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!

The anti-takeout.

We've all had nights when the responsibility of even thinking of something to make for dinner - much less actually making it - was the equivalent of being told to climb Mount Everest, in four inch heels, with 30 lb packs of rocks on our backs. Ugh. You know you've been there.

I was actually there three times last week; coming home late, out of steam, mentally drained... I was terrified. In such times of weakness, it would have been so easy to ask Marc to stop by the St-Hubert drive-thru for a chicken dinner with fries and gravy... Lord... That would have been good. But we had to eat something better than that. On that first evening, Mere would be coming by to go for a run, and I needed proper fuel. Not a cheap, greasy thrill.

So it's with that need for a speedy fill-up in mind that I thought of pasta. Pasta's fast, especially when you have some tomato sauce waiting in the freezer. But I didn't have any tomato sauce in my freezer. Damn. What the heck was I going to feed myself and my hungry man? I had some 35% cream in the fridge, but making a sauce with it would have been very, very wrong. That got me thinking, though. Do you know what else is creamy? Beans! Off to the larder I went, and whipped up a sauce in a jiffy. Because this sauce didn't require any cooking, it was ready by the time the pasta was done! On nights like these, I bless the day Marc got me a food processor as a "just because" gift. That man knows me so well...

Speedy and fresh spinach and white bean pasta sauce with Parmesan and lemon

(Feeds four, no leftovers)

Step 1: fire up a pot of water, salt it when it starts to boil, and throw in a 450 g package of pasta (any kind will do - I chose spaghetti this time). Tip: to achieve perfect flavour in your pasta, the cooking water should be as salty as the Mediterranean. Go ahead, taste it before you throw in the pasta. Nobody will judge you! 

Step 2: while your pasta cooks, put the following ingredients in your food processor and blitz:

• 1 can of white beans, drained

• 3 big handfuls of fresh baby spinach
• zest of 1/2 lemon (add more after blitzing, if you want a more lemony taste)

• 1/2 to 3/4 cup fresh parmesan chunks that you've chipped off using a butter knife (matchbook- sized pieces), or pre-grated parmesan (just not the sawdust kind from the green canister, for the love of all things holy!)

• enough olive oil to make everything whizz around smoothly (between 1/4 and 1/2 cup)
• salt and pepper to taste (might want to add this after everything's been blitzed).

Step 3: scoop a cupful of the pasta water out with a coffee mug and set aside. Drain the pasta, return it to the cooking pot and pour the pasta sauce over top. Mix everything quickly, adding some of the pasta water if the sauce needs to be smoother. Serve immediately with a drizzle of olive oil over everything. Et voilà!

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.

Soup. A hot-water bottle for your insides.

Soup is making a comeback in my kitchen. I used to be annoyed by it. I didn't like how I couldn't control my intake of food; how I was a prisoner of the tiny portion doled out by every spoonful, never able to take in more at a time without putting the bowl to my mouth and making a complete and disgraceful pig of myself. Eating soup, restrictive spoonful by restrictive spoonful, made me irritable. I wanted FREEDOM!

Sadly, short of filling a turkey baster and squirting my way to satiation, I had to find another way to live with the cutlery conventions of our day. That's when I discovered texture. I'm not talking chunky-vegetable-soup kind of texture here. I'm talking smooth, dense, mouthfeel all the way into tomorrow kind of texture. The kind I only experienced once I started looking for a vegetarian meal-in-a-pot soup solution. The spoon would still deliver the same, annoying portion with every pass... But this time, the texture of its payload would insure that the flavour and experience would endure; keeping my taste buds distracted long enough for the spoon to make its next delivery...

There are two main heroes in the category of texture for me, when it comes to whole-meal-in-a-pot soups: beans and tofu. Of course, 35% cream also fits in this category (for glooorious mushroom soup), but that's just cheating. 35% cream makes EVERYTHING taste good. So next time you set out to make a cream soup, try throwing in a can of white kidney beans or a block of silken tofu before you plunge in your immersion blender. I assure you, you'll be glad you did. 

