First anniversary hard truth... with salad!

Hey! I'm still here! It's been a while, hasn't it? I've been busy; training for a half marathon, competing to keep my job in the federal public service (still tbd), reading the last volume from the Game of Thrones series, yadda yadda... and do you know what? Blogging is a lot of work! And, well, being consistent with fresh new posts is quite contradictory to my farniente-ing. Sooooo I've decided to change my priorities a bit... I'm done with feeling guilty about not posting often enough. In my first blog post, I'd said that life's too short to spend it all in the kitchen. Now, I know that it should also have read that life's too short to spend forced three-hour periods, on a weeknight or otherwise, writing blog posts and formatting pictures. So, from now on, I'll post when I feel like it, and if there's a three month gap between posts, so be it. It's not like I started this thing to make money. 

So! It's almost Food and Farniente's first anniversary! I can't believe it's been a year already. I was actually reminded of this happy occasion as I was tucking my newly sprouted luxurious melons into the garden's freshly turned soil, all set for a second nail-biting season of "So you think you can grow melons?" Stay tuned for those... If it doesn't work, I'm swearing off heirloom melons for good. Stupid unengineered non-enhanced nature! Grow faster dammit!! Anyhoo, I'm not doing anything in particular to celebrate the occasion, but it just feels good to know that this important milestone is just around the corner. Yay me! I stuck with something! Sort of!

Okay. Enough horn tooting. On with the show. Here's one of my all-time favourite quickie recipes for a light, quick and tasty dinner. I love it. Marc loves it. You'll love it. If you don't, sorry to have led you on. Also, get your taste buds checked.

Soba noodle salad with soy-ginger dressing, snow peas, and random nuts or seeds

To feed two people generously, you will need:

• 3 handfuls of snow peas (or enough to fill a 4 cup glass measuring cup)
• 2 small green onions
• 1 handful of chopped and toasted almonds or toasted sesame seeds; a little pan-fried and cooled tofu could do the trick here too, for those who have nut allergies
• 3 bunches of soba noodles (a japanese buckwheat noodle - delicious cold. You should be able to find it at your regular grocery. If not, stop by any asian market. Note: they're a bit more expensive than spaghetti, but they're worth it!)
• 1 1/2 tsp fresh ginger, grated with a Microplane (I keep my ginger in the freezer to make this bit easier)
• 1 tsp rice wine vinegar
• 1 1/2 tsp soy sauce
• 2 heaping tbsp brown sugar (or more, to your liking)
• 1/2  tsp sesame oil
• 2 tsp neutral oil like canola or grape seed

Fill a large pot with water and bring it to a boil. Also, fill a bowl with cold water and throw in a whole rack of ice cubes - set aside on the counter, near the stove. While the water heads toward the boiling point, get the rest of your stuff prepared.

1. Put the chopped almonds in a dry pan and toast them on low heat until they start to brown and become fragrant. When done, remove them from the pan so they don't burn, and set them aside.

2. Slice the green onions very thinly, on the diagonal if your knife is sharp enough. If not, regular little rounds are fine, as long as you keep them thin.

3. Wash the snow peas and remove the tough stringy bits by snapping the tip off each end and pulling in the direction of the pod. Marc demonstrates - quite beautifully, I might add - in the photo below. 

4. When all the peas are trimmed, throw them in the boiling water and set your timer for one minute - no more! Once the minute has passed, pull the peas out with a slotted spoon and shock them in the ice water. Don't dump out the boiling water, you'll be using it again shortly (we're trying to minimize dirty dishes!)

5. Add the soba noodles to the pot of boiling water. Cook according to the directions on the package; it won't take long, so watch them carefully so they don't get mooshy. When they're done, drain them in a colander and toss them in the ice water with the peas to cool. 

6. Whisk together the ginger, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil and canola oil to make the dressing.

7. Drain the noodles and snow peas, put them in a pretty salad bowl and toss them with the remaining ingredients and dressing. Poof! You're done! Enjoy!!

