The Immodest Tart

I've suffered from acute modesty my whole life. As a kid, I was never one to take compliments well. I don't know where it came from, maybe it was just another part of being shy, but any time someone encouraged or praised me, I'd practically curl up into a defensive ball like a potato bug;

Well Meaning Individual: "Monika, you look really nice today."
Me: "What? Are you blind? I look awful. You clearly need your eyes tested."

Like it would kill me to say "Thank you, that's so kind." I would aim for nonchalance, but what came out was borderline hostile, and I'd invariably make the Well Meaning Individual feel rotten for talking to me. I was worried about seeming conceited, which, to my mind, was the exact opposite of being lovable. Even if I worked really hard at something, the recognition would send me into fits of blushes and bashfulness that were almost painful. What I really wanted was to be able to stand up and take my bow with grace.

And while I've grown up a lot and stopped being such a wiener about these things, I still kind of fret over it from time to time. You know how people preemptively apologize for a meal they've just made, because they can't bear the thought of having their dinner guests make horrified 'ugh!' faces at each other after the first bite? I've been guilty of that too. In the back of my head, I'd have the delivery pizza contingency plan on standby at the first sign of trouble. But I'm making a concerted effort to not do that anymore. It's tedious. It's exhausting. And as much as cooking is about the finished result, it's every bit as much about the sense of accomplishment and the love that goes into cooking for people you like.

I've been subscribing to Body + Soul magazine for a couple of years now. Much like All Bran or the at-home yoga DVD I've never used, it makes me feel healthier just having it around. I love this magazine because among other things, they have really great, simple recipes. With the fantastic food styling and stunning photography, it's hard not to be seduced by the recipes. My new issue came last week, and I saw the Mushroom, Scallion and Spinach tart and thought "Ding Dong! This would be perfect for my sister's birthday lunch!"

So I got all the ingredients ready...


Look at that spinach, shamelessly sunbathing in the colander;


I roasted the veggies and made the phyllo dough base. I put together the custard-like filling, assembled the tart and popped it in the Demonic Oven, checking on it often to make sure the dough wasn't burning. And when it came out?

I couldn't believe it. It was gorgeous. No - it was breathtaking. It looked like the picture in the magazine. I let the tart cool a little, then bundled it up and carefully walked it over to my sister's house. Her husband had come home early and we each polished off two big pieces of it. "Moni," my sister kept repeating, "this is REALLY good!"

I'd issued no disclaimers or warnings about the possible awfulness of the meal when we sat down to eat. I'd simply set it out and hoped for the best. And you know what? It was really good - flaky, salty, creamy, earthy. Totally something I would order for myself at a restaurant. And so I devoured, without the faintest tinge of modesty, my compliments. And they tasted wonderful.

Mushroom, Spinach and Scallion Tart, a Body + Soul recipe by Sarah Carey:

1 lb mushrooms (combination of button and shiitake is recommended, though I just used creminis) trimmed and sliced 1/2 inch thick
5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt
12 scallions, ends trimmed and cut into 2 inch pieces
10 sheets of phyllo dough, 14x19 inches each
2/3 cup of goat cheese
3 large eggs
1/3 cup milk
3 tbsp fresh chopped herbs (I used thyme and rosemary, but you can use whatever you like)

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. (Demonic Oven functioned at 350 and it worked out just fine)

2. On a baking sheet, toss mushrooms with 2 tbsp oil and 3/4 tsp salt. Roast for 10 minutes. Toss in the scallions and roast for about 15 minutes. Push them to the side and place spinach on the empty side, roasting it till wilted, about 3 minutes. Let it cool a bit, then squeeze extra liquid out of spinach.

3. Brush an 11x7 inch rectangular tart pan with a removable bottom with some of the remaining oil. (I just used the same baking sheet I'd roasted the veggies on - again, work with what you've got.) Keeping the sheets of phyllo between two damp dishcloths, work with one sheet at a time, placing it on the pan and brushing it lightly with oil. Bear in mind you'll be folding the sides and edges under to create an elevated crust if you're not using the tart pan. If using the tart pan, there should be a 1 inch overhang. Repeat the process of brushing oil with each sheet. When finished, fold the edges according to the pan you're using.

4. Line the middle portion of the crust with foil and put some dried beans or something on top to hold it in place. Bake it like this for about 5-7 minutes, or until the edges are golden and beginning to set. Remove the foil and bake until golden all over; about 3 minutes. If the edges are browning too quickly, you can cover them with foil.

5. Reduce oven to 375 degrees (Demonic Oven stayed at 350) In blender or food processor, puree goat cheese, eggs and milk with remaining 1/4 tsp salt till smooth. Add the herbs and pulse to combine. Spread the mushrooms, scallions and spinach over the crust and pour the custard mixture over top.

