Sweet Tart

From Grow. Cook. Eat. Repeat. by Su Tee

September 13, 2009

Since I’ve last written, good things have happened in the garden. Beans pods have withered, been picked, shelled and shelved. We voted the orca first for looks (black and white like the whale); we’ll find out soon if it tastes lives up to its outer shell. The cold room has been overrun by squash; from six seeds comes the gift that keeps on giving. Onions and potatoes are at rest in bins. The blueberries and raspberries have been packed away in the freezer to await pie and jam, respectively. The teen twit was on high cuke alert all summer; they rarely made it to the fridge, never mind Greek salad. And the tomatoes. What good friends they’ve been. We stuck to cherry and grape varieties due to bad luck (blight) and taste (bland) with larger varieties over the years, and our tomato bowl has runneth over all summer long. While the twits pop ‘em in their mouths for a sweet antioxidant hit, we fell in love with them all over again as the star of a tart:

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Barbecued Pizza

From Grow. Cook. Eat. Repeat. by Su Tee

July 29, 2009

So here’s the thing. There’s a heat wave. Huge heat wave. It’s really hot out. Boiling hot. Like crack an egg on the pavement at 8 PM and it’ll sizzle. No way are we using the oven. But it’s pizza night. Gotta have pizza. What an opportunity to experiment: I ask the big Twit to barbecue. With the pizza on a cookie sheet. He’s doubtful but obliges (he’s hungry). The results? Sublime. No. Beyond sublime. The crust is crusty; not a hint of sogginess; cooked to perfection. Lots of crunch but with taste. And on top, crisp and melty all at once, a supreme combo of caramelized onions, stir-fried tromboncino squash, fresh mozzarella and dukat dill. Summer explodes in my mouth. Thank-you heat. Thank-you big Twit. Thank-you barbecue. I’m in love with pizza all over again.

Is that a zucchini in your pocket? Or are you just happy to see me?

From Grow. Cook. Eat. Repeat. by Su Tee

July 29, 2009

I’m out in the garden the other day, picking beans, digging up potatoes, plucking peaches, cutting lettuce, feeling virtuous, when I trip over a zucchini. Literally. It has to be at least 18 inches long and 6 inches in diameter. I mean, how could I have missed this? Well, okay, I wasn’t focused on the zucchini patch because it looked like blossom city, and not pickin’ ready. But it’s been really hot, the soil’s happy and everything’s in a super-charged growing state, hence the mutant zucchini.

I bring it into the house just so that the Twits can ogle the size, but figure it’s way too big to have any taste except as Freddy (i.e. dog) food. I slice it open and dang! I was wrong. This baby’s flesh is delicate. Dainty, even. New challenge. What to make? While I admit to being Cocoa Loco, chocolate zucchini bread is just not my thing. Nor the Twits’. I round up Emy (housekeeper of all housekeepers) and we figure we’ll start with our ol’ standby, curried apple-zucchini soup. Freezes brilliantly, easy to make, tastes complicated (perfect for a dinner party—just add croutons and grated parmesan and you’re good to impress). We make a double batch and barely make a dent in the vegetable. We figure, hey, it’s pizza night, let’s make a topping. We slice, stir-fry with almost-caramelized onions, toss with crumbled blue cheese and spread over two pizzas. Yum.

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Cocoa Loco

From Grow. Cook. Eat. Repeat. by Su Tee

July 14, 2009

Yesterday we decided to celebrate all things chocolate. Well, okay, we do that everyday. It all goes back to when my urologist told me long ago to choose one of three: alcohol, coffee or chocolate. Umm, like, no brainer? My family has embraced this dark road with me: they, too, have become See’s Candies aficionados (the world can be divided, at least on the west coast, between those who choose See’s nuts & chews (us! us! us!) and then those who prefer those yucky soft centers). They grudgingly chop bittersweet (70%) chocolate for Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies. My tween Twit concocts the finicky custard necessary for super-creamy chocolate ice cream. My teen Twit is creating a line of chocolate syrups with his fourth cousin (for profit). I wouldn’t dream of making k’mishbroit (the Jewish biscotti) without chocolate chunks and toasted pecans. My friends have given up serving us chocolate desserts; how can they compete with Bubbe Bette’s Midnight Brownie’s 18 ounces of the dark stuff? Me, I’m a simple chocolate girl at heart. Give me a delicate bowl of mascarpone (slightly sweetened with powdered sugar) topped with almond-flavored hot-fudge sauce and I’m a happy camper. But back to yesterday: we toasted the morning with chocolate milk; snacked in the afternoon on Dorie Greenspan’s World Peace Cookies and finished the evening off with bowls of chocolate ice cream topped with hot-fudge sauce. Bliss.

Picky, Picky, Picky

From Grow. Cook. Eat. Repeat. by Su Tee

July 8, 2009

It’s a day of mourning in the household (well, okay, I’m wearing weeds, everyone else is going about business as usual): the Twits* would prefer to get in a car and drive to a store to buy lettuce rather than pick it fresh in the back yard. To quote the Teen Twit: “First I have to walk over to vegetable garden, then I have to cut the leaves, then I have to bring them back to the house and then you make me wash them, and gently, or the leaves get damaged. It sucks, Mum. Why can’t we just be like normal people and buy the bagged stuff?”

