Atelier

I am sooo behind...but I am still here. Comfort food.

2010-07-31T11:10:00.000-07:00

Hello lovelies,

Yes, I half abandoned this project. It's something I do best....lol...but I read your updates and always felt bad for not kicking in. Eh...you all know how easily life gets in the way...
So here I am again, posting my recipe for Comfort food. I wanted to make something from chldhood, something that brings back memories. And when I found sour cherries at the fruit market I knew I had to make this cake that my mother used to whip up on summer weekends or anytime we went camping...A piece of childhood, what can
be more comforting? I followed the recipe from the memory cookbook, lol...

2 eggs
150g sugar
125ml oil
125g plain yogurt
300g flour
2 tsp baking powder
pan of 28x28cm covered with parchment paper
sour cherries or any other fresh fruit(apricots go really well)

Mix them up, spread the fruit on top (I sprinkled some flouron the cherries to aborb some of the juices and prevent them from sinking in the batter) and bake it at 365 for 30 min or until done.

Easy and oh so good....

Mixed vegetable soup aka Minestrone

2010-01-31T19:33:00.000-08:00

It's very cold in Toronto, - 20 something for the past couple of days. A hearty soup consumed with crusty Italian bread and a drizzle of olive oil is all I wanted and dreamt of. Minestrone is a soup made of mixed vegetables; recipe found, action!

I followed a recipe from a magazine I bought on a whim from the grocery store: Cook's Illustrated. These guys take an authentic recipe and test it and tweak it until they come to the best version. My soup turned out really, really good.

Hearty minestrone

Ingredients:

Table salt
1/2 pound dried canellini beans ( about 1 cup) rinsed and picked over
If you do not have canellini, use navy or great Northern. I used navy
1 tbs olive oil
3 ounces pancetta cut into 1/4-in pieces (you can use bacon but pancetta is better)
2 medium celery ribs cut into 1/2-in pieces
1 medium carrot cut into 1/2-in pieces
2 small onions peeled and chopped in 1/2-in pieces
1 med zucchini chopped in 1/2-in pieces
2 medium garlic cloves chopped or pressed
1/2 small head green cabbage cored and cut in 1/2-in pieces
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
8 cups water
2 cups low sodium chicken broth
1 piece Parmesan cheese rind or a good chunk of Parmesan cheese
1 bay leaf
1 1/2 cups V8 juice
1/2 cups chopped fresh basil leaves

1.Brine your beans overnight (up to 24H) in a bowl with 2 qt of water and 1 1/2 tbs salt

2. Heat oil and panceta in large Dutch oven over medium heat. Cook until the pancetta has melted and browned, 3-5 min.Add celery, carrot, onions, zucchini and cook until veggies are soft, about 5-9 min. Add the garlic, cabbage, 1/2 tsp salt, and red pepper flakes and cook until cabbage is wilted, another 2 min. Transfer veggies to a platter aside.

3.Add soaked beans, water, broth, Parmesan rind (or chunk of Parmesan cheese) and bay leaf to now empty Dutch oven and bring to boil over high heat. reduce heat and vigorously simmer until beans are tender and liquid begins to thicken, about 45-60 min.

4. Add reserved vegetables and V8 juice to pot; cook until vegetables are soft, about 15 min more. Discard bay leaf and the Parmesan rind, stir in chopped basil and season with salt and pepper. serve with olive oil and grated Parmesan.

The best remedy for a cold day!

2010-01-19T07:50:00.001-08:00

It has been a good start of 2010. I made up my mind to read more and watch less TV and it worked so far. I feel so much joy around books, so much excitement, a trepidation and curiosity unmatched by anything else. So why would I abandon going to books and quenching my thirst through them? Why would I choose to swallow mud and dirt instead?
Reading women's books has been a catalyst for me as gender studies is very dear to my heart. I also think that my education is not well rounded so I am looking to remedy that slowly throughout the year.

Non Fiction:

~~The Creative Feminine and her Discontents: Psychotherapy, Art and Destruction by Juliet Miller~~.
A book about feminine creativity and the lack of language for women's discontents. The importance of accepting aggression as a form of expression for women's psyche.
Virginia Woolf -A biography by James King. Analyzing how the author's life has influenced her literature
A Problem from Hell:America and the Age of Genocide- a book about understanding America's role in world's genocides.

