New Year of Cooking

Happy New Year! Happy Leap Year! Beware the Ides of March!

How can it already be March? Impossible. This is what happens when you teach a class for the first time. Some things don't happen, and blogging is one of them. The blog would happen I think if it weren't for the picture component. That's what takes the time.

Anyway, I am still cooking and eating and actually contemplating getting a new table, which will be a red-letter event, perhaps emboldening me to invite more people over when I don't have a rickety splickety table that spills the soup! In addition to the inevitable unplanned culinary discoveries along the way in 2012, I have a new cookbook I'll be exploring this year called Quick Cuisine. The author is a Calgary cook, dee Hobsbawn-Smith, whose recipes I have enjoyed in other anthologies for years. As the title implies, her life has produced by necessity, as mine has, a repertoire of meals that are quickly prepared but still tasty and full of goodness. The book begins with appetizer recipes and I don't usually fix appetizers for myself, so I'll have to experiment with those as I have occasions to make appetizers. But the very next section is Soups, and I think I just might have soup running in my veins. At any rate it is the season for soups yet for a good many weeks I hope, and I love it. First up is Tomato-Carrot Basil Soup, which will make a perfect contrast to the other soup I made today for the week, my mum's Clam Chowder that I have made for years.



Also you might be interested in this very simple Bean Bake which I find makes an excellent side with lots of different meals. It is hearty and hits the spot when you're cold and hungry. And in terms of its preparation time is a perfect candidate for a quick meal collection. Mix it together and let the oven do the work while you do other things. I bet it would work well in the slow cooker too, which I would rank as one of the greatest inventions of all time.

Julekake

The last visitation of The Lost Norwegian is a Christmas yeast bread my mother also served on Christmas morning, Julekake, meaning Christmas cake. It has just enough candied fruit and peel to make it pretty and is especially delectable toasted, with butter and a bit of jarlsberg cheese. I can't remember if the recipe I made is my mother's or another one I found, but it has no eggs, which makes it edible by my friend Kathy who is allergic to eggs.



With that I send you fond wishes for a happy holiday. As Alec Baldwin always signs off the New York Philharmonic concert broadcast he hosts, "I wish you good health and good music" ... and a great many other blessings which there is neither time nor space to include. I hope you will find wonderful company around your table, and that you will continue to visit me around mine in the new year, either here or better yet, here! (What a crisis of place we 21st century people embody.) Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving

Remember the box of tomatoes? They duly became pizza sauce and there is no comparison with either bought pizza or bought pizza sauce! I give thanks for the bounty of the tomatoes, my mother's recipe, and a new pizza stone that makes the crust so crispy. Some friends here have a tradition of pizza on Sunday nights, a lovely tradition I hope I can contribute to sometime.



I tried a new biscotti recipe using pumpkin and chocolate chips. Biscotti means "baked twice," once in a loaf, and again sliced and laid on their sides to dry out and become crunchy and dunkable. I have liked making biscotti for years, partly because I inherited a love for dunking cookies in tea or coffee, and partly because compared to other cookies, they have a more intense flavor and comparatively less sugar and fat. Rather like another wonderful Italian sweet, gelato. These pumpkin biscotti have a different texture than any I have ever made before, but also even less fat, only two tablespoons of melted butter.





This was a Thanksgiving holiday to remember, the first visit of my brothers and their families to me here, approximately midway between them. And of course, in the excitement of having them here (and some unexpected drama--trauma!--with the nightly visitation of a bat!!) I failed to remember to photograph our gathering. However, they didn't arrive until the weekend, which enabled me to host a thanksgiving feast with a friend from Iowa City on the actual day of Thanksgiving, and then spend the afternoon teaching her to sew.

Autumnal Glory

A pretty plate I actually remembered to photograph. I roasted grapes for the first time, drizzled in olive oil and seasoned with thyme, sea salt, and fresh ground pepper. A perfect accompaniment to a roasted pork chop and some baked buttercup squash.



