Too Many Chefs

Brussels Sprouts Braised in Red Wine with Bacon and Lentils

2010-02-03T15:34:47-05:00

The Observer Food Monthly recently ran a series of articles addressing the somewhat frivolous question of what do celebrity food writers or chefs eat when they are cooking only for themselves? What is special about solitary meals? It is, after all, the dead season of food writing: not many sexy vegetables are in season, they've finished telling us what wonderful dishes we can make for the holidays and what frugal healthy ones we can prepare to make up for the holidays. And it IS interesting in voyeuristic kind of way. You can get a holier-than-thou feeling when you realize that three-star Michelin chefs sometimes eat standing over the kitchen sink too. In the end, most of the confessions fell into two categories: simple snack food that wouldn't usually be considered a proper meal, and experimental dishes.

And so I thought of the article earlier this week when I was making my solitary meal. Like the others, my meals on my own tend to be snack-like (a big bowl of buttery salted popcorn, cheese and crackers, smoked oysters on Triscuits, heaven help me) or else they involve experimenting with some ingredient from my CSA vegetable box that I know the rest of the family won't eat. Like Brussels sprouts. (When I first met the Critic, he insisted that we make Brussels sprouts at Christmas, though he refused to eat more than one. Since then, he has dropped that senseless idealism and we get by with only four vegetables on the Christmas table.)

Usually, these solitary dinners made of unpopular vegetables are tasty enough, but nothing to write home about - nothing worth writing about here. And then, every once in a while, I stumble upon something rather good. As I did this week. If you like Brussels sprouts, I think you'll love it. If you don't, you might just change your mind. It's a meal in a bowl: healthy, hearty and just plain good. Looking back after I finished it, I toyed with the idea of adding a few herbs (thyme, for example) to improve it. But in the end, I am not sure it needs it. Really good bacon is essential - the slices I had were thick and had been cured a good long time to give a nice dry texture. And don't cook the sprouts too long or they will smell unappetizing, get soggy and put you off forever. As soon as they turn bright green you should test one for tenderness and think about removing them from the heat.

I would suggest you use this dish to convince sprout-haters that they can be delicious. But then it would no longer be the perfect solitary dinner. And it was so good that I'm hoping the sprouts will still be in season when my next box arrives!

Continued reading Brussels Sprouts Braised in Red Wine with Bacon and Lentils...

Comments (46)

Comments on this Entry:

(charlene on Feb 15, 2010 2:38 PM) This recipe looks amazing. Brussels sprouts are so popular right now! We love your blog here at How2Heroes!!

(Special K on Feb 22, 2010 10:28 AM) Check out my Me Meals! You might find something you like, and I LOVE brussell sprout soup, which I wrote about in January...I am not a bacon fan, but like proscuitto...would that work?

(Meg in Sussex on Feb 22, 2010 10:49 AM) Yes, proscuitto would also be lovely, I think. I wouldn't bother cooking it though; just shred it and stir it in right before stirring. Hope you like it!

(Crystal on Mar 11, 2010 5:33 AM) I used to hate brussel sprouts but I became a convertee last year and am looking for more ways to cook them. SO thanks and I'll be giving this a try tonight.

(Elaine From Cookware Help on Apr 2, 2010 8:52 AM) When I boil a ham I always put the Brussels sprouts into the water and cook them. You need to try this it's so simple, but I also like your idea so might try this a the weekend.

(Fine Wine Trev on May 4, 2010 12:33 PM) Just the thought of Brussels Sprouts as a child made me want to throw up!! During the last three months my wife has seasonsed the sprouts with Reggae Reggae sauce and I must say the taste is delightful. I would also recommend sprouts with Honey and Salmon.

(Sophea Lazane on May 7, 2010 10:23 PM) I am a sprout hater previously but then I'm not one anymore since I found this one deliciuos dish that has sprout in it and I could finish them all. After try the dish for a few times, eating sprout doesn't seems bad at all.

(Window On The Prairie on May 21, 2010 5:13 PM) Don't care much for sprouts, but I may just have to try them again with this recipe. Thanks for this post! Suzanne

(Pam @ best Cookware guide on Jun 17, 2010 10:49 PM) I am so glad to find a recipe with Brussels sprout. I think Brussels sprout are very misunderstood vegetable and you have written such a gourmet recipe with wine and lentils, it is on my must make it this week list. Thanks for the recipe.

(brooke on Jul 20, 2010 12:26 AM) Loved the recipes but hate brussel sprouts but they looked great. Brooke http://www.momentsofelegance.com

(norma serrano on Aug 24, 2010 12:59 PM) When I saw that recipe called for red wine I was all over it like a cheap suit. Going to try it tonight! Good and funny info! Thxs. Norma Serrano, Los Angeles

(Restaurant Hoods on Sep 29, 2010 3:37 PM) Sounds delicious!

(CUISINES on Nov 3, 2010 9:05 PM) brussel sprouts are very good if you have a good stomack cuisiniste

(Shane on Nov 15, 2010 6:16 AM) Who would dare not to check this post. From the title itself - "Brussels Sprouts Braised in Red Wine with Bacon and Lentils". It's indeed a delicious one!

(Indiana health insurance quotes on Nov 16, 2010 7:28 PM) This sounds amazing! Will have to try it

(Paula in NY on Nov 18, 2010 6:48 PM) I've made a version of this dish, but I used red Camargue rice instead of the lentils. And I didn't have any fancy bacon in the house, just regular old breakfast bacon from the supermarket. It turned out rich and delicious and complex. Thanks for the reminder.

(Paula Bauer on Nov 22, 2010 3:57 PM) Wow! Now this looks absolutely delicious! I really are into brussels sprouts now... I'll have to give it a shot this weekend :-)

(Culinarian on Jan 5, 2011 7:37 PM) how peculiar that chefs don't tend to cook a lot for themselves, but only for others. Either way, this recipe sounds fabulous and fairly simple. thanks for sharing.

(seo yorkshire on Jan 10, 2011 1:31 AM) In fact your creative writing abilities has inspired me to start my own Blog

(ChefBlogDigest on Mar 13, 2011 2:59 PM) Your recipe is worth a try. thanks...

(dhanunjay.222 on Apr 20, 2011 4:51 PM) his recipe looks amazing. Brussels sprouts are so popular right now! We love your blog here at How2Heroes!! Posted by: | February 15, 2010 2:38 PM

(Counter Height Dining Table on May 20, 2011 2:16 PM) Oh I really love the recipe. I even tried it at home. Kids love it so much.

(Tim on Jun 9, 2011 2:25 PM) This looks like an amazing recipe. I just love it when the food is healthy and tasty! :)

(Neil on Jun 20, 2011 9:47 AM) People who come up with such interesting recipes should really think of running a restaurant. Don't write about them, live them try www.restaurant-sale.co.uk the first site in the UK that does nothing but advertise restaurants for sale

(JonesJersey on Nov 20, 2011 9:07 PM) Always looking for a great recipe with Brussels sprout, To please my clients.

(Amy @ Chef Basket on Nov 25, 2011 9:49 AM) Time is very important when cooking brussel sprouts. You want them al dente and not soggy as you mention. Otherwise it's my favorite vegetable to eat. I was one of those kids that actually liked them.

(Matt on May 2, 2012 8:35 AM) I've been including more sprouts in my diet these days. Bacon is different. Meg in Sussex suggested proscuitto...I like that idea! Thanks for the recipe!

(singapore emcee on May 11, 2012 1:23 AM) I am so glad to be here because i love to do cooking although i am not a professional chef but have some really best expertise.I will definitively try this one.

