Lemon Blueberry Muffins

I can recall many a bygone summer punctuated by berry picking. Just a stone’s throw from the edge of Vancouver proper unfolds seemingly endless opportunities to pick your own fruit. Nearly any berry you could want, you can pick, if the time is right. As the thermometer rises, and the sun does its magic, the region swells with fruit, ripened and ready to be plucked by the adventurous, the frugal and sometimes the unwilling. (The unwilling being myself and my niece Justine, who is only 5 years younger than me.)

As kids, we hated it, dreaded it.

The car ride: too hot with bare legs sticking to the seats, and seat belt buckle burns. The farms themselves: there was always a dodgy looking old guy or a ferocious seeming dog. The blazing sun: high sun, sweltering down on us, shoulders and backs peeling despite the slick of sunscreen and the embarrassingly wide brimmed hats. The bugs: at every turn there were spider webs to get ensnared in, sometimes with spiders. Or grasshoppers whizzing and clicking and zipping up the leg of your shorts. Or snakes. The reach: we were kids so we were short (we still are) so leaning into brambles, bushes and rows upon rows of shrubbery to reach up-high clusters of berries meant falling into them, crushing your plastic ice cream pail, losing your hat, likely swallowing a spider and getting leapt upon by any manner of creature. The work: this was hard labour, man. Minutes dragged by, hours felt like days and had we not been so creeped out by the flying, biting stinging things we would have just laid down under the bushes and waited for it to be done.

However did we make it through?

In reality it was never as bad as we remembered.Those car rides were filled with games of 20 questions, rock paper scissors and singing along to the radio. The farms were a change of pace from our city homes and the dogs, although full of bark, were never filled with bite. And the sun? We lived for midday sun. Justine would turn an impressive deep caramel and I would freckle — peeling sunburns and comparing tan lines was all part of the fun. The bugs were bad, the snakes were thrilling and while the grown ups were rows away from us, chatting, steadily filling their pails, we could be rambunctious, squealing at the sight of a wasp, chasing a snake, or poking spiders’ webs with sticks, only to shriek and recoil if they moved. Was it work? Not at all, it was a day outside with all the berries we could possibly eat.

As an adult, I now appreciate the work of picking berries, whether it’s me who picks them, or whether I just pick them up at the market. Either way, I have a better perspective on what it takes for local farmers to grow, produce, harvest, and sell their fruit. I’m also no longer “unwilling” to stop by a u-pick and fill an old ice cream pail or two on a sunny weekend afternoon. What changed? Well, now I get to do things with the pickings. Jams, tarts, cereal toppers, or muffins. The culinary options abound with fresh, seasonal fruit. It’s a short season, we may as well get all of it that we can – even if that means battling the grasshoppers, sidestepping snakes or even feeling like a kid again.

Lemon Blueberry Muffins

Since these little gems are not made by the “muffin method” they have a more classically cake-like crumb to them and they transform into loaf very well. Make this recipe as 2 loaves, 24 muffins or 1 loaf and 12 muffins.

preheat oven to 350°

1-3/4 C all purpose flour

2 Tbsp baking powder

a scant 1/8 tsp nutmeg (just a little pinch)

1/4 tsp salt

1 C yoghurt

2 Tbsp lemon juice

1 Tbsp vanilla

zest of 2 lemons, finely grated

1/2 C butter or margarine

1 C sugar

3 eggs, beaten

1 -1/2 C fresh blueberries

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, salt, baking powder and nutmeg. Set aside. In a small bowl, mix the yoghurt, lemon juice and vanilla together. Set aside. Cream together the butter, lemon zest and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the beaten eggs one at a time. Once the eggs are incorporated, mix in one third of the flour mixture then one half of the yoghurt. Repeat, alternating until all the flour and yoghurt mixtures are blended. Carefully fold in the blueberries. Scrape the batter into prepared (greased and floured) loaf tins or into muffin pans.

For loaves, bake for 60 minutes or until a toothpick or skewer comes out clean. For muffins, bake 20-22 minutes.

