food – Page 15 – Stephfood CLONE

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. 🙂

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!

From the Spice Drawer: Nanami Togarashi

Today’s featured item from the spice drawer is a Japanese spice blend that may or may not be called ‘Nanami Togarashi’. This name doesn’t appear anywhere on this bottle, and similar blends from other brands have different names (another one I saw was called ‘Shichimi Togarashi‘, seems to have the same ingredients. Hm. Wait – Google to the rescue here.) Nanami Togarashi is generally made up of chili pepper, orange peel, sesame seeds, japanese pepper (sansho – tastes almost lemon balmy), seaweed, etc.

This stuff is amazing, and I’m totally addicted to it.

In Japanese restaurants, they usually offer this to sprinkle on your soup. Once I discovered it, I started to put it on everything even remotely Japanese inspired. My favourite use is on stir fried udon noodles. As it is primarily made of chili pepper, it does add a bit of heat, so be careful when adding it to dishes. The inclusion of citrus and the almost citrusy tasting Sansho pepper give it a nice tang.

Nanami Togarashi isn’t available in most grocery stores, and can commonly be found in Japanese supermarkets and some pan-Asian supermarkets. I used to only be able to find the tiny bottles of it, and had even asked one of the grocers about whether I could order bigger bottles. At the time, it seemed that you couldn’t get it in any other size. On my most recent trip to Sanko, my favourite Japanese grocery store here in Toronto, I was pleased* to find not only a larger bottle, but also a large bag of Nanami Togarashi. I bought one of each.

Next time you see one of these cute little red bottles, give it a try!

Cheers!

*pleased = almost peed myself, I was so happy about the silly spices

Market Mayhem: A Trip To St. Lawrence Market (Part 1)

This past weekend, we took a trip to one of our favourite markets – St. Lawrence Market, in Toronto. We had a chance to pick up some of our “usual fare”, and took some pics while we were at it. Future posts will detail some of the specific finds there, such as Kozlik’s mustard and the fantastic selection of seafood. For now, we’d like to bring you a quick zip through the market, on a cold, cold Saturday.

We came home with armloads of greatness…

Enjoy!

Monthly Mélange: January 2010

Noodles!!

Here’s a rundown of some of my culinary highlights of January 2010. If there’s anyone out there reading my blog, feel free to comment with your own rundown of the month!

How did January 2010 taste?

Monthly Spice
Herbes de Provence. I had never bought it before, and my mom (who isn’t as insane about herbs and spices as I am) recommended I try it. So good! I think the timing was perfect, too, because the lovely woodsy taste works well in the winter, when you’re trying to create comfort food. Usually a blend of herbs like lavender, rosemary, thyme, savory and basil, it creates a nice balance between deep, woody herbs and lighter, leafier ones.

Mystery Ingredient
Ginger! It does a body good! My husband came down with a cold, and I made up my usual concoction of ginger, honey and lemon (more about that next week). I used a LOT of ginger this time, and he seemed to like it… so much so that I needed to make another batch the next day. Off to the grocery store I went, in the pouring rain I might add, to procure another PILE of ginger.

Party in My Mouth
Lindt just came out with a new Intense Blueberry dark chocolate. So good! Not as dark as I would like (‘Intense’ is a little misleading). A little disappointed to see other fruits in the ingredient list, like apple and pineapple, along with blueberry. This makes me wonder if the ‘blueberries’ in the chocolate are the kind of frankenblueberries (reconstituted-blueberry-flavoured-“fruit”-substance) that you find in breakfast cereal. Boo! That said, it tastes really good, and has a little crunch from almond slivers. On the fence, but just about to fall into the pit of denial, which is full of yummy, yummy chocolate.

I Made This!
I think the best thing I made from scratch this month was…. not sure, but my husband said it was mussels. Like most things, I started by looking at a couple of recipes and mostly used them to get an idea of the cooking time and what order things should go in. Then I did my own thing with the seasoning. Should I be offended that the best thing I made didn’t involve all that much difficult stuff? It’s not like he told me the best thing I had made was toast. Now THAT would be offensive.

Shameful Secrets
I am addicted to Skittles and Jelly Belly jellybeans. OK, the jellybeans aren’t that shameful in and of themselves… they are fantastic!! The problem is that I eat them until my stomach hurts. That, and they are in no way part of the ‘whole foods’ thing I’m trying to maintain, they aren’t especially natural, and I SIMPLY CAN’T STOP EATING THEM! I blame my recent bad behaviour on my friend Matt, who likes to hit the candy store after lunch. I had been doing so well!!

… and with my stomach torn to shreds, we head into February.

Have a great weekend!

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,

Found Favourites: Playgroup Granola Bars

To start things off, I’d like to share a recipe from my now defunct recipe database, that I found many years ago. I’ve pretty much stuck to the original recipe, except that I use dried cranberries instead of raisins, and I often add things like quinoa flakes, hemp seeds, flax seeds, etc. to the mix.

I can’t say I’ve ever been able to cut them into 24, as the recipe suggests, but I probably make them too big.

These are yummy and filling, so go easy!

Original Source: Allrecipes.com – Playgroup Granola Bars
(actually, I first got this from someone on Live Journal, but I can’t seem to find the original recipe… It’s basically the same, except the wheatgerm wasn’t in the first one I tried.)

Ingredients:

2 cups rolled oats
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
3/4 cup dried cranberries or raisins
1/2 cup chocolate chips
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup honey
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Generously grease a 9×13 inch baking pan.

2. In a large bowl, mix together the oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, flour, wheat germ, cranberries (or raisins), chocolate chips and salt. Make a well in the center, and pour in the honey, egg, oil and vanilla. Mix well using your hands. Pat the mixture evenly into the prepared pan.

3. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes in the preheated oven, until the bars begin to turn golden at the edges.

4. Cool for 5 minutes, then cut into bars while still warm. Do not allow the bars to cool completely before cutting, or they will be to hard to cut.

Servings: 24 (depends how you cut them)