“Come Into the Kitchen for a Minute:” Cooking, Eating, Talking with Mom

By bam on May 11th, 2011 No Comments »
“Come Into the Kitchen for a Minute:” Cooking, Eating, Talking with Mom">

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This guest post was writ­ten by  Vicki Bell. Vicki is Founder and Editor of The Little Paper; a monthly news­pa­per with a weekly newslet­ter and a web­site that pro­vides par­ents with the most com­pre­hen­sive, cre­ative and use­ful list­ings for pro­grams, classes, activ­i­ties, events and resources in the city. Vicki’s post is part of the part of the Apron Strings series, help­ing shine a light on our foremother’s food tra­di­tions. Visit the Apron Strings page to see other posts and the videos.

I’ve always sus­pected that my mom doesn’t like cook­ing very much – this despite the fact that she’s actu­ally a really good cook – but I thought I should check in with her before I went ahead and made it pub­lic. “Oh God, Vicki” she said, “I hate cooking.”

This shouldn’t really sur­prise me. My first kitchen mem­o­ries aren’t, as I believed for many years, of bak­ing cook­ies with my great grand­mother Gammy but with Mary Mills, her silver-haired Scottish house­keeper. My grand­mother had a cook as well and would only occa­sion­ally waft into the kitchen on a cloud of Arpége to look for a vase or a cock­tail or a child. It wasn’t much of a hot­house for orchids of the Cordon Bleu per­sua­sion. But then the story turned sharply to the left and my mom made what her mother would have called “an unfor­tu­nate mar­riage.” Imagine the poor thing, 18 years old, madly in love and utterly adrift in a tiny, (unstaffed) kitchen with only the Joy of Cooking to keep her impend­ing fam­ily afloat.

I remem­ber that book as a flour-dusted, penciled-in, broken-spined kitchen bible. From it emerged chicken baked with Lawry’s sea­son­ing salt and but­ter, French salad dress­ing made with Crisco and Ketchup and Harvard-styled tinned beets, smoth­ered in vine­gar and sugar. What’s more impor­tant than mom’s cook­ing though, is the kitchen itself. It was the cen­tre of the world. Everything of any impor­tance hap­pened there. Everyday after school I found my mom in the kitchen and while she cooked, I ate and talked.

Over time, my mom became more con­fi­dent and more ambi­tious. While I laid out the entire plot of a movie (Silver Streak comes imme­di­ately to mind), she attached a grinder to the kitchen counter and minced steak and onions for shepherd’s pie. As I ago­nized over the more pop­u­lar girls in grade seven, she made lamb curry with lit­tle dishes of raisins and coconut. While I got dumped, fell in love, opened my uni­ver­sity let­ters and planned my first apart­ment, she made scratch crusts for blue­berry pie – and apple, pump­kin and most impor­tantly, rhubarb pie.

The phrase ”Come into the kitchen for a minute” still strikes me as a spine-tingling pre­lude to big news or big secrets.

Not sur­pris­ing then that I love to cook and that I love shar­ing the kitchen with my own girls. We make won­der­ful food and great mem­o­ries together but alas, kind of a lousy pie.

Maybe you can do better…

Vicki

Pastry (enough for 1 1/2 — 9 inch pies)

This recipe works for me but I have given the recipe to oth­ers who say that I have missed out an ingre­di­ent.  Good luck !

  • 1 cup short­en­ing (Tenderflake) cut up into small pieces and softened
  • Add:
  • 1/2 cup boil­ing water and blend
  • 2 cups of flour(pastry or sifted)
  • 1/2 tsp bak­ing powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • Blend all together with pas­try tool or knife cut­ting through the mix­ture not stir­ring. If too greasy add a lit­tle more flour.
  • Form into a ball and place on a floured piece of tin foil and wrap up and chill before rolling. Best done the day before.

 

Rhubarb Pie (1 –9 inch pie)

  • 2 cups fresh rhubarb cut into 1/2 inch pieces
  • Sprinkle 2 to 3 tblsp flour over rhubarb and toss pieces in flour.
  • Mix together in sep­a­rate bowl:
  • 2 tblsp but­ter softened
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 egg beaten
  • 1/8 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp lemon juice
  • Add rhubarb to the above mix­ture and coat well. Place in an unbaked pie shell and cover with a pas­try top.
  • Prick the pas­try top with a fork and bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 to 45 min­utes. Enjoy !

 

 


⇪ Posted in Apron Strings, Apron Strings 2010, Food, Front Page, Guest Posts.

