Scarves, socks and Sunday night soup

I'm not a fall person. I love the barefoot, carefreeness of summertime. I love the sticky, sleepless nights, the hot, humid afternoons. I love sitting by the lake, going to the beach, swimming in cool water and heating up afterwards with the hot, summer sunshine. But, inevitably, fall makes it's appearance. It's not that I can't appreciate the beauty of fall, it's the imminence of winter that I can't get past.

Something I can embrace about fall though, is the food. I love warm bowls of soup after many months of crisp salads, bread baking in the oven, spicy cakes made with apples and pumpkin (there is one in my oven as I type this).

I will also admit that I love wrapping a cozy scarf around my neck and wooly socks on my feet and going for long walks, watching the leaves changing colours and crunching beneath my feet. The sun seems to cast a more golden light and every day when I get up I'm happy for any plant in my garden that has survived a night a little cooler than the last. It's always exciting to see which ones hold out the longest until they get covered up with their white blanket of snow to have a long nap until spring.

So I guess I'm coming around to fall. And a warm bowl of soup sure makes it easier to embrace.

Sunday Night Soupe Maison

This recipe is so easy I struggle to give you an exact recipe, so I will just give suggestions. It is pretty much impossible to screw up, and it will always taste good. My Mother-in-law is the master of this soup, and when I make it, JS is in heaven. He could eat just this soup all the time and be happy. His Mom used to make it for him every Sunday night. When I made it the other day, the only veggies I had to hand were potatoes, onions, carrots and some swiss chard in my garden. It was delicious! You can also add celery, garlic, turnip or any vegetables you like.

3 medium red potatoes

2 small or one large onion

5 medium carrots

1 zucchini

A few Tbsp. olive oil

1 tbsp dried herbs (I use herbes de provence, but any mixture of thyme, oregano, sage and/or rosemary will do)

Salt and pepper to taste

A few large leaves of swiss chard, spinach, kale or other leafy greens

Roughly chop the vegetables into fairly large chunks. Tumble them into a large soup pot with the olive oil and herbs and turn the heat to medium. Toss them around for a few minutes to heat and release some of their aroma.

When they are beginning to soften, but not brown, pour water in to cover them. Add a little bit of salt and pepper, stir and bring to the boil. Once it's boiling, reduce heat to medium, cover and simmer for about 45 minutes.

At this point, the vegetables should be cooked. If you stick a fork into a carrot and it's soft, that's perfect.

Add your chard leaves and let them wilt for a few minutes.

Puree right in the pot with an immersion blender, or you can use a blender or food mill (if you want to be really traditional). Add more water if it is too thick. Taste and correct seasonings. Serve in a big bowl with some chopped fresh herbs, a grating of parmesan cheese and some good, crusty, whole grain bread. Eat and feel happy about the changing seasons.

Back to blog

Well, I have been on hiatus. I don't really have any great excuse except that I got married in July and leading up to that took a great deal of planning, plus we had 8 house guests for the entire month of July which actually took more planning than the wedding itself.

But with the start of the school year just around the corner, I always feel inspired to start something new (or in this case, re-start something old). I also get this funny urge to buy nice new fall clothes, but that's for another blog.

This time of year is bittersweet for me. It's still summer, and I am constantly reminding myself of that, but everyone is acting like fall is already here and that means that winter is around the corner (ugh!). But the sweet part is that in reality, we still have several weeks of summery weather, cooler nights that just beg for another blanket and someone to snuggle with (lucky me, I have two!), and a bounty of beautiful summer vegetables from the garden and the farmers markets! This is, without a doubt, my favourite time of year to cook.

Today was warm and muggy and I wanted a healthy lunch made with garden vegetables. My friend Steph called last night from the west coast to say that what she was making for dinner (couscous with chickpeas and olives) made her think of me. I wish I could have shared it with her. Instead, I made a lovely bulgur salad full of fresh herbs and tomatoes from my dear friend Dave (mine are still green on the vines!?!). It fit the bill for a late summer, Sunday lunch for one.

Summer bulgur salad

1 cup bulgur wheat

2 cups water

1 tsp salt

Bring water and salt to the boil in a medium pot, add bulgur, stir and cover. Turn off the heat. Let the bulgur absorb all the water for about 20 minutes while you prep the vegetables.

a good handful of garden herbs, finely chopped (I used parsley, chives, basil and mint)

a few tomatoes, diced (I had a really lovely variety of heirlooms, you can use any fresh tomatoes)

half a cucumber, diced (I used a really lovely Armenian variety that I planted this year, it is so delicious and crisp, without a trace of bitterness, plus, the seeds are tiny!)

juice of one lemon

a few glugs of olive oil

salt

When the bulgur is cooked, spoon it into a large dish and let it cool a little bit. Add the vegetables and herbs, squeeze the lemon over (catching the seeds between your fingers) and drizzle with olive oil. Taste and see if it needs a little salt or more lemon or oil, and add as needed, tasting along the way. This dish is so flexible and easy. You could add pine nuts, olives, capers, feta, any other vegetables you like. And it keeps well for several days in the fridge and makes a perfect lunch to go. Eat outdoors with a cold glass of rose and a good book!

