The air is cool, the sky stretches impossibly high above in lovely blueness. There are birds singing, and Beethoven is coming from somewhere. Even though it’s still early, there are children laughing in the park, their mothers sitting quietly, soaking in the sun.

The breeze smells of spring, of the crabapple blossoms that have turned the neighbourhood into a fairyland. You sit reading in the snowstorm of petals, wishing for words to describe their perfect scent. The neighbour’s puppies interrupt your musings as they leap onto your lap, smothering you in kisses and silky fur.

Can you imagine anything more beautiful than spring?

Ginger-Cashew Granola

Each spring, I will quite suddenly grow weary of hot breakfasts and start longing for something cool and filled with fruit. Homemade granola served with berries fresh from the market fits the bill perfectly.

• 6 C oats
• 1 C cashew pieces
• 1 T ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 C butter, melted
• 1/2 C honey
• 1 C dried apricot pieces

Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease a large baking dish.

In a large bowl, mix together the oats, cashews, ginger, and cinnamon. Pour in the butter and honey and stir until well combined. Spread the mixture into the baking dish and bake, stirring every 10 minutes or so, for 30-40 minutes, until the granola has crisped and browned. Allow it to cool before stirring in the dried apricots. Store in an airtight container.

16-20 servings.

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“You’ll have to teach me to bake gluten free.”

My younger sister is the unchallenged baking genius of the family, at least when it comes to desserts. She’s received multiple marriage proposals for her molasses cookies, and can give advice on piping. Piping. That is, in my books, the height of baking sophistication.

So when she asked me to teach her some gluten-free recipes for us to share this summer—we’ll be neighbours for most of it, something I am looking forward to very much—I was excited, but also a little intimidated. After all, I’m only just learning the ropes myself. Gluten-free baking often seems like alchemy—four or five different kinds of flours, mysterious substances like psyllium husk or pectin, substitutions left, right, and centre. I’ve had some successes (most recently pizza dough, which will appear soon!) and some horrific failures. My Dutch Boterkoek for Easter Sunday was both distastefully greasy and so crumbly that you had to eat it with a spoon rather than a fork.

With the prospect of sharing my baking on a more regular basis, I am feeling all the more inspired to explore, to perfect my alchemy as far as possible.

In the spirit of experimentation, I wandered far from the recipe in this experimental cake, baked for no particular occasion. Perhaps my hundredth post can provide sufficient excuse? Or reading Lucan? Or simply the fact that it is spring?

On the other hand, chocolate needs no excuse.

Chocolate, Hazelnut, and Orange Cake

Adapted from Aran Goyoaga’s lovely book Small Bites and Sweet Treats.

• 40g dark chocolate, chopped
• 113g (1/2 C) butter
• 4 eggs, separated
• 100g (1/2 C) coconut sugar
• 80 ml (1/3 C) plain yogurt
• 2 T fruit-sweetened marmelade
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 75g hazelnut flour
• 35g buckwheat flour
• 35g cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease an 8×8 baking dish.

Bring a pot of water to a boil and melt the chocolate and butter in a small bowl placed over the boiling water.

Meanwhile, whisk the egg yolks and half of the coconut sugar together in a large bowl. Add the yogurt, marmelade, vanilla, hazelnut flour, buckwheat flour, cocoa powder, salt, and melted chocolate mixture. Mix well.

Beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks, then, continuing to whip, sprinkle in the rest of the sugar. Fold 1/3 of the meringue into the batter, then gently fold in the rest of the meringue. Spread gently in the baking dish and bake for about 35 minutes, or until the centre stops jiggling and a toothpick comes out clean.

12-16 servings.

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Spring has come late to Montreal this year.

Less than two weeks ago, I could look out my window and see flurries of snow. Not long before that, a blizzard erased all the dirt and grime of spring snow-melt, painting the mountain a brilliant, blinding white.

But now it is indisputably spring, and well worth the wait.