(Mikaela W on Jun 13, 2012 3:09 PM) It looks very appetizing! although I'm not cooking just for me ... This time I'll try! I loved your recipe!!

(Lucy on Mar 18, 2013 9:49 AM) I am not usually one for Brussel Sprouts, but in this dish i think i could munch on these 1 by 1. :) delicious

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Menu for Hope 6

2009-12-14T04:09:26-05:00

'Tis the season for giving! And while we are all busy running around finding the perfect gift for our families and friends, Pim has again been busy preparing the sixth annual Menu for Hope. What is Menu for Hope, you ask? Well, clearly you've been living under a rock, because last year Menu for hope raised a whopping $92,000 for the United Nations World Programme's Purchase for Progress program, which assists low-income farmers to raise crops and support their local economies. The idea is very simple and I've pinched the explanation directly from Pim:

Each December, food bloggers from all over the world join the campaign by offering a delectable array of food-related prizes for the Menu for Hope raffle. Anyone � and that means you too - can buy raffle tickets to bid on these prizes. For every $10 donated, you earn one virtual raffle ticket to bid on a prize of their choice. At the end of the two-week campaign, the raffle tickets are drawn and the results announced on Chez Pim.

And to that end, Too Many Chefs is delighted contribute in a small way with a basket of goods you can bid to win. We are offering a Taste of Sussex in the form of jams, pickles and honey. The winner of our bid item will receive: a jar of apple butter and a jar of pear butter (recipes courtesy of Elise's Simply Recipes), a jar of spiced apple sauce, a large jar of spicy pickled onions and a large jar of vegetarian mincemeat, a jar of spicy salsa, marinated roasted red peppers (again recipe courtesy of Elise), a small jar of unpasteurized, unfiltered and utterly delicious honey from a local farm and a jar of ginger and rhubarb jam, also from a Sussex farm. To top it off, we are throwing in a tea towel illustrated with the cultural sites of Plumpton, East Sussex. Well, actually it shows every building that isn't a house or a school, really. But it's classy nonetheless.

To make a donation and buy a raffle ticket for this basket of goodies, just go to the Menu for Hope 6 Donation page and enter the code EU20. The more tickets you buy, the better your chances of winning - and the more hungry families you will help! I will ship this anywhere in the world, so all bids are welcome!

And if you'd like to see some of the other fantastic items on offer, you can browse by region at the following sites:

Europe (hosted by David Lebovitz)
Asia Pacific (hosted by Ed of Tomatom)
USA: East Coast (hosted by Helen of Tartelette)
USA: West Coast (hosted by Shauna of Gluten Free Girl)
Canada (hosted by Tara of Seven Spoons)
Wine items (hosted by Vinography)

For more details on the event, do visit Pim's site and feel free to post any questions on our item in the comments below. Happy giving everyone!

Comments (11)

Comments on this Entry:

(David on Dec 14, 2009 5:51 AM) thanks for the tasty treats! xdl

(David Nutt on Dec 19, 2009 12:31 PM) Not too late The unique and perfect Christmas gift for all gourmets www.tastingtoeternity.com Enjoy

(clarkesam on Mar 30, 2011 10:46 PM) May I know if this program is for health support on malnourished people or just world health food awareness?

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My Waldorf Salad: a new twist on an old classic

2009-12-07T05:54:45-05:00

Celeriac is a problematic vegetable. It's not very pretty. And although it has a subtle celery flavor, it is easily overpowered by other flavors. Despite many recipes floating around for mashed celeriac, its texture really doesn't lend itself well to mashing. And subtle can easily fade into "dull" if you aren't careful. The classic French treatment is a remoulade, i.e. a kind of a celariac coleslaw. It's not unpleasant, but it lacks the crunchiness of a good coleslaw and rarely has enough pepper for my taste. So what do you do when it turns up in your CSA box with irritating frequency? I have mashed it. I have made a gratin. I have paired it with beans for a hearty soup. But I still felt I was missing the poor vegetable's potential somehow.

And then I had a bit of an epiphany. Lunching with a friend recently, I tasted the Waldorf salad that she'd bought. Until then, my knowledge of the great Waldorf Salad was confined to laughing at the Waldorf Salad episode of Fawlty Towers and paging through the 1938 edition of The American Woman's Cookbook, which I inherited from my grandmother. I thought the idea of mixing mayonnaise and apple was faintly disgusting and best avoided. And yet...when I finally tasted the supermarket generic salad that she'd bought, I found I liked it. The flavor combinations worked just as well as you would expect in a recipe that has stood the test of 110 years' time. And so I thought of my humble celeriac, waiting in my veg box at home. Celeriac Waldorf Salad. Perfect.

And it is. Crunchy and savory and just a bit sweet, it's a very satisfying and reasonably healthy lunch. I have to admit, though, that I'm not as much of a genius as I thought I was when I first came up with the idea of using celeriac instead of actual celery in a Waldorf Salad. A quick web search revealed that I was not the first to come up with the idea by far. But that does not make it a bad idea - far from it! So here is my version, coming in at a bare 2 WeightWatchers points per serving.

Continued reading My Waldorf Salad: a new twist on an old classic...

Comments (20)

Comments on this Entry:

(Arizona bankruptcy (lawyer) on Dec 9, 2009 11:49 AM) Looks simple and tasty. Thanks for sharing the recipe. Love the blog as well.

(tiny homes on Dec 16, 2009 3:39 AM) Thanks for sharing the recipe! It looks like it is very easy to make. So I am going to give it a try.

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(vincent on Dec 21, 2009 3:50 PM) Hello, We bumped into your blog and we really liked it - great recipes YUM YUM. We would like to add it to the Petitchef.com. We would be delighted if you could add your blog to Petitchef so that our users can, as us, enjoy your recipes. Petitchef is a french based Cooking recipes Portal. Several hundred Blogs are already members and benefit from their exposure on Petitchef.com. To add your site to the Petitchef family you can use http://en.petitchef.com/?obj=front&action=site_ajout_form or just go to Petitchef.com and click on "Add your site" Best regards, Vincent petitchef.com

(Best Olive Oil on Jan 16, 2010 3:18 AM) New spin on a classic, love it! Waldorf salad is a huge fav in my family - particularly around the holidays -

(vincent on May 16, 2010 3:36 PM) Hello, We bumped into your blog and we really liked it - great recipes YUM YUM. We would like to add it to the Petitchef.com. We would be delighted if you could add your blog to Petitchef so that our users can, as us, enjoy your recipes. Petitchef is a french based Cooking recipes Portal. Several hundred Blogs are already members and benefit from their exposure on Petitchef.com. To add your site to the Petitchef family you can use http://en.petitchef.com/?obj=front&action=site_ajout_form or just go to Petitchef.com and click on "Add your site" Best regards, Vincent petitchef.com

(homes for sale in abbotsford on Dec 1, 2010 6:54 PM) Thanks for the recipe.Now I have another kind of salad to serve to my family.I usually do the usual salad we had,I feel so boring. Britney

(shed plans guy on Apr 14, 2011 2:40 AM) The recipe looks really simple, but I have one question, what is celery salt ? does it help to bring out the celery taste?

(Lara@ blooming tea on May 5, 2011 6:40 AM) Yeah you're definitely right, celery is easily overpowered by other ingredients. So having a recipe like you have here is great to get the right taste and flavor of celery. Is it ok to use celery seed and salt if you don't have celery salt?

