Having never cooked a cauliflower the way the recipe suggests, this recipe appealed to my sense of curiosity. The basic idea is to steam the cauliflower slowly, giving all the ingredients an opportunity to meld together. The book instructed to not cut the cauliflower at all before cooking, simply pull off the green leaves and then use them to line a heavy sauce pan.
Then, place the cauliflower on top with the remaining ingredients and place on low stovetop heat for quite a while. I’m skeptical how this will turn out. The amount of green olives seemed a bit obscene but I’m willing to give it a chance….
To be honest, the cauliflower was a bit strange. Not only did it take twice as long as suggested to almost cook, but it was a bit challenging to eat. But it looked good before we started eating and would make a nice addition to a buffet table… Or, better yet it would make a good participatory appetizer for the beginning of a casual dinner party because all your guests could gather round with a fork and dig right into the one serving plate. The combination of flavours leaned a bit heavily towards green olives. Next time I would decrease the amount of olives in order to achieve better flavour balance.
The final product:
Although it’s supposed to be spring, I was inspired by the cold and wet this week and decided to make soup. Although I’ve been a soup-making fanatic for several years now, I’m a bit ashamed to say I’ve never made a good onion soup. I had a package of thyme in my fridge so this soup recipe seemed the way to use it up. Because of the large number of red onions to cut up, I recruited Dave to do the deed. His eyes stung, but I had a plate of beautifully sliced red onions.
Onion soup relies on good quality ingredients and this recipe relies on simplicity but does have a few added touches that make it simple to make but gorgeous to look at (ahem, red wine?). After a day at work, it’s great to come home to make a soup that calls for red wine – not that I should need an excuse to open a bottle. A little for me on the side always helps with the cooking creativity.
As suggested by the cookbook, I served the soup with goat cheese (I actually subsituted feta from the fridge) and crusty french bread. And we didn’t let the rest of the bottle go to waste. On a rainy evening the soup was divine – not too heavy, but full of flavour. Because there was so few ingredients, each one contributed significantly to the flavour. I tossed in probably several times more thyme than the recipe called for and we both loved the strong flavour.
It was, however, a bit on the runny side, even with the addition of cornstarch. Perhaps not a first date or boss entertaining item, as it got a bit slurpy, with the long pieces of onion. The leftovers, after being in the fridge for a few days, tasted even better.
To go along with the portobello mushrooms, I decided to keep with the grilling theme and do another simple recipe from the Outdoor Grills section at the same time. The arrival of asparagus signals the beginning of spring and in Vancouver, which is currently draped in pink and white cherry blossoms, it finally feels like spring. The flavour and appearance of this recipe masks it’s simplicity. You can easily impress people by serving food in season because the ingredients themselves are just asking to be eaten. The beauty of this recipe is you can substitute whatever vegetable happens to be in season and is suitable for grilling. Simply snap off the ends of each asparagus spear before marinating and tossing on the grill. The spear will break naturally where it should.
Both the mushrooms and the asparagus were delicious accompaniments to our main course – our after-work standby of veggie burgers! It was nice to have some elegant sides to an otherwise commonplace meal.
Having committed myself to cooking through this entire book without actually having tested any recipes, I felt a bit nervous about the first blog. I decided to go with some simple vegetables, both from the Outdoor Grills section of the book.
Since I don’t actually have any outdoor space in my house I’m improvising with my electric grill. The grill was a wedding present and when we opened it up my first thought was – great, a large item to take up space in the cupboards. I was seriously wrong. In the three years we’ve had the grill, it has consistently been one of our most used kitchen items. It has a flat side for items like pancakes and a ‘grill’ side. The grill side will serve as my pseudo bbq during this blog.
A very simple recipe, the first step is to marinate for about 30 minutes. The marinade ingredients are simple and you would likely have them on hand. I accidently bought fresh thyme instead of rosemary – I’m sure it will still taste great.
What exactly are portobello mushrooms? Are they exotic? These questions led me to a quick internet search, where I discovered that portobellos are actually just grown-up versions of simple brown crimini mushrooms. Most importantly, they taste good and provide an almost meaty texture.
After grilling the mushrooms had dense flavour and the experience of eating them was almost reminiscent of eating steak. And although Dave purports to hate mushrooms, he gobbled his up pretty quick.