Canada

 It's Canada, eh?

That's right, up this week are the neighbors to the north, Canada.

When I think about food in Canada I envision maple syrup, poutine, and heck even Canadian bacon.

So I was pleased to see some of these making an appearance in this weeks menu for Canada (no, not the bacon - this is a vegetarian cookbook!).

And even more exciting was that we had a guest for dinner! Our friend Megan joined in the meal (which was great as it ensured we didn't have too many left overs this week!).

The first dish was a black bean chowder.

Entree: Black Bean  and Chipotle Chowder

Eh? Black beans? Canada? Chipotle? This is not what I think of when I think of Canada. Even more strange initially was the idea of adding cocoa powder to it all.

To start with, I still haven't find Chipotle powder in NZ. I've looked in a few shops as technically the "Shannon Salad" recipe calls for it. But nada. So when I found actual chipotle peppers at Martha's Backyard (http://www.marthasbackyard.co.nz/) I bought up knowing I could use them. So in this recipe, I used 3 diced chipotle peppers in place of the chipotle powder. That may have been a bit heavy handed, but it gave the dish a beautiful smoky flavor.

Entree: Apple and fennel salad with orange and ginger cider vinaigrette

I've been looking forward to a salad dish for awhile no. So far so many dishes in this cookbook have been warm hearty dishes, but not necessarily your perfect dinner in springtime.

I was hoping to do some foraging to find the fennel as there is a great map of NZ which lists fruit trees, etc.. on public land. But as per usual I ran out of time and so opted for fennel from the store.

This salad was super refreshing and I can see it being a great accompaniment to any meal.

The recipe called for toasted walnuts. I didn't toast mine - only crumbled them and I also used a lemon infused olive oil in the vinaigrette. It was superb!

Entree or main: Veggie Poutine

Now, most people know poutine. Or if they don't know it as poutine, they know it as chips and gravy (with cheese). I often don't get to eat this out in restaurants (as you never know what the gravy has been made with) and so I was excited for making this at home.

As I read through the recipe, it suddenly hit me....where's the cheese man?! Turns out this recipe is a vegan poutine. I won't lie. I was skeptical. So skyeptical that I split my chips (above) and made 2 lots - one following the recipe and a second batch with vegetarian gravy (from granules) and a mozzerella and cheddar combo of cheese.

I shouldn't have worried because the vegan one was great. I wouldn't have thought so but the gravy (so simple with just soy sauce and flour) was so good that even Megan was impressed!

The mix of wild mushrooms and curly kale added a great texture and made this a great dish.

Main: Ginger Maple baked Aduki beans

I've never had aduki beans - or at least I didn't think I had until I read they are often used in Asian cooking (oh, those ones!). 

I would argue the title of the recipe is mis-leading. These are not baked but done on a stove top (since writing this I've learned that is how most baked beans are done - since I can't stand "normal" baked beans I'd never really thought about it.) This recipe put a beautiful smell in the house and I used authentic Canadian maple syrup in the recipe.

Dessert: Orange, Ginger and Rhubarb crisp

I put my sous chef in charge of this dish. We had some debate a crisp vs crumble. I always thought that a crumble had oats in it (turns out that crisps do!).

I've always wanted to grow rhubarb and after trying this recipe I'm sold! The rhubarb had a beautful tartness and it was warming and delectable.

In making this in conjunction with the salad, we used the juice/body of the orange zested for the salad above and it was easy to grate fresh ginger for both the beans and the crumble.

To serve this, I added a non-sweetened pro-biotic yogurt and fresh orange slices. I suspect you could easily add candied orange slices if you wanted to take this up a notch. Matt, not being a fan of that kind of yogurt, opted for fresh cream with his slice. Personally not my cup of tea but he reports it was a good combo.

The Map

I realized I am taking everyone on a journey and you have no idea where you are going! This trip needs an itinerary (or at least a map!)

As I mentioned in the first post, I am starting in South America and ending in NZ.

In any event, here's our journey.

USA

USA! USA! USA!