Fiction:

Part of the Woolf in Winter challenge I am re reading Mrs Dalloway. Next is To the Lighthouse
~~Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoi~~
~~Persepolis by Marjan Satrapi~~ (first graphic novel)

Oh...disaster...banana pudding

2010-01-10T19:59:00.000-08:00

It was bound to happen! I mean, with all the nice recipes you all make, something fatal and bad was bound to happen! And it happened to me. Here is my story:

I had over riped bananas in the fruit basket. Five of them. Black and spotty and ready to take their last breath.
And I wanted to make something sweet AND soft, since I missed the recipe challenge from last week. And I am sick again with the flu, so I wanted to make something, something sweet and easy.
I did not find anything in my cookbooks. Nothing caught my eye. So I looked online and I found this old recipe from the cookbook of a Jewish women collective from the 1912. Now who does not like a piece of history? You take 3 egg yolks, mix them lightly with 3 tsp of sugar, add 1 pint of cream and bake in a pan of water. I baked and I baked, long past the indicated 35 minutes, but the thing was still wobbly and liquidish. So I baked three times the time. Took it out, sliced bananas on top and made the meringue!
Le meringue senor seemed fine to me and I started to entertain my imagination with dreams of sweet and rich crunchy banana goodness on my tongue.
I took the 3 egg whites, combined with 5 tbs of sugar then on top it went and in the oven. Some miracle was supposed to happen in there, the meringue would grow and puff and resplendence in the heat(now it's true, I had no idea what temperature I have to put it at so I kinda of played with the knob). Mine did not. It raised a bit and it browned, but it fell flask and pitiful whn I took it out from the oven.Look at it, a slimy matter ready for an alien incubation >
Oh dear sisters, my pain is not over....I could have ignored the lack of beauty but I could not get past the taste...the pudding part was all right, but the bananas were black and semi rotten...and the meringue started to sweat on top of the bananas and the pudding...not pretty my dears, not pretty. Well, I took a bite...my hubby ate 2 spoon fulls...he commented that it is a "last on earth sort of dessert and would you eat it if it was"? I am not sure...But what I am sure of is that be it from the 1912 and all, it should have stayed there than come and spoil my Sunday afternoon and my soft AND sweet cooking challenge!!!

2010 resolutions

2010-01-03T17:58:00.000-08:00

What is a new year without resolutions? I am not going to label mine as the list of intentions, because I do not want to get too anxious if I do not make it...

1. Read more. I have already joined a blog challenge- Women Unbound and plan to read many books on feminism and gender studies. First book finished in 2010:
Feminine Creativity and Its Discontents- Psychotherapy, Art and Destruction by Juliet Miller
Currently reading:
Virginia Woolf by James King and Design Your Life -the Pleasures and Dangers of Everyday Things by Elen and Julia Lupton

2. Loose 20 pounds. Really, with the love for food that I have and the weekly challenges that I follow online, this will be an interesting goal to accomplish. But it has been on my list for way too long and frankly, I am tired of whining about it. So it has to happen.

3.Take more time to walk around the city and live life as if I were on vacation

4. Not procrastinate so much. Attempt to pay my bills on time and to stop piling them up in inhumane mounds on my desk.

5. Go to the cinema more.

and if I come up with more I'll write more.

Christmas cooking

2009-12-27T17:40:00.001-08:00

It was a great week of cooking, holiday spirit, eating and resting...The LCBO in Ontario (Liquor Control Board Ontario- the authorized store for alcohol) puts out a great magazine with recipes, wine pairing suggestions and food articles. Their recipes are great, and I collect my magazine every time I get the chance. They had a 2009 holidays edition this winter which brimmed with wonderful recipes and menu suggestions for the holidays. I made a couple of recipes from it, as I wanted to have a modern twist on the Christmas tradition and not make the same recipes every year. However, what is Christmas without comfort traditional food? So I had to make Romanian cabbage rolls, " sarmale". When the house fills with the smell coming from the oven, I am transported to a time and place when me and my sister decorated the Christmas tree while mom cooked all kinds of things from the pig my grandma had raised for a whole year in the countryside...It's all store bought and modern now, but these traditions can not be forgotten and I co mitt to keeping them alive as long as I can.
Christmas Eve: Romanian food- Cabbage Rolls and Polenta served with hot peppers. Awesome!

