Carrot Soup and Soda Bread

Yesterday the buttermilk was due to be used, which was good because it gave me the kick I needed to have another go at making soda bread.

I compared the recipe I used last time in Ferrigno & Treuille’s “Ultimate Bread” against Delia Smith’s recipe in her “Cookery Course”. The recipes were pretty much identical, except that one used salt and replaced two tablespoons of the buttermilk with butter. So, with a sigh, I tried again, halving the recipe because I was only cooking for myself. It was good and perfectly edible, with a nice crust and taste, but I suspect that soda bread, like all these deceptively simple things, require a touch that only practice can bring. Here’s the final product, looking very tiny:

While that was cooking I decided to make kitchen sink soup (you know…the soup where you throw in everything but the kitchen sink in an attempt to clean out the fridge of vegetables on the turn?). I started my base of leek, garlic, and onion:

And then realized that I had an overabundance of carrots and not so much of other vegetables. Remembering that Delia Smith has a recipe for a carrot and tarragon soup, I decided to make a carrot tarragon soup myself.

I threw in four carrots (again, just cooking for me so small amounts), sweated them with the leek and onion, then added some chicken stock and two big pinches of tarragon. I was worried then that I had put too much tarragon in, since this was only going to make two bowlfuls, but the boldness worked really well with the carrot. A bit of salt and pepper and a quick whir in with the hand held blender, a couple slices of soda bread with butter, and there was dinner:

It was very good. I’m definitely going to have to make this again. Yesterday when I made this bread, I was tempted to go over to the organic bakery across the road and buy bread, but I resisted the easy (and expensive, relatively speaking) out. I’m glad I did. There is a satisfaction in making bread and puttering in the kitchen that is peculiarly relaxing and life-affirming. So what if my thesis advisor has given me a ’suggestion’ that will entail another two weeks of work? I made dinner! And it was good.

Dim Sum: Where I eat some pretty disturbing things

Last night Lucy and Forest, my friends from Beijing, phoned and suggested going for dim sum today. I had cleared the decks so as to put in 8 hours of work today, but of course I said yes and abandoned responsibility. They explained to me that dim sum eating starts at 11.00 am, so we needed to be there about that time.

We got to the restaurant at 9 minutes after 11.00 and the official parking spots were all taken. I had to take my place in a line of cars parked illegally down the centre of the parking lot. I will tell you now that my car was not ticketed, towed, or damaged– any of which I was sure was going to happen to it while we were inside.

I had heard before that this restaurant was the best place to go in Edmonton for dim sum, but I have to admit I was surprised at how many people were there already, considering the place had only opened a few minutes before. This was a great cavern of a place crowded full of tables, like all dim sum restaurants in my experience, and yet we got one of the last remaining tables. As we threaded our way through the room, past great tanks of fish and under red paper lanterns, I noticed that there was only one other Caucasian person in the place. Great!, I said to myself, mentally rubbing my hands. This is what I want– the real Chinese cuisine, not the stuff they give the foreigners!

So when Forest and Lucy turned to me and said, “Before we order, is there anything you don’t eat?” I cheerfully replied, “I can’t have the tea, but I’ll eat anything else. I trust you, just give me what you would eat.”

Sigh. Let’s take a minute to reflect on how it would be wise not say things like that when eating non-Westernized food.  What I can’t believe is that I had completely forgotten about Lei and her husband taking me to a Sichuan restaurant here in Edmonton last year where they assured me I would get real Chinese food.  That menu offered frog legs, pig intestines, and fish heads.  And yet I forgot about that and said, “I’ll eat what you are eating!”

We started with four dishes:

And we ended up with twelve. Since they were hosting, I continued to encourage them to order what they liked, and said that I would go along. From what I can remember, we had:

1. Beef meatball
2. Shrimp and pork dumpling with crab roe
3. Octopus
4. Pineapple custard
5. Rice porridge
6. Chicken feet
7. Beef tripe
8. Beef and onion dumpling
9. Some sort of rolled noodle with a meatball filling
10. Fried rice cakes

The other two things I can no longer remember. Maybe we only had 11 dishes. But three of them were difficult for me to eat.

I remembered having chicken feet in Victoria’s Chinatown when I was 8 and had my first dim sum. So I bravely took one.  I tried one little bite and then hid the rest behind my bowl, because when I picked up a foot with my chopsticks, even though I kept telling myself if was meat and bone, it still looked too much like foot for my comfort. The octopus, which you can see in the picture above, I thought was squid. I have no problem eating squid but for some reason have shied away from octopus. Now that I have eaten it and not known it was octopus I guess I can’t be squeamish any more.

