Wednesday, June 24, 2009

I'll have the house salad, please.

It’s funny. When you love to cook people naturally ask you why you haven’t become a ‘chef’. I almost went to full-on cooking school right out of high school. Even though it never ended up happening for me – I went to UVIC for two semesters instead – my grandmother still asks when I’m going to become a cook. After working in the front of restaurants for years, I have an idea of what it’s like in the kitchen. And it’s not for me. Imagine making massive quantities of the same stuff everyday, and then spending the night grilling a hundred steaks. Or making a hundred salads. I think most restaurant cooks just love the repetition. And maybe the weird hours and parties?

So cooking behind a line isn’t for me. But I do daydream about opening my own restaurant. It would be ridiculously casual with good coffee... I like to entertain ideas of having a place that’s a cross between the Whistle Stop Cafe from Fried Green Tomatoes and The Foundation in Vancouver (Main and 7th – if you’ve never been, go). Just on a smaller scale.

I read in a book written by one of those famous chefs that we all love that he judges the quality of a restaurant by its house salad. He loved some nice greens with a good vinaigrette, while I like something a bit more substantial – not just a green salad but more of a meal. An old boyfriend’s sister-in-law would make incredible salads. Every vegetable from her fridge would go in and then just lemon juice, olive oil and salt and pepper on it for a dressing. She knew what was up.

The trick with salads is you just have to put stuff you love into it. And have lots of variation – when I was a kid our green salad was lettuce, celery, carrots, toms and cucumbers. And ranch dressing. I have nothing against this, its vegetables and that’s all you need. But why not go a bit above and beyond...

My House Salad
*the usual suspects:
-Lettuces
-Grated Beets and Grated Carrots (shout out to the Naam, in my mind they did it first!)
-Broccoli
-Almonds
-Sultanas/dried cranberries
-HERBS! My fave: dill. But I use whatever’s in the garden – mint, thyme, chives, flat leaf parsley, cilantro.

And thats just me. You could try:
-fennel
-green beans
-zucchini
-mushrooms
-tomatoes
-jicama
-roasted yams
-cheese
-roasted tofu
~absolutely anything else that you feel like!

Dressing:
-try making your own following the basic principle of 2/3 oil (I’m sure you’ve got some good olive oil), 1/3 acid (lemon juice or any sort of vinegar), and a few tablespoons of mustard. Mustard is magic, it creates an emulsion (the oil and vinegar sticks together). Try dijon or grainy mustard just because it tastes better than that bright yellow shit - I don’t really believe that stuff is actually mustard. You can also add some herbs, salt and pepper, maybe some honey or chilli. It goes on and on.

-My current favourite dressing goes against the norm a little bit by skipping the mustard and using tahini. Give it a go. It’s a good dressing for anything really, try a shot of it on top of something steamed like kale.
I got this from Vegan with a Venegance. Great book.

Tahini Dressing
Into a blender goes:
-A good amount of olive oil
-3 cloves of garlic
-2 or 3 good spoon fulls of tahini
-A glug of balsamic
-Pinch of salt
-Juice of 1 lemon
-A squeeze of something spicy like Sriracha or even paprika
Blend all of that up until it’s smooth after which add:
-whatever herbs you can find in your garden/grocery store that are beautiful and fresh.
Again, blend but let a few green bits hang around. Put in the fridge for a half hour or so after which you may have to add some cold water to thin it out (the tahini sometimes like to get pretty thick).
Enjoy!

There you are, that would the basics for the house salad in my very first restaurant, soon to be opened one day.
Soon.
In the far away future.
*I tried taking a picture of a salad but it didn’t look pretty. I need more practice.

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In my last post I talked about my strawberries. They just might be the best producers on the patio right now, while the zucchini is growing lots of blossoms but not fruit (I have been trying to hand pollinate (a hilarious term!) them with no success) and the beans are just going a bit slower.
A few days ago I made strawberry shortcake on some scones from the bakery around the corner.
Sooo sweet!
Sooo yummy and summery!



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On another note... Are you going to a party and need something new to take with you? I recently took these three dips to both a camping trip and a house warming party – great reception at both!
*You need a serious respect for your blending appliances for this to go smoothly. They will work hard for you.

