In the time of cabbage

As any good Windsorite can tell you, the weather in Southwestern Ontario is prone to flights of fancy. It floats to a lovely high of 10C one day and then descends into the gloomy trenches the next, hovering around -20C. And as a good, former Windsorite, I've developed a sizeable amount of patience over the years for fluctuating temperatures and seasonal disappointments. But like perishable food my patience has a best-before date, and as Valentine's Day came to a bitterly cold, windy close, I felt it expire. I want summer dresses and weekends spent at the beach listening to jazz and reading. Heck, I'd settle for a t-shirt and jeans and a walk through Trinity Bellwoods at this point. Are you there, spring? Its me, Sarah.

I like casseroles, soups and stews well enough. Miraculously, I haven't tired of them yet; I still have a full line-up of potential suitors begging for a trial run, including a dish of chic chickpeas cooked in dry white wine and lemon juice, served over mashed potatoes (or, I'm thinking, a creamy bed of polenta and steamed greens.) But yesterday I observed as Laura Calder made eggs en pipérade and readers, I dreamt and drooled over the thought of eggs cooking away in a savory tomato and pepper sauce accompanied by a side of soft baked homefries. But peppers and tomatoes aren't in season yet, so here I wait, awash in carrots, potatoes and onions.

But, as it turns out, there is cabbage. Yes, that homely, round vegetable most ignore or eat sparingly via coleslaw or as a vehicle for ground beef and rice. You might recognize it pickled, eaten atop bratwurst. As alone as I am in this camp -- and trust me when I say that the cabbage lover's world is a very, very lonely one -- I am a harsh defender of its versatility and deliciousness. Now, I don't care for boiled cabbage, and I don't know many who do. Frankly, it's bland and boring and loses all of its lovely texture. Braised or roasted cabbage is an entirely different story and one I like a great deal better than its clean-simmer-serve narrative. 

I was surprised to learn that cabbage is actually native to the Mediterranean region. Cato the Elder declared that "It is the cabbage that surpasses all other vegetables." Personally, I like its other names -- sea cabbage and wild cabbage -- much better, and I think if we started calling it Sea Cabbage of Greece it would rise in popularity by at least ten points within the week. In the interest of transparency I sometimes refer to it in my mind as Cah-bahge!!! (three exclamation marks!), a cross between sabotage and kaboom, which makes it sound like a deadly weapon. It gives me heart palpitations and provokes fainting in particularly impressionable foodies, so I'd say my pronounciation is quite fitting. Good cah-bahge may cause fatalities; consume at your own discretion. When I trained for a job at a grocery store many moons ago we were referred to the it as "sexy cabbage" because its corresponding number is 4069, and ever since I've considered it the bad boy of the vegetable world. Don't allow its ubiquity to deceive you.

As far as dangerous situations go, such was the case when I somehow found myself at lunch one Winterlicious day at Pangaea (pan-gee-ahh!!!), one of Toronto's (allegedly) best kept secrets. Frisée and light greens dressed with a mustard vinaigrette, served with half a perfectly crisp roasted pear, a small square of Stilton and candied walnuts. Well-seasoned duck confit, incredibly tender to the tooth, on a small pool of sour cherry jus and served with a side of apple braised cabbage. For dessert, a white teacup of drinking chocolate with homemade vanilla bean marshmallows. "It is what it says it is," said our server. "I know," I answered. "It's what I want." To my mind, it is easy to do fancy dishes; I take issue with the fact that the ingredients often overwhelm each other to such a degree that they are rendered unrecognizable or muddled. A simple hot chocolate is hard to pull off. Because there are so few ingredients it would be impossible to hide an ingredient of inferior quality; any eater with a solid palate will know immediately. Fortunately the hot chocolate was perhaps the best I've had in my life. I'm still thinking about it.

But if pushed, the cabbage took the lunch to new heights. Others pushed theirs off to the side, so I might be (gasp! again!) alone on this, but I adored it. It was buttery in texture and intensely flavourful, and lingered perfectly on my tongue alongside the melting duck meat. I had clearly underestimated its potential. Oh, I remember overhearing discussions over a good ol' fashioned girl's night in Florida about how cabbage cooked in a cast iron pan with bacon can take on almost mystical qualities, but it took really tasting cabbage in her Sunday best to get me up in arms. Err...his Sunday best. Whatever.

