carrot – Ali Does It Herself

Turkey Meatball Rigatoni with Pesto

Happy Canada Day! Today is a holiday here in the Great White North. Last Monday was also a holiday for those of us in Newfoundland, and I cooked this recipe up on that particular day. We are trying to consume the contents of our pantry and freezer before we move (and we’re doing a pretty good job) so this gets rid of a chunk of the stuff in there.

Anyway, my landlord is doing some renovations to her house, which is directly behind ours, and she needs our yard for access. The first thing I said to the Pie when he got up and joined me in the kitchen last Monday morning was, “Oh good, you’re clothed — there’s a man in our tree.” And there was. And there were several in the backyard.

And in the front yard.

And in the side yard.

And everywhere. All. Day. Which made Gren very grumpy.

And all the shops were closed so we had to make do with what was around for our dinner. So start making up some meatballs, okay? Preheat your oven to 375°F and grab a baking sheet. Ignore the small highway being created in your backyard.

Finely grate up a medium-sized carrot. Chuck that in a bowl.

Slice up some green onions.

Then dice ’em. Chuck those in the bowl with the carrots.

Then add a few spoonfuls minced garlic.

Plop in 2 eggs.

And about 1/2 cup panko bread crumbs.

Give that a thorough stirring.

Add in some ground turkey, seasoned with salt and pepper.

Stir that all together, then use your hands to squish it into golf-ball-sized meatballs.

Plop those onto your baking sheet and let those cook in the oven for 20 minutes.

To test for doneness, cut one open and see that there’s no pink inside.

Grab yourself some pesto, too. However much you want. I like lots. You can buy it or make it yourself, it’s up to you.

And slice up some tomatoes. I used grape tomatoes here.

Boil up a pot of water and cook up some pasta. We used rigatoni, because it was something we needed to get rid of.

Drain the pasta. Dump the tomatoes and the meatballs into the pot with the pasta.

Add the pesto. Stir like there’s no tomorrow.

Serve it up hot!

Aw Yiss. Some Motha. Flippin’. Tomato Soup.

I don’t know why I felt the need to use that title. I just DID. Also, in case you didn’t recognize the meme, Canadian comic artist Kate Beaton is awesome and you should read her stuff.

What do you do when you are moving and you have too many cans of tomatoes in your pantry, and your husband has left an open can of tomato paste in your refrigerator?

I think we all know the answer to this. It’s in the title after all. Besides, nothing says summer in Newfoundland like a big bowl of hot soup. And I’m not even kidding. I haven’t seen the sun in a while and as I write this it is raining and 7°C. Now you can use fresh tomatoes in this soup, and I’m sure there’s a good argument for doing so, because the taste is so much better and whatever. Personally, if I have a nice fresh tomato in my hands, I’m going to want to eat it as is, not simmer it in a soup. But to each his own.

If you do decide to use fresh tomatoes, I recommend blanching them first to get the skins off. Put a put of water on the boil and when it’s a-rollin’, submerge your tomatoes in the water for about a minute and a half, until the skins start to split.

Remove the tomatoes from the pot and plunge them into a bowl of cold water (to stop the tomatoes from cooking and going mushy).

Then you can just peel them easy as you please.

Take a few carrots, peel them, and chop them up.

Do the same with a large sweet onion.

You know when you are reading real estate listings and you have to sort of translate them to understand what the sellers are trying to tell you? Like, “cozy” means “small”, “quaint” means that none of the doors are level and won’t shut properly, and “rustic” means “broken”. I think you can apply almost the same principle to food. At least in terms of soups. When I read that a soup is “hearty” that tells me that there’s more stuff in it than liquid. And when I read “rustic” I understand that the creators were just too lazy to cut everything up extra small. So by that logic pretty much everything I ever make is “rustic.”

Sauté the onions in a large saucepan with a gob of vegetable oil until they are soft and transparent.

Now you can huck in your spices. I used some minced garlic, smoked paprika, and then some powdered chicken stock. Give that a good stir.

Now you can add in your tomatoes (I used 2 cans plus the 2 fresh ones I blanched) and your carrots. I didn’t drain my canned tomatoes because I wanted the liquid. If you’re using fresh tomatoes you may want to add in a bit of water. Plop in a can of tomato paste as well, to thicken it up.

Simmer that for a while until the carrots are soft. Now you can leave this in its hearty, rustic state, or you can give it a whaz with your handy immersion blender and mix it up.

I chose the latter, obviously.

Then I took a can of evaporated milk that Mrs. Nice had purchased for undisclosed reasons and poured that in. Uh, don’t, you know, confuse evaporated milk with condensed milk. I don’t think that would end well.

