Dark Days Challenge: Leek with Montaña Cheese Panade

There is something very comforting about panade on a dank, rainy west coast winter evening. Paired with a blanket, some sherry or wine, and a good movie, one's bones finally have some hope to warm up. After the excesses of the holiday season, panade is a great way to use up old bread and have a dinner that won't leave you feeling like a small anvil has taken up residence in your belly. Panade is a French term that means 'bread mash'. This particular panade recipe is a great way to showcase local Vancouver Island leeks, garlic, SaltSpring Montaña (hard sheep's cheese), and lovely locally made bread for the Dark Days Challenge.

This panade is easy to make and works as a main course for four, or a side dish for eight people. 

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds thinly sliced yellow onions
Up to 1/2 cup mild-tasting olive oil
6 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
Salt
1 pound leeks (upper third of green leaves removed), cleaned and cut into 1-inch-wide ribbons
10 ounces day-old chewy rice bread cut into rough 1-inch cubes
Up to 4 cups chicken stock
6 ounces Montaña (a hard sheep cheese or Gruyere will do), coarsely grated

1. Place the onions in a deep  4-quart saucepan and drizzle and toss with oil to coat, about 1/4 cup.  Set over medium-high heat and cook  until the bottom layer of onions is slightly golden around the edges,  about 3 minutes. Stir and repeat.

2. Once the second layer of  onions has colored, reduce the heat to low and stir in the garlic and a  few pinches of salt. Stew, stirring occasionally, until the onions are a  pale amber color and tender but not mushy, another 20 minutes or so. If  at any point the onions look as if they may dry out, cover them to trap  some of the moisture in the pan. Taste for salt. You should get about  2 1/4 cups cooked onions.

3. Preheat the oven to 325  degrees (or as low as 250 degrees, if it suits your schedule to stretch  the cooking time from about 1 hour 45 minutes to 2 hours 45 minutes; the  slower the bake, the more unctuous and mellow the results).

4. Place a few handfuls of leeks in a 3-quart saute pan or a  10-to 12-inch skillet with a drizzle of oil, a sprinkling of water (see David Leibovitz's instructions for washing leeks properly), and a  few pinches of salt. Let the water start steaming, and stir the leeks about. They should be translucent. Test for salt and correct as necessary. Set aside.

5. Toss and massage the cubed  bread with a few tablespoons of olive oil, a generous 1/4 cup of the  stock and a few pinches of salt, to taste.

6. Choose a flameproof, 3-quart  souffle dish or enameled cast-iron Dutch oven. Assemble the panade in  layers, starting with a generous smear of onions, followed by a loose  mosaic of bread cubes, a second layer of onions, a shimmering layer of leeks, and a handful of the cheese. Repeat, starting with bread,  the onions and so on, until the dish is brimming. Aim for 2 to 3 layers  of each component, then make sure the top layer displays a little of  everything. Irregularity in the layers makes the final product more  interesting and lovely. Drizzle with any remaining olive oil.

7. Bring the remaining 3 3/4  cups stock to a simmer and taste for salt. Add stock slowly, in doses,  around the edge of the dish. For a very juicy, soft panade, best served  on its own, like a soup or risotto, add stock nearly to the rim; for a  firm but succulent panade, nice as a side dish, fill to about 1 inch  below the rim. Wait a minute for stock to be absorbed, then add more to  return to the desired depth. The panade may rise a little as the bread  swells.

8. Set panade over low heat and  bring to a simmer; look for bubbles around the edges (heating it here  saves at least 30 minutes of oven time; it also means every panade you  bake starts at the same temperature, so you can better predict total  cooking times). Cover the top of the panade  with parchment paper, then very loosely wrap the top and sides with  foil. Place a separate sheet of foil under the panade or on the rack  below it, to catch drips.

9. Bake until the panade is  piping hot and bubbly. It will rise a little, lifting the foil with it.  The top should be pale golden in the center and slightly darker on the  edges. This usually takes about 1 1/2 hours, but varies according to  shape and material of baking dish and oven. (You can hold the panade for  another hour or so; just reduce the temperature to 275 degrees until 20  minutes before serving.)