As the daffodils, tulips, snowdrops, blue-eyed grass burst into a riot of colour, as the trees turn fuzzy, and the birds remember how to sing, it feels as though all the beginnings and endings are happening at once. Yesterday I took the last exam of my undergraduate degree. Time for rest, change, transitions. This time next year, I will be thousands of miles away from the trees I see blooming outside my window today. This time next year I will not be walking down Sherbrooke with a cake in one hand and a daffodil in the other, thanking a friendly panhandler who has exclaimed, “C’est belle, ta fleur!” This time next year I will not be exclaiming over asparagus at the Atwater Market.

Whatever wonders the next turn of the seasons will bring, for now, I am enjoying the wonders right in front of my nose.

O, elles sont belles, les fleurs.

C’est belle, la vie. 

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!

Dijon Asparagus with Poached Egg

A simple lunch or breakfast, just what I long for in the warming days.

• olive oil
• 5-8 stalks of asparagus with the woody ends broken off
• 1/4 tsp dijon mustard
• 1/4 tsp lemon juice
• 1 egg
• salt and pepper

Heat the olive oil in a large-bottomed pan. At the same time, start a pot of water boiling for the egg.

When the oil is hot, add the asparagus and sauté until the stalks are just tender. Add the mustard and lemon juice. Poach the egg while you keep stirring the asparagus. Arrange the stalks on a plate, top with the egg, and season with salt and pepper.

1 serving.

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Breakfast is a strange beast, sometimes.

On hurried mornings I used to compose variations on toast. Toast, almond butter, and banana. Toast and jam with yogurt. Toast with eggs—poached, scrambled, fried. Toast with avocado and soy sauce. Once, to my roommates’ collective horror, sardines and pickled carrots on toast.

Now that toast is off the menu, I’ve tended, boringly, towards oatmeal. Imagine, then, the breakfast-time panic, when, in the midst of exams, the grocery story quite suddenly runs out of gluten-free oats. The horror! One cannot simply skip breakfast, or exist on a diet of omelets and naught else.

And so, strangely and perhaps fortunately, I have been forced, in the rush of morning exams and last-minute papers, to take a little more time over breakfast.

Here are a few of my discoveries, one sweet, one savoury. Enjoy them slowly, while trying not to think about how much of your thesis remains to be written.

Coconut-Mango Breakfast Quinoa

• 1/2 C hot cooked quinoa
• 1 1/2 T coconut
• 1 T cashews
• 1/2 C cubed mango
• 2 tsp honey
• zest of 1/2 lemon (optional)

Mix everything together and enjoy!

1 serving.

Quinoa with Red Pepper, Egg, and Avocado

• olive oil
• 1/4 red pepper, diced
• 1/2 C cooled cooked quinoa
• juice of 1/2 lemon (optional)
• 1 egg
• 1/4 avocado, sliced
• salt & pepper

Heat the olive oil in a small pan over medium-low heat. Get a pot of water boiling for the egg at the same time. Sauté the red pepper until just tender, then add the quinoa and lemon juice. Cook, stirring, while you poach the egg. Top the quinoa with the avocado, put the egg on top, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

1 serving

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A sunrise, a risen Son. The first crocuses of spring outside my door. How can I keep from singing, shouting, dancing?

I danced in the morning
When the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem
I had my birth.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.

I danced for the scribe
And the pharisee,
But they would not dance
And they wouldn’t follow me.
I danced for the fishermen,
For James and John -
They came with me
And the Dance went on.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.

I danced on the Sabbath
And I cured the lame;
The holy people
Said it was a shame.
They whipped and they stripped
And they hung me on high,
And they left me there
On a Cross to die.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.

I danced on a Friday
When the sky turned black -
It’s hard to dance
With the devil on your back.
They buried my body
And they thought I’d gone,
But I am the Dance,
And I still go on.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.

They cut me down
And I leapt up high;
I am the life
That’ll never, never die;
I’ll live in you
If you’ll live in me -
I am the Lord
Of the Dance, said he.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.