I made the following soup the other night when it was dark and blustery outside. I was cold, and not really in the mood for making anything fancy. I found the last butternut squash from my garden as well as a few leeks at the back of the fridge, and a can of beans in the larder. Soup it is, I thought. And I was glad. That stuff stuck to my insides like Fiberglass Pink. Mmmm. Insulating.

Butternut squash soup with leeks and white kidney beans

Prep your ingredients:

1 medium-sized butternut squash, roughly chopped into chunks (see picture);

2 leeks, green parts discarded, white parts split lengthwise, thoroughly rinsed (dirt always manages to get in there) and chopped into half moons;

1 medium onion, chopped;

1 can of white kidney beans, drained and rinsed;

4 thyme sprigs, leaves plucked, or 1 tsp of dried thyme (or more, if you like).

Heat a stockpot or a big saucepan over medium heat. Once it's hot, throw in around 2 tbsp of olive oil or, if you're not focused on making this vegan, a matchbox sized piece of butter and just a dab of olive oil (1 tsp) to prevent burning.Throw in the onion and the leeks, and cook, stirring, until translucent.

Throw in the squash, and cook, stirring for 2 or 3 minutes. Add the thyme leaves and bare sprigs. Pour in enough cold water to cover everything, with a half-inch extra over the top of the veggies. I used some cooking water from my freezer that was left over from boiling potatoes and celery root.  Bring to a simmer and cook until the squash is soft.

Remove the thyme sprigs and add the kidney beans.

Whizz the soup into oblivion with an immersion blender or a regular blender. If you use a regular blender, do this part in batches to avoid overspilling and burns.Season with salt and pepper and serve with crusty bread, and some sharp and tangy cheese.

I hope you enjoy this soup. I'm getting hungry just looking at the pictures.

See you next post!

Dairy and onions. Yeah.

Well, Marc's in the bathroom, shaving off his beard for the inaugural day of Movember. At my request, he'll be going for the Magnum P.I. look. I can't wait. Too bad it's getting too cold outside for the cutoff jean short shorts. Sigh.

Anyhoo, while I wait to see my bare-faced mate, I've decided to bring you la tarte à l'oignon - the onion tart : one of the simplest things you can make, if you have the patience to see the caramelization of the onions through to the end. It's one of my favourite things to make when I have a laid back get-together; people are often underwhelmed by its plain brown appearance, but they always raise their eyebrows when they taste their first bite. Hah! I love that. Plain brown food one; dinner guests with little faith, zero.

This recipe is based on a tarte à l'oignon I ate for lunch in Marseilles, at a friend of a friend's house nearly ten year ago. I was too shy to ask for the recipe at the time, so I'd just recreated it from gustatory memory when I got home... It was good, but something always seemed to be missing. Then, I discovered the missing link : cream. How could I not have seen it before?!? I have Laura Calder to thank for that tidbit, bless her shameless, butter loving heart (see the recipe for Caramelized Onion Tarts in her book French Food at Home). The tart went from good to goooooood. And then, I got more raised eyebrows.

Of course, this recipe is still quite delightful sans cream, if you prefer to omit it. That way, you only have to deal with the guilt coming from the evil, evil (read: delicious) pie crust.

Let's get on with this recipe, shall we?

Tarte à l'oignon

What you need to have:

- 1 pie crust, purchased or made yourself. If you're making your own, I recommend a flaky one over a denser, buttery one. Don't pre-bake it.

- 5 to 6 large-ish onions, sliced into thin half moons (slice the onion in half from head to toe, then slice each half crosswise). You need about seven to eight cups of sliced onion in total. If you have a bit more or a bit less, it's not the end of the world.

- some thyme, preferably fresh, but dried will do. 2 tbsp fresh leaves, or 1 tbsp dried.

- a splash of brandy or white wine

- a good splash of balsamic vinegar

- 1/2 cup of heavy cream (35%). Again, omit this if you want.

