Kitchen Lark |

Rice Pudding

By Elizabeth | Published: January 4, 2013

One of my rituals when I come home for the holidays is to look through my mother’s cookbook collection. It’s a marvelous one, and I am unabashedly envious. About five feet of countertop are lined with cookbooks of all kinds, cuisines, and degrees of dilapidation. Overflow volumes are stacked in drifts on top, and there are usually two or three newer books from the library to thumb through. I pore over old favourites and new acquaintances, flagging recipes I want to copy out and try back in Montreal.

This year I rediscovered, wedged underneath Savory Baking, The New Basics Cookbook, a misplaced sudoku book, and a stack of egg cartons being saved for seed-starting at the farm, a little journal, half-filled with hand-written recipes. On the fly-leaf was my name, along with the idiosyncratically capitalized information that it was begun Sixth of march, 2006.

I began the book when I was first beginning to experiment with cooking, full of excitement and a blinding array of pen colours. Family favourites appear alongside versions of desserts I’d adjusted to be sugar free. My younger self has left a variety of motherly annotations (Hot hot hot! Let sit 5 min before serving or you’ll burn yourself), anecdotes about what various family members say about a dish, and so forth. The occasional recipe is headed with a variation on the theme I made this recipe up all by myself, and it didn’t explode or anything!

The first original recipe in the book is 16. Rice Pudding, recorded for posterity on the fourteenth of August, 2006. I remember being fascinated with the concept of rice pudding. In spite of three of the four members of the household being British, we had never really had many puddings, aside from the essential Christmas Pud (to be ceremonially salted with sixpence and lit on fire). There was very occasional Spotted Dick, which my sister and I demanded after seeing Wayne Sleep in a pantomime one year. The show was Dick Whittington, and it must have been around 1999, though I can’t remember the theatre. A running gag in the pantomime involved Sleep’s character—decked out in a very frilly dress as the essential panto dame—trying to explain to the hapless hero what the pudding was. “It’s Spotted Dick, Dick.” “Spotted Dick Dick?” “No, Spotted Dick, Dick!”

Rice pudding, however, was a mystery, known only from Victorian children’s novels like What Katy Did, which describes it as something unimaginably awful and hated by all children who are not rotten goody two-shoeses. I’m not sure what possessed me to want rice pudding with this promising introduction. Perhaps I am, at heart, a rotten goody two-shoes?

Posted in Snacks and Desserts

Baked Eggs with Comté and Cherry Tomatoes

By Elizabeth | Published: January 1, 2013

A new year.

Does it keep getting faster? Sometimes I worry I’ll wake up in what I think is a week or two and discover that it’s 2082, that a lifetime has sped by in the blink of an eye.

But for a heartbeat, at least, it’s 2013.

I’m an inveterate list-maker, so New Year’s is right up my alley. I make lists of books I want to read, places I want to see, things I want to do. Not a few of the latter are things I want to do in the kitchen. Here are a few of my culinary plans for the year.

I want to delve more into gluten-free baking. Right now I’ve only scratched the surface—there’s so much to learn. How do the different flours behave? I don’t want passable imitations—I want food that is tasty in its own right, food that is nourishing, not just a concoction of gums and starches. First stop, the stars: six months without bread is long enough. Also, I need a gluten-free version of this shortbread.
I’ll also (re)acquaint myself with meat. I’ve been vegetarian since June, but a sentence from on high has put an end to that adventure.
Before I leave Montreal this fall or next, I’m going to make myself a batch of poutine that doesn’t have anything I’m allergic to in it.
I really ought to work up the nerve to sharpen my own knives instead of trying to get visitors to do it for me. Aside from knife sharpening being an important life skill, I imagine it is not entirely comforting to be greeted at the door with a breezy, “Hullo! How are you? Do you want to sharpen knives today?”
I’m going to Greece in May, so I’ll be exploring that wonderful cuisine.

For now, though, it’s enough to start the day with a bit of breakfast-time excitement. There are 1094 more meals left in 2013—plenty of time to experiment.

Posted in Breakfasts

Sweet Potato Hummus

By Elizabeth | Published: December 28, 2012

A great joy over the past few months has been how ready everyone has been, not just to accomodate new-found food intolerances, but to help me find my feet in a gluten-free world. Before an event, whether a small gathering at a friend’s house or some larger function for the department at school, I’ll be bombarded with messages consisting of lists of ingredients and the question, “Can you eat all of that?” I’ve been offered recipes, websites, cookbook recommendations galore. Someone at yoga even saved me a business card from a gluten-free restaurant I might want to try. I’ve never felt lost or unsupported, culinarily speaking, for a moment.

I certainly have an exceptionally wonderful group of friends—I’m astonished every day at what considerate, kind, and interesting people I am blessed to know—but I also think (or hope, at any rate) that something more is going on.

A lot has been said about how food allergies—or at least the diagnosis of food allergies—have been skyrocketing in the past few decades. Some attempt to explain the change, pointing to differences in the food industry, in child rearing, in overall diet. Some dismiss the diagnoses as fads, especially when it comes to gluten intolerance.

