staycation
mini road trip, my favourite cookies, and a somewhat out of season galette
Jeff and I have both had the road trip itch lately, maybe thanks to the longer days and the little bits of sun we’ve been enjoying. Last Sunday we took a mini journey up to Squamish just to enjoy the drive; the Sea to Sky Highway is always beautiful no matter the weather. We made our destination Backcountry Brewing, a place that always has an impressive lineup of beers and some pretty decent pizza and sandwiches, too.
They’ve recently expanded their tasting room, so there’s more space inside in a sort of dining room vs. bar situation which feels really nice. We sat at the new section of the bar along the window and shared two pizzas: mushroom and white sauce and fig with prosciutto (needlessly extravagant, as we took half of each one home with us, but variety is important). I tried a very good IPA and two sours, one that tasted impressively like cherry cola and one reminiscent of an orange creamsicle. Watching the sun set over Bowen Island and the Sunshine Coast on the drive home was a wonderful reminder that winter really is disappearing in the rearview.
Because I’m off work this week I also, somewhat impulsively, went down to the tattoo shop near me to get my hands tattooed. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for ages but could never seem to settle on what I wanted, and always work too much with my hands to make it practical to try to heal them up nicely. So this gives me a few extra days to let them start to scab over before I’m back in the warehouse. Anyway, some of you have probably already seen this, but now you can know for sure that I am nothing if not committed to the bit. This will bring me joy every day which is really all you should want a tattoo to do for you.
Getting my knuckles tattooed did kind of mess up my plans of spending a good chunk of the week making things with my sourdough starters, but I managed to bake this whole wheat sourdough rye again, a really nice-tasting sandwich loaf I made previously for the cookoff, and liked because I can toss it together in an afternoon. I do love making the rustic sourdough boules, but that’s definitely a lengthier and slightly more involved process which makes me feel simultaneously like a medieval peasant and an artisan baker.
I made another chickpea salad to put in sandwiches, similar to the tuna-style salad from last week, but with buffalo sauce and less mayo. This time I added a little shredded carrot for crunch and some sweetness to counter the spice of the sauce. I’ve been making alfalfa sprouts in a jar on the counter again, which is great with all the sandwiches we’ve been eating lately, and they stay fresh a lot longer than you’d think, especially compared to the ones you buy at the store. We also made some oven fries to go with these, because potatoes, either in fry or chip form, are a natural accompaniment to any humble sandwich.
If you’ve got some random junk in the fridge to use up, a dragon bowl almost always manages to turn your odds and ends into something not only palatable, but delicious. I used the last of the farro I made last week as the base with some lentils (pulled from the freezer), and roasted a head of cauliflower to add to those. For the topping I made green goddess dressing, a forever fav for grain bowls, hearty salads, or as a dip for veggies and chips. My recipe is vegan, provided you use a vegan mayo, and I love the creaminess it adds in combination with the tahini to the herby, acidic flavour profile. I didn’t have basil this time and used dill instead, which worked well too— Jeff, who is not a dill lover, hardly noticed the difference. I had planned to also use sprouts to garnish the top along with the pickled onion, but forgot to add them until after we’d started eating, so they aren’t in the photo, sadly.
In further ‘cooking my own recipes’ news, Kayla came over on Tuesday to cook, bake, and be indoctrinated into the world of Star Trek, and we made these lavender snickerdoodles. This is another recipe that can easily be vegan, though I usually just use an egg for simplicity’s sake. I’m a big fan of lavender in baked goods and I think it’s so nice in this subtle sugar cookie, but you can also leave it out, or add cinnamon to the dough as well as in the sugar coating. This is one of my favourite cookies, with its crackly exterior and soft, crumbly interior; I find it really difficult to eat a reasonable amount of them. (I didn’t take a pic of these because we were distracted by Star Trek, but there’s a photo in the linked recipe post above.)
Unbelievably, we still have squash left from our harvesting of the garden last fall. While Kayla was here I roasted one of these — I believe it was a kabocha, but it grew unprompted presumably from seeds in the compost so I can’t be sure— and we put together this squash and caramelized onion galette. I made this once or twice in the past and really enjoyed it, although the galette dough method is needlessly fussy unless your house is very warm. I just make it as I would most pie crusts: cut in cold butter, mix in the other cold liquids, pat together and rest in the fridge for an hour or so. This crust sees enough use in my house in other galettes and it always comes out fine, tender and flaky after baking. I like to roll it out on floured parchment and then slide the whole thing onto a pizza pan or baking sheet to add the filling, rather than trying to unstick and lift the rolled-out crust off the countertop.
The squash filling was a little different because I roasted the squash in halves rather than in chunks because no one wants to fuck around with peeling any type of squash that isn’t a butternut. So it was definitely more of a purée than a mix of solids, but I didn’t mind it. I also didn’t have the recommended fontina cheese, and subbed in crumbled feta and grated pecorino; a bit less intensely flavoured than fontina, but it did the job. Our sage is not looking too hot after the winter, so I used a mix of thyme and rosemary, which was also really nice— thyme is a fresher-tasting herb so it helps in making the dish a little less solidly autumnal in flavour. Eating this with a salad made with more of the green goddess dressing helped, too.
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. No newsletter next week as it’s a stat holiday, but here’s a little snack to get you ready for the occasion.