- salt and pepper

What you need to do:

- throw a good 2 tbsp of butter into a heated pan (sorry - you need lots of butter for this), and add a bit of olive oil to prevent the butter from burning (a tsp should do);

- once the butter's bubbling, throw in the onions, lower the heat to medium-low and wait for them to caramelize, stirring regularly so they don't burn. This may take time. Up to 30 minutes. It's not that bad! Read a book while you stir! Or empty the dishwasher! Or sort your laundry! Whatever! Sheesh!

- when the onions are soft and brownish, throw in a splash (1/8 cup) of Brandy or white wine; let it simmer and reduce until it's gone;

- throw in a splash of balsamic vinegar. Start with about 1/8 cup, stir it all around and taste the onions. You need to taste the balsamic tanginess - it helps counteract the sweetness of the onions. Add a bit more if you don't feel the tang;

- add about 1/2 cup of heavy cream and stir it around, letting it simmer softly for a minute or two, just to thicken a bit;

- take everything off the heat, throw in the thyme, and season with salt and pepper;

- slide everything into the pie crust and bake for the time recommended on the package / in your crust recipe;

- let the tart cool a bit and serve warm or at room temperature.

Voilà! And here's an optional step. I usually throw a handful of pitted black olives (like Kalamata) on top of the tart, just before baking. I find their brininess the perfect companion to the onions' sweetness. Although I didn't try it in the recipe above, the olives would have been just as stellar with the richness of the cream, too. Give it a try, you won't regret it, I'm sure. And if you do, bah. Just pick off the olives. No biggie.

Oh gawd! Marc just walked in! Cue the Magnum theme song!

Aaaand I'm out. Enjoy the tart!

Fall's here - fire up the oven

Pretty, huh? Don't be fooled! It was ice-cold when
I snapped this picture! The dappled sunlight was a trap!

Winter's definitely on its way. First, the leaves show up on my back deck, and now, I'm rotting in bed with some sort of evil cold that makes my lungs burn. Ugh. It's only going to get worse from now on. The wind, the periods of snow-tease when the stuff falls and then melts away in some sort of sick game of "I'm here! No I'm not! Yes I am!" and, worst of all, the dry, dry weather that makes your hands so dry they crack and bleed. Can you tell I don't like winter? My plans for a retirement in the tropics are already well underway. Too bad I have some 30 years to go before I can kiss winter goodbye forever. Grumble grumble.

I must say there is one thing that I'm thankful for in the fall, and that's the cooler weather that calls for warm, oven baked foods. So I shamelessly made a lasagne the other day. A delicious, meat-free, husband-foolin' lasagne. It was a combination larder-garden effort: I had half a box of no-boil lasagne noodles in the larder, my tomato sauce from a few posts ago, red peppers that are still slowly ripening in the garden (!) and the equally tenacious basil. I rounded up a few more staples from the fridge and away I went.

Sprouted lentil, red pepper and goat cheese lasagne with basil

I feel that these are more assembly instructions than a recipe, but whatevs. In an 8x11" lasagne pan, layer the following ingredients in the order listed:

- a thin coat of tomato sauce

- the first layer of noodles (no pre-cook or cooked - your choice)

- a generous coat of tomato sauce

- approx. 1 cup of sprouted lentils (I get mine from La Défriche through the MSRO. Cooked duPuy lentils would probably be just as good. Not sure if the canned ones would get too mooshy. Meh. It would probably still taste just fine.)

- a generous amount of fresh goat cheese, crumbled. Judging by the picture, I'd say about 3/4 cup.

- the second layer of noodles
- a generous coat of tomato sauce
- 1 large sweet red pepper, sliced 1/4"
- 2 small zucchini, cut in 1/2" pieces
- as much fresh basil as you like

- the third layer of noodles
- a generous coat of tomato sauce
- an obscene amount of freshly grated Parmesan
- freshly ground pepper

Aaaaaand bake according to the instructions on the package of lasagne noodles. When the lasagne is done, remove it from the oven, let it cool while fighting off your ravenous husband, and serve with a lovely salad.