Allow to cool in the pan 5 minutes before turning out onto wire cooling rack.

Quinoa Pilaf with Feta

I’ve been in a bit of a cooking rut. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I really notice it. Cooking is so much fun and is such a great creative outlet, that when I hit a dry spell, it’s rather uncomfortable. Luckily, it feels as though the fog is lifting, and I’m re-invigorating my creative juices and to the relief of those I feed, I’m busting out some new material.

But enough about that. We’ve touched on quinoa here a few times, so let’s talk pilaf. We’ve all been to a wedding or other catered buffet type event and come across a warming tray filled with savoury-looking rice with peas (and possibly tiny cubes of carrot or niblet corn) in it labelled “rice pilaf”. Most commonly made with rice, and most recognizably a Middle Eastern dish (and that label alone encompasses a huge variety of cuisines), pilafs, by many names and variations, are part of a great number of cultures’ menus. At the very simplest, pilaf, is a grain dish, cooked in a flavoured liquid like stock or broth, with added ingredients like nuts, fruit, meat, herbs or vegetables.

The beauty of dishes like this, is that the combinations are endless and the rules for what to use essentially don’t exist. Don’t have dried cherries, but you do have dried cranberries? Use them! Out of red onion, but your garden is over run with scallions? Go for it. No quinoa in the cupboard? Do it with rice instead. Mix and match, play around and devise your own combinations of flavours. Myself, I like to keep the fruit tart and not too sweet and I am a nut for fresh herbs, so I like a lot of basil and mint in this dish. But you may not like fresh mint, you might prefer parsley. And that’s okay. So much of the enjoyment of cooking, and one’s development as a home cook comes from experimentation. With a dish like rice or quinoa pilaf you honestly, can’t go wrong, I promise. Even your “worst” will still be edible. So get to chopping and tasting and stirring and play creatively with this dish. Let me know how it goes in the comment section, I’d love to hear what you come up with, or what you think you might try. Enjoy!

Quinoa Pilaf with Feta

serves 4 

1 C quinoa

1 1/2 C chicken or vegetable stock

1/2 C dry white wine*

8 stalks of asparagus, trimmed and julienned

1/2 a medium sized red onion, thinly sliced and rinced

1/2 C toasted pecans, chopped

1/2 C dried cherries, chopped

3/4 C feta cheese, crumbled

2 small cloves of garlic, minced or grated

grated zest of 1/2 a lemon

1/4 C  mixed basil and mint leaves, julienned

juice of a lemon

2 Tbsp olive oil

sea salt and pepper to taste

*if you don’t wish to use wine, by all means, substitute it with more stock or water.

Bring the stock and wine to a boil in a small saucepan. Once boiling, add the quinoa and stir. Reduce the heat to minimum and cook, undisturbed, for 15 minutes.

Remove from heat, stir and move the quinoa to a large bowl. Stir well to help cool the quinoa, then set aside.

Prepare other ingredients and add to the cooled quinoa. Stir well to incorporate everything together. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour before serving.

Roasted Vegetable Gazpacho

The passionate cooking style of the Mediterranean is a favourite of mine. There’s something about the rustic, yet refined combinations of fresh ingredients that speaks to a certain pace of life and spirit of people. I admire the gusto of Mediterranean cooking, but more than the gusto, I appreciate the restraint. I appreciate how almost limitless the palate is and how carefully both its most prominent and most humble dishes unfold. What may seem like a simple, even one dimensional dish is undoubtedly a triumph of well constructed flavours, textures and temperatures.