Lastly, but most importantly, the tripe. It looked disgusting beyond belief because I have a little “thing” about tripe. I thought maybe, just maybe, I could manage to try a bit because this guy from Mexico a couple of years ago made me some posole (hope I spelt that right) with tripe in it, so I had to eat it to be polite and it was really good when you forgot about the tripe concealed within it. This tripe was undisguised but Forest told me it is his favorite and an expensive delicacy in China because everyone wants to eat it. So I took a few minutes to stop eating, got up my courage, and took a piece. It was so, so horrible. Now I know with statements like that I brand myself as someone incapable of becoming a gourmand, but it was horrible, rubbery with a prickly surface that rasped against your tongue, and boiled with ginger.  I have a hard time with plain ginger flavour anyway, so with the two together I started gagging but got it down and I don’t think anyone noticed my struggles.

It’s several hours later and I am still in gustatory shock.  I don’t think I will be able to manage eating dinner tonight.

Now, all the weird and wonderful new experiences aside, I had a really good time.  I have to say it was an education to see Forest order from the carts.  I’ve always meekly sat in my seat and accepted/rejected whatever the cart person showed me.  Forest got up, inspected the cart, interrogated the person pushing the cart, and even lifted up baskets and held them to the light before accepting some dishes.  I never knew you could do that! They also taught me how to say “dim sum”, the Cantonese term, in Mandarin.  It provoked much hilarity, as it always does on the part of any Chinese people listening, when I attempt to pronounce any word in any Chinese language.  I’ve given up on everything except “hello” in Mandarin, and it took my friends Lei and Lianlian three weeks to get me to say it properly.

Forest and Lucy explained to me that dim sum, which is part of Cantonese cooking, is meant to take two hours, which is about how long we were there.  I had known already that businessmen in China meet up to eat dim sum and talk, but they told me that dim sum is a meal/ cuisine/ eating experience that is meant to foster friendships and long conversations.   I think that is a lovely idea, and it happened today.

Sweet potato pie

I was out and about today, enjoying the warm spring air and the sunshine. Everything is still melting, but we’ve moved past dripping and into big puddles. This is what I missed when I lived in Arizona– the excitement that comes with the changing of the seasons. In celebration of spring I bought some tulip bulbs and I have been enjoying watching them gradually reveal their blooms over the past few days.

Today I made Paula Deen’s sweet potato pie. I got the recipe off the Food Network but had to replace the dry ginger with grated fresh ginger. At first I thought I would just make the sweet potato base and not do the meringue, so when it came out of the oven it looked like this:

I had missed my opportunities the last two days to make this and involve taste testers, so I figured I’d do the basic amount (the sweet potato layer) to know if the recipe was good. Then I smelt the pie and it smelt really good…and I knew it needed more, like fluffy sweet meringue. Plus I had to prove to you that I am capable of making a decent meringue after last weekend’s debacle. So I made the meringue and did the pie a la Paula Deen:

The meringue is a little gloppy looking because I was nervous about overbeating the egg whites. The pie is pretty good. I’m not sure it’s the ultimate sweet potato pie, but it is good. Of course, it might not be the ultimate because I can’t use bourbon, and I am pretty sure that’s a key ingredient for this kind of Southern pie.  I don’t find that the meringue adds anything in terms of texture or flavour to the finished pie.  It only adds visual appeal.  So if I make this pie again, I will be using whipped cream which I think would provide the visual appeal and do a better job of the mouth appeal.

My addiction to brown rice is growing and I am getting ready to write an opus about my brown rice cooking in a few days.

Bedtime Reading

It’s past 10.30 pm and I should have been asleep long ago, but I am having one of those nights that are recurring lately with alarming frequency– I can’t settle down into unconsciousness.  One of my habits, as I have mentioned here before, is to read cookbooks before turning out the light and composing myself for sleep.  I read at least one recipe; turn off the light; think about creating something and/ or organizing something (I’ve started organizing the cooking of Christmas turkey feasts in my head this week as an exercise in how you could do it without oozing perspiration on the holiday itself) ; and voila, I’m asleep and having good dreams.

This morning I was up at 7.30 am cleaning the bathroom ready for my day with Jen and Jen.  We had set this day aside to show Jen W how to make a quilt, and we were trying to do a one-day baby quilt project at my apartment.  Of course, we all got caught up in the excitement of the fabric and it’s turned into more of a two or three day project, but that’s another story.  The point is, I was up early today and kept busy all day, it was enjoyable and not stressful, but my food-related reading is not working and sending me off.  By the way, I cleaned the bathroom instead of making the sweet potato pie this morning.  It was the more pressing need.

The past couple of nights I have been reading Nigella Lawson’s cookbook “Feast”.  As far as “Feast” goes, I have to tell you that it has finally dawned on me what Nigella Lawson’s genius is, other than looking gorgeous at any weight (curse her).  It’s leftovers.  The woman is a genius with leftovers.  I still don’t trust her baking recipes though and I am wondering what is about her and her fascination with cranberries and chestnuts.  She’s like a pusher, only it’s not drugs, it’s the heavy use of cranberries and chestnuts– oh, and bacon– in your cooking.  Check any of her cookbooks and you’ll see.  By the way she recycles quite a few recipes in “Feast” that she has in other cookbooks, so I was a bit disappointed there.