6. Place tart back in the oven and bake till the custard is set, about 20-25 minutes (watch carefully that the crust doesn't burn) Remove from oven and let cool for about 10 minutes. Then devour it, with pride.

'Everything But The Kitchen Sink' Dinner

I've always been painfully aware that I am not photogenic. I'm not fishing for compliments here. I'm uttering a truth. I'm not sure what the problem is, if it's that I get uncomfortable the moment a camera is pointed at me; if it's the 'performance aspect'. Or maybe it's as simple as the rounded, Eastern European contours of my face drinking in light as opposed to sharply deflecting it in flattering angles. It's okay. I've come to accept it. And in the age of the digital camera, people like me don't have to suffer anymore; we can shoot and shoot and shoot and eventually, we'll hit upon a decent enough photo for public viewing.

My mother was a photographer. A former career woman, she chose to become a stay-at-home mom and, after selflessly raising us into the salty, sulky adolescent years, she realized she needed something that was just for her, a creative endeavor. So she began taking night school courses in photography and purchasing camera equipment. And luckily for her, she had two models to practice on right at home! Her pimply, shy, awkward daughters. Every Saturday morning, she would set up her studio, ready us with a dash of lipstick and a swipe of blush (the only part I enjoyed of this ritual) and we'd sullenly pose for her for several hours. There are virtually no pictures of me smiling during this time period.

Just like unphotogenic people, there are some foods that don't really take good photos either. The more I make it, the more I realize that pureed soup is one of these foods. Last night, with the house all to myself and a hungry belly, I looked in the fridge to see what I had to work with. Broccoli. Leftover bits from previous meals. A variety of veggies that were just starting to lose their crispness. So I decided to make soup; a soup that would help me use up a considerable amount of these ingredients. I wanted something with the soup, so I decided upon a chickpea sandwich filling, with mushrooms, thyme and Parmesan cheese. I chopped. I sauteed. I boiled. I coarsely pureed. I stirred. I tasted. I cheered myself on for making such a yummy dinner. But when it came time to photograph the food, my heart sank a little.



Everything was a murky sort of brown colour. Oh dear.

I broke a sweat, trying to get my creations to demonstrate their appeal to the camera. Twisting bowls this way and that, angling plates up and down and sideways, trying all the while to keep my hand steady while depressing the shutter button. By the time I was done, my food was getting cold and I decided to stop fretting about it and eat. And the tastes - salty, tangy, earthy, layered - neutralized all my concerns that I wouldn't be able to impart to the reader how lovely it all turned out. Because I'd know. And I'd have days of leftovers to keep reminding me.

My mother, by the way, became a brilliant photographer, and I keep her pictures close to me, in every room of my house, to remind me of her.

Please note: when I don't follow a recipe, I tend to use loose measurements, so these are approximations. Just keep tasting it!

Kitchen Sink Soup:

1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 large onion, diced
1 head of broccoli, cut into florets and stem chopped.
2 large potatoes, cut into smallish cubes
3 stalks of celery, chopped
3 carrots, chopped
generous splash of white wine
4 cups chicken stock
1 cup of water, more if needed
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp dried dill
1 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
prosciutto or bacon, cooked and cut into small pieces
plain yogurt or sour cream, if desired

1. Heat the oil and butter in a large stockpot. Add onion and cook over medium heat till soft, about 5-7 minutes. Add all the chopped veggies and the generous glug of wine and stir for about 1-2 minutes. Add the chicken broth and water and bring to a boil. Once boiling, keep at a healthy simmer for about 25 minutes, or till veggies are soft. In the meantime, cook up the bacon or prosciutto and set aside.

2. Using an immersion blender, puree the soup till smoothly processed. Add the buttermilk and the dill and paprika and adjust seasonings till it's to your taste. Keep it warm till serving. Add a dollop of plain yogurt or sour cream and sprinkle the bacon on top.

Chickpea-Mushroom Mash:

1 tbsp butter
1/2 onion
8 oz or 1/2 lb mushrooms, chopped - I used white, but cremini or shitake would be lovely too!
1/2 can chickpeas, rinsed well
generous glug of white wine
zest of half a lemon
juice of half a lemon, or more to taste
salt and pepper, to taste
1 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
1-2 tbsp chopped green olives (can leave these out for more subtle flavour)
shaved Parmesan cheese
Slice of grainy bread with light smear of Dijon

1. In medium frying pan, heat the butter. Add the onion and cook over medium heat till soft, 5-7 minutes. Add the chopped mushrooms, chickpeas and white wine and cook till browned and fragrant, about 10-12 minutes. Set aside to cool.

