weeknight curry

I'm a big fan of Luisa's blog, the Wednesday Chef. I love the recipes she features and a couple of weeks ago she posted Nigel Slater's Chicken Curry. I made that almost as written (doubled the amount of chicken, stock and cream but not the curry, added 2 tsps garam masala and omitted the tomato) and we loved it. According to my husband, his co-workers were salivating when he heated up leftovers for lunch. This past week, I made a vegetarian version with cauliflower, potato, mushrooms and peas. It was very good. My only complaint is that the vegetarian version doesn't yield so much extra sauce so I couldn't repeat the curry sauce and rice supper of a couple of weeks ago.

Vegetables in Curry Sauce (adapted from the Wednesday Chef)
1 medium cauliflower, cut into florets
8-10 large button mushrooms, sliced
5 small red potatoes, scrubbed, diced
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 medium onions, chopped
2 garlic cloves minced
1 can navy beans, drained
2 tbsp curry powder
2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 c chicken stock
1 c heavy cream
2 c frozen peas
juice of 1 lemon

Parboil the cauliflower and potato until al dente in boiling water and drain. In a large pan, melt the butter, add the oil and add the drained cauliflower and potato and saute over medium high heat for about 5 minutes until the vegetables brown slightly. Add the mushrooms, garlic, onions and beans and saute for about 7 or 8 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Stir in the curry powder, garam masala and cinnamon and cook for about 4 minutes. Add the stock and peas and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Stir in the cream and any salt and pepper required to taste. Add the lemon juice and simmer for 1 minute. Serve over rice.

making bread

I’ve been making bread on and off for many years. I think the very first loaf I made was inspired by the bread we ate aboard the Schooner Lewis R French. I thought if they could make bread from scratch aboard a sailing ship and cook it in a wood stove, I should be able to manage it in my own kitchen. And I did. I made dill and cottage cheese bread and kneaded by hand. I alternated with a cheddar cheese loaf and a hearty white and the bread and kneading got me through a tough winter. Kneading bread is very therapeutic and it’s a wonderful outlet for worry and anger and sorrow. That was many years ago and I’ve moved on and for the most part, thankfully, am not so needful of the therapeutic aspects of kneading bread dough. For a few years, I faithfully made bread in a bread machine. Sometimes I would set it to start in the middle of the night and would wake to the smell of fresh baked bread but truthfully, the bread wasn’t amazing and I always found it weird to pull the paddle out of the loaf. And then the machine started baking the loaves so they were too dark and I put the machine away in a cupboard.

I started baking bread again with the advent of my kitchen aid mixer. And I’ve been very happy with the very much tweaked recipe from America’s Test Kitchen that I make week in and week out for our toast and sandwiches.

I love the artisanal loaves I sometimes pick up at bakeries and markets around town and periodically aspire to more adventurous baking. Last summer I picked up a copy of this book from the library and over the course of several weeks baked several loaves with various variations.

black olive version

My husband always thought it tasted like sourdough. For some reason, I haven’t baked those loaves in a while. I keep thinking I need to try the no-bake bread in a dutch oven but feel like a) my oven doesn’t get hot enough (and we are having issues with the heating element in the oven right now) and b) I don’t really have a dutch oven type dish that I feel is up to the task. Maybe I’m just a chicken but that was one of the reasons I liked this book – that wasn’t a requirement. I had the peel and the baking stone so I was good to go.

At the beginning of January, Tea came up with the idea of cooking challenges over at Tea and Cookies. And the first challenge was sourdough bread, made from homemade sourdough starter. So I started a batch of starter. It went all weird on me around the 7th day which was around the instructions 5th day (I did learn that you have to follow what the starter is doing and not just the instructions). I think at some point I had read the instructions incorrectly and got the flour/water additions mixed up and I think the temperature variations in the house proved too much for my baby starter. So I started again. I coddled the second batch and made sure it stayed warm – wrapping it up and having it near a heating pad. I told myself that if pioneer women could manage making starter and sourdough while farmsteading and on the Oregon trail, surely I could manage this in my kitchen. (Although in my darker moments, I thought they all must have used starter handed down from generations of women who had created the starter in warm summer months!) A week later I had starter and I was getting ready to bake my first sourdough loaf. I used the recipe that Tea posted on her site (the first one) and mixed away. And I got 2 funny looking loaves as a result.