Hmmm. By the looks of this photo, I may have forgotten
to toast the nuts when I made this particular batch... Oh well!

Sweet potato eviction complete

I did it! I won! The sweet potato is no more. What did I do with it, you ask? I steamed it in the microwave and threw it in a salad! Gimme a break - it had to be a salad. We overindulged during the Holidays.

You have to understand that the microwave has very limited use in our house. In my opinion, it's good for warming up your lunch, melting chocolate (thanks, Nigella, for that one), heating up milk or water (to lukewarm, not boiling, please), and for softening tortillas. So talk about a discovery when my laziness, triggered by my complete disgust at having to clean a pot AND a steamer in order to cook 1/3 of a sweet potato, caused me to experiment.  I simply cut the sweet potato into small bite sized pieces, set it in a dinner plate with barely 1/4 inch of water on the bottom and cooked it for 3ish minutes, turning the pieces over halfway. And whaddaya know! It worked!

Talk about a quick meal. I chucked some baby greens in a bowl, topped them with some brown rice left over from a previous dinner, a handful of sunflower seeds (a fridge-larder staple!) and the potato, and tossed everything with a simple balsamic vinaigrette (balsamic, dijon, olive oil). Poof. Done. 

Well THAT felt good. Nice knowin' ya, sweet potato. Boy... I'm going to have to get to know my microwave better... The possibilities! Stay tuned!

The sweet potato that wouldn't die...

The holidays have come and gone, and I think most of us are just fed up with trying to find ways to reinvent the leftovers. Sadly, that work is never done - for me, anyway... Every single day of the year, some food item is guaranteed to be staring back at me from the inside of my fridge, taunting me with the ever present threat of spoilage. Is today its last day before mouldy grossness takes it over the edge into the realm of the inedible? Aiiiiiiigh! The never ending danger of decay is enough to drive a person insane. I hate throwing out food.

I've been having this sort of crisis lately with a sweet potato that's been in my crisper for the past month and a half. Every day, I see it. And every day, something comes up and I can't use it (or don't feel inspired to). It's started to shrivel a bit, just to remind me that time is ticking, and that the money spent on a nice organic sweet potato is about to be wasted. When I picked it up on Monday, a shrivelled part of it had actually gone soft and my thumb kind of sunk into it a bit. Ew. That's when I knew it was now or never. 

Thankfully, I had five or six boiled potatoes left over from our New Years' eve party à deux. And what does one instantly think of when one has a load of cold boiled potatoes? Potato salad! Of course, none of my resolutions included being less lazy, so I didn't bother to boil the sweet potato (it would have had a weird shape anyway, once the soft gross bits had been cut out); I just grated that bad boy down to shreds. Well, part of him, anyway. Here's what happened.

Potato salad with grainy mustard vinaigrette, sweet potato shreds and chives (feeds two)

This is a recipe that's easy on the dishes. All you need is a salad bowl, a knife, a cutting board and, if you must, a garlic press.

In the salad bowl, whisk together :

• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1 generous tbsp grainy mustard
• 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
• one minced clove of garlic 
• 1/4 to 1/3 cup of olive oil (or more, if you like)
• salt and pepper.

To that dressing, add :

• 5 or 6 cooked potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces 
• 1 good bunch of asparagus (like the ones they sell tied together with a rubber band), cooked al-dente in a steamer and cut into bite-sized pieces
• a few tbsp of finely chopped herbs such as chives, mint, parsley or dill (I had chives lying around from making mashed potatoes at Christmas, so I used chives)
• 1 cup of grated sweet potato

Stir around delicately and voilà. Serve with a few pieces of cheese or a boiled egg on the side.