(tracy on Sep 20, 2011 8:49 AM) Wow. This looks gorgeous. I�m looking forward to trying this recipe.

(Johan on Feb 12, 2012 1:37 AM) Dude I love this salad a lot. It's seems like simple but taste like out of this world. I often used to have it on dinner. Thanks

(Henny on Sep 20, 2012 10:30 AM) If you blanch the celery sticks for a minute it will loose some of its intensity. My grandma used to do that to make us kids eat it. YUM!!

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Cracking the Cranberry Roll Code

2009-11-26T08:56:30-05:00

As I write this, cooks in the U.S. are waking up and facing a full day of Thanksgiving fun: baking and cooking and gossiping with family and friends, looking forward to a feast. Living outside the US, I don't think I've cooked a Thanksgiving feast on the actual day in, well, 17 or 18 years. This year was no exception: we had our bird last Friday, before the Critic flew off for meetings in Tobago. (It's a hard life he leads.) We enjoyed a lovely bird from a local farm, with cornbread stuffing (each year the recipe is getting closer to perfect), bags of gravy and creamed corn. And cranberry rolls. There are always cranberry rolls. However, I have to say that in the interest of saving time, I committed sacrilege. I used a bread machine. And the really scary part? It worked better than when I've made the dough by hand. Yes, this is no compliment to me as a baker. But yes, I will be doing it again. And I will also now know that when I am making the dough by hand, I should go easy on the flour. Because this is the crux of the matter: in the past I have always used much more flour than the original recipe called for. When you are kneading the dough by hand, it tends to stick to your hands and so you reach for the flour bin. When it's in a non-stick machine, you don't. The recipe calls for 4-5 cups of flour; I put in precisely 4 1/2 cups. And when I turned it out to punch it down and form the rolls, I kneaded in no more than half a cup more. The rolls were light and pillowy and just plain heaven with a dollop of cranberry sauce. So if you are in a hurry this Thanksgiving morning but happen to have a bread machine, I highly recommend you give this recipe a spin. Your taste buds will thank you, as will your friends and family. I just took a couple dozen to my youngest son's nursery and introduced the children and staff there to them and came away with far fewer than I expected. Actually, the best compliment is this: of the children who were willing to try the rolls (toddlers are extremely suspicious of unknown food) only one left any roll on her plate. And oddly enough, it was the cranberry filling - and her mother snatched it up and ate it for her!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We have much to be thankful for this year including (but not limited to by any means): good health, good friends, good food, a President and first family we can look up to and be proud of, money in the bank and people who still come back and read this blog, however slow I am to post theses days. Thank you all!

Continued reading Cracking the Cranberry Roll Code...

Comments (14)

Comments on this Entry:

(colin on Nov 26, 2009 12:35 PM) hi, great site! your "cranberry rolls" are actually kolaches. these Czech pastries can be filled with almost any type of fruit, cheeses etc. my wife has family in the state of Nebraska where I have encountered a passionate following for these pastries as a 'go-to' item for breakfast or snacktime. mix up the fillings sometime and try out tart cherry, apricot or even poppy seed in addition to your yummy cranberry version. thanks for the post, i have never tried making these but will likely give your recipe a shot!

(Meg in Sussex on Nov 26, 2009 6:21 PM) Colin, I think you are right about the origins of the rolls. However, the odd thing is that it was my Irish-American grandmother, not the Austria-born-Czech-speaking one who taught me how to make them. Funny old world, eh?

(dining furniture on Nov 27, 2009 12:08 AM) HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Lots of things to thank this time of the year! After all the problems, we are still all here! Enjoy!

(Marianne on Nov 28, 2009 7:47 PM) I made these for our Mexican Thanksgiving, kneading with the dough hook on my Kitchen Aid and they were outstanding. But the best part of our "traditional" dinner was the turkey - selected that morning by the mother of one of the guests, neck duly wrung, plucked, cleaned, boiled, then smothered in spices (mainly achiote), and cooked over hot coals, turning constantly. Best I've ever had; served with pickled Yucatecan onions and, of course, all the usual trimmings. Grandma Kehoe would have loved our stories.

(Meg in Sussex on Nov 29, 2009 10:02 AM) Oh, Mar, you have my mouth watering! I don't suppose anyone noted down the precise recipe?? If so, I think it's your duty to share with me so I can share with the world! The Critic is always happy to eat another turkey... (Especially when we are having - gasp - lasagna for Christmas dinner!!)

(Big Brother on Dec 9, 2009 6:34 PM) Hey, hey, hey... nothing wrong with the Italian Christmas, now. A little different, perhaps, but still very tasty. I think Annie said she was going to do a more traditional Turkey-based meal on Christmas Eve. Anyway, I wanted to say that yes, I, too, have found that a wetter, stickier dough does create better bread. I make bread every weekend, and it has taken me a while to come to grips with the fact that less flour makes a better result. It just gets a little tricky handling it; I now use parchment paper to lower it into my Dutch oven, which helps immensely. I think it has something to do with the proteins being better able to align themselves into chains in a wetter dough; Cook's Illustrated wrote up an article explaining the science behind no-knead bread a year or so ago, and I think that was their explanation. Kurt

(Liz @ Comfortisse Bra on Dec 5, 2011 11:59 AM) This looks like the perfect breakfast item to wake up to and not just for thanksgiving. Cranberry Rolls are my next project.

(Mikaela W on Jun 13, 2012 3:14 PM) I love cakes!! look very appetizing! .. For sure I test ... more .. I know what to do when the bread dough left over .. Thank you for your recipe!

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Spicy Tomato Salsa

2009-10-17T04:47:56-05:00

Have you heard of the "canvolution"? Judging by some of my favorite blogs, it seems to be sweeping the food world at the moment, at least in the U.S. For some of us, it's an indulgence in the latest new fun-thing-to-do-with-food. For some, it hearkens back to memories of how our parents or grandparents lived. For some, it's an environmental decisions: buying food at its prime and preserving it means less need to ship it from far away climes or force it out of season in energy-guzzling greenhouses. And for me, it's all these things. When I first read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I had a real epiphany: I could preserve food in small quantities, and for the most part with equipment I already owned. Yes, I would need to buy some canning jars and freezer bags. But by judiciously choosing which vegetables to preserve and how, I could do a great deal to reduce my carbon footprint. Initially, this just meant flipping through my cookbooks and consulting with the organic farmer who supplies my vegetable box each week. We had a very symbiotic relationship this summer, with me offering to take off her hands any vegetables for which supply was overtaking demand. She threw in a lot of vegetables for free, too, as a perk. As a result, I have canned apricot jam, tomato sauce, tomato paste, chopped tomatoes, marinated peppers and pickled onions. In the freezer, I have bags of zucchini, shelled broad beans, runner beans, French beans, caramelized tomatoes, corn and grilled eggplant slices. However, one thing you may notice in this list is that, with the exception of the pickled onions, nearly everything is simply the preservation of a one-ingredient item. And then I suddenly had another realization: instead of buying mediocre Old El Paso salsa for my Tex-Mex cravings, I could make and can my own salsa. Surely the acidity of the tomatoes, combined with a dose of citrus juice, would overcome the need for pressure canning, even if I did use non acidic ingredients such as garlic, onions and peppers? And a little web research revealed it would. All I needed to do was pick my recipe.

