Tag: Cooking Chronicles

The Cooking Chronicles: Cold-Brewed Coffee

I made a mental note to try the cold-brewing method to make iced coffee as mentioned on Julie van Rosendaal’s blog this summer. Leave it to me to put it off until mid-September.

I loved Julie’s suggestion of using a French press to do the grunt work, eliminating the need to strain and filter the coffee separately. So after grinding some Transcend coffee we had in the house, I combined 2/3 of a cup of ground beans with 3 cups of water, and let the mixture sit in the press on the counter overnight. In the morning, I refrigerated the mixture after pressing the silt down – nothing to it.

Julie recommends a 1:1 diluting of the concentrated mixture with water or milk, or to simply pour it over ice. We went with the latter suggestion. However, having enjoyed more than our share of heavily-sweetened Starbucks iced coffees, both Mack and I have ended up with a need for sugar to override the bitterness. So I quickly made up a batch of simple syrup, and used a spoonful or two to help balance the iced joe.

Iced coffees in our drinking jars

The result was a great patio drink – not too strong, but not watered down. And best of all – so easy to make!

The Cooking Chronicles: Spicy Tofu and Pork

Instead of The Cooking Chronicles I feel like I should create a sub-category containing all of my tofu-related experiments titled “The Tofu Trials”. At any rate, a Company’s Coming Cooking at Home spicy pork and tofu recipe was my third attempt to gradually introduce tofu into our diet, a slow road to my eventual hope of edging Mack’s tolerance for tofu into a fondness.

Armed with Ying Fat tofu and Four Whistle Farms ground pork, I set to make the quick stir-fry dish. I thought the half pound of pork would be overwhelmed by all of the tofu, but the proportion was just right, really highlighting how economical the dish is to make, so long as the cook’s pantry is stocked.

The result? A textured dish full of subtle heat with just the right amount of sweetness for balance.  I would double the sauce mixture next time, however, as there was only enough to coat the ingredients in the pan, and not enough to drizzle on our accompanying rice. And while Mack would have preferred more meat, this was his favourite of the three tofu dishes we’ve tried thus far.

Spicy Tofu and Pork

The Cooking Chronicles: End-of-Summer Chili

Never take ingredients in your fridge for granted, particularly if expiration dates or other people are involved. I learned this lesson recently while making Rachael Ray’s end-of-summer chili.

I was near the end of the recipe – a chili packed with more vegetables than meat – and asked Mack to retrieve a bottle of beer from the fridge in our office to add to the simmering dish. He came back, regretfully empty handed, and said that he had drank the last bottle the night previous. I had sworn we had multiple bottles of beer just a few days back – and we did – but Mack’s hot weather thirst had to be quenched somehow. We resorted to using one of my beer coolers: Alley Kat’s Aprikat, which actually didn’t end up sweetening the dish as much as we thought it might.

I loved the chili, mostly because it was packed with vegetables (our default chili recipe involves the slow cooker, which would have pulverized the zucchini), and had decent flavour considering the quick cooking time. Mack would have preferred something with more meat (as always), but liked it. We did end up straining out some of the liquid, as it didn’t reduce much at all, and next time, would drain the canned tomatoes first.

End-of-Summer Chili

An easy meal to help bridge summer to fall – what could be more seasonal?

The Cooking Chronicles: White Beans with Kale and Savoy Cabbage

I remember two things from junior high home economics class – one – always level dry ingredients in baking, and two – read over recipes from start to finish before beginning prep. Why only the first one stuck with me I’m not sure.

My recipe scanning worked against me with a recent trial of white beans with kale and savoy cabbage, from a wonderful cookbook called Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets by Deborah Madison (thanks, May!). I skipped the first step of reconstituting and cooking beans, as I had a can of them ready to be added to the softened vegetables. However, by the time I reached step three, I realized the dish needed to be simmered for half an hour, time we didn’t have given the accompanying pan-fried chicken was drying out as we waited. It also became clear that cooking the beans would have provided some of the flavour base (I resorted to using water).

The resulting dish – our first experiment with kale – was edible, though I can’t say we enjoyed the half-limp texture. We did take leftovers for lunch the next day, and both of us thought the flavour had much improved overnight – the additional simmering was specified in the recipe for a reason, of course.

White Beans with Kale and Savoy Cabbage

I relayed this story to my coworker who had supplied me with the kale from her garden. She said a much simpler sautéed preparation would have been more ideal – one has to cook to learn, right?

The Cooking Chronicles: Zucchini Muffins

With baby zucchini languishing in the fridge, I decided to make some muffins using a Company’s Coming recipe I have never attempted myself, but have enjoyed many times. My Mum is always whipping up baked goods in between meals, ensuring our caloric intake isn’t bound by breakfast, lunch or dinner. As a result, my family usually has access to fresh muffins, loaves, or whatever else my Mum has decided to tempt us with, requiring no effort on our part.

Over at Mack’s, unless my daydream does come true one day and he has a rack of freshly-baked goods waiting for me on the counter after work, the task for supplying us with treats falls to me. Having recently procured my own copy of Muffins & More, I set to work.

The zucchini muffins recipe isn’t a difficult one – my only point of uncertainty was whether or not I had overmixed the batter. It turns out that I did, and my hope of obtaining a muffin consistency as light and fluffy as my Mum so easily creates was lost. It also dawned on me that there was actually a point of the whole wet-into-dry-well thing – to try and incorporate the two masses into one with the least number of turns. What you learn by actually trying something, eh?

Zucchini Muffins

Mack thought they were good (turns out, they freeze like a charm too), but I know of a higher standard that can be reached. Next time.