Of course, that recipe only used up a third of the dammed, rotting, cursed sweet potato. So tonight, I went ahead and made another salad with more stuff that was lying around the fridge. And this time, I dealt with another food straggler: old pita... Have you ever had this problem, where you buy pita for a hummus fix, but then the leftover bread just sits around your fridge for days on end, because it's become too old and tough to enjoy? Solution? Pita chips! They're super easy to make, and no matter who's around at mealtime, they'll be excited to eat them. If Marc could orbit the stove when I make these, I think he would; sadly, the wall behind the stove prevents full orbiting, so all he can do is stick his face in the oven window and keep repeating over and over "I think they're ready now. I think they're ready now. I think they're ready now." Gaaaah!

So here's the how-to for pita chips:

1. Cut the edge off your pitas by going around them with a knife or clean scissors. Eat the edges or give them to the dogs. Separate the two sides of the pita and lay them on a baking sheet with the inside surface facing up.

2. If you have a pastry brush, use it to give each pita circle a light brushing of olive oil. If you don't have a pastry brush, just pour a bit of olive oil (using a thin stream) all over the pitas and then smear it around with your hands.

3. Add whatever flavour you want. Dried herbs (oregano's nice), spices (smoked paprika anyone? curry?), salts (garlic salt, celery salt). Pepper's also highly recommended, and salt, if you're not using any of the garlic or onion variety. For this specific time, I used salt, pepper and sumac.

4. Pop the baking sheet on the middle rack of your the oven, which has been set to Broil. WATCH THEM CLOSELY. They burn in a heartbeat. Seriously. Heart... (still okay)... beat (crap! burnt!)

5. When they're nice and brown and crispy, take them out of the oven. Break them up if you wish. Enjoy.

--------------

Aaaah! Now that the pita chips are out of the way, back to the sweet potato from hell. Here's tonight's salad, with thanks to the larder, as usual, for the beans.

Curried creamy navy bean and shredded sweet potato salad with hard-boiled egg and pita chips (feeds two, with leftovers)

Boil up a few hard-boiled eggs (I made three for two people). While they cool, combine the following in a bowl :

• 1 can of white navy beans or white kidney beans, rinsed
• a few tbsp chopped fresh herbs like mint, dill or chives (I still had some damned chives, so I used chives)
• 1 cup of grated sweet potato

In another bowl, combine : (I did it this way, but you can definitely make this part first in the big salad bowl and save yourself some dishes)

• approx. 3/4 cup of plain yogourt (not low-fat)
• 1 scant tsp of curry powder
• 1 scant tsp of honey
• juice of 1/4 lime (approx. 1 tbsp); add more if not tangy enough
• salt

Serve the bean salad on a bed of baby greens with the sliced egg on top. Enjoy with your freshly baked pita chips.

Pfff. Only 1/3 of the sweet potato to go! It lives to die another day...

Until we meet again, Crisper squatter.

My ample larder, part 1

Sorry for my tardiness in posting. I have no excuse. I'm a bad, bad blogger. Please accept the following post as a token of my affection to you, my sweet, sweet and gentle reader. 

The larder... From the old French lardier. It means a place where you keep your lard. Or something along those lines... My grandmother used to say larder. It's the only reason I use the word. Surely pantry or store cupboard would be more poetic, but I like larder. Laugh if you will. Plenty have already. Larder.

So here's the deal. I hate getting caught defenceless. If someone arrives at our house on short notice, whether it be for dinner or an afternoon visit, I need my artillery to blow their taste buds away (or at least distract them). If I were to have nothing to serve them, not even a measly Kalamata, I'd die of shame. I don't know why this is so important - it just is. I think it has to do with the fact that when I'm happy, I eat. And when I have visitors, I'm happy. So if I don't serve food, it's like telling people I'm not happy to see them... Ooo. That's heavy. I think I just learned something about myself just now. Cool.

Anyhoo, back to the larder. The larder is a wonderful, magical place - a cave of wonders if you will - where certain types of foodstuffs are at the ready at all times to insure readiness to feed and entertain. When paired with the staples that are always in my fridge and freezer, these food items make me feel like the MacGyver of the kitchen - only with better hair. So the following post is an ode to my larder, if you will. An hommage to the foods that stand on guard for me (and the people I feed).