2. Once cooled, put in food processor and pulse till coarsely mashed (do not puree!) Pour the mash into a mixing bowl and add the lemon zest, lemon juice, thyme, olives if using and salt and pepper and stir till well combined. Serve on toasted grainy bread with Dijon and top with the Parmesan.

Halcyon Days

Maybe it comes from watching too much British crime drama on educational television. Maybe I think about my digestive habits a bit too much. Or maybe it's my 10:30pm bedtime (I lied just now, it's more like 10pm) But lately, at the tender age of 32, I've begun to tell stories like an old person; equal parts fond reminiscences and wistfulness at how much things have changed. I find it hard to believe sometimes that when I was a kid, computers had only just entered the fray, in the form of condo-sized boxes available in the school library. IPods? Cell phones? We had a record player and a rotary phone growing up, which I suppose would be considered by some as the technological equivalent to a gramophone and an ear trumpet.

Nostalgia for a 'simpler time' always seemed like the provenance of grandparents. But when I see kids on the bus, or in the mall food courts, and I hear the way a lot of them butcher the English language while regaling their questionable parent-free exploits, I long for the golden days of my youth. The F-Word hadn't made its way into my vocabulary till I was well into my teens. I kissed a boy for the first time when I was 13; prior to that, they were simply names with hearts around them on pages in diaries. And winter, winter was a marvellous time as a kid. My dad would get out the toboggan, an old-fashioned wonder of wood and glue and rope, and the four of us would go to Eglinton Park and fly down the hills as many times as we could climb back up again.

Afterwords we'd tramp home, exhausted and rosy-cheeked, and make hot chocolate and what my Dad christened "Cheese-thingees"; English muffins, halved and topped with cheese and decorated with olives in the design of happy faces. These would go under the broiler and get all melty and salty and my fingers would get greasy as I ate. Never would I have thought at the time that this would become a lovely memory to be pulled out years later for comfort. But it's been snowing, snowing like the Canadian winters of my childhood, with slightly blustering winds and the scrape of shovels clearing sidewalks and a collectively half-pleased/half-despairing Torontonian population nodding greetings to one another.

And with this cold weather, I find myself craving simple, starchy food to warm my insides. Wanting something a bit more substantial than Cheese Thingees, I decided upon a mushroom risotto I saw here, with a hit of lemon and Parmesan. With a dear friend coming over for dinner, I set to work as soon as I got home from work. The dog was not pleased that I'd had to forgo her walk; she made this patently clear by positioning herself in front of the fridge and making Sad Eyes at me. The cat insisted on following me everywhere and rubbing up against my legs. After repeated contact of human foot and beast tail, both were politely asked to leave the kitchen.

I'd never made risotto before, and it was a lot simpler than I thought. It just needed a bit of babysitting and continuous stirring; I'm still coming to terms with the fact that I can't leave anything unattended for even a second on my unevenly heated stove. To round out the meal, my friend put together a gorgeous salad with berries and nuts and blue cheese, and we ate mini cheesecakes I'd made the night before. We talked and laughed and got really, really full and it occured to me that nostalgia is a lovely place to visit once in a while. But the present, ripe with homecooked food, family and friends and an Almost Marriage, can be a pretty sweet place to live.

Here is the recipe for the risotto. Having followed it to the letter, which is very painful for me to do, I would make some changes the next time around. I found the amount of lemon zest called for was undetectable; I would increase the amount to the zest of half a lemon. Or if your palette needs to be hit on the head with a hammer, like mine does, the zest of a whole lemon. And a squeeze of lemon juice added just before serving. Zing! I would also increase the amount of wine from 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup. I love cooking with wine, and found I could barely taste it in the end result. Lastly, I skipped the parsley because I don't like it, and used thyme instead, which I loved!

*Lemon Mushroom Risotto, Gourmet Magazine, via Eat Live Travel Write:

2 2/3 cups boiling-hot water
1/2 oz dried porcini mushrooms
3 cups chicken broth
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
1/2 lb small cremini mushrooms, quartered 1 small onion, finely chopped
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons Arborio rice (8 oz)
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 teaspoon finely grated fresh lemon zest
1/4 cup finely grated parmesan
2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

1. Pour 2/3 cup hot water over porcini in a heatproof cup and let stand until softened, about 10 minutes. Lift porcini out of water, squeezing excess liquid back into cup, and rinse well to remove any grit. Coarsely chop porcini. Pour soaking liquid through a paper-towel-lined sieve into a glass measure and reserve.

