Dinner in the Yellow House

My first fried zucchini blossoms

My spouse doesn't know this, but a big motivation for my planting zucchini this year was that I wanted to eat fried zucchini blossoms. Mark Pascal had gone on and on about how delicious they were on The Restaurant Guys Radio show and I was dying to try them.  But zucchini blossoms are not too easy to come by in the shops, at least not here in Victoria, where we don't have a very large Italian population.  So I knew I needed to grow my own. 

The first blossoms appeared a few weeks ago and since then, I've been waiting for a day when there were enough new blossoms to fry some up for the family dinner.  So far, there have only ever been four or five blossoms ready on any given day:  not really enough to feed four people.  Today I decided I was tired of waiting, and that I would make myself fried zucchini blossoms for lunch, and the rest of the family would have to wait.  Score one for the lonely housewife!

The first step was picking the blossoms.  I had to be careful not to pick the daylilies, since they look very similar to zucchini blossoms.  The key here was to only pick flowers that were growing on the actual zucchini plant.  I picked five blossoms and managed to leave the daylilies intact.  ;)

Zucchini blossom = good eats

Daylily = strictly ornamental.  Do not eat!

The next step was heating the oil.  I don't like deep-frying in general, but I'm getting braver.  I courageously poured about 1/2 inch worth of canola oil into my cast iron frying pan and turned the heat to medium-high.  Then I put 1/2 cup of water in a bowl, and sifted in slightly less than 1/2 cup of flour.

I beat the mixture with a fork until it looked sourcreamy.  Then I cut a little slit into the edge of each blossom, and flattened them.  (By the way, I didn't get these directions out of my own brilliant mind or anything.  I found them in Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan.)

Then I dipped them in the batter. 

Before we get to the money shot (sizzling blossoms), a quick word about mommies and daddies.  According to this very informative article, the mommy zucchini blossoms cost more from suppliers than the daddies do, which makes me think that they must be tastier.  However, Marcella says that the mommies don't taste good at all, and specifically indicates "male zucchini blossoms" in her recipe.  The only thing to do was to try both, I figured, and so I did. 

The photos above depict a daddy, with a thin stem.  Here is (rather blurry) one of a mommy, with its little zucchini baby attached.

When I cooked her up, I just fried the baby as well.  The result?  Surprisingly, I think I agree with Marcella.  I often find her diktats overly strict and ignore a lot of her advice.  I put (gasp!) chicken broth in my risotto and may turn my eggplant slices more than once when frying them for pasta sauce. But in the case of the zucchini blossoms, Marcella is right, and while the female was not gross or anything, I think I'l stick to the males in future, for the purposes of frying anyway.  It's not worth giving up a potential future zucchini. 

And now for the sizzling.  Mmmm...

If you're going to make these, for heaven's sake do yourself a favour and use a splatter guard.  These things spit like nobody's business!

I drained the blossoms briefly on paper towels, before sprinkling over a few grains of kosher salt, and then gobbling them greedily. 

My first impression was that zucchini blossoms taste like popcorn, but with a delectably creamy centre.  After a few bites, I started to get more of the zucchini flavour.  The baby zucchini was okay.  It made me think that all the flavour that it was going to get was already in it, and the growing of the squash just diffused the flavour a little bit.  I like that diffusion though, and prefer normal-sized zucchini to the little baby I tried. 

Despite all this talk of mommies, daddies, and babies, I realized that I had made a vegan dish!  This hardly ever happens, but I'm excited when it does, because I like to tell my vegan friends that I am totally down with their cuisine. 

My 14-year-old babysitter arrived at the Yellow House just as I was taking the last blossom out of the frying pan and gamely agreed to try it.  She agreed with my popcorn comparison and thought it was pretty tasty.  This means that I can try them on the picky-seven-but-almost-eight-year-old next.  I may not tell her what she's eating until after she's taking her first bite though. 

This entry is my submission to Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted this week by its founder Kalyn.  And yes I know that zucchini blossoms are not an herb, but Kalyn graciously allows flower blogging in her event also.  I've been wanting to participate in WHB for ages, so I'm really excited to finally be a part of it. 

Solstice Ceviche

To celebrate the first day of summer yesterday, I made myself ceviche for lunch.  And not just any ceviche, but Clotilde's strawberry and avocado ceviche from Chocolate and Zucchini: Daily Adventures in a Parisian Kitchen.  And yeah, I ate it out of a margarita glass.  What's it to ya?

A glass of cava would have gone really, really well with this, but since I was headed off to teach music to preschoolers immediately after lunch, a nice crisp glass of water had to suffice. 

Since I ate this alone, I can only give you my impression, and keep in mind that I love anything fishy:  it was great.  M'hijo was curious about the glass, but eschewed the ceviche overall.  I think it must have been too cold for him, because he usually loves strawberries and avocados and halibut. 

