raspberry beret
suburban food nostalgia, and a mountain of raspberries
You ever just… *clenches fist* completely obsess over a food item? It’s been five days and I can’t stop thinking about the pizza we ordered from Farina a Legna on Saturday. It was their weekend feature, and while their features always sound amazing, we usually can’t order them because they so often use a white sauce as the base, which would make Jeff suffer terribly. This time, however, the sauce was a pickled garlic purée, and on top was spinach, parmesan, charred green onion, and basil mayo. I love a traditional pizza, but I also love a nonstandard pizza, and this was honestly so incredible I considered ordering it again on Sunday. I’m sure I’ll end up making my own version at some point, because I don’t know if I can wait until they have this as a feature again to be able to eat it.
I had a bit more motivation in the kitchen this week and actually planned meals instead of simply having a mild panic at 6 o’clock every night. Though I still failed at remembering to adjust my produce bin before it was delivered and I now, unfortunately, have even more apples. And the ones on the tree out back look like they’ll start to ripen within a week or two. I beg you, send help.
I use Isa Does It so much for weeknight dinners that I’m always surprised to find there are still recipes in this book that I have yet to make. This week, I gave the lentil-a-roni a try: a cheezy, meaty pasta inspired by the cans of Chef Boyardee some of us have fond memories of eating as children (and not-so-fond memories of eating as university students). The sauce is a mix of crushed tomatoes and cashew cream with a good amount of lentils, which are always a nice ground beef stand-in. I like to cook lentils in vegetarian beef bouillon since I almost always use them for this purpose.
I used fresh tomatoes, blanched and skinned and then puréed, instead of canned. I think I may have ended up with slightly less than the amount the recipe called for, because the sauce was definitely more creamy than tomatoey. I would say it came out a little more similar to a stroganoff, and I still really enjoyed it, but I wouldn’t have minded more balance from the tomatoes. I added a bunch of spinach to wilt at the end which was good for a bit of colour (it was still kind of a slop-looking dish though— they don’t all have to be beauty queens). I liked this with a bit of vegan parm and chili flakes on top, and it was extremely filling. Like most of the recipes in this book, the sauce made a lot, so I have half in the freezer for the future.
Another hit from this book to use the remainder of the lentils I cooked as well as some of my wealth of tomatoes: vegan nacho night. This is in the section “Sunday Night Suppers” because making the multiple sauces and dips for them takes awhile— certainly a lot longer than grating some cheese and opening a jar of salsa— but these are honestly some of the most delicious nachos ever. The cheeze here is a vegan queso-style sauce made with, you guessed it, cashew cream. It’s satisfyingly tangy from the addition of miso and lemon juice, and filled with bits of jalapeño and onion for heat and texture. This thickens a lot in the fridge, so I sometimes eat it just as a dip for crackers or chips later on, but you can thin it out by warming it up again and adding a splash of water.
Lentils play the beef role again, in a lentil meat that’s used elsewhere in the book as a taco filling. A bit of hot sauce and tomato paste are used alongside a homemade spice blend to help bind them together a bit, so they come out in small- to medium-size pieces that are nicely spicy with the Tex-Mex flavour profile we know and love. A quick pico de gallo and a side of guacamole finish it off— I use my own guac preferences instead of the recipe in the book, though. I like to add sliced black olives, and sometimes corn if I’m craving a real pub-style nacho experience. These might not be the “fuck it, nachos for dinner” level of effort you get with traditional cheese nachos, but I like them even better. And as an added perk there are always leftover elements, so I’ll probably (definitely) be eating them again soon.
Shortly before moving here, we bought a black raspberry bush in a pot at a nursery. We kept it in the pot so that we could transplant it after moving. The first year, we got one little cluster of berries. The next year, a few clusters confined to a single branch. And now, in its fourth summer, it has taken over most of the garden and we have— I believe the scientific term for it is— a metric fuckton of berries. We’ve been eating them fresh at breakfast, picking them off the vine whenever we’re in the yard, and I’m happily sharing with my coworkers, but there are so many. And the season is short, meaning they will start to shrivel up soon if they aren’t used, so I made these raspberry oat bars from Smitten Kitchen. They’re described as a ‘breakfast bar’ but it’s still a bit sweeter than I’d be likely to eat at breakfast, although they are reminiscent of a fruity version of the oat bars at Starbucks, so I can see how that would be plausible.
I liked that this recipe doesn’t involve softening butter, and almost all the prep is done in the food processor, so it was easy to get these in the oven while going about my day. They seemed a little soft still after the initial baking time and I was tempted to put them back in, but instead I let them cool in the pan and then put them in the fridge, which gave them the perfect consistency. Jeff and I both were blown away by how good these were; not that I was expecting them to be bad, but I wasn’t prepared for how much I like them. I think part of it could be that I halved the recipe but messed up halving the salt: the original used ¾ tsp but I used ½ tsp in my version. So if you, like me, enjoy saltier baked goods, I can endorse this change! We’ve been appreciating these out of the fridge as an after-dinner treat, but I’m sure they would be good for breakfast too, if you swing that way.
We grilled veggie burgers again and as a side, made one of my favourite summer salads: watermelon and feta. What in particular makes it so good— is it the crisp, juicy melon? the salty, creamy cheese? the fresh, fragrant mint? I don’t know, but this unstoppable combo always disappears at barbecues as people rave about how delicious it is, and I personally eat way more salad than I could normally manage alongside a filling burger. I like to add cucumber for a bit more crunch, and balsamic vinegar and ground pepper to help balance the sweetness of the melon. I always use mint, but basil and oregano are good choices for a complementary herb.
Media:
As a longtime expiration dates truther and the person my roommates would always hand past-date containers of cream to and ask, “is this still good?”, I liked reading this Vox article about how best before labels came to be and what they actually mean. The article contains a lot of interesting (if America-centric) info about how stores are stocked, consumer habits, food regulations, and manufacturer responsibility. By the way, the egg trick they mention isn’t quite correct— an egg that floats in water doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad, just that it isn’t fresh! Crack it into a bowl before adding it to whatever you’re using it for, and if it’s bad, you will know immediately. Because basically, in the majority of cases “best before” doesn’t mean “bad after”, and you can use your senses to tell if something is good to eat or not. Or just invite me over, and I’ll tell you.
With plant-based and vegetarian food becoming more mainstream than ever, and as a person myself who eats more vegetable-based mains than anything else, I appreciated this piece about what wine styles to pair with vegetables. I love red wine, but if I always saved it for a time when I was eating beef or lamb, those bottles would never get opened. A few BC wines that I think pair well with salads and fresh vegetable dishes are Fort Berens Riesling, rosés from Stoneboat or Rust, and Stag’s Hollow Pinot noir. I also find that matching some lower-acid whites like Chardonnay with dishes featuring raw garlic tends to make both the food and the wine taste terrible, so keep that in mind.
*note: this article contains a factual error— hot peppers get their heat from capsaicin, not capsicum. Capsicum refers to the genus of plant that contains all peppers.
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, so donations I can use towards cookbooks or future treats are much appreciated. And now, a valid entry to the database of cakes with threatening auras.