil, you may carry on.

Stir the tomato and basil into the oil. Taste and season with salt and pepper, keeping in mind that you've already put salt and pepper on the salmon.

Once the fish is done and out of the oven, move it to a serving platter. Spoon the warm tomato and basil oil over. Serve.


*Here's an easy way to seed a tomato. Cut it into wedges. Use a sharp paring knife to scrape out the seeds. Done.

penne with sausage and greens

This was the winter of kale.

This was the spring of kale.

This is the early summer of kale.

We have learned how to make kale chips and we have learned the secret to enjoying kale: chop it into very small, tiny, miniature pieces. Chopped like that, we ate it almost every week and hardly noticed.

See those fine bits of kale and chard?

You may be a kale fan.

You may enjoy eating tough pieces of the same green leaf over and over again.

We're not and don't.

But we do, of course, want to eat local vegetables in season, which is why we're still eating kale six months after we learned to chop it very finely. (When does the season end???) And now Swiss chard is joining the kale ranks.

We've also sought out new recipes to use this everlasting vegetable, which leads me to today's offering: penne with sausage and greens.

Dear Ricardo calls for arugula, but I knew kale would work. Turns out, so does Swiss chard. All these green options make it a very flexible recipe for the whole year long. I like that, since it also comes together quickly – 35 minutes or so – so it's easy to make after work.

I seem to be using "fun" as a prerequisite for recipes these days – remember the potato chips in the lettuce wraps? – and this one definitely measures up. Because you actually get to snip open your raw sausages and squeeze that tasty meat right out! How fun is that? Let me tell you, it's pretty darn satisfying.

Using sausage meat like this is brilliant, really, since the meat is already seasoned and ready to make me a quick dinner. No fuss, no muss (except for the fun squeezing).

What more can I tell you?

Oh, right, about Ricardo. Do you know this dear man? We haven't actually met him, but we are addicted to his cooking videos.

Apparently, he's quite famous in his native Québec. A little while ago, he started recording "Ricardo and Friends" in English. Every episode, he has people come over and he cooks for them with great enthusiasm in his big Montreal kitchen. Sometimes, he cooks for the workers re-paving his street, sometimes he cooks for his friends' kids, but usually, he cooks for two or three good-looking Montréalais friends. (Why are French Canadians always so much more chic than English Canadians?)

The friends all ooh and ahh over the meal and we invariably wish he would invite us over.

Sometimes, we watch him in French to practise our French, but he seems to speak a lot more quickly in French. It's like his whole personality changes, which is fascinating in itself.

But anyway, back to this recipe. It works! It makes a great dinner! Don't worry about that whole cup of red wine – it cooks right in and helps finish the sausage-y sauce.

Bon appétit!

One year ago: Kathleen Claiborne's hot cakes
Two years ago: Chili pasta

penne with sausage and greens
adapted from Ricardo Larrivée
serves 4 – 5 

 


375 g. (3/4 lb.) penne pasta
30 ml (2 tbsp.) olive oil
450 g. (1 lb.) good sausage meat, pork or turkey, squeezed out of the casing
5 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 tsp. Korean red pepper flakes or hot pepper flakes
4 plum (or any) tomatoes, diced
500 ml (2 c.) Swiss chard, kale or baby arugula, chopped finely
250 ml (1 c.) red wine
250 – 500 ml (1 – 2 c.) Asiago cheese, grated

Boil the pasta in salted water until it's al dente. Drain and toss with 1 tbsp. olive oil. Set aside.

In the mean time, heat a heavy-bottomed skillet or Dutch oven over medium-low heat. Add the other 1 tbsp. of oil. Brown the sausage meat, garlic and pepper flakes, breaking up the meat into small pieces as you please. This will take about 5 minutes.

Add the tomatoes. If you're using chard or kale, add it now. Stir often until the liquid has evaporated, about 7 minutes. Pour the wine in and try not to panic about the amount of liquid you now have in your pan. Cook for about 3 minutes. Add the pasta and stir until everything is hot. Taste for seasonings and add salt and pepper if necessary. If you're using arugula, stir it in now.

Serve in wide, shallow bowls with lots of Asiago cheese.

hop & go fetch it: pacific rim edition

See that?

