Everyday Boy

Buddha Rice Bowl

This is another easy delicious dish to make - which we make often. There is a way to marinate the tofu cubes, which the recipe book goes through as well, but it works just as well if you heat them up in a frying pan before hand.

Buddha Rice Bowl

Serves 4

6 cups cooked brown basamati rice
1 1/2 cups tofu cubes (grilled)
1 batch Thai Peanut Sauce, heated (below)
4 cups bean sprouts
1 bunch cilantro chopped
1/2 cucumber, sliced and cut into half moon shapes
1 lemon, cut in wedges

Put 1 1/2 cups of cooked brown basamati rice in a large rice bowl.  Top with a portion of tofu cubes in the middles.  Pour a 6 ounce ladle of warm Thai peanut sauce over the tofu and rice. B e sure to cover all the tofu with sauce to warm it up.  Put a handful of bean sprouts on top of the sauce, piling as high as possible.  On top of he bean sprouts, place a few leaves of cilantro - or more if you love cilantro as I do.  Around the edge of the bowl, arrange four slices of cumber and tomato.  Garnish with a wedge of lemon. Repeat for each serving.

(65)

Thai Peanut Sauce

4 servings

5 cloves garlic, minced
1 inch ginger root, peeled and minced
1 1/2 cups natural smooth peanut butter
3/4 cup lemon juice
5 tablespoons tamari (wheat free soy sauce)
2 tablespoons paprika
2 cups vegetable stock or filtered water
cayenne to taste

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and whisk until smooth. Heat gently for 10 minutes, stirring often. Serve hot.

(97)

From Refresh: Contemporary Vegan Recipes From The Award-Winning Fresh Restaurants by Ruth Tal & Jennifer Houston

Phad Thai

This page in the cookbook is quite mangled due to our using this recipe so much.  It's modified a bit to not include a thinly sliced omelet stirred into the dish (feel free to add it if you like).

Phad Thai

14 ounces flat rice noodles
1 tablespoons peanut oil (I just use olive oil)
1 onion, cut into thin
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 small red pepper, cut into thin strips
(I like them in bigger pieces)
1/2 cup fried tofu, cut into 1/4 inch wide strips (or cubes)
6 scallions, thinly sliced diagonally
1/2 cup cilantro leaves
1/2 cup soy sauce (or tamari)
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 tablespoons sambal oelek
1 cup bean sprouts
1/2 cup chopped, roasted, unsalted peanuts

Cook the noodles in a saucepan of boiling water for 5 - 10 minutes or until tender.  Drain and set aside.

Heat oil in a wok.  Cook the onion, garlic, and pepper over high heat for 2 - 3 minutes or until the onion has softened.  Add the noodles, tossing well.  Stir in the tofu, scallions, and half the cilantro.

Pour in the combined soy sauce, lime juice, sugar, and sambal oelek, then toss to coat the noodles.  Sprinkle the bean sprouts on top and garnish with the peanuts and the remaining cilantro.  Serve immediately.

Serves 4

(227)

From Veggie Food: From Veggies On The Side To The Main Event, Edited by Kay Scarlett

Green Curry

I need to preface this recipe with a couple of things.  First, this is a recipe that Tammy uses more and better than I do, and which she usually combines with another recipe involving green curry (so I may have to update this).  And, she usually adds different vegetables to the recipe because she doesn't like eggplant: baby corn, carrots, water chestnuts, and zucchinni all work really well.  She cooked this dish for us this past week, as pictured above.

Green Curry With Sweet Potato & Eggplant

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped
1 - 2 tablespoons green curry paste
(Note: If you buy this make sure it doesn't have shrimp paste
if you want this to be a vegetarian meal)
1 medium eggplant, quartered and sliced
1 3/4 cups coconut milk
1 cup vegetable stock
6 kaffir lime leaves
1 orange sweet potato, cut into cubes
2 teaspoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 teaspoons lime zest
cilantro leaves, to garnish

Heat oil in a large wok or frying pan. Add the onion and curry paste and cook, stirring, over medium heat for 3 minutes. Add the eggplant and cook for another 4 -5 minutes or until softened. Pour in the coconut milk and stock, bring to a boil,t hen reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the lime leaves and sweet potato and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes or until the vegetables are very tender.

Mix in the sugar, lime juice, and lime zest until well combined with the vegetables. Season to taste with the salt. Garnish with fresh cilantro leaves and serve with steamed rice.