The sweet side of the avocado

For a while I've been meaning to experiment with avocados used in sweet things, but every time I buy avocados and they are sitting, perfectly ripe on my counter, all I can think about is a squeeze of lime, Maldon salt and a drizzle of the basil infused oil I brought back from France. Needless to say, until today, I hadn't gotten around to all my sweet avocado ideas!

My first idea came to me a while ago when I began making matcha lattes with almond milk, which I keep a stash of in my pantry. I love the slightly sweet, slightly almondy, creamy smoothness of almond milk to tone down the grassiness of matcha. I love starting the day with matcha, but sometimes the intensity and the greenness is a little much for me first thing in the morning. Matcha is super healthy and contains lots of antioxidants, the reason why it's better for you than regular green tea is due to the fact that you consume the whole leaf when you drink it rather than just the infusion of the leaves. Anyways, it occurred to me to combine avocado with matcha in a morning smoothie, to play on the green colour, but I wanted something with a little more flavour. Banana came to mind, as it has the power to make any smoothie sweet enough and gives great body and texture when pureed.

So this morning was test time. I decided to try frozen banana, avocado, almond milk and matcha. It worked! It was so creamy, cool and sweet, without being cloying and it felt just right for a morning pick me up. Plus, isn't everything green cool right now?

Green Sunrise Smoothie

1/2 an avocado (rub the other half with lemon, wrap tightly and save to throw in a salad later)

1 frozen banana (I freeze mine, peeled, in ziplock bags when they start to get brown and spotty)

about 1/2 cup of almond milk

1 tsp honey

1/2-1 tsp matcha powder (if you've never tried matcha, use a small amount to start, it has a pretty intensely green and slightly bitter taste)

Whizz everything in the blender and pour into a glass. Drink immediately, before it has the chance to turn a not so appealing khaki colour. Feel great about starting your day in such a healthy way. Serves 1.

Mon pain a moi

The bread baking has been continuing here. I've been really excited about the pain au levain, which I've played with a little bit to make it my own. It's a very dense loaf, maybe because my starter is not quite mature enough, but it has a crispy, hard, caramelized crust that I love and a chewy interior.

Clotilde of Chocolate and Zucchini has a great recipe that I have mostly followed, but changed a few things. http://chocolateandzucchini.com/archives/2009/07/natural_starter_bread.php

I have just slightly adapted this method.

Rustic Pain au Levain

The night before you want to bake:

Feed your starter, scoop out 1/2 cup starter and put in a clean glass bowl, stir in 1/2 cup plain flour and 1/4 cup filtered water. Remember to stir with a wooden spoon. Cover and let sit overnight.

If you don't have a starter, have a look at Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Bread Bible. There are fairly clear instructions on starting your own from scratch.

The next morning:

In a stand mixer with the paddle or dough hook, mix together:

600g flour (I use 300g whole wheat, 100g rye, 100g spelt and 100g white, all organic)

400g pure water

200g starter

1 Tbsp gluten flour

Mix until a rough dough is formed. This dough will be very sticky. Cover the bowl and let sit for about 30 minutes.

Add 2 tsp sea salt and allow the mixer to mix the salt in. Then transfer the dough to a floured countertop and knead by hand until the dough is less sticky. This might take about 10 minutes. Put dough into an oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Set in a warm, draft free area and allow to rise. After about an hour, fold the dough over, cover it up and allow it to continue it's slow rise. The bread should just about double in size after about 8 hours.

Oil and flour a cast iron or glass pot with a lid that is safe for the oven. Place the dough in the pot, make a few slits in the top and sprinkle with flour. Put the lid on and place the pot in the oven. Turn the oven on to 450F and set the timer for 1 hour. At that point, take the bread out and check it. Mine is usually not baked yet, so I uncover it and place it back in the oven for at least 15 and up to 25 minutes. If you stick a knife in the middle of the loaf it should come out pretty clean. This extra, uncovered time in the oven will allow for deeper caramelization of the crust. When the bread is baked, take out of the oven and carefully (don't burn yourself!) remove from the pot onto a wire rack. You really should wait for this bread to be cool before you cut into it, otherwise the middle can be gummy.

Enjoy and revel in the fact that you made a loaf of bread that is so rustic and beautiful! It is amazing what flour, water and salt can make when we treat them right.

Brioche and Pain au Levain

Today was a successful day on the bread front. In between clients, I kneaded and turned and gently set my doughs in bowls to rise. I peeked in on them, deflated them when they needed and finally tonight baked them, separately, each waiting their turn, in a hot oven until they were both golden and puffed. They are possibly the two most different types of bread, so let me start with the brioche, which I promised I would tell you about today.