2. Meanwhile, bring broth and remaining 2 cups hot water to a simmer. Keep at a bare simmer, covered.

3. Heat 1 tablespoon butter in a heavy skillet over moderately high heat until foam subsides, then sauté cremini, stirring, until browned, about 7 minutes. Add porcini and reserved soaking liquid to skillet and boil, stirring, 1 minute. Remove from heat.

4. Cook onion in 1 1/2 tablespoons butter in a 3-quart heavy saucepan over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, 3 to 4 minutes. Add rice and cook, stirring constantly, 1 minute. Add wine and simmer, stirring constantly, until absorbed.

5. Stir in 1/2 cup simmering broth mixture and cook at a strong simmer, stirring frequently, until broth is absorbed. Continue simmering and adding broth 1/2 cup at a time, stirring frequently and letting each addition become absorbed before adding the next, until rice is tender but still al dente and creamy (it should be the consistency of a thick soup), 18 minutes. (There will be leftover broth.)

6. Stir in zest, mushrooms, remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons butter, parmesan, parsley, and pepper to taste. (If necessary, thin risotto with some of remaining broth.) Serve immediately.

*Instructions come directly from Eat Live Travel Write's post. I take no credit for it!

Labour Of Love

Oh hello. Did I blind you? Have you recovered from the ugliness of this picture of my dinner the other night? I know. It's a bit of a leap, asking you to consider making this based on your first impression, which is undoubtedly a little...unfavourable?

Would it help if I told you it was really, really good? If I used adjectives like 'earthy' and 'fragrant' and 'flavourful', would that persuade you a little? It's all good stuff in there. It's just that I wasn't able to capture the inner beauty of this meal in a photograph.

My landlord lives downstairs from us; he loves to cook. I come home from work everyday and the smells wafting from his door entice and inspire me and make my mouth water as I try to deduce what he's making. He and I have discussed the art of cooking on several occasions, and the one thing he said that has really stuck with me is that if you're preparing a meal, you must feel good about it and do it with love. My first response to that was an internal eye-roll; cook with love? What? How do you even quantify that? How much love is enough? Will the love tell me when the meat is ready? Will the love tell me whether the soup needs more cumin?

But when I thought about it a bit longer, my skepticism faded and I recognized the value of his advice. Often, when I set to cooking, it's at the end of a long day. I'm rushed, I'm hungry, I feel like the day is getting away from me. Consequently, I don't enjoy the chopping and dicing and seasoning and sauteing as much as I could. All the motions are there, but where's the love? Where's that feeling that I'm involved in something really cool? Maybe if I just slowed down and really opened myself to the experience, my food might turn out better and wouldn't have that slight aftertaste of 'frantic'.

So the other night, I set to doing just that; allowing the love to join me in the kitchen. I had a bunch of mushrooms that were on their way to the compost in another day or so, and I decided to throw a few things together that I knew I liked; canned diced tomatoes, onions, garlic; a simple sort of tomato sauce that I wanted to bake some white fish in. I poured a glass of wine, turned on some classical music and took a deep breath. I forgot about the long day I'd had and completely surrendered myself to the magic of food. As my ingredients came together and bubbled in the pot, I felt it; that love my landlord had been talking about. It wasn't some mystical element that told me what to put in the dish. It was the thing that put me in the moment, that engaged me with tastes, smells and ideas and made me trust what I was doing.

So here, without further ado, is the ugliest, tastiest thing I've made in a long time. I made the sauce the day before, but you could certainly make this all in one day. It would be much quicker to use fresh fish, but all I had was frozen which increased the baking time a lot!

Simple Tomato Sauce With White Fish:

1 tbsp butter
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 red onion, chopped
1 big clove of garlic, finely diced
1 package of white mushrooms, chopped
1/2 cup red wine
1 28 oz can of diced tomatoes (mine were lightly seasoned with oregano and basil; you could add some if you like)
salt and pepper to taste
1 large frozen or 2 fresh fillets of cod, haddock, sole or monkfish

1. Preheat oven to 350° F

2. In a large pot, heat up the butter and olive oil over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and garlic and cook till onions are soft and translucent, about 7-10 minutes.

3. Add in the mushrooms and red wine and allow to come to a boil. Cook for about 5-10 minutes, or till really fragrant and some of the wine has been cooked off.

4.Turning the heat down a little, add the tomatoes and simmer for about 30-40 minutes; the sauce should thicken a bit as some of the liquid boils off.

5. Put a layer of the sauce in a baking pan/oven-safe pot/dutch oven and then add the fish. Put the remaining sauce on top of the fillets and cover.

6. As I'd mentioned, I used frozen fish, which took about 45-50 minutes to bake. Next time, I'll use fresh fish, which, by my estimation, should take about 20 minutes; make sure to check on it and when the fish flakes easily with a fork, it should be cooked through.