Food

October 9, 2009

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Two Inspiring Cookbooks “Moro East” and “The Kitchen Diaries”

A few months back I decided not to do reviews anymore. Not that I did many in the first place, but the decision lifted a huge load off of my shoulders. It’s the difference between just not doing something, and making a conscious, said out-loud choice not to do something.

I love books, yet for some reason I do not enjoy reviewing them. Which is funny, because I love talking about them. Ask me what I’m currently reading and prepare to hear an earful. My Good Reads account is overflowing with lists of books I have read, am currently reading, or am hoping to find. I enjoy updating my lists and finding out what my friends are reading. But I never write reviews there either.

Recently, the FTC ruled that bloggers must disclose the items they receive free for review. I always did, so that ruling would not have affected me, and 9 times out of 10 the items I reviewed were those that I had purchased myself anyway, and not books that were sent by a publisher. This kerfuffle had nothing to do with my decision and came well after I had made up my mind.

All of that preamble to say that while I am no longer writing reviews in the traditional sense, I still plan to make mention of books and gardening related things that really inspire me. So basically, I’m not changing anything, just reasserting my desire to keep it limited to what moves me.

This summer I developed an insatiable desire for beautiful cookbooks and have been surprised by how many times I have walked into my favourite used bookstores around town with the express purpose of perusing the cookbook section exclusively. I have long kept the cookbooks in my home limited to one shelf. Part of my reason for this is a complete lack of ability to follow a recipe as it is written. I always make some change, or alter the idea completely. But it seems that now, more than ever, cookbooks are moving far beyond a list of recipes and into the realm of storytelling and journal-keeping. I am finding this movement very inspiring and am eager to search out more in this vein.

Eating is both personal and communal. Bringing that warmth and the individual charm of the writer into the package as a story makes great sense. The daily journal aspect of this movement also forces the story into a seasonal context very naturally. Over the years we have shifted our eating patterns closer to eating as seasonably as we can while allowing ourselves the occasional spontaneous treat. We’ve also upped the amount of food we freeze and I don’t have to remind you about my little canning problem. I am finding that the result of this is a greatly intensified and almost childlike love of the food I eat and an excitement about seasonal changes on a new level. I don’t take simple things like strawberries and pears for granted anymore. I am constantly gearing up for the next season and the treats that I know are coming down the pipeline.

The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater closely follows this journal-style model. The book is structured around a year in his eating life and offers personal stories about shopping at the market, yet includes lots of follow-along directions if needed. The result is a book filled with spontaneous seasonal meals — pretty much how most of us eat casually outside of special occasions and holidays.

Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater

I haven’t made any of the recipes yet, but have been told by others who love the book and are long term fans that there are recipes in there that have turned out to be personal favourites.

Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater

As you can see, the photographs are stunning and the paper the book is printed on is like butter. How he had the patience and commitment to wait until the food was photographed (by his partner) before diving into each meal day in and day out for an entire year is beyond me.

Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater

I’m now on a quest to get more books by Nigel Slater including his memoir. And I am also told that he writes a regular gardening column for the RHS.

While, Moro East doesn’t follow a journal format in the traditional sense, it does chronicle, through photos and recipes, the last year in the life of an allotment garden in East London before it was demolished to make way for an Olympic hockey stadium. Members of this unique gardening community are predominantly Turkish or Cypriot so the recipes contained therein are all inspired by seasonal, homegrown cooking of Muslim Mediterranean origin.

Moro East by Sam and Sam Clark

Many of the recipes were cooked or prepared on site utilizing whatever was on hand in their garden. There is great inspiration for us gardeners with techniques and flavour combinations that had never occurred to me before. This recipe called Wanderer’s Soup is very much like the nettle soup we make in the spring when the nettles are young and tender, but includes nutmeg, cloves, and bay leaves. I can’t wait to try this next year!

Moro East by Sam and Sam Clark

The photographs by Toby Glanville are so friendly, warm, and captivating, I actually teared up going through the pages the first time. Both the garden and gardeners are photographed as they are on any given day, with no pretension or set decorating. I still get a chill and a rush of inspiration whenever I take another look.

Moro East by Sam and Sam Clark

This is my favourite photograph in the book. I want to garden alongside someone with enough sense of humour to wear that shirt. [It says, "Who's the Daddy?"]