In the end, I decided to work with a recipe from the New Mexico State University website. I don't know why so many universities seem to publish books and online recipes for canning, perhaps the combination of young energetic people and scientists? In any case, this page has a half dozen fantastic recipes. A word of caution: whenever I find a recipe - in a book or on the web - I have a tendency to tweak it to my taste. This is a dangerous practice if you are canning, because a slight decrease in the acidity of the contents of the jar can have serious, sometimes fatal, repercussions. The most I am willing to depart from a recipe of this sort is to add an extra clove of garlic, and even then I compensate by adding a few tablespoons of lime juice. It is much, much better to be safe than sorry. If you really want to go wild and make changes, I suggest you invest in a pressure cooker and can the serious way.

For myself, I much prefer recipes that only require boiling in the �.50 gargantuan iron pot I picked up at a jumble sale a few weeks ago. That has got to be one of the best investments in my cooking life. (Though I really do need a round cooling rack of 22-23 cm to put in the bottom of it to fully utilize its surface area. Anyone have a suggestion?)

The recipe I chose made a wonderful versatile sauce. How hot it will turn out will of course depend on the peppers you use, but mine came out just hot enough to be interesting but not so hot that you reach for a cold beer before you've swallowed. I will be cracking open a jar to enjoy with tortilla chips, adding a jar to beans to kick-start a chili con carne and even using it for a quick and tasty last minute dinner. Last night, I set some brown rice boiling, saut�ed a chopped onion in a little olive oil, added chopped chicken breast and about 150 g frozen zucchini, covered it with a jar of salsa and simmered until the rice was done. With a grating of low-fat cheddar and a spoonful of low-fat sour cream, it made a hearty, delicious dinner at only 8 WeightWatchers points.

Continued reading Spicy Tomato Salsa...

Comments (18)

Comments on this Entry:

(sheetal Savant on Nov 11, 2009 5:35 PM) This year was to be the one I took on my canning expedition, but somehow or the other I couldn't manage at all. Sounds like a very lively recipe ... can't wait to try it!

(Chicago Furniture on Jan 13, 2010 12:30 PM) man, I can't handle the storage space all of the canning uses.

(Chef Jay on Jul 31, 2010 7:16 AM) I think this recipe is awesome. Thanks for sharing. If you get the chance, check out more ways of canning salsa over at my site.

(SylviaFoxBevan on Aug 31, 2010 5:49 PM) one never knows how tried and true it is just from surfing for a recipe online ... We always get lots of requests for our salsa - here's the recipe - tried n true Tastes similar to a main stream salsa company's Homemade Salsa Recipe: � lb jalapeno or cherry peppers (I always use jalapeno, cherry peppers are VERY hot) 8 cups coarsely chopped peeled tomatoes (I don�t peel them) 3 cups chopped seeded sweet banana peppers 2 cups chopped onions 4 to 5 garlic cloves, minced 2 cups cider vinegar 1 cup EACH chopped sweet red and yellow peppers * I use a total of 5 cups of whatever colour sweet peppers are either on sale, or in my garden, the yellow banana peppers to give a nice perky flavour, though 1 @ 5 � oz can tomato paste 2 tablespoons white sugar 1 tablespoon salt 2 teaspoons spanish paprika 1 teaspoon dried oregano � cup chopped fresh cilantro (the fresh leaves are cilantro, the dried seed is called coriander) **if you can�t get fresh cilantro you can use 2 teaspoons ground coriander (and up to � cup parsley fresh or 2 tablespoons dried) Method... see www.sylviafox.ca or salsa recipe

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(Falcon 900 Range Cooker on Dec 3, 2010 7:13 AM) Thanks for the awesome recipe! I'm a huge salsa fan and will be trying to make this to your recipe very soon, I just got a new range cooker installed and can't wait to use it at any opportunituy!

(karaoke songs on Dec 12, 2010 10:22 PM) THANKS FOR THE tips of making the tomato salsa.i'll try it

(Classified Ads on Oct 4, 2011 3:41 PM) I think this tomato salsa will rock with the after noon light snacks. I usually prefer the sauce and the chocolate sauce but this look really delicious to me and I will surely take a taste of it.

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Salade des Landes Anglaises

2009-10-10T10:09:23-05:00

One of the many benefits of living in a "socialist" (horror!) country like France is that workers are genuinely well looked after. Admittedly, this is less of a bonus from an employer's point of view, especially when coupled with that nasty tendency to strike and the near impossibility of firing an incompetent employee. However, if you are an employee - competent or not - the benefits are obvious. A minimum of five weeks of holiday every year, in addition to a slew of public holidays. Great unemployment benefits should the impossible occur and you find yourself out of work. A government agency whose sole purpose is to help you find a job, for free. And in addition, companies are obliged to either provide a cafeteria which supplies cheap, healthy food or give their employees tickets restos, lunch vouchers that can be exchanged for food in nearly every restaurant in the city and many supermarkets too. Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch? I was woefully unaware of this issue for the first ten years I lived in Paris for the simple reason that the international organisation where I worked had a snack bar, a cafeteria and a restaurant on site. When I went to work for a French law firm near the Champs-Elys�es, I was surprised and delighted to find that in addition to my salary, I would benefit from just under nine euros for lunch every day, rain or shine. Admittedly, food around the Champs is not cheap and several of my colleagues complained that it simply wasn't enough for a "proper" meal. But for an American who was happy with a nice salad or sandwich, it was plenty. I generally ended up with a dozen or more of them left at the end of the year, which I happily distributed to the homeless population of Paris. They were happy to have such a generous donation; I was happy knowing that they would have to use it to buy food. Win-Win.

I spent the first few weeks exploring the neighborhood around my office, scoping out the caf�s with the best service and cheapest good food. And I found my local - complete with a nice grumpy waiter who looked out for regulars like a trouper - on the avenue FDR. I won't bother giving the address here, because the last time I was there it had changed beyond recognition and my favorite grumpy waiter was gone. But for the two years I worked in the neighborhood, I was there at least a couple of times a week. And at least once a week - until I got pregnant* - I had the World's Best Salad: la Salade des Landes. Seriously, my mouth is watering just thinking about it. Imagine a mixture of tender lettuce leaves tenderly dressed with a tangy, very mustardy vinaigrette. Add sweet tomatoes. Then add meaty g�siers confits (preserved gizzards - trust me, they are heaven on a plate and not at all gamey) and magret de canard (smoked duck breast). Then add two thick slabs of foie gras and hot toast. All for just under nine euros. Is it any wonder I loved that place? I don't miss Paris often, but I do feel a pang when I remember those tranquil (one hour) lunches with no children pulling on my sleeve or running wild, just a good book and a delicious salad for company. Sigh. Not that I don't love my harum-scarum boys, mind you, but I'd love a tranquil lunch break sometimes.

And on that note, this lovely salad was consumed to the sound of Tom and Jerry on the computer, two year old shrieks and mayhem. But it was still delicious. No foie gras, mind you, but then again I'm on a diet nowadays. Weight watchers points: 2. Win-win.

*A note for any pregnant visitors to France: French people, including restaurant workers, have what many Americans would consider a somewhat cavalier attitude about food safety issues. Eggs are not refrigerated in supermarkets and salads are - frequently - cut with the same knife that just finished filleting a chicken breast. On the same unwashed chopping board. For this reason, doctors in France advise pregnant women not to eat salads in restaurants, for fear of toxoplasmosis or salmonella. At home, you can ensure that the lettuce is well washed and my doctor even advised soaking it for 15 minutes in a water to which a tablespoon of vinegar had been added.

Continued reading Salade des Landes Anglaises...

Comments (9)

Comments on this Entry:

(David on Oct 10, 2009 11:45 AM) France is a socialist country? Don't tell that to Decaux...or Sarko...