I seem to have a thing about food eaten on solstices and equinoxes (equinoxen?).  I see I was still eating winter food when spring began.  Now that summer is here, we in the Great White North can start enjoying the dishes that normal (read, warmer) countries eat in the springtime.  Risi i bisi is coming soon!

(Incidentally, I also celebrated the last day of spring in a foodie way, with an antipasto plate and a glass of sangiovese at Ottavio on Wednesday.  A highly recommended midweek treat.)

I dream of Vij's

There are a lot of reasons I won't be going to Vij's anytime soon:

• cost of travel to Vancouver
• time required to travel to  Vancouver
• once I get to Vancouver, lack of babysitter
• impossibility of taking M'hijo (my 18-month-old)  anywhere NEAR a restaurant which is known for making people wait for up to an hour for a table (because they don't take reservations)

The New York Times said that Vij's was "easily one of the best Indian restaurants in the world".  And it's just right there, over the water!  Right there

It might as well be in Mumbai (sniff!). 

Lucky for us Vancouver Islanders, however, Vij's now sells some of their entrees frozen in little metallic bags, suitable for boiling in the bag, or you can heat them up in the oven or microwave if you prefer.  Here is the list of available dishes. (Click for a version you may actually be able to read).

And where can you purchase some of these goodies?  The wonderful Charelli's, of course.  Call ahead to see when they're getting a shipment in (598-4794).

I took four shiny bags of Vij's goodness up camping this weekend and they were great.  We were a little skeptical that boil-in-the-bag dinner could be good, but we were happily surprised with the result.  We tried the Punjabi daal, Punjabi lamb curry, saag paneer, and garnet yam and green chili dumplings.  Thank goodness I had the forethought to toss the bowl of my rice cooker (half full with leftover rice) into the back of our van before we went off into the wilderness, because the sauce on the lamb in particular was really delicious, and without the rice to sop it up, it would have been wasted. 

Tobias claims this was the best Indian meal he'd ever had, but this was after two bottles of IPA, and really, doesn't everything taste better when it's eaten beside a river, in front of a roaring campfire?  I'd say it was certainly the best Indian meal I'd had outside of a restaurant. 

Presto Pasta Night: TV Dinner Edition

The title is a misnomer for me, since I don't have a TV and I didn't eat this for dinner.  But it's the type of thing one might eat for a dinner in front of the tube, which is why it appears in the TV dinners chapter of Nigella Bites.  She calls it linguine with garlic oil and pancetta.  My version uses fettucine and, because I didn't have any garlic-infused oil, just crushed garlic cloves. 

This is exactly the kind of dish that appeals to me when I'm eating alone and feeling lazy, but like I need something more heartening than a peanut butter sandwich for lunch.  Depending on how much oil you use, it can be a little messy to eat, so wear a splatter guard.  For the full effect, serve this in a deep Japanese-style bowl that you can hold on your lap.  If you do have a TV, watch it while eating this.  If not, may I recommend the Britain's Got Talent clips available on YouTube?  Have a splatter guard ready for your computer also, and some Kleenex for your eyes. 

To make it, peel about six garlic cloves and crush them a bit with a big knife. Put them in a roasting pan or Pyrex dish with around two tablespoons of good-tasting olive oil (I used a lovely Portuguese one that I bought at Charelli's) and around 4 ounces of roughly chopped pancetta.  The quantities are completely flexible, of course, and depend on how many you're feeding.  I was just feeding my greedy self.  Put in the oven at about 450 degrees and set your pasta water to boiling.  I found that the amount of time it took for my water to boil and then for the fettucine to cook was exactly how long my pancetta wanted.  Your mileage may vary, but the pancetta should be nicely sizzling and crisp-looking. 

If your oven dish is large enough, drain the fettucine and plop it into the dish along with a handful of chopped parsley.  Mine wasn't, but I used a spatula to get all the tasty bits off the bottom of the dish so I wouldn't lose out on any flavour.  Mix well and gobble down.  Nigella suggests no parmesan with this and surprisingly, I agree.  A good dusting of freshly ground pepper is nice, though. 

My favourite part of this was the garlic cloves.  They're not for everyone, I suppose, but I thought they were delicious.  Not quite as sweet and creamy as roasted garlic, but without the bite of raw garlic, and with a bit of the flavour of the oil infused into the clove, in addition to the the oil taking on the flavour of the garlic.  Yum!  Of course, use garlic-infused oil if you prefer or even just regular olive oil if you are not a garlic lover. 

Thanks to Ruth for hosting Presto Pasta Nights.  I have missed the past two weeks but I am back in the pasta-cooking saddle once again. 