—Sydney Carter (1963)

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Two months have passed since I last cooked with a spoon in one hand and a camera in the other.

It seems far, far longer.

These past two months have been the most intense I have ever passed through. Life has become so concentrated that days, though they fly by at breakneck speed, contain enough information, experience, joy, for several weeks of normal life. Is life ever normal? Does it keep intensifying?

But now I am back. At least for a heartbeat, I am finished with late-night rehearsals, early-morning flights to all corners of the continent, days spent running from pillar to post. I am back to the ordinary insanity of schoolwork, exploring my beautiful city, making messes in the kitchen. Back to the homey noises of my roommates moving around the house, the front door slamming, the neighbour’s dog barking. Back to writing, back to spring, back to singing down the streets on the way to school instead of rushing on the metro.

What better time to get back to bread?

Aside from one unfortunate gluten-free brick purchased in a moment of weakness, I have not tasted bread since my last bagel in August of last year. I’ve announced many times, “tomorrow I am going to try making bread,” but nothing has ever come of it until now. Oh, heavens. That first bite was like a moment earlier this month when I walked out of the airport in San Francisco and smelled the eucalyptus-filled breeze for the first time in the better part of a decade—I hadn’t realized how achingly I missed it until it was back.

Gluten-Free Bread

I have read enough horror stories to know that I’m incredibly, incredibly fortunate to have had such success on my first attempt. This is probably because I based my recipe on the lengthily-named “crusty bread that even those who eat gluten might like” from Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef. Shauna and Daniel Ahern certainly know what they’re doing when it comes to gluten-free, and, in spite of my changing around many of the flours and the baking temperature/time, everything turned out all right. The teff and brown rice flours combine to give the bread the rich brown colour I remember from my sourdough loaves.

• 227g (8 oz.) potato starch
• 100g (3.5 oz.) almond flour
• 43g (1.5 oz.) brown rice flour
• 43g (1.5 oz.) teff flour
• 85g (3 oz.) sorghum flour
• 1 T active dry yeast
• 1 T psyllium husks
• 1.5 tsp salt
• 1 1/3 C warm water
• 2 eggs
• 1/6 C olive oil
• 1 T honey

Weigh the flours into the bowl of a stand mixer and whirl them up until they are well incorporated. Add the yeast, psyllium husks, and salt, then mix some more. Add the remaining ingredients and mix until it the dough comes together slackly. It won’t look or feel anything like bread dough. To quote the Aherns: “Don’t worry.”

Push the dough down from the sides of the bowl into one mass, cover it with plastic wrap, and set it aside to rise for two hours. Come back when your roommate yells that something is growing in there.

Preheat the oven, with a hearth stone if you have it, to 450°F. When the oven is up to temperature, form the dough into two oblong loaves on a piece of parchment paper, slash with a knife or lame, and slide them into the oven. Back for 30-40 minutes, until the loaves sound hollow.

Let the bread cool for about half an hour before you slice it—this is agonizing, but will make it less likely to crumble.

2 loaves.

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Life rule #1: when your life feels hectic, make sure you have good snacks on hand.

Life rule #2: when your life feels hectic, take time each day to read poetry. Yeats is on my mind this week:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Ginger-Oat Snacking Cake

Adapted from Eating for England. This is especially good with a slather of butter.

• 90g oat flour
• 150g almond flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 4 tsp ground ginger
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 C honey
• 1/2 C melted butter

Mix the dry ingredients together, sir in the wet, and bake in a greased 9×9-inch pan and bake at 350°F for 45 minutes to an hour. Cover with foil if you don’t want a browned crust, but I like the crust.

12 servings.

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These are the days you pull round your shoulders like a quilt, familiar and warm. Time for nourishment, and inspiration.