Serves 4 - 6

(252)

Veggie Food: From Veggies On The Side To The Main Event, Edited by Kay Scarlett

Another Quick Pasta Recipe

I used linguine this week. I like the nutmeg and spinach combination:

Tagliatelle With Spinach, Mascarpone & Parmesan

1lb tagliatelle or spaghetti
olive oil
2 teaspoons butter
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
½ a nutmeg, freshly grated
400g/14oz fresh spinach, washed thoroughly and finely sliced
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
120ml/4fl oz double cream
150g/5oz mascarpone cheese
2 handfuls of freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil, add the pasta, and cook according to the packet instructions. Meanwhile get a frying pan or wok warm, add a drizzle of olive oil, the butter, garlic and nutmeg. When the butter melts, add the spinach. After 5 minutes it will have wilted down and will be nice and dark. A lot of the liquid will have cooked away and you'll have wonderful intensely flavoured spinach. At this point season with salt and pepper until it tastes good, then add the cream, mascarpone and a little ladle of cooking water from the pasta. Let this come to a simmer and then season again.

Drain the pasta, reserving some of the cooking water, then stir it into the spinach sauce. Add the Parmesan and toss everything together. Loosen to a nice silky consistency with some of the reserved cooking water, so it doesn't become too claggy. Check once more for seasoning and serve straight away.

From Jamie's Dinners

Spaghetti Con Gameretti E Rucola

This is a tasty and quick pasta dish I like to cook up, courtesy Jamie Oliver.  It is a pasta dish which I have many good memories of, sharing around a kitchen table with friends.  As many of you know I am a big Jamie Oliver fan, and have learned a lot about cooking following many of his recipes from almost all of his cookbooks - cookbooks generously given to my by friends and family.  I must especially thank Alison for having one of his cookbooks sitting on a kitchen shelf for me to discover; for buying me his Italian cookbook, which has been used religiously to this day; and for this lovely fish-shaped serving dish pictured above.

I am a bit better these days not having to follow recipe's to the letter, thanks in large part to my friend Karen, so I've found that you can adapt it to be a simple vegetarian dish by removing the shrimp, and that the dish works just as well with spinach if there is no arugula to be found. Tammy won a bid at a fundraiser for 30 bottles of white wine last Fall, so this is also a good way to use up a bit of that wine, along with Jamie Oliver's various risotto dishes.

Spaghetti With Shrimp & Arugula
Serves 4

1 pound dried spaghetti
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 - 2 dried red chilies, crumbled
1 pound peeled raw large shrimp
1 small wineglass of white wine
2 heaping tablespoons sun-dried tomato puree, or 6 sun-dried tomatoes blitzed in a blender
zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 handfuls of arugula, roughly chopped

Cook your spaghetti in a large pot of salted boiling water according to the package instructions. Meanwhile, heat 3 good glugs of extra virgin olive oil in a large frying pan and toss in the garlic and chili. As the garlic begins to color, add the shrimp and saute them for a minute. Add the white wine and tomato puree and simmer for a couple of minutes. When the pasta is ready, drain it in a colander, reserving a little of the cooking water. Toss the spaghetti with the sauce, squeeze in the lemon juice, and add half the chopped arugula, using a little of the reserved cooking water if you want to loosen the sauce a bit, and correct the seasoning. Divide between four plates and sprinkle with the grated lemon zest and the rest of the arugula leaves.

(116)

Jamie's Italy

Vij's Indian Cuisine

For Christmas, Tammy got me, among other things, Vij's cookbook: Vij's Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisine.  And she cooked a tasty dish this past Monday for us, although we had difficulty finding some ingredients that night (we did not use asafoetida, which Tammy says it is optional). 

The cookbook points out you can use green, raw mangoes, which makes it more tangy than sweet and to use nice green curry leaves for the best flavor.  It can be an appetizer served with chapattis or rice, or plain salted crackers:

Mango & Tomato Curry

1/2 cup canola oil or ghee
1 tablespoon black mustard seeds
1 teaspoon asafoetida
30 - 40 curry leaves
2 cups large tomatoes (2 large)
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 tablespoon & 1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon salt
3 medium to large mangoes, peeled, in 1 inch cubes
2 cups chopped green onions, white and green parts

Heat oil (or ghee) in a medium pot on high for 1 minute.  Add mustard seeds and cook until you hear the first popping noise.  Immediately add asafoetida and curry leaves, being careful to keep your head away from the pan in case the water from within the curry leaves pops, and stir.  The curry leaves will shrivel as soon as you stir them in the hot oil.  Immediately reduce the heat to medium-low.

