Recession Fever and The Reviled Vegetable Bowl

Question: Who goes to a vintage clothing shop and gets more excited about the used cookbooks than the clothing?

Um...Hopefully more people than just myself?

Last week, a friend and I went out to browse the vintage shops along Bloor and Lansdowne. We went to Vintage 69, a multi-level collective of preloved goodies with a gorgeous, airy and bright feel to it. We made our way upstairs and I eyed several pretty sundresses that I knew wouldn't fit me. I didn't try them on; I figured it was better to picture myself in them, in my mind, rather than actually disappointing myself in 3D.

We got to chatting with the saleslady, who was obviously very keen to make a sale. I noticed a purse hanging up; it had a lovely embroidery which had caught my eye.

"Oh," she said, noticing my interest, "that's a vintage Fendi. My friend got it for me, and she doesn't do knock-offs, that's the real thing. I'll give it to you for $40."

I took it into the other room to look at it carefully. Now, I'm no expert in bags, in fact, up until I was in my early 20's, I used an old, stained liquor store tote as a 'purse'. So maybe I'm wrong here, but I'm pretty sure Fendi didn't go through a 'pleather' period. The stitching inside was coming out and I felt in my gut that if I were in the presence of a vintage Fendi, if I was about to be gifted with the kind of shopping horseshoe our sartorial urban legends thrive on, I'd know, right?


Anyways, I DID find this fantastic cookbook by Madhur Jaffrey, who is a renowned author of Indian and Far East cuisine. Score. We then went to eat at Nazareth, an Ethiopian restaurant that is one of the hidden gems of Bloorcourt Village. It more than lived up to its reputation for incredibly tasty food, served in massive quantities for very few dollars.


And speaking of massive quantities, guess what I got in my CSA food box yesterday? And guess for how much? No, seriously, guess, because you won't believe that this horn-a-plenty of fruit and veggies only costs me $12 every two weeks. I still, after almost a year of getting a food box, cannot believe that such a system exists, where I pay my $12 and get a heap of local-grown food bought directly from the farmers. It's like a produce Costco with a conscience.

If I seem obsessed with money and not spending large amounts of it, it's because I am. I have no job, no prospects and the one freelance job I was doing went atomic on me last night. Husband is having to pay for just about everything right now, and honestly, I will never be comfortable with that. I had read all about the recession and understood that it happened to 'other people'. I just didn't think it would reach me too. But here I am, contemplating the fact that I'm not owed anything by life, not job stability or even decent wages. And I'm going to have to just suck it up.

So, in my efforts to not waste either money or food, I decided to use up the cauliflower that was sitting in my fridge. I found a recipe for Cauliflower Bhaji in my new, used cookbook. It's a funny vegetable. Everyone seems to hate it. In fact, I did a Google search using the words 'Cauliflower' and 'Hate' together, and it came up with over 2 million hits. There is even a "Cauliflower Haters" Facebook group. Crazy.














Well, for such a widely despised vegetable, it sure is pretty. I cut it up and threw it into the colander for a rinse, and the stalks turned this incandescent sort of green, like it had stored up the daylight and was glowing just for me.














And finally! A use for the insanely hot dried chilies I'd bought a big bag of, thinking I could crush them with mortar and pestle and use them instead of ready-made chili flakes! Only to realize they're so hot, it's instantaneous evacuation of your nasal cavities and vaporizing of your taste buds! Get me some milk, please! Quick!














It was a really easy recipe to follow, and without a picture of the finished product prepared by the talented Jaffrey to daunt me, there was no pressure, no expectation of the end result. Oh sweet Lord, it was good. Yes, it was really spicy - there is, after all, 1/2 tsp of cayenne pepper and 2 Insane-o dried chilies; if you make this yourself, you may want to adjust the amounts. But it was also incredibly tasty and, served on some basmati rice, or with a naan bread (my next project from the cookbook) and tzatziki or baba ganoush, it is just the thing to warm the belly and sweat out your recession blues.


Cauliflower Bhaji, with a couple of add-ins by me, by Madhur Jaffrey a la From Curries To Kebabs:

1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground cardamon (my addition)
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp mustard powder (my addition due to lack of mustard seeds)
3/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp corn, peanut or olive oil
1/2 tsp mustard seeds (I didn't have them, so I used fennel seeds instead)
1/2 tsp whole cumin seeds
2 whole dried hot red chilies
1-inch piece of ginger, first cut into thin slices, then stacked and cut into thin slivers
1 cauliflower head, cut into smallish florets, about 1 1/2 inches wide.
1/2 cup peeled and finely chopped tomatoes
1/2 peas (my addition)

Directions:

1. Combine the coriander, cumin, turmeric, cardamon, cayenne, mustard powder (if using) and salt in a bowl. Add 4 tbsp water and mix. Set aside.

