Fish with Leeks and Tomatoes

We're still traveling, and won't be home for a couple of weeks. Here's a recipe from the archives to keep you busy and happy till we get back. Bon Appetit!

Growing up in an Irish Catholic family meant that we ate fish on friday. Every friday, without fail. 

Actually, as Catholics, we weren’t obliged to eat fish. We just couldn’t eat meat. At our house, though, 'no meat' meant fish. So we ate fish every Friday. We didn’t live especially close to the sea (Atlanta), and the selection of fresh fish at that time wasn’t great. We were also a large family (Irish Catholic, remember?). All of this meant that we ate a lot of the dreaded Tuna Noodle Casserole. With potato chips on top. No peas. We also ate a lot of salmon patties made from canned salmon. I still like these. I haven’t made them in a long time, though. Hmmm....

Mayo Clinic

Let's face it: no matter how much we love our favorite ones, sometimes we feel the need to spice things up. I get bored with the same old thing. Come on, admit it—you do too. I mean, we've all tried to make it more exciting, haven't we? A little spice helps a lot, I think. I've been playing around lately, going farther than ever before, and I think I've found some tricks. So if you're tired of plain old mayonnaise, why not send your mayonnaise to the Mayo Clinic for a little lift?

New Year's Traditions: Hoppin John

I have a confession to make. I really don’t like New Year’s. To me, it’s an artificial thing. Don’t get me  wrong, I love the IDEA of it--a new start, wipe the slate clean and begin anew. What’s better than that?

The problem is that we seem to take all our problems, resentments, wounds into the new year. We can’t seem to leave them behind. We try to feel as if it’s a brand new year, but if we’re honest with ourselves, nothing is different, is it? At midnight we say HAPPY NEW YEAR! and we pop corks and throw confetti and set off fireworks and we try to feel as if something is different, something is new. But it really isn’t. At least for me.

Katrin's Summer Beans

No, I haven't disappeared. I've not been cooking much, since I've been on this diet. Roast chicken, grilled steak, fish with leeks and tomatoes. You've either seen these recipes or you don't need them. So I haven't been posting. MISTAKE! Because we've been travelling....

The Reckoning (recipe: Fish Terrine)

In restaurants in Germany, when you finish your meal you don't ask for the bill. You ask for 'die rechnung'. It's what tells you how much you have to pay for your excesses at the table. As you may have guessed, this word is the root of our English word 'reckoning'. Which also has to do with paying for your excesses.

CARDAMOM LIME TEA CAKE

I have been trying to figure out how to bake with gluten-free flours. I have quite a collection: brown rice, white rice, corn (fine and coarse), buckwheat, almond, oat. But wait, there's more! Teff, millet, quinoa, chestnut, chickpea, coconut. I keep thinking that I have to 'know' each one before I know how to combine them. I've been a little discouraged, to be honest.

As I read more and more about gluten- and wheat- free baking, I see similar recipes with different flours and I don't understand why they used one as opposed to another. I don't like it when I don't understand...

Rabbit and Merguez Tagine

I have two tagines, those lovely Moroccan cooking dishes. The big one is a traditional cone-shaped one, made from glazed terra cotta. I bought it from a Moroccan shop in our town not long after we moved here. I fell in love with it when I first saw it--it’s old, a little wonky, a little chipped. It wasn’t new when I bought it. The shop owner tried to talk me out of that particular one, pointing out that there were new, colorful ones available. I can only use it for serving, not for cooking. It’s too big for my oven, and I can’t use it on the stovetop because the bottom’s not exactly flat. But I love it.

Lemon Curd

What's in a name? I mean, Shakespeare said it, didn't he? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. This is the kind of statement that makes me want to push the concept. I mean, what if we take a lovely rose and call it a booger. Will we want to stick our noses in it and breathe deeply? I'm not so sure.

Take lemon curd. I mean, let's face it: curd is not a pretty word. It brings up images of Miss Muffet and spiders. Altogether too icky a name for this lovely stuff. It's like somebody boogered my rose. I think we should call it something else. What, though? Lemon roses? Lemon velvet? No, that sounds like chewing tobacco. Lemon sauce? Too liquid. Lemon jam? Close, but how to distinguish it from marmalade?

Oven Roasted Ribs

Someone recently remarked that we must only eat desserts at our house, judging by my blog. It’s not really true that we only eat desserts. It’s just that they’re so pretty! Really, don’t you think so? They’re like the cheerleaders of the table, jumping up and shouting “me! me! look at me!” “take MY picture!” Ahem. Maybe they don’t really do that--maybe it’s just me.

Crème Fraiche Verrines

I've written before about some of my language adventures at the supermarket in our town. I told you about the preservatives and the cuisses de canard. But I haven't yet told you about the incident of the crème fraiche. When we first moved here, I went to the supermarket one day looking for whipping cream. All I could find was crème fraiche. Everywhere I looked—crème fraiche. I didn't want thickened, cultured cream, I wanted whipping cream. And there was none to be seen. 