I don't often try to replicate restaurant dishes. If I've experienced a memorable meal, I'll return for it. But cabbage is easily made at home, and so I've gone and done it anyway, Sarah-style. It's not fresh peppers and tomatoes, nor is it Pangaea, but perhaps it is close enough. At least until next month when I begin to long for local asparagus and bright-tasting red currants. 

Savoy cabbage (see above) is the best varietal for cooking, but this recipe would be equally delicious with white winter cabbage. 

 Braised Cabbage with Apple and Carrot

Yields 6 - 8 side portions

1/2 - 3/4 of a Savoy cabbage, thinly sliced

1/2 cup pure apple cider, preferably with no sugar added

1/4 cup dry white wine

2 carrots, grated

1 medium sized apple (such as McIntosh), grated

3 tbsp unsalted butter

Salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 400F.

In a large bowl, mix together cabbage, grated carrots and grated apple. Add to a large greased casserole dish (I use one by Anchor). It's okay if it overflows slightly, as the cabbage will cook down.

Heat the butter over medium heat until melted and slightly nutty smelling. Remove from heat and whisk in apple cider and white wine. Season the liquid generously with salt and pepper, and pour over cabbage mixture. 


Roast for about forty-five minutes, covered, removing once from the oven to mix. Roast for an additional fifteen minutes uncovered so the edges brown and crisp up. 


Serve warm.

On becoming resourceful (or, my girlfriends are superheroes)

It just so happened that my furnace blew out Sunday evening during the coldest night of the season, when the temperature dropped to -31C with the wind chill.

After a weekend of frustrations and heartbreak, I sat on the couch and felt the air grow slowly cooler. I could feel my apartment floors through my leopard-print slippers. This city's not used to this insane weather, I thought. I grabbed another blanket. But when I peeled back my duvet Monday morning, there was no mistaking it, that startling, skin-blazing chill.

I phoned my landlord immediately, but the city was in trouble. People were having heating issues all over. After experiencing a near-asthma attack while walking to the AGO the day prior, I hailed a cab to work. I sat at my cubicle wearing my thickest pair of tights beneath my lined wool pants, two t-shirts and one of my heaviest sweaters.

With my furnace repairs delayed, I considered my options. Calling up a friend, packing up my things and crashing somewhere else for a couple nights. Buying a space heater. Burying myself beneath my blankets until conditions improved.

I thought about the old days, jacked my oven to 450F and opened the door. Within two hours, my apartment was reasonably comfortable. Take that, furnace -- name the game and I'll play it.

This was a hard weekend for many people. A pregnant friend of mine was butchering chickens with her mother when she spotted blood. She has been trying for a good long while to have a baby, and grew immediately devastated at the thought of losing this one. Fortunately she and the baby are both okay, but another friend of mine was not so lucky. Another friend of mine lost her cat. And, apart from thinking we grow increasingly complicated and complex as we grow older -- thank goodness -- I thought, my girlfriends are my superheroes. I'm fussing about my heat and others are mourning a future, gone. And also this: here we are, a collective of young women who butcher chickens, make sausages from scratch, knit clothing, sing, play instruments, develop public policies, revise national marketing materials, plan elaborate trips, move to different cities on a whim, take chances, go back to school for the third time, open businesses, and forge ahead into the great, clichéd unknown, entirely unarmed.

As Dana Velden put so eloquently this week, "You're human and you're built for this."

And so I made a giant pot of minestrone soup -- not a soup that requires several fancy ingredients, but one that insists on pantry staples. One easy to throw together at a moment's notice. No zucchini? Toss in a cup of green beans. Don't like zucchini? Use cabbage instead. It's a good soup, an easily adaptable soup, one that pleases the palate and warms the belly. Good comfort food. If I were anywhere near any of these women, I'd try to warm their spirits with a pot of this. It reminds us that while star-studded ingredients like quinoa flour and good-quality dark chocolate and amazing coffee and artisanal goat's cheese are all well and good, the bare-boned basics, when treated well, when savoured, can really shine, and are perhaps the most comforting thing available in moments of quiet desperation and sorrow.