2. Pour the oil into a large pot or pan with a lid and set over medium-high heat. When oil is hot, add the mustard seeds (if using) cumin seeds and chilies. Once the seeds start to pop, which doesn't take long, put in the ginger, stir and then the cauliflower. Fry the cauliflower till it starts browning, stirring continuously, about 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and stir in the spice paste; cover and let simmer over low heat for about 5-10 minutes.

3. Stir in the tomatoes and peas, replace the lid and cook for another 6-10 minutes, or until cauliflower is tender. Serve with a large dollop of plain yogurt and salt and pepper to taste.

Currying Flavour

I was not an athletically inclined or able child. Ever. I was that kid who faked head and stomach aches in gym class to sit out dodge ball or track and field. Gym teachers were forever frustrated by me and the "Please excuse" notes I'd repeatedly begged my poor mother to write me. I lacked competitiveness. I didn't care about finding my personal best; I just wanted to get by quietly with my personal adequateness. I think the activity that induced the most terror and night-before anxiety had to be the Hurdles sprint. There seemed to be a persistent disconnect between my brain and my 'jump now' impulse. I would run towards the first hurdle and either charge through it as if on a blind stampede, or stop abruptly, like an animal that knows it's going to get hit by the car. No amount of encouragement could compel me to keep trying; I got very little out of re-enacting failure.

The great thing about growing up, the thing adults were forever telling me and I was forever disbelieving, is that at some point, you'd overcome the common miseries of youth. I learned to manage my paralytic shyness, learned to make friends, learned how to go after the things I wanted in life. And now I don't get as dissuaded by failure as I did back then.

Except maybe when it comes to making curries.

I've lost count of how many times I've tried to make a decent curry. I'm not sure what keeps going wrong. It's not that they're inedible, but most of the time, the curries just end up bland. There's spice. There's heat. But there's no intense flavour. I always mistake the flavour for the physical temperature of the curry when I eat it. And then when I try it again the next day, it's still tasteless and I realize I'm stuck with about 4 quarts of it. Which I force myself to eat, joylessly, for the next week.

Last night, though, I was craving spice something fierce. I still had half a jar of curry paste in the fridge from the previous attempt, and I had some cauliflower that needed using. I decided I'd follow a recipe, and not just any recipe. A Jamie Oliver recipe. Can you go wrong with him? I mean, he comes from a country known for its curries (Disclaimer: other than the originating countries of curry) He uses forgiving language; a 'knob' of this, a 'lashing' of that; easy enough to interpret for measurement-lax people like myself.

With the dog just walked and a dark Belgian beer poured and ready for sipping, I got started. I diced the onions, my eyes stinging and watering so much, I could barely read the cookbook. I chopped the chili and ginger and garlic; I washed and cut the veggies and opened the tins of tomatoes, peas and coconut milk. I heated the butter and oil and cooked everything till it was fragrant and bubbling cheerfully on the stove. With glee, I realized the curry smelled the way I thought curries should and it was the same colour as Jamie's in the book - surely that was a good sign?

When the rice was ready and the veggies tender, I scooped up a huge bowl for myself and topped it with some plain yogurt. And the verdict? Ding Dong! It was absolutely divine! All the elements of a good curry, real flavour and depth and heat, were present! I'd done it! I'd jumped my culinary hurdle! I forced myself to eat it slowly and forgave myself all those years of assuming failure, because maybe, just maybe, it had led me to my new-found tenacity in the kitchen. Perhaps I'd stumbled upon an alternate trajectory to success: I'd simply tired of hopelessness, and the only direction left to take was 'up'.

Here's my adaptation of Jamie Oliver's curry recipe from 'The Food Revolution':

1 fresh red chili, finely chopped
2 smallish onions, chopped
1 thumb sized piece of ginger, finely chopped
1-2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tbsp butter
2 glugs of oil (I used olive oil, but he calls for canola or vegetable oil)
1/2 jar of curry paste (I used Patak's Mild Curry Paste)
1 head of cauliflower, cut into medium sized florets
2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into cubes, about 1"
1 14 oz can of coconut milk
1 14 oz can of diced tomatoes
1/2 can of peas, rinsed well

1. Prep and chop all vegetables, open all tins, then heat up the tbsp of butter and the two glugs of olive oil over medium heat in a large pot or frying pan.

2. Once the oil-butter mix is heated, add the chili, onions, garlic and ginger and cook till softened and almost translucent, about 10 minutes, stirring often.

3. Add the curry paste to the onion mixture and stir till incorporated. Add the vegetables and stir to coat them with the paste-onion mixture - do this quickly, if you can, so the paste doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot. Once coated, add the tomatoes and coconut milk and about 1/2 cup of water and stir till combined.

4. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for about 30-40 minutes. Now's a good time to make some basmati or jasmine rice; follow package instructions. Once the veggies are tender and the sauce has thickened a bit, take the pot off the heat and allow to cool for about 5 minutes. Serve on a mountain of rice with a squeeze of lemon and topped with plain yogurt and fresh cilantro, if you like. Then eat and enjoy!