In my kitchen: December 2019

I went to Toronto for 10 days in November for a conference and to catch up with friends. As always in Toronto, there was so much friendship and joy. Lots of people ask me how I cope with my job when they find out what I do for a living (even lots of my patients) - I think I cope predominantly by eating and playing music!


We visited the Big Apple just east of Toronto on the way out to visit Emily's childhood home.

The apples have such incredible flavour in Ontario, none of that tasteless floury stuff you get after months of refridgeration. We played a few cello-piano duets here, Granados' Orientale, the first Beethoven cello sonata in F and the first Brahms cello sonata. Em's childhood friend also was inspired by the music making and after a 20 year absence from the piano, was convinced to join us on 6-hand piano arrangement of Mozart's Alla Turca and Schubert's famous Military March. Lots of fun all around!

 

I also picked up some apple cider vinegar and apple cider from the Big Apple.

The weather was really quite cold in Toronto this time. The first couple of days I got some excellent photos of the autumn leaves, but then there was a huge snowstorm and I was distracted by all the white after that.

We were gifted this beautiful blackberry crostata by Em's friend Maria whose husband is a real green thumb and makes his own jam from backyard blackberries every year. We enjoyed this lovely introduction to crostatas, a soft eggy pastry with a filling of jam.

Also in Em's kitchen, we had a dumpling party with pork and Chinese cabbage dumplings. Making the dumpling dough is always the most fun. We also ate these with artichokes (becoming a bit of a joke theme for our travels to look for artichokes) and a simple bok choy stir fry. We ate these with a selection of wonderful pieces - Shostakovich's 3 pieces for 2 violins and piano, Bach's Double violin concerto and the Beethoven String trio no.1 in Eb.

One afternoon we also enjoyed this delicious truffle cheese with the heady scent of truffle, along with eggplant dip and Egyptian artichoke salad (because... artichokes) from Maha's, my new favourite brunch place in Toronto. And coffee in tiny Romanian cups, Maria's biscotti, fresh ricotta cannoli.. what an afternoon tea it was!

Organic fruit beer.. my friend's favourite. A weird citrus-y beer that is like a beer-cider cross.

Em is the queen of challah. She has now perfected the easiest method to form this beautiful plaited bread and she showed it to me this time.

We made a four strand challah first.

Then a five strand challah!

I really admire her ability in eyeballing such a complex dough - I always thought that bread had to be measured precisely, or at least that's what everyone told me until I started making my own bread. But she really takes it to the next level with her bread intuition.


Back in my own kitchen, one of our string quartets was cancelled due to the bushfires making it too hazy to drive. I had seen bread animals online but never tried to make one.

Here he is, I call him Pete the vegan crocodile. My scale battery also ran flat so I had to eyeball this dough but it turned out just fine. I must say he looks rather like a platypus..

After basically 6 straight weeks away Barney needed feeding, so I ate a lot of sourdough pancakes!

In more news from the music & food series...

We had these lovely zucchini flowers stuffed with haloumi. We were only three that night so we ended up playing a bit from the first Schubert piano trio, the Bach double violin concerto and the Debussy piano trio.

Our quartet had our Christmas party and I based this on Not Quite Nigella's Christmas tree wreath recipe. It was a fairly easy adaptation with sourdough which rose a bit like a pizza base but still had crunchy "fingers". We played Schubert's Death and the Maiden, Dvorak's American and a bit of the Brahms first piano quartet - though my thumbs gave up by then!

What a year of delicious food and wonderful music it has been!  I'm sending this to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings who hosts the monthly In My Kitchen events.