Sorry, now that I have that out of my system, this week takes me home. Or rather to my homeland, the United States of America.

Overall this weeks menu felt very Californian inspired. Kale Salad? Mexican style salad? We may as well just call it California on a plate. Except for mac and cheese. Mac and cheese is a hearty American classic and one of my favs.

I also decided (since I am a glutton for punishment) that I would also make the avocado ice cream I had meant to make last Sunday while the power was out.

I learned from my mistakes last week and decided to start early (you never know if the power will go out!) at the end with dessert which was a chocolate tart.

You wouldn't think of NZ as being the home of great chocolate, but there are some great brands and I love Whittakers. For the chocolate tart I opted to use 62% cocoa chocolate. I followed the recipe for the dough, but to be honest, I would have liked more walnuts in it and think you could easily add more in when making it. Or alternatively, skip the flour dough and make a nut crust. Something like...

Lindsay's nut crust

Ingredients

1. Almonds

2. Walnuts

3. Handful of dates (medojol or normal softened dates )

4. dash of cinnamon

1. Blender/food process all ingredients until clumps form. Spread into the pan and press down to form the crust.

But we'll go back to the cake later....

Up first...

Entree: Kale Salad

I opted to use curly kale which was taste and I add a little bit of lemon juice to the dressing.

I think this salad would go great with orange segments (or mandarin pieces). 

While I was working on the salad I tasked my sous chef with the ice cream.

The other salad on the menu was a tex mex salad.

Entree: Tangy black bean and corn salad

This salad is eerily close to a personal favorite of mine, called "The Shannon salad" after my friend Shannon who introduced me to it.

Her version includes grated carrots, green peppers (not just the red this recipe calls for), and shallots.

The main dish was mac and cheese. Except veganised. Thing is, I'm not a vegan. I am about as far away from a vegan as a vegetarian can be. Some might say I have a cheese addiction (I would choose to say it's a cheese appreciation lifestyle). In any event the idea of making mac and cheese with no cheese (or dairy) was just too much for me. So i did the following substitutions with the recipe

-Butter for vegan butter

-milk for water

-a large cup of cheese (I did a 50/50 split of mozzarella and low fat cheddar)

I honestly did look for "nutritional yeast flakes" out of curiosity. But I could only find standard yeast/breadmakers yeast. I suspect somewhere like Huckleberry Farms or Wise Cicada would stock them, but I don't think I suffered by omitting them from the recipe. I also would not have thought to use tumeric in the recipe. Yum.

2 salads, 1 main, 2 desserts and just Matt and I.

I paired everything with a nice NZ sauv blanc which complemented the tangy-ness of the mac and cheese perfectly.

And let's not forget the dessert. This was divine! I think that the chocolate tart would be amazing with some chili mixed in. Served with the avocado ice cream to cut through the creamy-ness this would be Mexican food heaven (the nut base above instead of the flour base in the recipe might also provide a good crunch and some texture to the dish).

All in all, cooking for the US was a blast. I thoroughly loved the food and the company I shared it with.

Mexico

This Sunday was a bit of a bust. 

My good friend Tracy was pregnant (I say was as I am writing this now the week following and she is now a mommy to 2 lovely little girls!) and I had offered to host a baby shower for her. I got all ingredients together and mostly prepped thinking I would cook the morning of the shower.

At about 3am I start hearing this beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. After poking Matt we realize it's the alarm beeping due to no power. Seems it was out to the whole house. Matt turned off the beep and back to bed we went. Except when we got up at 9am, there was still no power. Seems during the night there was a fire at a substation and a chunk of Auckland (90,000 houses!) were without power with no ETA for it to come back up. 

With no power and an impending baby shower Tracy and I headed to a near bye suburb that still had power to buy some supplies. Pre-made meringue with whipped cream and berries along with some cakes and out came the camping stove to make tea. Shower was lovely and at 5pm the power came back on (for us). 

Anyways to make a long story short I didn't have much energy to cook and with no power freezing the ice cream maker bowl the avocado ice cream that was due on the menu wasn't going to happen. 