Part of what is keeping me up is that I can’t settle a question in my mind.  You’ll have to pull out your “accepting self” here for a minute.  I enjoy creating and fundamentally need organization.   For example, shopping for Christmas gifts for my siblings and their spouses was driving me mad, so I figured out what to give them for five years as couples gifts, and year two is now in production getting ready for December 2008.  (Remember, I said “accepting self”).

I want to settle what my cooking project should be for next year, which will start at the end of August.  I can’t decide and it’s keeping me from sleep tonight.  Here are my choices, with any pros and cons I have identified, so maybe you can help me decide:

1.  Puddings.  Pro: Love puddings, easy to size for one person.  Con: If I had a houseful of men to feed there is no question I would do this, but I don’t.  And I am struggling enough as it is not to get any fatter than I am already (curse graduate school in a cold climate!).
2. Cookies. Pro: Easy to palm off on other people.  Con: I don’t see much challenge or interest.
3. Cheap cooking. Since I will be paying off my student debt (that’s right, even getting scholarships/ bursaries and working two and three jobs through school doesn’t mean you can escape grad school debt) this would be a good option for the next year.  Con: Am I capable of making cheap home cooking exciting?  You saw how gross my rajma looked in the picture I posted last week.
4. Exploring my British culinary heritage. Pro: I love British food and think it is completely underrated.  Con: I can’t think of one really except that I eat British dishes all the time as part of my normal life so how would this help me improve my cooking skills?
5. Making things that you normally would never make at home.  This would include things like making mayonnaise, homemade salad dressings, English muffins etc. Pro: I would learn a lot.  Con: I know from experience that when you start eating that way you can’t bring yourself to buy cheap and convenient anymore.  Look at me and custard.  Any time I want it I have to make it with egg yolks and do the whole production instead of pulling out Bird’s powder.
6. Pastries. This would be things like Danishes, madeleines, cream slice, etc.  Pro: I would be challenged and learn a lot about technique.  Second pro, this would be easy to give away.  Con: See “puddings”.

You know, with that off my chest I think it may be off my mind for tonight as well.  I’m heading back for another try at falling asleep.

About blogging

At Christmas dinner I had to hear my brother in law announce how sad bloggers as a species are.  My sister (his wife) pointed out that I have a blog, but that didn’t seem to alter his opinion.

I’ve started to look around at other food blogs and I’ve found a couple I like.  I’m still monitoring them a while longer, though, before I recommend them.  One of them wrote today about drinking vodka behind the wheel of his car, driving through Paris, and so he’s now off my list because I am, like any reasonable person, rabidly anti-drunk driving.

(On a side note, I’ve been in Paris and observed the driving first-hand.  A lot of them do drive like they must be intoxicated and I would think any American expatriate would be sufficiently intimidated by the driving there to want to be cold sober before getting on the road.)

Some of these blogs I’ve been looking at are downright intimidating.  The photos, the name-dropping, the ultra restaurants, and the 107 comments per post…it’s definite that your New York food blogger and a graduate student in Edmonton do not experience the same food.  I have figured out, though, that you need to put lots of tags on your posts.  It boosts circulation.  By the way, I found out today that in French I would be a blogeuse.  All I can say is, vive l’Academie Francaise, the organization better known here in English speaking Canada as the French language police (always referred to with a lifted lip of disgust and raised eyebrow– who could object to words like “le weekend” and “le hotdog”?).

I have realized that I could change the name of this blog to “food rant” these days so I am going to try for something lighter over the next little while.  I was hoping to try this Guatemalan restaurant I heard about with my friend Kristin this week but we have to stay at her house on Friday and can’t go out.  Potty training is taking longer than the one day the book promised.   It looks like the most exciting food experience this week will be (sigh) this week’s pie.  I’m planning on making Paula Deen’s sweet potato pie tomorrow…I’ll let you know how it goes.

It is also necessary to add that I saw “Doc Martin”’s final episode of season three, and I was pleading with the television that no, it couldn’t be so, Doc Martin and Louisa had to get married!  They had to!  No, Louisa, don’t walk away… So now I am completely disgusted and planning to write a letter to Martin Clunes personally to say that they had better get on with filming season four, and that I want Doc Martin and Louisa to get married.  I don’t care about all that rubbish over whether they would make each other happy, it would make me happy so get on with it already.  –Sorry, I have to tell you about it because the only other three people I know who watch it are in different time zones and I can’t call them to unload, so you get to hear about it instead.