10. Uncover panade, raise  temperature to 375 degrees, and leave until golden brown on top, 10 to  20 minutes. (If you aren't quite ready when your panade is, re-tent the  surface with parchment and foil and reduce the heat to 275 degrees. You  can hold it another half hour this way without it overbrowning or drying  out.) Slide a knife down the side  of the dish and check the consistency of the panade. Beneath the crust,  it should be very satiny and it should ooze liquid as you press against  it with the blade of the knife. If it seems dry, add a few tablespoons  simmering chicken stock and bake for 10 minutes longer.

Sunday Morning Granola

One morning, after taking advantage of the morning light to photograph "the twins" - the newly-filtered cherry liqueur and the orange peel liqueur, I realized it was time to start Sunday breakfast. I abandoned my plan to continue reading my copy of Ottolenghi's brilliant cookbook, and wandered into the kitchen.

The twins posing on Ottolenghi's cookbook.

We hadn't partied or entertained the night before, so a full on breakfast of eggs, hashbrowns, bacon seemed excessive. Oatmeal seemed like the stuff for work mornings and camping weekends. It had to be granola.

I'll be honest, I'm not too crazy about sprouting mung beans or any of the other hippy things I was surrounded with when growing up on the west coast of Canada. For the longest time, I lumped granola in with the rest of the foods I associated the word "hippy" with. To my uninitiated palate, these foods seemed flavourless, perhaps even joyless.

However, granola has quickly become mainstream in the last decade, with wee but fashionable boxes of the stuff demanding high prices. I will admit that my palate and appreciation for granola evolved in step with the mainstream trend. Many boxes of commercially available granola usually have some form of wheat or gluten in it. Between the allergies, being too lazy to walk to the store, and too cheap to dole out the dollars for a tiny bit of oats mixed with dried fruit, I decided to make my own.

The results? Oh hello, tasty, flavourful granola. Quick and easy to make, it's lovely (I'm told) with some milk. 

I used this lovely honey!

Sunday Morning Granola


2 cups regular oats
1/2 cup flake or dessicated coconut
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup sunflower seeds (didn't have any, used up some trail mix)
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup honey or maple/agave syrup
1/3 cup grapeseed oil (Or use something like canola. If you try olive oil, let me know!)

1. Combine all the dry ingredients and mix well.

2. Add in the wet ingredients and mix well. Spread in an even layer that's no thicker than one inch on a well-greased cookie sheet (I used a giant tray, but you can use two smaller sheets).

Granola before I baked it.

3. Bake in 350 degree oven until golden. After about seven minutes in the oven, take the tray out out, and flip the ingredients around using a spatula. Another seven minutes, move it about again. Let it be until it looks golden.

This granola stores well in an air-tight container for up to two weeks. Some people keep it longer. Mine never lasts that long!

Granola is a free-form creative exercise. Try adding things like minced candied ginger, any sort of dried fruit, or different sorts of flaked grains or flaxseed meal. It's a great way to also use up those bits and ends of trail mix that no one seems to want to finish.

Do you have a favourite granola recipe or item to add to granola?

Argentinian Blueberry and Chocolate Slab Cake

I know many food bloggers are all about the local, the fresh and the 100 mile diet, but I thumb my nose at the environmentally friendly and sustainable practice of the 100 mile diet. And I mean it. I'm not about to give up my bourgeois tastes in a multiplicity of things that must come across the sea to get into my belly. The lovely Persian dates that Ciaran recently brought me are a scrumptious example of that.

If it came to it, I would be reasonable, buy as many gai lan and Indian eggplant seeds as possible, attempt to grow my own curry leaf tree, and adopt the 100 mile diet. For now, I will indulge in certain naughty excesses like buying Argentinian blueberries at the end of November when I'm actually on a mission to buy leeks for Parisien Leek Soup. Buying blueberries from Argentina is something of a joke on the west coast of Canada. We're massive seasonal producers of blueberries. You can buy them by the crate for practically nothing during the summer.