I have been trying for awhile now to cook with some restraint. This is not to say that I don’t still experiment at almost any chance I get, but I have learned to more carefully consider combinations of flavours and textures and make each choice more meaningful so that every part of a dish makes sense. That is a hard thing to do when you are an excitable cook and you want to toss things together and throw caution to the wind. I feel as though this gazpacho is an exercise in such restraint. How I wanted to toss in some anchovy, some hot chilies, olives, capers, and just pack this quiet soup with a cacophony of flavours. But I held back. I tasted carefully, building the flavours in a sensible manner and paying attention to that ever-needed balance of sweet, sour, and salt. I did take one major liberty: I did not thicken the soup with bread, as is traditional. I have never found that this gazpacho needs thickening. In fact, it often needs some dilution, either with water or wine to bring it to a pleasant, soup-like consistency. Is it wholly traditional? No, but it has a magically cooling essence to it and makes a delightful starter to a summer supper. In fact, you can skip the salad, since this is essentially salad in liquid form.

Roasted Vegetable Gazpacho

makes enough for 6 

6 ripe tomatoes

3 bell peppers, halved and seeded

1 small red onion, peeled

3 cloves of garlic

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 Tbsp honey

1/4 tsp smoked paprika

1/2 English cucumber, cut into small chunks

1/4 C fresh parsley leaves

1/4 C fresh basil leaves

sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Grill or roast the tomatoes, peppers, onion and garlic. Once they are charred and blistered, set them in a bowl and cover with cling wrap to seal. Leave them for 10 minutes to sweat and cool slightly. While still warm, pull off the skins and discard. With the tomatoes, remove as much of the seeds as possible. Now your roasted vegetables are ready to be used.

Place all ingredients in a food processor or blender and whiz them until smooth. If using a blender be careful — hot liquids will build up steam pressure, so take care when removing the lid.

Taste the gazpacho, check for seasoning. if it seems too thick,  continue to blend it, adding water a few teaspoons at a time until it reaches your desired consistency. Allow to cool significantly before refrigerating. Serve cold with bread for dunking.

Mini (vegan) Chocolate Cupcakes

I have never been a morning person. I religiously hit snooze at least 4-6 times every morning and the only way to get myself moving is to quite literally leap from the bed and get straight into the shower. The shower must then be followed by coffee. Only then, well snoozed, braced for the day by hot water and caffeine, do I really feel like myself and feel prepared for the day. It may seem crazy then, that I also don’t really like to sleep in very late. It’s less about the time, and more about the pace. If I can snooze and drift in and out of sleep for awhile and languish in bed until I’m restless, I don’t mind getting up early. On days that I am not at work, like weekends or vacations (like this week) I feel a nagging sense of “wasting the day” if I am in bed past 8:30 or 9 o’clock. Gone are the days where sleeping until 11 was a normal weekend occurrence. I must be getting older.

I find on days like today, when there is nowhere that I need to be, and I know that everyone else in the house is either off to work or school or will sleep later than me, that the mornings can be a very lovely time of day. The term “me time” gets tossed around a lot but we all need it; time to recharge our batteries, think without being interrupted and move at our own pace. This particular morning I awoke at 4:23 am due to horrendous sinus congestion. After getting up and dealing with that, I went back to bed, checked my email, jumped on Twitter and realized that I was surprisingly awake for such an unreasonable hour.

Since going back to sleep all stuffed up seemed impossible and I was almost feeling, dare I say, chipper, I slipped away from the bedroom, cats in tow, and put on the kettle and soon had the French press brewing. (If I have nowhere to be, I can often postpone the shower and skip straight to the coffee with no ill affects.) Sitting on the couch with coffee, my leg being deftly massaged by a small cat I decided that baking up something for breakfast would be nice. In step with the unseasonably cold and drab weather that we have returned to, I thought of pumpkin loaf. Once my cup of coffee was done and the cat had grown bored of me, I set off back to the kitchen and found the requisite can of pumpkin puree, but alas … no eggs.  Now, had this been 10 am, 2 pm, 7 pm, etc. I might have tinkered and tweaked a pumpkin loaf to not include eggs, but since it was only quarter past 5 at that point, I abandoned the pumpkin and turned to an old standby: Vegan Chocolate Cake from The Joy of Cooking.

This cake, which I often make as cupcakes, is simply delicious. It is very quick and easy to make, is not too sweet and is always a hit. Don’t be thrown off by the coffee in the cake or glaze, it does not give you the mocha-like effect you might expect it to. Instead it enhances and deepens the chocolate flavour, and a deep, dark chocolate flavour is what you want from chocolate cake, especially if it’s for breakfast.

