Farro Soup and Sadness

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Turns out that contrary to what you might expect, listening to sad songs when you’re feeling blue can actually make you feel better. You would think that bopping along to Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off would give you a lift, but actually, listening to Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide turns out to be more beneficial.

A recent German study has revealed that listening to sad songs can improve a person’s emotional well being as well as make you feel at peace and nostalgic. Liila Taruffi, one of the authors of the study was interviewed on todayhealth.com. She summarized the findings, explaining that essentially there are four benefits to be reaped through listening to sad songs.

1. Sad songs allow you to feel sadness without any of its “real-life implications.” In other words, you can safely explore what it’s like to be a little blue without experiencing the intense grief of mourning a loved one, for example.

2. “Emotion regulation” was another important reward. Many respondents said that when they were in a bad mood, experiencing sadness through music made them feel better afterwards and provided an emotional boost. That may be because the songs help them to express and release their emotions.

3. The reward of “imagination” allowed listeners to feel as though they could express themselves as richly as the mournful music.

4. The “empathy” reward made the listener feel good by allowing him to share the sadness of another human being through the song.

Reading the results of this study, I couldn’t help come to the conclusion that there may very well be a culinary equivalent to sad songs. Sure, playing Pharrell William’s Happy at an ear splitting volume while downing a pint of Salted Caramel Ice Cream will make me feel better in the short run, but tomorrow I will regret my decision to finish the whole tub. Seems like a better choice would have been a bowl of soup. Soup has the ability to soothe and comfort. It warms your soul.

This hearty Farro Soup is based on a traditional soup (Minestra di Faro Lucchese), which hails from the walled town of Lucca, in Tuscany. My version of it is slightly adapted from Mario Batali’s interpretation.I usually buy large wedges of Parmesan cheese for grating. When the cheese is done, and all that’s left is the rind, I toss it into a ziploc bag in the freezer. I toss the frozen rinds into a pot of soup. The umami properties of Parmesan cheese add a real depth of flavour to the broth.

A good cry while listening to Carly Simon’s “Haven’t Got Time For The Pain“, and a big bowl of this soup may just get you through your latest round of heartbreak or grief. Not quite the same as a hug from your mom, but close.

Click here to print recipe for Farro Soup.

Roasted Squash with Smoked Paprika, Maple Syrup and Sage Salt

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While home for a visit last weekend, my daughter observed the mess on our dining room table and expressed the opinion that perhaps I may have developed a bit of a hoarding problem. “Don’t you think you’ve acumulated enough food photography props mom?” she asked.Clearly she doesn’t understand. Those are all spring/summer props. Now I need to start acquiring appropriate fall/winter props. While some parents turn their kid’s vacated bedrooms into gift wrapping quarters or perhaps an extra closet to store off season clothing, it is entirely possible that her bedroom may be converted into my props closet, if I continue collecting at my current rate.

Of course it doesn’t help when my sister sends me these charming bowls. They were intended as nut bowls, but they are just perfect as mise en place bowls for a photo shoot! I let out a squealed with joy when I opened my gift. I have an extreme fondness for bowls! The colour combination of these little vessels is just gorgeous. She found them in Toronto at The Cookery Store. I have since discovered you can also get them online at Fishs Eddy.

I had a glut of winter squash after a recent photo shoot, and I needed to use them up before they went bad. My go-to ingredient for roasting vegetables is smoked paprika. It just makes everything taste better. The inspiration for this roasted squash hails from Melissa Clark’s book, Cook This Now. She mixed smoked paprika with olive oil and honey and smeared it all over squash before roasting. I swapped out the honey for some maple syrup, because that’s just the way we Canadians roll!

Melissa suggests finishing the roasted squash with a sprinkling of homemade sage salt. So simple to make; just bake some fresh sage leaves for about 10 minutes, until crispy. Then crumble them between your fingers with some coarse sea salt. Earthy, and slightly bitter, sage makes a perfect partener for sweet squash. A final sprinkling of toasted pumpkin seeds adds a welcome crunch.

Click here to print recipe for Roasted Squash with Maple Syrup, Smoked Paprika and Sage Salt.

Pear Parsnip Pistachio Soup

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Pear Parsnip Pistachio Soup. Say that 3 times fast! If you or your progeny are of a certain vintage, the title of this soup may bring back memories of a certain Sesame Street Fairy Tale called The King Banishes the Letter P, featuring King Peter The Persnickety.

I just adore the shape and all the gorgeous colour variations of fall pears. However, for eating out of hand, pears just don’t set my pulse racing like a crisp Sweetango apple. But when cooked, the flesh of pears becomes silky and velvety. That’s what I wanted to capture in this soup.I decided to combine the pears with parsnips. The earthy tangy quality of the parsnips would provide the perfect balance for the sweetness of the pears. Looking for inspiration, I stumbled across a recipe for a Pear Parsnip soup with a very odd list of disparate ingredients that included wine, milk, pistachios and a chile pepper. But then I saw that the recipe was from Stephanie Izard’s (Top Chef winner Season 4) cookbook, Girl in the Kitchen. Long a fan of Stephanie’s big bold flavours, I knew I had to try this soup.