That is a perfect lunch-time dessert. It's sticky jasmine rice with mango and coconut cream and it's divine. We ate it at the über-lovely Café Julia in Honolulu (where I freely admit we ate five meals over the course of our nine-day stay).

I have been travelling and it's now time for the Pacific Rim edition of hop & go fetch it: Hawaii, Vancouver, Victoria and Nanaimo. The restaurants include the exotic influences of Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, French and Scottish food . . . but they're all located in places that actually sit on the Pacific Ocean.

Now, you might not think little Nanaimo is exciting enough to be included in these Pacific Rim hotspots, but I beg to differ. If you eat a Nanaimo bar at McLean's, I think you'll agree.

So there you go: if you're travelling somewhere on the Pacific, here are my favourite places to eat. Enjoy!

That Hawaiian wind helped us work up a healthy appetite . . .
and created unusual hair styles.

loganberry vinegar

Did you look carefully at those berries?

They're actually frozen loganberries because loganberry season doesn't start for another three weeks or so. (Yes, I am counting.)

A few weeks ago, I bought these berries at our favourite farm in Deep Cove, Smyth's. We'd just gotten back from Hawaii and I was desperate for interesting fruit – so far, rhubarb is the only ripe fruit on Vancouver Island.

Seeing as our freezer is roughly the size of a very small shoebox, it was quite the commitment to buy a big bag of frozen loganberries. But, oh, what fun they are! Definitely worth carving out a space in the miniature freezer for them.

So far, I've used them for waffle and ice cream toppings, deep-dish apple-loganberry pie, rhubarb-apple-loganberry crisp and now, loganberry vinegar.

This vinegar is easy as pie (actually, speaking from recent experience, easier). Just purée the logans with simple white vinegar, leave them to join forces in a cool, dark place – with a daily shake, for fun – strain, and voilà: loganberry vinegar at your service.

I know you might not have logans in your part of the world and I am genuinely sorry for you if you don't. (If you've never heard of a loganberry, it's a cross between a raspberry and a blackberry and it is, hands down, the most scrumptious berry in the world.)

However, I do believe this vinegar would work for most summer berries: strawberries, raspberries, blackberries . . . What kind of berry will you have growing near you?

In any case, with this little labour and the dirt-cheap price of white vinegar, what have you got to lose?

What to do with your loganberry vinegar? Tonight, I made a simple salad dressing with it – loganberry vinegar, walnut oil, honey, mustard, salt and pepper – and besides being a lovely pinky-red colour, it really did taste like loganberries.

I envision a summer of logan-y salads and marinades to come.

one year ago: tomato cheddar soufflé with asparagus
two years ago: chili pasta


loganberry vinegar
slightly adapted from Sherri Brooks Vinton via Brett Smyth

glass jar that holds 4 cups
2 c. berries
2 c. white vinegar

First, sterilize your jar. Boil water in the kettle. Fill the jar and let it sit. After 10 minutes, pour out the water.

Use a blender or immersion blender to purée the berries and vinegar together. Pour into the jar.

Let it sit in a cool, dark place for 5 to 7 days (or longer, if you're away). Shake every day to blend the flavours.

Strain it through either a double cheesecloth or a very fine sieve (not both, or nothing happens). You might need to use a spoon to stir it and encourage the liquid to fall through.

Pour the strained vinegar into a sterilized jar or bottle. Keeps at room temperature for up to 1 year. (Please note that I haven't tested whether it keeps at room temperature for a year or not yet. If you're a nervous type, keep it in the fridge.)

 

chinese-canadian lettuce wraps

Lettuce wraps with ground pork and potato chips spilling out of them are not exactly romantic things to photograph. It's hard to get any light into the pork, the lettuce looks whiter than it actually is and the chips make it look like some kind of sea creature from outer space.

Oh, well. They fulfill two of my major requirements for making it to this blog, so I present them to you with pride. (Those two requirements are tasty and fun to eat.)

I have actually been working on Chinese-Canadian lettuce wraps about seven years now.

My friend Virginia, who is from Hong Kong, made these for me just after I'd moved to Vancouver. I remember being quite suspicious when she put out a bowl of potato chips and said we should put them in the wraps. Suspicious, but willing. (Virginia is a very good cook. Her hot pot is the hot pot to beat all hot pots.)

