standing at the threshold
cooking with tea, oven-fried potatoes, and beers with friends
I hope you all had a nice Labour Day long weekend, the unofficial last weekend of the summer, and have been cruising through this shortened week without too much trouble (and shana tova to anyone celebrating Rosh Hashanah). Parents, my thoughts are with you as you have little choice but to send your unvaccinated kids off to an uncertain start of the school year. This Friday across Canada, advance voting begins— I encourage you to vote early if you can (if you haven’t already requested a mail-in ballot). I know no one is pumped for a snap election during a pandemic, and we’re all weary of Disappointed Uncle Justin’s broken promises, but find the person running in your riding who you feel you could hold accountable on issues that affect us the most, and cast your vote accordingly.
Over the weekend we held our long-awaited tea cookoff (originally scheduled for March of 2020). Thankfully, the rain cleared up by Sunday so after towelling off the patio furniture, we were good to go. We were honoured to have a professional chef and former regular attendee (they moved back to the states several years ago) among us, in addition to most of the usual suspects. This was a necessarily creative theme so we had some really unique entries! We started in the early afternoon because a couple people had evening engagements, and those of us who didn’t went to House of Funk for a beer afterwards, which turned into 2-3 beers over four hours. We weren’t the last table there so I don’t feel guilty about this, but the staff had started sweeping the floor by the time we left.
Jeff and I also took a little trip to Langley on Tuesday to check out The Barley Merchant, a new taphouse where a friend of ours is the head chef. He created the menu for our wedding, so if you were there you’ll know this is a place worth your time. He worked really hard to make a menu that is local, seasonal, and suitable for people with allergies (almost everything is vegan- or gluten-friendly, and the restaurant is nut-free), while still being something you can enjoy casually with a flight of beer or cider or a glass of wine. I’ll admit that after a busy weekend, I’d forgotten we made plans to go out and was annoyed because I’d been looking forward to a night alone at home. But once we were seated at a picnic table under string lights, looking at the list of dozens of BC beers (some of which are exclusive to the restaurant), and chatting with our friend whose name was embroidered on his uniform with “executive chef” underneath, I changed my mind. If you stop by there soon, I recommend the shishito peppers and the gnocchi.
My quest to use as many tomatoes as I can before they split and fall off the vines continues. I picked all the ripe Romas and roasted three pounds to make the ultimate comfort for a rainy Saturday: tomato soup. I’ll make it using cans of fire-roasted tomatoes when I no longer have access to large amounts of fresh ones, and I don’t know that using fresh really makes much of a flavour difference, but the way I feel about it is different. My ideal tomato soup evokes the memory of cans of Campbell’s I ate as a kid, but with less sweetness and more acidity, and a little more spice and flavour variation. I’ve tweaked my recipe enough over the years to have found the balance I’m looking for: a bit of brown sugar, a splash of cream, chopped basil and thyme, a pinch or two of chili flakes. The perfect match, for me, is a grilled cheese on grainy bread or sourdough, but some cheddar or parmesan croutons would also not disappoint.
After reigniting my love of Orto’s caramelized onion butter the previous week, I was searching for some way to involve such a thing in my cookoff entry. So I began by doing the obvious, and making a loaf of bread (no-knead has yet to steer me wrong). I also wanted to involve some of our tomato bounty, and wavered back and forth on what tea flavour might work best with tomatoes and caramelized onion. I eventually settled on a rooibos, which wouldn’t be too sweet, or so strongly flavoured that it’d end up clashing.
Although caramelized onion butter is a compound butter (just mixing something into softened butter), getting the tea flavour requires an infusion. I melted the butter in a pot, added the tea leaves, and let it simmer about five minutes, and then steeped it five more minutes off the heat before straining. Vegan butters won’t re-solidify as quickly as the dairy version, so I put the bowl in the freezer for a bit to help it along. When it was no longer fully liquid but still stir-able, I minced the caramelized onion and added it in, then returned it to the freezer for a little longer. A note about caramelizing onions: however long your internet recipe tells you it’s going to take, double it. I know someone is lying if they say “about 20 minutes” (the French onion soup recipe in Bouchon, by contrast, has you cooking them for over two hours). I have never gotten good results with anything shorter than 50 minutes, and trying to speed it up with a higher temperature will give you crisp-edged sautéed onions, not caramelized ones. You just have to commit to the waiting.