So what was meant to be a trip to "Mexico" ended up being more if a stop over. I ended up cooking just one of the three potential dishes. To be fair, I was pretty tired though.

Entree (or Main): Mexican Salad in Tortilla baskets

The Mexican Salad in the cook book is a basic taco salad. For those not acquainted with this concept, this is effectively a taco in a tortilla shell.

This was super exciting because I got to try using a life hack. Life hacks are simple tricks and I read about this one ages ago but had yet to try it.

What was it? The life hack was this - to make a tortilla basket, invert a muffin tin and use that to keep the shape of the tortillas while baking in the oven. Yes, these ones are baked as opposed to what you might see in a restaurant where they are deep fried. This makes me like this recipe all the more.

Effectively it was all quite simple. Layer the ingredients and eat.

One ingredient listed was guacamole and I thought i'd share my guacamole recipe with you:

Lindsay's Guacamole

Ingredients

-1 Avocado (in NZ we usually have Hass Avos)

-1/2 of a red onion

-1 tomato or a handful of cherry tomatoes

-Coriander (or Cilantro as it's known back home)

-1 lime

-Salt and Pepper

1. Scoop the avocado out and mash it

2. Chop the red onion and cherry tomatoes.  If you like chunky guac, leave the tomatoes in reasonable sized chunks. If not cut smaller pieces

3. Mix the avocado, tomato and onion. Tear off bits of corriander and mix in.

4. Add the juice of 1 lime and then salt and pepper to taste

et, Voila!

This is probably the first dish I think I've done out of this cookbook where I feel like my version looks as soon or if not better than the version that was shown in the book.

Pretty good, huh?

Cuba

From Grenada to Cuba.

I've always thought that food should equate with things. Not just nuitrition, but family, events, holidays - you name it. Cuban food holds some great memories for me. My uncle Larry is Cuban and I remember spending a few Christmas or New Years Eve dinners eating at a Cuban restuarant in Sommerville, NJ (Martinos). 

To me, Cuban food is comfort food. Black bean soup and rice dishes. I suppose if I wasn't a vegetarian I might associate pork with it too? In any event I'm not.

So on to the recipes this week:

Entree: Cuban salad

This was quite a simple salad and to be honest, it doesn't really make me think of Cuba. But the radishes were great and the salad dressing was lovely.

Main: Moros y Cristianos (black beans and rice) 

Now this is Cuban food. This recipe was easy to coo and very straight forward. It reminded me of a recipe my Aunt Debbie (Larry's wife) shared with me in my engagement cookbook. It has green olives in it and they add a great kick! I could see this working well in this version of the rice and beans.

This came out great and would be a great main on it's own!

But the main dish for this country was....French toast?

Main: Torrejas (Cuban Style French toast)

French toast for dinner conjures up a few other food memories for me. Growing up my stepfather Pat didn't really cook dinner. But when he did we had french toast - often with fresh grated nutmeg.

For yet another Sunday, I've opened the book been ready to cook and gone, Whoops....I've forgotten something.

For this week it was evaporated milk.

There are some items here in NZ which I always struggle to find. Rubbing alcohol. Hydrogen Perioxide. Evaporated milk. 

In my lazy state I thought, surely I can use condensed milk - they must be the same.

Turns out they're not. But this would be a positive change. Wow. I'm not sure why I never thought to use condensed milk in french toast (or pancakes before) but YUM!

The recipe said to serve with syrup or jam. Figuring that syrup is always used, I thought i'd try a blackberry jam from South Australia that my father in law left in our fridge a few months back. YUM! The blackberries were perfect and were not too sweet (probably because the condensed milk made the french toast sweet enough). I also used a textured/seeded grainy bread. Normally I would have used something like a sourdough, but again, being lazy and waiting to the last minute on Sunday meant that this was all that was available at the corner shop. The seeds and grains made a great texture

Dish: chichachirritas (plantain fritters) with mojo

I also tried to make the chichachirritas (plantain fritters) with mojo. Except I didn't have plantains. As I mentioned in the Grenada post, my tree is only just now fruiting and sadly plantains aren't quite a staple fruit in NZ grocery and fruit and veggie stores.

