Easy?

I've been thinking about the word "easy" lately.  It seems to be applied to everything; sometimes in a way that appears dismissive of the time and effort that someone put in to something, and sometimes to try to make an activity seem like it might be more fun.

I also tend to apply it to my own accomplishments or things that I've made, often in an effort to be modest.  The thing is, though, most things that I consider to be worthwhile aren't easy.  They take time and effort and dedication and creativity.

Take cooking, for example.  I cook for a lot of reasons: to eat healthily, to enjoy new flavours, to gain new experiences, to connect with my culture as well as other cultures, and so on.  Whether I'm making a tomato sauce that takes 10 minutes or food for a party of 40, cooking is not easy.  It needs my full attention, no matter what it is.  

The aim is always to be proud of what I've made and served.  That's why it can be quite disappointing or disheartening when someone says something about how easy something is to make.  For the time it took for me to make the dish, I was thinking of nothing but the end product, and all the steps it took to get from start to finish - the right way to chop, how often to stir, when to taste, how to season.

We all do this in our everyday lives, at home, at work, with our friends and our families - just because something doesn't seem challenging or interesting to others, we downplay it and our own abilities.  I plan to stop myself from measuring things in terms of easy from here on out.  Or, instead of describing something as easy, maybe I'll go with "not too complicated" or say that it "comes together quickly".  No more dismissing accomplishments.   


Not-Too-Complicated Tomato Sauce
(for pasta and pizza and anything else you'd like it for)

1 clove of minced garlic 
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tin of San Marzano tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon of sugar - keep aside in case you want more
1/2 teaspoon of sea or kosher salt - keep aside in case you want more
3 torn up fresh basil leaves

Heat a heavy-bottomed pot on the stove at medium-high heat.  Add olive oil - swirl to coat.  Add garlic and cook till it no longer smells raw - about 1.5 to 2 minutes (don't let the garlic turn brown - golden is okay, but brown is not).  Add tin of tomatoes, sugar and salt.  Bring to boil, then turn heat down to simmer, stirring occasionally.  Simmer only 10 minutes, then remove from heat.  Add torn up basil leaves.  Stir.  Taste to see if sugar and salt are correct, according to your preferences.  

Sauce can even be made into a soup if you puree it and add a little bit of water or stock.  Great with a baguette rubbed with garlic, drizzled with olive oil, then grilled, or even a fontina grilled cheese sandwich.

The Chain

It's sort of silly to remark on the length of time that has passed since I last posted on here, given that I don't think anyone reads this.  But the reason is that in a lot of ways, I haven't had much to say.  I haven't made any major changes or done anything significantly different with my life in the past... oh, let's say two years.  Instead, I grew busier and busier at work and allowed that to consume my days and nights.  In addition to that, I traveled a little more, I saved a lot more, I took on new responsibilities and pushed off others.  

I grew fat and tired.  Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at 32 years old.  Made some lifestyle changes, and attempted to say yes more often to fun opportunities, and to say no when I meant it.  Took a good long look at myself both as an individual and as part of a family and as part of a community.  Tried to be a better spouse, a better daughter, a better friend.  Tried to be better to myself, even when I felt like I didn't deserve it.  

Still haven't figured things out, really: what I want from my existence, and what my existence seems to want from me.  However, the constant for me throughout all of this was my kitchen, and what I could make with my own two hands.  Maybe it's time to chronicle that publicly.  Maybe it's not.  I think I'll give it a shot and see what happens.

Here, fishy fishy fishy

So, I'm kind of ambivalent about a lot of things at the moment.  I blame it on the winter, on the steady greyness that permeates everything.  However, it's nearly February and that means it's going to get brighter every day going forward.  

