Discovering Czechoslovakian food

Nutmeg and Parsley. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought to put together the two. But I am now trying out recipes from the Eastern European part of the world, a part that I have not spent too much time testing out. Friday was one of those busy crazy days. I was working in the morning, then went to hang out with a friend and then had to go grocery shopping since I was on supper duty. I was having a friend over for supper which adds a bit of time pressure as I like to have everything ready for when guests come as it is hard to fully pay attention to people when I have a recipe to follow. To top it off, dinner HAD to be ready by the time my friend showed because we were heading off to pick up tickets for a steve bell concert (I mentioned Steve in my last post, and there are never too many plugs for good music, so I give another - Steve Bell is an awesome singer/songwriter that has a real heart for God).

Anyways, I discovered a soup in my European cookbook that looked fairly simple and one that I could manage with the time pressures. And I was excited that it was from Czechoslovakia - a country I haven't delved into in terms of food. So I cooked a cauliflower soup. A relatively plain looking soup as it just had cauliflower and then heavy cream in it.

Here is the final product with nutmeg and parsley. the nutmeg adds a wonderful flavour that I can't quite describe. Yum!

Discovering Swiss Chard

As a house, we have been receiving what is called the "Good food box" which is really neat. It is all organic, and either locally grown or fairly traded. (To read more about fairly traded stuff, check out my friend's blog Just Consumers?). Anyways, each week we get a bunch of (usually) in season fruits and vegetables and we have to find our way to consume the abundance of amazing foods that we are given. Organic food goes bad a whole lot faster. It has made me think and question what I have been eating all these years. We are what we eat! I'm becoming more aware of the injustices and just wrong practices that society has become so accustomed to.. I keep thinking of the Steve Bell line in one of his songs: With much wisdom, comes much sorrow. (A little plug for Steve Bell - if you don't know who he is, check him out. He is a Christian singer/song writer that has been extremely influential in my life and I tend to quote him a lot on my blog of reflections).

So this is swiss chard. It turned the water a beautiful bright redish-pink colour. It is like spinach, and just with spinach and kale you shouldn't cook it for longer than it needs or else it will turn bitter.

This is the final product - a swiss chard back. It is filled with egg, milk, bread cubes and tons of cheese :) Yummy - my housemates said this one was a keeper.

Pakistani food

 I tried a new region's food last week - Pakistan. The flavours were similar perhaps to North India, yet very distinct. I made rajma which was a red kidney beans in sauce dish. This was quite good and I would make this again. I also made nauratan pullao, a mixed vegetable pilaff (rice) dish with cumin, cardamom pods, bay leaves, cinnamon, pepper corns and chili powder. This latter dish was interesting, but I'm not quite sure I'd make it again. One thing interesting though was that you sauteed the vegetables in the spices first, then add the rice and water to the pot, allowing the rice to cook IN the spices. It had a spicy kick to it, but also a very sweet flavour.

Red Kidney Beans with sauce

Mixed Vegetable Pilaff

The highlight of this cooking experience for me was the flat bread! I had never baked a flat bread before. I couldn't find a genuine Pakistani bread recipe so I made an Indian Roti. It has saffron (which came straight from Morocco thanks to a good friend!) and cilantro in it. And then you dry fry it. It was delicious

Indian Roti

Moroccan Dinner

A few weeks ago, I welcomed my Aunt and Uncle for dinner at Camino House. It was a chance for me to cook for them (they have done so much for me so it was such a blessing to be in a place where I could do something for them!). I decided to introduce them and my housemates to the wonders of Moroccan food.

Moroccan food holds a special place in my life. Awhile back I had "loved and lost" and was trying to mourn the loss of a dream that I had held for awhile that the man I loved was not the man for me. One wise woman in my life suggested that since I enjoy cooking so much, I should pick a nationality and learn how to cook their foods during this time. That way I turn something difficult into something beautiful. Plus the man I do marry would be fortunate enough to have a wife who likes to cook a different culture's cuisine.

Some of the dishes I made were success dishes from a dinner party I once held to celebrate my "exodus" in life - a day in which I was freed from a bad situation and my life set course on a new path. I made a tagine (which means one pot) with kefta (meatballs filled with flavours) and a wonderful sauce. This has been a hit in the past and for the meat eaters it was a hit again.