Mini Chocolate Cupcakes with Dark Chocolate Glaze

adapted from The Joy of Cooking 1997 edition

preheat the oven to 350°

Swapping out butter and milk in baking is usually a simple accommodation if you are attempting a vegan recipe. Eggs can be a bit trickier if you are unfamiliar with substitutions. These cupcakes are vegan and therefore they are egg-less but they get their lift from baking soda and vinegar. If you don’t have balsamic on hand, white vinegar will do just fine, balsamic just adds a nice depth of flavour. I have made this recipe many times with great success with some or all of  the oil replaced by applesauce, making them low fat or fat-free. 

Grease or line 24 mini muffin tins (or regular sized 12 muffin tin) (or a 9″ round cake pan)

In a large bowl, combine the following dry ingredients, whisking well:

1 1/2 C flour

3/4 C light brown sugar

6 tablespoons cocoa

1 tsp baking soda

pinch of salt

In a second bowl, mix the following wet ingredients:

1/2 C cold coffee

1/2 C cold water

1/4 C vegetable oil

1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 Tbsp vanilla

Add the dry ingredients to the wet, all at once, stirring well to combine. Scoop into muffin tin. Bake for 18-22 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center of one of the cupcakes comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes, then pop the cupcakes out and let them cool completely on the wrack.

For the glaze:

Stir together

1/2 C icing sugar

2 Tbsp cocoa

2 Tbsp cold water

3 Tbsp cold coffee

Mix well until a smooth, glossy glaze is achieved. Dip the tops of the fully cooled cupcakes in the glaze, allowing excess to drip off. The glaze will firm up as it dries. If you are adding sprinkles, non pareils, etc., do so immediately after dipping to ensure they stick. Store the cupcakes, once fully cooled in a sealed container at room temperature for up to 2 days.

Grilled Halibut with Charred Baby Bok Choi and Brown Butter

Recently we re-vamped our backyard. We have planted more than 300 square feet of garden space and we are growing a huge assortment of things, we found a sweet little picnic table with 4 detached benches on Craigslist and painted them a cheery vintage aqua colour, we made a patio, flanked by trellises covered in peas and beans, but if you ask my husband what he is most excited about, he will likely say it’s the new barbecue.  I can’t say I disagree. Transforming the yard was a ton of work, an insurmountable project had it not been for 4 of our friends who wanted in on the action, and it is incredibly rewarding to be growing our own vegetables, learning about gardening and actively composting. However, the immediate gratification that comes from a kick ass barbecue should not be over looked.

How un-committed to cooking would I sound if I said that I don’t like cooking fish because it makes the house smell fishy? How shallow! But I do love fish, and living in Vancouver we are spoiled for choice when it comes to fresh seafood and fish. That’s the beauty of grilled fish – the fast, high heat perfectly compliments the delicate nature of almost all fish and there is no stinky clean up or lingering smell. So, when a very large slab of halibut came home from our grocery shopping today, it was easy to get excited and fire up the ‘cue. Ten or so minutes later, we dressed it with some browned butter and dinner was on the table.

Grilled Halibut with Charred Baby Bok Choi and Brown Butter

For the fish:

Cut the fish into serving portions, season on both sides with olive oil, salt and pepper. Grill on high heat until opaque (about 5 inutes per side, based on pieces 1-1/2 inches thick), turning only once.

For the Charred Baby Bok Choi:

Once the fish is half cooked and has been turned, place freshly washed and still wet whole baby bok choi bulbs on the grill over medium heat. Allow to cook for 5 -7 minutes or until wilted and slightly charred. To serve, place the baby bok choi under the fish before finishing with the brown butter.