I let Matt talk me into using bananas, but to be honest, I should have known better. Plantains would work for a dish like this because they are so starchy and paired with the garlic might be nice. Bananas I'm afraid just did not work. Not having a deep fryer I tried to shallow fry them - fail. 

I'll have to wait and retry this later on in the year. I love making plantain chips (see my recipe in older posts on this blog) and will be excited to try the mojo with it.

Grenada

The next destination is Grenada

I'll admit. I don't know much about this Carribean nation. I hear Grenada and sadly the only thing I can think of is that Rhianna is from Grenada. 

Looking at the recipes from here one ingredient stands out - COCONUT! Almost every recipe up on this list has coconut in it.

I thought with a trip to the Carribean in order I would add my own favorite twist and taste to it - in this case by adding a Guana Grabber. A Guana Grabber is a cocktail from Great Guana Cay, an island in the Bahamas where my family likes to spend time.

I thought I'd share the recipe (as best as I know it):

Guana Grabber:

1 parts Grapefruit juice

3 parts Pineapple juice

1 part light rum

1 part dark rum

1 part coconut rum

Shake all ingredients together with ice and strain.

Add a tiny dash of grenadine for colour.

And with a cocktail in hand, it's time to start cooking.

Up first: Coo Coo with spicy tomato relish and plantain

This dish feels Italian to me - except with the coconut milk in the polenta its different. What a great taste and texture! And with the fresh basil and the coconut. Super refreshing. 

I used muffin tins to shape the "coo coo" which worked well. I lightly greased them with olive oil just to ensure the polenta cups would come out. 

The tomato relish was fantastic but I would make more! Not sure the relish that's layered in the cups but extra to go on top! I added extra relish with my own homemade spicy tomato chutney (made with a red wine vinegar).

The side of plaintains was difficult. It's ironic that given that we have several plantain trees on our property the best I could manage were the tiny bits in the picture below. Sadly I will be stuck waiting for more plantains - thankfully I have some on the tree and it shouldn't be more than a few months.

Main dish: Oildown

I have to admit the idea of this dish sets my healthy ideas towards food on edge. The idea of having the coconut milk split so there was oil seems so foreign to me.

This dish also proved a challenge to me in terms of ingredients. It calls for Breadfruit, Plantains and Dasheen. Well, it seems dasheen is a type of tarro. Which should be reasonable easy to find in the Pacific but admitedly not without searching. And to be honest, I didn't really look at this in time to check out the Otara markets. The Otara market is a local market in Otara, Auckland which has lots of amazing Pacific produce. A true authentic South Auckland experience.

They say you should eat local and given that I couldn't find the above ingredients, I decided to improvise. So, I added pumpkin and black carrots.

With all these root vegetables I under estimated the amount of coconut milk I would need to cover the dish. 2 coconut creams was not enough and so I added another can of coconut milk to try and make up the difference. Fresh thyme from the garden. Yum! My kitchen was so fragrant!

Almost an hour later later and it's reducing nicely. Except it's not spliting quite as well as it has in the picture in the book. I guess that's what I get for using some coconut milk.

In any event, yum! So filling and warm. It almost reminds me of a gratin but made with coconut cream. This would be a great, hearty dish for winter. Seems strange to see it come from the Carribean where it is usually so warm!

Dessert: Coconut Ice

In my mind, I expected this to be a bit like a sorbet or a granita. But it hasn't quite come out right. My food processor is on the blink so I tried to use the vitamix to shred the ice. Matt, my sous chef, was put in charge of getting the cardamom seeds from the cardamom pods. I had bought both but then realised that the recipe mentioned pods. WIthout knowing how many seeds were in a pod I thought i would try and use those. Turns out, on average there was generally 5-9 seeds per pod. This had a heavy cardamom taste and would suggest perhaps reducing the amount included.

I served my with banana - I would recommend refridgerating the banana when serving. 

