Crapplesauce

Cardamom 'n Apples

I heart cardamom. I think there is no better pairing than cardamom with apples. Cinnamon is a close second. When I came home yesterday morning with over a dozen of my favourite apples, Pink Ladies, I was dismayed to find six other apples, and they weren’t no Ladies. Oh, bother. Where did they come from? I didn’t want to deal with them, I wanted to throw them away. I needed the space in the crisper drawer. But how wasteful! I could never. I think Michael must have bought them, but he wasn’t eating them. I tend to ignore apples that I don’t pick out myself. Since I don’t have as much time in the kitchen as I’d like to lately, Michael has kindly and almost uncomplainingly stepped up. Nowadays he does almost all of the grocery shopping and a lot of the food organization. If it sounds as though we had kind of 1950’s relationship it’s because we did. Well, minus the housecleaning and great dress with a fitted bodice and full skirt. Anyway, what was I talking about? Apples. So Michael bought some crapples and the only thing to do with them was to make a chunky applesauce for our morning cereal.

Makes about 3 cups

6 apples – peeled, cored and cut into wedges

2 tablespoons agave

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Get Michael to peel, core and cut the apples that he bought. If you don’t have a Michael you’ll have to do this yourself. Put everything in a medium-sized, heavy-bottomed pot over low heat. Let simmer, stirring often, for about twenty minutes or so. Break up the apples now and then as they’re cooking down and softening. We left the applesauce quite chunky, but you could puree it if you wish. I heart Michael even more than cardamom. We’re a very good pairing, right up there with cardamom and apples.

Happiness

Orange Spectrum

Orange – what a happy colour! With the exception of the persimmon, the fruits in this salad are not local, but this is their season. At the market there were so many orange fruits that I just had to make a jumbled salad out of them. Hachiya – Japanese persimmon, carabao – Phillipine Mango (the sweetest!), honey mandarins and passionfruit. Hachiya persimmon is a deep, beautiful red-orange and, if you leave the skin on, it is astringent from the tannins. I think Phillipine mangoes are my favourite mango, they are golden, barely orange and extraordinarily sugary. Honey mandarins, those bright, tiny little sugar-bomb oranges. You can never have just one honey mandarin, you need at least five at a time. And passionfruit! I squeezed and strained sweet-tart passionfruit pulp over this tone on tone fruit salad. I think this salad is helpfully loaded with a lot of the vitamins needed to drive winter colds and flues away. And my little race car is the perfect get-away car!

1974 Inka Red BMW 2002

The Flu Fighters

CBGB

Coconut Banana Ginger Bar

I love Blondie. I love Debbie Harry. I wanted to be her. Parallel Lines was my first album. That might be a lie. My first album might be Kenny Rogers, The Gambler. It was one or the other, I think I got them in the same year. But Blondie’s Parallel Lines is way cooler. CBGB’s was a bar in New York where Blondie – and a whole lot of others –  rose to fame (I don’t mean to make it sound as though I were there, I wasn’t). CBGB stands for Country, Blue Grass and Blues. My CBGB stands for Coconut Banana Ginger Bar. I suggest you crank up Sunday Girl or Rip Her to Shreds and blitz together some of these bars. One Way or Another.

Makes 4 – 6 cm x 4 cm bars, or 4 small spheres

15 dates

1/3 cup whole, raw almonds

1/3 cup dried banana chips

1/3 cup unsweetened, shredded coconut, plus more for sprinkling

1 tablespoon coconut oil

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

pinch of salt

Place dates in a small bowl, and cover with boiling water. Let sit. In the bowl of a food processor dump in almonds, banana chips, coconut, coconut oil, ginger, cinnamon and salt. Drain dates and add those, too. Now buzz everything up for a minute or two. Give the mixture a stir and then pulse on and off until it comes together in a sort of batter. Don’t overdo the processing or you will end up with a greasy mixture. Form into bars or balls and finish with a sprinkling of coconut.

You may or may not be interested to know that I can sing along to every Blondie song. And I also know all the words to The Gambler.

Moules au Vin Blanc

Steamed Mussels

Local steamed mussels make for an easy and delicious meal. Serve with a simple salad, and there you have dinner. Mussels are a great source of protein, vitamin B12 and iron. The most classic and, I think best, preparation for them is steamed with white wine – moules au vin blanc. Sadly, we will have no frites. I bend the clean-eating rules a bit and add a large glug of white wine but you can leave it out if you’re more virtuous. I guess then you’d have to call this moules sans vin blanc.

Serves 2

2 pounds local mussels, cleaned*

1 teaspoon olive oil

2 shallots, minced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 teaspoon sea salt, or to taste

1 large glug of white wine, optional

1 lemon, juiced

1/4 cup fresh parsley or cilantro

2 cups fresh spinach, optional

Heat a large cast-iron pot over high heat and swirl in the olive oil. Add shallots and garlic, and sauté for about two minutes. Turn mussels into pot, taking care to not crack their shells. Add salt and white wine, if you’re using. Cover with lid and allow to steam for about 7 minutes. Lift off lid to add lemon juice, parsley or cilantro and spinach, if you’ve opted to put it in, and cover again. Allow to steam for a further 3 minutes or so. Lift lid and peer through the fragrant steam to see if most of the mussels have opened, discard any that haven’t. Stir carefully to distribute the greens and divide amongst two large dinner bowls. Serve with a fresh, crisp salad but not, unfortunately, with bread to sop up the flavourful broth. Take a moment to get over that, and the lack of fries while you’re at it, and use a spoon.

