orb pondering
a stellar winter salad, a visitor, and a gift guide
Greetings from the end of retail’s hell week. I’ve been playing in Chaos Mode since last Friday, as I watched my normal level of work increase tenfold, all in the midst of a chain of three more huge rainstorms. Also I’m hearing word that it’s December now? I almost wrote ‘October’ on a date label for some leftovers I was putting in the fridge, so that should tell you something about how time has been feeling for me. There’s been no room in my brain for much other than work, knitting, and orb memes this past little while. Oh, and trying to make sense of the genres in everyone’s Spotify Wrapped.
Luckily, over the weekend I had a visit with Iain, a good friend who lives in Ontario, as a welcome distraction from work and having to process the passage of time. After work on Friday, Jeff and I joined him at Strange Fellows for a drink and a pretzel before walking down to Superflux for another round and some of their fancy hot dogs. They have 4 options, of which at least 3 can be vegetarian— I went for the Carolina Gold which has barbecue sauce, apple, and gruyere. Jeff got French Onion which was also really good.
I like the tasting room there for being spacious but still feeling somewhat intimate, with interesting wood design and greenery in various places. I also appreciate their small pours so you can try some of their exclusives without having to shell out $17-24 for a 4-pack. I had a really nice IPA which they of course are known for, and also tasted a bizarrely good sour made with strawberry cheesecake and graham crackers, which reminded me a lot of strawberry Campino candies. (Sidebar: do these still exist? Google seems uncertain.)
On Saturday we went for brunch at the Roundel Cafe, which has changed a lot since I was there last a couple of years ago. They’ve done some remodelling which I feel neutral about; I enjoyed the old-fashioned, kitschy charm of the previous interior, but booths where the seats aren’t split are also nice. The menu has more of a Mexican slant now, too, along with some of their previous classics— the hot sauce is spicier now, but the hash browns haven’t changed! And the coffee is still as strong as ever.
In the afternoon we had a cozy round of beers on Beere’s enclosed patio, keeping warm while the rain from atmospheric river 2 of 3 poured down in the street outside. In the evening, another friend joined us to play some games and eat homemade pizza. I didn’t take a photo of the pizzas, which were standard but delicious: prosciutto with pineapple, mushrooms, and roasted red pepper, plus a veggie one with mushrooms, roasted red pepper, olives, capers, and feta. We’ve been playing games together over Skype for the majority of the pandemic, so it felt extra special to be playing together in person, even if our whole crew wasn’t able to be there (either due to the atrocious weather, or living in another province/country).
Finally, on Sunday morning we walked with our umbrellas to House of Funk to try their breakfast offerings, made in their kitchen by the good folks of the Crack On food truck. We could not resist the allure of hash brown patties and a fresh-baked cruller, so I couldn’t finish my sandwich, which was huge and perfect. All three of us got different ones and each of us was blown away by the deliciousness. The candied jalapeño and tomato relish really took the sandwiches to the next level. I also had a cortado with their house-roasted espresso; most of their coffees are a much lighter roast than I normally go for but I have yet to have an espresso there that I didn’t enjoy.
I didn’t do much cooking this week for obvious reasons, but after our weekend full of higher than usual amounts of beer and meat, I felt compelled mentally and physically to make a big kale salad. A friend sent me this Instagram reel awhile ago from someone who often posts interesting-looking dishes, thinking I might like it. I assumed it would be like most other food I see on social media: something I look at and think, “wow, that looks fantastic, I should try to make it,” and instead, promptly let the memory of it exit my brain never to be seen again. But I realised early this week I had nearly all the ingredients already, so after a trip to the produce store the next day I made it happen.
I was most intrigued by the dressing, a lemony vinaigrette made with charred leeks and green olives. It was fun to weigh the leeks down in the pan to ensure as much charred area as possible: I used a second, smaller cast iron pan, after using it to toast walnuts for the salad. The dressing was thicker than most vinaigrettes after blending, but it works since this is a sturdy winter salad. The other elements— persimmon, feta, turnip, and pomegranate— provide sweetness, umami, and extra crunch. I didn’t have turnips so I used sliced radishes instead for texture, and goat feta is more pungent than the standard kind so I used slightly less. This was a remarkably tasty and satisfying salad, full of flavour from the dressing, and with enough variety that you don’t feel exhausted from chewing mouthfuls of kale forever. Unless you for some reason can’t eat leeks, you will not regret making this dressing. I have leftovers and I can’t wait to use it again.
