Bacon.

You know when you finally do something you’ve been wanting to do for a long time but for whatever reason you kept not getting around to it, and then when you finally do get around to it you feel so silly for having waited all that time?

For me, the thing was bacon. Homemade bacon, which I always knew you could do but put off because for some reason the thought of finding curing salt was rather daunting, even though I knew you could buy it literally three blocks from my apartment. I don’t know. I think I figured once I had the pink salt, I’d have to commit, and then what if I wasted my money and half a kilo of pork belly? There was a lot to consider, and the threat of failure and food poisoning put me off.

Then a couple of weeks ago the director at work told me about a butcher shop that her French cooking teacher recommended and I went there to buy something else, and there, in its fatty, rosy glory, I found just over two pounds of local pork belly, just the right amount to make my first batch of bacon. I found a Michael Rhulman recipe, and bought my pink salt, and in about ten minutes I had done everything I’d need to do to the meat to make it bacon. After that, it would need seven days, and to be mostly left alone.

I feel silly for having waited all this time.

The result was impressive, meatier than regular bacon and not as salty, with a pronounced garlickyness that was thrilling – garlic and bacon go almost as well together as bacon and cheese. I cut it thick, about an eighth of an inch (my parents have a meat slicer they let me use … *mental note: add meat slicer to wish list*), but it would last longer in thinner strips (some of us never learned when to say no).

Bacon might just be a gateway charcuterie. One cannot simply stop at a slab of cured pork belly; there’s pancetta to think about, and guanciale, and corned beef, and sausage … I already have plans to convert a wine fridge I got as a wedding gift to a climate-controlled curing chest, and even though our apartment is already crowded with kitchen tools and the hydro bill grew exponentially with the addition of the deep-freeze, Nick is okay with this – he stopped just short of encouraging me. For him: salumi.

I’m asking for Charcuterie for Valentine’s Day, which we don’t usually celebrate but neither of us has a greater love than cured or smoked meats – I am not exaggerating when I say Nick would trade me for my weight in bressaeola, and I’d happily swap him for a lifetime’s supply of jamón ibérico de bellota - and I can’t quit now.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Big plans, no direction: story of my life. Have you done this before? Have you cured, smoked, dried, or otherwise preserved meat and made it more wonderful with salt and spices and air? Have you done it at home? Can you teach me? At this point I fear nothing, not food poisoning or living in an apartment that smells like a delicatessen, and there’s no going back to store-bought bacon.

And if you haven’t made bacon at home? Don’t wait any longer. Start your first batch today.

Paprika roast chicken, again.

When speaking of this site, Nick and I call it Bloggy, affectionately as it is a large part of our existence. “Will it go on Bloggy?” Nick asks when dinner is good. Well, today is Bloggy’s second birthday. We celebrated with an update to the roast chicken I wrote about in my very first post. It’s strange, but this week has felt just as long as it did the first time I wrote, and just as much now as then, we both felt that spicy roast chicken would solve all our problems and be just the thing to help us move into another seven days. Chicken’s magical the way it does that, isn’t it? Well, maybe not, considering the part wine plays.

In two years, my paprika roast chicken has undergone some changes. I’ve streamlined the process and added butter, so now you simply slather the chicken in a paste of spices and butter, and roast it with a bit of white wine for 90 minutes in a 425°F oven. The last part is because of Ina Garten, who roasts her chickens in a similar way, and who is right about how to do things quite a lot of the time.

To roast a chicken in this way is to save yourself steps, time, and fussing; the result is a meal that makes itself (save for a couple rounds of basting when you’re passing through the kitchen to refill your wine glass – if you’re like me, in 90 minutes you will do this three or four times and if it’s the weekend you may need to open a second bottle but that’s okay because you’re cooking and cooking is art).

Paprika roast chicken

• 1 whole chicken, 4 to 5 lbs.
• 2 tbsp. unsalted butter or olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tbsp. sweet paprika
• 1 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. ground black pepper
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup dry white wine

Let chicken rest at room temperature for an hour. Preheat oven to 425°F.