Kefta with lemon tagine

Below are two salads. The first one, slada gharaa bil tofah, a roasted zucchini and apple salad is one of my favourite side dishes in the Moroccan cookbook that I own. You roast the apples alongside the zucchini in the oven, creating a really unique flavour. The second salad, slada jazar is a carrot and cumin salad with orange flower water. When I first started cooking Moroccan food I had to hunt high and low for orange flower water but it is worth it!

Zucchini, Apple and Orange Salad

Carrot and Cumin Salad

This next side dish surprised me - I used a whole bunch of Spinach and look how very little it made! I couldn't believe how much spinach shrinks when boiled. This dish is called saute d'epinards, sauteed spinach with orange and almonds.

Sauteed Spinach with orange and almonds

 One of the things I love about international cooking is that I get to discover new foods. In this cooking adventure, I discovered fava beans - these beans are huge! Maybe an inch or more in length! This made a lovely garlicky fava bean dip called bissara.

Garlicky fava bean dip

 I live with two vegetarians and six carnivores (two of the carnivores are twin 18month olds). So I needed to come up with a vegetarian dish. Kind of a challenge with a cookbook that has mostly meat and fish dishes! Alas, I found berber adas which is berber lentils with cilantro. My book says that this is a simple village dish I suppose from the village of berber?

berber lentils with cilantro

This endeth a good meal :)

Fall is here!

So it's been a little while since I've posted. I should share a little background of what has kept me busy and away from the computer (yet more immersed in the kitchen!). At the end of August (almost a month ago!), I moved to an intentional monastic community. I am living with five other adults, two 18mth old twins and my beloved cat Shalom. I have been involved in mission projects in the area including cooking for homeless and street involved people, hymn sing at a nursing home and showing hospitality. Each member of the house has a selected evening when they prepare dinner for the house. My day is Friday, a day that I have set aside as a Sabbath - of rest, reflection and re-creation. Since cooking is my favourite thing to do, it is a joy to set aside a good chunk of the day to meal prep.

I have to say that I was pretty excited the other day to realize that fall is here. I love fall with all it's colours, the cool breeze, and all the wonderful flavours of fall stews and soups and the harvest. I almost literally jumped for joy in the realization that I can use a new section of my cookbook Simply in Season - a book that sections recipes according to the seasonal fruits and vegetables (an awesome cookbook!). I had so much fun picking out recipes for the house.

Yesterday, I made a couple of salads and a kale potato soup (pictured below). The sweet potato salad had a tangy homemade honey mustard dressing while the autumn green salad with pears had a dijon dressing. The kale soup was so flavourful. I steamed it for just a few minutes making it soft, but not too much that it becomes bitter. The soup had only chicken stock and salt to flavour it, but the natural flavours were something else!

Sweet potato salad

Kale and Potato Soup

I also made a granola using up some of the dried fruits and grains in the house. I love homemade granola and it is the perfect topping for yoghurt!

Granola with raisins, cranberries, currants and pumpkin seeds

Last but not least, I made a caraway rye bread. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture so you will have to take my word that it both looked and tasted delicious. I could barely wait for it to cool off from the baking (do you know how hard it is to subject yourself to the smell of baking bread and then have to let it cool? patience has never been my virtue).

Beating the heat with Caribbean food

I have neglected this blog lately, but surely have not neglected cooking! I have been making Caribbean food and sharing it with friends. Tonight I made a wonderful chili with a Caribbean twist. I am used to making the Mexican version and it is probably my favourite food. Tonight's dish, however, had thyme, soy sauce, cinnamon and nutmeg in it. But it was fantastically wonderful, making it my favourite dish so far. I think I say that about every dish I make ;-) I just love trying new foods from around the world with new flavours. Thanks to Caribbean recipes, I am discovering thyme and what a wonderful herb it is.

Caribbean Chili

I also recently made a very spicy Mexican dish. It was pork with pineapple and TWO jalepeno peppers :-) I felt like my mouth was on fire, but it was definitely worth it!

Pork and Pineapple

Here are a few more pictures of the Caribbean food that I have been making lately.

Tomato and Okra Salad

Green Bean Salad

Grapefruit and Avocado Salad

Pineapple and Mint Drink

Citrus Quinoa Salad (except I accidently made couscous instead of quinoa)

Around the World in 4 Days

My kitchen has taken an adventure around the world the past few days. It started on Friday with a trip to Malaysia to discover what happens when one puts a bunch of seemingly random ingredients together in a salad. I steamed potatoes and carrots, boiled cabbage, bean sprouts and cucumbers, hard-boiled eggs, stir-fried tofu, chopped up spring onions and mixed together with a peanut sauce. And voila - Gado-Gado, a Malaysian salad. Very yummy! The cabbage added a nice colour to the salad. Actually, because of all the ingredients, the salad was very diverse in colour and flavour.