These are my favourite dips to make:
Humous
Chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice, tahini, salt and pepper, olive oil, maybe some chillies.
My secret: if it’s too thick and chunky, try adding some hot water to smooth it out. Tahini will also help things be smoooth.

Roasted Yams
Simple: peel and chop some yams, put them in a roasting dish with some olive oil and salt and pepper and roast them. When they are soft, blend them up with cumin and some spice. Done.

Beet Dip
A few more steps in this one:
-Roast your beets by wrapping them individually in tin foil and putting them in a super high oven for quite a while – sometimes over an hour. They need to be soft even in the middle, and it’s virtually impossible to burn them so leave them for a bit.
-Pull them out after a while and let them cool so you don’t burn your finger prints right off (which will probably happen no matter what). Then peel them with a paring knife by slicing the stem end off then you should be able to scrape the skin of like buttah’.
-Cut them into rough chunks then into a bowl they go with a handful of feta cheese and maybe half a cup of plain yoghurt, the good stuff (this is already going to be healthy, no need for fat-free!). Blend it up, add some salt and pepper to taste, and then you have a dip to take anywhere that is pretty much fuschia in color – beautiful!
*If you haven’t roasted your beets until they are fully soft they won’t blend very nicely and it may make your kitchen look like the scene of a bloody crime.



There’s the humous and yam dip on the right making a great showing at dinner with the ladies on Pitt Lake.

Also, breakfast. Girls eat so well when they are camping without the boys!

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

My first strawberry.

Fancy that - my camera wasn't dead at all, it just needed to be charged! I seem to be finding drama for myself involving this camera...

So after a few weeks of super hot weather in here in Vancouver, my cute little patio pots have decided to really starting pumping. Things are starting to shoot up and turn colors and flower and I couldn't be happier. I took out my newly revived camera this afternoon and took some quick pictures.

The very first strawberry of the summer:
I sliced it in half and shared it with my roommate. Picked (in excitement) a tad too early but wonderful all the same!

The lettuce (remember the picture from a few months ago when it was just tiny!?):
Beans:


The zucchini blossoms:

How's your garden?

Monday, June 1, 2009

Coast to coast delicious-ness.

I just went on another trip. It was the cheapest cross country trip I could manage, via greyhound, cheap flights, and Craigslist rideshares; staying on couches and in hostels. My best good friend from high school, Tiffiny, was getting married in Denver and my sister was graduating from university a few weeks later in Montreal so I figured why go home in between?? I went to some amazing cities and met some wonderful new friends. Being the girl that I am I bypassed most of the fabulous museums that I could have visited and my trip centred mostly around food.

Here's the backbone of it all:
A zippy bus ride from Vancouver to Seattle where we (the other best good friend from highschool) had a short stopover to investigate the Pike Place market and witness the men throwing fish. A few hours later we were on the wrong city bus out to the airport which came very close to making us miss our flight to Denver. We caught it, which got us into the city just in time for the bachelorette party.
After the wedding and a few more days in Denver I went to explore Boulder, just north. In a nutshell: not the quant little hippy town I expected but beautiful none the less. And it has a million little places to get a good meal.
Boulder to Denver one early morning to catch another flight to Newark, New Jersey. Train ride into New York where I met up with my sister, then on to three days with not enough sleep, lots of lemonade and the discovery of the city's great parks and fun restaurants.
Next, we found a ride on craigslist to Montreal with two guys who appeared to be transporting basketball shoes over the border so they could sell them. Legit? I'll never know, but they drove fast and got us home quickly.
Montreal: ate lots of food, proudly watched my sister graduate from architecture, and went to the Cirque du Soleil (!!).
Finally, last night, I boarded a flight back to Vancouver. Phew...

Also - a continuation of my camera saga - it died the day of the wedding (two days into the trip) so I have no photos. Use your imagination.

So with no photos I figured I would give the details of a few of my most favourite meals of the past two and a half weeks. Pretty basic stuff, no five course restaurants or fancy wine, just food. And drinks. Great fun!