Arrgh! I forgot about the bendy shelves! Please ignore that aesthetically disturbing
feature of my larder. Also, please ignore the Skippy peanut butter. I'm still working on
converting Marc to the sugar-free non-crap kind. It ain't easy.

First, the protein. It's so easy to have non-perishable protein on hand. Here's a run through of the main ones I usually have lying around:

• DuPuy lentils: they're just plain fabulous. They're meaty and fragrant and have a beautiful mouthfeel. They remain firm when they're cooked, so they're actually still appealing when they come out of the pot. You can serve them cool tossed with fresh herbs, a green stringy thing like beans or asparagus, tomatoes, baby spinach and a vinaigrette. Or you can serve them hot with some sautéed onions and Marc's favourite "seasoning", bacon (you only need three or four slices, cooked and crumbled), with maybe a side salad and some baguette. Smoked pork and lentils. It's like the perfect marriage of French Canadian and European French. Can you hear the angels signing?
• Quinoa: good as a side dish for fish from the freezer or, again, in a salad, like my roasted zucchini and quinoa salad. For a fast and heathy fish recipe, check out Martha Stewart's technique for cooking it en papillote. Normally, I just stick the fish and whatever random veggies I have lying around the fridge (thinly sliced so they cook quickly) in the little cooking pocket. Try thinly sliced potatoes, onion, chives, red pepper, grated carrot and baby spinach. Don't forget the salt and pepper. 
• Canned beans: most beans can be thrown into salads (with or without lettuce) or made into patties or stews, while chickpeas can also be roasted for snacks, or be transformed into delicious, silky hummos. And you already know about the virtues of chickpea flour!
• Canned fish: Jamie Oliver has a fantastic recipe for pasta with tuna and tomato sauce. It's from his Cook with Jamie book. I highly recommend trying it. Canned tuna can also easily be added into salads, such as my no-brainer macaroni salad (one of Marc's all-time favourites... Really?!?):  Mix together cooked and cooled macaroni, a can of tuna, finely chopped red onion, fresh chopped or dried mint for seasoning, tomato, celery, a generous glug of olive oil and juice of a lemon, salt and pepper.
• Nuts: I keep most of these in the fridge, but I'm mentioning them here. Usually, I have a Costco bag of almonds and also another type of nut which I like to alternate between walnuts, pecans and pine nuts. I use nuts in salads and in pilafs, but they're also very helpful when I'm baking and, especially, when I make an out-of-the-blue pesto. Like in the early summer when my beet greens were still young and fresh: using my food processor, I whizzed around beet greens, parmesan, lemon zest and juice, garlic and some almonds. Throw some hot pasta on that, honey. Woo. Nuts are also lovely when entertaining. Toast a few pecans, coat them with honey and other tastiness, serve with cocktails and you have friends for life. Same goes for your run-of-the-mill dry roasted peanuts. Pop the top, serve with pickles, olives and some pretzels and you have a party!

Second, the carbs. Mmmmm. Carbs. 

• Couscous: good for (duh) salads, side dishes (add some chopped dried apricots, some chopped mint and a few toasted pine nuts to the cooked couscous) or an awesome vehicle for leftover tomato sauce (again, as a side dish, perhaps?)
• Bulghour: yadda yadda salads, yadda yadda side dish, yadda yadda to thicken vegetarian stews (this is Sparklypear's discovery - brilliant!) 
• Pasta: no need to elaborate here. Watch the calorie factor, if that's a concern.
• Rice: all types. Brown, Basmati, Arborio. For making salads, pilafs, stir fries and calorie-bomb / emotionally therapeutic risotto. 
• Vermicelli and asian noodles: for spring rolls, pho (pronounced fuh, I've been told) and stir-fries.
• Panko breadcrumbs: do I really need to explain the panko? Do I need to explain the need for oxygen?
• Triscuit. they're like bread that doesn't go bad. You put stuff on 'em. And they're delicious. And they're only three ingredients. Wheat, oil and salt. No crap. Beautiful.

