November rain
comfort foods and the eternal grey
It’s been a cold, dreary week, and that mid-November hibernation mood is setting in: on Monday I woke up and briefly considered calling in sick to my less-than-a-month-old job. I didn’t, but the feeling of being overwhelmed by life and wanting to just watch tv under a blanket remained. I’m finding it hard to decide if it always feels like this at this time of year, or if it’s more intense because of the pandemic getting actively more terrifying. Either way, the sun rises at 7am and sets at 4pm, not that we’d know because it rains the entire day. I’ve been making stews and other hearty meals and eating Bulk Barn snack mixes, letting most of my chores slide this week while trying not to feel too bad about it (just kidding, I don’t feel bad about it at all). If you’re in the same boat, hopefully you enjoy these offerings of comforting food, and the knowledge that even a struggle meal in these dark times is an accomplishment.
I wrote in a previous newsletter about how I didn’t cook much Indian food until recently, but also, I would gravitate towards the dishes I already knew I loved when ordering takeout, rarely trying anything new. So, my first experience with kofta that I remember wasn’t from a restaurant, but in making the vegan malai version in Isa Does It: chickpeas, zucchini, and almonds in a delicious creamy curry sauce (vegetarian kofta in this sauce are often made with potato and paneer). It was amazing— so when another newsletter mentioned how much they loved Tejal Rao’s vegetarian kofta in tomato curry, I had to try that too. These spiced ‘meat’balls are made from black beans, fresh herbs, jalapeño, and green onions, and held together with breadcrumbs and egg, just like regular meatballs. One tip I will offer that goes against the recipe is to lightly mash the beans first, instead of trying to do it as you’re adding other ingredients (which don’t mash)— the balls will be a lot easier to form if you do.
The sauce is made like a pasta sauce, either using canned crushed tomatoes or by puréeing them in a food processor, and then letting them reduce with the seasonings. If you time everything right, this can happen while the kofta are in the oven, and you won’t have to wait too long for the sauce once they come out. Once everything is pretty much ready, just dunk the kofta in the sauce and let everything simmer a bit longer so the flavours can come together and the sauce can thicken a little more. Garnishing with chopped mint and cilantro made for the perfect finish, and we served it over rice but I actually think flatbread would have been even better. It was just the right level of spicy and felt super satisfying but not terribly heavy to eat (in front of the tv watching Full Metal Alchemist). If I made it again I would maybe use slightly more beans to make the kofta a little more cohesive, especially once they’re added to the sauce, but otherwise, this was a winner.
In the before times, one of the places I sometimes went if I had time to kill between work and whatever I was doing afterwards, was the Earls happy hour. I know, I know, but cheap glasses of beer and $5 for an 8” margherita pizza while sitting at the bar reading a book or watching a bit of hockey isn’t a bad way to spend an hour. Once last fall, a guy beside me was eating what looked and smelled like the most amazing salad I had ever seen. I picked up the menu to see what it was— not because I was hungry, but because I knew there would be a time when I had to recreate it. I googled ‘Earls brussels sprouts salad’ the first time just to pin down the ingredients, and made it couple of times last year, and remembered it just in time for what might be the last batch of brussels sprouts from the garden.
The key to a really good salad is one of two things: it either has to be the perfect complement to whatever main dish you’re serving it with, or it has to be filled with things that put it on (or over) the boundary between “healthy dinner” and “vegetables carrying salt and fat to my mouth like a cargo ship”. Roasted brussels sprouts and potatoes, grated parmesan, dried cranberries for sweetness, toasted almonds for crunch, pickled red onions for contrast, and a base of kale, all tossed in a brown butter balsamic vinaigrette. The brown butter vinaigrette comes from Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, made just by browning butter (obviously) and using that in the dressing instead of oil.
This salad works best if everything’s still warm, so that the butter doesn’t start to re-solidify. Normally I like to use lacinato kale for salads because it’s a bit more tender, but the store was out, so I used green kale chopped small, and just smushed it around in the bowl with my hands to soften it up (the warm elements of the salad helped too). We served it with chicken thighs marinated in lemon, yogurt, and feta brine, and seasoned with dry mustard, thyme, and white pepper. I cooked them in a cast iron at 450° at the same time as the potatoes, and added the sprouts to the potatoes about halfway through, so everything was ready all at once— this is the hardest part of cooking, for me! Anyway, I really can’t describe to you how delicious and satisfying this salad is, you just have to try it.