Christmas day dinner: Rosemary and Mustard Crust Prime Rib Roast with Potatoes and Green Beans with Hazelnuts

Desert for all days: Salted Macadamia Orange Chocolate Bars

and Gingerbread Cake with Lemon Ice cream served with a shot of chilled Ice Wine

In between meals,store bought Polish sausages, cheese, olives, fish and lots and lots of chocolate...ahhh...and Fireside Martinis with Baileys! lol

Recipe for Salted Orange Macadamia and Chocolate Squares:

Crust:
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter

Put everything together in a food processor or crumb it by hand. The dough will not not come together, it will be crumbly. Preheat the oven to 350. Grease and put parchment paper in a square pan of 8 inch. Press dough in the pan and bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Take out and let cool while you prepare the filling.

Filling:
2 large eggs
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 tbs finely grated orange zest
1tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup roasted and salted macadamia nuts(I used cashews)
1 cup chocolate chips or chunks (chunks are so much better)
1 tsp Maldon sea salt flakes (I just used Kosher salt)
Whisk the wet ingredients, add the nuts and chocolate chunks and coat them nicely, spread over the cooled dough and bake in the oven for 25 minutes, until brown and bubbling. Cool completely before chilling, at least 2 hours, then slice into squares. Best served at room temperature but they can be refrigerated for up to 5 days.

We LOVED these cookies and I just think they will be in our small family Christmas baking tradition from now on.

Koftas, tzatziki and beet salad(salata pantzari)

2009-12-20T18:16:00.000-08:00

I love Greek food but I do not have a Greek cookbook...I have however a Mezze book, appetizers from the Mediterranean world. Armed with it, I proceeded at making Lamb and Beef Koftas. They might not be 100% Greek, as a a matter of fact they had a pronounced Middle Eastern taste, but they were great! And it's so hard to differentiate cuisines from countries that share the same cultural and geographical space...

Ingredients:

1 cup of freshly ground beef
1/2 cup ground lamb
1/2 onion grated
2 tbs fresh parsley
1 garlic clove smashed
1 ts cumin
1/4 ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp hot paprika
salt
pepper
cayenne pepper

We grilled them on the BBQ despite the -10 or so degrees...Ah, Canada!

Then I made the tzatziki sauce, which seemed greatly represented with all the bloggers, and a beet salad to top it all.

The beet salad:

900 g raw beets
4 tbs olive oil
1 1/2 red wine vinegar
2 garlic cloves mashed
2 scallions
coarse salt, pepper

Boil the beets, skin them and chop or slice. Make the marinade and toss it in the beets, leave in the fridge for 1 H to infuse.

Final creation:

I love these challenges. I am always the last to post but I always look forward to my Sundays afternoon in the kitchen trying to complete the challenge and the frantic blogging that ensues....

Getting ready for Christmas!!!! I was a good girl this year, wonder what Santa has in the bag for me!

2009-12-08T19:00:00.000-08:00

Yes, I am missing in action...No, I did not forget the cookbook challenge, as a matter of fact we have been cooking up a storm in our house for the past weeks...But unlike before, my work is crazily, insanely, headachy busy...and that means less time for writing and other entertainment geared endeavours....
However, I have been able to cook for the hors d'oeuvre theme. I assumed from the beginning that I will be making appetizers and I actually got pretty excited because I never make appetizers and if it was me I would only eat appetizers for a meal...I am intrigued by their miniature status yet intricate tastes, little explosions of taste and tantalizing what's to come in the mouth....
My dish had nothing of the above characteristics. As a matter of fact, even the lilliputian characteristic was missing.But not the taste- the Green Plantain Patties( empanadas de verde) were very, very good...They are an Ecuadorian appetizer and I made them from a cookbook called "Tasting Diversity- A Celebration of Immigrant Women and their Cooking". I read this book, I read the stories of women who came to Canada from all corners of the worlds but never cooked anything from it. This was a first and it was good...

You need:

4 green plantains
salt to taste
250 g ground beef or chicken
1/2 onion diced
1 carrot diced
1tbs chopped fresh parsley
250 g cooked peas
1 boiled egg, diced
oil for frying

Boil the plantains in salted water until they are soft. Remove from water and mash them like potatoes. (I put them in a blender and because the stupid thing broke on me I ended up adding some water to make the mixture easier to blend. Big Mistake read why below...)Keep in a warm oven.