I know what you're thinking: a bowl of beans and vegetables. Well, yes. I know it doesn't look like much -- photographing soup takes talent I just don't have -- but trust me on this. The pesto in this recipe makes for a truly superb broth. I froze half this soup, but I don't think it'll stay there for long.

Minestrone Soup

Yields 8 - 10 servings

Notes: There are a number of recipes for Minestrone. However, there are a few things I wouldn't skip on. For one, good-quality stock is, to my mind, essential; I like homemade chicken best, but any good poultry stock will do. I would hesitate to prescribe vegetable stock, because I find most far too sour-tasting. I've ruined many a pot of soup with vegetable stock. However, to each his or her own -- if you like vegetable stock, then by all means use it.

Secondly, I substituted the pasta with uncooked quinoa to up the protein and nutrients in this recipe.

Third, I think every soup needs a bright ingredient. In this instance, I've used red wine vinegar, but you can easily substitute lemon juice if you haven't red wine vinegar on hand. This recipe also calls for diced tomatoes; if you don't care for chunks of tomato in your soup, feel free to puree them or adding tomato sauce instead.

Fourth, while I love the taste of sundried tomato pesto here, I know this isn't available to everyone. Classico makes a jarred version available at most grocery store, or try experimenting. You could add pancetta or bacon to this recipe. Try adding in green beans, cabbage and/or spinach in place of the zucchini. Use whatever's on hand or looks good at the store.

1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, very finely diced or grated (roughly 1 cup)
4-5 carrots, peeled and chopped (about 2.5 cups)
1 zucchini, chopped (about 1 cup)
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
2lbs potatoes (3-4), peeled and diced
1 quart good-quality, low-sodium poultry stock, preferably homemade (see notes)
2 - 14oz cans diced tomatoes with juices
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp dried oregano
3 tbsp dried parsley, or 1.5 tbsp fresh
2 - 16oz cans of beans (I used kidney), about 3 cups cooked, rinsed
1/3 cup uncooked quinoa
2 heaping tbsp sundried tomato pesto
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
Sea salt and pepper
Parmigiano-Reggiano, for sprinkling

1. In a large saucepan or Dutch oven, melt the butter and olive oil over medium heat. Once the butter is melted and the pan feels warm, add the onions. Toss to coat, and sprinkle lightly with sea salt. Cook until onions soften, about five minutes.
2. Add carrots and continue to cook until slightly tender, about ten minutes more, adding additional oil as necessary.
3. Toss in the garlic and combine with carrots and onions. Once fragrant, about one minute, add tomato paste and stir to combine.
4. Add in potatoes, chicken stock, canned tomatoes, beans, zucchini, quinoa, and pesto. You may have to add the second can of beans once the soup has reduced slightly (I had to.) Salt gently again and add 1/8 tsp of cracked black pepper. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a strong simmer.
5. Cook until the potatoes are tender, the broth thickens and the quinoa is fully cooked, about 20-30 minutes. Take the soup off the heat and add in the red wine vinegar. Taste and adjust the seasoning.
6. Serve in bowls garnished with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.

The pleasures of the winter table

If you live in a city where the temperature drops to -20 celcius, perhaps you are the type to stay in bed, cancel your planned outing to the St. Lawrence Antique Market, and re-schedule your trip to the Maharaja exhibit at the AGO for the following week, weather permitting. It's the kind of weekend that finds you sipping on a Manhattan while watching the Golden Globes, keeping warm under a blanket. You turn up the heat just a little. You make good use of your slippers. You enjoy a leisurely breakfast and an extra cup of coffee because it just makes good sense to do so.

January is a depressing month, so they say, and I'm apt to agree. But instead of filling my weekend with errands and stuffing it to the bits with various to-do lists, I enjoyed a leisurely one filled with old-fashioned fun: knitting, reading, tea-drinking, baking, and making a terrific, simple lentil soup recipe that is, no joke, ridiculously cheap to cook up. Even if you use organic lentils as I do.

I have ideas, readers, really I do. I've been cooking up a storm. And enjoying.

Those stories will come.

