Cooking in Code

This chili recipe has been idling in my email drafts folder for sometime now (a year at least). It has become one of my go-to winter recipes. This is the dish I cook upon returning home from traveling, when I’m craving detox food, but have nothing in the fridge. Everything you need to make this dish can be found at your bare-bones grocer. In fact, you can probably find some reasonable approximation at your local dep. And if you *do*…

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I’d been meaning to attempt homemade ramen for some time now (not Tonkatsu or anything crazy, because boiling pork bones for 6 hours seemed like a big commitment), but I figured your basic (spicy) miso ramen couldn’t be that hard to do…So of course, I bought vegetable broth, noodles, some sort of miso paste and veggies and gave it a shot. Oh dear. Turns out there are *lots* of different types of miso pastes, and if you try to make…

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After about the third iteration of snow–>rain–>melt–>freeze (a common occurrence here in Montreal at this time of year), I decided a night of good friends and food from warm, dry places was needed. So I hosted a vaguely-Moroccan themed dinner party. The menu consisted of 3 main items: Zalouk, which I assembled 5 minutes before the guests arrived and which was gone shortly thereafter, i.e., before any pics could be taken. All I’ll say is this: take the time to…

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Marmalade moodiness, originally uploaded by CaitKP. will do as they please, and men, dogs and marmalade makers should relax and get used to the idea.” To paraphrase a quote from Robert Heinlein. The photo above shows marmalade made from the same recipe (Nige’s), in different years (left: this years batch, right: 2 years ago’s batch). How one of them ended up several shades lighter but with a firmer set than the other is anybody’s guess. All I know is that…

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Mushroom Vindaloo (originally taken from here) Ingredients: 1-2 pack of button mushrooms (about 3 cups, sliced if big and whole if small)1 small onion, chopped1″ ginger chopped3 cloves garlic1 15 oz can crushed tomatoes1 Tbsp cumin powder 1 Tbsp ground coriander 1 tsp turmeric1 tsp garam masala2 dried red chilies, with seeds (crumbled) 2 chopped serrano chilies (seeds or not, depending on how brave you are)1 tbsp white vinegar1/2 cup yogurt2 tbsps chopped cilantro leaves2 tbsps olive oilSalt to taste…

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Edit: I made it again, and now there are photos! I made this a couple weeks ago, but wanted to get a photo before I published the post…however, it “got et” before any such photo could be taken…so you’ll just have to make it and see for yourself. Chicken Tagine with Chickpeas and Apricots 2 Tbsp olive oil 4 skinless chicken thighs 1 large onion, chopped 1″ piece of fresh ginger, chopped 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped 1.5 tsp ground…

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Chaat is the prototypical Indian snack/street food. It has everything you could ask for in a snack: flavour, substance, and arguably the most important, crunch. Step 1: Find the crunchies. What are crunchies, you ask? They usually consist of a mixture of sev (small crunchy fried noodles), lentils, and puffed grains. They come in bags like the ones in the picture above. We found them by sheer luck at the local fruit shop. If you have a nearby Indian or…

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2011 was not, in retrospect, a particularly stellar year for me in the cooking department. Maybe the abundance of fast/affordable/awesome food options available in Montreal at all hours were to blame… or maybe it was the seemingly constant change of culinary surroundings (we moved 3 times in 10 months). At any rate, most of my cooking was of the old-standby nature (and very little of it was blog worthy). The one exception to this was the canning. This year, knowing…

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Congratulations Seattle. You have one thing Montreal doesn’t: a Chipotle (in fact you have several). Here in Montreal, our Mexican options are limited at best, and besides, Chipotle is more SF than Mexico. To be honest, I was recently asked what made a mission-style burrito so different from a normal one, and I’m embarrassed to say I couldn’t come up with a good answer. The more I think about it, I think the secret lies in better cuts of meat,…

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Carrots, oats and dates — it’s actually surprising there was any room for the cake part. This was actually a combination of two recipes: a a date cake with a little bit of carrot muffin mixed in. Really I just had a surplus of carrots, and this seemed like a good thing to do with them. If I were to make it again, I think I might half the oats, or add a touch more milk, to make the whole…

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