Season with salt and pepper to taste.

I would have loved to serve it with fresh basil but dried had to do. Yum!

Wingin’ It Wednesday: Red Soup, Green Soup

It’s been so busy here since Victoria Day that we haven’t had a chance to really do a lot of cooking for cooking’s sake. As a result, when I cleaned out our refrigerator this weekend in preparation for my parents’ arrival tomorrow (!), I found a sizable amount of very sad-looking produce. When I bought it, it looked sad, as most Newfoundland produce does, and two weeks in my crisper made it sadder still. Sad vegetables are just begging to be chucked in sauces, roasted, layered in a casserole, or made into soup. So I made soup.

I had red vegetables and green vegetables, and so I decided to make two different soups.

Each one started with onions and garlic, obviously.

The red soup was carrots, red peppers, mushrooms, and cherry tomatoes.

And I scooped out the seeds of the tomatoes. Well, some of them. I got bored quickly.

Chop that up, chuck it in a pot with some broth, some chipotle seasoning, and chinese five spice, then blend it up and you’ve got a savoury soup with a bit of kick.

The green soup had fennel, celery, cucumbers, broccoli, leeks, and cabbage.

To even out the flavours I added dill, mustard powder, salt, and a dash of cumin. Blended up, it’s cool as the cucumbers inside it.

Then I stored them all in plastic containers and froze them for future enjoyment!

Spicy Spring Carrot Soup

Happy Easter!

It’s spring. Well, I shouldn’t say that. It’s spring in some parts of Canada. Here in Newfoundland we are still clearing up snow from our blizzard last week. In most parts of the country the markets are full to bursting with new spring vegetables: tender carrots, tiny potatoes, fresh peas. Here in St. John’s it’s time to clean out the dregs of our winter supply, and most produce around here is either flaccid or unripe. So we make soup.

This soup will be served as a starter at our Easter dinner on Sunday. If a soup could be considered to be light and fluffy, it would be this one. In fact (and I may have texted this to the Pie when I made it), I bet if you put the Easter Bunny in a blender and heated him up he would taste a lot like this soup: sweet, a little bit spicy, a hint of ginger, and chock-full of carrots.

This recipe is simple, and takes very little time.

I have here 2 bunches of “new” carrots (which in reality were bendy and dried-out), 4 Bosc pears (which I unsuccessfully tried to ripen for three days), a handful of mildly hot peppers, and 2 onions.

Chop those puppies up and toss them in a pot. Add a whole carton of chicken broth (about 4 cups, or a litre), and top the rest up with water.

Chuck in as well a few teaspoons of minced ginger (two will probably do it, as the minced stuff is wicked strong) and a healthy dollop of dijon mustard.

Add in a few tablespoons of sweet chili sauce as well.

Simmer that like crazy until all the vegetables are tender.

Remove it from the heat and use an immersion blender (or a regular blender) to turn it all into an orange pulp.

If you’ve picked a really hot pepper for your soup, you might want to serve it with a dollop of sour cream, or maybe some green onions for garnish. It’s also lovely just as it is. You can freeze it easily and bring it out whenever you need a taste of spring.

Wingin’ It Wednesday: Sausage and Sweet Potato Stir-Up

This is an easy way to make sure you’re getting all your veggies in the winter time.

For this I diced up half an onion and chucked it in a large frying pan with some olive oil and a scoop of minced garlic. Then I added one very large hot Italian sausage (in little bits) and cooked it through. Toss in two finely sliced carrots, two handfuls sugar snap peas, and a finely sliced red pepper, and you’re almost there. Let that cook a little until things are tender-crisp. Then I added in two small sweet potatoes that I had previously parboiled and stirred everything around with some salt and pepper. Mmm, boy, it was good!

Carrot Zucchini Bran Muffins

I’ve been craving baked goods recently but with the food-heavy holidays coming up I don’t want to overdo it this early in the season. The answer to my delicious dilemma? These hearty food-filled muffins from Sweet Mama.

Preheat your oven to 400°F and spray a muffin tin with cooking spray.

Grate up 1 small zucchini and 1 medium carrot — you’re trying for 1 cup of each.

Mash up 2 small bananas with a fork — again, you’re looking for 1 cup banana.

In a medium-sized bowl, beat together 2 eggs, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup canola oil and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Add in the mashed banana and the grated carrot and zucchini. Add in as well 1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut. Mix it up well.

In another bowl, mix together 3/4 cup all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup bran, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoons each ground cinnamon and ground nutmeg.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and stir until just combined.

