In My Kitchen, June 2023

We are in the middle of packing up in Toronto for the move to Paris! In fact we will be in Germany till the end of July as S is going to an important academic convention there which I've nicknamed Nerdfest... so there will be a lot of wurst and sauerkraut coming soon :)

Here, a quick look at what was in my kitchen in the last month... 

I continue my obsession with swirly breads.. this one made with dark cocoa powder, just a hint of chocolate in the final product. 

We continue with our Manga Monday tradition. Here the dish was Hiya Jiru, a cold summer soup with a base of sesame and dashi. It was not so much a soup more like a thick sauce! It was delicious with a bowl of rice and a pile of edamame..

I tried making sourdough injera again... it wasn't super effective since I didn't get as many holes as I would have liked, but the texture was nice and soft. I also bought some shiro powder from an Ethiopian shop (there are many in Toronto) and this made a delicious shiro! 

Sourdough banana and coconut pancakes. My dad always says life is boring and we have to find our own fun. 

Tortilla Thursdays are another fun tradition we have. We are just at the end of the tortilla flour now, the bag has lasted us a whole year! Here we had some mango salsa, leftover lentils, and grilled capsicums with cajun seasoning. 

We have been doing the rounds of visiting our friends for the last time (for now). Here I made this loaf for one of these parties. 

We made this cake with our friends' kids, it was an insane amount of sugar and the kids  both got super hyper. At one point they were licking the icing off the table! We called it the Neptune cake since the surface was covered by moon rocks of unmelted icing.

This was a tray of baked goodies I took to another farewell party. The loaf at the back was made with gluten free flour leftover from the failed croissant experiment, and the front is  normal gluten full pretzels which worked out pretty well. 

The farewells continue. This was a dinner we had at ours with wrap-your-own Vietnamese paper rolls. So fresh and delicious! 

I associate Toronto so much with roti, not the flat bread kind of roti we usually associate with Indian cuisine but Caribbean style roti, where the roti is huge and becomes a wrapper for delicious fillings. When I lived here in 2016-2017 I had a favourite place but it closed down and its chef has since moved to a fancier joint. The roti is still amazing! 

The curveball this month is the Infinity Room by Yayoi Kusama, which has been installed at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The reflective objects are placed all around the room and you are immediately surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands, reflections of yourself. It's also completely silent. Eerie but cool!

That's it for me this month, thanks to Sherry again for organising the IMK series. I'll see everyone next month from Germany!

In My Kitchen, May 2023

Can someone please tell me where, just where is the time going? It is flying past and our time in Toronto is coming to an end... at the end of June I will be finishing my fellowship and moving to Paris with S. So much change in our lives!

Let's take a look into my kitchen this month ... We've been travelling a lot!

First up I have some homemade ramen noodles from Oji Seichi, a ramen shop near where one of my previous workplaces. These noodles were really beautiful, springy with lots of bounce and a great mouth feel.  

We made our own veggie ramen with a shiitake mushroom & miso based broth. The toppings were shiitakes (they turned out so meaty!) black fungus, asparagus, carrot, seaweed and a just-set egg. It was pretty good!

Always a tradition for me at Easter time to make sourdough hot cross buns. Here was a batch for friends and a giant one for me. I glazed them with maple syrup. 

You could eat it like a cake! 

For Easter, S and I went away to stay in a tiny cabin on a farm. It was so beautiful - there were friendly goats that headbutted you, horses that would come up for a nuzzle, geese everywhere (I even saw a goose threesome, it was... incredible). The breakfast each day was very generous and came on a big tray like this. We also saw stars, such a rare treat when we live in a big busy city. 

We had a crazy week of heatwave in Toronto where the temperature almost got to 30 Celcius. We had a party on the patio at Princess Margaret Hospital, and I made this delicious vegemite cheese star. I didn't say anything about the vegemite till everyone had had a piece, because so many people here don't "like" Vegemite! 

Some Garrett popcorn I brought back from Chicago - this is a seriously addictive mix of cheesy and caramelised 

My friend from Australia visited for a week and we went up north for a long weekend. Algonquin Park is absolutely stunning at any time of the year, and we were amazed to see the ice in lakes melting. We also stopped by a maple farm to pick up some local maple syurp. These bottles look like Goldilocks!

S and I have a Tortilla Thursday tradition. When we first moved here I bought one of those giant bags of Maseca for making tortillas and we've been eating the same bag all year! He's now pretty good at flipping them. We usually have a pile of salad and some kind of salsa. Here it was with corn and orange capsicums - so good!  

The curveball this month... We were in New York for a long weekend and the cherry blossoms in Central Park were just stunning. 

There's something about natural things that come for a short season that make one feel a grand sense of awe - how is it possible that these cherry blossoms can be so beautiful, so delicate and so short lived? No wonder all of New York was out here walking amongst the cherry avenues, with a gentle shower of pink fluffy petals every time the wind sighs. (See, it even inspires poeticism..)

I'm sending this to Sherry who hosts the monthly In My Kitchen series. Thanks Sherry! 

In My Kitchen: April 2023

Dear friends of IMK, welcome to my kitchen, have I got a story to share with you this month! 