Delicious, I tell you. And, as usual, when there's enough cheese involved, the meat-eaters don't even notice there's "something" missing. Mwahahahaha! Next time, though, I'll use a bit more sauce. My no pre-cook noodles were rather greedy for moisture.

Well, I'm spent. I'm going back to bed for another 20 hour nap. Stupid cold. TTYL.

Papillote, je t'aime

Marc's working late tonight. I'm by myself, but that's no reason to settle for a martini with toast and peanut butter. As far as I'm concerned, if I've got a half-full bottle of leftover rosé, a minimally stocked larder, and some jazz on Espace Musique with the mesmorizing Stanley Péan, I'm set for a good time. So after rooting through the fridge and finding a few viable veggies, I grab the piece of cod that I'd remembered to pull from the freezer before heading out to the office, and I set to work on my fish en papillotte.

I love this technique. It's so simple, it's nearly equivalent to pouring yourself a bowl of cereal for dinner, but oh, is it ever so much more satisfying. Cooking fish en papillote basically means that you're cooking it in a parchment pocket... It's a recipe that has only two rules: 1) cut all of your vegetables thinly enough that they can cook in the same time as the fish (approx. 10 minutes for a 1/2 inch thick piece), and 2) only use fresh ingredients for the best flavour - there's nowhere to hide when you're cooking with paper.

Today, I've found half of a tiny red cabbage, a carrot and some baby spinach in my fridge, so that's what's going into the papillote, along with paper-thin half-moon slices of onion. But honestly, if it's a vegetable and you can slice it thin, it's good for the papillote. Potatoes, asparagus, zucchini, beet, baby bok choy, celery, sprouts, fresh or dried herbs, lemon slices, la la laaaaaaaaa! Anything! Just slice up enough veggies to make one dinner plate-full per pocket. If you're eating alone (and there's nothing wrong with that!), then you're probably okay with 3/4 cup of cabbage, one potato, one carrot, one hefty handful of baby spinach and 1/4 to 1/2 cup of thinly sliced onion. You get the picture, right?

The method is simple enough. Cut a large piece of parchment paper and fold it in half (I like to play it safe and start with a piece of parchment roughly 50 cm long). Then, remember your scissor skills from kindergarten, and cut the paper so you get a heart shape when you unfold it (see the picture at the top of this post). On one half of the parchment heart, lay down the tougher vegetables and the onions. I find that when they're on the bottom the stack, the juices from the fish and other veggies help them steam a bit more intensely (this is my own thinking - this may not actually be what happens. I wouldn't know. My papillote-cam is still on backorder.)

Once your base of tougher vegetables and onions has been laid down, go ahead and place a little nub of butter there to add a bit of flavour. If you want to keep this super virtuous, skip the butter. Season this layer with salt and pepper and then lay the fish on top. Season the fish, place another nub of butter on top of the fish and then top it with the rest of the veggies (I shred the carrots with a box grater to keep them thin). At this point, if you haven't used butter, give the whole stack a good splash of olive oil.

Close up the papillote by folding the paper heart in half. Starting at the bottom end of the heart, crimp the edges by folding them over and over until you get to the top end of the heart. The goal is to fold the edges tightly enough so steam doesn't escape. I know this can seem scary, but just wing it. I've been known to weigh the pocket down with muffin tins to keep it sealed as it bakes. There is no shame when it comes to cooking in paper. If you want, you can also youtube this technique for pointers.

 

Once you're done folding, scootch the papillote onto a baking sheet, bake in a preheated 350 F oven for 10 minutes (for a piece of fish about 1/2 inch thick) and poof! You're done. Serve with a quick starch like couscous if you haven't included potatoes in the papillote. And there you go! Enjoy! I did.

Ta!

