bento box

salmon to swoon over

Four ingredients. Two minutes prep. Endless compliments.

This is the most date-worthy recipe in my repertoire. It takes mere minutes to make, is almost impossible to screw up and makes a hell of an impression.

It's been described as the most perfect use of prosciutto by one friend. I won't argue.

It was in fact a university roommate who recited the recipe to me one day when I was desperate for a birthday dinner idea. She had just seen an episode of Jamie Oliver's The Naked Chef and jotted the recipe down. Not that there is much to it.

At the time I had no idea what prosciutto was and remember timidly asking the butcher at Loblaws for it, completely mangling the pronunciation and unsure of what I would get.

The key, as I've learned over the years, is to make sure you're not getting the butt end of the prosciutto with its puny serving spoon-sized slices but instead longer ones that you can envelop your salmon in.

Since that first somewhat awkward introduction to prosciutto, I've made the recipe a thousand times ... and not just to impress. It's a recipe I make at least once or twice a month for myself because it's just so damn easy and tasty.

In fact, my garden always has a sprig or two of lemon thyme growing in it just for this meal. That's how good it is.

Salmon wrapped in prosciutto

Ingredients:

• I fillet of salmon.
• A handful of lemon thyme (regular works too).
• Olive oil
• 2-3 thin slices of prosciutto.

1. Drizzle a little oil on a baking sheet or on some tin foil. Put the slices of prosciutto down, then place the salmon fillet on top.

2. Pull the leaves off the thyme if the stalks are woody. If they are tender, just chop them all up. Sprinkle on top of the salmon. Fold the prosciutto over so that the fish is completely wrapped. Drizzle oil on top.

3. Bake in oven at 400 F for 10-20 minutes, depending on thickness of the fillet. You can always just cut in the middle to check whether it's done and flaky. The prosciutto should be nice and crispy.

I like to serve this with a lemon linguine or risotto and broiled asparagus topped with a few sprinkles of salt and a slice of lemon on the side for fresh squeezing at the table.


 

tomato sauce

Sometimes cooking for one feels like a chore, not worth the effort. After all, it's just for you so why bother?

But I think it's worth the bother. And it really doesn't have to take much time.

I've accumulated a rotating repertoire of recipes for those times when I come home and can't even fathom summoning enough energy to cook. Each one is fairly simple and sometimes they even come across as impressive.

The one recipe I make the most would have to be fresh tomato pasta sauce. It sounds like it would take all the effort in the world, but is actually ready in the time it takes to boil a big pot of water and cook the pasta.

The key to making the sauce feel like a treat is using high-quality ingredients, mainly the tomatoes.

Most of the time, good fresh tomatoes aren't available. And that's when I recommend using canned San Marzano tomatoes, which are so sweet you'll never go back.

(See pic below with San Marzano tomatoes dwarfing a can of the inferior kind.)

At its most basic, tomato sauce should include:

• A tomato or two, diced, OR a can of whole tomatoes.
• Several cloves of garlic, minced, OR a shallot, minced.
• A few tablespoons of oil, olive or vegetable.
• Salt and pepper.

1. Heat the oil in a pan over medium-low heat. Add garlic or shallots. Stir and cook until sweating.

2. Add tomatoes. If using whole canned tomatoes, instead of dicing them, I usually grab them from the can and crush them with my hand before placing in the pan.

3. Stir regularly. Cook at medium-high heat for about 10 minutes or until consistency seems sauce-like.

4. Add salt and pepper to taste.

The best part about this recipe is it has infinite variations. At the end, you can top it with freshly grated Parmesan or mix in Ricotta. Fresh parsley or basil also taste great.

The oil can be substituted with butter, with an extra dab added at the end. (Like the sauce in the pictures.)

Or you can add red pepper flakes when cooking the shallot or garlic to add some kick.

There are more possibilities, but I'll save them for another time.

picnic

Can you eat cherry blossoms? I'm not sure, but that would be a convenient excuse to post these sakura pics on my food blog.

How about the fact that I went that I went to High Park in the pouring rain to join some friends for a Hanami picnic?

Hanami literally translates to flower viewing, and in Japan is a springtime ritual of lazing on a tarp under a thick ceiling of dainty sakura, or cherry blossoms. But the get-together wouldn't be complete without a few bottles of sake and a whole slew of snacks.