In an effort to eat my way out of apathy (should work, right? right?), I've been trying to incorporate more fish into my diet.  Gotta tell you that fish is not my most favourite thing, but I'm learning, and since I count shellfish in this total-fish-eaten tally, it's been pretty good really.  Oysters and lobster and mussels and shrimp - to me, those are the most delicious items the ocean has to offer.  But for diet-based doses of omega-3s, you have to go for the oily fish, so that means salmon once or twice a week.  I like wild Pacific salmon best, but you do you - I'm not going to recommend one ocean over the other.

This is a super easy recipe.  You may not even call it a recipe.  But it is tasty.

Mustard-Garlic Salmon 

Preheat oven to 425

2 tablespoons grainy mustard

3 tablespoons olive oil

Juice of half a lemon

1-2 minced garlic cloves

Dried chili flakes, to taste (I like to take a half a dry chili pepper and whir it around in my spice grinder - which is actually a coffee grinder - I think they taste better when they don't sit around in flake form)

Salt and pepper

1 teaspoon of dijon mustard if you're really super keen on mustard

1 big salmon filet - like a side of salmon, if you will - skin on one side

Another 2 tablespoons olive oil

First, mix the mustard, the olive oil, the lemon, the chili, and the salt and pepper together to make a paste.  Set aside.

Next, you can line a baking pan with foil or just leave it foil-less.  Drizzle the rest of the olive oil onto the pan/foil where you're going to be placing the fish.  I like to paint it into a uniform oil glaze with a pastry brush, but the value of that is debatable.  Place the fish skin-side-down onto the pan.  Grab the mustard paste and spoon it out onto the salmon.  Then, take a pastry brush or whatever you have around and make sure the paste covers the entire fleshy surface of the salmon.  An even coating ensures a good end result.  

Throw the pan into the oven and let the fish cook for about 15 minutes.  Fish is finicky so I'm not going to really give a proper time for it.  You know it's done if you stick a fork in, rotate it, and the fish flakes readily.  Because I like a bit of texture, sometimes I put the broiler on for a couple of minutes at the end to make the coating slightly crisp.  

Serve with something green to maximise the benefits of the omega-3s - some sauteed garlic spinach, or asparagus or broccoli or whatever.  

Apple Pie and America

It's at times like these that I think of this Conway Twitty song my grandparents used to play... it went "Hello, darling.  Nice to see you.  It's been a long time..." And yes, it's been a long time.  Things got in the way, as I suppose they are wont to do.  But the blog name was far too good for me to let go of, so I figured I'd come back and maybe just start posting somewhat randomly.

Today, I'm putting my recipe for apple pie out into the universe.  Reminded of it by my first trip to New York ever, which was last weekend, the recipe has received nothing but rave reviews since I debuted it last fall.  It's sort of an amalgam of a number of different apple pie recipes from t'internet, so apologies if this looks familiar to anyone.  But here goes.  If I may suggest an accompaniment, it would be either whipped cream with a little tiny bit of vanilla whipped in, or vanilla ice cream from Ontario's own Kawartha Dairy.

Apple Pie

(full ingredient list at the end of the recipe)

Get your stand mixer out - it makes pastry-making a joy, honestly.  I'm never going to use a food processor again for pastry.  Into that stand mixer, measure out:

2.5 cups flour (not self-raising, just regular old flour - i think if you wanted to use whole wheat, you could probably do .5 cups whole wheat to 2 cups all-purpose)

2.5 tablespoons sugar

Half a teaspoon of salt

Turn mixer on low (like speed setting one or two), and let those dry ingredients combine.  Then, take: 

1 cup of the best unsalted butter you can find, straight from the fridge, and cut it into half inch pieces

Piece by piece, while the stand mixer is still mixing, throw the butter into the mixer.  When I say piece by piece, I actually mean it.  You want the pastry to get a nice crumbly looking texture.  Once you've added each piece of butter, let it mix another 5 seconds, then take

1/2 cup ice water

And, very slowly, trickle the water into the bowl of the mixer.  This is where you need to be very careful as you only want the pastry to just stick together, no more, no less.  You are unlikely to need the full 1/2 cup.  The dough should not look sticky or tacky, if it does then you've got too much water in and you're going to have to add more flour or start all over again.

