LUCY PICK BOOKS

Porter, Streetcar, Bathurst and College, Crown and Tiger, Cloak and Dagger, Iranian Kebabs, up at dawn, Future Bakery, Liber testamentorum ecclesie ovetensis, Flip Toss and Thai, Burry and David, Cora’s, Harbord Bakery poppy seed danish, the Kitchener Picks, Indian food, the Roxton not the Rushton (or is it the other way around?), Ezra’s Pound and Alison, Polish sausage on the street (a big mistake), lots of Rachel, Monkey’s Paw, Ossington between Dundas and Queen, RCMP paper napkins (wish I had bought them now), Foxley (arctic char ceviche and lamb duck prosciutto dumplings), Clinton’s, cider all over my sweater the floor and everything, Stanley Cup, Carin and her Mum, Bar Mercurio Espresso, carrot cake, Kensington Market, Lettuce Knit, Romni Wool, hempathy, Subway, Streetcar, Porter.

Home.

I’ve promised a lot of people a food post and I’m sorry it has been delayed, but here it is now.  I’m a passionate food tourist — I can even spend an hour or so happily in a perfectly ordinary foreign supermarket — and one of my great griefs on earlier trips to Spain has been that I haven’t had anywhere to cook the wonderful food I see.  Well, this time around, I have a tiny kitchen and one of the best markets in Barcelona across the street from me so I am making up for lost time.  Check it out:

Can you believe that wonderful fish and shellfish?  One of the things that fascinates me is how all the vendors seem to follow rules about what they can sell.  Poultry sellers sell game, but not other meat.  Fresh pork sellers sell charcuterie (embotits) but not beef.  Beef and lamb can be sold together.  And offal is all sold at the same few shops.

Here are some raw materials about to be cooked by me:

These are tiny lamb chops and some “pimientos de padron.”  These peppers are blistered briefly in oil, salted and eaten.  I’d read about them many times, but never eaten them before.

This is a dish I made from a fish and some tomatoes I bought.  The fish was a “dorada,” a farmed fish, very cheap, and it was sold like all fish are in this market, not only whole but ungutted.  The guts will make a fish spoil faster, so their presene is a sign of freshness.  Thank goodness, the nice fish ladies with the big knives will gut and scale them for you.  

No, not me. Well not exactly. Today is the feast of Sankta Lucia, the patron saint of light. In the old calendar, her feast was the shortest day of the year, and in Sweden it is celebrated with singing, candles, coffee, and special little buns at dawn. It’s also a great chance for me to try out my new camera.

“But Lucy,” you say, “Those little buns look so delicious. Where can I get some for myself?” I am so glad you asked. I posted the recipe for them this time last year, and they’re called bullar. Follow the link and they too can be yours. Which brings me to an interesting factoid about this blog. My food posts are by far the most searched for parts of this blog. If you google “bullar,” this recipe turns up close to the top of the page. But by far the most popular recipe I ever posted is the one for flan de queso. It is regularly the top monthly search string. Makes me think I should post more recipes.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to enjoy my tea.

As if I didn’t have enough lovely fiction to read, my favourite cookbook writing duo, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid have come up with a new one, Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China (Artisan, 2008), which i simply had to buy. When I say I am a fan, I’m not kidding. The Seductions of Rice was the first book of theirs I received, followed by Flatbreads and Flavors and Hot Sour Salty Sweet, abut the cuisines of South Asia. Then last spring, I was searching for meaning in the cookbook aisle and I thought to myself, how wonderful it would be if they wrote a book for India like the one they had done for South Asia. I looked up and, lo, there was Mangoes & Curry Leaves.
Why do I like their books so much? Two reasons. First, they’re political.  Their attitude towards food and eating is one of both delight and responsibility in a world of scarcity.  Their way of eating urges the western world away from making costly (in so many ways) meat the centre of our diet and towards thinking of meat as a delicious accent to a diet based in vegetables and staples like bread and rice.  In addition to being guardians of resources, and no more so than in this most recent book, they are guardians of cultures.  They are photographers and essayists as well as fine cooks and their stories and pictures document and defend little known cultures and peoples.

The second reason I love their books is that the food is delicious.  The receipts typically have modest lists of ingredients and they always work.  I admit that my pantry may be better stocked with unusual ingredients than most, but almost everything in their latest book can be made with things you’d find at an ordinary grocery store.  It isn’t “restaurant” ethnic food; it tastes more like home cooking, and it is often based directly on dishes they have eaten on their travels, with ordinary people.  The classics make way for unusual and unique receipts and their books will not duplicate anything else you have in your collection.

But why take my word for it?  I thought I’d make one of their receipts and present it here for you.  So, below the fold: Savory Boiled Dumplings! Continue Reading »

I am one-quarter Swedish, but since it is too much of a strain to be one-quarter Swedish all year long, I solved that problem by being all Swedish during the month of December. And since someone was nice enough to tell me they made the last receipt I posted, I thought I would give you another one. This one is for the lovely buns in the photo, called bullar. They may look complicated, but are very easy and all people seem to love them — children, in-laws, boyfriends, ex-husbands, step-siblings, everyone.