They are delicious although not very tangy. But I assume the tanginess will develop as the starter ages. The dough smelt tangier than any of my previous bread recipes which was exciting. So if you are up for a challenge, try making your own starter and then your own sourdough. Or, get someone you know to make their own starter and then get some from them. I’m passing some of my starter to my sister-in-law and we’ll compare bread.

two jars of starter



dreaming of scones

I woke up yesterday thinking about apple scones. I don't know why. But I wondered how to add some apple flavour to my standby scone recipe. Finally I went downstairs and gave it a try. The result was a nice change to our regular scone but not overly appley.

Apple Scones (adapted from Brown Sugar Scones from The Recipes Only Cookbook)
2 1/2 c unbleached flour
1 c organic unbleached spelt flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 c brown sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
grated of fresh nutmeg
13 tbsp butter
3 tbsp applesauce
3/4 c milk
1/4 c apple juice
1 golden delicious apples, peeled, cored, diced

Combine the flour, baking powder, spices and sugar in a food processor and whiz until blended. Add the butter and applesauce and mix until the butter is blended evenly in small pieces through the flour. Add the milk, juice and apple and mix until a dough just forms.

Dump the dough onto a floured surface and form into a rectangle. Cut the dough into 16 triangles and place onto ungreased baking sheets.

Bake at 400 deg for 15-19 minutes until slightly golden brown. You can brush the tops of the scones with milk and add sanding sugar for extra crunch prior to baking.

sour cream noodle bake

This is a dish in regular rotation at our house. It comes from Ree at Pioneer Woman but I've played around with it quite a bit and made it ours. I use less meat than the original recipe and added vegetables. Also I've swapped out tomato sauce with creamed corn for my husband and his gerd tummy. This is how I made it last night.

Sour Cream Noodle Bake (adapted from Pioneer Woman)
1/2 lb lean ground beef (I also use ground chicken or turkey)
14 oz can creamed corn
1/2 medium onion, chopped
6-8 mushrooms, sliced
1 medium red bell pepper, sliced
1 c frozen peas
1 tbsp dijon mustard
1 package egg noodles
1/2 c sour cream
1 1/4 c ricotta cheese
3 green onions, sliced
 1 c grated cheese
salt and pepper

In a saute pan, over medium high heat, saute the beef until slightly brown. Add the onion and cook until soft. Add the mushrooms and peppers and cook until soft and slightly brown. Add the peas, mustard

and the creamed corn. Cook for a few minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile cook the noodles until al dente. Drain the noodles and mix with the sour cream, ricotta cheese and the green onions. Layer half the noodles into a greased casserole dish. Spread half of the meat mixture over the top and add half the cheese. Add the rest of the noodles, the rest of the meat and top with the rest of the cheese.

Bake at 350 deg F for 20 minutes. Serve.

around our house this week

It's been grey and rainy a lot lately. By mid-week we were decidedly grumpy and the weather wasn't helping. I was tired of grey, tired of damp and my soul was longing for a bit of sunshine. I have these in the kitchen

and living room, which help with the idea that spring is on it's way. We had a house guest, who wasn't much trouble over the last weekend but who didn't do much.

He ate lots of vegetables and hay and entertained our boy.

We've had some lovely meals - this polenta and artichoke tart from the Wednesday Chef (thanks Luisa)

and this celeriac soup from Dana Treat accompanied by delicious yogurt biscuits from Super Natural Every Day.

And a couple of days ago, the sun came out. Everyone seems happier. We went for a walk yesterday afternoon to a bay full of nostalgia for my husband's family and introduced our boy to it.

Today we have plans, to go skating, build some Lego creations

and play in the park with a friend.

making it green

For our boy's 6th birthday party, he'd originally requested a locomotive cake. I do have a book on making kid cakes but it didn't have a locomotive cake that he was happy having, so I went over to youtube for some help. And while scrolling through several videos of train cakes (mostly Thomas the Tank Engine), up popped a tank cake on the side bar. Well, he was enchanted. "I want that", he said. And it looked easier than a locomotive cake, especially the way our boy was thinking it should be. And actually assembling the tank cake is easy. I'm here to tell you that the hardest part is getting the frosting the colour you want it, at least it was for me.

Now I took the easy way out with the cakes. As a couple of the crowd have wheat issues, I went with Glutino's Gluten Free Chocolate Cake mix - 3 of them. I whipped them up and baked 2 cakes, 1 in a 9x13 pan and 1 in an 8x8 pan. In retrospect I could have made the tank using just the 9x13 cake, making it a bit smaller.