• I got two cookbooks for Christmas: Small Plates and Sweet Treats and Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef. Both are giving me ideas…
• Gearing up for more tragedy.
• The traditional snack for journal editors (it is journal-editing season) is Timbits, which are, alas, not on the list of things I can eat. So I am trying to think of alternatives. Pumpkin bread is possible, as are these rather exciting florentines. I’ve also been meaning to try these biscotti.
• The soup craze continues. On the hit list: sweet potato soup, French lentil soup with parsnip and apple, black bean pumpkin soup.
• Cynthia Lair is being awesome, as usual.
• Planning to try this, in my copious spare time for baking experimentation.
• Ever since discovering harissa, I’ve been craving carrots and chickpeas all the time.
• Reading John Donne.
• And The Yiddish Policeman’s Union for fun.

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I was very cleverly away from Montreal during the record snowfall just before New Year’s, but the consequences are in many ways still visible weeks afterwards. Snow has been carted away and sidewalks cleared, but there are still beautiful drifts on the mountain, gleaming distractingly outside my classroom window. The short-cut alley is still full of slush. And I am most decidedly in a soup mood.

So lasting has this mood been that I made three different kinds of soup this week, freezing some for later, carrying leftovers to school in a thermos to lift my spirits at midday.

The winner this week has been this roasted cauliflower soup, adapted from a recipe by Aran Goyoaga in her book Small Plates and Sweet Treats. My parents gave me the book for Christmas as a leg up in my attempts at gluten-free baking. I have yet to bake any of the sweet treats, or the tempting-looking savoury pastries, but this is a soup that hits the spot in a soup mood.

Expect more soup in days to come. The snow’s here to stay.

Roasted Cauliflower and Leek Soup

• 1 cauliflower, cut into small florets
• 1 leek, sliced
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled
• olive oil
• 3 small potatoes, peeled and diced
• 3 C vegetable stock
• 160 ml (1 small can) coconut milk
• pinch thyme

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Toss the cauliflower, leek, onion, and garlic with a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Put them in a baking pan and roast for about 25 minutes, tossing occasionally, until they start to turn golden. Move the vegetables into a large pot and add remaining ingredients. Bring to a simmer and cook for about 15 more minutes, then puree with a blender or immersion blender. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve hot with the pesto as a garnish.

4-6 servings

Arugula and Hazelnut Pesto

• 1/4 C hazelnuts
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 3 C arugula
• 2 T grated Parmesan
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 C olive oil

Toast the hazelnuts in a dry skillet over medium-high heat until they start to smell fragrant. Put them in a food processor with the garlic and process to a powder. Add the arugula, Parmesan, and salt, and keep the machine going until the arugula is finely chopped. Pour in the olive oil in a a steady stream with the machine running until it comes together in a lovely paste.

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I’ve just gotten home from my first day of class. (Most of the time, I may add, I don’t write my posts at six in the morning. Most of the time.) It was an odd-feeling day. Partly it had the flavour such days always have. The excitement of seeing everyone after an eternity of two weeks apart, the pleasure of learning what is in store in each class for the coming months, the horrors of standing in a massive queue at the bookstore. Hustle and bustle punctuated by lulls of quietness. Sunlight slanting through the windows of the almost-deserted library.

But this time it was also my very last first day, at least of my undergraduate education, which added an element of melancholy. Melancholy, and bizarreness.

In any case, it was the start to a busy semester, so I tried to start it off on the right foot, at least on the feeding myself end of things. Among other things, this means I actually remembered to pack a snack, instead of my usual trick of straggling home to make dinner having eaten nothing for seven or eight hours. Whether this will last more than a few days remains to be seen…

Rosemary Toasted Almonds

• 1 C almonds
• 1 tsp dried rosemary
• 1/4 tsp sea salt

Heat a small sauté pan over medium-high heat. Put in the almonds and toast, shaking them around constantly so as not to burn them. After about a minute, throw in the rosemary and salt. Keep toasting until the almonds are fragrant and toasty looking. Let cool completely before storing in an airtight container.

Makes 1 C.

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