Life is short

This post has nothing to do with the subtitle of my blog, but I'm compelled to write anyway.

Today I found out that a friend of a friend passed away. I only met her a handful of times, but she was a woman with a lively, colourful spirit and had many people who cared about her.

In May, she got married. In June, after her honeymoon, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. On Tuesday she died. She was 36.

If you are reading this and you are healthy and have people who love you, be thankful.

Squash quandry

I bought these summer squash/zucchini at the market this morning, more for aesthetic reasons than anything else. Don't they look cute in my little yellow bowl? Now I'll just have to find something to do with them. I'll likely look here for inspiration.

Here are some other things I've been eating or cooking this past week.

A row of candy cane beets, all salt, peppered and oiled and ready for a roast in the oven.

A bowl full of cherries straight from Beamsville, ON. They looked a lot better than they tasted, I have to say. Blame the sunless summer for these not-so-sweet beauties.

And a pan full of purple beans ready to simmer, which by the way, turn green after they're cooked. Mother Nature FAIL!

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I can check off the "colourful vegetables" box for my diet this week.

Yellow Frittata

Sometimes when I come home from work, my go to dinner is a frittata. I like them because they're so quick, and a good way to use up any vegetables lingering in the fridge.


I called this one a "yellow" frittata, though I didn't plan it that way. Yellow because it included yellow potato, yellow pepper and some leftover yellow beans. The green you see is some cooked chopped bok choy and herbs (chives and parsley).

I started by dicing a small potato and blanching it for about five mintues while the pan heated up and the oven got warm. After they were fork tender, I put then in the hot frying pan in a bit of olive oil and sauteed them until they were crisp. Then, in went a handful of sliced pepper, cooking until it was a bit soft and had some colour. Then I beat a couple of eggs with the chopped herbs, and added it to the pan. I threw on some beans and a bit of grated cheese (yellow cheddar, in keeping with the theme).

A few minutes in a 400C oven and the whole thing puffs up and gets golden brown. All in, the dish takes about 20 minutes from start to finish. I had mine on its own, but it would be nice with a side salad as well. A pretty satisfying weeknight dinner if I do say so myself.

Raspberry cake redo!

Let me just say that it really, really bugs me when a recipe doesn't turn out right. I never thought of myself as a perfectionist, but maybe I am when it comes to cooking. Ever since I baked the cake for the first time on the weekend, I've been thinking about what I did wrong. Was it the too-small pan? Did I mess up the ingredients? Was the oven not at the right temperature?

Seriously, even when I was supposed to be concentrating on pigs, I was thinking about this damn recipe!

So I bought another pint of raspberries tonight and made the cake again to take into work, and... success!

This time I baked it in a 9-inch ceramic pie plate, which I wasn't entirely sure would work. But it seems to have done the trick. And the berries somehow stayed suspended in the cake -- bonus!

The batter seemed thicker somehow tonight, so I'm thinking I maybe added too much buttermilk the last time around? Need to pay more attention to what I'm doing!

Tonight's cake. Ta da!

And might I just add, that I made this cake for the first time on the weekend, then blogged about it. And then Martha Stewart's daughter made the cake and wrote about it on her blog. I think she's copying me.

Raspberry Buttermilk Cake

It's berry overlap season! We're still getting great strawberries around here (though some of them are quite soft, due to all the rain we've had), but now the first raspberries are appearing as well.

I bought some on the weekend and made this little cake.

Raspberry Buttermilk Cake

1 cup (130 grams) all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon (2 grams) baking powder
1/2 teaspoon (2 grams) baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt1/2 stick (56 grams) unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup (146 grams) plus 1 1/2 tablespoons (22 grams) sugar, divided
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest (optional)1 large (57 grams) egg
1/2 cup well-shaken buttermilk1 cup fresh raspberries (about 5 oz)

Preheat oven to 400°F with rack in middle. Butter and flour a 9-inch round cake pan.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside. In a larger bowl, beat butter and 2/3 cup (146 grams) sugar with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about two minutes, then beat in vanilla and zest, if using. Add egg and beat well.

At low speed, mix in flour mixture in three batches, alternating with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour, and mixing until just combined.Spoon batter into cake pan, smoothing top. Scatter raspberries evenly over top and sprinkle with remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons (22 grams) sugar.

Bake until cake is golden and a wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool to warm, 10to 15 minutes more. Invert onto a plate.

Original recipe adapted from Gourmet, and found on Smitten Kitchen.

Here it is, all ready to go into the oven. I had high hopes at this stage.

And here's the finished product. I couldn't get a good picture, but essentially, all the berries sunk to the bottom. Still tasted good, but you wouldn't know it had raspberries in it unless you cut into it. A bit disappointing.

