Kitchen Chick

Chickpeas Cooked in Tea

The last Monday in May is Memorial Day in the US. It's the time for beaches, camping, and BBQs. Our friends Kristen and Jack hosted a potluck BBQ. I whipped up a batch of chocolate chip and apricot cookies, and Joe said, "Everyone brings desserts. Can we bring something with protein in it? How about chickpeas?" It's 12:30. The BBQ starts at 1pm. I wracked my brain and my cookbooks for something easy that doesn't require too many fresh ingredients (because we need to go shopping).

Chickpeas Cooked in Tea
from Quick & Easy Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey

The original recipe uses cilantro, but I think mint is even better.

2 cans 19 oz each of chickpeas
1/4 C vegetable oil
generous pinch of asafetida (optional)
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 medium onion (about 6 oz), chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1/4 heaped C chopped canned tomatoes (or 1/2 C raw)
2 tsp grated ginger
1 1/4 C prepared black tea
1 to 2 hot green chilies, sliced into thin rings
1 tsp salt
2 tsp ground toasted cumin seeds
1 tsp garam masala
3 to 4 Tbs coarsely fresh cilantro or mint.
(If using dried herbs, use half as much)
1 Tbs lemon juice

Drain the chickpeas, rinse with water and set aside to drain.

If necessary, toast and grind cumin seeds (the second listing of cumin only).

Heat oil over medium high heat. Add asafetida. Let sizzle for a second. Add cumin seeds let sizzle for 15 seconds. Add onion. Stir and fry until onion edges turn brown. Add garlic. Stir and fry until it turns golden. Add tomatoes. Stir and cook until they turn dark and thick. Add ginger and stir. Add chickpeas and remaining ingredients. Bring to simmer. Lower heat and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes, stirring now and then.

Peller Estates (Canda part 4)

After breakfast, we took off to the Peller Estates Winery. The Niagara Escarpment has a micro climate that is ideal for growing gapes, and the area specializes in creating icewine. To make icewine, the growers wait until the grapes have frozen on the vine before picking them, and then the grapes are pressed while still frozen. The resulting wine is very sweet and ideal for serving with desserts (or as the dessert). We tasted three of Peller's icewines, and came away with bottles of their Cabernet Franc (a red icewine!) and Riseling icewines. The Vidal was too sweet for our tastes.

Living so close to Ontario, I think of icewine as something that is fairly easy to get, but it is apparently rare and expensive in other parts of the world. Large numbers of Japanese tourists finance their trips abroad by coming to Niagara-on-the-Lake, buying up bottles of icewine, and reselling them at home for up to $300/bottle Canadian!

Breakfast at Wheaten Manor (Canada part 3)

Leo and Zenobia Charvat run the delightful Wheaten Manor Bed & Breakfast in Niagara-on-the-Lake.  The house was built specifically to be a B&B.  The guest quarters are in the front half of the house, with a dining room and sitting room and front veranda for guest use.  The bedrooms all have their own baths.  It's a very pleasing arrangement, but it is Leo's breakfasts and his willingness to go to the extra mile (or, rather, kilometer — it's Canada, afterall) to help his guests that keep people coming back year after year.

Leo is an Austrian trained chef.  After many years in the restaurant business, this B&B is his "half-retirement."  He keeps a rotating schedule of 30 different breakfast menus.  This year we enjoyed...

 
A first course of fresh strawberries mixed with yogurt and garnished with mint from Leo's gardens.

  A second course of a Eggs Toscany with grilled tomatoes and goat cheese and pan fried potatoes garnished with oregano from Leo's garden.

A third course of butterscotch scones with anis garnish.

Oh wow, yum.   

The Wheaton Manor guest dining room.

I don't like to use flash.  First off, direct flash is harsh, and it's hard to avoid reflecting it directly back into the camera.  Second, I think it's rude and distracting to the other guests sharing the table, who already had to watch the "weird woman" take pictures of her food.  So the colors are off, though I used my in-expert photoshop skills to improve them a bit.

It's nice to own 50,000,000...

...of something besides one's own germs.

I bought 50 million beneficial nematodes. 50 Million. Wow. Just so you know, 50 million nematodes can fit into a small yellow mailing envelope, with plenty of room left over for a sheet of instructions.

Tonight I sprayed 25 million of the buggers in my garden and yard. (Joe: "Hey, before you go spraying those outside, I want to greet each one personally.") Why? To eat the larvae of cutworms, maggots, japanese beetles, weevils, and other such pests. Not because they've been especially damaging to my tomatoes or other vegetables (they haven't, actually, at least not yet), but because if the larvae are gone, then the moles will go away and hunt for food elsewhere. And if the moles are gone, then my vegetables will be so much happier, and if my vegetables are happy, then I will have a bountiful crop to cook wonderful food with.

Now I just have to do something about those rabbits. Hasenpfeffer, anyone?

Purple Grape Chocolate Trifle (Canada Part 2)

Imagine, if you will, a layer of purple grape jello, with a scent reminiscent of that artificial sickly sweet Faygo grape smell. Spread a layer of chocolate pudding over the jello, and a nice thick layer of whipped cream over the chocolate. Serve unlabled to unsuspecting customers.

"It belongs in the Monster Manual," Joe says.

It'd also be right at home in the Gallery of Regrettable Food.

It could have been worse. It could have had celery seed in it.

We set aside our purple monstrosities and preserved our hope — we knew we would be having breakfast at Wheaten Manor, afterall. A siren call if ever there was one.

An Inauspicious Beginning, or the Worst Meal Ever (Canada part 1)

Canadian roadside restaurants are to be avoided at all costs. No offense meant to Canadians, but... ewww! McDonald's would have been better.