* After you bring your mussels home, you will need to wash and debeard them. This is simple: just rinse mussels under fresh water, and remove the beard – hairy vegetative growth – attached to the outside of the shell by giving it a quick tug. Also, if you are not cooking your mussels right away, keep them in the fridge in a bowl, covered with a damp tea towel. Do not store in a sealed bag, this will suffocate them.

Make Me Quince

Ooh. Ahh.

This is quince, a member of the rose family. A quince looks like a lumpy, mishapen and acid-yellow pear. Pick one up, bring it to your nose and inhale. It will flood your brain with the most haunting floral fruit fragrance. There is nothing like quince. They are not good to eat raw as they are granite hard, super astringent and sour. But poached? Divine. As you can see, they turn a stunning foxy red. And the flavour? Amazing. Why not pick up a couple of quince next time you see them at the market?

Makes about 2 cups

2 ripe quince, peeled, cored and cut into wedges

1/3 cup agave

2/3 cup water, divided

tiny pinch of sea salt

1/2 vanilla bean, seeded

In a small saucepan, combine agave with 1/3 cup water, sea salt and vanilla. Reserve the remaining 1/3 cup of water to add during cooking. Bring contents of saucepan to a simmer over low-ish heat. Add quince to pan and arrange in a single layer, or as your pan allows. Let simmer and caramelize without turning for about half an hour, adding a tablespoon or so of water as needed. Your home will be filled with the perfume of quince. Turn the entire pan on the burner if you notice that some of the quince are getting too dark. Carefully turn each quince wedge over – they will be darkening to that gorgeous foxy-red colour on one side, and becoming sticky. Cook for another half an hour, adding a little water here and there if needed. Quince are loaded with pectin, so the gorgeous syrup that is resulting is probably really thick and speckled prettily with vanilla bean. Remove from heat and allow to cool a lot before tasting. Sweet, syrupy and sour. Really good in your morning cereal for a treat. Great with roast pork. Astonishingly yummy over vanilla ice cream while still warm.

Golden Quince

Fact or fiction? Quince may have been the proverbial apple that Eve offered Adam.

I Do Believe

Salad Days of Winter

I do believe that winter might be one of the best salad times of the year. Winter salads, here in Vancouver. We are lucky! Just take a good look at this salad – it rivals and triumphs a tender baby spring salad in colour and texture. Dark chocolate bell peppers. Sparkly, garnet-hued beets. Safety-orange and purple carrots. Bright white-white coins of tiny, raw turnip. Crisp, tart slices of apple. Frazzled-looking spicy peppercress. Delicate tangles of pale endive. Flourescent curls of magenta kale. Rounded leaves of tatsoi – the word tatsoi kind of sizzles when you say it: tatsoi. There is no excuse for eating limp supermarket salad from a box or bag. Go to a winter market. Get some winter greens and dress it with acidy-gold apple cider vinegar and a dark, antioxidant-laden oil, such as flax or pumpkin or hemp. Don’t forget to sprinkle it with a glittering of pretty salt and grind some flecks of black pepper over top. I am bossy, I know. But I feel so lucky to be able to eat a salad like this in the middle of November! If I wasn’t so damn busy I would invite you over for salad. But I know if I did you would ask what was for dessert, and I would tell you that there is no dessert, I’m not making any, we’re just having salad. And you then you might complain that I never make dessert anymore. You know who you are.

Pumpkin Bread

Great Pumpkin Loaf

My friend Jen G. bakes an exceptional pumpkin loaf, but her recipe begins with 3 cups of sugar. I scaled back her recipe and changed up a few ingredients. Here is the result. It’s not quite as yummy as Jen’s, but it’s a whole lot healthier. I also made great pancakes from this recipe. If you want to make pumpkin pancakes and a loaf, double the recipe.

Makes 1 loaf

1/2 cup agave

1/3 cup coconut oil, melted

1 large egg, plus 1 large white, save the yolk for your morning omelette

5 oz pumpkin puree

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/4 cup almond milk

1/4 cup water

3/4 cup brown rice flour

1/3 cup almond flour

1/4 cup ground flax

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 teaspoon xantham gum

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon cardamom

Pre-heat the oven to 350º. Line a loaf pan with parchment and set aside. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk agave and coconut oil with egg and egg white. Add pumpkin puree, vanilla extract, almond milk and water. Set aside. In a larger bowl, combine all dry ingredients. Pour wet ingredients over and mix together. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and bake for about 50 minutes. Test for doneness by inserting a bamboo skewer into the centre, it will emerge cleanly when done. If you have doubled the recipe for pancakes, pour just half of the batter into the loaf pan and reserve the remaining batter. I fried my pumpkin pancakes in a little bit of coconut oil, they make a great breakfast treat.