(Susan on Oct 20, 2009 3:32 PM) There's no protocol about scrubbing the meat cutting board before cutting ingredients to be served raw? That's alarming, even though I suspect that on the whole French food sources are a bit safer. No feed lots or pen-raised chickens, as far as I know. However, I was taken aback the other week when my local cafe owner actually perched his new Jack Russell puppy on the zinc. Cavalier indeed.

(Meg in Sussex on Oct 29, 2009 7:03 PM) Susan, I remember several years ago, when I was just starting out blogging, reading a post by someone who was attending classes at the Cordon Bleu (as I recall - could have been another of the schools) and she wrote that she had suddenly realized that in three weeks of classes she had never once been instructed to clean her chopping board. Yikes!

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An English Salade Ni�oise

2009-10-02T08:29:19-05:00

I've written a bit lately (okay, droned on) about the problems posed by a prolific zucchini plant. However, here in England, there is a larger problem. Runner beans. My understanding is that these lovely plants were originally cultivated by the British for their pretty red flowers. Then one day someone discovered the beans were just about edible. Fast forward a couple hundred years and you have the most popular vegetable for English amateur gardeners. It's easy to see why: like the zucchini, it is almost impossible to mess up. I bought a half dozen plants myself earlier this year and planted them uncomfortably close in pots. I gave them minimal sunshine (because we are renting, I have placed my container garden on the side of the house that has a bit of pavement, to save the grass) and supports that were about three feet too short. And I had so many beans that I ended up freezing quite a few bags. And they are still arriving each week in my box from the local organic farm. I like beans. But even I am struggling a bit to use them all up before the next lot arrives.

So today's lunch was my way of finishing up the runner beans from last week's box before my delivery arrives this afternoon - no doubt with another portion of runner beans. It was filling, surprisingly tasty and a great use for runner beans, a bit like a pared down salad ni�oise. And unlike a true salade ni�oise, this one came in at 1.5 WeightWatchers point per satisfying savory serving. Which, given the fact that I had friends over for drinks last night and went way over my WW limit on wine, cheese and chips, is a very good thing.

Continued reading An English Salade Ni�oise...

Comments (8)

Comments on this Entry:

(Nancy on Oct 2, 2009 4:00 PM) This sounds good. I'm trying to follow the Eat to Live diet and was running out of veggie ideas. The amount of oil fits right in too. Thanks

(Brian on Oct 3, 2009 9:49 AM) Another glut that occurs this time of year is of tomatoes, so blanch some beans, chop the tomatoes and toss together with a dressing of choice.

(Meg in Sussex on Oct 4, 2009 6:07 AM) Brian, this recipe did include a couple of small tomatoes. But if you have a real glut, I'm a HUGE fan of canning them. Unlike many other vegetables, tomatoes are acidic enough that you only need a hot water bath to can them; no need for special equipment like a pressure canner. I have 30 jars of plain chopped tomatoes, eight jars of tomato sauce and three jars of tomato paste. And next week, I'm starting on salsa! Look out for a post on this issue some time soon (I hope)!

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(Darlene on Aug 28, 2010 1:04 AM) Looks great! Makes me hungry just looking at it.

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Sweet Corn Soup: the Midwest in a Bowl

2009-09-18T04:02:08-05:00

When you live outside your home country, the first question nearly every new acquaintance asks you is "What brought you here?" It's a simple question with a complicated answer for most expats. A job, a spouse, a parent, these are all the simple answers. "Because I studied French in high school" is the beginning of the long and complicated answer for me. Because I studied French in high school, I continued it at university. And when I was unhappy in my second year (romance problems of course), I decided to apply for the year abroad program at the Sorbonne. Because I had studied French in high school, and otherwise when would I have a chance to use what I had learned? I didn't actually speak much French or learn much French while in Paris that year as I was terminally shy. But I did fall in love with the city. And so two years later when my boyfriend of the time got a job in Munich, we both thought "Well, it's closer to Paris than here, so why not?" And when the Munich job ended, we moved to Paris. And I got a job, a new boyfriend, a cat, a few sticks of furniture. And then one day I turned around and realized I'd been there for 17 years.

Living in France was a rich experience for me and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. It gave me a husband and two adorable children and wonderful friends. It introduced me to a world of good food. But there was one thing missing, I have to admit. Well, actually a few. But I'm here today to talk about one important food. Corn on the cob.

You can take the girl out of the Midwest but good golly you will make her miss her sweet corn. For years, I used to bring back packets of seed corn and distribute them to friends who had houses in the country or suburban yards. "Here, plant some corn - you won't believe how good it is compared to the stuff you can get here in France!" They all took the packets with a bemused smile but not one, as far as I know, actually planted them. In France, you see, the corn you find in the supermarket - on the rare occasions when you can - is half shucked, plastic wrapped and (mostly) from Israel. I'm pretty sure it's the variety that Americans feed to their cattle, not their children. In any case, it's tough, frequently moldy on the underside and not very sweet. And expensive.

So you can imagine my surprise and delight last September when my box of vegetables from the local organic farm included a few ears of genuine, fresh sweet corn. It wasn't quite as tender, juicy and sweet as the corn I devour every summer when we visit the Midwest. But it's manna compared with the corn I have found in Europe until now. In fact, it's so good that this year I ordered 36 extra ears and blanched and froze the kernels for the winter months.

And one recipe I am looking forward to reproducing is a hearty sweet corn soup. This recipe came about when I discovered we had three ears of corn left over after a big barbecue. As you can imagine, when you suffer sweet corn deprivation for 17 years, you are not going to waste a single kernel once you find decent corn. So I chucked the corn in a soup pot with leeks, chicken broth, summer squash and thyme and zapped it with my stick blender. And then I tasted it. And added a handful of grated sharp cheddar cheese. And declared it heaven. The Critic, who also has a healthy appreciation for good sweet corn, loved it. It is the Midwest in a bowl and I'll be pulling a bag of frozen corn out of the freezer this winter whenever I get the Expat Blues.

Continued reading Sweet Corn Soup: the Midwest in a Bowl...

Comments (6)

Comments on this Entry:

(Deborah Dowd on Sep 20, 2009 8:00 PM) The best thing about summer is fresh corn and this soup sounds amazing.

(dining room tables on Sep 21, 2009 2:14 AM) I love corn and every recipe that has corn with it! Especially the soup..love it when it is rich!

(Wall Mirrors Gal on Oct 1, 2010 10:00 PM) Ooooh delicious corn soup......

(Dining Table Sets Gal on Nov 13, 2010 1:46 AM) yammie You have a grate food and excellent taste i feel hungry must try this soon. I recommend all to join in.

(Counter Height Dining Table on May 20, 2011 2:21 PM) I also love corn. It's really delicious especially the corn soup. Love it!

(Counter Height Dining Table on Jun 18, 2011 9:16 PM) I've tasted this corn soup and it's really delicious.

Sausage and Sweet Corn Risotto

2009-09-04T13:40:49-05:00

We interrupt our normally scheduled healthy low calorie recipe line up to bring you this sinfully calorific creamy and child-friendly recipe. Sausages. Corn. Salty soft rice. What's not to love?

If you look in the "child-friendly" category of this site, you will unfortunately find very few recipes. This is for a few reasons. Firstly, I believe that in an ideal world, children should gradually come to eat the same as their parents. With the exception of things that are potentially dangerous for young children (raw eggs and seafood for example) I like to think that most of our recipes can either be served to children as they are written or toned down a bit, in the case of very spicy dishes. Secondly, my children do not actually live up to this theory yet. I'm working on it. But many of the things I make for them fall into simple categories like "scrambled eggs with vegetables" or "pasta with vegetables and cheese". The Critic tends to get home far too late to make a family dinner feasible during the week, so too often I cater to the boys with simple food.