For the Brown Butter:

Melt 1 tablespoon of butter per portion of fish in a small saucepan over medium heat. Allow the butter to separate and the milk solids to brown. This will take about 5 minutes. The butter with froth and foam. Remove from the heat once you can smell its toasted, nutty smell and it has turned an appetizing medium brown. Be careful not to burn it! Add to it 1 small hot chilli, minced, a clove of crushed garlic and the zest of a 3rd of a lemon. Steep the aromatics in the hot butter and drizzle over the fish when serving.

Vanilla Custard with Bing Cherries in Dark Rum Syrup

Lazy Sunday? No, not lazy, just slow. Coffee in the yard, puttering about, catching up on laundry, reading, cleaning out the garage. Summer seems to have arrived. All of a sudden the afternoons are hot and bright, the garden is bursting with green, plants doubling in size overnight. The wet too-long Spring could almost be forgotten, or written off as a myth. The mornings are warm now, so much so that sleeping in has become difficult. The sun is up early and the day becomes alive with birdsong and you can hear that school is out; the neighbourhood is suddenly more filled with children than before. Evenings are balmy once the sun dips behind the skyline. Slowly things begin to cool, the residual heat of the day makes me believe I can stay out in the yard without a sweater longer than I can. By seven o’clock the air smells like barbecue and dinner alfresco seems like such a good idea, you’d think we’d come up with it ourselves. Sunday dinner becomes something off the grill and salad, then a little something sweet. Cool, homespun, drunken fruit on velvet custard. At long last, happy summer.

Cherries of the night are riper
Than the cherries pluckt at noon
Gather to your fairy piper
When he pipes his magic tune:
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
Mine are rounder,
Mine are sweeter
For the eater
Underneath the moon.
And you’ll be fairies soon.

— from Cherry-Time by Emily Dickinson

Vanilla Custard

This custard gets it’s richness from eggs and stability from cornstarch. It is loose enough to compliment the syrupy cherries in the recipe below or some crumbled cookies but would also be great as a stand alone dessert. This recipe makes enough for 6, served family-style. If desired, skip the one large serving dish and pour the pudding into 6 chilled bowls or ramekins before chilling until fully set.  

3/4 C sugar

5 Tb sp corn starch

2 1/2 C cold milk

4 eggs

1 Tbsp vanilla

1 Tbsp almond extract

Choose a serving dish and set it, within arms reach of your cooking area, with a fine sieve in it so it’s ready at the last moment.  This custard comes together quickly in the end, and it’s best to be well organized. Custard waits for no one.

Measure the sugar and cornstarch into a medium size, heavy bottomed saucepan.

Divide the milk into 2 measuring cups, one having 2 cups in it, the other the remaining 1/2 cup.

Add the 4 eggs to the 1/2 cup of milk. Break up the eggs into the 1/2 cup of milk by stirring well with a fork.

Measure the vanilla and almond extracts into a small glass and set aside.

Now that you are ready … Add the 2 cups of cold milk to the sugar and corn starch, whisking well. Cook, over medium heat for about 5-7 minutes, whisking to dissolve the sugar and cornstarch and to prevent lumps from forming. As the mixture starts to simmer it will thicken quite quickly. Whisk continuously until the whisk leaves trails behind it. Remove from the heat. Turn the heat down to medium-low, as you will be taking the pot back to it.

Whisking quickly, pour the milk and egg mixture into the pudding, mixing until well incorporated. This will thin the custard slightly. Put the pot back on the stove and cook the custard for 3-4 minutes longer and it will re-thicken.

Once thickened, pour the hot custard through the sieve that is waiting in your serving dish — this will ensure that any small bits of coagulated egg get caught and don’t end up in your dessert.

Place plastic wrap against the surface of the custard to prevent a skin from forming and refrigerate for 4 hours until firm and cold all the way through.

Top with fruit.

Bing Cherries in Dark Rum Syrup

1 1/2 cups Bing cherries, halved, pits removed

1/2 C sugar

3 Tbsp dark, spiced Rum, such as Appleton’s

1 Tbsp vanilla extract

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat until the cherries have released a lot of juice. Allow to reduce, stirring frequently, until the syrup thickens slightly. Cool to room temperature before using.