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Ingredients: 1 1/2 cup short grain brown rice, boiled for about 12 mins 1 medium onion, chopped 3 tbsp olive oil 2 tsp anise seeds 1 tbsp butter 1 cup chopped rapini or another green 3/4 cup red wine 200g mushrooms, chopped 2 handfuls of walnuts, chopped about 1 litre hot water or broth salt & pepper to taste 1. Heat the oil and butter in a heavy pan and cook the onions until soft. Add the anise seeds and mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms are cooked and the onions begin to brown. Add salt and pepper. 2. Add the parboiled rice, mix in well, and add the red wine. 3. Once the red wine is absorbed, keep adding the hot water/broth, one cup at a time, mixing it in well for about 15 mins. 4. When the rice is nearly cooked, add the chopped rapini and the walnuts until the rice is cooked through and creamy. Add the grated parmesan cheese at the end. Taste and season again if you think it needs it.
 A moqueca is a Brazilian fish stew typical of the state of Bahia. This past weekend I made Salmon and Shrimp Moqueca to try out the capixaba clay pan my mother brought me from Brazil. I pureed a head of garlic, an onion, lime juice, salt, and cilantro and marinated six salmon steaks and a pound of shrimp in the mixture. I then layered sliced tomatoes, onions, and peppers at the bottom of my clay pan and topped it with the salmon steaks and shrimp. I pureed another tomato, an onion, and a tbsp of paprika and poured over the fish and added a can of tomatoes to the pan and covered the whole thing with plenty of cilantro and set it over medium heat. The moqueca is ready when the fish and shrimp are cooked, in about half an hour. But that’s not why I’m writing this post. I’m writing this post to share what I did with the leftovers. I got home from work today and had one salmon steak left in plenty of moqueca broth. I had been talking about risotto with my brother the night before so the idea of a moqueca risotto came to mind. I strained the moqueca broth, separating the cooked fish, caramelized an onion in some butter, added 1-2 tsp paprika, and mixed in the risotto rice*. In order to re-enforce the coconut milk flavour of the original moqueca, I added 3-4 tbsp of unsweetened shredded coconut. I mixed in the moqueca broth and when that was absorbed, I added hot water, a 1/2 cup at a time until the rice was cooked but still a bit al dente. I folded in the shredded leftover salmon, serving the risotto as soon as the whole thing was heated through. It was yummy! It was only after I began to shop at Farmers’ market and buying local produce that I began to understand a bit more what food activists were complaining about when they talked about the loss of biodiversity that the current centralization of agriculture in the hands of fewer corporate farms, who buy their seeds from a handful of companies. Fruits and vegetables come in every shape and colour. But this reality is not seen at a local supermarket. When I was growing up, in Brazil, this was evident if we talked about tropical fruits. There were so many different kinds of mangoes! But that was mostly because most people didn’t really buy mangoes from the supermarket. Everyone knew someone who had a mango tree in his or her backyard. But in the grocery store everything was more uniform – tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, lettuce, – it all came in one size, colour, shape. The same is true here. But the closer to the family farms you can get, the more diversity. When we went to the harvest party in the Kawarthas a few weeks ago,our hosts had a tomato tasting table set up. It was heaven and I took these pictures (after I ate several or each kind, of course): Browsing through Mark Bittman’s Food Matters Cookbook, I came across this recipe for a tomato crisp. I had seen other recipes for tomato crisp in the past but they often rely on simply breadcrumbs and butter. Bittman’s addition of oats, olive oil, cheese, and nuts proved too irresistible. It was very easy to make since most of the cooking is largely unattended.
Ricotta seems to be the ingredient of choice in this household at the moment. I don’t bake very often, but when I came across this apple ricotta cake on one of my favourite food blogs (original recipe here), I had to give it a try. The result was a very moist, sweet, flavourful cake. We ate it still warm with plain Greek yogurt sweetened with maple syrup and topped with local plums.
After chatting this morning with a fellow food fanatic friend (wow, talk about alliteration!) about the wonders of good ricotta, I had to snatch it up when I came across it at my neighbourhood grocer. It made a perfect base for a fresh summer dessert: a slice of buffalo ricotta, topped with sweet yellow plums, drizzled with maple syrup and served with some coronation grapes. It was yummy and photogenic! Next time I’ll add some basil or mint.
Update The next day, I tried a slightly different version – instead of maple syrup, I used strawberry rhubarb jam I bought from KEG last week. The strawberry jam complemented nicely the other fruits and its colour really added extra punch to the dish.