• 3/4 cup milk, scalded
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter plus a few tablespoons
• 2 small tablespoons (2 packages) yeast
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 4 1/4 – 4 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 1/2 – 1 tbs. ground cardamom
• 2 eggs
• cinnamon and sugar

I scald the milk in the microwave in a large measuring cup and then add 1/2 cup butter cut in cubes and the sugar, to melt the butter and dissolve the sugar in the warm milk. Sprinkle the yeast on th warm water and stir. Put the milk mixture in a large bowl and add 1 1/2 cups of flour. beat with an electric mixer for a minute at low speed to develop the gluten. Beat in the eggs and the yeast. Now would be as good a time as any to add the salt and the cardamom. I always use a full tablespoon of the latter, but you can use less. Make sure it is fresh. Add as much of the rest of the flour as you need to make a nice dough. Knead for five to eight minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic. This receipt makes a dough that is very easy to work with. Don’t add too much flour and let it get too dry, but the dough should not be sticky either.
Let it rise for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, until it has doubled in bulk. Punch it down. Divide it in two, and keep the half you are not working with under a cloth while you shape the first half. Roll one half into a long rectangle about 10″ wide and as long as it gets with the dough fairly thin, maybe 2 and a half feet long. Spread your rectangle of dough with two or three tablespoons of melted butter and sprinkle it with cinnamon sugar. How much cinnamon sugar? Well, let’s say you were making a nice piece of cinnamon toast for yourself. That much. Fold the longest end down 1/3 from the top and up 1/3 from the bottom, like you were folding a letter for a business envelope. You will end up with a piece of folded dough about 3″ wide and still two and a half feet long or whatever, sandwiching the butter and cinnamon sugar. Cut this long piece of dough into short strips that are about 3/4″ wide. Hold an end of each strip in each of your hands and twist it as many times as you can, four or so good twists. Then tie it in a knot. Yes, it will work. The first strip is the hardest, but you’ll soon get the knack. Do this for each strip and put them on a cookie sheet spaced about an inch apart on all sides.
Now you can preheat your oven to 375 degrees because you need to let each batch of dough knots rise for half an hour before you cook them. Roll, fill, fold, twist, and knot the second slab of dough while you’re waiting. Then cook each sheet for 12 to 15 minutes, until they are lightly browned on the top and bottom. And then eat them with a mug of coffee, tea, or cocoa. Dipping is encouraged. Yum.
If you are very enthusiastic, you could brush beaten egg on them and sprinkle on pearl sugar before you put them in the oven, but my family always says to heck with it. We do freeze them in bags in batches, so we can always have them fresh. I find that reheating them for 20 seconds in a microwave warms them perfectly.

When Cecily and I were in Spain this summer, we took a break now and then from our quest to see every single ninth- and tenth-century church in the Asturias to have a spectacular meal. I can’t bring you any of the artisanal cheeses we tried, or the besugo the waiter brought from the fish shop across the way on the coast in Cudillero, but I can offer this transcendentally wonderful dessert we had in Arenas de Cabrales after a dinner that started with half a side of cow covered in the eponymous cabrales cheese, and sidra natural all over the floor. It is sort of a cross between regular flan and cheesecake, neither of which I like very much but somehow the alchemical reaction that occurs when you mix them is greater than either alone.

Flan de Queso

For the custard:

• 1 12 oz. can of evaporated milk
• 1 14 oz. can of sweetened condensed milk
• 5 large eggs
• 8 oz softened cream cheese
• 1 teaspoon very good vanilla
• 1 tablespoon brandy

For the caramel:

• 1 cup sugar
• 5 tablespoons water

Put a bain marie in your oven (I use a rectangular cake pan filled with enough water to go about half way up the side of the dish I cook the flan in). Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

The caramel is the fiddly bit, so let’s begin there. Put the sugar and water into a saucepan and stir to dissolve. Now turn the pan onto medium heat and let the sugar cook without touching it until it turns golden brown. Sounds easy, eh? Problem is, when the sugar is cooking it bubbles and foams so much, you can’t tell what colour it is until it is too late and you have a nasty, burning mass of blackened sugar on your hands. I mostly use smell to tell it is done. When it starts to smell like caramel, I stick the end of a wooden spoon nto it and see what I have. You might also try cooking it in a pyrex saucepan if you have one.

When the caramel is perfect, working quickly, pour it into your flan mold. I use a souffle dish. Tip the mold around to coat the bottom and sides. It will harden quickly. Then relax. The hard part is done.

Mix all the other ingredients together until smooth. If you do it in your food processor, you’ll get runny goo overflowing through the holes (I learned this the hard way). If you don’t mix it well enough, its components may separate in the oven. I suggest a blender or a hand mixer. Pour it all into your prepared flan mold and cook it in the bain marie for about an hour. It is done when it has set but is still a tiny bit wobbly. A skewer will come out clean.

After it has cooled, you can unmold it. Run your skewer all the way around the rim and put a large serving dish over your flan dish (I use a pie plate since I am greedy and don’t want to lose a drop of caramel). Flip it over until the flan falls down onto the serving dish. You can cool it a bit more before serving.