For serving, I decided to do one sweet and one savoury: after spreading the butter on two pieces of bread, one got some homemade peach jam and a few fresh thyme leaves, and the other some cherry tomato wedges and a sprinkle of oregano, pepper, and Maldon salt. The rooibos was fragrant but subtle, and was a delightful complement to both the salty-sweet tomatoes and the fruity jam.
I’m pleased to inform you that there is at least one “quick and easy kitchen trick” that actually works, and it is this two-minute mayonnaise from Serious Eats. I’ve done homemade mayo a few times before, and have only managed to get it to work by breaking it and then starting over— it’s never emulsified correctly for me the first time, regardless of whether I do it with a whisk by hand or in a blender. I won’t say that this method is foolproof, because there is always the possibility of failure, but it worked instantly for me on the first try (I used a 2-cup measuring glass). The video really helps in terms of how the immersion blender should fit into the glass, and to show you why the process works— basically, you’re mixing the egg and lemon juice first while the oil floats on top, and then it gradually gets pulled down into the blades to incorporate effortlessly.
After I was finished being overjoyed, I mixed some of the mayo with garlic, and set about making patatas bravas to go with. Yes, I know garlic mayo is not actually aïoli, and I actually don’t care because it’s still actually delicious. Oven-fried potatoes is the way to go here if you too have yet to succumb to the air fryer trend: heat a large cast iron at 450° for at least 15 minutes, toss chopped potatoes in loads of olive oil and salt, and listen to the sizzle as they hit the pan, scraping in any remaining oil. After 15 minutes, turn them over and cook at 400° for another 15-20. Blanch first with russets for nice craggy edges, but no need to bother for yellow or red potatoes. They will come out wonderfully browned and crisp. And uh, turn off your smoke alarm.
Salsa brava is the other condiment used for patatas bravas (the name should be a giveaway): a spicy tomato gravy-like sauce you can either use as a dip or toss the potatoes in after cooking. The ‘true’ version would use fresh tomatoes and peppers, cooked down and then blended, but you can make a quick and dirty version that’s still really good using tomato paste, broth, and powdered chilies. A dash of red wine or sherry vinegar to finish makes the sauce satisfying complex, and it lends plenty of spice and acidity in contrast to the mayo. We put some olives in a bowl and made a dinner out of this, because life is short.
Media:
This NPR piece is a few years old but remains fascinating: How Snobbery Helped Take the Spice Out of European Cooking. There are all sorts of jokes about how white Europeans colonized the world for spices and then refused to use any of them, but it was actually, at least partially, the colonization that created the blandness. When many spices were difficult to obtain and expensive, richly spiced food was viewed as a symbol of wealth and status. But after colonization, a wide variety of spices became accessible and therefore “common”, so the wealthy needed a new way to differentiate themselves from the middle classes. Krishnendu Ray explains,
“[The elite] moved on to an aesthetic theory of taste. Rather than infusing food with spice, they said things should taste like themselves. Meat should taste like meat, and anything you add only serves to intensify the existing flavors."
Because wealthy people could use the most expensive cuts of meat, this made meat the focus of a meal in order to showcase its quality of taste and texture. This idea is still prevalent in much of Western fine dining (most notably French cuisine), but there has also been a return to creating recipes and restaurant dishes with “exotic” spices and hard-to-source ingredients in order to be seen as exclusive. I don’t know that we will ever stop viewing certain foods as a status symbol, at least not until we overthrow capitalism, but it is heartening to see more of modern trends that treat meat neither as mere filler for a heavily spiced sauce nor as a centrepiece whose flavour must be unadulterated in order to be of value. Meat and spices are simply elements to be enjoyed along with everything else that goes into a dish.
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. Lastly, I don’t know what inspired this, but it would definitely make for a different vibe to the game.