Thoroughly Modern Dorothy: Why I Remember Mealtime on Mother’s Day

By bam on May 9th, 2011 1 Comment »

 

This guest post was writ­ten by  Wayne Roberts. Wayne is a food pol­icy ana­lyst and writer, widely respected for his role as the man­ager of the Toronto Food Policy Council from 2000–2010. You can read Wayne’s writ­ing in Now Magazine, and on his blog. Wayne’s rem­i­nis­cences on his mom Dorothy are part of the Apron Strings series, help­ing shine a light on our foremother’s food tra­di­tions. Visit the Apron Strings page to see other posts and the videos.

My Mom and Dad came of age in Toronto dur­ing the “Dirty Thirties,” but even by the stan­dards of that era, they had more than their share of bad breaks. Mom was given up for adop­tion as a baby, lost her adop­tive mom at 14, and was res­cued from the streets by a warm and gen­er­ous fam­ily, the Farmers. Dad’s father had a prob­lem with booze, so my dad quit school to sup­port his fam­ily at 14.

When they mar­ried – Dave and Dorothy, and soon their two kids, Dale and (I got lucky and wasn’t called Dwayne) Wayne — they were bound and deter­mined to give their chil­dren all the love and hap­pi­ness they missed out on. I thank them every day for the joy they gave, but on Mother’s Day, my mem­o­ries turn to meal­times my mom orches­trated, and the good cheer and fun times we all had eat­ing together. Continue »


⇪ Posted in Apron Strings, Apron Strings 2010, Front Page, Guest Posts.

Grandmother Barker’s Nanaimo Bars

By bam on May 8th, 2011 No Comments »

This guest post is writ­ten by Ravenna Nuaimy-Barker. Ravenna is Executive Director of Sustain Ontario a province-wide, cross-sectoral alliance that pro­motes healthy food and farming. We’re run­ning this post as part of the Apron Strings series focus­ing on how our fore­moth­ers’ food nour­ished us body and soul.


Though I am from the United States, the fam­ily recipe that I’m going to share with you is a Canadian orig­i­nal. This story is about how Nanaimo Bars, named after Nanaimo BC, became a fam­ily favorite.

My grand­mother, Lucy, grew up on a farm in Okemah, Oklahoma. If you’ve heard of Okemah (which you prob­a­bly haven’t) it would prob­a­bly be as the birth­place of song­ster Woodie Guthrie. Woody was only six years older than my grand­mother, but she claims not to have known him. She did, how­ever, know his mother. Grandma tells me Mrs. Guthrie made the best tamales in town.

Grandma lived with her fam­ily on the farm until she met and mar­ried my grand­fa­ther Bob, a dash­ing young engi­neer from Ohio who enlisted in the Air Force shortly after­ward. Lucy fol­lowed Bob from once army base to another all over the United States, even­tu­ally mov­ing in with his fam­ily in Ohio when he went to war. When he returned safely, he was offered an engi­neer­ing job, and the mov­ing resumed.

It was in the late 50’s, when my mother and uncle were enter­ing ele­men­tary school, that Lucy and Bob moved to their most exotic home yet – Regina.

During the decade that they lived there my fam­ily found many things to love about Canada.  My uncle found ski­ing, and although he now lives in California, he still skis every week. My mother, now a the­atre pro­fes­sor, dis­cov­ered act­ing here.

My grand­mother, who now lives in California, still remem­bers fondly the hoar-frosted trees that she first saw here. It was also here that the whole fam­ily fell for a spe­cial ver­sion of Nanaimo bars, shared with them by a Canadian neighbour.

Though the fam­ily even­tu­ally returned to the U.S., the recipe stayed with them. I grew up hear­ing sto­ries of Canada each time we cel­e­brated a hol­i­day or birth­day and ate these mag­i­cal Nanaimo bars.

I can’t say that this deli­cious treat is the main rea­son that I decided to move to Canada myself over a decade ago – but it was cer­tainly a factor.

The Barker Nanaimo Bars

Ingredients/Directions

Part 1:

  • Combine ½ cup butter, 4 table­spoons dry cocoa, ¼ cup white sugar
  • beat 1 egg and add to the mixture
  • put in a dou­ble boiler, stir until melted and a lit­tle thicker
  • add 1 tsp vanilla, 1 cup coconut (you can use a lit­tle more), at least 2 cups gra­ham cracker crumbs and ¾ cup chopped walnuts

Part 2

  • Pack all of that into a 9x9 pan
  • Take a small pack­age of cream cheese and mix with just enough pow­dered sugar to make it a lit­tle sweet
  • Spread on top of the gra­ham cracker coconut mix
  • Chill entire mixture

Part 3:

  • Melt 4 squares semi-sweet or dark choco­late (or an equiv­a­lent amount of choco­late chips) in a dou­ble boiler
  • Spread the choco­late care­fully in a thin layer over the top of the chilled cream cheese
  • Re-chill and serve when choco­late is hardened

⇪ Posted in Apron Strings 2010, Guest Posts. Tags: .