It was more than a little drizzly on Sunday afternoon, but a few of us still managed to gather under a protective roof and eat the day away with samplings of yakisoba, mochi, gooey chocolate chip cookies and more Japanese chips and chocolates than I could name.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the edible offerings being too enamoured with the flowers. But really, that's how a hanami party should be.

Made for me

Often, I find myself insisting friends come over for dinner. I enjoy cooking for them, whether it be a hasty concoction from whatever is left in my fridge or a blog recipe that I've been drooling over.

But the best part is having company since so often my meals are scarfed down in front of a computer monitor or eaten on my couch with my plate perched on my lap.

So it is a special treat to not only have a guest but have them cook for me as well. And especially to wake up to a chocolate chip pancake extravaganza after lazily sleeping in until noon.

On Sunday, D. made me his special chocolate chip pancakes. It's a recipe he's perfected over the years and can throw together on a whim. (Perhaps if I'm lucky he'll let me post it.)

But this time he pimped it up with a slathering of whip cream topped with raspberries and slices of mango. And in a last second Emeril Lagasse "kick it up a notch" style inspiration, he sprinkled it all in cocoa.

And when we'd eaten more than we thought we could eat, he nudged me and said, "Hey, maybe this can be a guest blog."

"Maybe," I replied, none too surely.

But here it is. Maybe not so much a blog by a guest, but a blog entry about great guests.

oatmeal

This spring tantalized and teased us with an early wave of hot weather. Like many I swapped my winter clothes for summer ones and started eyeing up the fresh produce section of my grocery store for the first edible signs of spring.

But in the past few days, I've been reaching into my closet for gloves and digging deep into my cupboards for comfort food.

And so as rain dripped drearily in the dog park outside my window, I pulled out the traditional winter staple: oatmeal.

I always used to toss whatever instant oatmeal was on hand into a pot and boil it to death with the requisite amount of water. But during one of my many nights flipping through cookbooks, I noticed a recipe for oatmeal in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.

The recipe is quite simple and there's nothing all that remarkable about it (though the addition of butter did give me pause). But what the recipe did was make me think about the fact that oatmeal doesn't have to be the nasty gruel you grew up with. Like almost anything, it can take on a little gourmet flair.

To that I end I drizzled mine with wildflower honey, poured on thick organic cream, then tossed in some raspberries.

And I have to admit that while savouring that steaming bowl of oatmeal, it didn't seem so bad that spring is taking its sweet time.

Oatmeal

Adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups water
A dash of salt
1 cup rolled oats
A spoonful of butter (I think this is the key...)

1. Combine the water, salt and oats in a small pot. Turn heat to high, then turn down to low when the water boils. Cook, stirring, until water is just absorbed, about five minutes. Add butter. Turn off heat.

2. About five minutes later, uncover pan.

3. Put oatmeal in bowl, stir in sweeters such as brown sugar, maple syrup or honey and cream or milk.

truly tasty

Don't you just want to lick them?

I know, I know. Your mom told you to never eat dough because it has *gasp* raw eggs in it and you could get Salmonella and die a slow painful death.

Well, I'm not scared of no raw eggs. In fact I do recall my farmer dad regaling me with tales of his grandfather and his one-raw-egg-a-day regime. My father also dared my brother and I to gulp down a raw egg whole, for a prize, of course -- a calf. My brother won and made a fair chunk of change.

In my house, cookie and other types of dough were always being eaten out of the bowl and off the beaters. When a Japanese woman came to live with us for a month, she introduced us to seaweed and tea ceremony; we introduced her the wonders of cookie dough.

Funny that she thought us strange because it was living in Japan that I learned the savory pleasures of eating raw egg. There's nothing like sukiyaki, boiling thin strips of beef then swishing them in raw egg, or katsu-don, a breaded pork cutlet over rice and topped with onions and raw egg.

All I'm trying to say is raw eggs aren't so bad. The creaminess they add to both dessert and dinner dishes has no rival.

And so I urge you to make this most delicious Double Chocolate Brownie recipe and take the time to lick your beaters and bowl clean.

If you're still too nervous about licking the bowl clean because of the egg, this recipe offers an alternative -- a bowl of chocolate, butter and cocoa that has to be melted down on the stove. Also very tasty.