Add tomoatoes, tumeric, cumin, cayenne and salt.  Stir and cook this masala for about 5 minutes.  Stir in mangoes, increase the heat to medium, cover and cook, uncovered for 2 to 3 minutes.

To serve:  If serving as hors d'oeuvres, scoop lukewarm mango curry into glass or ceramic bowls.  Arrange crackers on a serving plate and serve together.  As a vegetarian meal with chapatti, serve the curry piping hot.

(48)

Eat, Memory

I discovered the local public library up the hill from us a few weeks ago, and am looking at stemming my appetite for books, music and movies there, instead of haunting local book, music, and video stores.  I figure it will be easier on my wallet, as well as our limited and burgeoning storage space.

I picked up a collection of essays from the New York Times called Eat, Memory: Great Writers at the Table featuring food inspired recollections by some of America's leading writers: playwrights, screenwriters, novelists, poets and journalists.  Not just stories but recipes too.  It reminds me of an idea a friend's mother made about writing memorable meals in the margins of our cookbooks so as not to forget them.

Editor, Amada Hesser writes: "Writers know that if you want to portray a person succinctly, tellingly, you describe the way he (she) eats.  Food is the royal road to the unconscious." (11)  Which has me thinking about the way I eat, as well as the desire to cultivate good eating habits - slow food as opposed to fast food.

I found a package of gnocchi to cook up this week at the neighborhood grocery store, and decided to cook up a simple Alfredo sauce to go with it.  I found a recipe in Mark Bittman's dictionary-like recipe book How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipe's for Great Food (which I have barely scratched the surface of).  I would like to try and master simple recipes like this:

Maybe overkill, but good nevertheless:  Reduce the butter to 2 tablespoons and melt it gently.  While the pasta cooks, combine two eggs, 1 1/2 cup heavy cream (I substituted skim milk and some corn starch), and 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese in a warmed bowl; beat briefly.  Sprinkle with pepper.  When the past is cooked, toss it with the cheese mixture, adding a little of the cooking water if necessary to keep the mixture moist.  Drizzle with the butter, toss well, and serve immediately. (447)

Soup For A Cold Rainy Day

It seems to me that our three basic needs for food and security and love are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.

- M.F.K. (Mary Frances Kennedy) Fisher, writer (1908-1992)

Life really does militate against home-cooked wholesome meals - just as it does against friendships, marriages, parenting, and almost everything else that mkes life worth living. It has to be like that, because the spirit of our time is to look only at the profit line.

- Carol Flanders
From her introduction to The New Laurel's Kitchen

This past winter one of our housemates introduced us to a lovely recipe book called Refresh: Contemporary Vegan Recipes From The Award-Winning Fresh Restaurants in Toronto.  It has a wonderful array of soups, salads and rice bowls which we have been happily making.  With the cold weather creeping back into the Lower Mainland, we cooked this delicious soup last night:

Butternut Squash and Pear Soup

1 inch ginger root, peeled and minced
1 cinnnamon stick
1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded and diced
1 sweet potato, peeled and diced
6 cups vegetable stock
1tablespoon olive oil
1/3 cup white wine
2 pears, cored and sliced
1/2 cup coconut milk
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon white pepper

1/2 re pepper, diced

1. Put the ginger, cinnamon stick, squash and sweet potato in a soup pot.  Cove with vegetable stock.  Bring to a boil; then reduce to a simmer.
2. While the vegetables are simmering in the soup pot, heat olive oil in a frying pan.  Add onion and cook until caramelized, about 5 minutes.
3. Add white wine and chopped pears to the pan.  Cook for 5 minutes until wine is reduced; then add to the soup pot.
4. When the squash and sweet potatoes are cooked, about 30 minutes, add the coconut milk, salt and pepper.  Remove from heat.  Take out the cinnamon stick.
5. Puree in a food processor or with a hand blender.  To puree in a blender, first let the sop cool; then reheat to serve.  With a hand blender, you can puree the soup while it is still hot.
6. Garnish with finely diced red pepper and serve.

(22)

The Year's Best Appetizer

This has been a favorite dish on many occasions this past year. It was a little harder finding good seafood in Calgary during the holiday, and I substituted habaneros peppers for the fresh chillies peppers, but it turned out all the same. Simple, tasty and little gourmet. Enjoy!