I baked some pear chips to accompany the soup, because I like a little crunch with a pureed soup. They couldn’t be simpler to make. Slice firm pears very thinly on a mandolin. Or, if your knife skills are excellent and you can slice very thinly and evenly with a sharp knife, go for it! No need to peel or core the pears. Lay them flat, in a single layer (do not overlap) on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake at 200°F for 45 minutes. Turn the pears over and bake for another 30-45 minutes until they are curled up at the edges and golden brown. They will still be a bit pliable at this point but will harden upon cooling. The pear chips will keep for a week, in an airtight container. You could sprinkle a bit of salt or cinnamon on them before baking, but I just left mine plain. They make such a pretty garnish for the soup. Sometimes pureed root vegetable soups can taste a little bit flat, and you aren’t really sure what vegetables you’re tasting. I wanted both the pears and the parsnip flavours to shine through. This soup delivered in spades. The chile flakes quietly announce themselves with a gentle heat that does not smack you over the head. The wine provides much needed acidity and the milk contributes a mellow gentle background note. Salty pistachios add texture and a wonderful counterpoint to the sweet pears.

Click here to print recipe for Pear Parsnip and Pistachio Soup.

Safari Cookies and Chanelling Your Inner Artist

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When my kids were little, they used to imagine that while they were away at school all day, I lay in bed reading magazines and scarfing down bon bons. Haha! Nothing could be further from the truth. I wasn’t eating bon bons in the bedroom. I was eating cookies in the kitchen. Actually to be more accurate, I was eating my iced cookie mistakes.

Truthfully, I don’t really like eating iced cookies. I find them too sweet, but I just love creating them. They are just so freaking adorable to look at. I’m not a very good artist when it comes to the traditional medium of pencil or paint. But put a piping bag in my hand with a #2 tip and my inner Jackson Pollock is unleashed.

I made these safari animal cookies to take to a friend’s dinner party. We are planning a South African safari trip for the spring and she thought it would be fun to get the group together to kickstart our planning. I volunteered to bring a dessert.

I ordered the cookie cutters from coppergifts.com. With over 2000 cookie cutters to choose from, it really is the ultimate cookie decorators site. They ship quickly and offer inspirational decorating ideas for every cookie cutter they sell.

I baked Thick and Chewy Gingerbread Cookies as well as a batch of Sugar Cookies with Brown Sugar. Then I mixed up a batch of Royal Icing .The super talented Suzanne of suzsdaily.com, provides a very thorough tutorial on how to create these precious baby elephants.

To create the lions manes and tail, I mixed yellow, orange and brown sprinkles. I took a free style approach with the zebras, and to be honest, I think they look more like horses.The giraffes were the most difficult to create. Once again, I used Suzanne’s step by step tutorial. The background colour of the giraffes was crafted by mixing Americolor’s warm brown and ivory into the royal icing. The colour of the spots was made by mixing icing with tulip red and warm brown. These cookies just make everyone smile!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

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Peanut Butter Cups and I have a bit of a love-hate relationship. I love to eat them, but sadly my hips and thighs protest quite loudly when I inhale too many. My hatred of Halloween likely stems from what I refer to the “Peanut Butter Cup Incident of 1985.” It was my first time giving out treats as an official grown up. I bought several large bags of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in the snack size a week before Halloween. They disappeared within 2 days. I purchased several more replacement bags and discovered that I suffer from a chromosomal abnormality that affects my ability to control my willpower.

Luckily, now that “Big Butts” are back in style, we can all eat Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups with abandon!

These chocolate peanut butter cups are a variation on the original. When I saw Anna Olson make them on her Food Network show, Sugar, I knew I had to try them. The cups themselves are crafted from chocolate cookie dough. Once baked these cookie cups become a crunchy vehicle to hold the chocolate ganache filling and the peanut butter and cream cheese mousse topping. These are a very decadent, sophisticated peanut butter cup.

Click here to print recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups.

Winter Squash and Arugula Salad

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Big sisters have a very important job to do in this world. It is their mission to pave the way for their little sisters, teaching them the ropes and ensuring that they do not stumble through life’s little land mines along the way. My big sister taught me where babies come from, (I didn’t believe her!), how to shave my legs, and, with instructions whispered through a locked bathroom door, how to use tampons. She taught me how to hide cigarettes from our mom as well as how to sneak out of the house, late at night, when boys came calling, by throwing pebbles at our basement bedroom window. Sadly, I never had to use that last one. I was a late bloomer and the boys only came for her!