I decided to use some of my pricier chocolate for the brownies, just to give it added richness. Fortunately, I had just been at Soma Chocolatemaker in the Distillery District where I bought some of their Peruvian 64 per cent cocoa dark chocolate and a 75 per cent cocoa dark chocolate bar by Chocovic.

In the end the dough was marvelous ... and the resulting brownies weren't half bad either.

barbecue season

At my housewarming party not so long ago a friend opened my freezer in search of ice and instead found a whole lot of something else. "Whoa," she exclaimed, "you've got a lot of meat."

Especially for a person living alone.

In my freezer right now there are three massive coils of farmer sausage, six steaks, too many packets of hamburger meat to count, bags of unwanted chicken parts for making broth, a beef cross rib roast, an elk sirloin butt, a buffalo sirloin, etc.

One might think that I was preparing for a mini famine.

I must defend myself though by noting that most of the meat does come from my parent's farm. And so, yes, I do tend to stock up a little every time they visit me or I visit them. We have several well-worn coolers that have made the Winnipeg-Toronto journey many a time.

But in the interest of spring cleaning and starting afresh (and really just emptying out the freezer in time for the next visit), I'm trying to eat my way through what I have.

As a nice start, I had a few of the T-bone steaks last night. For such good meat, straight from the farm, all I did to season them was crush some peppercorn to coat the steak and then sprinkle on some salt.

Now, I just have to get through the dozens of other packages sitting in my freezer. I have to admit I'm still a little perplexed about how to cook the elk and the buffalo meat. (Suggestions welcome.)

Anyways, this is all just to say you're going to be seeing a lot more meat on here in the coming weeks.

ode to lemons

One of my favourite poems is a playful, irreverent one about lemons by Alberta novelist and poet Robert Kroetsch. I first read it in high school. For years I kept a mottled copy of it in a binder full of favourite writings. And when that disappeared I scoured the web, unsuccessfully, for the poem.

From time to time, I'd peek around the poetry sections of bookstores for Kroetsch's books. Then, last week, it occurred to me to check the Toronto Library. Sure enough. It had one copy so old there was a pocket for a signout sheet on the front inside cover and a warning on the back that an overdue fine of five cents a day will be charged.

When I got the book, I figured what better forum than a food blog to share it with. So, here is the mini ode to lemons. I hope you enjoy it.

Sketches of a lemon

1.

A lemon is almost round.
Some lemons are almost round.
A lemon is not round.

So much for that.

How can one argue that a lemon
is truly a lemon,
if the question can be argued?

So much for that.

I said, to Smaro,
(I was working on this poem),
Smaro, I called, is there
(she was in the kitchen)
a lemon in the fridge?
No, she said.

So much for that.

2.

As my father used to say,
well, I'll be cow-kicked
by a mule.

He was especially fond of
lemon meringue pie.

3.

I went back and looked at Francis Ponge's poem
on blackberries. If blackberries can be
blackberries, I reasoned, by a kind of analogy,
lemons can, I would supposed, be lemons.

Such was not the case.

4.

Sketches, I reminded myself,
not of a pear,
nor of an apple,
nor of a peach,
nor of a banana
(though the colour
raises questions),
nor of a nectarine,
nor, for that matter,
of a pomegranate,
nor of three cherries,
their stems joined,
nor of a plum,
nor of an apricot,
nor of the usual
bunch of grapes,
fresh from the vine,
just harvested,
glistening with dew --

Smaro, I called,
I'm hungry.

5.

What about oranges?
At least an orange
looks like an orange.
In fact, most oranges
bear a remarkable resemblance
to oranges.

6.

Smaro is rolling a lemon on the breadboard.
The breadboard, flat, horizontal, is motionless.
The lemon rolls back and forth on the motionless surface.
Smaro's hand moves horizontally, back and forth,
over the rolling lemon.

One could draw a diagram of the three related objects,
deduce therefrom a number of mechanical principles.

7.

I had a very strong desire
to kiss a lemon.
No one was watching.
I kissed a lemon.

So much for that.

8.

I bought a second-hand car --
Okay, okay.

9.

If someone asked me,
how is a lemon shaped?

(the salmon
(the oven
(the lemon

I'd say, a lemon is shaped
exactly like an hour.

(Now we're getting somewhere.)

10.

The lemon cure.
In each glass
mix:   

1 stick cinnamon
1 teaspoon honey
2 cloves
2 jiggers rum
1/2 slice lemon
hot water to taste

Repeat as necessary.