Company at my Table has been neglected these last months. Happily, I can report that part of the reason is that I have been dealing with some company at my actual table: company from Washington DC; company from Louisville, KY; company from Minneapolis, MN; company from Iowa City; and company from right here at home. Most of these guests missed the autumnal glory that I enjoy so much in the comparatively long lingering autumns we have here. In Canada, autumn is the briefest season, and you're likely to miss it if you're not paying attention. I don't think I shall ever get tired of the oh so gradual retiring of the magnificent oak and maple trees, nor of their glowing canopy as I fly down my stairs to work in the cool of the day.

Last Garden Haul

Yesterday I cleaned out the garden, which meant picking what tomatoes remained on the vines (they are roasting in the oven as I speak, and will be puréed together with some pumpkin before the end of the day for some pumpkin soup) digging the carrots, and pulling up the beans. It's supposed to get frosty some nights this week for the first time.

A funny story. All summer, the neighbor beside the lower garden plot has been completely neglecting some 15 tomato plants, and a couple of pepper plants, leaving dozens to rot on the vine. This has irked me for weeks, but I have had neither the gumption to just help myself to his tomatoes without asking, nor the courage to go to the door and ask if he would mind if I used them as he clearly wasn't interested. So yesterday in the beautiful fall sunshine, he drove up while I was working in my garden, and hollered, "How are your tomatoes?"
"Pretty good," I said.
"Feel free to help yourself to whatever of these you want." He gestured carelessly to the neglected vines.
"Thanks."
So I promptly went home, got a banana box, and loaded it up with tomatoes in varying stages of ripeness. I hope to turn them into my mother's most delectable pizza sauce and preserve it for many a winter homemade pizza.



My only other culinary adventure of late that I managed to remember to photograph was a delicious recipe I found in the NY Times a couple of weeks ago, called Schiacciata con l'uva, a focaccia with concord grapes, rosemary, and pine nuts, sufficiently different that I managed to bring some home from coffee hour at church and enjoyed it for breakfast for several days. It's like a bread with a fresh baked jam all over it. I'll do it again, maybe when you come for a visit.




I have done a good bit of cooking and baking that I have neglected to photograph. For example, I baked an apple pie for a Jane Austen movie night with the girls the other night, inspired by Jane's comment to her sister Cassandra in 1815 that "Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness." Indeed. Apples being as plentiful as they are around here, I decided to try a new chili recipe using chicken and apple sausage, apples and butternut squash instead of the usual ground beef and tomatoes. It's in the crockpot right now, so feel free to pop over for a Sunday night supper about seven. Should be tasty.

I hope your October is yummy, full of spices and warmth, a new recipe here and there just for fun, and plenty of friends to gather around your table.

Onion

The Lost Norwegian called it Løk Terte, Onion Tart, and it was my very own mini Julia moment chopping the nine onions it called for. I think next time I will not use sweet Vidalia Onions. They were almost too sweet, although undoubtedly easier on the eyes in the chopping.





It was delicious and reheated beautifully for lunch all week. Something so Septemberish about it, served with a little salad of fresh red and gold pear and cherry tomatoes cut in half and tossed with feta, basil, ground pepper and a little garlic olive oil. And a bit of onion, you ask? I think maybe not.

Farewell to Summer

All of a sudden, without fanfare or fond farewell, summer departed. For my part, the absence of the extreme heat is not lamented in the least, and in fact I find myself partly in its memory stubbornly refusing to turn the furnace on though the indoor thermostat dips below 60 degrees at night!







Rather, the summer plenty of delicious fresh food is worthy of a post acknowledging that for all the welcome charms of autumnal fare, even a dyed-in-the-wool autumnal maiden like myself is loathe to lose the lavishness (do we put anything in our mouths frillier than kale?), gorgeous colors, and luxurious accessibility (as in, just outside down 36 penitential steps in the garden) of summer food.



This was my last batch of granola for the year I think. Hot cooked cereal from here on out.