In a small bowl, combine butter or oil, garlic, paprika, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, black pepper, and salt. Mush together with a fork until the mixture forms a paste.

Using your hands, slather the paste all over the chicken, sliding your fingers under the skin to rub the paste into the breast, legs, and thighs. Wash your hands, then truss the chicken, folding the wing tips behind the bird, and place it into a roasting pan. Pour wine into the bottom of the pan. Optionally, you could throw in some chopped carrots or onions at this point. Sweet potatoes would also be lovely.

Roast the chicken for 90 minutes (or 18 minutes per pound), until the juices run clear when you cut into the spot between the leg and thigh. Baste periodically, adding additional wine or water as needed to moisten the bottom of the pan.

Remove from oven and tent with tin foil. Let rest 20 minutes before serving. You can make a spicy, luscious gravy by tossing a handful of flour into the pan drippings and stirring in a bit of milk or cream. If there are leftovers they are wonderful in pozole, and the carcass makes a glorious stock.

Salmon and mushroom casserole, or “Salmon Balls.”

One of the first dinners I ever made came from one of my mom’s Company’s Coming cookbooks – I don’t know if you can get those books in the states, but at one time everyone’s Canadian mother had them; I remember a row of them in the pantry cupboard, each book’s plastic spiral-bind a different colour. The recipe was for “Salmon Balls,” which I’ll admit does not sound tremendously appetizing. But it was, as it was little more than rice, canned salmon, and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. It was salty, creamy, and very comforting – perfect for one of these Canadian Januarys.

Of course, some things have changed, and around here we’re not really big on canned soups or heavily processed foods in general. I believe very strongly that if something’s going to be bad for you, it should be bad for you for the right reasons. This is why there are things like triple-creme brie, bacon, and bourbon. Besides, this version isn’t really bad for you, if you don’t eat it all the time. The ingredients are pronounceable, and you can easily substitute the things you aren’t sure of. Where I used a cup of sour cream, you could just as easily use yogurt; where I used white rice, you could use brown and adjust the cooking time. I’ve also crammed a few extra veggies in, so bonus points for that.

Also, this easily uses up a plateful of leftover fish, which earns you double bonus points.

But since it’s January and the whole city’s covered in a thick slurp of beige slush, there’s little reason not to go ahead and use the sour cream and white rice. Maybe you also have a hole in the sole of your boot and your work pants didn’t make it into the laundry this week and your hair just hates this weather – there are so many reasons to indulge right now, and who’d blame you?

Salmon and mushroom casserole

(Serves four to six.)

Salmon:

• 1 lb. cooked salmon, chilled, bones removed
• 1/2 cup uncooked long-grain white rice
• 1/2 cup finely grated carrot
• Half of one onion, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup minced celery
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
• Zest and juice of one lemon
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper

Mushroom cream sauce:

• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• Half of one onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 lb. mushrooms, chopped
• 1 tsp. dried savory
• 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
• 1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
• 2 tbsp. all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1 cup sour cream
• Salt, to taste

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl, combine salmon, rice, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, lemon zest and juice, eggs, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Mush the whole thing together with your hands until thoroughly combined. Form into balls about an inch and a half in diameter (you should end up with 14 to 16), and set aside.

In a large pan over medium-high heat, add oil and onions and cook until onions are translucent, three to five minutes. Add garlic, mushrooms, savory, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, and cayenne, and cook until mushrooms have sweat and no liquid remains in the bottom of the pan, about another five minutes. Add flour, stir to coat, and then add milk and sour cream. Cook until liquid comes to a gentle boil. Taste, and adjust seasonings as needed.

Ladle a small amount of the cream sauce into the bottom of a 1.5- to 2-quart casserole dish. Line the bottom with a layer of balled salmon, then ladle half of the remaining sauce over top. Place remaining salmon balls over top, and then top with remaining sauce.

Cover, and bake for one hour. If you’re using a casserole dish that doesn’t have a bit of an edge to it, place the dish on top of a cookie sheet before putting it in the oven, as the sauce will bubble up around the sides.