I think next time I might try dusting the fruit with flour? Not sure if that will help or not.

The other issue is that my cake took a lot longer to cook than the 25 minutes in the recipe. It could be my antiquated '70s-style oven, but it could also be the fact that I only have a seven inch spring form pan, and not the nine inch one called for. Time to go pan shopping, methinks!

Still, in spite of the delay and sunken fruit, this cake is really, really easy and insanely delicious. I think you could easily swamp out the raspberries for any other fruit you might have handy. Really good with a cup of peppermint tea (hint: if you have mint growing in your herb pot, snip off a few stalks and put them in your teapot, cover with water, and voila! Peppermint tea, easy peasy style).

Jamie's Chicken with Crispy Posh Ham

I've watched and enjoyed the latest show from Jamie Oliver on the Food Network, Jamie's Ministry of Food. A few weeks ago, on a rare trip to Costco, I picked up the accompanying cookbook for the series. While some of the recipes are really simple, and wouldn't truly quality as recipes per se, there are some good ideas, and it's a fun read.

I decided to try one of the main dishes from the program this weekend -- Parmesan Chicken with Cripsy Posh Ham. It's very quick to put together, fast enough for a weeknight even if you've got all the ingredients, and quite good as well.



Here's the chicken prior to going in the pan. All you need to do is put the parmesan, lemon zest, pepper and some thyme leaves on the meat, cover it in salty proscuitto and pound flat. A few minutes on each side in a hot skillet and you're done!

Here's the finished product, in all its Italian bacony goodness, served with some bok choy and roasted fingerling potatoes. Homemade fusion!

Wednesday night wine

Only three more classes left in my grape varietals course at the Gonk. Tonight we covered Syrah, Grenache and Mourvedre, so there were descriptors like "chocolate", "pepper", "stewed prunes", "leather", "cigar box", "pencil shavings", "a hint of barnyard" and "a long sour cherry finish" thrown around with great abandon.

Seriously, we talk like that and spend a great amount of time with our noses stuck in those tiny glasses you see in the picture.

If you ever suspected that sommelier students were an obnoxious bunch, you'd be right! :)

Evening in Pakistan

Okay, not really. But on Friday night, I was invited for dinner at the Pakistan Embassy in Ottawa (or technically the residence of the High Commissioner).

Friends of mine had purchased the dinner for eight at a gala for the WaterCan charity. And lucky for me, they needed more bodies to fill the seats, so in I stepped.

It was one of the most interesting nights I've spent. Our hosts were Naela Chohan, the acting High Commissioner of Pakistan, and her husband, Musa Javed Chohan, now a retired a diplomat. Together they've spent decades in the foreign service, and have served their country in Paris, Tehran and Malaysia. In a few weeks, they're leaving Ottawa so that Naela can take up her new post in Buenos Aires.

Their home was full of interesting artefacts, collected from their various stints around the world, and from Pakistan itself. Naela is an artist, and she had many of her paintings hanging in the home. She took us on a tour after dinner, explaining the political and feminist themes of her works.

Musa had a career in the military before he joined the foreign service, so he showed off his collection of ceremonial daggers. Now he's a reformed soldier turned poet, and he gave a reading of several of his poems after dinner.

The meal itself consisted of what Naela told us was traditional fare -- lentil soup, a seafood mash, fish and brown basmati rice. We even had wine with dinner, something none of us were expecting. Apparently the menu was chosen because Pakistan is making efforts to export its seafood around the world. Who knew!

Unfortunately, the food wasn't quite as spicy or flavourful as I had hoped. I'm not sure if they dulled it down for the Canadian guests or not.

But the conversation more than made up for anything the food may have lacked. It was fascinating (and humbling) to learn about Pakistan -- and realize how little I know about this part of the world. I was stunned to find out that the city of Karachi has more than 21 million people, meaning that almost all of Canada could fit into that one city. It was so interesting to learn about the education system, social customs (including the very involved wedding ceremonies), and the vast regional, cultural and political differences among the various provinces. Our hosts were incredibly diplomatic (naturally) when asked about Pakistan’s relationship with Afghanistan, and were fairly honest in admitting their county has its share of problems, but as a developing nation, their people were doing the best they could.

Above all, what struck me was Naela's passionate refrain that Pakistan was a country of romance, and its inhabitants value language, creativity, dance, poetry, music and art -- in all its forms. It may be a naive description, but perhaps it's one that deserves some consideration from the rest of the world.

My signed copy of Barricaded Self, a collection of poetry by Musa Chohan.

Art in the Alley

For anyone in Ottawa this weekend, come to Westboro for a fabulous outdoor art show supporting the OHS!