Courtesy of Jamie Oliver, from Happy Days with the Naked Chef:

Shrimp with Chilli, Parsley, Ginger and Garlic on Toast

Serves 4

extra virgin olive oil ∙ 1 thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped ∙ 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely sliced ∙ 2-3 fresh red chillies, deseeded and finely sliced ∙ 16 large whole raw tiger or other large shrimp, tails left on or peeled off ∙ 1 -2 lemons, to taste ∙ 1 good handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped ∙ sea salt and freshly gound black pepper ∙ 4 long slices of ciabatta bread, toasted

Into a large, hot frying pan put around 4 tablespoons of olive oil, your ginger, garlic, chilli and shrimp. Fry for about 3 minutes, then turn the heat down and squeeze in the juice of 1 lemon. Add parlsey and a couple of glugs of olive oil. Toss over and remove from the heat. You should have a nice juicy sauce - have a taste. It may need a little more lemon juice. Season to taste. Serve over your ciabatta, to mop up the juices. (153)

Springtime (On The Coast)

Song of the moment: Cara Luft's Wilcox (Springtime On The Prairies), which you can listen to here as an MP3. Her web says: Cara is in the pre-production stage of her new album! She is currently in Victoria working with producer Neil Osborne (of 54-40) and will be recording in Winnipeg in March. If you would like to pre-order a copy of Cara's new disc, read here (PDF).

Being born and raised in Calgary I never really considered myself a prairie boy. I think it's because I grew up in the city rather than the country. I still have fond memories of riding my bicycle out onto the country roads though, when land nearby our house was still a patchwork of undeveloped hills and fields of tanned wheat and scorched grass.  I think there's definitely a little of the prairie that has seeped into my bones, but I'm still not quite clear what that is exactly... perhaps the expanse and openness of the place.

Being on the West Coast now I feel a different rhythm in the seasons: more rain than snow, longer summers, warmer Autumns and Winters, and Spring-times which always seem to surprise me with their bright and early appearance in colorful sprouts and green buds. I suppose wherever you are there is a different feel and rhythm to the seasons. I like Vancouver because Lent seems to coincide with Spring so well. The cherry blossoms are now beginning to bloom all over the city as less rain gives way to more sun. There is a sense of Winter giving way to Spring.

I've been feeling a bit weary and broken down this past week, thinking of one of my uncles who is going to have a bone marrow transplant this month, and my former volunteer director being diagnosed with liver cancer this past week. I was also called in to work an extra eleven hour shift which has made for an extra long week.  I was happy to fill it, but we have also been short staffed this week, so instead of three of us on overnights, there have been only two. Folks still ask me how graveyard shifts are, and I still say that I enjoy them - which is true, but I think the difficulty comes in living the rest of life well, in being present to others outside work in fun and meaningful ways, and being disciplined in practicing my writing. I often feel like just hibernating in my bed after work... Winter tendencies needing to thaw a bit.

A friend pulled into town at the beginning of the week and it was good to spend time with her.  We were able to enjoy some red and white wine in the company of another friend who graciously hosted us for dinner. As for Ash Wednesday, with the help from one of my housemates I cooked a few Filipino dishes for house dinner this past week. A soup called chicken tinola and a Filipino noodle dish called pansit. I began trying to compile family recipes with my mom at the beginning of the year, as a way of slowly reclaiming a bit of my cultural roots.  I modified the recipe below, using egg noodles instead of the bijon noodles, which you don't have to soak beforehand:

Pansit Bijon Guisado
6-8 servings

2 tablespoons light olive oil
6 cloves garlic, crushed
1 medium onion, diced
1 chicken breast, boiled and shredded
1 cup pork loin chop, boiled and sliced (2 pork chops)
1 small cabbage, shredded
2 large carrots, julienne
2 tablespoons soy sauce (or to taste)
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup green beans, julienne or french style
1 bundle pansit bijon (rice vermicelli noodles)
2 pieces Chinese sausage
sliced, boiled and slightly browned (optional)
2 green onions chopped (garnish)
1 small lemon sliced
3 hard-boiled eggs sliced
Salt to taste

Soak bijon noodles for a few minutes in warm water (not too soft). In a non-stick wok or saucepan saute garlic in cooking oil until brown. Add onions until translucent. Add a little broth from boiling the chicken. Add pork, carrots and green beans until cooked. Add 1 cup chicken broth and let boil. Add the chicken and the cabbage and blanch for a few minutes (let boil once). Add salt and pepper to taste. Reduce heat to low and remove all ingredients. Boil about a 1/4 cup of leftover chicken broth. Add soaked noodles and cook medium to low heat until done (not too dry, add more chicken broth if needed). Add soy sauce. Add meat and vegetables and Chinese sausage and mix together. Garnish with green onions, lemon slices and boiled egg.  Enjoy!