Foodtv.ca cooking club for June: Meringues

The Food Network blog, called Food for Thought, has started issuing cooking assignments each month.  This month, the assignment was to try a meringue recipe from French Food at Home.  I haven't seen the show, but based on the title, and my experience with this recipe, I think I'll have to watch it. 

Laura Calder calls her meringues crisp and chewy, and boy is she right.  My seven-year-old is crazy about the meringues from a local bakery, but compared to these, the bakery ones seem dry, brittle and with a flavour resembling sawdust.  The inside of the Laura Calder meringues were like marshmallows, but creamier, and the outsides were, yes, perfectly crisp. 

I don't have a pastry bag, but I made my own by cutting a hole in the bottom of a Ziploc bag and working really fast.  It went pretty well.  My favourite meringue, which I insisted on eating myself, had a little mousetail on it. 

As you can see, my meringues didn't get toasty-looking, but they were definitely ready to take out after 90 minutes. 

The recipe specifies either vanilla or orange-flower water or maple extract for flavouring and I went with the orange-flower water.  I never buy this, but my friend Farheen gave me half a bottle when she was moving once.  She uses it, among other things, in her Eid shortbread.  After she gave it to me, it didn't see the light of day for a couple of years, until I made the meringues.   

I was the only one who wasn't crazy about the orange-flower flavour.  I couldn't shake the feeling that I was eating a cookie that I had spilled some perfume on.  However, my spouse, my daughter and her friends all loved the orange-floweriness.  So maybe I was just overly sensitive to it because I was the one who actually put the stuff in. 

The biggest fans of these were the three seven-year-old girls, who gobbled down the whole bunch for dessert last Friday night in record time.  I even managed to get some cauliflower in them beforehand, using the promise of meringues as a reward. 

I'm going to try them with the maple extract next.

Risotto for Breakfast

Whenever I make risotto for dinner, I wolf down quantities that would make Dr. Atkins roll over in his grave.  Once that's done, I let the rest of the family nibble on the leftovers.  Once that's done, there are always a couple of cups that go into a tupperware in the fridge, to be forgotten as often as not. 

But this morning, I tried a risotto pancake (from The Joy of Cooking) for breakfast, and I don't think leftover risotto will ever be forgotten again.  Note the one lonely shard of cheddar in a sea of parmesan.  Apparently I didn't clean the grater well enough after making bean n' cheese burritos yesterday!

Here is how I made my risotto pancake:

Add as much egg as necessary to make your leftover risotto a little cohesive.  I had around a cup and a half of risotto; I added one egg. Now melt some butter in your favourite pan and once it foams, spread your risotto in the pan.  If you do as I did and just make one pancake, it will be very tricky to flip and you will probably end up with one lovely half-pancake and a big ol' messy other half-pancake.  You could also just make smaller ones.  Push the risotto down with a spatula to make the shape pancakey.  If you're making this for kids, shape it into a heart, or a Smartie, or an amphibious landing craft. 

Leave the pancake alone for longer than you think.  You want to get a nice brown crust forming.  After five minutes or so, flip it over and let the other side get crusty. 

This really tastes like hashbrowns, which is why I think it is great for breakfast.  I wouldn't serve eggs or bacon alongside though, because the risotto is pretty flavourful already and I think eggs and bacon would be too much.  The perfect accompaniment, I think, would be nice sliced tomatoes, maybe in a balsamic vinaigrette?  Too bad for me, I was out of tomatoes this morning and since I, like my Mexican mother before me, think salsa goes with pretty much everything, that is what I had. 

Pot Question

No, the question isn't, "Where can I get the best pot?"  I already know the answer to that one.  The question is, what do I do with these new pots I got?

I picked up this one and its oval-shaped sister at a White Elephant sale last week, thinking I would use them for stews and broth-making and roasting.  But my spouse tells me that this type of surface (I don't even know how to describe it or else I'd have Googled it) is only suitable for boiling water and that the pots should just be used for canning. 

I was annoyed because a) I paid a whole two bucks for those things!  and b) I used to sell pots (as well as pans, whisks, blenders, fine china, etc) at The Bay and even though that was a long time ago, I still have some residual professional pride and don't like not knowing something like that. 

I also have some residual

• guilt: from selling so many people anodized aluminum pot sets before I'd ever actually cooked with them myself.  Sorry, everyone.
• obnoxiousness: I can't help turning over people's plates and cups and bowls to see what brand of china they have.
• distaste for bridal registries: ick. 

Anyway, can anyone help me with this?  Is it okay to do all the roasting, broth-making and stewing I want in these pots or do they need special treatment? 