Serve over rice, with a sprinkling of fresh parsley.

Also, if you haven’t voted and my relentless (if self-conscious) badgering hasn’t turned you off this blog completely, please visit the Canadian Food Blog Awards voting page and select Well fed, flat broke. Voting will close this Saturday, January 15. After that, I’m pretty sure we’ll go back to business as usual.

Which, you know, means a lot of photos of my cat, which are completely out of context for a food blog.

Feuerzangenbowle!

A few weeks ago my mom and I went on our annual holiday outing to Christmas shop and eat and generally be merry, and we went to the Vancouver Winter Market beside the Queen Elizabeth Theatre downtown because the ad said there would be food and festivity and because this was the first time we’d ever heard of the thing.

When we got there, the first thing we saw was a kiosk dispensing something German we couldn’t pronounce, but it smelled good so we put a deposit on a pair of mugs and had our first round. Feuerzangenbowle, the thing we got, is mulled wine with cinnamon, cloves, star anise, orange, and rum, and when I did a bit of research I discovered that it’s also something that involves fire, which stirred my mild pyromaniacal urges in the best possible way.

The most important thing about feuerzangenbowle is zuckerhut, a sugar cone which is doused repeatedly in rum and set on fire above the heated wine mixture. The sugar caramelizes and melts into the wine, and the result is magic. I wanted to create this on Christmas, so I asked Brigitte, a German lady I work with, how to spell the thing I wanted to make (I still can’t, and pulled the name from the email she sent me, which also included this recipe for “rumtopf,” which I also must make) and where to buy the zuckerhut. I ended up not being able to find it in town, but she would be going to Greco’s Specialty Foods in Surrey and she had called and found that they had some, and she would pick one up for me. And she did.

To find zuckerhut, visit your local German deli; if they don’t have it, they may be able to order some in for you.

And so, on Christmas Day, we poured two bottles of cheap, off-dry red wine into a Crock Pot, and set it to heat for an hour. We added strips of orange and lemon peel, and two cinnamon sticks and two cloves to the pot and let it simmer with the lid on; next time, we’ll add two star anise pods and slice the orange and lemon into the pot so that the fruit flavour is more pronounced. Our adapted recipe comes from this one from WikiBooks, but deviates significantly enough that I’m okay calling the recipe below an original interpretation – we wanted it to taste like the drink we had at the Winter Market, and I think we made it work.

After an hour, we placed the zuckerhut in a wire mesh strainer and held it over the pot. We poured rum over top, and then lit the cone on fire. It was awesome. We ended up using about a cup and a half of rum; the cheap white stuff worked better than the good amber stuff for burning. When there was no more rum and we couldn’t light the sugar on fire anymore, we stirred the remains of the cone into the pot and let it dissolve. We served it in mugs immediately, and felt very warm and delighted and then had naps.

(Serves six.)

• 2 bottles of off-dry red wine
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 2 whole cloves
• 2 whole star anise
• 1 orange, sliced
• 1 lemon, sliced
• 1 zuckerhut
• 1 1/2 cups rum

Heat wine with cinnamon sticks, cloves, star anise, orange, and lemon slowly. If using a Crock Pot, set on high heat and let sit for about an hour. Do not bring to a boil. If heating on the stove, heat over medium-low heat, covered, for 30 to 40 minutes.

Suspend zuckerhut in a wire mesh strainer (one that has no plastic on the edges of the strainer). Pour two tablespoons of rum over top, ignite, and continue feeding the flame with small amounts of rum until no rum remains. Do not pour rum directly from the bottle.

Stir any remaining sugar from the zuckerhut into the pot, test temperature, and if it’s warm enough to serve, ladle the drink into mugs.

Choucroute garnie à l’Alsacienne.

It’s our anniversary! Our second one, but Mondays are boring and also our laundry day, and for some reason I was awake at 4:00 this morning, so to celebrate we did a load of towels, had a nap, and Nick brought me orange flowers, and we went for sushi, which was delicious, though convenient.