And finally, the rest.

• Vinegars: I find that with red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar, cider vinegar and balsamic, I have all the bases covered well enough. With any of these, a little garlic, a little dijon, a splash of fresh lemon juice and some olive oil, you're in vinaigrette heaven. Anybody who's isn't satisfied with that is just a whiner.
• Oils: organic olive and canola are in the larder. Toasted hazelnut, toasted walnut and sesame are in the fridge (nut oils spoil quickly - never store them at room temperature).
• (Addendum) Coconut milk: I just remembered coconut milk while writing the post for Larder- part deux. Crave it, need it. For asian dishes, curries and cakes. 'Nuff said. Just take care you don't overdo it - those bad fats'll git 'ya.
• Sweeteners: local honey, brown sugar, white sugar and asian rock sugar (Yan Can Cook converted me to that one) are in the larder. Maple syrup from Awazibi in Maniwaki is in the fridge. I use the honey and the maple syrup to sweeten salad dressings (on top of their obvious breakfast applications). The sugars are for baking and coffee. The rock sugar is for asian dishes such as stir-fries.
• Dried fruit: I keep most of them in the fridge for optimal freshness (dried cherries, apricots and raisins), although I did notice that yellow-bagged lollygagger in the picture (dried plums). I add dried fruit to salads, pilafs, oatmeal in the morning and baked goods. They're also perfect for snacking when combined with a handful of almonds.
• Plain chips and pretzels: you can't see them in the larder picture because I keep them in a separate cupboard above the fridge, high enough that I have to make the conscious effort to drag a chair over to reach them. Stupid temptation. Chips and pretzels are another non-spoiling crowd pleaser when it's cocktail time. But we're not heathens, here. Serve them with something fancy like cornichons and pickled onions. Puh-lease. 

So there we go! Part one of the greater-larder overview. I hope this information proves useful as the cold weather rears its ugly head and you begin squirrelling food away for winter... Ew. Apologies for using the "W" word. 

Next post: larder, part deux! À plus tard!

An embarrassment of riches...

The garden's exploded. There's food everywhere. As Marc and I filled our harvest bowls to the brim with green and purple beans, I couldn't help but giggle as I was reminded of that beautiful line from Casablanca that was made oh-so-much more entertaining when recited by Leslie Nielsen in The Naked Gun: "It's a topsy-turvy world, and maybe the problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans... But this is OUR hill! And these are OUR beans!!"

*Sniff* Beautiful. So the beans were packaged up for another time, as the harvest also included the following:

Golden nugget, Kenosha, Black Russian, Black from Tula, Ottawa 39

Chantenay, Yellowstone and Cosmic Purple!

Chioggia and Touchstone Gold

The tomatoes were put aside for tasty sandwiches, a cherry tomato and bocconcini salad with basil (an oldie but unbeatable goodie - that's for din dins tomorrow with some nice baguette) and, of course, a ratatouille (as soon as Dad drops off another truckload of courgettes). So what was left? The beautiful, glorious root vegetables. I couldn't help myself; I had to create a tableau...:

Don't you just want to dive in?

Now, I think I've made it abundantly clear that turning on the oven when it's stinking hot outside goes against my deepest convictions. However, I had to make an exception. I just cringed at the thought of boiling all of this stuff for dinner... The time! The dishes! The lost flavour and nutrients! THE HUMANITY! 

So I lazily tossed everything together with olive oil and some leftover cauliflower I had hanging around the fridge, and I set that sugar-packed jewel box of a meal to roast. 

Peekaboo!

Oh, stop looking so good! You're embarrassing yourselves!

By the way, have you ever tried roasted cauliflower? Sorry for going off on a tangent here, but OMG. It's like eating buttery bits of sweet sweet caramelized and burnt goodness that could only be described as what a strapping young fireman's lips must taste like after a hard day's work of putting out five alarm blazes. Honest. It's mind blowing. But you have to be patient. They have to roast until they're soft enough that you can squish them between your fingers (hypothetically speaking, of course - don't burn yourself).