The Boiled ingredients

The salad before the peanut sauce was added.

Then tonight we headed to Senegal in Africa for a hearty vegetarian stew. This stew had potatoes, carrots, turnip, squash, cabbage, onions, leafy greens, tomato paste and peanut butter. Delicious! I am still full from this wonderful stew.

Senegalian Vegetarian Stew

Tofu Steak

Chef de Cuisine is back in the kitchen and eager to try new recipes, starting with a tofu cookbook on her shelf. Today she made a tofu 'steak' - tofu coated with a mixture of flour, paprika, salt, pepper and thyme and cooked. Then onions and green and red peppers sauteed, can of diced tomatoes added with a bit of broth and simmered for about fifteen minutes. Served with quinoa, this dinner was filled with extra protein without the extra fat.

Shake and bake 'meat'

Tofu Steak Bites

Simmering Goodness!

The Final Product

The Story Behind the Cakes

I've shared on here the story behind my cooking adventures, but neglected to tell the story behind the cake decorating adventures.

My Bible study group meets on a weekly basis and we take turns doing snacks. There is often a tad of competition....


... Fancy Flavoured Cupcakes


... Coconut Carrot Raisin Bread



... Fruit Shoe "Cake"

And then one day, Chef de Cuisine decided that she would prepare a special cake for a dear friend. This is a chocolate zucchini cake (probably the best cake one could ever taste in my not so humble opinion!). Having never decorated a cake before, this one was quite the challenge. Yet the candy markings gave way to inspiration to start decorating cakes - an inspiration that has only grown with time!

The Earthbound Cook

I bought myself a Christmas present - "The Earthbound Cook". Yes, a cookbook. But honestly, I've been in a bit of a rut, haven't felt like cooking and my appetite is not great. I'm just pretty uninspired by food lately! So I decided that a little inspiration wouldn't hurt. Plus today is the Staff/Resident Christmas Reception and I will get a nice little gift that will more than cover the cost of the book. And I also have a whole shelf to fill on my cookbook shelf now that I moved all the books to a new one! (obsessed? perhaps).


Anyways, I was reading about the benefits of organic farming and a dream in me was renewed. I've always wanted to live on an animal and vegetable farm. When I was 16 or 17, I began volunteering at a horse breeding farm to gain some large animal experience. I spent a year mucking out stalls, delivering bails of hail, and learning about an amazing animal. I quickly found out that i was a city gal - I got shocked a few too many times by the wire on the fence. My supervisor smiled near the end of my time there and said that I had come a long way - that they weren't sure if it would work out with me!

That was when I first got the idea that I want to have a home on a big property and animals and be able to open it up to others in need. Now the idea has and is continuing to change with maturity. But I remember being struck by how therapeutic working with animals was - even though I did not have the language of "therapy" to stick with my experience. Cooking is also a means of "therapy" for me.

Today on my way to work, I couldn't help to be inspired by the gorgeous pictures of fruits and vegetables growing in the backyard of the author's home! Wouldn't it be wonderful to fill the table with foods that don't contain pesticides and that haven't sat in the back of truck for days or weeks? I even had a brief moment today when I thought that having organic meat was a good idea - I was shocked by my somewhat ok-ness with sacrificing Buffy the cow to feed the family (hmmm..... let me rephrase. My husband can do the deed while I am out somewhere! I shall add that to my description of husband requirements: willing to bring me coffee in the morning, a strong Christian, able to proofread, able to read in between the lines, and be willing to do the much dreaded deed should we one day live on a farm).

One of the draws to organic eating is a change of lifestyle habits. I was reading about ways in which energy, resources and time are wasted and began reflecting on the number of times I have thrown out good food simply because I didn't know tips that would help preserve food longer (did you know that you should wash lettuce when you get it, put it through a salad spinner, then in a bag with a paper towel, store in the coldest part of the fridge [preferably a crisper] and away from apples? Supposedly lettuce will stay firm for a week!)


So expect updates on what it is like to become an earthbound cook and to allow this lifestyle to permeate every aspect of my life!