But last night I wanted to do something kind of special, because we spent our first anniversary pushing Paul’s car across the border, which was as romantic as pushing a Honda Civic across the Canadian border in the dark and then standing under an orange street light for an hour waiting for a tow truck on the other side in November after frost has fallen and taking public transit back to the city can be.To make up for last year, this year I brought my A-game. Sometimes I like making food that takes all day, and I wanted to do something distinct to mark Sunday as separate from the rest of the weekend, during which we also celebrated Nick’s birthday. I invited Grace and Paul over to celebrate our anniversary with us, and we had so much food. Come to think of it, it makes sense now that I was up at 4:00 a.m.; there is only so much pork that one can cram into her maw and still expect to sleep through the night.

The recipe that follows is based on Jeffrey Steingarten’s recipe for Choucroute Garnie à L’Alsacienne, from his book The Man Who Ate Everything. Because I am paid considerably less than Mr. Steingarten and am routinely accosted by Nick over how much I spend on special-occasion meals (not much, by the way, but he feels that all the dollars I spend on fancy ingredients could be spent far more enjoyably on beer), there are some adjustments. Much as it saddens me, I simply do not have an elaborate collection of specialty meats on hand. One day. Perhaps with the next husband?

(Serves six, generously)

• 2 smoked pig’s feet
• 3.5 lbs. sauerkraut
• 2 lb. bratwurst
• 1 lb. kielbasa
• 2 lb. other sausage (such as pork and apple)
• 1/2 lb. bacon
• 3/4 cup gin
• 2 tbsp. butter or duck fat
• 2 lbs. onions, thinly sliced
• 2 lbs. apples, grated
• 1 1/2 cup dry Riesling (preferably from Alsace)
• 2 bay leaves
• 25 black peppercorns
• 1 1/2 tsp. caraway seeds
• 5 whole cloves
• 4 branches fresh thyme
• 6 sprigs parsley
• 1/4 cup minced garlic
• 2 tsp. coarse salt

Place pig’s feet in a medium-size pot, and cover with water to about an inch above the feet. Simmer for one hour, then remove feet, and reduce until about two cups remain, an additional 15 minutes. Set aside.

Drain sauerkraut in a large strainer, squeezing out liquid periodically. Rinse, then continue to drain, about an hour.

Cook all three sausages and bacon. Set aside.

Simmer gin in a small pot until reduced by about two thirds. Set aside.

In a large, heavy bottomed pot over medium heat, melt butter, then cook onions until softened but not golden, about ten minutes. Add apples and sauerkraut. Stir to combine. Add gin reduction and bay leaves.

Add reserved stock, and Riesling, and two cups of cold water. In a piece of twice- or thrice-folded cheesecloth, combine peppercorns, caraway, cloves, thyme, and parsley. Tie tightly with kitchen twine and let sit in sauerkraut mixture.

Place meat on top of mixture, then scatter garlic over top, and then sprinkle salt over top. Bring to a boil, then reduce to medium low. Cover, and simmer for 90 minutes, stirring approximately every 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 250°F. When choucroute has finished cooking, remove meat to a plate and let rest, covered in tin foil, in a warm oven. Let choucroute rest, covered and off the heat, for 30 minutes.

To serve, drain choucroute and place in the centre of a platter. Place meat on top, and scatter side dishes around, such as spaetzle or fried potatoes. Serve with sweet mustard, sour cream, and cornichons. To eat, ensure you are wearing something with an elastic waistband.

Risotto and procrastination with currants, orange, and almonds.

Time seems to pass quicker all the time, and before I know it, it’s nearly Thanksgiving again, and hockey’s on TV and I need to have my boots re-heeled and somehow I still haven’t done any of the things I’d planned to by now, and it’s colder so the excuses to not do things get stronger all the time. Why work on that grad school application when I could curl up in my Snuggie with a book? Why finish writing those chapters when I could wander out for hot chocolate, stepping on all the crunchy-looking leaves along the way? Why stay late at work to finish a project when I could go home and make risotto?

