stormy weather
swapping soups, chaos cake, and pub food as medicine
I know I’ll be eating my words soon enough, but I was so happy to see the rain arrive late last week. Though the switch to cool weather has felt more dramatic than in previous years, I think we’re all ready for it.
It had been a long work week with some of my usual routine thrown off, and the idea of going home to cook dinner was exhausting. During the day I got overwhelmingly enticed by the idea of eating fries and drinking a beer in my favourite pub in North Van, the Queens Cross. Thankfully when I suggested it Jeff was on the same page, because by the time the end of the workday rolled around my desire to eat fish & chips that someone else cooked for me could almost be classified as a bodily need.
I’m still not used to it being dark already at dinnertime, but something about pub food and a glass of stout makes a rainy, dark day feel cosy and comforting instead of dreary and cold. The fries there are next level, and they have Hoyne’s Dark Matter on tap, which is one of my favourite beers for the season (Howe Sound’s Rail Ale is another nice one which I feel disinclined to drink in the summer, but can’t get enough of in the winter).
In October of 2020, with many of us missing our usual monthly vegan cookoff, Amanda suggested a soup swap, where each participant makes a soup and then we get together to trade jars of it, so you end up with a bunch of different soups to eat throughout the week. She organized another one this year, and the timing couldn’t have been better; Jeff has been busy at work with a menu launch, and I sometimes find it harder to motivate myself to cook when it’s only me home for dinner.
I made a smoky black bean soup with chipotle and lime in the instant pot. This recipe was the inspiration the first time I made it, but I usually add more vegetables (carrot and/or celery if I’ve got it), more chipotles in adobo, and both smoked and hot paprika. It’s really easy and super delicious— hearty, acidic, and a little spicy. We ate some on Saturday night with sour cream and cilantro, and a little tajín on top, plus a quesadilla on the side. I’m addicted to making quesadillas in the cast iron; if you use a medium-high heat and a little oil they get so nice and crispy on the outside.
On Sunday we met up in the park to swap, and I received eight different ones in return! I didn’t take pictures of all of them when we ate them, but I’ve had a lovely week of enjoying different soups for lunches and dinners, alternating between grilled cheese or a quesadilla or everything bagel crackers to eat with them. Two other people also made a black bean soup (‘tis the season apparently) and they were still really different, both from each other and from the one I made. There was also a vegan ‘egg’ drop (made with tofu and jackfruit), cauliflower with ginger, curried lentil and chickpea, carrot, and two different squash soups— one with saffron, and one with curry.
Another fallback when only one of us is home for dinner is opening the freezer to see what sort of sauces or leftovers have been stashed away, and I found a vegan squash alfredo sauce from a few months ago, which made for an easy pasta dinner. I wouldn’t say the sauce is exactly like alfredo or anything, but it’s still tasty and filling, and met my requirements for a decent dinner without a lot of effort. Even making the sauce from scratch doesn’t take too long if you’ve already got some squash purée on hand. I added a little chili crisp for garnish, which worked surprisingly well.
One luxury I do like to give myself when Jeff, who is famously lactose-intolerant, won’t be home to eat is a meal absolutely laden with cheese. I made a classic béchamel-based baked mac with four cheeses: aged cheddar, gruyère, mozza, and provolone. I’ve made béchamel enough that I don’t use a recipe to make it, but if you want a starting point, The Kitchenista’s mac & cheese method is thorough and easy enough to adjust to your taste or portion size needs. I make the sauce in a cast iron after cooking some onions and garlic, and then add the noodles and cheese when it’s ready, which cuts down on time as well as saves me having to use a baking dish.
Making the sauce from scratch isn’t really much work, but it does seem to dirty a somewhat unreasonable amount of dishes (a pot, a pan, a colander, various utensils, the food processor…). But much like enchiladas, which also makes an obscene mess of the kitchen, it’s always worth it, and the oven time provides the chance to clean up. Then I can eat it in my sweatpants in front of the tv, free in the knowledge that I’ll have only one last pan to wash when I’m done.
Because everything pumpkin-related dies after Halloween (sorry I don’t make the rules but if you drink a pumpkin beer on November 1st you are breaking the law), I decided it was time for a pumpkin cake. We’ve had a can of pumpkin pie filling hanging around for awhile— an impulse buy off the dollar rack, but every time I remembered it I always felt too lazy to make pie crust— so I figured I could put it to use in a cake instead.
Maybe this is very Sagittarius of me, but I think the people who say baking is an exact science are living in fear. At this point in my life I know basically what constitutes a cake. If I’m experimenting with an ingredient, I’m fine with not being able to follow an exact recipe for what I want to make: even if it’s not perfect the first time, it’ll still almost certainly be an edible dessert. I made a straightforward vegan cake with a bit less sugar than I’d normally use, since the filling has some already, and just sort of dumped in flour until the consistency looked right. Then I added some chocolate chips so I wouldn’t feel compelled to also make icing (something I don’t enjoy doing).
I ended up with a soft and moist cake that tasted quite a bit like pumpkin pie, which was indeed the goal. I liked how the chocolate chips broke up the texture, and on top I added some powdered sugar and a little of the apple syrup leftover from my last cake, just for beauty’s sake.
Media:
We finally got around to watching The Bear, which was so engaging we finished it in about three nights. If you’re one of the few who hasn’t watched it already, it’s a wonderfully paced and beautifully acted show about a man who inherits his estranged brother’s restaurant after his death, moving him from the world of fine dining to managing a line kitchen in a hot dog and sandwich shop.
The show is about the realities of restaurant work, and how fine the line can be between grief and resentment, but it’s also surprisingly optimistic. And Jeff, who’s worked in restaurants in many forms including kitchen prep, was really excited about some of the depictions— yes, it shows you how dehumanizing and difficult parts of it can be, but it also shows you so much of the joy people can find there, and in each other. If you haven’t watched yet, I encourage you to give it a go, and if you have, I encourage you to read this lovely piece by Alicia Kennedy: In The Bear, Food Is the Language of Love and Grief.
Thanks for reading— if you enjoyed this newsletter, please smash that like button below, or 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. Finally, here’s yet more evidence that every business needs to consult at least one queer person before going ahead with marketing or decor choices.