At the end of January I decided to go dairy-free for a while and see what happened. I wrote about it here. It’s not the first time I’ve experimented with that. I spent a few months when I lived in Barcelona avoiding dairy, which meant passing on the cortados for a while. As in the previous time I tried, it didn’t really work for me. On the one hand, you don’t need to convince me that cow’s milk is not really designed for human consumption. After all, it’s designed to make a baby cow double in size within a few months. On the other hand, however, human beings are ingenious in adapting what nature makes available to them and over the centuries the cultures that domesticated wild bovines, transformed milk into more digestible products such as yogurt, kefir, cheese, butter, and the like. Those early herders also became less sensitive to lactose. All intellectual justifications aside, I have to confess that my efforts to remove dairy from my diet have been hampered by my appreciation for centuries- old food traditions. And when you add to that the I come from a long line of people who not only depended on dairy but improved upon it, I feel like I’m denying my roots every time I pass on the slice of cheese. Half of my family, on both my father’s side and my mother’s side come from the area of northern Italy that invented the Parmesan (the true Parmiggiano Reggiano). There’s also some sprinkling of Dutch (also known for being big on dairy) and lots of Portuguese. When the Italian side of my family immigrated to Brazil, many settled in the fertile lands of Minas Gerais, which is known for its Queijo Minas. Although it pained me, I was prepared to give up dairy if I felt it significantly improved my health. But after a while without eating any dairy product and being very careful of what I ate, I felt no significant improvement. It was nothing like when I discovered a couple of years ago that I have an intolerance to white rice and a mild intolerance to wheat and actually minimized my exposure to those ingredients. Replacing white rice and wheat for other grains improved my life significantly. I now have lots of energy and feel much more focused. Avoiding dairy did not have a similar effect. In fact, drinking coffee without a bit of dairy in it is a bit hard on my stomach. Even if I replace it with non-dairy milk. For me at least, looks like cutting dairy completely is not the solution. This week’s share came with many favourites: cherry tomatoes, corn, green beans, cauliflower, dark leafy greens, eggplant, purple potatoes… I had to take a picture, of course, but I haven’t had a minute to sit down and download it and upload here (how I wish my camera would send pictures directly to flickr!). This abundance of tasty produce got me thinking about what to make with all of that. The eggplants are gone. A friend came over last night and since I knew she likes eggplants, I roasted them in the oven seasoned with some oregano, olive oil, salt and pepper. Once nicely roasted, I added a bit of balsamic and olive oil and we ate all 5-6 small eggplants with some bread and cheese. It was that awesome. But what to make for tonight? Some sort of salad with the corn would be great. The internet is filled with great ideas for salads mixing corn, green beans and tomatoes, of course. I knew I had made a good one a couple of summers ago. A couple of clicks later and voila: a corn, green beans, tomatoes, and feta salad inspired on a recipe by Mark Bittman. Can’t wait to try it when I get home today! Reading Barry Estabrook’s Tomatoland: How Modern Agriculture Destroyed our Most Alluring Fruit has only confirmed the importance of eating seasonally. I’ll talk more about the book in another occasion, today I just wanted to say how excited seeing the first tomatoes of the season make me feel. The past couple of weeks have brought grape tomatoes to my vegetable basket and their sweetness have been magnified from the months of
Have I mentioned how much I love my CSA? Well, a lot comes close. One of the beauties of becoming a CSA member is having access to the freshest produce available, grown locally. Getting a share at a farmers’ co-op (which is what my CSA is) has also taught me a great deal about eating seasonally. And let me tell you, when it comes to taste and nutrients, nothing can replace fresh, local, seasonal produce. Here in Toronto we are quite spoiled since southern Ontario has some of the richest farm land in North America. The only problem with eating seasonally is that whatever is in season can be found in abundance at farmers’ market but we can only eat so much of it before the season for a given produce ends. I always wanted to can some the summer and fall bounty for the long winter months. Preserving, however, is not quite like cooking where you put some ingredients together and be reasonably confident that it would turn out. And if it doesnt turn out, no harm done. Preserving is more of a science – if the chemistry inside the jar is not done right, you can get very very sick or even die. With that in mind, I waited until I could find a knowledgeable friend who agreed to can with me and teach me the skills. Turns out I’m not the only urbanite with less than ideal food preservation skills so KEG decided to organize a workshop on the basics of canning and since strawberry season is nearly over they decided that the class would be about making jam. I jumped at the opportunity, of course! That the class was held a block away from home only added to its attractiveness. So last saturday, 12 of us met for this workshop and it was a LOT of fun. Betsy, the instructor, had a degree on food preservation from the University of Wisconsin and gave us a thorough introduction to the science behind home canning. She brought along about ten different version of strawberry jams, canned using slightly different methods for us to taste. Afterward we turned to the boxes of strawberries KEG provided and began preparing our jams. We made two different kinds: an old fashioned sugar-based strawberry jam which we seasoned with lemon and lavender. It was exquisite! Stay tuned for the recipe! The second jam was a strawberry jam sweetened with wild honey, requiring a very quick cooking method since we thickened it with pectin. I found that second jam to be ideal on plain yogurt or creme fraiche. I’ll be definitely buying a canning book and preparing more jams throughout the summer. I guess that’ll make me popular among my friends, who will no doubt get homemade jam as gifts on a regular basis. Raspberry season is around the corner and I saw a recipe for a raspberry mint and lavender jam in one of the books that sounds too irresistible! |
 Hi, I'm Alexandra. Born in Brazil, Canadian by choice, and having lived in exciting Barcelona for a year between 2006 and 2007, my earliest childhood memories revolve around food and food is what I remember most about every place I’ve ever lived. After writing a more general blog for the past few years, it was time to organize my writing about food in one place. © All pictures on this blog are taken by me unless otherwise noted. About the title of this blog |
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