11.

poem for a child who has just bit into
a halved lemon that has just been squeezed:

see, what did I tell you, see,
what did I tell you, see, what
did I tell you, see, what did
I tell you, see, what did I
tell you,see, what did I tell
you, see, what did I tell you,
see, what did I tell you, see,
what did I tell you, see, what
did I tell you,see, what did
I tell you,see, what did I
tell you, see, what did I tell
you, see, what did I tell you

One could, of course, go on.

12.

This hour is shaped like
a lemon. We taste its light

on the baked salmon.
The tree itself is elsewhere.

We make faces, liking the
sour surprise. Our teeth melt.

Peewee kiwis

It was the overflowing pints of blueberries that caught me attention and drew me into a local fruit stand, but it was these mini kiwis that I walked away with.

Kiwis the size of grapes. A few bucks for a wee container. Naturally, I grabbed them.

No sooner did I have them in my hand and a woman was peering over my shoulder asking, "What are those?" "Mini kiwis," I replied, as though they were part of my weekly grocery list.

I had no idea how to eat these miniature fruit, also known as kiwi berries. Too small to peel or scoop out with a spoon, I popped them into my mouth whole. (The skin is not fuzzy like the common egg-sized kiwis.)

Later, I read on blogs that this is the way to eat them. Still, my stomach revolted a bit. The next day, I bit a piece off the top and sucked out the kiwis instead.

Perhaps not the most civilized method, but it did the trick. Tasty.

Not sure how I'd use these little treats, other than as a snack though. On one blog, they sliced them in half and set them out on a fruit platter. Perhaps they could even go in an exotic fruit salad. Hmm, something to ponder.

Lowly biscuits and uppity oeufs en cocotte

One lone biscuit and a few crumbs. That was all that was left to photograph minutes after an impromptu Sunday breakfast that saw the lowly biscuit paired with the highfalutin' oeufs en cocotte.

I first came across mention of oeufs en cocotte, also known as shirred or baked eggs, when reading Julie and Julia. The book is based on a blog Julie Powell wrote about her successful attempt to make all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the course of a year.

While Powell's tales of butchering lobsters alive and boiling hooves to make aspic seemed a bit too extreme for my tastes, oeufs en cocotte - despite the grandiose name - seemed do-able.

And the biscuits, well, my grandmother seemed to make them at the cottage for her lazier morning feasts.

In the end, both were fairly easy. The biscuits came together in the time it would have taken me to walk somewhere to pick up bread.

And the eggs were prepped in no time. Then it was just a matter of waiting for both to finish baking.
 

Oeufs en cocotte

This is really just a fancy name for baking eggs in a buttered ramekin.

1. Preheat oven to 375 F. Butter the ramekins (no margarine!).
2. Pour enough cream to cover the bottom in a thin layer. Break an egg into the ramekin, or two if you're using a larger one.
3. Sprinkle parmesan and parsley on top. Bread crumbs are also nice.
4. Place the ramekins on a baking sheet, then bake for about 10-15 minutes or until they are set.
5. Sprinkle on salt and pepper to taste.

Baking powder biscuits

When in search of a simple, hardy recipe for biscuits, I knew I had to go to the main source from the homeland: The Mennonite Treasury of Recipes. In its flour-caked and butter-splattered pages, I found a recipe that would do my grandmother's biscuits justice. The recipe below makes about 12 biscuits.

Ingredients:

• 2 C flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 3 tsp. baking powder
• 3/4 C milk
• 3-6 Tbsp. butter

1. Mix flour, salt and baking powder in bowl. Cut the cold butter into pieces then add it to the mix. Using your hand, smoosh the butter with the flour mixture until it resembles coarse crumbles. (Can smoosh be a technical recipe term?)
   
   
2. Dump in all the milk at once. Stir quickly until it forms a soft dough. It will be a little sticky, but not too much. Knead for half a minute on a lightly floured surface until it's not sticky.
   
   
3. Pat into a disc until it's half an inch thick. You could use a proper biscuit cutter or just use a knife to slice the dough into squares.
   
   
4. Place on an ungreased sheet and bake in 375 F oven for 12-15 minutes, or until lightly brown.

 

NOTE: You can add a tablespoon or so of sugar into the flour mixture if you want to sweeten the recipe.