What does a Canadian Sri Lankan Tamil do with fresh blueberries at the tail end of fall that really feels like winter? She uses it to crown her morning bowl of oatmeal, paired with freshly grated nutmeg.

Or, she could stud a decadent chocolate slab cake with them. I found the cake on a food porn site and was so taken with the image, I felt the need to replicate but modify the cake so that I could eat it. The results were deliciousness on levels that bordered the profane.

I feel the need to include a warning or disclaimer with this cake recipe. Once you finish slathering on the icing and studding the cake with blueberries, you will find it difficult to stop even after eating two pieces of cake. We found it nearly impossible to step away from the cake. I suggest wrapping the cake and putting it in the refrigerator to halt excessive cake consumption. This cake is guaranteed to seduce any man or woman, and might even possibly save marriages.

Here's the modified recipe I adapted from Picnics by Australian Woman's Weekly.

1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup boiling water
2/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
3 eggs
1 2/3 cups rice flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
3/4 cup Balkan style yoghurt
2/3 cup fresh blueberries

Chocolate Icing:
2/3 cup dark chocolate, chopped coarsely
1 3/4 tablespoons butter
1 cup icing sugar, sifted
1 1/2 tablespoons hot water

1. Preheat oven to 350 ºF. Grease 19cm x 30cm lamington pan; line with baking paper. Be sure to cut the corners of the paper on a diagonal so that the paper sits flat in the pan. Otherwise, your cake will have rippled corners.

2. Blend cocoa with the water in small bowl. Add the water a bit at a time to prevent lumps. Cool.

3. Beat butter and sugar in small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Transfer mixture to a large bowl, stir in sifted flours and soda, and yoghurt in two batches; stir in cocoa mixture.

4. Spread mixture into pan. Bake about 30 minutes. Cool cake in pan 20 minutes before turning, top-side up, onto wire rack to cool. Don't remove the paper just yet.

5. Make chocolate icing: melt chocolate and butter in small saucepan, stirring, over low heat. Remove from heats; stir in sifted icing sugar and water until smooth.

6. Spread cold cake with icing, top with blueberries. Don't forget to take the paper off first. Cut cake into squares.

Serves 20.

Crisp Coconut Cookies

I dream of convection ovens the way some people dream of Bugatti Veyrons or Mazarati cars. The perfection realized in the way a Veyron hugs the road at high speeds is similarly attained in the perfection of baked goods that come from a convection oven. How does this occur, you might ask. If you've ever lived somewhere like Winnipeg, you understand wind chill. The genius of the convection oven lies in its use of the same physical phenomenon. It seems fitting that I should love something that harnesses the powers of a force that made me suffer for the powers of good.

My regular oven!

You may have gathered by now that I do not have a convection oven. There's a good chance you probably don't have one either. Never fear, it is still possible to bake lovely cookies in the regular sort of oven too! The secret to lovely, crumbly cookies with even edges is butter. How you handle the butter is critical to luscious cookie success.

First, make sure your butter is fresh. Like bread, butter can go stale, especially if it's exposed in your refrigerator. Butter should be about 65 degrees before you cream it with sugar. That means it's cool to the touch (and will take an imprint of your finger), but easy to spread. If it gets any warmer, you start messing with its delicate emulsion and then it's game over. The whole point of keeping butter cool is so that it can maintain structure for you.

If your butter melts, don't try re-freezing the butter and starting again. You can use this destroyed butter for frying potatoes. Lastly, keep your dough cool. Don't work it too much with your warm hands (people with permanently cold hands like mine, rejoice, for you have found a calling in forming cookies). If it seems to be warming up, put it in the freezer to cool it down. 