This dish, however, bridges the gap between "kid food" and "adult food". The boys (after the usual token "I don't like rice!" opening volley in the food battle) settled down and enthusiastically ate a big bowl each. In terms of healthiness, it's not too bad. Sausages, of course, are full of salt and fat. But sweet corn is in season and absolutely loved by children. With cheese and rice, you have your four basic food groups in a bowl. And it's so tasty that you'll find yourself, like me, sneaking bites out of their bowls while they are absorbed in watching Beauty and the Beast on the laptop. (Yes, we rely on the dinner time cinema at the end of a long and tiring week. All the play dates we planned for the summer holidays have seem to have been crammed into the last week before school starts. It's hard work being a highly social two or four year old around here!)

Continued reading Sausage and Sweet Corn Risotto...

Comments (1)

Comments on this Entry:

(Amy Sherman on Oct 2, 2009 12:36 AM) My goodness that sounds appealing! I have been looking for more dishes to pair with Chardonnay. I bet this would work.

In defense of the humble zucchini

2009-08-15T11:15:04-05:00

Zucchini are the rabbits of the vegetable world. In the spring you plant three of four little seeds and suddenly in late July you realize you have an ever increasing mountain of vegetables. When I was growing up, it was a running joke in the summer months: don't visit Grandma because she won't let you leave without a huge bag of zucchini! My mother used to grow them, until she realized that it wouldn't keep my grandmother from trying to offload her surplus on us anyway. It was the stuff you literally couldn't give away. On top of the problem of sheer volume of produce, there was also the lack of imagination in what to do with it. My grandmother included it in her steamed vegetable mixes, which today I would probably quite like. But at the time all I noticed was that it got all slimy and tasteless. And she usually included celery in the mix, which overpowered the poor zucchini. She also made zucchini lasagna, which was lovely - but not something you'd want to eat three times a week. Especially in the Chicago suburbs in the summer: you do NOT want to turn the oven on when it's already over 100 degrees in the shade outside. And zucchini bread. We all loved Grandma's zucchini bread - in the winter. Again, not so fond of turning on the oven in the summer. So zucchini was a real conundrum and a bit of a joke.

Over the last 15 years, though, my perspective on zucchini has changed a lot. For one thing, I moved to the city, where you are in little danger of having unwanted vegetables forced upon you. For another, I met some beautiful classic zucchini dishes: French ratatouille and Catalonian escalivada, which is in some ways like a drier, meatier version of ratatouille. I started experimenting with this versatile vegetable and I learned to love it.

So now we are at the height of the zucchini season and I'm aware that in much of the world, zucchini disposal is still something of a problem. I thought I would share a few ways to address the glut:

1. With the wisdom of years, I am now convinced that part of the problem was that my grandmother was too greedy. Well, not really greedy, perhaps, so much as "too proud of her gardening skills". She - and everyone else I knew back then - never picked a small zucchini. They always let them grow and grow to the size of small baseball bats, by which time the skin was a bit tough, the inside woody and bland. What a revelation it was to me when I arrived in France and saw beautiful small courgettes with their tender skin and full flavor. Seriously, if you pick your zucchini when it's half the size, logically you'll have half the weight to deal with. And it will have twice as much flavor.

2. Use the wealth of information at your fingertips (literally) to find new recipes. My mother and grandmother relied on their various cookbooks (many of them community based and very reliant on cans of mushroom soup and cake mixes) and friends for recipe ideas, a relatively small pool. Today, you have a gazillion food blogs like this one and celebrity chefs falling over themselves to give you free recipes. I've done a quick search on our database and just a few of the ideas include: Grilled Summer Vegetable Salad with Roasted Garlic Dressing, Pasta with Vegetables and Goat's Cheese Sauce, Warm Zucchini and Tomato Salad, Pesto, Pasta and Summer Vegetables, Green Eggs and Ham (a great one for small Dr. Seuss fans, and incidentally zucchini makes a lovely base for baby food too) and of course my most recent post below, Spicy Zuke Soup. This is just a smattering of the results on our site alone. There are a lot of great zucchini recipes out there: it's a lovely sweet vegetable when treated with respect. Grill it. Grate it. Roast it. Just don't steam it with celery, please.

3. If all else fails - and even with a wealth of great recipes, it can - PRESERVE IT. Last year, I wrote about being deeply affected by Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Take a leaf from her book and save the vegetable that is over-abundant now for the cold winter months. Zucchini can be canned with a pressure cooker, but even more easily - it can be frozen. Wash it well, slice it or cube it and blanch it in boiling water for three minutes exactly. Then plunge it in ice water for a further three minutes, drain well and pack it in freezer bags. The result will not give you delicate summer salads, but it will enhance your curries, stews and soups. My favorite soup, the one I make on average twice a month through the winter months, is best with a generous helping of zucchini. This year, thanks to the 2.5 kg of cubed zucchini waiting in my freezer, I won't have to feel guilty about buying it out of season to add to my soup all winter long. I have also frozen grated zucchini in two-cup bags, following my grandmother's practice: perfect for a mid-winter loaf of zucchini bread. And lastly, there is the ubiquitous Zucchini Lasaga. I'm sure most families have a version of this old standby. My mother and my cousin collated all my grandmother's recipes into a home-published cookbook for the family and I used her recipe (with a few small departures) to make a double batch this week. One for us now, and one for the freezer. Fast food for the winter months!

A note on the photo: despite all I've written above about the prolific nature of zucchini, a less than stellar summer, combined with a less than stellar cat-sitter (who did not water the plants as promised) meant that I personally only harvested one zucchini this year. But the woman who runs the local organic farm is delighted that I'm such an enthusiastic buyer. And they are cheap!

Continued reading In defense of the humble zucchini...

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Spicy Zuke Soup

2009-08-03T10:09:21-05:00

This was supposed to be a nice minestrone soup. The summer rain was pelting down on the roof of the conservatory and the Critic had just phoned to say that he was coming home from work early as he had the flu. I looked at my selection of fresh summer vegetables and started skimming the cookbooks and decided minestrone would be the perfect use for my seasonal vegetables. According to Marcella Hazan, I would need tomatoes (check), garlic (check), onions (check), zucchini (check), borlotti beans...no check. Or, rather to be precise, no cooked beans and the dried ones in my cupboard would take too much time to prepare. Never mind, I thought. I'll just pop down to the village shop. They have everything there. Everything but cans of Italian or French white beans as it happens. But the shop did have canned chickpeas, which set my mind off in another direction: Morocco. The Critic isn't overly fond of North African food, but I figured if it was spicy and didn't include couscous (which he can't abide for some reason) he'd never complain. I hurried home and started searching the cupboards for the elusive tube of harissa I knew was lurking there somewhere. And I found it: with a split side, spicy paste oozing everywhere and a sell-by date of 2007. Good heavens, the stuff was older than my youngest child!

And so in the end - I chucked the cookbooks and just started cooking. And really, I'm delighted that I didn't have the ingredients I wanted in the cupboard, because the soup turned out delicious: coriander and cayenne spiced the soup without overpowering the sweet tomatoes and zucchini. Chickpeas gave the bowl a satisfying bite and a bit of weight. It was hot, sweet, spicy and full of summer goodness, the perfect foil for a bout of the flu.