Who would have thought you could make little dough lovebirds like this? I really enjoyed the process of making them. The males have their wings spread and the females are more demure. I also strangely enjoyed poking the cloves in to be their eyes... 

Here they are after baking! Aren't they beautiful? 

I had to store them out of sight because they were the first step in a big surprise project... 

I've never made such a giant dough (it was a simple challah dough), I couldn't find any bowl big enough so I put it inside my biggest IKEA pot. Obviously my sourdough was too active - the next morning I woke up to see that it had exploded in the fridge! 

Can you guess yet what I'm making..? I made my own wedding "cake" from sourdough! 

It was a base layer of braided challah (just because challah is delicious), a Chinese middle layer of a Chinese style babka with sesame, coriander, chilli and green onions, and an Italian top layer of tomato focaccia. It represents the coming together of our cultures. 

You may ask... but why is it on the balcony? Because I started making it 2 hours before the wedding and I needed it to cool down quickly. It was -5 outside so I put it outside to cool! We ended up putting it together just 7 minutes before the wedding started. Talk about cutting it close! 

The Italian focaccia layer 

Braiding the Chinese babka... 

Have a look at that Chinese layer, my friend E's flavour creation - she calls it crack babka because it is utterly addictive!

Here's the final wedding "cake" in all its glory. So much fun to make!

My bridal bouquet - the first time that I met S we ate artichokes that we bought from the market downstairs from his place in Paris

We also got ourselves a beautiful dozen roses 

S wanted to match the artichoke so he had a piece of cos lettuce for his pocket - so sweet

This is probably one of my favourite photos from my entire life! It was so special to celebrate our wedding with friends in Toronto, especially our music friends. We got married in the party room in our condo so that we could unplug the piano and take it downstairs.  It was so special that we could play a part of the second Brahms violin sonata during the ceremony - here is a video of the beginning. It was a really simple wedding, 20 people, a potluck dinner, and a music party - now how often do you get to play music in your wedding dress?? 

And now we drink our coffee from these cups :) 

Thanks to Sherry for hosting the IMK series - I don't know any of you in person but I feel like I know you all, thanks for all your words of encouragement and support! 

In My Kitchen: March 2023

Oh how the time is just flying by! In February we went back to Australia for two weeks. On the day we left Toronto it was -20 (-28 with wind chill) and when we got off the plane in Sydney it was 30 degrees! What a crazy temperature difference...

In sunny Australia... 

It was actually our first Valentine's day together in person. We celebrated with a group of friends at a suburban Chinese restaurant - all of us not believing in hallmark birthdays, but since the Australian Barney is still alive I had to make this sourdough heart to share with everyone. We clandestinely ate it under the table before the food came! 

We visited my friend the cellist from my old string quartet, and together we played Mendelssohn's piano trio no. 1 in D minor and a bit of the Beethoven Archduke piano trio, my favourite. We made this fruit salad for dinner - how I adore Australian summer fruit! 

We went up to the Gold Coast to visit my music friend and her husband, and we spent a few days playing music there - some Bach, the Beethoven violin sonatas, and some 2 piano music. This Queensland yoghurt with mango is just excellent.  

She made us this cake on the last day, and dusted it with icing sugar and paper cut outs - how smart!

Then I made the same cake (Claudia Roden's orange cake) and decorated it with some mango for my dad's 70th birthday! For his birthday, S and I prepared a musical gift of Beethoven's Spring sonata and the traditional Chinese piece The Butterfly Lovers. 

A couple of extraordinary tomatoes we ate from my dad's garden. 

The second week we were in Australia, we stayed in Newcastle. My dad and his partner came up one day for lunch and here we are having whole roasted barramundi with a selection of Chinese veggies all from my dad's garden. 

Long term readers will recall that I have a close music friend in Newcastle with whom I played duets all throughout COVID. She put on a big dinner for us with roast lamb, sauerkraut, cauliflower & cheese, roast potatoes & pumpkin. It was such a feast! She's turning 80 this year, and she is just incredible! 

Our last dinner in Australia - home made pan fried dumplings, and a big pot of "Russian" soup at my dad's. 

Back in Toronto... 

It was freezing... and we continued our Manga Mondays tradition. Here the dish was natto, which is a kind of fermented soybean. An acquired taste, I must say. We had it with some salmon and tofu miso soup, and a simple side of broccoli stalks stir fried with daikon. Everything was more delectable than the natto!

Another Manga Monday... pork katsu with rice, highly non traditional sides of bean sprouts and heirloom tomato. We baked the katsu instead of deep frying it and it turned out really well! 

Another day, we had wonton noodle soup for dinner.. it's just so cold, it's soup weather. 

Finally, here is a beautiful loaf of shokupan, or Japanese milk bread I made with my sourdough. I have been experimenting with plant based milks, and I'm excited to report that this milk bread worked out really great with oat milk. 

The curveball... 

My dad's current Guide Dog puppy is called Wendy. She's actually 8 years old, so not quite a puppy. She was working as a guide dog but the visually impaired person did not see that she was getting too overweight. Hence she has taken a leave of absence from her work to do an intensive weight loss program at my dad's. She is quite adorable and loves eating. 

I'm sending this to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings, who hosts the monthly In My Kitchen series - Thanks Sherry!!