Last evening, after a long working day, I walked west down Bloor until I reached St. George. Around the corner came a dapper young man and he whisked me off to a lovely little place called Bar Mercurio where everyone is in good spirits, always, and a woman with crazy blonde curly hair mixes up a mean espresso martini, slightly sweet, exceptionally creamy and absolutely divine. Your friend and this lovely woman engage in casual banter. "Done any painting recently?" he asks her, and she says, "No, no." "Just re-use your work from this year for next year's show and call it something else." She laughs and murmurs, "Yes, I'll call it 'I Changed My Mind'," as she takes a sip of espresso from her tiny white cup, and we all smile together.

The marble counter top and wall of wine are all Italian, and the low light soothes your broken mind. I sat there and drank my cocktail -- perhaps too quickly, as it disappeared all too fast for my liking -- and experienced the moment. I am trying to experience the moments, dear reades, as January is almost over already and soon it will be February and then it will be March. Spring! What will that feel like? Sometimes I catch myself daydreaming and need to move a few steps back.

Soon it will be over, dear readers. I don't want this season to pass me by; I want to celebrate its quirks. I want to make a big pot of soup on Sundays and fantasize about spring pea soup with mint. I want to decide, rather impulsively, to bake up a batch of miniature buckwheat cookies with cocao nibs on a Saturday night before heading out to catch a film, the first that I've seen at the theatre in almost a year. I want to sit down for a while doing nothing, and find myself perfectly happy doing so, and I want to bury myself under my duvet for another hour before getting up to grab a few groceries. I want to listen to Chet Baker and chop onions perfectly. The things we think about when we're left alone for too long, non? What I'm saying, I suppose, is that there's beauty in all seasons. For too long I've overlooked winter's as hers is more difficult to see and to love, I think, for someone who has always adored the summertime. I'm slowly coming around. It has taken me twenty-five years, but I'm just about there.

Eventually spring will come. Eventually, I'll write the things I've been wanting to write and share them with you. Until then I'll be here, slurping soup, and taking life as it comes because even under the snow, the slush, the salt, there's amazing things preparing to emerge.

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter.  Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.  -Andrew Wyeth

There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you.... In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.  -Ruth Stout

"There is a town in north Ontario / With dream comfort memory to spare..."

I'm not the first to say this, but I have no idea where November went. Hello December -- I can hear you whispering among the willows.

The first snow came as I walked down a beautiful city street, fall leaves still attached to their branches. Ahh, Canada; it turns out I missed you something serious! I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but I... might like this thing called winter.

Yeah, I still can't believe it. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm hardcore about summer. But winter inspires bundling under blankets and hot apple cider with a capful of Captain Morgan's spiced rum, sitting by a roaring fire and making mulled wine. It means evenings spent reading and listening to K. D. Lang talk about being helpless, and sitting back on your sofa, reflecting, feeling fortunate about the way the months have unfolded. Who knows how many wrong turns we narrowly avoided.

But still, no blood oranges. They are December babies, after all. So I wait. I wait for blood oranges, and blood orange and jalapeno margaritas, and blood orange juice, extremely orange and tart.

Farmer's markets packed with kale, with spinach, with celery root, with candy beets that really know how to help a salad take centre stage. Clementines that taste so sweet, juice dribbling down your chin as you tuck into another section. Pears the shade of green the grass takes when you first see it in the springtime, signalling, however subtle, a new season, and leeks as big as a child's arm. We are fat and happy around here as we decorate the office tree, exchanging inappropriate stories while we let the tea steep. If you're going to take a break between frantic e-mails and drawn out phone conversations, you better make it a good time.

Yes, winter, maybe I've come around to you. Strolling through Toronto streets in my boots, jeans tucked in. Waking up to a giant mug of coffee the size of my head -- a really fantastic cup, I should say -- and buckwheat crepes filled lightly with cheese and topped with sunny side up eggs, sprinkled with paprika, and chicken bacon. The crepes are so good and buttery tasting that my tastebuds can't help but sit up and dance. The flavour isn't nutty, but soft and flavourful. I need that recipe and someday someone's going to surrender it to me. But in the meantime I'll dream about that crepe and about the Christmas holidays, and wait for blood oranges.

What are you waiting for, dear readers? Or maybe you're just enjoying things as they are, which is perfectly acceptable, too. Let me tell you: I've got my eyes on those pears.

Do yourself a favour and dance while you cook. Tonight there is a batch of soup simmering on the stove, and "2 Scoops" by Michelle Harding coming from my television, and hey! another Monday under our belts. We're a day closer to blood oranges, to a new year, to a good night's sleep. Winter -- I've got you figured out.