Woo! Is it getting hot in here? Right. My oven's on. 

Back to veggies. If you'd like to give roasted vegetables a go, I highly recommend it. Here are some  pointers:

1. No matter what the veggie (potatoes included), set your oven to 400 F and stick the baking sheet in there as the oven heats up; this will ensure that the sheet is searingly hot when the veggies hit it, which will help with caramelization (the delicious brown! The delicious brown!)

2. Cut all of your veg at the same thickness, so everything cooks at the same time. Keep into account the density of your veg as well - a cauliflower floret can be cut a lot bulkier than a slice of denser beet.

3. Make sure your veggies are nice and dry before you splash oil on them (you're just adding enough oil to coat them); a quick go with a tea towel usually does the trick. If they're still wet, the heat will be wasted on evaporation rather than caramelization. We don't want that.

4. Don't salt your veggies ahead of time; the salt draws out moisture and may slow or even - heaven forbid - prevent the delicious browning. Wait until they're done and salt them as soon as they come out of the oven, while they're still hot and glistening (like that fireman's lips). Pepper, herbs and/or spices are fine anytime, beginning or end.

5. Once your oven is at 400 F, pull out the pan and throw a good knob of butter in there - it should sizzle and slightly brown when it hits the hot surface. That's when you add your veggies and stick the pan back in the oven.

6. You can flip the veggies halfway through the cooking process, but I'm usually too lazy, so I rarely do. Forty minutes is a good cooking time, but I recommend you start checking for doneness as soon as 25 minutes in, depending on the type of veggie and thickness of the cut.

7. No matter what you're roasting, it's never a bad idea to add a thickly cut onion to the mix. Those are just awesome no matter what dish you're going to serve.

Once your veggies are roasted, you can do a ton of things with them:

- Serve them alongside some nice protein like fish, tofu or meat. 

- Mix them around with a grain like bulgur, millet or couscous, or some quinoa, throw in some herbs, some nuts, and give everything a splash of white wine vinegar and olive oil and - POOF! - you've got yourself a salad.

- Whizz them up with the stock of your choice (veggie, chicken, whatever) using an immersion blender, add some cream or plain yogurt if you're feeling naughty (full fat, please), and you've just made a roasted vegetable cream soup.

- Or stick'em between two slices of baguette or any other type of nice bread, with some goat cheese and some sprouts or microgreens (and maybe a slice of bacon if you're Marc) for an awesome sandwich.

By the time roasting was done, I just sprinkled some goat cheese on these particular veggies and served them as a main course with some lovely rosemary and garlic baguette from Art is In. If it hadn't been dark outside, I would have gone to the garden for an addition of freshly chopped parsley, but that was too much work.

The light was getting a bit low - sorry!

Voilà! See you next post!

How a profusion of beans pulled him back from the meat brink.

My pole beans plants have finally exploded. They'd been teasing me for a while, sprouting one or two beans here and there, never giving me enough to make a decent meal. I'd cursed them and call them names - why weren't they coming out?! They'd bloomed enough, dammit! But this morning, during my usual daily sashay through the garden, they'd finally succumbed to my horticultural bullying. I was confronted with clusters of beans. Big clusters... So I grabbed my little bowl and picked every last one of them - purple and green. And tonight, I made a salad. A really, really tasty salad.

This recipe has benefited from some hefty inspiration, I must say. First there was the proliferation of beans. Then, the discovery of a first tomato off the Ottawa 39 plant (nothing to write home about, by the way - not getting those next year.) But most importantly, there was the challenge posed by Marc who, following his first meeting with a personal trainer, came home to tell me that he'd been instructed to eat meat. Lots and lots of meat. (insert rolling eyes and puffed cheeks with a slow exhale here.)