Chile

So here I am starting things off, and up first is Chile which is really exciting because I've BEEN to Chile. Matt and I went to Santiago and San Pedro de Atacama in 2011 as part of our honeymoon.  I loved trying authentic drinks and dishes while there (like mote con heusillos). Plus I love food from this region - quinoa is up there with some of my favorite foods. So challenge accepted.

So up for Chile was:

-Dobladitas (Chilean Breads)

-Huevos con piclco de choclo (baked eggs in corn sauce)

-Pebre Chili dip

-Micaos (potato cakes)

There was also a recipe for Calzones rotos (aka torn underwear cookies). Which sound like fun but trying to do 4 dishes in 1 night was already enough. So the cookies will be a rainy day project. You can cook cookies from any country so fine to do then.

Up first was the Dobladitas. The recipe said plain white flour - I only had high grade flour and can maybe use this as the only excuse as to why mine didn't come out exactly right.

I've never been good at following recipes. Like any dough I also used my mixers dough hook to get started. I love breads, pastas, anything with flour. I am a paleo villian. Yet, I tire when making dough, pasta, bread. Maybe it's an arm muscle thing. In any event I started kneading. And kept kneading. Thankfully after 5-10 minutes Matt offered to help. Kneading is his specialty harking back to our pasta family dinner nights. Fine by me.  When it came to rolling out though ours did not look as smooth as the picture. Maybe it was a case of needing to sift my flour? In any event it made folding quite difficult so in most cases we only did a single fold.

While Matt was kneading I started the chili dip. Oh, I need to open a bottle of wine for the 2 tbsp it calls for? Oh ok, go on and twist my arm and make me have glass while I cook the rest of the food. I never thought about using wine in what is effectively a salsa. In any event opted for green chilis over red and a cab sauv. I also decided to use a red onion and thankfully limes, coriander and garlic from the garden.

While the flavors in the salsa (erhm, I mean dip) were mixing I also prepped for the huevos. This recipe reminded me a lot of Shakuska or Moroccan eggs where eggs are poached in tomatoes. I suspect cooking this in summer when corn is fresh and plentiful would be great. Instead I opted for pre-shucked corn in a pack. So much butter! Between the onions, the butter on top of the eggs, the dobladitas and then the pancakes I felt like I was swimming in butter. On the plus side my hands were softer than a babies bottom by the end of the night.

The dobladitas came out of the oven and looked as puffy as they did when they went in. But they smelled good. In went the eggs to cook while I started the pancakes. Hmm. Vegetable suet is not something I keep handy in the pantry. I thought I'd wing it and use crisco thinking that lardy shortening would work the same. I don't really deep fry and just don't seem to do it well when I try. I don't think I use enough oil. Must be my inner health freak trying to be healthy and sparing. In any event my pancakes just didn't fry up perfectly. Straggly bits of potato came off (much like a hash brown) and looked nothing like the picture.

When it came time to eat Matt and I sat down. There was a certain amount of excitment. Maybe it was the new food - the challenge laid out. I'm not sure yet, but we had a lovely evening.

The verdict: 

The dobladitas tasted like scones. Or like the biscuits I used to make from Bisquick batter. I had originally envisioned them like a bread - sopping up chili dip, or corn/egg, but they were too thick for that. Instead they were eaten on their own - dipped in the dip and egg. And they were lovely alebit a bit filling with all the other food.

The huevos were good. Not quite as saucy as the Moroccan eggs I was envisioning but with a nice kind of earthy and corny (no pun intended) taste - particularly when the yolk mixed with the corn. The kernels also helped to give a different texture to the dish. I think in future it might be nice to blend a portion of the corn.

The salsa/dip WAS AMAZING. Wow. What great flavors. I was a bit worries about using green chilis as I almost always use red and know their potency a bit better. But this was great - not too hot and will be my new go to version of a salsa.

The potatoes were my letdown which I think is more a result of my cooking skills as opposed to the recipe. There were some crunchy bits but you could see from the picture I just didn't have it right.

Overall it was a great meal and the eggs and salsa will definitely be made in the future.