With a salty-peppery crunch and bits of tasty ground meat attempting to escape, I bit into my lettuce wrap.

I was – immediately, irrevocably – converted to putting potato chips in my lettuce wraps.

And that is how we've eaten them ever since.

I do believe Virginia used ground chicken or pork (considering I didn't eat red meat at the time). But we've now settled on ground pork mostly because eating ground pork reminds me of the Chinese pork and chive dumplings that I LOVE so much I put the word in all-caps. In fact, the ground pork marinade here was inspired by the excellent Mark Bittman's recipe for pork pot stickers.

Dress the pork a bit and fry it, then fry up some carrot and celery. Throw it all in a lettuce wrap. Use your artistic talent to wedge in some curly potato chips. Eat.

And now for some exclamation marks: I can make these in 35 minutes! Alone! Without a sous-chef! So can you! Eating potato chips for the main part of your meal is fun!

You might be thinking: don't we need some sauce here? In fact, that is what the ever-suspicious Scott thought at first. (I think I will be telling him to trust me for the rest of our lives.)

One bite and I proved him wrong. This pork is so moist and well-seasoned with a kick of pepper and sesame oil (not to mention the pepper on the potato chip), that you really don't need any extra sauce. Which is awesome. Because it means less mess and less dishes and in case you didn't hear me the first time, you don't need sauce.

I call these Chinese-Canadian lettuce wraps because I checked and Virginia didn't put potato chips in them in Hong Kong. Instead, she used deep-fried mong bean noodles for crunch (which also sounds pretty fantastic). So this is Vancouver Chinese fusion food at its best. Yum.

Thank you, Virginia!

one year ago: blueberry rhubarb rum jam
two years ago: chocolate peanut butter oatcakes (the most popular recipe ever on dollop!)

chinese-canadian lettuce wraps
wraps inspired by Virginia
pork inspired by Mark Bittman's recipe for pork pot stickers in How to Cook Everything

2 tsp. fresh ginger, minced
1 tbsp. rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp. soy sauce
2 tbsp. sesame oil
2 tsp. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. ground pepper
1/4 – 1/2 tsp. salt
454 g. (1 lb.) lean ground pork
3 ribs celery, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1/2 c. chopped green onion
1 iceberg lettuce, washed, dried and separated into whole leaves 
220 g. (1/2 lb.) chips, preferably salt and pepper or lime and pepper

In a medium bowl, mix ginger, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, pepper and salt together. Stir in the pork; try to coat it as best you can.

Heat a heavy-bottomed frying pan or Dutch oven over medium heat. Fry the pork, stirring often and breaking up larger chunks, until it's cooked through, about 8 minutes. With a slotted spoon, put the pork in a bowl, leaving whatever small bit of liquid is left in the pan.

Turn the heat down to medium-low. In the pork pan, fry the celery and carrots until they have slightly softened, but are still tender-crisp, about 8 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat.

Stir the pork into the celery and carrots and mix well. Stir in the green onion.

Serve pork mixture with lettuce leaves and potato chips so that everyone can make their own.

mango love on oahu

That is a pineapple that I found growing in a field. At sunset. I ask you: how fun is that?

In retrospect, I should have known it would be a very good day when, as we were driving up to the North Shore in the morning, I heard these lyrics on the radio:

My heart does the tango
I love you like a mango

I am serious. I did not make that up. I mean, how could I make up a lyric that good?

We had just eaten a lovely breakfast of yogurt panna cotta and toast with macadamia Nutella sitting outside in the courtyard at the even lovelier Café Julia in Honolulu.

Now, we were cutting up the middle of the island of Oahu to reach the Haleiwa farmers' market on the north shore (and, um, buy mangoes!). This is how my husband demonstrates his love for me: he finds farmers' markets.

We pulled into the dirt parking lot and I was ready to bolt out of the car, cloth bag in hand, excited grin firmly plastered on face.

I headed into the fray of stalls selling flowering ginger, shrimp tacos, lilikoi popsicles, taro, apple bananas, sea asparagus, honey soap, coffee beans, and local chocolate. Scott, on the other hand, found a shaded table and settled in with a book. (After five years of marriage, we know how to navigate these things.)