Spoon into the muffin tins. I sprinkled mine with a wee bit of cinnamon sugar that I had on hand.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the muffins are brown and a toothpick inserted in the centre of the centre muffin comes out clean.

Leave in the pan for a few minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Or eat still hot with butter. MMMMMMMM!

O Canada: Quebec Three Bean Soup with Bannock

When you type in searches for French-Canadian soups on the internet you get a plethora of results. “Plethora” is one of my favourite words. That and the Spanish “desafortunadamente,” which gets me every time.

Jess sent me this beauty, passed down from the Iroquois nation. I decided, however, that the ingredients were slightly too close to the hodgepodge I made earlier, and I want to give you guys some variety.

There are also a ton of recipes out there for a yellow split pea soup that is quintessentially French-Canadian. Turn the peas green and you get pea soup from the Maritimes. Thicken it up a little and steam it in a wee bag and you get pease pudding from the Atlantic.

I dislike all pea soups. Sorry. You won’t see one here.

If you happen to Google “French-Canadian bean soup” you get further interesting results. Apparently, Arthur Flegenheimer (who went by the name of Dutch Schultz), was a rum-runner and all-out nasty mobster during Prohibition in the US in the early part of the 20th century (as a bit of Canadiana for you, pretty much all the contraband booze smuggled onto American soil during that time came from Canada, which wasn’t really into teetotalling). Anyway, while using the men’s room at a New Jersey hotel, Schultz was repeatedly shot. It took him about two and a half hours to die of his wounds, and when the police arrived to arrest the dying man, one of the officers recorded his words. One sentence involved “French-Canadian bean soup.” Who knew? These words have been turned into all sorts of literature, most notably that of Hunter S. Thompson. Weird stuff.

But we’re making soup here, not discussing books.

I cobbled together a recipe from here, here, and also from Jess’s suggestion above.

Preheat your oven to 400°F.

First, I got myself some local fall vegetables, some sweet potatoes and an acorn squash. Use whatever squash you like. Or none at all. Soups are pretty fluid, both conceptually and literally. Ha. Ha.

Slice up your squash and remove the seeds.

Slice up some sweet potato too.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil.

Roast them until they’re browning at the edges and fragrant, about 45 minutes. Remember to flip them every once in a while.

Meanwhile, drain and rinse 3 cans of beans. I used romano, white kidney, and chickpea. Chickpeas (garbanzo beans) seem to be consistent throughout these recipes, so I would make sure to use that one. But other people use cannelini beans and lima beans and whatever else they have on hand.

Dice up an onion. I have two halves of a red and a white so I’m going with that one.

Chuck the onion in a large saucepan with some minced garlic and some dried herbs, such as basil, and sauté until tender.

Dice up some carrots and celery and add those to the mix.

Plop in the beans as well.

Add 1 can diced tomatoes.

When your roasted vegetables are ready, peel off their skins, cube them up, and chuck them into the pot. Don’t fret too much about cutting up the squash super small — it will fall apart and smush itself as it simmers in the pot.

Cover with vegetable or chicken stock and season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and allow to simmer for 30-40 minutes.

Now for the bannock. As a child, on every field trip we went that involved learning some aspect of Canadian history (the Goldrush, the Fur Trade, the Potlatch, the Salmon Fishery …) we ended up making bannock on green peeled sticks over a campfire. Every. Time.

As a result, bannock in my mind will forever taste of ashes and stick.

But you can make it in a skillet too. To avoid the taste of raw stick and ash.

Apparently, bannock is a Scottish flatbread, stolen from the Romans so very long ago. If you squint your eyes you can kind of see how the Latin panecium can be bastardized into the Gaelic bannock. Sure. But remember that so many different cultures make a form of flatbread. It’s some form of grain or bean flour plus water and heat and boom – flatbread. The First Nations people of Canada, in the course of their various interactions with European settlers (good or bad), adopted and adapted bannock such that it is also recognized by many to be part of a bunch of First Nation food traditions. Because it’s bread. Everyone eats bread.

Some recipes for bannock use dried milk powder and shortening to fluff up the bread, but I firmly believe that this should be a flatbread, made with the barest minimum of ingredients.

So. Dry ingredients. Mix together 1 cup flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1 tablespoon sugar, and a pinch of salt.

Add enough water to form a dough and mix thoroughly. This will be dependent on the moisture content of the air and your flour. I added probably half a cup to this one. You want the dough to be slightly tacky.

Divide the dough into appropriate serving sizes and flatten into patties. Feel free to wrap a patty around a stick and shove it into a fire.

Or you can slip the patty onto a hot buttered skillet and fry, flipping halfway through, until both sides are golden brown.