For Victoria BC Coffee Lovers

There are a bunch of new café reviews on CoffeeCrew.com since I last checked.  I would like to try them all, but especially want to check out The Village Bakery and Café in Estevan village.  According to the CoffeeCrew, their coffee is from Discovery, the second project of Sam Jones, El Jefe de café in Victoria.

I wonder if they sell beans.  Caffe Fantastico is wonderful, but so far away from the Yellow House. 

Fixing My Karma

I just got on the top-secret, only available to serious food bloggers, by invitation-only strawberry list at Dan's Farm and Country Market.  I get to go pick up my flat of strawberries on June 18th in a location and at a time that will only be revealed 60 minutes in advance, by a phone call from a blacked-out number. 

Just kidding.  I just called Dan's and told them I wanted some strawberries.  If you live in Victoria, you should too.  Oh, and also get on the list for blueberries and raspberries.  Blackberries, well, you can pick them yourselves. 

Kicking the California Cherry Habit

The locavores would have my hide for this.  And I'm a little disgusted at myself as well.  Ever since I bought California cherries to make crêpes this past weekend, I have been craving those things.  And indulging that craving.  Yes, despite knowing that they're picked before they're ripe and knowing that I should support local farmers and knowing that they had to get here in a truck, that drove for days, and used up gallons and gallons of unrenewable energy resources in the process, I have been buying bags of California cherries.  Three, to be exact. 

I mean it's very well for the locavores; they live in California.  I live in the Great White North.  California is a long way away.  The Okanagan, on the other hand, is just over the water.  But I just can't wait! 

There's the little matter of expense.  My latest 2 pound purchase cost 11 dollars!  Yikes.  Think how many sweet delicious BC apples I could have bought for that amount! 

But the worst part of it is not what I'm doing to the earth, to my own soul, or to our family's fragile financial situation.  The worst part of it is what I'm doing to the kids.  They are going to grow up thinking that the cherry season starts in May, not in July.  They'll see the (ornamental) cherry trees blossoming and think, poor souls, that they're about to start eating cherries.  Then they'll go to the grocery store and realize that yes, they could have cherries, provided they're willing to shell out the CDN$172.50 a pound they'll no doubt cost by the time Sahsez gets her own place. 

Some have suggested it's time for me to start going to CCA meetings.  I don't think I'm quite there yet.  I don't eat cherries alone.  I don't eat them during the day.  I haven't missed work because I've been eating cherries (possibly because I don't have a job). 

No, I feel that the way to stop eating California cherries is to quickly use up all the ones you have in the fridge in one fell swoop.  The real danger is in eating them fresh, one by one, sucking the pits and then seeing how far you can spit them.  In a baked treat, they're nice, but not nearly as tempting and addictive as the raw product.  And so, for anyone else who may be struggling with this same problem, I offer a glimmer of hope:  the Joy of Cooking's Cherry Clafouti recipe.  It uses up a pound of sweet cherries, and tastes like a cross between a custard and a cake.  I like it because you don't need to serve anything alongside.  It doesn't need ice cream or whipping cream or custard sauce.  It's perfect alone and really easy to make.

Here is how I made The Joy of Cooking's Cherry Clafouti:

Pit a pound of cherries.  Or leave them whole if you are a traditionalist.  I can't serve a pitty dessert in the Yellow House because if we're having dessert, it's most like Sunday and if it's Sunday, we mostly likely just finished a bottle of wine and if we just finished a bottle of wine, I am not in the right state to vigilantly prevent myself and the children from choking on a pit. 

Put the cherries in your favourite pie plate.  Now, toss 4 eggs and 3/4 cup of sugar into a mixer and beat for 2 minutes.  Add a cup of milk, a tablespoon of rum, 2 teaspoons of vanilla and mix.  Finally, add 3/4 cup of flour and a pinch of salt.  Bake at 375 for ten minutes then 350 for 35.  The smell is heavenly. I like to eat this while it's still fairly warm. 

This is a dessert that is just crying out for a nice wine pairing.  Unfortunately, I haven't tried any, so can't make a suggestion.  I should probably be loyal for once and suggest a nice BC ice wine, or just because the name is a perfect match, Cherry Point Vineyards' Cowichan Blackberry Port.  But the first thing that comes to mind is a sweet muscat.  I'm open to suggestions for the next time I make this...when the local cherry season starts, of course.

Other great ways to rid your fridge of those sweet red sirens:

Sher's Cherry and Almond Coffee Cake

Sher's Cherry muffins with crumb topping

(Sher has her own producing cherry tree, so she eats them without guilt.  My cherry tree is almost completely dead and the one limb that still grows fruit hangs over into the neighbour's yard.  Worse luck.)

Weird but in a good way: Béa's sweet savoury tartine

Sam's cherry-almond pavlova

The ulterior epicure's cherry tart