Turn the nice, just barely holding together dough out onto your counter and gather it into a ball.  Roll it about with your hands to make a nice smooth ball, then divide the ball in half with your hands.  Flatten the two halves with your hands into discs.  Wrap each disc up individually in saran, then stick them in the fridge to rest for about an hour (yes, this is necessary - pastry is finicky and needs time to just exist before you do anything with it).

So, while your pastry is chilling, in a big bowl you can combine:

6-7 Cortland or Northern Spy apples, peeled, cored, and sliced into thin-ish pieces

1-2 tablespoons cinnamon (whatever your taste is - I usually stay at about 1.5)

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice      

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons light brown sugar

4 tablespoons white granulated sugar

1/4 teaspoon mixed spice or straight nutmeg

Stir everything together - the apples will look somewhat coated.  You're going to let this mixture rest as well - it's called macerating - so that the excess juice from the apples will mix together with the sugars and spices and then run off.  It takes about a half hour.

 

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees fahrenheit.   

Grab a strainer and place it over a pot.  Empty the apples from the bowl into the strainer and shake vigorously.  Lift the strainer and see how much apple-y, sugary liquid there is.  Shake it again just to get any more liquid, then you can empty the apples back into that first bowl.  Turn your stove burner on medium-high, and then boil the liquid down into a syrup - it takes about five minutes.  While it's boiling, mix about

2 tablespoons cornstarch

into the apples in the bowl.  Once you've got your syrup, mix that into the apples as well.

Flour your work surface and a rolling pin, and get a nice deep glass pie plate out - now's the time to grab 1 disc of the pastry from the fridge.  Put it onto the floury surface, and start rolling out.  You want to roll it into something approximating a circle, and it needs to be big enough to cover the bottom of that pie plate all the way up to the edges.  Place the rolled out dough into the pie plate - you've now got a bottom crust - and then empty the bowl of apples-cornstarch-syrup onto the bottom crust and even them out.  Re-flour your surface and your rolling pin, grab the other disc from the fridge, and roll that out too.  It needs to cover the top of the pie plate all the way out to the edge of the lip.  Place the rolled out dough on top of the apples.  Press the edges down using a finger to make a ruffled edge.  Cut some slits in the top crust to let the steam out as it bakes.  

Throw that pie into the oven for 45 minutes.  Check on it after about 25 minutes to make sure the edges aren't getting too brown - if they are, you can make a little ring out of tinfoil or parchment paper and cover the edges up with it.  At 45 minutes, remove from oven and let cool.  You should now have a beautiful pie to share and enjoy.          

Ingredient List:

Pastry:

2.5 cups flour

2.5 tablespoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 cup of cold butter

1/2 cup ice water

Filling:

6 or 7 Cortland or Northern Spy apples

1-2 tablespoons cinnamon (whatever your taste is - I usually stay at about 1.5)

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice      

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons light brown sugar

4 tablespoons white granulated sugar

1/4 teaspoon mixed spice or straight nutmeg

2 tablespoons cornstarch

Such a pest(o)

This summer, I've been really into pasta. Don't really know why or anything, but I am. It may be because most pasta applications are relatively easy, and no one really wants to cook anything super hardcore in the summer because it's hot and you're tired and want to be outside. Pesto trapanese is no exception to this general rule, but its deliciousness fools you into thinking you've really accomplished something by making it.

So, it's pesto, but it's not what you think of when you think pesto because it has tomatoes.

Pesto Trapanese

1/2 cup almonds, toasted in a pan with some olive oil. Take them out as soon as they start turning a teensy bit brown, because it's a very short trip from there to burnt.

4 Roma tomatoes (the egg-shaped ones), cut into quarters and de-seeded

12-15 basil leaves

1 garlic clove, peeled and halved

1 cup of grated parmigiano reggiano

1/4 to 1/2 cup of olive oil - you'll know your preference

1/2 box of linguine (I use dry Barilla pasta - it seems to work well more often than not) for 2 people eating what could be their only meal of the day - if you're having a starter or a dessert, you're not going to want that much.