Moro East by Sam and Sam Clark

I am eager to find new cookbooks to devour. What cookbooks are inspiring you?

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September 25, 2009

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A One-Pot Garden Scraps Meal

Before I came down with the Great Attack of the TIFF Flu 2009 (named as such because the worst part coincided with the Toronto International Film Festival) a lot of our meals looked like some version of this one. They probably looked like this one throughout the flu debacle as well but 1. my memory is shot and 2. Davin did all of the cooking.

But getting back to my point, which is increasingly lost these days underneath a jumble of words and thoughts that refuse to string together (a lingering symptom of the TIFF Flu), we were eating like this because it was the end of the summer. And you know how the end of the summer is; all sorts of surprises are popping up in the garden, the fridge and counter-top bowls are overflowing with bits of this and that all poised to rot at any moment and a troop of fruit flies waiting on standby to get their big break. I had also just scored this little single-portion casserole dish/dutch oven on sale for half price, rekindling my love for the one-pot meal.

These meals are insanely easy to make and come with the added bonus of clearing out those little scraps of this and that, that linger in the fridge, too small to serve any other purpose. The meal depicted in the above photo was actually my lunch one weekday afternoon. I like this as a work-day lunch meal because it takes only a few minutes to prepare. I can then pop it in the oven, set the timer, go back to work, and resurface when lunch is done.

It’s the meal that practically makes itself!

Every dish is different depending on what’s on hand, but if you’re looking for some ideas, here’s how I make mine:

First, pre-heat the oven to about 350-400 F. Cut up the vegetables into manageable pieces, toss in a sprinkling of olive oil, add chopped herbs (thyme, parsley, oregano, and sage) from the rooftop garden, a pinch of grey sea salt (I have a weakness for fancy salts) and throw in some kind of protein to finish. Fresh, new potatoes are a good addition, too. I’ve been known to add a few capers, a squeeze of lemon, or oven-dried tomatoes. I add a single leaf of the rounded German ‘Berggarten’ sage from my community garden plot when I want to be fancy. I am not against adding a melting cheese in the last minute or a sprinkle of Parmesan to finish.

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September 11, 2009

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Snack Foods for the Apocalypse

This is how I see canning: making snack foods for the apocalypse. Because in truth, with the exception of the plain tomato jars and sauces, many of the items I put up tend to be condiments, pickles, and intense fruit preserves — food I could probably live without. If, say, we were to suffer through an ice storm or prolonged power outage this winter, I’m not sure how long we would stay alive on tomato salsa, brandied peaches, elderberry syrup, and chutney.

Although, that’s hardly the point, is it? I’m not really putting up food for emergency preparedness. It’s really about having that extra something special to enjoy during the off season. That and the fact that the process of canning makes me feel good.

I canned up a storm this summer. It’s really not appropriate to speak of it in the past tense because frankly, I’m not done yet. I went way overboard this year, and even put up a few batches of foods I won’t and can’t eat myself. I think the reason why I went so nutty was that I needed a come-down off of the book project that was active and creative. I didn’t feel like doing any of my regular go-to creative outlets. I just wanted to play with food.

I’ve been canning long enough that it has become like meditation in motion. It’s one of those activities that allows me to focus one part of my brain on the doing while another part relaxes and opens up. I gave myself permission this year to jar up anything that caught my interest and experiment to my heart’s content rather than sticking to healthier fare. For that reason I was able to be much more creative and at times even focused on making purely aesthetically pleasing jars rather than worrying about the nutritional content.

This is my current favourite jar, pickled crab apples. It is the only thing I have ever canned that I couldn’t (and still can’t) visualize as a flavour. I used the blemish-free crab apples that I had schlepped all the way from Montreal. They were perfect for it. I followed a book recipe exactly, rather than experimenting with my own ideas and flavours (how I usually do it). The recipe called for both vinegar and a TON of sugar. This is not something I would ever make in a typical year but I made it anyways. And it was so worth it. Man, is this jar beautiful.

I know that making food I won’t or can’t eat makes no sense and sounds wasteful, and if it were another year I would not have gone that route. However, I can’t tell you how many times I have stood, savoring the visual delight of those pretty jars and it’s not even fall yet. During the winter months I occasionally sit on the kitchen floor next to the main storage cupboard (everything else is stashed away in boxes here and there) and pull out several jars, soaking in the colours that are so desperately lacking in mid-January. I’ll give away the extra food we can’t eat as gifts to friends who will enjoy them, so why not?