Now that we’re all grown up, she is still passing on lots of valuable lessons. She works for the popular blog, “Yummy Mummy” and is quite knowledgeable about the business side of running a blog. She is always going on about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and how important it is for my blog. SEO is the practice of improving and promoting a web site in order to increase the number of visitors the site receives from search engines.

She explained that the title of your blog posts is of utmost importance. Beginning the post title with a number assists in making the post’s content more actionable. It also reassures those readers, whose attention span matches that of a gnat, that they can scan through your list post quickly if needed. My sister also emphasized the need to use exciting adjectives that promise audacious results.

As I was writing this post, I thought about some of her tips and tried to put them into action. “Seven mind blowing ways to roast winter squash.” Or, “Four essential steps to cutting squash without hacking off your finger.” (On that note, check out this very helpful video on cutting winter squash) Somehow, they just seemed too sensationalist, and not really very “me.” However, I do promise you a delicious squash salad, that while perhaps not exactly mind blowing, will make dinner time at your house a very happy place to be.I was inspired to make something with winter squash after a visit to my neighbourhood Farm Boy store. If you don’t have Farm Boy in your city, I am just a little bit sad for you. Entering the store you are heartily greeted by a life-size animatronic singing Farm Boy and his dog Barndoor Buddy. (Not sure if it’s just me, but some days it feels like he’s mocking me!) Perched in the produce section, resides a mischievous monkey who performs endless backflips over the banana display. Rounding the corner into the dairy section, you will encounter Lulu the cow who moos every time you open the dairy case to get milk and Rusty, a crowing rooster, standing guard over the eggs. My kids and I spent a lot of time there when they were little. It was the lazy mom’s version of taking your kids to the petting zoo. And, it had the added bonus of not stinking like a zoo.

The produce bins were overflowing with a myriad of winter squash. Unable to decide what to get, I excitedly filled my cart with about 35 pounds of assorted varieties. As the cashier was ringing me through, her curiosity got the best of her. She just had to know what I was going to do with all these squash. When I told her I was going to take their picture she looked at me like I was a bit crazy. And yes, perhaps you might agree, when I confess that I spent the better part of a very happy afternoon, arranging squash.

Click here to print recipe for Winter Squash and Arugula Salad.

Celery, Green Olive and Plumcot Salad

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If you are anything at all like me, then there’s a pretty good chance that even though there’s not much to eat in your home, and you are in desperate need of a trip to the grocery store, there are always some olives and a few stalks of celery, albeit, a little limp and bendy, in your fridge. So you would be forgiven if the title of this post has you believing that this is one of those, “Clean out the Fridge” deals.

That is precisely what my husband thought when he discovered this salad on our dinner table last night. Au contraire, my dear husband. Although this salad does contain said limp celery and the dregs of the olive container, it is actually one of the most delicious flavour combinations I have come across in quite a while. Thanks to Chef Bonnie Reichert, for this inspired combo.

Instead of using plums in this salad, as in Bonnie’s original recipe, I substituted my fruit crush of the month, Plumcots. Can we just talk about plumcots for a minute please? A super sweet cross between a plum and an apricot, plumcots (sometimes called pluots) are consistently delicious. The sweet apricot cancels out any hints of sourness from the traditional plum. Plumcots are available June through late-October and each variety is only available for a few weeks. Seek them out. You will thank me later!Sweet juicy plumcots and fat salty green olives make such excellent playmates in the bowl. The crunch from the celery stalks add a very welcome crispness to this salad. The tender celery leaves, from the heart of the celery, which most people sadly discard, are chopped up and added to the salad and provide a lively hit of pale green freshness.A simple vinaigrette, boosted by a dash of grainy mustard and dollop of sweet honey, make all the flavours of this salad start to hum. Toasted sliced almonds, scattered over top make this salad literally sing. Cleaning out your fridge has never been this delicious.

Click here to print recipe for Celery, Olive and Plumcot Salad.

Roasted Tomato and Carrot Soup with Cheddar Crisps

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I may get drummed out of the core for saying this, but even though the Farmer’s Markets are still full of beautiful ripe tomatoes, I find myself shunning fresh sliced tomatoes with a hefty pinch of malden sea salt and a chiffonade of basil. With October just around the corner, I am yearning to roast something.Red ripe plum tomatoes are halved and combined with some sweet carrots, aromatic garlic, onions, thyme and rosemary. Salt, and a healthy pinch of red pepper flakes woke everything up. I wanted a grown up tomato soup. Tossed with some olive oil until glistening, the veggies are roasted in a hot oven for 45 minutes.

I pureed it all in the blender and added some water to thin it out. I decided against using chicken stock as I really wanted the taste of the vegetables to shine through. A tiny bit of 35% cream stirred in just before serving really brings all the flavours together.