Maybe I’m too hard on myself. I have reference letters, and a third of a manuscript together to send in with my MFA application, with a month to go before it’s due. I am writing, and the writing is going well and someday maybe a book will come out of it. And sometimes you just need to decide you can’t stare at a computer screen for even ten more minutes and come home and make risotto.

Maybe I’m too hard on myself, or maybe I’m lying to myself, but either way, it’s important to achieve small things every day so that the big things don’t seem so insurmountable.

The risotto on offer today is one that qualifies for Meatless Monday, but you’ll notice that it’s Tuesday now and there are perfectly pink medallions of pork tenderloin on the plate. Ignore those if you found this via the Meatless Monday website; the risotto is what’s really important here.

Risotto with currants, almonds, and orange

• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• 1 medium onion
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1/2 cup dried currants
• 2 tsp. orange zest
• 2 tsp. chopped fresh rosemary
• 1 cup arborio rice
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
• 3 to 4 cups warm chicken or vegetable stock
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 2 tbsp. butter
• 1/2 cup toasted slivered almonds
• Salt and pepper, to taste

In a large pan, caramelize the onion in the olive oil. Start with high heat, and then drop the heat down when the bits of onion turn just the faintest bit golden. Brown the hell out of them, stirring often enough, and let them go as long as you can stand it. The browner the better. I left mine in the pan to brown for forty minutes, until the onion was a shadow of its former self. However, I understand that not everyone dreams all day of coming home to make dinner, so go with your own judgment and preference here.

Bring heat back up to medium-high, and add in your garlic, dried currants, orange zest, rosemary, and rice. Cook for about a minute, until rice has begun to turn opaque. De-glaze the pan with the wine and orange juice. Stir the rice continuously until the liquid is absorbed.

Add one cup of the warm chicken stock, stirring frequently until liquid is mostly absorbed. Repeat with an additional cup of stock, and then repeat again with one to two more cups as needed. Test your rice for tenderness. The idea is to get it to al denté, but if it isn’t there yet, just pour in a little bit more stock, as needed, and let it absorb into the rice.

Your currants will have plumped, and the smell will be intoxicating. Add Parmesan cheese and butter. Taste, adjust seasonings as needed. And then, at long last, add almonds.

You can serve this as a main dish to two people, or as a side dish for four. As always, this is a recipe that’s easily multiplied, so if you want to feed four, just double it.

It’s a rich dish. Sweet and savory, creamy with a bit of crunch, earthy with rosemary and deeply browned onions, but bright with citrus and just a hint of wine. Beautiful with gently braised pork or lamb, or perfect on its own, with crusty bread and a few bites of roasted stone fruit. Peaches are just about done, but plums are gorgeous right now. Apples would be nice as well. And you’ll find that once you’ve tackled dinner, everything else becomes a little easier to manage; maybe I will write a chapter this evening, or a cover letter. And there’s always tomorrow, which is reliable as long as you don’t let it dissolve into the next day, and the ones after that.

Roasted tomato pizza.

We’re getting to the best time of the year now. The tomatoes that were so bright and lovely a few weeks ago are now mottled and sweet, and they beg to be roasted low and slow or stewed down for sauces, and since the air outside has cooled a bit I have no reason not to but oblige them. On Alana’s advice, I roasted a whole bunch of field tomatoes last week and stuck them in the freezer, but I still had a few romas, a hankering for bread and cheese, and a resurgence of old lady disease in my limbs, hands, back, and left big toe that made me not want to put in a lot of labour.

This post is mostly pictures, because I made my focaccia bread for the crust (all the ingredients up to the flour, plus salt – the recipe will make two pizzas if you’d prefer not to make one gigantic one), made pesto for the sauce, and roasted tomatoes for hours and hours to put on top. And then cheese. It’s also short because we made a trip to the garden … let’s just say this is a two-post night. (I know. I’m excited too.)

The aroma in the apartment was amazing, and a valid argument for always working from home. Tomatoes develop a sweeter taste as they roast down, but they smell almost meaty, with a lusty musk that is distinctive to this exact moment in the tomato season. Capture it while you can.

You can see how the light changed as the hours past while the pizza slowly came together. The focaccia crust isn’t the sort of thing you’d make on a weeknight ordinarily, but if you’re in no rush it’s perfect for homemade pizza.