Lemon Polenta Cake

Cooking without wheat is presenting me some challenges, some of which are difficult, and some of which are very enjoyable. One of the benefits of this way of eating (I don't like to use the word 'diet', because that makes me want to break it!) is that I get to explore other grains. I find foods that I wouldn't have found otherwise.

Bagna Cauda and a Winner!

Bagna Cauda means 'hot bath' in Italian. Why are we talking about hot baths? Because we have about 6 inches of snow on the ground here and a hot bath sounds pretty nice right now? Nah, it's because this specialty of Torino is the perfect thing for a cold snowy day.

If you're thinking apres-ski, you're in the right ball park. If you're like me, though, you're probably just thinking instead-of-ski. Heh, I went skiing once. It took me about 5 minutes to tear up my knee. That was my ski career. Whenever I see those amazing athletes barreling downhill, I head to the apres-ski zone toute de suite. Just watching them makes my knee hurt!

Oat Shortbread Cookies and Vitamin O

Many years ago, when I was in Grad school, some friends and I began to think seriously about nutrition. Grad students on the whole aren’t known for their interest in nutrition, but we discovered a vitamin that’s not very well known: vitamin O. Vitamin O deficiencies are pretty common, and can have serious affects on your social life. Your body can’t store it, and so you need some every day. Jogging or other strenuous exercise completely strips your body of it, as do exams. Vitamin O is very important for mental health. And we WERE studying Psychology, after all!

Oven Braised Pork and Winter Vegetables

The weather here has been very wintery—it's put the BRR in NovemBRR! Rain, cold, fog. Perfect weather to hunker down and stay home with something warm and hearty for dinner. Me, I also want something easy. Something that I can stick in the oven and not think about. This is the perfect thing! 

Spiced Nuts

One of the lovely customs here in Belgium is that whenever you're invited to someone's house for dinner, you take a gift. Nobody ever shows up empty-handed. This gift can be flowers, a plant, a bottle of wine, or something else that you know the host/hostess will like. Often it's chocolate.

When we go to someone's house, we normally bring chocolates. This past weekend, however, we were invited for dinner and we couldn't take chocolates--we were going to the home of our chocolatier! He certainly had enough of his own chocolates to satisfy him, and taking chocolates from a rival wouldn't have been very nice. So...what?

What's better than something from the kitchen? Pillsbury's jingle aside, there is (for me) something special about a gift from the kitchen. No, not wooden spoons...

Spicy Cheesy Lamburgers

My friend Françoise is the source of many good things for us. She's brought us friendship, good advice, English novels, the odd vocabulary lesson, and lots of good food tips. Recently, she shared with us some cheese that a friend had brought her from Turkey. We don't know the name of the cheese, but it was a hard, crumbly, salty cheese—sort of like Feta but with a more buttery flavor. At my house we just called it Turkish Cheese.

At the same time that we received this wonderful cheese, I found some lovely ground lamb. I wanted to make some lamb-burgers, and I was thinking of the wonderful spices in some of the Moroccan dishes we can find here. I wanted something a little hot, a little exotic. This buttery, salty cheese fit right in with what I had in mind.

Mirabelle Crumble

One of the joys of late summer here is the fruit. I love the peaches, nectarines, raspberries and of course the blackberries. One fruit I didn't appreciate till we moved here are plums. There are so many types: Red ones, purple ones with yellow flesh, the green Reine Claudes, and the tiny yellow Mirabelles. 

I love it that fruit and vegetables here have proper names. I used to just buy plums. What kind? Uh, purple ones. Here, we call them by their names. Reine Claude in French means Queen Claude. Don't ask me why you'd name a Queen Claude, but I guess someone did. In any case, she turned out to be agreeable enough that they named a lovely little green plum after her. I like the name Mirabelle better, I think. Not so royal but veryvery pretty. Like the plums themselves, tiny bundles of sunshine. 

Play With Your Food!

I don't think it's a secret that I like to play with my food. When I have the time and energy, I love to take something ordinary and make it special. A little fancy. Maybe even fancy pants. Like these sandwiches.

Cheese Muffins, Bag Ladies and a new Cook Book

I've done it again—that bag lady thing. I am having a hard time writing at the moment, and I think that if I write something that's less than purr----fect (like I've never done that) you'll stop reading my blog, nobody will want to have anything to do with me, Dan won't love me any more, and I'll end up living on the streets with all my possessions in a grocery cart. I'll be a bag lady.

Old Friends and a New Recipe (Lemon Cake)

Last weekend Dan and I went to the Belgian coast to spend some time with some old friends. We have known George and Jacqueline since before we moved to Belgium. In fact Dan has known George for most of his life—they were in high school together in California. Being trained by the Jesuits tends to make lifelong bonds, I think.