About Food – Page 7 – Stephfood CLONE

Challenges

The thing about challenges is that they are, well, challenging.

Part of the reason I started this blog is to challenge myself to try new things, learn some new dishes and have fun. I was told about a site called the Daring Kitchen, where challenges are issued each month and members are required to follow the same recipe (with few alterations permitted). This was just the kick start I needed, so I signed up for an account. I won’t actually hear back about starting the challenges for a couple of weeks, however.

I decided to try one of their prior challenges to get warmed up, jumping right into an area that I have never tried before – pastry. I started with the recipe for Salmon en Croute.

Salmon en Croute – fresh out of the oven!

I’m not really much of a baker, so I enlisted the help of my husband, who helped by making the short crust and rolling it out. Neither of us have worked with pastry crusts before, so we found it to be pretty tricky to work with. It did not turn out exactly as described in the recipe, or the helpful video tutorials. After much work, and a little creativity, we managed to wrap the salmon in the pastry dough and get it into the oven.

Imperfect, yes, but still a success! It was a fun learning experience, and it tasted great!

Complete! Salmon en croute for dinner.

Squid!

Squid may be a little scary, but it’s one of the simplest, tastiest and least expensive seafood options out there.

On our recent trip to St. Lawrence Market, we picked up some nice cleaned squid and made a simple, but delicious meal.

Market Squids!

For those of you who are not fans of squid, or like to pretend that they don’t have tentacles, you may want to skip the next couple of paragraphs. I’m about to discuss “squid parts”.

Cleaned squid is really a great thing, for those of us that are not fond of guts. Many moons ago, I picked up a box of frozen mini squid from Chinatown, and quickly found out that they were not just nice clean white tubes, ready for cooking! After thawing, I had to do some gross things like pulling off heads, pulling out guts, and dealing with ink. Squids have a couple of places that contain ink sacs – one is in the tube part, and the other is around the single staring eye. The preparing of these squids was kinda gross, lots of work… and, in the end, the squids just weren’t that good.

I did not prepare squid on my own again until recently when I discovered the glory that is cleaned squid!! For the most part, the icky work is done for you – guts and ink sacs are removed (sweet!), along with the creepy eye. The plastic spine may or may not be completely gone, and the first time I got these there were still beaks in the head (did you know squids have beaks!??!) Also, you have to pull off the heads and deal with tentacles. This is really not a big deal. I even pulled off the beaks with no trouble. Other than that, all you really need to do is rinse them off and prepare them for cooking!

This time around, we opted to prepare the squids with tubes intact (not cut into rings) using our grill pan.

We found that it fit four small squids just perfectly.

Squid has a very delicate flavour, and a texture that can range from perfectly chewy to rough rubber-bandy; so you will need to handle with care.

For seasoning, I keep it basic: garlic, wine, butter, lemon and a light dusting of herbs & spices (dill & cayenne, usually). You want to be careful not to over cook the squid, otherwise you end up with the rubber bands. I found that the grill pan was perfect for this.

Combined with some veggies, baked sweet potatoes and a healthy glass of wine, it was the perfect meal!

Our Dinner… still working on my presentation skills. 🙂

Food Waste Reduction Challenge 2010: Week 1

Week 1 is done!!

I think I haven’t done too badly, but it’s just the beginning, yes?

I have been trying to plan out meals, buy just what we need and then use it. I also had a “use it up” pasta sauce that made good use of an interesting combination of leftover items.

I’ve also decided that I would do my best to use as much of an item as possible. For example, we regularly cut off the ends of broccoli and the whole peel of a lemon once juiced. I’ve already started zesting all of the lemons before I juice them (having some dried lemon zest on hand has been great!) and next week, I will start a freezer bag for veggie ends, to be made into an aromatic broth sometime in the future.

Some challenges encountered this past week:

Cilantro – can only buy this in a big bunch, and we only use a little bit. To our advantage, we planned two meals that make use of fresh cilantro. But what to do with the rest?? Fresh cilantro is always best, but I did freeze some and dry some. The only stuff we threw out were the handful of stems that had already started to go bad — it goes fast, so there was really no preventing it!
Spinach – I used it up, but there were a few baby leaves that were already on their way out.
1 -2 tbsp cut off pastry dough from a recipe I did — it just made more dough than I needed, and I couldn’t think of anything to do with it.
1-2 tbps Some sourdough starter that went funky

Snake Oil & Ginger Juice

Come up to the front of the stage – yes you! I have a cure for the common cold that will drive you wild!

OK, so I haven’t actually found a cure for the common cold, and I’m not charismatic enough to be a snake oil salesman. I have, however, come up with a sweet and spicy concoction that can help to soothe sore throats, loosen chest congestion a little… and all without chemicals or drugs.

Let me back this up a bit.

For a while now, I’ve been trying to slowly change parts of my life that are wasteful and I’ve been trying to weed out foods that aren’t healthy, or are full of chemicals or… just aren’t food. Here in Canada, many of us reach for a packet of Neo Citran when we feel the effects of a cold (yes, fellow Canadians, you will get strange looks if you ask for it in the USA). I’ve always liked it, but it’s also creeped me out. It’s a weirdly lemon-pledgey powdered mixture that tastes like there’s a ground up aspirin in it (because there kind of IS one).

Add to that, the fact that the acetaminophen in it doesn’t mix with other cold medications I may take.