Occasionally, in between chats with vendors, I brought him things: an iced coffee, a shrimp taco. Once, I called him over to see some beautiful local jewellery (good thing, too, since he then bought me a necklace with a rose petal pendant for our anniversary!).

The farmers' market was heaven. We stayed until it shut down in the early afternoon.

After that, we drove along the north shore and explored in the rain. Once it stopped – as we knew it would because it was that kind of day – we drove back to Waimea Bay for our afternoon swim. (On Oahu, I just didn't feel like my day was complete without an afternoon swim. In fact, the most work I did every day was packing our bag for the beach. Ah, the good life.)

At the farmers' market, I had asked the woman who sold me a very, very good shrimp taco for lunch where we should go for dinner. She thought about it for a moment and said, "Opal's Thai" because her friend worked there and it was very good. But, she said, we needed to get there early because it would be busy on a Sunday night.

I kept that in mind in the afternoon, but somehow – miraculously! – my triple-type-A personality didn't get stuck on it, and we lazed around on the beach as the sun dipped lower over the water.

And maybe it was a vacation lesson for me. Maybe we were just lucky. We walked in to Opal's around 6 and got a table right away. We looked at the menu happily and made our choices as the tables filled up all around us. Then Opal came. He asked us all kinds of questions: where were we from, had we eaten Thai food before, what were we planning to order. He made a few notes, nodded and said, "I'll take care of you."

I asked about wine – after a full and perfect day, wine was necessary to cap it off – and he said we could buy some at the drugstore next door and bring it back.

We could buy some wine at the drugstore (!). Notice the italics! In socialist Canada, we can only buy alcohol in government-approved liquor stores. So that in itself was an adventure. But I walked right over like I did it every day, found a bar of soap (to replace the badly-scented soap back at the condo) and picked a very nice Sauvignon Blanc from California off the shelf.

When I got back to Opal's, he whisked out a bucket of ice and plopped my drugstore wine in. Our lettuce wraps, with salty tofu and carrots and other goodies, had just arrived and we dug in. The whole meal was like that. We finished one thing, another surprise arrived, we drank more (now chilled) wine and dug in like kids at a birthday party. Sigh.

The sun was just setting as we started back down the island and I do believe my heart did the tango.

One year ago: Oregon hazelnut salad
Two years ago: Behold the small white bean in ripe bean soup

poached apricots and hawaii

Look at these poached apricots.

Don't they look lovely and buttery with that hint of syrup and crushed pistachio on top?

Too bad they don't taste that way.

Unfortunately, I know exactly why.

A couple of years ago, Scott found out that his late Mennonite grandfather used to drink apricot brandy. This was a revelation because Mennonites are not known for drinking . . . um . . . anything.

So Scott thought we could get a bottle of apricot brandy and drink it on Christmas Eve when we opened presents, instead of our usual port. I was game, although I got a little nervous when he said the apricot brandy only cost $8. And this was not a small bottle.

Christmas Eve came and we eagerly toasted our little glasses of apricot brandy, thinking of Scott's grandfather. The first sip, however, was disappointing. The second sip confirmed what we already knew from the first: we weren't drinking any more of this. It was strangely perfume-y without any real flavour. It was bad.

Of course, we couldn't just throw the apricot brandy out, but we couldn't drink it, either. It hid in our cupboard for a long, long time. Over that time, we went to a Turkish restaurant and had the loveliest simple dessert of apricots poached in some kind of alcohol. I filed the dessert away in my mind, thinking I would have to try making it some day.

The time seemed ripe when I saw particularly fat dried apricots at the grocery store a couple weeks ago. I looked online to find a recipe for poaching them but couldn't really find what I remembered. With nothing to go on, I thought I'd make it up.

Looking at our (not so vast) selection of alcohol, I saw the apricot brandy. Genius! Apricots go with apricot brandy!

Turns out, they don't.

If I have taught you nothing, please remember this: nothing goes with apricot brandy. Don't drink it or cook with it or do anything with it. Pour it down the drain. In fact, that's what I'm going to do right now.

(Sound of me pouring apricot brandy down the drain and wrinkling my nose.)