Continued reading Spicy Zuke Soup...

Comments (4)

Comments on this Entry:

(angelina jacob on Aug 8, 2009 2:35 AM) hey this soups its so tasty and i want everyone to try it Angelina Jacob

(Rebekka on Aug 10, 2009 1:34 PM) I love the idea of the spices....gorgeous! I have to make this :)

(Crystal on Dec 2, 2009 10:48 AM) Hi Meg I'm a huge fan of your blog. Thanks for including the ww points - I keep trying to stay on track with my points but am mostly over. And I too have too many zucchinis in summer (actually ate the last one yesterday!) so this will be great. Will be adding you to my favorite blog list soon as it's up.

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The Cumin Kick: Kohlrabi and Quinoa Salad

2009-06-30T07:27:52-05:00

I have been on quite a cumin kick lately. In a post long ago, I referred to being (like a painter with his color "periods") in my "nutmeg period". I have definitely moved on to cumin now. It's spicy without being burning hot. It stands up well to gutsy vegetables like cabbage and onions. It reminds me of good Mexican food, which is no longer a cuisine to be taken for granted as it was long ago when I lived in Chicago. And now that I'm on a program to lose weight, all of those things - well, except for the Mexican cuisine, which can be quite high in calories - are to the good. So when a funky purple kohlrabi showed up in my weekly vegetable delivery, it immediately sprang to mind.

As is usual when confronted with an unusual vegetable, I hit the Internet looking for inspiration. Sadly, I found none. Nigel Slater, my favorite source of inspiration, detests the poor vegetable. Other offerings were almost universally unsuitable for a woman on a diet, involving baking the slices in cream or grating them and dousing with mayonnaise. So I turned back to my first idea: cumin and kohlrabi. I decided they needed a substantial background and so I opted for quinoa as a base and also threw in a red pepper that was lingering in the back of the vegetable drawer. And finally, I decided to add a generous helping of mushrooms. We recently got the barbecue working again for the season and so I opted to simply grill the mushrooms. The result was deeply satisfying, with the spicy flavors of cumin and cayenne pepper, meatiness of the grilled mushrooms, sweet red peppers and kohlrabi with its delicate brassica note. It stood up well to the other flavors but didn't fight them - a perfect hearty summer salad.

If you are interested in the less diet conscious classic kohlrabi recipes, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a fan of the kohlrabi and included three recipes I'd like to try in last Saturday's Guardian.

Continued reading The Cumin Kick: Kohlrabi and Quinoa Salad...

Comments (3)

Comments on this Entry:

(Lauren on Jun 30, 2009 3:27 PM) Hi Meg, Wow it's wonderful that you posted a recipe using kohlrabi on the very day I get one in my veggie box! I am definitely going to try this one out. Thanks, Lauren

(Laura [What I Like] on Jul 16, 2009 9:38 AM) Looks lovely! I too am just the hugest Nigel Slater fan, but when faced with an unusual vegetable often turn to Madhur Jaffrey's A World Vegetarian. She suggests simply sauteeing kholrabi in butter with a bit of salt and pepper, and I must admit that I adore it! Tried to eat the leaves the other day though and that didn't go so well...

(Jessica on Jun 27, 2010 5:52 PM) Perfect! I went looking for a recipe that used quinoa and kohlrabi and bingo! Thank you!

Green Goddess Salad Dressing

2009-06-16T10:00:55-05:00

I feel sorry for anchovy-haters. I really do. Those tender little fish are so much a part of my cooking that I can't imagine life without them. God help me if some day (due entirely to my consumption no doubt) they end up on the endangered fish list. I would have to move to the coast and start breeding them. They really are the cook's best friend, enhancing an otherwise slightly dull sauce, giving a whack of flavor to a bite of pizza, adding a more complex salty note to roast meats. If you don't like them, you are missing out. And you should look away now, because I am going to present the most amazing salad dressing in the history of...well, this site anyway. It knocks the socks off my diet Caesar's salad dressing, which was my previous favorite salad dressing. And it's lower in Weight Watchers points too. When I finished making it, I licked the bowl, an action that is usually reserved for gravy making and cookies in this household. Not only is it the perfect salad dressing, but I am thinking that if you drained the yogurt for an hour first in cheesecloth to thicken it, you'd also have an ideal dipping sauce for raw vegetables. I know this because I snitched one of Big Brother's carrot sticks off his dinner plate and dipped it in the sauce. Too thin to stick to the carrot stick well, but oh-so-tasty. Anchovies, yogurt, garlic and basil: the perfect partner the lovely salads that are in season or the new vegetables that are just starting to appear. Even tired old carrots will get a lift!

* This dressing, by the way, bears only the vaguest of resemblance to the commercial dressing of the same name. Both are green. Both have garlic. And both - heaven help me - are beloved by yours truly. Actually, I haven't tasted the commercial version in a few decades so that last one may no longer be true. But when I was a young lass, I used to drown my salads in it and would have happily eaten it straight from the bottle if my mother let me!

Continued reading Green Goddess Salad Dressing...

Comments (3)

Comments on this Entry:

(Juliet Upton on Jun 18, 2009 10:54 AM) WOW Meg, how cool! I have always thought you were a fabulous cook and a great writer!! I've printed out the receipe and definately am going to try it out! Please post some more! Juliet

(Meg in Sussex on Jun 19, 2009 3:35 AM) Hey, Juliet, glad you like it! Although my posting has slowed down to once every week or two, there are about 2000 recipes in the archives. The more recent ones are mostly diet-conscious because I've been on the Weight Watchers program, but the rest are all full fat and indulgent. (Which is why I'm on WW, incidentally...!) Hope you enjoy the dressing - I really did think it was fabulous!

(Big Brother on Jun 28, 2009 11:43 PM) At our work place we've developed a regular Thursday lunch bunch with the other engineers... I was a late-comer to the traditional weekly lunch, so by the time I joined up they were used to ordering in shorthand: "I'll have the G-13, please." The two favored destinations are a horrible Mexican place (cholesterol alert, Dive, Dive!) and a Vietnamese place. It was while seated at the Vietnamese place that Leonard, who is from south-east Asia, revealed what exactly is in the fabled fish sauce: fermented anchovies! Big Brother, who on the advice of his doctor has given up on butter.

The Perfect Rhubarb Parfait

2009-06-03T11:03:11-05:00

A few weeks ago, as I was dropping off Big Brother at his nursery, I noticed one of the mums - who lives on a farm - handing over a big bag of freshly picked rhubarb to one of the assistants. I pricked up my ears and when I heard her say (as I expected she would) that it was over-running her garden and she couldn't get rid of it fast enough - I jumped in with an offer to take some off her hands. I love rhubarb. My grandmother grew it in her back yard and so when I was growing up, I had an endless supply. As a result, I hate paying for it. Why should I buy something that grows like a weed and should be in every garden? (No, I haven't planted any yet: that is the next step in my master plan to exploit my poor friend who has the luck to live on a farm...I'll see if she wants to free up some space in her garden by giving me a plant.)

When I next saw the farmer's wife (who is actually the wife of the head of the local agricultural college if you want to be exact) she asked what I had done with it. And I had done as I always do: stewed it with sugar until it made a glossy red compote and spread it thickly on my morning toast every day for a week. (As an aside, rhubarb stewed with sugar is only half a Weightwatchers point for 75 g, which is plenty for a piece of toast.) She thought this sounded disgusting. Which is funny to me, because my first (and last, as far as I am concerned) experience of an English rhubarb tart truly was disgusting. It managed to be simultaneously slimy and woody - and so sour that I am puckering again just remembering it. There are some aspects of English cooking I will never understand.