I decided to serve the soup with some cheddar crisps. This is what I imagine the childhood classic of tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich would grow up to become!

If you have never made cheese crisps before, you need to try them. They can be made with almost any firm grating cheese (Cheddar, Parmesan, Gruyere, Manchego, Asiago). They are delicious with a glass of wine, served on the side with a salad or even slipped onto a burger for some crunch. Beautiful to look at, salty and crunchy, they are the perfect counterpoint for this velvety soup. The crisps are quite simple to make. They can be flavoured with almost anything you like. I decided on fresh thyme leaves, a pinch of cayenne and some black pepper. The trick is to spread the cheese out into flat circles so that they are lacy when baked. They will be a bit soft when you remove them from the oven, but they will harden upon cooling.

Click here to print recipe for Roasted Tomato and Carrot Soup with Cheddar Crisps.

Baked Apple Spice Donuts with Maple Brown Butter Glaze

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Sometimes, when I’m in the shower, belting out “My Man” from Funny Girl, there’s a little voice inside my head that tells me I could be Barbra’s vocal doppelgänger. But then the steam in the bathroom clears and I realize that, no, I can’t sing like Barbra Streisand. But that’s ok, because you know what I can do? I can bake donuts.

Yes, I said bake donuts, not fry. Who even knew such a thing was possible? Well, as it turns out, lots of people, particularly two of my favourite bloggers, Joy over at joythe baker, created Apple Cinnamon Baked Donuts with Brown Butter Glaze and Naomi over at bakersroyale crafted Baked Apple Donuts with Caramel Drizzle.

Before I knew it, that bossy little voice in my head, ordered me to go online and get these baked donut pans from Amazon. Never mind that I had recently declared a moratorium on online shopping after my girlfriend Paula whispered to me that she was going cold turkey, especially with shoes. She sensibly pointed out “We only have two feet you know. How many pairs could we possibly wear?” The little voice in my head agreed with her and said, “Yeah, no more online shopping for me anymore either.” However, in my defense, I will say that these pans are way cheaper than my current shoe crush.

The big question was, should I make the yeast style donuts that Naomi crafted or the cake style ones that Joy featured? The Cake vs. Yeast Donut debate can get almost as heated as the New York vs. Montreal Style Bagel debate. Apparently, people are very passionate about their foods with holes in the middle.

Yeast style donuts rely on yeast to do the leavening work. They have a more open crumb structure and a chewier texture. Cake donuts, on the other hand, rely on baking powder and/or baking soda to do the heavy lifting. They result in a donut with a tighter crumb structure, and are denser and more crumbly than yeast donuts. Unable to decide which ones to try, I ended up making both. That way you don’t have to. You’re welcome!

Truthfully, I have no business making any variety of donut this week as there are more pressing matters at hand. Instead of baking donuts, I should be reading Chapter 12 in my Canadian Securities textbook, clearing all the food photography props off my dining room table so I can set it for the Rosh Hashanah lunch I am hosting later this week for 21 people, and watching the season premiere of Big Bang Theory. The cake donut batter is quite loose and can be piped. The yeast donut batter needs to be formed by hand. They are really fun to make.Both varieties were delicious. My friends at yoga inhaled (deeply!) the cake variety and the staff at my hair salon quickly gobbled up the yeast ones. My personal preference was for the yeast donuts. I really liked the chewy heft of the dough. The yeast ones do take longer to make, but it is not hands on time, just dough resting time.

I adapted Naomi’s recipe by adding cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg to the dough and instead of topping them with a caramel drizzle, I crowned them with a Maple Brown Butter Glaze. You can either chop or grate the apples. If you chop them, you end up with little bits of apple poking out from the dough and they look quite rustic. I love it when my baking looks like it didn’t come out of a factory, but rather was made with love in my kitchen. If you prefer a tidier donut, grate the apples so they remain inside the dough.

The topping for the donuts can be made quite thick, so it needs to be spooned on or spread, or thin so you can dip them like a glaze. The main difference is the amount of liquid, in this case, maple syrup, that you add. The other liquid ingredient in the glaze is brown butter. This is a small extra step that makes a huge difference in flavour. If you have never made brown butter, give it a try. It is as simple as melting butter over medium heat until it browns. The nutty aroma and taste will astound you and you will soon be browning butter for everything. One of my favourite restaurants here in Ottawa makes brown butter and then lets it solidify, whips it and serves it with their house made bread. Genius! I don’t want to say goodbye to the summer, but Baked Apple Spice Donuts make saying hello to fall very sweet indeed.

Click here to print recipe for Baked Apple Spice Donuts with Maple Brown Butter Glaze.

Apple, Honey and Almond Tartine for Rosh Hashanah

Salt and Serenity

Tales from my kitchen