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Torta Rustica Pinkita

From Grow. Cook. Eat. Repeat. by Su Tee

July 1, 2009

This past Monday I got ambitious and decided to attempt Provençal Zucchini and Swiss Chard Tart with Whole Wheat Yeasted Olive Oil Pastry, published last week in the NYT by Martha Rose Shulman. Out in the garden I found onions, garlic, beet stems and leaves (chard replacement), rosemary and thyme. But no ripe zucchini, so that was a Young Brothers buy. to While we didn’t have gruyère, we had something similar (well, it was white and smelled strong). My housekeeper kindly mixed together the ingredients for the pastry, but before I had time to roll it, she fell, gashed her head against a corner of the open dishwasher and we ended up in the ER for three hours. She’s going to be OK, but the dough rose way longer than advised. No matter. I rolled it out anyway and fit it into our huge cast-iron pan that I can barely lift. Then I quickly beat the eggs, added the cheese and sautéed vegetables, dumped the mixture on the pastry, turned over the edges in as rustic a way as possible and sent to the oven for about an hour. It was delish and you know what? It tasted even better the next day, cold. So there you go. A one-dish summer dinner. On the pink side.

Strawberry Short-Take

From Grow. Cook. Eat. Repeat. by Su Tee

June 14, 2009

Life is sweet these days: strawberries are in season. I was at Young Brothers yesterday, just about the cheapest place on Vancouver’s west side for fresh fruits and veggies (cash only, no organic but plenty local), and there they were, just picked, nestled comfortably in green cardboard cartons. Local strawberries. They weren’t even their usual, Pacific Northwest soggy selves, thanks to an unusual run of hot weather.

They were beautiful. Ridiculously red. Smallish and almost heart-shaped. I fell in love. I blew my budget and bought four pounds. I cradled the two boxes in my arms as I left the store and cautiously drove home, avoiding sudden stops. At the sink, I gently brushed the dirt away and rinsed them oh-so-slightly in water before standing them stem side down on baking sheets outside for the sun to kiss dry.

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Get your butter freak on

From Grow. Cook. Eat. Repeat. by Su Tee

April 2, 2009

I have a confession: I make butter. Every other odd thing I do apparently pales in comparison. (And I do odd things, like wash dishes before putting them in the dishwasher.) It’s astonishing: people think it’s bizarre that I make butter, and that I must be weird. I have my brother to thank for this. He always introduces me to his friends or acquaintances as, “This is my sister. She makes her own butter.” He says it with such “ah-ha!” in his voice, as if challenging these individuals to, Trump this! You’d think that people would say Good for you, or ask if it’s hard to do but no; most respond by raising their eyebrows and wondering, Why?

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New Month, Fresh Start

From Grow. Cook. Eat. Repeat. by Su Tee

April 1, 2009

Today is the first of the month. Otherwise known as Give Me Please among the twits. As in, Give Me Please My Pocket Money. You see, for two years now, the twits and I have lived on a budget. And we have learnt that in order to successfully do so, we must pay for everything we possibly can in currency: it’s remarkable how the list of necessary purchases shrivels when one is forking over cold, hard cash. (It did take the chief twit one year to learn that VISA is not a foreign word that means, “I’ve run out of pocket money so I’m using plastic, but since I don’t see the statement, it doesn’t count.”)

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Please Don’t Eat the Veggies

From Grow. Cook. Eat. Repeat. by Su Tee

April 1, 2009

I should be delighted. My teenage twit is eating his fruits and raw veggies: strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, apples; carrots, celery, cucumbers, lettuce, peppers. While part of me is delighted, other parts–-the growing and buying part, the washing and prepping part, the budget management part–-are, what’s the word? Oh, yeah: annoyed. It just takes so much more time, energy and money to fill a twit full of fruit and vegetables than vacuum-packed bags of sugar and preservatives. I water, weed, soil amend, pick: he just eats. The other twits weren’t even aware that we grew cucumbers, strawberries or raspberries this past summer; teen twit got to them first. I buy and wash; again, he just eats. The quantities, they’re breathtakingly impressive: two pounds of carrots, a celery head, five red peppers, a quart of frozen blueberries-–in a sitting. (And no, he’s not trying to jump-start his colon.) Does anybody out there know how aggravating it is to open the cooler at 6 PM to retrieve two heads of romaine for the Caesar salad you were looking forward to all day, only to find a plastic bag, empty except for a drooping leaf (justification for leaving the bag in the cooler). I made him start to wash the veggies. But that’s almost worse–-he eats on the job. It’s getting expensive. Growing season hasn’t really begun, we eat organic, we live in Vancouver, BC (not a cheap city). He’s causing havoc with my food budget. Please don’t get me wrong. I like that he eats his fruits and veggies. I just never thought I would ever say to my twit, Enough with the roughage. Go eat a cookie.