I haven’t seen much ink spilt on the social implications of food allergies, though. One would expect food allergies to be isolating: fearful of accidentally causing anaphylactic shock or some similarly unpleasant reaction, people logically ought stop eating together entirely. This isn’t at all what I’ve experienced. Instead, I’ve seen people become even more deliberate about sharing food. Someone will always check: any nut allergies? Vegetarians? Who keeps kosher? And there is always something for everyone. There are, it seems, more obstacles to sharing food, but it also seems as though the social ritual of breaking bread together is sufficiently important to us that we are working harder to overcome these obstacles.

Again, I’m not trying to dismiss the difficulties, and I realize that the wonderful people in my life may have made me overly optimistic. But I like to think that things are getting better for allergy sufferers.

There is hope.

In the spirit of sharing, here is hummus to share. It is gluten-free, tree-nut free, peanut-free, vegetarian, vegan, and, if you do your shopping mindfully, kosher. It is inspired by one of a collection of recipes that my friend Emily sent me just after our Greek history final. A few days later and a few hundred kilometers away, my mother handed me many, many chickpeas to do something with, so, although the original recipe omits them entirely, I’ve added them back in. Spanish paprika (a sometime stocking-stuffer) makes things a little more exciting.

Thank you, Emily, and thank you to all the others, too many to name, who have shared with me in the past year. I’m looking forward to cooking with you in 2013!

Posted in Sauces, Dressings, and Condiments, Snacks and Desserts

Santa Always Brings Clementines

By Elizabeth | Published: December 25, 2012

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Posted in Adventures & Announcements

Brownies!

By Elizabeth | Published: December 21, 2012

Even though I found out I was gluten intolerant way back in August, I haven’t put up a lot of gluten-free baking recipes yet. Partly this is because I made a 2kg batch of whole grain gluten-free flour mix and promptly forgot how many grams of which flour I put in. Partly it’s because I haven’t had much time to experiment.

Mostly, it’s because I’ve felt strongly that I need a cooling-off period, a chance to forget a little bit what real bread tastes like so that I can appreciate gluten-free baking on its own merits rather than be constantly comparing it to what it isn’t. So I’ve stuck mostly to the many foods which are naturally gluten-free—potatoes, corn, rice, quinoa, and so many other things. There’s a lot more food that is gluten-free than isn’t, and, because I’ve always cooked entirely from scratch, the transition hasn’t been a hard one. Yes, there are days when my roommate makes a grilled cheese sandwich and I want to cry because I can’t have one, but for the most part, I haven’t had much trouble.

Probably as a direct result of exams, the baking itch has been coming back lately. I’ve made a few reasonably successful batches of oatmeal raisin cookies, which I will be sharing as soon as I figure out how to recreate my flour mix. Same goes for an apple crumble. The gluten-free pizza needs work.

My first unqualified success has been these brownies. They are Very Chocolatey, which is how brownies ought to be, and have the fudge-like texture an crispy edges that all self-respecting brownies have. You could throw in some walnuts or hazelnuts if you like, but in this instance I wanted straight-up brownies.

I shared these after an evening exam on the very last day of the exam period. (If anything in life requires chocolate, it is three hours writing about Archaic Greece on the last day of exams.) We sat huddled on tables and chairs outside the exam room after the exam, in a mild state of shock. We were done. Startlingly few people were interested in brownies (apparently most of them had been surviving on a diet of sugar and caffeine for several weeks, and were ready for something more substantial). But one friend, who has been kind enough to try most of my ill-starred gluten-free baking experiments (reactions have ranged from mild approbation to feigned death), took two of them and looked surprised when I started eating one. I take that as a very good sign!

Posted in Snacks and Desserts

Musings & Migas

By Elizabeth | Published: December 18, 2012

December is always an odd point in the year. It’s an in-between time, especially for those of us in school. Classes have ended, disrupting three months of routine. The exam-time panic starts to seep out of the library as more and more people leave for the holidays. There is a lot more silence, a lot more sitting quietly at home trying to make sense out of the distribution of pottery sherds, turn poems into meaningful arguments, dredge early Greek history out of the dusty corners of my brain.

I hang tightly to the routines that last, make new ones, look forward to Christmas traditions.

In spite of all the things I have to do, I find myself, in this liminal season, dwelling on other transitions. Soon I will have to let go of the friends, the school, and the city I have grown to love so dearly over the past few years.

Don’t mourn it before it’s gone, I sternly tell myself, using my inner voice that sounds most like my mother’s.

But these moments are precious, and I can’t help sighing a little as each one passes by. Not just the beautiful moments—singing carols with my roommates, sharing laughter and my first gluten-free pizza, dancing in the first snow like a five-year-old. The hard ones, too—panicking about papers, dreading a 6pm exam, slogging to school through what has now turned to slush. Every moment only comes once, which makes even the terrible ones beautiful in a strange sort of way.