On Tuesday, a day I normally don’t have to leave the house, I came home from work feeling like a dead cartoon character with Xes for eyes. Thankfully our makeshift levees (made out of chunks of cement, traffic cones, and large wooden posts) had diverted the flow of rainwater down the alley instead of through our yard, and the storm drains held up this time so we didn’t have any flooding to worry about. But it was on my mind all day as I listened to the rain pounding on the roof while I worked, and driving conditions were still awful.
I managed to throw together a carbonara in under thirty minutes that even had some vegetables in it— not traditional for carbonara, but good nonetheless. After frying a few slices of prosciutto, I cooked some chopped oyster mushrooms and a few remaining radicchio leaves in the leftover fat, along with a couple of sliced garlic cloves. One defeating aspect of this meal was grating the requisite amount of pecorino off of the fossilized block that’s been in the fridge for a couple of months, but the important thing is I could make it while my mental state was ‘low-power mode’.
Also this week I baked sourdough at 7am like a complete freak before leaving for work. I had left the dough out on the counter overnight, instead of refrigerating overnight and letting it rise at room temperature for several hours afterwards. I hadn’t been getting great rises using the latter method lately, maybe because my house has been so cold, so I thought I would try this to compare. I did get a better rise, although still not quite the puffy round boule I’m looking for. And I made my standard chili (recipe here), this time with some mushrooms and bell pepper instead of Beyond ground. Sprinkling the last crumbles from a bag of tortilla chips on top killed two birds with one stone; that is, it finished the chips and made a non-crunchy food crunchy (and therefore improved).
THE GIFT GUIDE
Since all the newsletters and blogs are doing gift guides, and many of them tend to feature products that aren’t available here or are from shops that cost an arm and a leg to ship to Canada, I thought I might include a few options you can buy locally that you might want to give to a special home cook in your life. However you should still look at this guide from the New Yorker, whether for ideas or not, because it’s just a delightful read. Please note I do not make any money from the links below and am including them simply for reference, because I care about you. You can thank me by giving your loved ones nice things, and sharing my newsletter with them!
Books: Ottolenghi Simple and Isa Does It are two that I use often, and have a wide range of straightforward, delicious food (mostly vegetarian and fully vegan, respectively). Short Stack Editions— mini recipe books centred around a single ingredient— are a fun stocking stuffer, and should be available at several shops in Vancouver and Toronto (and a few other Canadian cities, too).
Tools: Here’s a few things that will be game changers if they aren’t already in your recipient’s kitchen (they were for me)! A microplane. A Japanese chef’s knife. A salt cellar to keep by the stove. An immersion blender (this is the one I have; I also use the mini food processor attachment a lot). A Whirley Pop, the easiest and best way to make popcorn with almost no unpopped kernels left. A citrus press.
Food: A box of Maldon salt, or a small container of smoked salt or ghost pepper salt— don’t get any other infused salts, no matter how good they sound; I promise they will never get used. The opposite is true of mustards; any of these deliciously flavoured mustards will have them seeking ever more opportunities to use them in dressings and sauces. Fancy heirloom kernels which make delightfully small and light popcorn.
Drinks: A holiday pack of 2 or 4 bottles from Garden of Granite, which makes wine right here in North Van from grapes grown in BC. A double-walled growler (to keep beer cold when they’re picnicking, camping, or just headed somewhere far enough away that the beer might otherwise be warm when they arrive) with a gift card for their favourite brewery. For the sober cocktail lover, Lumette! is a BC company that makes lovely non-alcoholic rum and gin.
Thanks for reading— if you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with someone new! I like providing this to you for free, but it does still involve time and effort. This weekend is my birthday, so if you’d like to help me buy myself a treat, you can do so here. And I don’t know why this is true, but it is. It’s just science.