Joe and I got off to a late start, and so we didn't want to waste the time at a sit-down restaurant. I declared that we would arrive at the B&B before midnight, so "fast" was an important criteria. We stopped at one of those large gas station-restaurant-truck stops somewhere near London, Ontario. Joe says to me, "I bet you $20 dollars that this will be the worst food we've eaten in two years."

Uh, yeah, right. "You don't understand," he explained. "Canadian roadside restaurants are bad." I look at him doubtfully, but I don't take up the bet. The restaurant boasted a buffet. Perfect. Fast, but not fast food chain foodstuff. We look it over. A small selection, but otherwise very similar looking to the U.S. Old Country Buffet chain. Ham, fish, battered shrimp, a selection of vegetables, rolls, salad bar, and dessert bar. How bad can it be?

We dive into the food. Broiled fish for me, ham for Joe. Side dishes, gravy.

I have never tasted such awful fish as I had that night. In fact, "tasted" is the wrong word because there was no taste. It was like eating boiled water with texture. It must take some special skill to make fish taste like boiled water. And the gravy.... I had to choose between dark and light for my mashed potatoes. (Beef and chicken gravy?) I chose the one more people before me had choosen. It had decidedly strong celery-aftertaste. This was less surprising when I saw that the coleslaw was heavily spiced with celery seed. Joe said the ham was on the mushy side, but edible. I'm particular about ham, so I passed on that. The boiled vegetables looked less than appealing, so I left them alone. I ended up eating a big plate of breaded shrimp, the kind that comes out of a big frozen bag, until I got worried that the shrimp cocktail sauce may have been sitting out too long.

But that was nothing compared to the dessert. Most of them were old and dried out — not surprising given that the buffet was near to closing down. But one was very special. It didn't have a name, so I will name it: Purple Grape Chocolate Trifle. And it deserves a post of its own... (coming soon)

Kitchen Chick Goes to Canada

Joe and I carted ourselves off to Canada for the weekend. We caught Pygmalion at the Shaw Festival at Niagara-On-The-Lake, then circled Lake Ontario for a stop in Toronto. Oh baby, the food. Some of the highlights include a fabulous breakfast at the Wheaton Manor B&B (Proprietor Leo Charvat is an Austrian-trained chef), lunch at "The Rest" in Niagara-On-The-Lake, Niagara icewine, and unforgettable dim sum at Lai Wah Heen in Toronto.

And of course the worst meal we've eaten in two years (and probably longer).

Photos and commentary coming soon.

Ma Po Tofu

Oh yeah, ma po tofu. Sprinkled with the infamous banned Szechuan Peppercorns, toasted and ground. This is only the second, of many, ma po recipes that I have that actually lists szechuan peppercorns as an ingredient and it comes from Land of Plenty. This fabulous cookbook was a gift my Joe's sister, who lives in England and frequently gives us UK-published cookbooks. This one happens to also be available in the US. The wonderful thing about newer Chinese cookbooks is that because it's so much easier to find authentic ingredients, cookbook authors aren't afraid to require them and the recipes, as a result, are so much more authentic. The odd thing is, Szechuan peppercorns, a key ingredient in Szechuan cooking, were banned in the US in May 2002, a year before this cookbook made its US debut. Lucky me, I still have some. They give Szechuan dishes a distinctive and unique flavor that can't be duplicated with other ingredients.

The manager of the Chinese grocery store we shop at told us that the ban had to do with too much szechuan peppercorns adversely affecting the nervous system. Okay, that's not how he said it, but I think that's what he meant. It sounded somewhat unreal, but health departments have been known to ban foods and preparation processes for less good reasons. A quick Internet search shows that Szechuan peppercorns were banned because they carry a citrus canker, which could devastate the Florida and California citrus crops. Well, okay. But I live in Michigan. I want my peppercorns.

Circular Hotdogs

I'm sitting here at work and my stomach is growling. It's 11:10 am. What the heck? I ate breakfast. A scrambled egg, a small bowl of cereal, and a hotdog. Yes, a hotdog. You see, I need to eat protein for breakfast and lunch, otherwise I practically pass out during the day. Yesterday, I foolishly ate pizza and about half a donut for lunch, and around 3pm, sure enough, I had the hardest time keeping my eyes open. This is not a good thing when you're taking a class from one of the people who has the ability to give or deny new work contracts.

Anyway, back to the hotdog for breakfast. I used a trick I learned from an old children's cookbook and made a circular hotdog. You take a hotdog, cut about 2/3 through through the dog about 1 cm apart, down the length of the dog. Then cook it under a broiler on a tray. Flip once to get both sides. The hotdog bends at the cuts, and you end up with a circular hotdog. High kid appeal. I was going to share a picture, but Joe said that it was repulsive and would scare people off and that I should instead post a picture of the ma po tofu I made last night. It's a hotdog! Okay, so it's not in its usual straight hotdog shape, but it's still just a hotdog. Well, I've spared the world a picture of a circular hotdog. Though you all are free to try this food experiment for yourselves.

July 5, 2004
By special request, a picture of the cooked circular hotdog:

Where's Kitchen Chick?

I've been experiencing an excess of life. Although it's kept me too busy to post, it hasn't prevented me from cooking. A short list of some of the dishes I've cooked over the past week...

Apricot and chocolate chip cookies
Orange flavored shortbread cookies dipped in chocolate
Goan fish curry
Kung pao chicken
Ma Po Tofu
Lamb kababs and harrisa
Tagine of chicken with apricots and olives
Salmon burgers
Oatmeal with raspberries