I used Rose Levy Beranbaum's Basic Brioche recipe. It required lots of steps and seemed a bit daunting, like many of her recipes I must admit. But when I broke it down and actually looked at the steps, I realized it wasn't that difficult.

The soft, golden yellow dough that I had set in the fridge last night puffed until the plastic wrap around it was really tight. When I looked at it this morning it reminded me of a chubby woman squeezed into a mini skirt. All I had to do today was fold it and leave it to rise. I decided to make it in a big loaf pan with white sugar crystals on top, my favourite topping for brioche. Then it baked for about an hour and voila! A real brioche made in my own kitchen. I tried to be patient, but patience is not a great quality of mine, so I sliced it carefully while still a bit warm and spread it with apricot jam from last summer. It was lovely, mildly sweet, golden from the free range eggs, rich from the butter and with a softness that I was surprised and delighted by. All in all, the brioche was a winner.

Now for my pain au levain. I was skeptical about the life of my starter. I again used Rose's recipe for starter and I realized after about a week or two that I had been stirring it with a metal spoon. Apparently that is a big no no, but in all my reading about starters, I couldn't figure out why. Some people claim that metal is warm and will kill the bacteria, others say that metal contaminates starter. I wasn't sure. So I kept dumping out a little each day and feeding it with flour and pure water. It was smelling like a starter, acidic, maybe even a little cheesy. It was bubbling a little bit, like a good starter should. It was a nice even colour, with no streaks. I decided to name it (as both Rose and Clotilde did) and came up with Yuki. So I set out to try Clotilde's recipe for Pain au Levain using my very own Yuki. Basically I used 600g flour (red fife, whole wheat and white), 400 g water, 200 g yuki, 1 tbsp wheat gluten and 2 tsp sea salt. This got mixed, rested, kneaded and rose all day. The baked in my beloved red cocotte. It didn't give away how lovely it was going to taste with much of a smell wafting from the oven the way the golden brioche did. I tried to wait patiently by distracting myself with the end of a captivating book, but I was dying to see what was going on inside the lidded cocotte. Finally an hour passed and I opened it up, only to find it a little bit pale and not as high as I hoped. So I took the lid off and popped it back in to get a bit more colour and hoped for the best. I still wasn't sure that the starter had done it's job very well. So with a bit more patience I waited for the miche to cool and then, finally, cut into it. Well, let me tell you, I needn't have worried. If I dare say this, it was almost as delicious as my favourite bread, Pain Poilane! It had a lovely, chewy, compact interior, a hard, carmelized crust and that nice, mildly acidic tang that a starter lends to bread. I can't believe that I was able to create such a nice bread in my own kitchen!

Brioche

I decided to try my hand at a real brioche. Plain and simple. A rich dough full of butter and eggs, baked until golden and eaten just a little bit warm from the oven. It started last night when I got the sponge together and put in the fridge. this morning all I had to do was mix the dry ingredients together and cover the sponge and let it sit for a few hours. Then I mixed them together in my mixer and added the cold eggs then the soft butter bit by bit. That gave me the most beautifully sticky and soft golden coloured dough, which spent a couple of hours rising and is now resting in the fridge. It got deflated once, went back into the fridge and will get folded tonight before spending a chilly night in the fridge. Tomorrow it will rise once more before being baked and then enjoyed with some good butter and apricot jam. I can hardly wait!

I will post a photo tomorrow to let you know how it turns out....

Grapefruit Avocado and Feta Salad

The weather is tricking us into thinking spring is on the way, which I guess it is, but truthfully not for another 10 weeks. Snow is melting off rooftops and the streets are mucky and brown. I felt like having something bursting with flavour for lunch today. Something light, fruity and healthy. I had a few ripe avocados, tons of citrus fruit in the fridge and some feta cheese, so there was my lunch. It was just what I wanted, the silkiness of the avocado and the burst of pink grapefruit with some salty feta and a drizzle of sharp lime juice and basil infused oil. Perfection! I think some good black Kalamata olives tossed into the mix and a few fresh basil leaves might have taken this to the next level, but I thought of the olives after the fact and I had no fresh basil. I ate it with my homemade olive bread from last night's dinner (which is possibly better the second day) and sauteed tofu and spinach. I hesitate to give you a recipe for this, as quantities should vary according to your taste, but here's what I put in mine.

Grapefruit Avocado and Feta Salad

1 pink grapefruit

1 avocado

feta cheese (as much or as little as you like)

juice of half a lime

basil infused olive oil for drizzling

Maldon sea salt

Segment the grapefruit and remove the membrane and pith. Cut each segment into two or three pieces. Cut the avocado into small cubes. Cut the feta cheese into small cubes. Toss or arrange on a plate. Squeeze a fresh lime over top and drizzle with the oil. Sprinkle with Maldon sea salt. Eat!