-Westside East in the lower east side of New York City. After a big night I told Jeff, the guy my sister and I were staying with, that we needed to eat a big plate of vegetables for breakfast. He sent us a few blocks up from his place on Avenue B to this little place. After a short wait we sat at the bar (which was tended by two extremely cute boys) and were presented with menus that, on top of the usual brunch items, had a special sheet that was all vegetables. Great choice, Jeff! Four choices cost $15 and we got tomato and basil salad, asparagus with lemon and almonds, soy glazed green beans, and sweet potato fries. The choices change daily and the staff handwrite the menu with big, slightly unreadable cursive. With a big glass of lemonade (which became my new infatuation in New York), I felt re-energized enough to wander over to Union Square to take a nap.

-The best sandwich of my life. Somewhere in Chelsea (again, New York), I was lead there by my sister. It doesn’t have a sign and I don’t know it’s name so it‘s kind of like a myth. Or a fable. Olive bread, fresh mozzarella, spinach and home cured prosciutto. And ginger-mint-lemonade. Eaten in a park. I’ll let you dream…

- Picnic in a park across Parc from Mount Royal, Montreal, Quebec. Myself, my parents and my sister lying on the grass in the first sunshine after five days of rain. We bought a Portuguese chicken (lots of spices and when you buy it, they put it in a bag and pour what looks like half a cup of butter over it. Mmm…) from a shop on St. Laurent and the ingredients for potato salad. Also, a bottle of wine, some cheese, bread, grapes and Peak Frean cookies (which are a necessity on my family picnics). We laid on the grass for hours, basking in the sunset. The week I was in Montreal we went to a lot of wonderful meals in some great restaurants, but this was by far my favourite.

-The Rio Grande in Denver, Colorado. To start with, a direct quote: “credit cards, speed limits, and Rio Grande’s margaritas: all things that should have limits”. One margarita at this mexican place has something like three shots of tequila and they will only allow you to drink three. However, if your thing is breaking rules, you can push the limit and move from the patio to upstairs and maybe the new waitress will bring you three more. There is a reason they have a limit, because too many might make you decide it’s a great idea to drive to Tiajuana to see if the margaritas are just as good there…
Our dinner was homemade tortilla chips and salsa. Tasty, complimentary, and just enough to keep us from doing things we weren’t proud of.

Other places I went that I loved:
-Illegal Pete’s, Denver, Colorado. Awesome, cheap mexican food with cute boys.
-Sunflower Grill, Boulder, Colorado. You will want everything on the menu and it’s all organic, some vegan, and mostly local.
-Golden City Brewery, Golden, Colorado. Some guy decided to brew some beer in his garage and let people drink it in his backyard at picnic tables.
-The Library, Avenue A, New York City. Excellent place to celebrate a random guy’s 30th birthday party. The books and the bathroom are covered in graffiti and the drinks are cheap. Perfect.
-Wilensky’s, Montreal, Quebec. You go and order “the special with cheese” and you get a toasted boloney sandwich with heaps of mustard and a dill pickle. Cherry coke - optional.
-Aux Vivres, Montreal, Quebec. A vegan’s paradise filled with healthy looking people and the best breakfasts.
-The Khyber Pass, Montreal, Quebec. Afghani food in a below street level cave on Duluth Street. Biryani and rose water pudding were my highlights.


My Potato Salad - best eaten outside.
7-8 red potatoes, cubed and boiled until they are just tender
3-4 hard boiled eggs
3-4 celery stalks, sliced
Handful of radishes, sliced
A pickle, finely chopped
Red onion, finely chopped

Dressing:
Mayonnaise, lets say ¾ cup
Grainy Dijon mustard, about 2 or 3 tablespoons
Apple cider vinegar, 1 tablespoon
Salt and pepper
A little dash of pickle juice

Mix up the dressing in the bowl you will be using, then stir in all the other ingredients. I am not against a warm potato salad in the least, although if you let it sit in the fridge for a few hours or even overnight the vinegars will soak into the potatoes and make your salad taste that much better. Cooling is just a side effect…

*The trick to perfect hard boiled eggs: put your eggs in a saucepan with enough cold water to cover them, then onto the stove, uncovered. Turn on the heat and leave it for around twelve minutes. Use a timer! The water should be softly boiling within the first five minutes and then just let it go. At the end of twelve minutes, I put the pan into the sink and let cold water run over it. Peel them and the yolk should be just cooked, not fully solid but not runny either. The perfect hard boiled egg!