Fry the meat in some oil, add the rest of the ingredients and coat them nicely, add salt, pepper. Take the plantain mash out and put it in between parchment papers, roll with a pin. This is where it got very tricky. Because ( I assume) of the added water, the mash was very sticky and it was impossible to work with, let alone shape...This is where I started adding some flour, until it got easier to work with...Cut in rounds, put the meat mixture in the middle, fold in two and fry in oil.
I made some quick chimichuri on the side (chopped fresh cilantro, lime juice, vinegar, red onion, salt and olive oil) and it went really well with the empanadas...

The taste took me right back to memories of Ecuador and the trip to South America I took a couple of years ago...

Muy rico!

2009-11-29T21:44:00.001-08:00

इंडियन फ़ास्ट (Indian Feast)

All right...I do not know how ya'll tackle these challenges but I end up cooking millions of recipes in my head before going into the kitchen and making 1 recipe for the blog...so I started my week with dreams of Indian food and spices, perusing the 2 cookbooks that I have, not being able to decide on one. I had my Indian friends over one night and I remember them looking at my cookbooks and being of the opinion that the recipes are not quite accurate....geared more to the North American palate...so with that in mind, I went to the library the other day and found "Mango and Curry Leaves", a beautiful book with photos and recipes from travels in the Subcontinent. My plan was to make one recipe from one of my cookbooks (just a generic "Best Indian" sort of book) and one from the beautiful library book. While this might sound a bit like cheating, I had an ulterior motive: I wanted to compare the quality of the recipe...I kept thinking since the beginning of this challenge that this will be a good way to test my cookbooks...and at the end, only those books that deserve to stay will burden my already bent shelf...My reward for going through this challenge will be new cookbooks, only now I want to buy the best of the bunch and I might even ask you for opinion along the way...
Enough blabbing, back to Indian food.

I made: Chapatis and Roadside Cafe Chicken from the Mango and Curry Leaves book and
Eggplant curry from the generic Best Indian Meals book. I can report that the chicken was amazing. The chapatis were rock hard but only because I overcooked them, to my husband's exasperation who kept warning me about that....well....
The eggplant curry was so, so...just like the rest of the recipes I cooked from that book...These are my pics:
Chapatis dough waiting to be set in the grilling pan

Small eggplants used for the curry:

and the final meal:

This is the recipe for the chicken since it was really delicious:

4-6 chicken drumsticks
1tbs vegetable oil, raw sesame or peanut oil
2 tbs ghee
1 1/4 cup of grated onions
2 tsp garlic paste
1 tsp ginger paste
cinnamon stick
2 bay leaves
1 tsp Bengali spice (scant 1/4 tsp of each black mustard, fennel, cumin, nigella seeds and fenugreek). I did not have this but I had some chicken masala mix bout from a Little India market last week which had most of the above ingredients, so I added that
2 whole cloves or a generous pinch of ground cloves
1ts ground coriander
4 dried red chillies
about 1 1/2 cups water
1 tsp salt and 1 tsp sugar.

You envision this: melt the ghee and oil, add the spices and warm them up , add the ginger and garlic paste- brown them a bit, add the onions until they get yellow. In the meantime chop the drumsticks in 3 parts each and rinse in cold water(to make sure there is no bone fragments left). add to the mixture and simmer for 30 minutes until the chicken is cooked and tender.

Indian meal served!

Yours truly.

The Cookbook Challenge- week 1 Citrus

2009-11-22T19:25:00.000-08:00

Well, I had so many ideas when I signed up for this challenge. I wanted to cook so many recipes...and then I got the flu. Not really bad, but still, quite the annoying, bed bound, dizzy head kind of flu that leaves you tired and cranky and speaking in a nasal voice... I consumed oranges and grapefruit and lemons with hot tea for 3 days, so I guess that could qualify for a different citrus themed kind of challenge...
Today, in the 12'th hour, feeling a bit better but on a new wave of stuffiness that left me taste and scent disabled, I managed to pull one recipe out of the "Mother and Daughter Jewish Cooking: by Evelyn Rose and Judi Rose. I never used this book before and was quite excited to give it a try. I made the Halibut in a Velvet Lemon Sauce. It was fairly simple, but I am not be able to tell you how it tastes because I am supposed to let it marinate in the fridge for 24 H after cooking. Without further delay, here is the recipe:

The fish ( 1 1/2 to 2 pounds of halibut) gets poached in water(2 cups, 1 sliced onion, salt, 1/4 cup of sugar). After that, the fish is transported on a plate to cool down ( I totally over poached it and I could hear Chef Ramsey in my head, yelling at me and calling me a stupid cow for not being able to poach the stupid vanilla halibut). Anyways, on the plate it went and I continued boiling the poachy sauce for another 3 minutes or so.
In a bowl, I mixed 2 tsp of corn starch with a drop of cold water, the juice of 1 lemon and 2 large eggs( I only had 1, so I put less liquid). Then I mixed in the pouchy sauce and whisked it a bit. On low heat I warmed up the sauce until it became custard consistency. Watch the heat as the eggs tend to curdle fast. And the sauce went over the fish and it's supposed to stay in the fridge until tomorrow.

In the picture it looks like a recipe from the 50's cookbooks, so that in a way is far from appetizing but will report on the taste tomorrow...if I get my taste buds back that is...

I am excited for the Indian challenge and I spent a good couple of hours with friends in Little India in Toronto today...we restaurant hopped and bought many spices for the cupboard! I am tempted to make it a week long Indian extravaganza because we absolutely LOVe Indian food and could eat it every day. Will see where my enthusiasm ends...

On to new horizons!

Yours truly.

My Food Trail - A Melbourne girl's food blog: The Cookbook Challenge starts next week 16/11/09

2009-11-17T08:09:00.000-08:00

My Food Trail - A Melbourne girl's food blog: The Cookbook Challenge starts next week 16/11/09

2009-11-16T13:48:00.000-08:00

The hassles of being an adult, of juggling work and dreams, ideas and actions...finding the time, finding the inspiration, finding the energy...always, every moment of the day a constant battle. Luxury or necessity?

I like knitting, sewing, reading, baking...when I do one I feel guilty for abandoning the other. I envy discipline and structure yet I crumble under the pressure of due dates and do everything in my power to avoid something that has been imposed on me or carries the imperative of "NOW". I am longing for slowness, for carelessness but can we find these in our busy urban lives? And I am chronically aware of the fact that my small delicate family of two does not impose any constraints on me...what is to come when the family grows larger?

In an attempt to reach within and live slowly, I decided to bake bread and a complicated cake for our family Slava this past weekend. Slava is a Serbian tradition that celebrates the family's patron saint in our case Damian and Cosmos. They were healers, doctors and we celebrate them every year on Nov 14. This is my first official Slava as I am now sharing my husband's tradition....I have contemplated the meaning of these saints and whether or not I could link their presence to my history. We share something in common- the healing profession in a larger sense. When you look for meaning I think you are bound to find one.

The bread was a semi disaster but I know what my error is and therefore feel at peace. The cake was acceptable in looks but tasty in what matters, so no complains there...I am leaving you with a picture.

I am reading a book on writing these days:" Writing Down the Bones". It challenges you to write with Zen attitude, to be fearless and attempt to deconstruct ideas and language structures in an attempt to find the inner voice and poetry. I am reading it slowly and practicing the exercises and have noticed a difference if not in the quality of my writing but in the thinking process...it's like a shy fluttering of the wings, wings you were until recently unaware of...trying to see if they could support you, merely thinking they could , merely even acknowledging your power to do so....I have a long road in front of me and I am even afraid to have any emotion about it. For now I prefer to simply not think about it...

2009-10-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

My foray into the world of blogging....I want to write. This is not something I decided upon waking up in the morning and feeling loss at the knowledge that I will be spending another day doing things I do not like (not all of them, but a significant part)....
Oh no...it's something I held in my heart for a while now, thinking about it, wondering if I could, doubting myself like a decent human being that I am...
No more asking, no more wondering. I am going to start writing here and now, even if it is only for the most critical judge and the most feared public- myself.
I am not sure what I am going to write about but that is a minor complication...I will look for words, I will crawl to them, I will scrape them from the ceiling of my mouth onto the paper... Because there is a well in me that needs filling and I have nothing but words to pour in it.