PS – Check the comments section for easy instructions on how to make your own roasted sugar pumpkin puree.

Jerusalem Artichoke

Sunchoke Dip

This is a tuber of many names: sunchoke, sunroot and earth apple, in addition to Jerusalem artichoke. It is not from Jerusalem, nor is it an artichoke. It’s actually a member of the sunflower family, and it has a wonderfully earthy and nutty flavour. It kind of looks like a knobbly ginger root. I like to make a rich dip out of them.

Makes about 2 cups

1/4 cup olive oil

1 shallot, sliced

9 cloves of garlic

4 cups Jerusalem artichokes, chopped

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Warm olive oil over medium-low heat in a large pan. Add shallots and garlic, and cook gently until softened. Add sliced sunchokes, and toss to coat. Cook, turning occasionally, for about ten minutes or until sunchokes are cooked through and tender. Remove from heat and let cool for a bit before pureeing. Taste and season with a little more salt, if you wish. Call it what you like, I call it delicious. Raw vegetables are a superb choice of vehicle for getting the dip from bowl to mouth.

Jerusalem Artichoke aka sunchoke sunroot earth apple

Tea Sommelier

Pu-Ehr

I had the fortunate and interesting experience of completing level one of a tea sommelier course two weeks ago. There are eight levels, so I have a ways to go before I’m a true tea sommelier. I do love tea, and I have been drinking loose leaf tea for most of my life. My mom is a bit of a tea person, and I grew up drinking genmaicha and lovely Earl Greys. She is particular about her Earl Grey, only a couple of them make their way into her teapot. However, I had little idea about the thousands of teas that exist. One tea really caught my attention, and that is Pu-Ehr (it’s pronounced POO-air, which is funny because you say poo). Pu-Ehr is from the Yunnan province in China, and is renowned for its health benefits. It is thought to aid in digestion, lower cholesterol and increase metabolism. All tea is from the Camillia Sinensis plant, and all tea begins as a green tea. The process of oxidization changes green tea into black tea. It is why a cut apple turns brown – it oxidizes. Pu-Ehr is lightly oxidized and slightly wet when formed into a cake, brick, or button, and its flavour changes as the damp tea ferments. Pu-Ehr is is often aged for many years, much like a vintage wine. Some are as old as 100 years! It is said that its flavour mellows with age. And, in my limited experience – 3 cups – it is a mellow and earthy tea. If you find a brick of Pu-Ehr, I would love to come over for a cup.

Fall for Soup

Beautiful Fall Soup

This week you should head out the door into the chill and rain to buy a head of celeriac, or celery root. Celeriac is a homely, grubby, low-starch root vegetable. It is not actually the root of celery, as you might imagine, though it is from the same family. Don’t be put off by its unattractiveness. I’m confident that you will fall for celeriac, and find that it has a beautiful, nutty-creamy flavour – it’s what’s inside that counts. And speaking of nutty flavour, this recipe also has brussels sprouts in it. You don’t like brussels sprouts? Well, fine. It might be hard for us to be friends now that I know this, but I would like to try to convince you that they are delicious. I hazard a guess that you may not have tasted a perfectly cooked brussels sprout. They are easily overcooked, and some sort of chemical blah-lah-lah happens when they’re overcooked, causing them to actually emit sulphur. Buy small, sweet brussels sprouts for this recipe. And then we’ll see about mending this disagreement that has sprouted between us.

Makes about 8 cups/2 litres

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, diced

2 carrots, sliced into coins, or diced… I felt like coins for this soup…

2 cups brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved

1 not-too-big celeriac, trimmed, peeled and diced

1 teaspoon sea salt

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1/2 head of kale, stemmed and torn

4 cups water or chicken stock

1 – 14 oz tin cannelini beans, drained*

1/2 bunch of flat leaf parsley, leaves pulled from stems

Pour a stream of olive oil into a large pot over medium heat. Add onions and sauté for a couple of minutes. Add carrots, brussels sprout halves and celeriac. Increase heat a titch, sprinkle the sea salt over and cover with a lid. This will help speed the cooking of the vegetables. Now, of course, you’re going to take care not to overcook the vegetables, for the sake of our friendship. Lift the lid after a few minutes, stir, and taste-test a brussels sprout – it should be underdone, more crisp than tender. Stir in the minced garlic and kale leaves. Cook for two minutes and then cover with water or stock. Bring to a simmer, lower heat and add beans and flat-leaf parsley. Simmer for another few minutes. Taste for seasoning, you might need to add another pinch of sea salt. The vegetables should all stay a wee bit crisp, that’s how I like it. Isn’t the celeriac gorgeous and earthy and creamy? How are the brussels sprouts? Friends?

So Not Pretty!

* Oh, I know, I should really be using dried beans, the texture is so much better. But it is so quick and easy to use canned.

PS – Woo hoo – Katie found black garlic at South China Seas on Granville Island yesterday afternoon!