lotsa gaHHHlic.

It is officially cold season!  And party season.  Alas, one must stay healthy and strong to be able to rock on.  With the overflowing abundance of garlic left over from playing defence against the Halloween vampires, I decided to make hostess gifts that will keep my gracious hosts’ immune systems robust and breath pungent.  Garlic is also associated with helping to reduce hypertension, which is convenient in those moments when guests are making rings on the coffee table with their glasses and grinding crumbs into the sofa.

Roasted garlic paste is super easy to make, and a very convenient item to have stocked in the fridge for those times when you reach for the bottom of the garlic bowl and only find some shrivelled pieces of papery shrapnel.  Spooned into a pretty jar and tied with a bow, they can be presented to friends with a beatific smile and the approval of your naturopath!

Roasted Garlic Paste

Preheat your oven to 400 F.  Arrange the garlic in one layer in a baking dish.  You can make as much as you like; I think you might as well make more, because roasting one head of garlic will stink up the house as much as a dozen.  I managed to squeeze in fourteen heads of garlic in my dish, which made about 2 cups of paste.  Sprinkle a bit of olive oil over top, and pop it all into the oven for 30-40 minutes.

Pre-roasted:unroasted garlic

Post-roasted:roasted garlic

The garlic is done roasting when you give it a gentle poke with your finger and it feels soft.  Let the garlic cool at room temperature.  Meanwhile, sterilize a couple of Mason jars by pouring boiling water into them and letting them sit for 5-10 minutes.  You can put the lids into a bowl and pour boiling water over them as well.  This is NOT a fail safe way to sterilize anything, but it does help reduce the microbial count a little so the garlic paste will keep longer in the fridge.  After letting the water sit in the jars, pour the water out and just let air dry to avoid recontamination.

When the garlic is cool enough to handle, pop the cloves of garlic out of its paper into a bowl or right into your blender.  Add a generous splash of olive oil, and blendblendblend into a paste.  Spoon the paste into your sterilized jars, and add some more oil on top to cover the paste.  This layer of oil will also help control microbial growth by acting as a barrier to air.  Label and date, then refrigerate!

Ta DA! garlic paste

pomegranate time.

pomegranate timeThis is the time of year that pomegranates are in stores in our part of the world, and I am so happy!  I love dissecting the fruit to reveal its ruby jewels, even when the process inevitably covers everything with a spray of red juice.  The seeds are scattered haphazardly, to punctuate my food with exclamation marks.  Here, their playful, juicy astringency balance the richness of butter spread on an austere Nordic rye cracker.

I’m glad that they are only around for a few weeks every year; their scarcity makes them ever more precious.

self-actualization and bread.

We live in an old, creaky apartment with cracks that crawl up the walls, lumpy hardwood floors, and crooked charm.  The harbinger of winter is the sound of the radiators coming on, first with slow grumbling and hisses, building up to rattling like a tin kettle boiling over.  Occasionally it sounds like a troll is inside the radiator hammering his axe against the metal.

With radiators the heat is either nil, or pumping full blast.  Blazing heat is wonderful when it is the lonely wolf days of winter, but right now when we are dancing through the last days of fall, a radiator turned on means sweating in shorts on the couch.  So instead I keep them off, and heat our apartment with some baking action in the oven.  Recently I’ve been hooked on baking bread – or rehooked, to be accurate.  One of my first forays into baking was making a white loaf out of a Canadian Living cookbook – crinkled photocopies of which I still have, because at the time I was still so young that I would have had to plea with my parents to buy the book, so instead I just borrowed it from the library.

I have found over the years that bread dough is incredibly sensitive to your emotional and mental state, and will behave like a sullen toddler if you are irritable and rushed, refusing to budge in its bowl and rise into its full airy potential.  However, if you are kind, patient and benevolent, it will rise perfectly, and grow into a beautiful loaf that you are deeply proud of helping to shape.  I have also come to realize that hands-off parenting seems to work best with bread dough – a few gentle turns, and then leave it be.  Too much pressure and stress on dough (and similarly a child) to self-actualize, and all your efforts will simply backfire, resulting in unrealized development in both cases.  Or at least, limited growth in the particular areas desired by the parent.  In the bread’s case, it becomes a “flatbread.”  For the person, God only knows.

Frankly speaking, I think flatbreads are wonderful things.  Left plain, they are excellent supporting characters to stews and soups.  Alternately, all that surface area invites embellishment with toppings (herbs, cheese, sun dried tomatoes…).  Most importantly, it is such a celebratory moment to present to your loved ones a wide, beaming spread of bread.