I thought of this when I began planning a big barbecue combining a housewarming (which we never held when we moved) and a birthday party (because my 40th was spent nursing a newborn every two hours in a post-birth hormonal haze). I would make a rhubarb dessert that would show this woman exactly how amazing rhubarb could be when stewed with sugar. And I would have shown her too, if she had shown up.

Actually, the dessert was a huge hit. Even the Critic, who, because of experiences with the aforementioned English Rhubarb Tart, has always maintained that he doesn't like rhubarb - loved it. The mousse came out a bit sweeter than I would normally make it, but this complimented the strawberries perfectly. Topped with unsweetened whipped cream, the parfait was creamy and sweet but with a bite of ever so slightly sour strawberry. It really was a perfect early summer dessert. Or pudding, as they say over here.

Continued reading The Perfect Rhubarb Parfait...

Comments (5)

Comments on this Entry:

(Laura [What I Like] on Jun 3, 2009 1:53 PM) Oh delicious! This is the first year I've been buying rhubarb religiously, and I too am a massive compote fan (although I put it on my yogurt rather than toast). I made a rhubarb custard that, if poured into a tart shell would make a nice tart...give it a try and get that terrible taste of rhubarb tarts out of your mouth!

(Jackie @ PhamFatale.com on Jun 4, 2009 12:22 AM) I've always been intimidated. Rhubarb always seemed to me like a difficult ingredients to cook... I don't know why. You did an excellent job, it looks perfect

(Meg in Sussex on Jun 4, 2009 1:52 AM) Laura, it's a funny thing about the English rhubarb tart. The day I was given one by a neighbor, my Facebook status read "Meg now understands why her husband thinks he hates rhubarb" and within minutes I had a response from a Kiwi friend saying "I'll bet you just tasted an English rhubarb tart!" For me that was the proof that it wasn't just a one-off! Jackie, rhubarb compote is the simplest thing in the world to prepare - I've been making it since I was about seven! Just chop it up, add a minimal amount of water (it will release quite a bit of water as it cooks) and sugar to taste and simmer until it's soft, about 20 minutes. The proportions in this recipe are about right, except that I would start with about 2/3 of the sugar and taste and correct with more sugar once it's cooked.

(James on Jun 5, 2009 6:16 PM) Hey this looks good Rhubarb was one of the first things I planted in my garden when I moved into my new house. Not being a fan of sour tasting rhubarb either I add plenty of sugar to my rhubarb crumble tart: http://www.thecotswoldfoodyear.com/2009/05/rhubarb-crumble-tart-with-creme.html

(Pete on Aug 18, 2009 11:58 PM) I am a huge fan of rhubarb and always on the lookout for new rhubarb recipes, especially non-pie recipes. This looks great. I'll have to give it a try!

Remembrance of Things Chocolate

2009-05-22T04:45:36-05:00

Ever Since Proust famously experienced an epiphany of memory over a crumbly madeleine cake, it has been more than a clich� to muse on the power of food memories. We all have countless triggers: the delicate powdery cookies my Austrian grandmother made at Christmas, Great-Aunt Marcie's soft caramels, my mother's gravy. However, it is only once you become an expatriate that the full force of the issue really hits you. I have lived in nearly 18 years in three different countries now and I have to say that in my experience - personal and observed - food is the single biggest trigger for homesickness and the one issue that unites everyone, gourmet cook and food slob alike. In fact, to be honest, it's usually the non cooks who suffer the most, as they are the ones who rely on packaged goods that are not available in their new country. An American in Paris may not be able to find Philadelphia brand cream cheese or soft brown sugar, but he or she can find something close enough to substitute for a delicious cheesecake or chocolate chip cookies. (Kiri cheese and sucre roux, for those who are interested.) However, the poor sod whose Thanksgiving depends on Stouffer's Stove Top Stuffing, will find himself trekking halfway across town to one of the American specialty shops and nearly fainting at the thought of forking over 7 euros for what is essentially a box of flavored bread crumbs. But trek across town he will, because it's Just Not The Same with an unfamiliar stuffing.

When I first arrived in Europe, I was determined to immerse myself in the local culture and turned my back on American food. In Bavarian beer gardens, I ate steckerlfisch and and consumed vast quantities of Edelstof and schnapps. In Paris, I happily explored the 365 cheeses and ate, well, everything in sight: snails, frog legs, steack-frites, moules-frites, cr�pes and pastries. I turned into the ultimate Francophile snob, informing visitors how superior a croque-monsieur was to an American grilled cheese sandwich, how they would never find a baguette in American to compare with a Parisian one. (Though I did loftily admit that a friend of mine had told me of a bakery in the Seattle Pike Place market which had bread that was was made by a Frenchman, in a French stove, with French flour - which was "not bad".) But over time, I found more and more food items sneaking into my suitcase when I returned from visits to the US. Smoked oysters and Triscuits. Concentrated cranberry juice. Baking powder and yeast. Reese's peanut butter cups. And I came to realize that although French food might be vastly superior to American food in general (and I do say might: the Critic would disagree completely) in your heart of hearts, nothing can replace the food you grew up with.

Now that I am the mother of two boys with American and British passports, another truth has become apparent. Not only do we crave the food of our childhood, but we yearn to pass it along to our children. While I am delighted that my boys will have happy memories of Cadbury's chocolate and the fish and chips van that comes to the village every Tuesday, I also want them to remember fresh picked Illinois sweet corn and trick or treating on a cold October evening. In short, like every parent, I want it all for my kids. And while I can't change the fact that "pudding" will forever mean "dessert" in their little half-British minds, I can at least ensure they know and appreciate what an American means by "chocolate pudding" . Chocolate pudding may not come in a little cardboard box here (one of my earliest cooking triumphs was making Jello brand chocolate pudding) but it's almost as easy to make with ingredients in your cupboard. Well, in my cupboard anyway.

Continued reading Remembrance of Things Chocolate...

Comments (7)

Comments on this Entry:

(Dumdad on May 22, 2009 11:29 AM) Great photo! You're absolutely right about food and expats. Like you, I'd like my Anglo-Frog kids to like British comfort foods I relish. Marmite's a good example: My son hates it, my daughter loves it. They both love 99s though.

(Meg in Sussex on May 22, 2009 1:19 PM) Thanks! Dumdad, you probably remember as well as I do the waves of despair that went through the British expat community in Paris when Marks & Spenser's closed down its foreign stores. Let me know if your stock of Marmite runs low and I'll pop some in the mail!

(Meg's MOM on May 25, 2009 11:06 PM) Oh, Brandon surely is feeding himself! Love it!

(web design studio on May 26, 2009 9:31 AM) after seeing this im gonna grab a cup fup of pudding from the fridge before i head off to work in an hour. i really shouldnt and say no, but chocolate is such a weakness. i should have never had made it! lol

(Sandra@chicago web site design on Apr 13, 2010 1:36 AM) This is a great and easy recipe. Yum...I like pudding and whats more you gonna need than make it a chocolate pudding. Great.

(Andrea on Sep 29, 2010 6:03 AM) Hi Meg. Do you think I could sub Lindt dessert chocolate for the baker's chocolate and just reduce the sugar?

(Roma on Nov 26, 2011 6:02 AM) Now after getting a note of some great stuff for dinner, I was looking for a dessert and this was awesome. I loved it, kids loved it and we all loved it.