The Cooking Chronicles: Braised Tilapia with Leeks and Tomatoes

One of my favourite cooking blogs of late is The Wednesday Chef. Beyond the recipes, it’s Luisa’s stories behind the food that sets her posts apart. Take, for example, her recipe for braised tilapia with leeks and tomatoes. What led her to create such a dish? Why, love of course.

Even though they are no longer together, I couldn’t help but be drawn to the recipe. Mack and I picked up all of the necessary ingredients at the City Centre Market (cherry tomatoes from Gull Valley Greenhouses, leeks from Sundog Organics, and Honduran tilapia from Ocean Odyssey Inland), and used some white wine we had kicking around.

The dish was fantastic – this was our first time cooking with leeks, and it won’t be our last. We were a bit afraid our “glug” (Luisa’s measurement) would overwhelm everything, but between the sweetness of the leeks and burst tomatoes, we welcomed the additional sauce. Be careful not to overcook the fish as we did – we left the pot with the lid on as we waited for the rice to finish cooking. As a whole, this dish was leaps and bounds above the other one-pot meal we had tried a few days earlier – Mack enthusiastically put this recipe in the “keep” pile.

Braised Tilapia with Leeks and Tomatoes, served with rice

Thanks Luisa for the recipe, and keep up the great work!

The Cooking Chronicles: Basa with Greens and Lemon Pepper Oil

You’d think I would know by now to research potential substitutions online before employing them, but the mealtime scramble always seems to win out over logic.

Though I wanted to recreate a Food Network recipe for tilapia with escarole and lemon pepper oil, I ended up substituting both of the main ingredients. Basa stepped in for tilapia, and romaine lettuce for escarole. I found out later that escarole is in the chicory family, greens that are heartier and stand up to cooking better than others. As a result, the romaine came out limp and way overcooked. Thankfully, the brown and crispy potatoes and perfectly steamed fish redeemed the dish as a whole. We found the lemon pepper oil a tad too strong for our taste (even after cutting down the quantity of lemon), and borderline unnecessary.

Basa with Greens and Lemon Pepper Oil

We loved the one-pot nature of this recipe, and now that I’ve learned what not to substitute, perhaps we will make this again in the future with the proper ingredients.

The Cooking Chronicles: Pizza Stone Attempt #1

Have you ever been wooed at the store by a kitchen gadget only to bring it home and allow it to gather dust? A pizza stone I had picked up at Winners last year fell into that category, even though I had the best of intentions when I bought it, with visions of crunchy, thin-crust pizzas overtaken by the reality of time and effort. Well, I hoped to reignite some of those visions and made it a point to finally make use of it.

The stone itself came with a serving rack, but Mack and I weren’t sure if the rack itself was meant to be put in the oven. We decided it would be safer to avoid potential melting and put the stone directly into the oven. The instructions directed us to preheat it for 40 minutes in a 450 degree oven.

We assembled the pizza using a tried and true recipe (Giada de Laurentiis’ dough base, though I wish I could toss dough like Chris instead). As instructed, we sprinkled some corn meal on the hot stone, lay our rolled pizza dough on top, and assembled our favourite assortment of toppings, including prosciutto, roma tomatoes, mushrooms and fresh basil. And into the oven it went, for about 15 minutes.

Out of the oven, the pizza was looking good – the crisp brown edges were just beginning to curl. When we dug in though, we found the crust to have an odd consistency. While crunchy on the bottom, the centre of the crust was chewy, almost undercooked. We weren’t sure if this was attributed to our mangling of the dough recipe, or perhaps a mistake of our first pizza stone try, but we were disappointed the pizza didn’t quite taste as good as it looked.

Pizza stone + pizza

We weren’t disheartened though – we will be making use of the stone again (with a different dough recipe), optimistic for better results!

The Cooking Chronicles: Curried Chicken, Potato and Rice Soup

Though Saturday started out scorching hot, the night hosted one of the city’s most intense thunderstorms in quite some time, and it turned out to be a perfect occasion for a comforting bowl of chicken soup.

A recipe for a curried chicken and rice soup in Food Network Magazine had caught my eye – the thought of fragrant dill simmering with chicken stock was all it took. And though it wasn’t quite a one-pot wonder (two, in fact), the work required was minimal. I threw in some halved baby red potatoes from Greens, Eggs and Ham that we had in the fridge for additional heartiness, but besides that, kept to the ingredients specified. I also couldn’t be bothered to puree the rice.

The result was a lustrous yellow broth filled with tender onions, moist chicken and perfectly soft carrots and potatoes. Mack would have liked a little more rice, but other than that, had no complaints.

Curried Chicken, Potato and Rice Soup

We had enough leftover for lunch the next day, served with fresh-from-oven dill-icious cheddar and dill scones (sorry, I couldn’t help myself). The soup is great recipe that would work well with leftover rice, chicken and vegetables and we’ll be keeping it in mind in the future.

The Cooking Chronicles: Udon with Tofu and Spinach

The second recipe I had my eye on that employed the tofu and spinach leftover from our salad the night previous can be found in the June/July issue of Food Network Magazine. Having never cooked with udon noodles before, the dish of udon with tofu and Asian greens caught my eye.

I wanted a broth more substantial than fortified cooking water, so heated up about three-quarters of a cup of chicken soup for each of us to serve as a base. Other than that, I followed the instructions fairly closely. I had forgotten how fragrant simmering sesame oil could be (as I seared the slices of tofu), and as it perfumed the kitchen, it set up a wonderful anticipation for the meal.

Udon with Tofu and Asian Greens

Mack much preferred the tofu in this dish, though as a whole, most warm meals would win his vote over cold salads any day. He especially liked the wilted spinach greens, and the spicy kick from the chili flakes. I was happy with how easy the meal was to prepare, and though we copped out with pre-cooked udon this time, I wouldn’t hesitate to take the extra effort for uncooked udon noodles next time.

This recipe is definitely a keeper in our kitchen!