In My Kitchen: November 2022

I cannot believe I just typed November! October was an incredibly beautiful month of fall in Toronto, the vivid and vibrant changing leaves are my favourite thing about living in Canada! 

In my kitchen this month... 

Let's begin with this most simple of meals, pasta with chickpeas and veggies. S and I have been having Sunday lunch in Toronto / dinner in Paris. It's a nice way for us to unwind at the end of the week with a glass of wine and reconnect by cooking something together. 

I've been doing a lot of baking this month since my dad has been visiting, he's been doing all the food shopping / meal preparation and my only responsibility is for the bread we have for breakfast everyday. I've been trying out different scoring patterns. 

Here I was inspired by the shape of a rose

I made this pumpkin bread for Canadian Thanksgiving. I couldn't find any kitchen string since I think everybody had bought some for tying up turkey! I used garden twine instead and it worked surprisingly well, though some people may have gotten some extra fibre... My favourite part about making the bread was stealing a stem from a zucchini! 

Take two, used a walnut for the stem instead and used more pumpkin (about 25% by weight). I think this scoring worked out better. 

Here's a sneak peek inside the pumpkin, the bread had a beautiful orange hue and had a wonderful fluffy texture, stuffed with pepitas.  

On the road... 

I took my dad and his partner on a big road trip in October. I was going to Montreal for a conference so we made a trip out of it - we went to the Thousand Islands region, Montreal, Quebec City and stopped off in Ottawa on the way back. There were lots of farms along the way (we took Highway 2, the "old" road passing through small communities) and here we saw some weird and wonderful gourds at one of the roadside stalls. 

A rice cooker is essential for all Chinese families on road trips. Not only can one cook rice but it is also used as an impromptu pot for cooking all sorts of things, like soba! Here we had the soba with home made radish & carrot pickles, and a topping of pork & shiitake mushrooms slow cooked in soy sauce and bean sauce. 

Not strictly in my kitchen, but take a look at this incredible poutine we had along the way, in a fromagerie near the original home of poutine in Drummondville, Quebec. The cheese was fresh and squeaky, the gravy a little on the salty side, but the fries were perfect - some were crispy and crunchy, others were saturated in gravy. Delicious!

And who can visit Montreal without going to get bagels? There's been a big rivalry between St Viateur and Fairmount, I must say I prefer St Viateur by far. The Montreal bagel is a little more dense and sweeter than the New York bagel, as it is cooked in honey water. They are simply incredible when warm straight out of the wood fired oven. 

This was a gorgeous soft brie cheese we picked up at the fromagerie in the middle of nowhere in Quebec. As good as the cheese in France! 

I bought some cranberries thinking they could be eaten as a snack. No idea they would be so sour! I cooked them with some honeycrisp apple (a Canadian specialty), and the colour was incredible!

After our long road trip of chasing the autumn leaves, we got back to Toronto just in time for Halloween. Here I tried cutting a skull shape into my bread but maybe he looks like a friendly one! 

Finally, my curve ball this month is one of the hundreds of photos I took on the road trip of the beautiful leaves... here was sunrise at Gananoque, the heart of the Thousand Islands. 

The sun rising over the St Lawrence river turned this maple tree the most extraordinary colour. Nature is just wonderful. 

I am sending this to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings who hosts the monthly In My Kitchen series. Thanks Sherry and have a good month everyone!