Feeling mildly suspicious, and not-so-mildly annoyed that someone was about to undo all of the hard conversion-to-flexitarian work I'd accomplished on the home front, I decided to make a salad that could rival a steak on protein and flavour anytime - with a fraction of the cholesterol and hormones, and tons more fibre. Pffff. Meat. WHATever!

Green bean and bulgur salad with toasted almonds and tomato (serves three generously)

First thing:

Set 1 cup of medium bulgur to cook and let it cool once it's done (if you're in a hurry, just spread it on a cookie sheet and stick it in the fridge while you get on with the rest of the recipe).

While the bulgur cooks:

- Steam three large handfuls of fresh green beans until al dente and throw them in an ice bath to stop the cooking.

- Roughly chop up about 3/4 cup of whole almonds and toast them in a pan over low heat until they're fragrant. Watch'em! Once they start to burn, they burn fast! Let them cool in a plate so they don't burn in the hot pan.

While the bulgur cools off:

- In the salad bowl, whisk up one minced garlic clove, some sherry vinegar (about 2 tbsp) and some olive oil (1/4 cup - these are approximate measurements. You may like your dressing a little more or a little less tart).
- Chop the tomato and the beans into bite sized pieces. Toss'em in the bowl.

- Finely chop a handful of parsley and a handful of basil. In the bowl they go.

Add the cooled bulgur and the almonds, adjust the seasoning (salt and pepper) and combine everything into a fluffy, green flecked thing of beauty. Done-zo.

Marc crumbled some goat cheese in his salad and was as happy as a clam. He didn't bring up the meat idea once. HAH! Take that, trainer-lady! I left my salad just as it was. Delicious. Especially with a nice glass of Blanche de Chambly. Peeerfect.

À la prochaine!

The curse of the giant zucchini, or, The night I discovered I'd never be an animal photographer

So Dad's just being a showoff. He dropped these off last weekend.

I tried to show the scale of these monsters by placing a pen next to them, but somehow, it just didn't do them justice. So I looked outside... Ah. There we go :

Oh! Hey mom!

What the ?!?!?

Behemoths, I tell you! My father wins in the quantity department, that's for sure. But he doesn't have as pretty beets and carrots as I do! *grumble grumble*

So what was I to do with such a bounty of horribly large cucurbits? I got to work, that's what! Here's a mash-up of a few things I did.

1) I roasted them. 

First up, a roasted zucchini and quinoa salad. 

• I cooked one cup of quinoa in water with a dash of salt. Once cooked, I set it aside to cool.
• While the quinoa cooked, I cut the courgettes lengthwise into 5mm slices, tossed them with a little canola oil, salt and pepper and cooked them straight on the barbecue grill until they were softened but still toothsome (i.e. not mushy!) Once done, I cut them into bite-size pieces.
• I chopped up a palmful (smaller than a handful) of basil and a handful of parsley from the garden.
• In a salad bowl, I whisked together some sherry vinegar (white wine vinegar would have been nice too) and some olive oil (ratio of 1 part vinegar to 3 part oil is usually good.)
• Finally, I tossed everything in the bowl with the dressing, adjusted the seasoning with more salt and pepper and POOF! Done. 

Sadly, Marc, my sister and I ate the salad much too quickly for me to remember picture-taking. Here's what I managed to get, post-meal. You'll have to trust me on this. It was beautiful and it was tasty. Reeeeeeal tasty.

Second up, another roasted zucchini salad, this time with barbecued tofu. And I remembered the pictures that time!

• I sliced the zucchini lengthwise into 5mm slices, and did the same thing with the tofu (firm), only slicing crosswise instead. I made sure I squeezed the tofu between sheets of paper towel to remove any excess water. I then tossed the tofu and the zuckes together with a bit of canola oil and some Montreal steak spice (thaaat's right - steak spice!) 

• Next came grill time, where I decided at the last minute to throw on a few slices of leftover red onion that had been lying at the back of the fridge. Best decision ever.