Serve with honey, butter, jam, salsa, soup, spaghetti … whatever you want. It’s bread. It’s flexible.

More Words on Bannock

Art of Manliness: Baking in the Wild

Family Oven: Bannock

M.E.C. on Bannock

WikiHow on Bannock

Roasted Chicken and Rice Soup

So I made a roasted chicken to go with our poutine from earlier, and the Pie and I ended up, in the events of that week, forgetting about the leftovers completely.

So let’s make some soup for those busy periods in our lives (which, this term, is pretty much every day).

Pop your carcass and any other bits of chicken you have, skin, bones, everything, in a large pot. Cover it with 1 litre chicken stock and the rest with water. Bring that to a boil and reduce the heat to a simmer. Let that bubble away for about an hour.

Remove the pot from the heat. Set a large colander in a larger bowl and pour the contents of the pot into the colander. This makes getting the wee bits of non-meat out of the broth easy.

Pour the strained broth back into the pot. Strip the chicken of bits that you want in your soup, and chuck those bits in with the broth.

Chop 1 carrot and 1 onion and add those in.

Add 1 cup rice.

I was going to add a can of tomatoes to this, but it turned out I didn’t have any (which was kind of a shocker, considering that I normally have about four on hand). Instead, I had a little over 1 cup pumpkin purée, left from the Pie’s first attempt at pumpkin pie, so I added that in.

Sprinkle on some herbs (I used oregano) and add salt and pepper. I also added a pinch or two of chipotle seasoning.

Put your pot back on the heat and simmer it for about half an hour, until the rice is cooked and the carrots are tender and everything is hot and yummy. Taste, and adjust your seasonings if necessary.

Serve hot or freeze for later on. It’s that simple!

O Canada: Maple-Glazed Salmon

You won’t see too many fish or seafood dishes on here, because the Pie won’t eat them. You can’t do a feature on Canadian cuisine without talking about Canada’s vast ocean resources, so I’ve kind of snuck this one in under the radar. I discovered the recipe a few years ago when the Pie and I had two other roommates who were a little more into sea creatures than he is, and I made it often. The plus is that the marinade works really well on pork chops as well, so when I make this I can make a piece of salmon for me and a piece of pork for the Pie and we’re both happy.

Maple syrup forms the basis of this marinade, but the lemon juice, ginger, and soy sauce give the sweetness a bit of a snap. Quick and easy, too. I pulled it from an issue of Canadian House & Home a million years ago.

In a bowl, mix together 2 tablespoons lemon juice, 1/2 cup genuine maple syrup, 4 tablespoons light soy sauce (I used organic tamari), 1/4 cup Dijon mustard, and 1 teaspoon minced ginger. This is enough marinade for 4 pieces of fish.

You’ll notice here that I butterflied the porkchop I had, just to make it the same thickness as the salmon. That way I could cook them at the same time.

Place your salmon* (or your pork) in a shallow dish and, saving about 1/4 cup of the marinade for later, pour the sauce over the fish. Refrigerate that for an hour.

Preheat your oven to 450°F.

While that’s heating up (mine takes forever), peel 2 very large carrots and wash 3 very small zucchini. Or whatever ratio you prefer.

Use a mandolin to slice the vegetables thinly lengthwise.

Plop them in a pot with a few inches of water. Add a generous pat of butter and some fragrant herbs, like herbes de provence.

Cover and steam for 8-10 minutes, until the carrots are all bendy.

Thinly slice up about 3 tablespoons scallions or green onions.

Spray a glass dish and set your fish in it with a bit of marinade to coat.

Bake for about 10-12 minutes, basting halfway through with some leftover marinade.

Transfer to a serving dish and drizzle with some of that 1/4 cup of marinade you saved earlier. Sprinkle with the sliced onions. Drain the vegetables and serve as well. Mmmmm … This makes up a little bit for the poutine we had last week, but won’t stand up in the face of what I’ve got planned for you on Friday. Stay tuned!

*** THE END ***

*If you’re reading this asterisk-ed caveat, you got me: that is actually trout, not salmon. It was in a big jumbled pile at the seafood counter and I picked it up by mistake, okay? Sheesh.

Carrot Cake for Interviews

While the Pie and I were back in Ottawa, I took advantage of our time there to finish off a few more interviews for my work with the local hockey team. For my very final interview, the person I was interviewing wasn’t a huge sweet fan, so I decided to go with a nice, fresh carrot cake that I pulled off the Canadian Living website. Plus it was easy peasy and I didn’t have a lot of free time.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and then butter and flour a 13 x 9″ metal cake pan (or, as I did in this case, two 9″ square disposable aluminum pans).