As a part of my series on kitchen gardening (scroll down to where it says “Microfarming with Gayla Trail”), The Globe & Mail recently published an article I wrote on canning tomatoes, including three recipes: plain tomatoes, catsup, and green tomato chutney. You can also see a slide show of me canning in my cramped kitchen. Proof that you do not need a lot of space to can.

I also gave a workshop on canning tomatoes at The Workroom last Friday. Karyn has done an amazing job recapping the event on her blog. She also recounted her follow-up experience here.

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September 10, 2009

46 Comments

Let’s Make Tiny Vaginas, Each One Beautiful & Unique

And make our own edible version of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party!

There has been a long and harried internal debate raging in my brain for days over that title. I have avoided making this post, worried that I will offend people by using the anatomically correct word for part of the female anatomy on a website about gardening. NO! The Horror! Because flowers and gardens and pollination and the like has nothing to do with sex at all.

I asked myself questions like, “Do I pull an Oprah and use the hideous colloquialism “vajay-jays” for those who think the word vagina is inappropriate?”

Both penis and vagina within the span of a month? What next, Gayla? What horrible word will you assault us with next?

Monsanto.

So then I thought,” Really, if I’m going to use appropriate anatomical terms I should have said “labias” or “vulva”, right?” I eventually decided against it because I figure some will find those words more offensive than vaginas and 70′s era feminist art.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about making what are really just oven dried plums.

As soon as tomatoes come into season I begin making batches of oven dried tomatoes. I’d love to make real sun-dried tomatoes and skip the energy consumption, however the climate here is far too humid (and this season is especially too wet) to properly dry tomatoes the natural way. If you have never made oven-dried tomatoes you must do it. They are so much better than store bought sun-dried tomatoes which are often laden with sulphite preservatives. My recipe for making them is in my next book so I can’t repeat it here.

My first tomato batch of the season fell a bit short of filling up the oven so I looked around to see if there was anything else on hand that could benefit from an afternoon in the oven. Plums! Yes, dried plums are really just prunes, and while I can’t remember the last time I ate a prune (if ever), I am absolutely certain these are a whole lot better.

I used Italian purple plums but I’m sure just about any will work.

To make them simply turn your oven to the lowest heat and line a baking sheet with a silpat or parchment paper (this step is important since they drip sugars and can stick).

Cut the plums in half and remove the pit.

Sprinkle or coat the plums with sugar if you like. This is not necessary if you want to keep it low-sugar since the heating process concentrates the plums’ own natural sugars.

Set in the oven for several hours. Drying time depends on the wetness/ripeness of the plums you use so check back after the first 2 hours to determine the drying rate and go from there.

Once cool, store the dried plums in freezer bags or reusable freezer safe containers.

Save a few for eating right away but try not to eat too many at once. I think you know why.

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August 5, 2009

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‘Mini Purplette’ Onions

Every year I go a little nuts growing large crops of onions such as ‘Egyptian Walking’ over at my community garden plot.

Onions grow easily in the ground, but they tend to take up a lot of space in containers. In the past I have grown smaller, bunching onions in pots as a way to have the odd onion on hand without wasting the kind of space that could be dedicated to coveted crops like tomatoes and basil. I like onions well enough, but nothing, not even a batch of slowly caramelized onions is coming between my mouth and a caprese salad.

Speaking of which, I made my first caprese salad of the season last night.

But I’m always on the lookout for something different to try, just in case. In the early spring I nabbed a pack ‘Mini Purplette’ onion seeds with the promise that I would have bulbous, miniature yet mature red onions come late summer. [I got mine from Urban Harvest however, Seeds of Change has them in the U.S.]

And sure enough, this afternoon I reached my hand into the soil of a medium-sized pot and discovered several round, golf ball sized red onions.

I’m very pleased with them and plan to grow more next year. I grew mine in fairly deep containers (about 10″) but am absolutely certain they would size up well in a window box. In fact, I would like to see that — several little onion tops neatly lined up in a row.

Or not. Because really, who am I kidding? My gardens are anything but neat.

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