cool morning sun
gardening, curry, and speculoos determination
Last Friday, we invited my dad over— due to the previous covid wave we hadn’t seen him since my birthday in early December, so we laughingly exchanged gift bags with bottles of wine inside, wishing each other a merry Christmas. He kindly treated us to Korean takeout from Maru, which Jeff and I had eaten at once before, and ordered from a couple of times during the pandemic.
The bibimbap and other rice dishes that are normally served in a hot stone bowl come disassembled when you get takeout, so the secret to enjoying them at home is to have one person heat up a big cast iron frying pan while another person goes to pick up the food. Then you can quickly stir everything together in the pan to get nice crispy bits of rice and caramelized sauce, like you would at the restaurant. We also ordered the mushroom japchae which was delicious, and I love their trifecta of pickles (lotus root, daikon, and spicy daikon) and had a little of them with everything.
My sister has been staying with us while she looks for a new place to live, and although it’s an adjustment having another person in our space again, it’s also been nice to have someone else around to talk to and share things with. Jeff isn’t a coffee person and Maddie is, and I do really enjoy having someone who shares that ritual in the mornings, even if we don’t necessarily drink coffee together every day or anything. Something Maddie and Jeff have in common is their sweet tooth, and she brought us a little gift of some truffles from Coconama, a chocolate maker just a few blocks away that I have somehow never been to. They have such interesting flavours and quite a few dairy-free options, too.
While the sun was out last Saturday, Jeff and I started the onerous task of preparing the garden for spring planting. Jeff added compost to the largest planter bin and put in some seed potatoes (Warba, a delicious local heirloom variety), and I uprooted and cleared out anything we’d neglected to deal with in the fall that was now gone to seed, withered, or rotting. I got a surprising number of baby kale leaves off some bolted kales before I pulled them up, and found a couple potentially edible carrots, but unfortunately some of the herbs that have come back year after year look like they might have finally been killed off by the cold snap we had in December. I’m still optimistic about the garden, though— if the sage and lavender don’t make it, I can always plant more.
Anyway, the chives are about the only edible thing out there currently living, and they’re coming in nicely. I had huge bunches of dill and parsley in the fridge, so I used them along with some of the chives to make a delicious vegan tahini ranch dressing. I followed this Bon Appetit recipe, adding about a cup of mixed herbs. It’s similar to this recipe, which I’ve also tried, but a little thinner and less heavy on the tahini, with added umami from the miso. It still doesn’t taste exactly like a non-vegan ranch or anything, but it somehow satisfies the ranch craving. It definitely tastes best after a day in the fridge. I’ve been dipping pizza crusts and veggies in it, and I also used it as the sauce for a satisfying early spring rice bowl with steamed kale, shredded beets & carrots, cucumber, and Gardein nuggets.
I’ve been making pizza about once a week using my sourdough starter; I make basically the same pizzas each time so I haven’t written about them. But I finally ran out of sauce from my freezer, and had to purée a can of tomatoes to use as a base. With the remainder, I made one of my favourite pandemic pantry meals: Tejal Rao’s baked rajma, a delicious and easy tomato-based curry with red kidney beans and a little something creamy on top. I like heavy cream best but it’s not something I usually keep around, and mozza (as the recipe suggests), full-fat coconut milk, or cashew cream are still really good. I tried Miyoko’s fresh-style vegan mozza this time and it was great; I loved how the top of the cheese browned while the inside was melty and creamy.
This dish is assembled quickly on the stove and finished with 30-40 minutes in the oven to reduce the sauce, and I used that time to make saag paneer. I’d bought paneer on a whim at the grocery store because I don’t see it too often (or maybe I’m just not looking for it), and was excited to use it in Priya Krishna’s recipe from the book Indian-ish. The recipe actually uses feta, which is more easily found for most, and I’ve made it both ways and love it just the same. I find I like a little extra salt and lime in the paneer version, since the feta makes it more briny. Either one of these dishes could be a complete meal with some rice or naan, but having both on the same plate feels like a luxurious feast.
In one of Folu Akinkuotu’s recent Unsnackable newsletters, she shared a recipe for something that, like many of her baked goods, sounded like a truly inspired combo: brown butter and black cocoa marbled banana bread with cookie butter streusel topping. I had almost every ingredient to make it at the time I read it, except for the cookie butter— a creamy, speculoos-infused magic you can spread on toast or bake with (or eat with a spoon). The recipe only used a couple of tablespoons, and I’m sure I could have just made a regular streusel and still ended up with something delicious, but I’d made up my mind.
Cookie butter is seemingly much more readily available in the US than it is here. I have yet to see it in a single store since the closure of Pirate Joe’s, though apparently President’s Choice does make one. For some reason I decided making my own would be easier than going out to the accursed Superstore on Dollarton Highway to see if they had any (as someone who also semi-regularly undertakes elaborate culinary projects of questionable necessity, I’m sure Folu approves). Not wanting to go quite so far as to make the cookies from scratch, I ground some store-bought ones into crumbs to achieve a 250mL jar of cookie butter using this Serious Eats recipe. My worry was that since it’s made from cookie crumbs, the butter would be grainy, but the recipe assures you that the cooking step dissolves the sugar. This happened much sooner than I expected, and afterwards it came together in a snap in the mini food processor, and then I could move onto the banana bread.
The base recipe isn’t too different from most banana breads, you just have to split the batter in order to create the beautiful marbled effect. I generally go out of my way to avoid having to wash one extra dish, so you know this was worth it. The loaf comes out impressively tall, and as expected the flavour combo of the chocolate, banana, and speculoos was outrageously good and I loved the crisp contrast of the topping. I’m also thankful for how many bananas this used— more than the 3 called for by most recipes— because I now have a slightly less unreasonable number of them staring at me every time I open the freezer.
We ate a lot of leftovers this week because I made so much curry, and Jeff brought home extras from a work meeting that was catered with way too many build-your-own vegan tacos. I also made a pretty good fried rice using the remainders of the sauces that were used in the bibimbap, a Japanese eggplant, and some crispy tofu. The eggplant is maybe not a usual fried rice ingredient, but searing thick slices of it at a high heat until they were browned outside and just soft inside made for such a satisfying texture, and it blended well with the rice and sauce. I threw some leftover quick pickles on top to balance the sauce, and chili crisp because I can’t get enough.
Media:
I liked this short but thorough piece by Alicia Kennedy on vegan cheese and how it has become more widely available and delicious than ever. Local artisan Blue Heron gets a mention! It also discusses some of the sustainability concerns around ingredients used to make vegan cheese— plant-based foods are, on the whole, more sustainable than their dairy or meat counterparts, but there are still things to be aware of.
This by Rax Will was also appreciated: considering how restaurant service could make efforts to become more gender-inclusive. It really highlights how terms and customs that were once considered merely polite can feel so charged— even I as a cis person don’t really like to be greeted as part of a group with “Good evening, ladies!” There is also work to be done to make spaces more inclusive for staff; one could argue that most restaurants would want to be viewed as inclusive by guests and reviewers, but are they actually making gender-diverse staff feel safe? As one restaurateur puts it: “If you can’t hire a gender-nonconforming person, you can’t feed a gender-nonconforming person.”
Thanks for reading— if you enjoyed this newsletter, please smash that like button below, or share it with someone new! I like providing this to you for free, but it does still involve time and effort, so donations I can use towards cookbooks or future treats are much appreciated. Now, please enjoy two of my favourite shrimp fried rice jokes: here and here.