Once baked, I cut a round out of the large cake and evened off the edge. I placed this cake on a foil covered stiff cardboard I used for the cake board. I trimmed the 8x8 cake and placed it on top of the larger rectangle and the round cut out went on the top.

 To glue everything together, I used a crumb coat of frosting. I made the crumb coat using food colouring in liquid drops and even using all the green I had, I still only got a bright shamrock green. I set up the layers and covered the cake with this frosting and put it in the fridge to set up.

And then went off to the craft store for gel food colouring - in Moss Green. I had to use quite a bit of gel to get the olive green colour I was going for, but it worked! I frosted the entire cake in the olive green frosting, then added a chocolate roll wafer cookie for the gun, and used chocolate buttons (large) for the wheel rollers with a bit of black frosting gel to outline for the treads.

 Add candles and lego people and the cake was ready for the party. It was a hit and fed a lot of kids and adults.

lego and a tank cake

If you'd looked up the word apprehension in the dictionnary last week, there might have been a photo of myself and my husband. We were building up to panic through the week, at the prospect of 18 of our boy's 5 and 6 year old friends invading our house for a couple of hours. Yes, we'd invited them, but still, the prospect was daunting. We kept saying "it is only for 2 hours". It seems that kindergarden is a big year for birthdays and a few of our boy's friends have had parties for the whole class. Our boy really wanted to do that as well. I looked into various options for entertainment and venues but in the end I came up with this - a party at our house with entertainment for the children. I hired a fantastic guy who came with a ton of lego and a friend to help him to play with the kids for most of the time. (I'm not linking to his site mainly because he isn't currently booking parties but if you live in the Vancouver, BC area and are interested just leave me a comment and I can forward you details.) I also begged some mum friends to stay while their kids played (ok, I also plied them with wine to make it more palatable).

So, the party has come and gone. Everyone seemed to have fun, no-one got hurt and my husband only had to use a bit of carpet cleaner solution afterwards. I think it also helped that I've learned a few things and applied them to this party. When I started planning the party, I was initially only going to ask the boys. But in speaking to a few mums about the idea of a lego party, they all seemed enthusiastic and it did seem a bit mean to not ask the girls in our boy's class as well. Especially, as my husband pointed out, that our boy had been to several of their parties. But I did think that I would set up a place where the girls could go if they go legoed out, with a roll of art paper and crayons. And as we moved the furniture in the living room mostly into the dining room to make a clear space for the lego to be, we had a big seating area in the dining room - very squashed but cosy. I kept it simple with the party food with things that had worked well at other kid parties - crackers (I went with the ever popular Cheese Bunnies), a veggie tray with dip, sliced fruit (melon, apple, strawberries and grapes), homemade bagel bites and a bowlful of yogurt tubes. I'd never seen yogurt served at a kids party before but it is one of our boy's favorite foods and I thought it might be a good idea as it is a self contained serving. They were very popular, especially with kids who'd never had them before.

The lego guys arrived early, and set up quickly with all kinds of fantastic lego creations - I'd requested the City set with airport and space add ons. They had lego apartment building, hospital, bank, police station, pizzeria, airport, airplanes, stations, a huge crane as well as all kinds of lego vehicles, people and an array of space plants, stations and robots. They also set up a lego train set with a set of controls and had trays of block for the children to build things with. It was quite an impressive set up.

 I did wonder how all the children would fit in but they all did. And after the initial excitement on seeing it all, the kids settled down to a dull roar. They played with the lego, some came and snacked and some made their way upstairs. The girls did a giant birthday card for our boy with the paper and crayons and some found a game to play.

The parents who stayed perched around and had wine and snacks and chatted. It was great. When the lego time was up, the kids moved to wash their hands and then onto the snacks. It was very crowded in our dining room but no-one seemd to mind. Once everyone was done with hand washing, I lit the cake candles and our boy (with the help of some of his friends) blew them out and the kids had cake.

And then it was time to go. They all got a balloon and a goodie bag and off they went.

Afterwards, we cleaned up, moved the furniture back to where it normally is and had a supper of mostly leftover veggies and fruit. One of our favorite moments from the party was when some of the boys (including mine) decided to put all the Lego girls in jail and one of the girls found out about it. "We have to rescue them!" and the girls all banded together and trooped in to rescue the Lego girls from the police jail.