*Entry title courtesy of Neil Young, "Helpless"

Have a cookie

Some people debate the end of the world. Others worry about the state of our economy.

I, on the other hand? I think I'll have another cookie.

At least for now. Tomorow begs for seriousness. As for tonight: hold on to your hats, folks and frolickers, and consider the last time you ate a really good cookie. What was it?

When the living wears you thin, sometimes there's nothing else to do but sigh, listen to Michael Franti's "Sound of Sunshine" (or what have you) and hope for the best. This sometimes works. You could always try holding a costume party ala Elton John. That could get interesting. Or you could bake a batch of these gems, crispy yet tender, some sort of chip-cookie mutation gone oddly... right.

I'm not much of a cookie person, really. Actually, I should rephrase that. I wasn't much of a cookie person. But these cookies? They're the sexiest of the sexy cookies. While I still can't put back an entire batch by my lonesome, I do have officemates. Fortunately for me, people are generally quite receptive to homemade cookies, and -- you can quote me on this -- no such cookie will go to waste on my watch. That's a promise I can uphold, and I take my promises very, very seriously indeed. Especially concerning items of the chocolate variety. 

Most of the time, I live on pretty simple fare. An egg here, some rice noodles here. Cooking for more than one, in my experience, is both a tiresome responsibility and a luxury, a fuse lit equally with obligation and joy. But cooking for one leaves enough to be desired as you find yourself plowing through another night's worth of leftovers or in the dark at 8pm, contemplating whether air-popped popcorn counts as dinner if you drizzle olive oil on it and eat a bowl of lettuce on the side. Suffice to say, I appreciate that I'm now able to dabble on the sweet side whenever I fancy, to turn over a cookie here or a tart there and place them oh-so-innocently on the kitchen counter of my office. It's a way to experiment without feeling bogged down, to try something new without committing to an entire batch. It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.

I first made these cookies on a cool night in Florida. Yes -- Northern Florida does cool off significantly, contrary to popular opinion. My good friend Kim was on her way over for dinner. The menu sounded reasonable enough: chicken with lemon and roasted garlic, quinoa salad with a tahini dressing, vegetables, wine. For dessert, I opted to make something other than my standard 3-ingredient peanut butter cookies and stumbled on these. I wasn't sure what to think initially. Everyone in the blogosphere raved about them, these alleged chocolate puddle cookies, but they looked pretty generic to me.

After the first batch had cooled, I popped one in my mouth. Let's just say I have been eating my thoughts (and the damn cookies) ever since. It was an epic fail of a dinner that evening; my chicken, a cheap thing from Winn-Dixie, disappointed. I refer to it as the strangest bird I've ever cooked, because it sat in the oven for almost two hours and yet was still undercooked. Odd. (And no, there was nothing wrong with the oven.)

The quinoa salad was a flop, and so baked potatoes were served (always good).

The vegetables, well. There's not much to say about them.

But that night, we watched Olympic figure skating, drank some wine, ate some cheese, and devoured these cookies. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say the cookies saved the day. After all, Kim is still my friend -- this is saying a lot considering I tried to poison the girl with bad poultry. She's a good sport. She also has fantastic taste in cheese (and food), and it's been my experience that these types of people are both rare and good to keep around. Especially in the event they insist on leaving Brie at your place.

I didn't have walnuts or cocoa nibs on hand during that initial batch, and I have to say, these things change a cookie. They turn a pretty damn good cookie into a pretty damn great cookie, as a matter of fact. My favourite variation of this recipe is Molly Wizenberg's, unsurprisingly, mostly because it incorporates cocoa nibs (always good) and secondly because the yield is on the smaller side as far as cookies go. Which you may or may not like, depending on whether you find yourself back in the kitchen baking up another batch within days because someone has gone and eaten them all. This is known to happen; don't say you weren't warned.

So if you find yourself alone in your kitchen on a Monday night, feeling a little down without reason, anxious to hold future dinner parties, anxious for the future, anxious for the end of the world, have a cookie.

And make it a pretty damn great one: a cookie you can sink your teeth into, that you can chew on, that coats your mouth with cocoa, that leaves you happier with every bite.

Check out Molly's recipe here.