At 101 cookbooks there is a recipe that makes brussels sprouts taste like ambrosia. Startlingly simple. Browse around there, there are tons of San Franciscan organovegelicious recipes there. It's caused me to happily increase my appreciation whole grain textures. Inspired by that foodie website, I've started adding quinoa to my morning oatmeal and I tell you, it's a whole new world. The texture is 100% better.

So now that I'm out of Thailand, I have to tweak my fried rice recipe, since Horapa and fresh green peppercorns are rather less readily available in the cold north. But, you can still make a decent fried rice with winter veggies and no meat, even. I list ingredients, albeit amorphously, but you'll have to eyeball appropriate quantities. It's the nature of the dish, man, you're getting rid of leftover rice and some random shit in your fridge:

• cooked rice, preferably half white and half brown.
• garlic
• ginger
• a little bit of chili peppers, or cayenne powder, or rooster sauce
• leeks. or shallots. or onions.
• soy sauce. or if you're going for a thai-er flavor: fish sauce, lime juice and sugar.
• green onions to cut up and add raw right before eating.
• tofu
• an egg
• celery root
• peas. or snow peas. or yknow... whatever vegetable might seem to fit. Yes, frozen peas are a winter vegetable. Shush.
• hell, throw in some walnuts or cashews if you feel like it.

The premise: cheap starch, cheap protein, fried, spiced and salted such that it ceases to matter that the foodstuffs are cheap. All the protein and vegetables, you can play fast and loose with that. Going out and buying celery root just for this sort of goes against the spirit of the recipe, though I gotta say it is surprising and very tasty in fried rice.

The following is best done in a nice roomy wok.

First beat the egg and fry it like an omelet on medium to med-high heat in a little bit of oil. When it's done, take it out, cut it into little pieces and set that aside for later. Meanwhile brown the tofu, then put in the leeks and vegetables (depending how fast they cook) and peppers. Then the garlic. When things are looking looking about done, put the eggs back in, and some soy sauce, and the ginger, and the rice. Stir fry till it starts looking and smelling like a proper fried rice. Turn off the heat and mix in the green onions.

If you're vegan, skip the egg, you won't even miss it. In fact, if you're a carnivore, you might not even notice the lack of meat. This fried rice should be flavorful, a wee bit spicy, and have a nice variety of textures.

recipes | Posted by amanda at 01:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

This lemon-ricotta cheesecake just looks really tasty.

Made pecan pie for thanksgiving. With 1/8 tsp or baking powder and 1.5 tsp of white or cider vinegar, the crust ends up with good texture. Also, maple syrup is WAY better than corn syrup in this pie.

recipes | Posted by amanda at 11:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Winter approaches in Montréal and it's getting dark and cold outside. As a result, I am appreciating the warmth of my own kitchen more and more every day, and I am also experiencing the urge to gratinée everything in sight. I have made more stocks and roux and béchamels in the last two weeks than in the preceding two years.

A couple things have stood out as particularly tasty.

A while ago b took a break from his quest for the perfect potato soup recipe to try this cauliflower and cheese soup. (We replaced the carrots with parsnips since that's what we had on hand.) This turned out tasty, but alarmingly rich. The amount of cheese made it almost too thick to really call a soup. A couple days later, however, it found new life as macaroni and cheese.

Since I got the mac'n'cheese recipe from a friend, I don't feel quite right posting it online for all to see, but it is your basic baked-mac'n'cheese recipe based on a béchamel sauce with some breadcrumbs on top. Surely, you can find some similar recipe somewhere on the internets. Since the aforementioned soup was, essentially, based on a béchamel with some vegetables and cheese added, I built the mac'n'cheese on top of that, adding a bit more cheese, some butternut squash, and some breadcrumbs. Really easy, and really tasty.

I would also recommend this turkey-squash-lima-bean potpie from epicurious. We had home-made chicken stock, which really made the dish. It had this really nice essence of chicken despite have very little chicken meat in it (like one cup instead of the three asked for in the recipe). If you mostly use the beans and vegetables, it ends up a remarkably economical dish that's still quite satisfying. (We were too lazy to do the bacon and cheddar, btw... ::shrug:: There's only so much fattening up for the winter that I want to do, and this is already a far cry from the fish and rice I've been eating all year in the tropics.) We curried it a bit, grinding up some cumin, coriander, black pepper, a bit of cardamon and cinnamon, turmeric and spicy paprika and adding maybe a tablespoon or so of that mix. (Sorry, no exact recipe, I just dump in more cumin, coriander and paprika, a medium amount of turmeric and black pepper, and a little bit of the other things, and just make sure it smells good.)

Lastly, if you're looking for something to bake au gratin, seriously consider celery root. Mix it up with your potatoes.

recipes | Posted by amanda at 01:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

I love Thai food but I must admit that I have been gazing longingly at recipes for lemon zucchini muffins and oatmeal yoghurt pancakes.

The other day, I was craving cheese.

links | Posted by amanda at 02:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tasty, tasty appetizer recipes in the NYT last week.

Here is a collection of party foods that are as easy to eat as they are to make. Each can be produced in 20 minutes or less. Many can be served at room temperature. And none require a plate. (Few people can juggle plate, wineglass and fork successfully, let alone gracefully.)

Most of these recipes are beyond minimalist: they never do in two steps what can be done in one, and they need no embellishment.

Seriously, there is a whole cluster of at least half a dozen different things, each wrapped in bacon.

links | Posted by amanda at 07:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)