Crisp Coconut Cookies

125 g butter (one stick)
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg
pinch salt
2 cups rice flour
1 cup dessicated coconut
extra sugar

1.  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

2. Cream the butter in a bowl for approximately three minutes. The object of this game is to beat air bubbles into the butter. The baking powder will only work to expand these existing bubbles. If you're using an electric mixer, don't go past medium speed because otherwise, your butter will heat up.

3. Add in the sugar and beat until just combined. Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and mix.

4. Take two or three tablespoons of sugar and spread it around in a small saucer. Take a teaspoon of the dough and roll it into a ball between the palms of your hands.

5. Flatten the dough to about 1/4 inch thickness. Dip one side of the cookie into the sugar. Place cookie, sugar side up, on a greased baking tray. You can avoid the grease by using Silpat.

6. Bake for 10 - 15 minutes on the middle rack. Gently loosen the baked cookies on the tray while still warm.

This is my favourite cookies to nibble while it's still warm, accompanied with a cup of tea. Do you have a favourite cookie? Let me know what it is :)

 

(yield 40)

Recipes in Translation

On this rainy October day, gentle readers, I remain in bed even though it is well into the early afternoon hours. I decided to bring you a recipe that has a dual purpose. Though this recipe is a demonstration of the gastronomic translation that occurs in my kitchen, it is also meant to transport the reader to a Sunday morning that involves a kitchen flooded with sunlight and the scent of warm, baked goods.

Long before gluten-free products became fashionable and everyone was drinking soy, almond or rice milk, the family doctor diagnosed me as being allergic to a list of things longer than there is blog space. A proper allergic sort of person that no amount of Lactaid or whatnot would fix. In time, I grew out of most of the allergies save for the allergies to wheat and its closest family members, as well as most forms of dairy that come from a cow - the biggest offenders being milk and cheese.

My mother, being an enterprising lady, used the rice-based Tamil and Malaysian fusion cuisine to compensate for this as I grew up. She also experimented with corn and rice flour to bake delightful cookies for me. Aside from the disgusting childhood engagement I was compelled to have with powdered soy milk that left me completely unable to drink soy milk straight, this left me with a key philosophy. The world is a wide place with many culinary traditions that provide countless alternatives. One should not despair on account of allergies.

I have found that friends and acquaintances who were diagnosed with allergies much later in life are often frustrated by what seems to be the loss of options and the limitations of substitutions that are often quite expensive. I suspect they feel cheated. While I still hold to the notion that seeking gastronomic alternatives is often the better choice, coming up with substitutions isn't such a bad thing either. Here's a recipe I adapted from Martha Rose Shulman. We ate these warm from the oven, slathered in peach marmalade made during the last days of summer.

Quinoa Walnut Muffins

Grind your own quinoa flour in a spice mill, or in my favourite, the stone mortar. I used red quinoa for these moist, not too sweet muffins.

1/2 cup ground flaxseed meal
1/2 cup rice flour
1/2 cup quinoa flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large or extra large eggs
1/4 cup maple syrup or agave nectar
3/4 cup Balkan style yoghurt (Works so well! Or use 3/4 cup soy milk.You won't taste soy milk in this.)
1/4 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup cooked quinoa
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees with a rack in the middle. Plop cupcake papers into 12 muffin cups. Otherwise, grease the tin. Mix together flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

2. In a medium bowl, beat together the eggs, maple syrup or agave nectar, yoghurt/soy milk, canola oil and vanilla. Quickly whisk in the flour mixture, then fold in the cooked quinoa and walnuts. Combine well.

3. Spoon into muffin cups, filling each two-thirds full. Bake 20 to 25 minutes until lightly browned. Cool in the tins for 10 minutes, then remove from the mold and cool on a rack.

Yield: Twelve muffins. They keep well for two days. If you want to keep them longer, pop them in the fridge or freeze them. If you end up cooking too much quinoa, don't fret because it freezes really well. I like to freeze it in one cup measurements.

Special credit to my sister, Amanda, for bequeathing her unopened packet of ground flaxseed meal to me when she moved several time zones away.