Posted in Breakfasts

Winter Summer Rolls

By Elizabeth | Published: December 7, 2012

This post was going to be a bit of a whiny one, complaining about how much trouble I’m having making gluten-free lunches, given the fact that (a) salad greens don’t survive a half-hour walk through sub-zero temperatures very easily, (b) I refuse to use a microwave, or even to allow a friend to microwave things for me in the other room while I’m not looking, (c) I am sick to death of gluten-free crackers, objectively amazing as they are, and (d) I am very, very busy. After a few pleas to those who have walked this path before to give me a few ideas, I planned to end on a note of hope: summer rolls, which have become a lunchbox staple when I can’t face the crackers.

But now the time has come for whining, all I can really think about is the fact that I’m getting a Christmas tree today.

I’m getting a Christmas tree today!

I will walk to the market later this morning, pick out the biggest tree I can afford (hopefully a little larger than the twelve-inch ones I was eyeing earlier in the week), and carry it up the hill to my apartment, unless I can bribe someone into carrying it for me. I will put it in the living room and decorate it with lights and ribbon and invite a few dozen friends to come admire it. There it will sit in all its glory until January, when it has thoroughly dried out and started to shed faster than a Shetland sheepdog.

For some reason this is the first thing I’ve ever done that makes me feel, well, grown up. My first glass of wine, my first pair of heels, my first apartment—all of them seemed to have an element of let’s-pretend about them. But the first Christmas tree I’ve bought for myself…it’s starting to seem like this is real life, not just a dream I’ll wake up from someday to find myself still twelve years old.

Anyway, back to the summer rolls.

Posted in Sauces, Dressings, and Condiments, Vegetarian Main Dishes

Black Lentil Soup with Lemony Yogurt

By Elizabeth | Published: November 20, 2012

This weekend felt like winter.

It wasn’t so much the cold, or the fact that the trees are pretty well bare now. There wasn’t any snow, or even that much ice. Still, there was a quality of silence to the weekend, a particular kind of cocooning quiet. There was the sort of darkness that shrinks your apartment into a small circle of warmth and light.

It was a weekend to curl up with a kitten and a book and a cup of tea. Ideally, the kitten would be mine and the book would be something frivolous, but a borrowed kitten and an archaeology textbook were reasonable substitutes. The tea was perfect.

As with most such weekends, it was also a weekend for soup.

I first made this soup for my Thanksgiving dinner, with a bag of black beluga lentils my mother had brought on her last visit. It took me a while to track down the lentils here, but last week I discovered them at, of all places, a vegetable stand at the Atwater Market. Ours is not to question why…

Posted in Soups

Pomegranate and Pine Nut Salad

By Elizabeth | Published: November 16, 2012

One evening last week as I was making dinner one of my roommates burst into the kitchen, proudly brandishing the largest pomegranate I had ever seen. It was, he declared, on sale, and destined for consumption in one of his family’s most excellent recipes: pomegranate and pine nut salad with a maple vinaigrette.

I was, needless to say, intrigued.

For me, pomegranates have always been exotic treats, to be enjoyed slowly, with a toothpick and a faint feeling of foreboding derived from the fruit’s mythic connotations. I don’t remember ever having had pomegranate in something. So many gaps to fill—so many things to try!

I didn’t have to wait long to try the salad, as my roommate very kindly gave me some of his. It was indeed excellent, and on my next trip to the market a pomegranate found its way into my bag…and a can of maple syrup…

Make this on a grey day when you need your lunch to look like a treasure trove glittering with rubies and emeralds and pearls. Eat it, and listen to Beethoven, and know that life is beautiful.

Posted in Vegetables and Salads

Macaroni and Cheese

By Elizabeth | Published: November 13, 2012

I am standing in the kitchen, with its polka-dot floor, its window overlooking the Golden Gate, and its walls painted Asparagus Soup. (Or maybe the Asparagus Soup was later. All incarnations of that kitchen have merged into one in my mind.) A pot of water is boiling merrily on the stove, and I stand tiptoe on the step-stool to shake in a box full of pasta shells. I set a timer carefully, then start to melt some butter in a smaller pot. I whisk in milk and cheese powder slowly, reveling in my grown-upness. I am making dinner for myself. Is it too undignified to lick the extra powder out of the packet? No, not really.

And so it went, nearly every night, for a very long time. In my mind it was years, but it might have been only months.

I tried Annie’s again earlier this fall for the first time since I discovered other dinners. Even the gluten-free version tasted nostalgic. But now, I’ll take taste over nostalgia any day, and homemade macaroni and cheese beats anything from a packet hands down.

I am standing in the kitchen, with its undulating floor, nondescript walls, and the scattered debris of four different cooks. A pot of water is boiling merrily on the stove, and I toss in some corn and rice spirals. On the front burner, a white sauce is underway, and the sharpest cheddar I could find is grated in a pile. I am certainly not too dignified to sneak a bit of the cheese while I’m stirring the sauce.

I don’t need a step-stool to reach the stovetop anymore, but really, have I grown up that much?

Have any of us? I hope not.

Posted in Pasta