I decided to make my own hot lemony drink. I know I’m not the only one, and I’m sure many others have magically come up with the same concoction that I use. I know this must be true, because of its simplicity — there are but four ingredients: water, grated fresh ginger, honey and freshly squeezed lemon.

The result is a sweet, spicy and lemony hot drink that is very soothing.

Get yourself a really big piece of fresh ginger – the chubbier the better, and look for a smooth skin with some shine to it — if it is wrinkly and dull, it is old and not as useful.

Ingredients:

1/2 c of grated fresh ginger
2tbsp honey (this is a good way to use up any honey that has started to crystallize)
1-3 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/2 c water

I’ve made this a couple of different ways now, and we’ve found a method that seems to work well, except that I’m not sure if boiling the crap out of ginger will kill some of the good-for-you properties of it. I need to figure this out, but am not a scientician.

Here’s how I’ve been making it up lately:

Grate the ginger into a bowl, trying to keep as much of the liquid as possible.
Put the ginger and water into a pot on the stove, and simmer it for about 1/2 hour.
Strain the mixture through a fine mesh colander/strainer, pressing on the pulp of the ginger to get more liquid out. Get as much of the liquid out as you can.
Put the strained mixture back on the stove. The liquid should be opaque and a brownish colour. If the mixture is too transparent or light in colour, put the stove on high and boil off some of the water. Taste it – it should be a very very strong, bitter, gingery taste. It should taste terrible.
Once you have the perfect awful ginger juice, turn the stove down to a low-med temperature. Add the honey, and make sure it dissolves completely.
Add the lemon juice, stir it in. Take the mixture off of the stove now, and let it cool. Put it in a container in the fridge, where you can access it as needed.

To drink: Put 3 tbsp of the ginger mixture into a mug, top with hot/boiling water (doesn’t need to be boiling, as it doesn’t need to steep). Ejoy!

Food Waste Reduction Challenge 2010

This month, I will be participating in Crunchy Chicken’s Food Waste Reduction Challenge. Since I haven’t had the guts to try one of her challenges yet, I thought this would be a good one to start with. Blogging about it will hopefully encourage me to keep up with it, and really take a look at what we’re wasting.

The two-second overview: to really look at what edible food we throw out over the course of the month. This doesn’t include inedible food waste, like coffee grounds, banana peels, or eggshells. To get a sense of the bigger picture, please see the writeup on Crunchy Chicken’s blog.

I honestly think we do pretty well with food – we buy quite a lot of fresh produce, and usually use it up before it spoils. I know we have trouble with some fruits and veggies — seriously, limes do not keep well and avocadoes are a big question mark for me. It’s hard to know how long we have to eat them – but I am learning.

Part of this challenge isn’t just to monitor what you throw out, but to make a real effort to limit what you throw out. This involves some thinking and planning – only buy what you need, keep an eye on the freshness of your food, and use it or freeze it before it spoils.

I hope that some of you will consider taking this challenge with me. If you do, and you are blogging about it, please leave the link to your blog in the comments! I’d love to see how you do!

Cheers,

A Life of Spice

Thinking about my cooking.

I’ve already admitted that I’m not a good cook, but I think I might be good at adding herbs and spices.

I have more spices than any rational person should have, but I do use them! I’ve been trying to grow herbs for years – only being able to successfully grow a basil plant on my balcony after I moved to a new home this year (lack of sunlight = weinerbasil). My recent move also brought me some excitement in the form of a “spice drawer”.

In my old apartment, my spices were strewn all willy-nilly around the kitchen. I had two revolving spice racks, a narrow shelf on top of the stove, a masala tin, and other little pockets of spice. During the move, we were trying to figure out what to put in all of the drawers when my mom suggested I have a spice drawer. My jaw dropped, my eyes lit up and a wee tear trickled down my face… ok, that last one was made up. You get the picture – I was ecstatic. I hadn’t thought of that possibility, and now I could have all of my spices at my fingertips.

Masala Dabba
I still kept my masala tin – that thing kicks butt, and is a sign of a true spice fanatic.

I’ll be featuring different spices from my collection every once in a while, and I’d love some feedback about new things to try!

Cheers,

A New Start to the Affair

It started with the loss of my recipe database – one that I’ve kept for the last 10 years.

I’ve relied on it for access to a number of recipes I’ve collected, modified, and loved. Now it’s gone.

Tonight, I watched the movie Julie & Julia, and had a forehead smacking moment. I blog. I run a blog system. I help others to blog. DUH! A blog is actually the perfect replacement for my poor old database, which I often used to house more than just recipes.

Thus I have started a new blog, for myself, and I hope to maintain it and pay a little more attention to it than some of my other attempts at blogging. I figure this one should fare a little better – I’m addicted to food, I enjoy cooking… and I’m in need of some motivation to become a better cook. I am not a great cook. I can make things that taste pretty good, but I’m lacking in some of the basic skills. I have spices beyond belief, but can’t poach an egg.

I will not be de-boning a duck any time soon, so don’t worry that I’m just stealing the Julie & Julia storyline. You will find that meat is not on the menu, for the most part, as I generally do not eat it.

This blog will be a way to rebuild my recipe database, to track my trials (& errors) with new recipes, and to set some culinary goals.

Anyone who knows me is probably wondering why I didn’t do this long ago… I use food as examples in everything I teach, I talk food, I live food.

Cheers!