Now, what you're going to do is pretty much just drop all the ingredients for the pesto into a food processor, and using the "pulse" function, chop it up till it reaches your desired consistency. I've tried chopping the almonds before I do everything else, but I honestly couldn't notice a difference, except that I thought that I preferred chopping everything up together. Oh, and start by putting in a 1/4 cup of olive oil, then check the consistency halfway through the chopping exercise. If you feel like it's too solid, not liquid-y enough, pour in another 1/4 cup of the oil. Use good oil if you have it - you can tell when you do (tried it with not-so-good, and it kind of disappointed). Stop chopping once you feel good about it.

Boil 4-5 cups of water, and salt it liberally. As in, it should taste like the ocean. Drop your linguine in and cook for 6 or 7 minutes. Drain, but reserve a bit of the pasta water. Stir the pesto into the linguine in the pot that the linguine was cooking in. If it looks perhaps a little too solid, stir in some of the cooking water, adding a little bit at a time so you know exactly when it looks right.

I've attached a blackberry photo of this to this post - quality's not that good, but at least you'll get an idea of what it should look like.

Invictus (Unconquered)

It all happened far too quickly. One minute my brother was here, and the next he was gone.

The unexpectedness of the role I now find myself in, that of a bereaved sibling passing through the 1-year anniversary of my younger brother's death, is probably what makes it so difficult to understand, even still. Brent was a (relatively) healthy, bright 26-year-old young man. He had a benign brain tumour for most of his life, with successive surgeries and radiation to try to remove it, but the surgeries and radiation were never totally successful. But Brent had lived with it ever since he could remember, and he wasn't having seizures or feeling sick. In fact, he had a new job in a new city, a partner he loved, and a passion for the wilderness.

But then there was that day when everything happened. All those years of his living seizure-free finally caught up to him - like the gods had decided that he'd had enough luck, and his time was up. None of us were there, and all we know for certain are the conclusions of the coroner and the police department. Brent had a severe seizure at his place in Ottawa, and while his mind was firing off unconnected electrical charges, disorienting him, he stumbled through the screen door to his balcony. He tripped, then fell 8 storeys, landing on a parked car. He probably died on the way to the hospital.

No one - not his girlfriend, not his parents - knew about any of this until the police came to knock on doors with the news much later that night. Even later, my own phone rang, with my partner telling me that he and my uncle were at my apartment because they had bad news. I can remember thinking, "please don't let it be my mom and dad," never thinking for a second that something had happened to my brother. And then my uncle told me what happened. And then I was an only child. And then my heart broke irrreparably.

And then the world continued turning and the media started calling and the newspapers featured stories and photos of my brother, who was mine, not theirs, to tell stories about.

I know as much as I ever will about his death. But the suddenness and the apparent callousness of it still takes my breath away. There were so many coincidences that had to be in place for this to happen the way that it did, that it makes me question the nature of the world and whatever power may govern it from on high. And that doesn't really signify, because no matter what my level of understanding is of life, the universe, and everything, I won't ever have a brother ever again.

In life, Brent was unconquerable. He was governed by an impeccable set of morals. He was opinionated and stubborn. Since he had that tumour for most of his life, he learned to compensate for whatever inabilities he had - he couldn't make choices when faced with too many options, so he eliminated the options by whatever means necessary. He didn't have a lot of short term memory, so he used discussion as a way by which he could remember important things. His language was plain and to the point - why use 3 words when 1 could do just fine? He had great friends - mostly the same group of young men that he'd hung out with since they were all in grade 1. Brent wasn't afraid of anything - not death, and certainly not life. He was admirable, inspiring, and able to look things in the eye and call them by their right name.