So you, flatbread or not – you have a place at my table.

——-

This focaccia is inspired by the one in David Tanis’ Heart of the Artichoke and Other Kitchen Journeys.  I replaced his olive oil with sunflower oil for frugality’s sake, and didn’t bother caramelizing the red onions ahead of time, instead simply slicing them paper thin to scatter on top.  Patience and forethought are required, as an overnight rise is needed for this dough.

Red Onion and Red Grape Focaccia

makes 1-11×17″ flatbread

1/2 cup lukewarm water
1 tbsp active dry yeast
3 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 cup lukewarm water
3 cups minus 3 tbsp all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sunflower oil
cornmeal

Mix the first three ingredients together in a large bowl.  Let it sit for about 5 minutes, until it gets a little bubbly.  (In my general experience, getting my yeast to wake up this early in the process is as futile as trying to wake up a grandpa from his armchair.  Regardless, I forge on, and make do with a longer rise time.)  Add the remaining ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon.  Knead it in the bowl lightly.  With one hand, tilt the dough to one side of the bowl and add a touch more oil to the bottom of the bowl.  Use your non-dough hand to swoosh the oil around to coat the insides of the bowl.  Turn the dough over in the oil to coat, and cover with plastic wrap.  Let it rise overnight.  I like to let my dough sit at room temperature, and put it in the fridge just before I go to bed.  The next day, take it out of the fridge and let it warm up to room temperature for at least one hour.  Scatter a good layer of cornmeal on your baking sheet, and gently stretch the dough out on it.  Scatter thin rings of red onion and halved red grapes over.  Add an extra sprinkle of coarse salt.  Bake in a preheated 400 F oven, for 25-30 minutes, until golden.  Let it cool before slicing or breaking apart with your hands.

We ate it with homemade labneh, pickled beets, and a simple dip of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

red onion grape focaccia

winter is coming.

As the temperature drops, all I want to do is cook things on low and slow.  Soups, stews, roasts…things that take a few hours to cook, that need to be eaten in bowls while wearing fuzzy slippers and sweaters.

A few years ago I discovered a Persian restaurant in Toronto called Pomegranate.  For my first dinner there, I enjoyed chunks of lamb in a split yellow pea stew, beside basmati rice studded with dried fruit and nuts.  I had never known the joy of combining meat with dried fruit, and it was completely magical!  Since then I’ve always wanted to recreate the deep, sweet and savoury flavours of the meals I enjoyed there – but with all perfect memories, there is also the fear of marring the past with present-day re-enactments.  Finally however, this past week I mustered up the courage to strive forth and commemorate a food combination that has always been in the back of mind, slowly simmering.

This particular recipe is inspired by one from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem cookbook.  The original version called for quail (which I’ve never seen available in the prairies) so I settled for some chicken pieces.  The golden raisins replaced apricots and currants – I think any sweet dried fruit would be perfect.

Braised Chicken with Golden Raisins and Tamarind
makes eight servings

5 thighs and 5 drumsticks, bone-on, skin-on
4-5 dried chiles
1-1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1-1/4 cup water
juice of 1/2 an orange
juice of 1 lemon
3/4 cups golden raisins
3 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp tamarind paste
3 twigs of thyme
salt
handful of parsley

Blend the chiles, cumin, fennel and salt in a Magic Bullet or some other fast-moving blade (or mortar and pestle!) into a powder.  It’s ok if there are some chunks.  Rub the spice mix over the thighs and drumsticks with the sunflower oil, and let it marinate for at least 2 hours.

When you are ready to cook, heat a touch of sunflower oil in a saute pan to medium-high heat.  Brown the thighs and drumsticks, about 4 minutes per side.  Remove the bird meat from the pan, and pour out most of the oil until just a thin coat remains.  Add the water, orange and lemon juices, raisins, sugar, tamarind paste and thyme.  Add the chicken back in.  The liquid should come about 3/4 up the sides of the meat.  Cover, and let it simmer for about 25 minutes, turning the chicken over halfway through.  If you want the sauce thicker, remove the chicken and boil for a little longer.  Garnish with parsley and an extra sprinkle of salt.

We ate it with plain basmati rice to help soak up the deliciously sweet and tangy sauce.  A lovely meal it was: warm and satisfying without leaving a sense of lethargy.  The past is nice, but the present is even better.

braised chicken with raisins and tamarind