There’s a lot to be said for homemade pizza, whether you dawdle over homemade, buy the dough from your favourite take-away place, or just get frozen dough from the grocery store. The advantage to using dough over a premade crust (other than not having to eat something that pretty much tastes like cardboard and has weird speckles of what you kind of recognize as “cheese” all over the thing) is that you get the smell of baking bread, which is the best thing about pizza, aside from all the cheese. Use whatever cheese you like, but (and this will seem completely out of character) I prefer low-fat mozzarella, because it’s stringier and I like my pizza cheese stringy.

The other thing about making your own pizza is that you get to put whatever you like on it, and you don’t have to feel crushing disappointment when Domino’s puts green peppers on anyway even after you told them how much you hate them. So, you get the satisfaction of the smell of bread baking, as much cheese as you want, whatever toppings you want, and nobody cries because there are green peppers.

And if tomatoes aren’t your thing, you should try this in October with butternut squash, rosemary, roasted garlic, and Gruyere. Holy crap, it will change your life. Try it and get back to me.

A delicious thing to do with sardines.

Kitten and I are alone this weekend, as Nick is off to a rainy lake four hours away to fish for trout/drink on a boat. And so I will stay in this rainy city, with tinned fish and my pajama pants, and drink on my couch. At least tonight. Though this work-week was only three days, they were three busy, non-stop days that required focus and effort – neither are strengths of mine.

So I’m staying in, alone. And instead of cooking, I’ve opted instead to “assemble” a meal, and have put together a grazing platter that should carry me through the evening, if I am able to stay awake. The centre of the meal is a thing with sardines, and it’s based on this anchovy thing I really like called anchoïade.

Anchoïade is a French thing, and at its most basic, it’s a potent mix of anchovies, olive oil, lemon, and garlic. It’s delicious, but I can’t quite justify a large dish of the stuff because anchovies are not a particularly sustainable ingredient these days. Good news though, sardines are. They’re plentiful, and they’re from close-by – there’s a cannery in California in Monterey and when I eat them I think of John Steinbeck because I love that book and because I literally hemorrhage bliss when an item of food tickles my book fancy, if you know what I mean.

I hope you enjoy this little adaptation. It’s for Linda, who asked for a sardine recipe; she’s expecting a baby, and sardines are all kinds of good for moms-to-be. Wander over to her place and say hello!

Sardinoïade

• 1/2 cup whole almonds (skins on), toasted
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tin sardines packed in olive oil (smoked, if possible)
• 1 tsp. lemon zest
• 1 tbsp. lemon juice
• 1 tsp. grainy dijon mustard
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. pepper
• 1/4 cup good olive oil

Okay. You can do this two ways.

The easy, smooth-textured way to do this is to grind almonds and garlic in a food processor, then add remaining ingredients (add the oil from the sardines too, don’t forget!) and pulse until the mixture achieves the texture you prefer. I like this way for parties and things where you can just put it out without having to explain too much about it. It will resemble pate, and it will work as either a spread or a dip.

The other way, which is also easy but has more steps, is to chop the almonds as finely as possible (or as you like), mince the garlic, and mix them both together. Dump the tin of sardines into the mix, oil included, and mash it all up together until it’s a texture you like. Stir in remaining ingredients until well combined. This is better as a spread. It’s much less attractive, but just as, if not MORE tasty.

Scoop either variation into a ramekin, and drizzle the top with good oil. Serve either on a plate with pickles, slices of hard-boiled eggs, and slices of baguette. You must also have wine or sparkling water. Pajamas optional, but always implied.

If you have any left over the next day, it’s nice to thin it out with a bit more olive oil and toss pasta with it, topped with fresh herbs and grated Parmesan cheese.

Enjoy!

Some people use air fresheners, but I prefer spicy cakes.