Garden cleanup

Well, the beans have shrivelled up, the cucumbers are no longer growing, and the melons, I don't even want to talk about. It's the end of the summer, so it's time to clean out the garden. I pulled out all of the beets, left a few carrots in just for the hell of it, harvested all of the remaining rhubarb and picked every last tomato. 

Mrs. Bott's Italian tomatoes. Pretty.

The rhubarb was easy to deal with - I just chopped it up and stuck it in the freezer for whenever I'd need a little hit of summer in the dead of winter. But the truckload of tomatoes (I had more in the fridge - that photo is about the third of it) could only be dealt with in one way - tomato sauce, and lots of it. 

I started off by chopping up the tomatoes which consisted of Kenosha and Mrs Bott's Italian. I probably ended up with a good ten cups of them. Oooof.

I then chopped up the pancetta into little lardons (forgot to take a picture - sorry) and finely chopped two smallish onions. I then threw the onions with a bit of olive oil into my heated, beloved Staub cast iron dutch oven (hee!), and cooked them until they were translucent. 

Then came the tomatoes and the long, long wait. The secret to this sauce's tastiness is in the tomato-ey concentration of flavour - one that can only be achieved by patient simmering to eliminate water. Note to self: never start this tomato sauce at 7pm on a weeknight.

I lost patience halfway. Bedtime was fast approaching, so I did something that ended up being brilliant: I took the immersion blender and puréed the softened tomatoes to smithereens! The simmering sped up considerably and I had a thick, rich tomato sauce in no time. It was at this point that I quickly rendered the pancetta in a separate frying pan (omit this if you want to keep this sauce vegetarian - obviously) and threw it into the sauce along with all of the delicious brown bits from the pan. I did this at the end in order to preserve some of the flavour in the meat - had I added it to the sauce from the beginning, they would have only been rubbery pieces of flavourless nothing by the end. Ew.

Finally, and this is my brother-in-law Jean-Marie's trick for a fresh-tasting sauce, I added a crapload (yes, it's a technical term!) of roughly sliced and chopped garlic, I let it simmer in the sauce until it was cooked through and then took the whole pot off the heat. Adding the garlic at the end instead of frying it up at the beginning creates a whole new flavour experience - you have to try it. Anyhoo, once the garlic was cooked, the sauce was done! When I'd be set to serve it, I would just reheat it in a pot with a handful of fresh basil for a fresh-tasting, fragrant hit of deliciousness.

Of course, by the end of this process, it was waaay past my bedtime, but it was still too soon to put the sauce in the fridge. One should never put super-hot things in the fridge; it makes the temperature inside skyrocket, and then bacteria reproduce faster than they would to Barry White's greatest hits. Ew. So here's a trick I learned in cooking school for cooling off sauces and soups, lickety-split: fill your sink with cold water, put the sauce-filled pot in there (careful the water doesn't spill in!) and then keep cramming ice cubes all around it to keep the water freezing-cold. Keep stirring the sauce while replacing the melted ice, and your sauce will be cool in about five minutes.

So to recap, here's the how-to for the sauce:

- roughly chop your tomatoes (let's say 5 cups of chopped tomato);

- finely chop 1 medium onion;

- over medium heat, sweat the onion in a bit of olive oil;

- throw in the tomatoes and cook, uncovered, until soft;

- purée with an immersion blender and continue simmering until thick and no longer watery;

- chop approx. 4 slices of pancetta, pan-fry to render a bit of the fat and throw everything into the sauce, taking care to scrape out every last little brown bit;

- add 3 big cloves of roughly chopped garlic to the sauce, and simmer until soft;

- add a teaspoon of sugar or more to cut the acidity, if necessary, and season with salt and pepper if you wish (I didn't);

- just before serving, throw in a big handful of fresh basil and simmer until well-wilted but still fragrant;

- ta-daaa! Done.

- serve on pasta, on pizza or in a bowl with some baguette for dipping while watching Spaceballs for the 56th time.

That's all for now, folks. À la prochaine!