Vida: Persian Pofak Sweetness from Home

By bam on May 7th, 2011 No Comments »

How can some­thing so sim­ple, wal­nuts coated in egg and sugar, be lay­ered with so much mean­ing? From Christmas in Iran to the German chef who taught this Vida to become an expert in Persian pas­tries, Vida’s story demon­strates that when it comes to food, noth­ing is sim­ple. And the more tex­tured the his­tory, the more deli­cious some­thing becomes.

Check out Vida’s video with her daugh­ter in law Vanessa, who together, make del­i­ca­cies like these at their infa­mous Toronto bak­ery Shirini Sara Pastry Shop.

There are 2 tra­di­tional pofaks, Pofak Zard and Pofak Sefid

Pofak Zard are Walnut halves coated with egg yolk - Zard means yel­low in Farsi and Pofak Sefid are Walnut halves coated with egg white — Sefid means white in Farsi.

Both are Gluten free. They are sold at Shirini Sara ” under the names Yellow Walnut flow­ers” or “White Walnut flowers”.

Pofak Zard

Ingredients

  • 3 egg yolks
  • 100g icing sugar
  • 1/2 tea spoon liq­uid vanilla or 1/2 bag of vanilla sugar
  • 1 tea spoon of rice flour
  • 200g unshelled wal­nuts , cut in small pieces (about half an inch)

Directions

  1. In a blender, com­bine all the atop ingre­di­ents except the wal­nuts. mix for 5–10 min­utes until you get a very light shiny yel­low batter.
  2. Stir in the wal­nuts and mix grossly with a table spoon.
  3. With the help of a tea spoon, lay the mix­ture on an oven tray. Each pofak should be about 1/2 inch to 1 inch large.
  4. Heat oven to 350°C and cook the pofaks for 10 min­utes.  the nice light yel­low colour should barely change  (Just the time for the egg yolk to cook)
  5. The result should be crunchy, enjoy!

⇪ Posted in Apron Strings, Guest Posts, Recipes from Videos.

Darshanie: Chicken Curry Adds the Spice

By bam on May 7th, 2011 2 Comments »

Chef, writer and activist Joshna Maharaj says that grow­ing up her mom Darshanie’s Chicken Curry was “like every­one else’s Kraft Dinner”–a meal that was sim­ple to pre­pare and so became a fam­ily din­ner sta­ple.  While the two diverge on aspects of how this curry should be pre­pared, they exem­plify how recipes evolve from gen­er­a­tion to generation–family to family.

Check out the video and watch some fam­ily magic unfold

Ingredients:

  • 3 tbsp veg­etable oil or ghee
  • 4–5 fresh (or dried) curry leaves
  • 1 green chili, sliced in half lengthwise
  • 2 tsp cumin seeds
2 yel­low cook­ing onions, finely chopped 
2 tbsp minced gar­lic 
1 tsp minced gin­ger  
1 ½ tsp cayenne
  • 2 tsp ground coriander
  • 1 tbsp ground cumin
  • 1 tsp turmeric
  • Salt and freshly ground pep­per to taste
  • 2 lb bone­less skin­less chicken, such as breasts and thighs
  • 1½ cups pureed tomatoes
  • 1 tbsp garam masala
  • Finely chopped fresh corian­der to garnish

Method:

  1. In a heavy bot­tomed saucepan, heat the oil or ghee to high.  Add cumin, chili and curry leaves and stand back!  Once the splut­ter­ing has sub­sided, reduce heat to medium high, add the onions and fry for about 4 min­utes, until they turn a rich golden brown.
  2. Add the gar­lic and gin­ger and sauté to cook. Mix in the cayenne, ground corian­der, cumin, turmeric, salt and pep­per. Sauté briefly to cook and combine.
  3. Increase the heat to high and add the chicken pieces.  Toss to coat with onions and spices, and fry for about 5 min­utes or till the chicken is well coated in the masala and lightly browned.
  4. Add the toma­toes and mix well.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to low, cover and sim­mer for about 15 min­utes or until chicken is well cooked.  Sprinkle in the garam masala, cover again, and con­tinue to sim­mer for about 10–15 min­utes to allow the aroma to blend well in the curry.  The longer this sim­mers on low, the bet­ter the flavour will be.   Taste and adjust salt and chilies as necessary.

Serve hot, gar­nished with corian­der leaves and lime wedges.


⇪ Posted in Apron Strings, Food, Guest Posts, Recipes from Videos.

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