Sometimes I clean around here, and though that doesn’t happen as often as it should, when it does, I’m always a little OCD about the place smelling like it was cleaned. If I can smell it, it’s right, and so from time to time, the bleachy, VIMy, ammonia smells are a little more prominent than they need to be. It’s momentarily satisfying – it’s the way I let Nick know that I don’t always do almost nothing around here. And then I hate it, so baking happens, because spices and vanilla and sugar cover up the smell of cleaning stink and make an apartment feel like home.

Tonight the evening light was golden, and though we’re well into spring, it doesn’t feel too late for cake. The warm glow through the trees seemed to call for something yellow and spicy, and this cake is it. Well, maybe not yellow. Golden, I guess, but definitely spicy. Perfect for brunch or tea.

Ginger spice cake

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 tbsp. ground ginger
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp. finely ground white pepper
• 1 1/4 cups plain yogurt
• 2/3 cup vegetable or canola oil
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a large bowl, combine flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and pepper. Mix well.

In a separate bowl, combine yogurt, oil, eggs, and vanilla.

Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients, and combine until wet ingredients are just moistened.

Pour mixture into a greased 9″x13″ pan. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Serve warm, with whipped cream or ice cream.

Can I write about meatloaf in May?

I think yes, I can, because it’s my name on this thing and I felt like something meaty. The whole last hour of my day and the entirety of my bus-ride home was spent fighting the urge to chat MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! for all the world to hear, and when I finally got here, I dove right into things, mincing shallots and sautéeing finely chopped mushrooms and garlic in butter and olive oil. Can I write about mushroomy meatloaf in May?

Again, I say yes. At the little farmer’s market I go to when I go back to the ‘burbs, there were beautiful little white mushrooms that a sign claimed came from very nearby. And I wanted them, so we’re throwing back to November here, even though it’s warmish out now and the sun periodically mentions itself from behind the clouds. Around here meatloaf is a three-day affair – one day dinner, two days lunches, and I like the long-lastingness of it. Why am I defending this? You know you want meatloaf. There are places where it’s not even really spring yet, and maybe you’re from there. Maybe you want this so bad right now.

Well, here. This one’s a little different – it’s French. Or, rather, French-ish. It starts with shallots, then mushrooms, and then garlic, some dry white wine, fresh bread crumbs, a generous dollop of dijon, enough black pepper, and fresh parsley. There’s meat in there too – I used buffalo tempered with pork, but you can use beef, and venison would be lovely. I’ll bet a bit of lamb would be exquisite.

Anyhow, I made the meatloaf, and it was very good. You can hold off until October, if you want, but I’d make this now. Let it get cold, and slice it into sandwiches, and serve them at picnics.

Mushroom meatloaf

• 2 tbsp. butter
• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• 1/2 minced shallot
• 3/4 lb. mushrooms, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 cup dry white wine
• 1/2 lb. extra-lean ground beef (or other extra-lean red meat, such as buffalo or venison)
• 1/2 lb. ground pork
• 1 tbsp. grainy dijon mustard
• 1 cup fresh bread crumbs
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp. black pepper
• 1/4 tsp. nutmeg

In a large pan over medium heat, sauté shallot in olive oil and butter until translucent. Add mushrooms, stir to coat, and allow to cook for five minutes, until liquid begins to drain from mushrooms. Salt, add garlic, and stir. Sauté for another five to ten minutes, until pan is dry and mushrooms have begun to caramelize, achieving a golden hue.

Deglaze pan with wine, and simmer for another three to five minutes until all of the liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat, and allow to cool until you are able to handle the mushrooms comfortably.

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl, combine meats, mushroom mixture, bread crumbs, eggs, mustard, parsley, pepper, and nutmeg. Squish everything together with your hands until pretty well combined. It’s okay if the meats are not thoroughly blended – it’s more interesting if they’re not, actually.

Press mixture into a greased 9″x5″ loaf pan. Bake for 45 minutes.

Remove from oven and let stand for ten minutes before serving. And remember, it’s always even better the next day.

As you may have noticed, meatloaf is one of the ugliest foods, which is one more reason why these photos suck. But don’t let that stop you from making this.

To make up for the photos, and because I’ve been good lately, here’s a sleepy photo of the cat.