• Once the tofu had turned golden with some good, darker grill marks, and the zukes had softened without being mushy, I pulled them off, along with the onions, and threw them back in their pre-cue bowl to cool off a bit.
• After I chopped the zucchinis and tofu into bite-size pieces, I added the following to the bowl:
• a chopped golden tomato
• some chopped romaine lettuce
• a splash of balsamic vinegar and some olive oil
• salt and pepper

And voilà! A warm roasted zucchini and tofu salad with red onion and golden tomato. Faboo.

And finally, tonight, 

2) I baked with the zucchinis

I just went to my go-to gal for bundts, The Food Librarian, and got the recipe for a Zucchini Olive Oil Bundt. I dropped the lemon glaze because I ran out of sugar, but compensated by serving the cake with some home-made whipped cream (whip 35% cream with a drop of vanilla and a bit of sugar). Mmmmm... Satisfactorily delicious replacement.... Again, apologies for the lack of "before" pictures. It was just that damned good.

But wait! Are those toasted almond bits I see? Why yes, Timmy, those are!

Just check out this moist and tender crumb. COME ON! IT'S GORGEOUS!

The evening ended beautifully with Marc taking care of the dishes while I tried to replicate the "doggie to zucchini scale" picture of Ti-Gars with what was left of Gigantor, the Ridiculously Large Courgette. Sadly, that's when I discovered that any hopes I may have had of one day being an animal photographer were probably a waste of time... Oy. I leave you with samplings of the disastrous photo shoot. 

À la prochaine!

Hot, hot, heat - what to eat?

Yeeeeeah... When it's 47 degrees with the humidex, there's no way I'm barbecuing, sautéing or turning my oven on. So what's for dinner? Well, I scrounged around in my fridge and found the following to make something tasty: local organic broccoli (partly softened because of my forgetfulness - you'd think that when you pay $4.99 for a broccoli, you wouldn't abandon it in your crisper for a week and a half), a half used-up red onion, an unopened tub of sour cream (expiring in three days - what is wrong with me?!?), and a bag of pecan halves.

Thankfully, I'd just come back from the Gatineau Costco with a abundant selection of lovely Québécois cheeses (NEVER go there before dinner! Go in for toilet paper, leave with fifty tons of dairy. Stupid seductive cheese.) I'd also stopped by my favourite boulangerie, which will be featured in an upcoming GMZ, to pick up the best traditional baguette in town, so I knew this broccoli-sour cream concoction would be a salad of some sort. So away I went!

First, I broke up the broccoli into bite-size florets and steamed them until they were al dente and that beautiful, brilliant shade of jade green. Then I plunged them into an ice bath to stop the cooking and prevent them from turning that gross, overcooked-army-fatigue green. While they were cooling off, I got on with the dressing.

I finely chopped some of the red onion until I roughly had 1/4 cup. I threw that in a bowl and then slopped on four or five greedily full tablespoons of sour cream with a sprinkle of salt and pepper, tasting to make sure the flavour was to my liking.

Then, I threw in the broccoli and tossed it around to make sure every last floret was coated in creamy deliciousness.

Finally, I chopped up a small handful of pecans (this could also work with another sweet nut, like toasted almond slivers), and scattered them on top of the salad. There. Poof. Done.

Marc and I then set up din-dins outside and had the salad, with the baguette and cheese as accompaniments, and a fine glass of rosé from the BIB. Please pardon the less-than-Gourmet-magazine-worthy Arizona themed plates. The dishwasher was full, and we hadn't done a load in time for the impromptu photo shoot...

That was a damn tasty hot summer night dinner (partly thanks to Marc filling those wine glasses nearly to the brim... Holy moley!) If I were to make the salad again, however, I'd probably give the broccoli a bit more of a shake to remove as much water as possible before adding it to the dressing. You've got to have the thick richness of the sour cream to make the broccoli sing.

Bongo loves broccoli.

Ti-Gars too!

À la prochaine!