In my ongoing task of using things from my cursed list of sauces, spice mixes, and freezer items I want to be free of but not throw out, I did something I would normally never succumb to, and used a store-bought pie crust. My roommate made a banana cream pie sometime last year (or earlier? time has no meaning) and because the crust came in a two-pack, it’s been taking up space in the freezer ever since. So since I didn’t get to feed people at Thanksgiving this year and was too lazy and sad to make a pie then, I bought the filling ingredients and made one this week. Although I’ve made a lot of pies, I tend to be a fruit pie purist, and actually had only made my first pumpkin pie maybe three years ago. But everyone loved it, and said it was some of the best pumpkin pie they’d had.
There is a lot of pumpkin pie controversy out there, and people are almost religious about their spice blends, or whether canned milk or fresh whipping cream is better, and so on. Here is my secret: I used the recipe on the back of the label on Eagle Brand condensed milk, because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Some things don’t need to be fancy, and this is the platonic ideal of pumpkin pie: creamy, sweet, spiced, and basically foolproof to make. Obviously a store-bought, probably months-expired crust has nothing on a homemade one, but with a little whipped cream on top, it was a completely tasty pie, especially considering it took less than 15 minutes to prepare.
Other notables from this week include picking the remaining figs off the tree, since it’s getting too cold for them to ripen further, and making jam. Because some of the figs weren’t perfectly ripe I wanted to be sure they weren’t the only source of flavour, so I included a bit of lemon, thyme, and honey. It was done in an hour and now I have a full jar of jam in the fridge and an empty tree in the backyard. We also sweetened and bottled the limoncello this past weekend, so it infused for about 3 weeks. Just under a cup of simple syrup was the perfect amount for 750ml, and after chilling it in the fridge for a few hours, we poured tiny glasses for ourselves to taste. Sweet lemon candy, tart aroma, with just enough alcohol bite to make it interesting. I’m excited to think up some good cocktails to make with it… though it’s wonderful enough as it is.
Media:
I’m going to be honest: my brain has not allowed me to read anything longer than a few paragraphs this week, so I don’t have anything hard-hitting to share. However, with American Thanksgiving coming up, I did like reading (and watching) Samin Nosrat’s test of her famed buttermilk-brined chicken recipe to see if it works as well on turkey (if you don’t eat meat, feel free to skip to the end). She says the thing that will make you unpopular at Thanksgiving around turkey lovers: it won’t be like chicken, no matter how much you want it to be.
“So let’s stop wishing our turkeys could be chickens, and let’s stop making ourselves unnecessarily miserable by complicating the cooking process. When it comes to turkey, simpler is better.”
For me the best part of turkey isn’t eating it the day you cook it, it’s the things you get to make with the leftovers. Turkey can be dry, turkey can be bland (we’ve perfected our methods to ensure this is never true at our house, though I’ve eaten some sad birds over the years)… but turkey soup? Nope. A sandwich full of stuffing, cranberry sauce, and slices of ripe tomato? Never. A curried turkey and vegetable pot pie? No way. If you’ve made the buttermilk chicken before you know how delicious it is the day you make it, but also cold out of the fridge the next day, or shredded for chicken salad, so a turkey version would definitely deliver on this front. Clearly as a Canadian I’m not doing anything Thanksgiving-y next week (except preparing at work for Black Friday), but I’ll be keeping this recipe in my back pocket in case Jeff and I want to have a festive dinner for ourselves at Christmas, while we drink wine with my family over Skype.
Thanks for reading— if you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with someone new! P.S., my birthday is in a couple of weeks, and it’s going to suck ass not hosting my usual movie night where I cook a giant dinner and make a cake to share with all my friends while watching But I’m a Cheerleader or Mad Max: Fury Road. So please feel free to send me a little gift, or some money which I promise to use to buy beers and snacks.
Lastly, apparently Snapple is on the side of the proletariat. Who knew?