After one particularly invasive surgery, my brother lost the ability to walk and was partially blind. I stayed close by his room at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, going in whenever he wanted me but mostly just listening to the therapists come in to help him try to remember how to stand on two feet. He went to rehabilitation, and gained back the ability to walk while helping other kids with brain injuries study and feel better. Brent did everything his doctors told him that he probably wouldn't be able to - even dying in the way that he did was wholly unanticipated by any of his medical team. I tell myself that he died the only way anyone could have killed him.

Most people ask me about my parents. They get by the best they can, but I know now that when you lose a kid, even if there's another one left, you're never going to be really happy again. I try to fill their lives, just as I try to fill my own. I got married - they visit us often. They travel - I send them lists of things to do in the places they're going. They are my best friends. I work and I work and I work, because if I don't do something with my thoughts, they go immediately to that day that he died. I need a lot of solitude. And I know that one day maybe I won't need to work or be alone, but right now it's still so new, despite it being a year since he died. Our friends and family, as well as Brent's own friends, visit and help my parents and I feel like we're part of a community of memory, or at least that we're not alone in our grief. We thank all of you as we attempt to continue on with our lives and plans. Brent is gone, and our world will never be as good, or as hopeful, or as interesting.

I know now that the last movie Brent watched was "Invictus". Since I found that out, I turn frequently to the poem of the same name by Henley, because the words are just so close to how Brent chose to exist. I'd like to put, "I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul," somewhere that he would see it, somewhere that he would know that we remember how he lived and what he believed, but that's not possible anymore. Instead, I plan to use the indelible ink of memory, and of love, to try to live that way myself.

Invictus (William Henley)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced or cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

Squashed

My mom showed up at my place last weekend carrying an acorn squash. She said that she had found it at the Oshawa farmers' market and figured I should have one. I thanked her in a noncommital way, as I've never been particularly fond of squash, mostly due to the effort it takes to extract it from its skin. I then let it sit on my counter for a week while I considered what to do with it.

Dear readers, I roasted it.

And then I made soup.

Roasted squash is exactly 1 billion times easier to work with than a raw squash. And it imparts that beautiful smooth roasty flavour to anything you put it into, like this acorn squash and apple soup.

Acorn Squash and Apple Soup
First:
1 acorn squash, cut in half with seedy inside scooped out and discarded
Preheat oven to 450. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Lay squash halves cut side down on parchment. Put in oven and roast for 40 minutes or thereabouts.
Remove from oven. Flip squash halves over and use a spoon to scoop out the edible squash - you're scooping it away from the skin. Put edible stuff into a container and reserve. Throw away the skin - you won't need it anymore. Not like you ever did, to be honest. It just got in the way.

1-2 onions, cut up
2 tablespoons of butter (or ghee - I used ghee because I had it at hand)
2 1/2 cups of chicken stock/broth/whatever liquid you like
1 cup white wine
1 apple, peeled and cored and cut into cubes
1 thyme sprig
all that reserved roasted squash
1 tiny pinch of cinnamon
couple shakes of Tabasco sauce
kosher salt and fresh black pepper
2 tablespoons heavy cream

Melt butter/ghee in deep pot over medium heat. Add onions and cook slowly until translucent. Add apple. Stir. Add white wine - allow alcohol to simmer off, then add the chicken stock and thyme sprig. Allow all this to simmer for around 12 minutes or until apple pieces are tender. Add squash - stir till smooth-ish. Drop that tiny pinch of cinnamon in, along with the Tabasco. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for another 12 minutes or so. Remove from heat.

(seriously, remove from heat. I taking the next step while it was still on the heat, and I couldn't figure out why I was getting boiling hot soup bubbling up at me while blending. Sometimes I'm not very quick.)

Using an immersion blender if you have one, blend soup until very smooth. It'll be really, really orange. Add the cream and stir. It'll be less orange now. Serve with whatever soup accoutrements you wish - a design of cream, a dollop of sour cream, whatever you like really. It's quite mild-tasting, and makes a good starter or a pleasant lunch.