Now, I don't want to leave you recipe-less for the next little while, while I jaunt off to Hawaii to celebrate my anniversary. (We're going to Oahu – Any favourites you want to share?)

So, here are a few links I've been looking at lately:

I love this photo, and of course the Earl Grey chocolate cake looks divine.

The German in me can hardly wait to make this buttermilk poppyseed cake.

I think I might finally be ready to try making my own marshmallow fondant.

Chive blossom vinegar, anyone?

I once made my own granola bars and they were a crumbling tray of despair. These look better.

Does this photo trick you like it did me?

And if I were to try poaching dried apricots again, I might try this. I'll be back, tanned and relaxed, with a recipe in a couple weeks. Aloha!

One year ago: Dutch marzipan cookies
Two years ago: Chocolate nut balls

grilled chicken sandwiches

For a little while there, it seemed like summer was coming.

I got all cocky: hanging laundry outside to dry, busting out the rosé, buying a fragile little basil plant . . .

I think you can guess where this is going. It is now cold and wet and gloomy and I can't believe I wasn't wearing socks just a few days ago. (May showers bring June flowers?)

Anyway, back when I thought summer was coming, I made our favourite summer sandwich.

The original recipe calls for a barbecue but since we keep thinking we're moving and decide we don't want to move a barbecue across the country, we've adapted this recipe over the years for our handy electric grill. The chicken takes a bit longer to cook, but it still makes the happy grill marks that I think look kind of professional.

Also, we marinade the chicken in this genius concoction for which I take no credit, but which does lovely, lovely things to the chicken, making it all tender and tasty.

After marinating and grilling, it's pretty easy: slather your bread with the lemon-garlic mayo, pile it up with grilled chicken, avocado, sun-dried tomatoes, roasted pepper and havarti cheese, try to get a bite in before everything pops out onto your plate, and you're in business.

This is one of our favourite meals to serve company because you can do everything ahead of time except grill the chicken. Heck, even the chicken is fine if it's just warm and not hot.

After that, everyone can build their own sandwich with whatever they like. Also, you just have to have a good time licking your fingers and chasing pieces of messy sandwich around your plate. Instant happy dinner party!

In fact, I have proof that this sandwich creates fond memories in our guests. We made this for our friend Richard back when we all lived in Ottawa.

Last year, he lived in Japan and came to visit us. I asked if there was any Canadian food he was longing for and I would make it for him. What do you think Richard requested? That's right: this sandwich.

So, you see, it's kind of hard to go wrong. Change the filling, use a real barbecue, make your own mayonnaise from scratch.

Do what you want and you'll still love this sandwich. This, I am confident of. Summer, not so much.

one year ago: sour cream coffee cake
two years ago: putting asparagus on pizza
 

grilled chicken sandwich
adapted from Canadian Living

chicken marinade
2 tbsp. neutral oil, such as canola or grapeseed
2 tbsp. red wine vinegar*
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. grainy mustard
1/2 tsp. soy sauce
freshly-ground pepper
2 good-sized boneless, skinless chicken breast

lemon-garlic mayo
6 tbsp. mayonnaise
1 tbsp. + 1 tsp. lemon juice
1 clove garlic, minced

sandwich filling 
1 red pepper, roasted** and sliced
1/2 c. oil-packed sundried tomatoes, sliced
1 1/2 c. havarti cheese, grated
1 avocado, sliced
your favourite bread to make the sandwiches

Mix all the ingredients of the marinade together and coat the chicken. Let stand for 10 minutes or cover and refrigerate for up to 12 hours.

Mix all the ingredients of the lemon-garlic mayo together and put in a small bowl.

Prepare the sandwich filling items (slice, grate, etc.).

There are two ways to grill the chicken:

1. Grill the chicken on an electric grill set to medium-high until done. Turn once while it's cooking.
2. Grill the chicken on the greased grill of your barbecue set to medium heat. Close the lid and grill, turning once, until it's not pink inside, about 10 minutes.

Slice the chicken and assemble your sandwiches. If you like, grill them once they're filled in order to get the cheese to melt (but I don't).


* I ran out of red wine vinegar and used white wine vinegar instead. Still yummy!
** To roast that pepper, cut out the innards and put the three or four big pieces of flesh you have left on a pie plate. Roast it in the oven at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes.