gin and blossoms
spring feelings, no-occasion party cake, and the best fried tofu
Last weekend, a coworker from my pre-pandemic job and I finally got together like we’d been meaning to since summer of 2020. I convinced him of the abundant beer options on the North Shore, and he joined me out here a surprisingly warm and sunny Friday evening. We sat with our jackets off on the patio at La Cerveceria Astilleros talking about music and food and life, and as we walked to another brewery, he ran into an acquaintance of his working at the host station outside Copper Penny, and we were convinced to stay there for a drink instead. (Is it ok to break the “liquor before beer” rule if you only have one of each?)
Copper Penny is a distillery that opened quite recently; Jeff had pre-ordered their first bottling of gin around Christmastime and it’s lovely. They’re still making just gin and one type of liqueur, but it’s amazing the variety their cocktail list has. Upon arrival, you’re given a taster of the gin to try while you look at the menu. We both chose drinks not normally made with gin— I got a paloma and he got a sour— and really enjoyed them, and the bar’s Art Deco style nods to an old-school speakeasy without feeling too corny. We had to put our jackets back on once the sun started to go down, but it is my god-given right as a Canadian to enjoy a patio beverage when it’s 10°C outside!
Also over the weekend, Jeff and I went to the Orpheum to see the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, a show I bought tickets for in 2019 that was originally scheduled for April 2020, rescheduled for January 2021, and re-rescheduled for April of this year. So even though I haven’t been inside basically anywhere since the mask and vaccine mandates ended, I felt almost obligated to attend. We dressed up a little and kept our masks on, and although there were more masked attendees than I expected, I estimate it was still not more than half. But the music was excellent, and the VSO was also the last live music I saw in early March 2020, so it felt appropriate for my first experience of it to be back in that beautiful venue. Afterwards, we stopped in at Virtuous Pie and were just able to get some vegan ice cream before they closed. We ate it on a bench across from the Keefer Bar, listening to the buzz of the people inside while trying to keep our hands warm. But it’s never too cold for ice cream.
We went back to the farmers’ market on Sunday— the last one before the summer markets begin again in May— and got a few nice things for the week. I couldn’t resist another big box of mixed mushrooms and some beautiful striped eggplants, and we picked up a very tall living basil. I clipped the top half off and put the rooted end into a planter outside, then used the leaves from the clipping to make pesto along with the remaining green garlic and (blanched) nettles from last week. Making pesto lets you use up whatever greens or nuts you have around, and then you can throw it in the freezer and thank your past self a month later when you need to make a quick pasta or add it to some mayo for a sandwich. Some very resourceful people might freeze it in ice trays and then pop the cubes into a plastic bag for easy storage and retrieval, but I tend to just heat up a spoon in boiling water and dig out what I need from a 1- or 2-cup container.
Mondays after I get home from work is usually when I figure out (sometimes specifically, sometimes loosely) what to cook for the rest of the week, so on those days I generally opt to make something easy that uses up any remaining traces of things still in the fridge from the weekend. Then if I get sidetracked looking at recipes and find myself rummaging through the cupboards wondering if I still have saffron somewhere, I haven’t delayed dinner to an unreasonably late hour.
This week, there was still some of the remoulade and the roasted fennel white bean dip left. I seared a fresh batch of maitakes and two of the little eggplants— halved and scored and heavily olive oiled— to eat with the remoulade, and sliced some sourdough to eat with the dip. It created a tapas-style meal that looked a lot more lovely than two forms of leftovers and an overbaked loaf of bread might imply, and only took me about 20 minutes to put together.
I think I have talked before about the giant bottle of sweet chili sauce haunting me from the door of my fridge, which we bought at Costco during a time when we used it a lot, and then apparently promptly stopped using. It’s weird that we don’t really seem to make use of it often because both Jeff and I actually love sweet chili sauce. I decided to shallow fry some tofu (I like firm rather than extra-firm) and toss it in the sauce, an homage to the kind of trashy but delicious sweet chili chicken bites or “boneless wings” at certain pubs.
The wok is my preferred vessel for shallow frying instead of a flat and wide cast iron, because you can use less oil, although it does mean you have to fry in batches. I used Erin Alderson’s method of tearing the tofu into pieces instead of cutting into cubes or slices, for better sauce coverage and a more rustic aesthetic. I roasted some potatoes, beets, and carrots in miso butter with garlic powder to eat with the tofu, which was nice because I could basically ignore them while focusing my attention on frying. The tofu turned out perfect, and the sweet-sour-spicy sauce was great with the buttery saltiness of the vegetables. I can’t wait to try this method of tofu frying for some of the other sauces I like (curried peanut sauce and gochujang glaze come to mind).
As usual during the last week of the month, I was looking for inspiration by browsing through dozens of fancy cakes, but none of them seemed to be grabbing me (normally I have the opposite problem, and have to narrow it down from four or five open tabs and scraps of paper marking pages in cookbooks). When I saw scrolled past a photo of a yellow cake with chocolate icing and immediately salivated, I realised this must be because I was really craving nothing fancy or gourmet, just a Basic-Ass Cake. I used the Party Cake Builder pages in Deb Perelman’s Smitten Kitchen Every Day, a collection of classic cake and frosting recipes as well as an incredibly useful tool for scaling up or down. I had no one to impress (except the internet, of course), so I went for the standard 8” square cake.
This was the recipe whose photo initially caught my eye, so I decided to try their chocolate icing with Deb’s golden vanilla cake. Since the frosting promised a little complexity by way of bittersweet chocolate and sour cream, I added some orange zest and orange blossom water to the cake. Sorry, turns out it’s impossible for me not to be a little bit fancy. I always make icing in the food processor because you don’t have to sift the sugar and it comes together so easily. However, the melted chocolate means there needs to be a fine balance: if it’s still warm, you risk melting the butter, and if the sour cream is too cold, it’ll re-solidify the chocolate. The flavour was perfect, but I think I did melt the butter a bit because my icing kept threatening to destabilize. I added sprinkles and stored the cake in the fridge to compensate, and no one who hadn’t already read this newsletter would be the wiser.
Also this week: we made the shiitake-tofu noodle bowl with chili crisp again— I can’t seem to get this dish from the bowl to my mouth fast enough. Some oyster mushroom tacos that didn’t make as much filling as I’d hoped, and I had to throw in a bit of leftover seasoned veggie ground round I’d stashed in the freezer. But they were still great with some pickled cabbage, pico de gallo, and hot sauce. And my sister and I made something akin to this fennel roast chicken with cabbage because she wanted to learn how to cook a whole chicken. The meat came out tender with perfectly crispy skin, but the caramelized cabbage was the star!
Media:
That’s enough words from me I think! But since I was already talking about cocktails, feel free to get mad with me about how dumb the concept of a “skinny margarita” is. And while a lot of people are out sick with covid, it seems relevant to share some ideas of what to cook when you’re too tired too cook (the comments are helpful too). I am a big fan of #putaneggonit, the freezer pesto I mentioned earlier, and another fave is roasting some small potatoes while heating up the oven for frozen vegan nuggets.
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. I leave you with this, an abomination of both music and soda.