Kale Salad - Original Recipe

Kale Salad

I introduced Kale Salad to a group of youth and their families this past Friday. For many it was the first time they have ever seen, let alone tasted, this glorious vegetable. For others, it was the first time they had had Kale raw. I had forgotten that this was a potluck dinner, and so I had forgotten to bring anything from my kitchen. So this is an original recipe.

In keeping with the Christmas theme, I used: Red apples, Red onions, Red peppers and Kale.

The dressing was as follows:
1/2 cup of fresh lemon juice
1/2 of vegetable oil (I think olive oil would have been much better)
1-2 tbsp of Mustard
1tsp cayenne pepper

Toss with salad..... mmmmmm.
This salad seemed to win over even those who are not salad people!

A Pokeman Christmas

As an outreach event, I held a Christmas cookie decorating event with seniors, students and members of the local church. It was a wonderful evening of hearing stories of Christmas traditions, and learning of one person who used to decorate wedding and birthday cakes. I love having baking and cooking nights as it allows each other to learn things that one might not learn over a cup of coffee. I also really enjoy holding intergenerational events as I think the stories and experiences shared are beneficial to both!

Apparently Christmas can't be Christmas without a pokeball ornament! K. came up with this design.

Pokeball

Others made various creative Christmas ornaments with the sprinkles I had provided. I was amazed at the creativity!

Santa Claus

 

Youth Group Night - Japanese Food!

On your mark. Get set. Go! 15 youth divided into pairs of 2 or 3 with a recipe or two in a kitchen that has few supplies. I told the youth group that I was two too tired to cook, so they were going to cook for me. Improvisation is the key word of the night - a cup for a bowl, a glass for a rolling pin. Several of the youth had not cooked before and many of these foods were considered "exotic". My name was called throughout the evening and food preparation techniques were given. Everyone had a choice - they could cook or be on sole cleanup duty. Everyone made the wise choice to cook.

It took a long time to prepare - much longer than I had anticipated. So between the long wait and the eagerness to try the dishes that we prepared, we were more than ready to sit down together. In the spirit of the Japanese who thank the earth for the food, we thanked God for the food, the friendship and the time that we had together to learn new things.

Then - for the first time in a few hours - there was complete silence followed by a chorus of "mmmmm"s.

Here are pictures from the evening's menu:

Spicy Edamames

Beef and Pepper DIsh

This salad was prepared by one young man who adamently proclaimed that he could not cook. So I gave him the salad that only required slicing tofu, tomatoes and avocadoes. I learned afterwards that I had successfully given him a dish to prepare with every ingredient he did not like! Poor guy didn't get to enjoy the fruits of his labour!




Tofu Salad



Daikon Salad



Bean Dish



Avocado Dip



Teryaki Chicken

Well done youth for a delicious meal.

The Joy of Bread Baking

Orange Cinnamon Swirl Bread

There is something really special and therapeutic and almost prayerful about baking bread. There is a process of creating, of waiting, of anticipating, and rejoicing when a loaf is made. Yesterday, my friend J. and I set out to bake bread. She worked on an orange cinnamon swirl recipe that comes from The Bread Bible: 300 Favorite Recipes. This sweet bread had the hint and smell of orange that was faint, yet made this bread distinct.

Orange Cinnamon Swirl Bread (Side View)

I worked on a yeast pizza crust from the Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition - 2006, and added my own flair to it with a few herbs.

Basic Pizza Dough (Improvised version with herbs)

Together we chatted and shared about our life stories, our journeys and what we are struggling with as we kneaded and prepared bread that we would share. As we waited for it to rise, the stories continued.

There is something special about creating food with a friend. The giving, the receiving, the making, the sharing, the enjoying. The finished bread and finished pizza was a prize for our hard labour as well as a joy added to our friendship, making yesterday a special day.

Best tasting pizza ever!

I love the simplicity of baking bread. I used to think that bread was complicated and yeast was finicky. But there is something to making one of the basic foods in life from scratch and something wholesome about not eating one of the main staples from a store.

Bread making, as I referred to in a different post, has a special meaning to me now. As I knead the bread, I remember my grandma. I remember her influence. I remember the joy that she brought into my life. I remember her praying with my grandpa each morning for all the people in their life. I remember the stories she told me of growing up and here adventures in the war. The kneading is healing to the pain and sorrow of losing someone I love dearly, but also extends beyond to the future of knowing that her legacy lives on. Her life was a blessing while she was here on earth. But will also continue to be a blessing. Today I was reminded of this as I enjoyed a piece of the orange cinnamon bread and the fruits of yesterday.

Forming the Dough