eggs@princesse.ca

The great two volume of the revised edition (1965) of The Gourment Cookbook contains instructions for gently making scrambled eggs over low heat. A variation is called "Scrambled Eggs Princesse" and consists of garnishing the scrambled eggs with asparagus tips and slices of truffle.

drawn@butter.ca

For the longest time I thought drawn butter was the equivalent of clarified butter. I was enlightened by reading the sauces section of The New York Times Cook Book by Craig Claiborne. There I learnt that it is a sauce thickened with flour and finished with lemon juice. Also learnt of a variation — egg sauce (two coarsely chopped hard-cooked eggs to drawn butter).

mushrooms.potatoes@genoese.ca

A cookbook without author attribution, Potatoes: Mashed and More does credit home economist Dagmar Vesley and provides instructions on how to prepare a Ligurian recipe in which "the potatoes absorb the flavour of the mushrooms, making it seem as if there are more mushrooms than there actually are." The secret is to use dried mushrooms.

Soak the dried mushrooms in a bowl containing the hot water for 30 minutes. Drain off and strain the liquid through muslin or a filter paper. Simmer the rehydrated mushrooms in the strained soaking liquid until the liquid has evaporated. Toss with the fresh mushrooms, potatoes, garlic, basil and salt and pepper.

The mixture is baked, with a turn of the ingredients halfway through, until the potatoes are tender.

yeast@ingredients.ca

A bit of description about a very important ingredient in making leavened flatbreads... In reading it, one can relish the mix of gastronomy and science.

Yeast is a wonderfully mysterious thing. The yeast we rely upon for baking leavens our bread and lends its appetizing smell and taste. As a single-celled fungus, yeast works in bread by feeding first upon the sugars in the dough, and later upon the maltose produced as starch granules are broken down by malt enzymes. As the yeast metabolizes the sugars, it produces carbon dioxide and alcohol, a process in bread making referred to as fermentation.

From Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, Flatbreads and Flavors: A Baker's Atlas.

apple.sauce@2butter.ca

Mary T. Goodwin and Gerry Pollen in Creative Food Experiences for Children (Center for Science in the Public Interest, 1974) set out two learning objectives for a lesson focusing on apples.

The children will observe the changes made by grinding apples to make raw applesauce.

The children will observe how heat changes apples by making cooked applesauce.

Reminds me of the slow patient stirring of gently bubbling applesauce to make apple butter.

rouille@sweet.potato.ca

What would a vegetarian find of worthy interest in Jennifer McLagan's Bones: Recipes, History and Lore? She has a vegan recipe for rouille. And what is its function? Let's let her explain:

In France, fish soups are often served with the traditional accompaniments of croutons, grated cheese, and rouille, garlic-and-red-pepper-flavored mayonnaise. Not a big fan of flavored mayonnaise in my soup, I've replaced it with a garlicky sweet potato puree. This delivers the garlic hit as it melts into the soup and thickens it slightly.

scone@variations.ca

Peter Oppliger in Green Tea: the delicious everyday health drink has a recipe for scones. The list of variations reads like a poem.

Add to the dough: raisins (2 tablespoons), crisp cooked pumpkin (100 g), powdered vanilla (2 pinches), ground cinnamon (2 teaspoons), acacia honey (1 teaspoon), dried pears or dried apricots (2 tablespoons).

I wonder how one gets cooked pumpkin to crisp up. I can imagine pumpkin pulp becoming drier...

miso@gravy.ca

Louise Hagler in Miso Cookery offers a recipe for gravy: a roux is made from flour, oil and nutritional yeast. Once the roux begins to brown onion and garlic are added. Water is then added to form a thick and smooth gravy. The miso is dissolved in water then added to the gravy.

chips.chile@casserole.ca

From Jane Butel's Tex-Mex Cookbook come the instructions for "Frito Pie". Grease a casserole. Place a layer of crushed corn chips in the casserole. Layer with finely chopped onions followed by leftover chile stew. Sprinkle with additional corn chips. Top with shredded cheese. Bake until the cheese has melted and the chile is bubbly (Approximately 15 minutes in an oven preheated to 350 Fahrenheit).

leek.watercress@soup.ca

Dorothy R. Bates in The Tempeh Cookbook offers an interesting combination of flavours in a leek and potato soup with watercress. To a base of potato and leek soup that has been simmering for about thirty minutes is added chopped watercress and allowed to cook for the time it takes to brown tempeh cubes which are then served much like croutons floating in the soup that has been ladled into bowls.

poached@eggs.ca

She learnt her infallible method from a cookery book published by the Buckinghamshire Women's Institute and shares it with us in French country cooking. Elizabeth David describes the process thus

First boil a saucepan of water, and into this dip each egg whole, in its shell, while you count about thirty, then take it out. When it comes to actually poaching the eggs, have a pan of fresh water boiling, add a dessertspoon of vinegar, stir the water fast until a whirlpool has formed, and into this break the eggs, one at a time.

One minute to a minute and a half cooks them.

pumpkin@baked.ca

Native Harvests: Recipes and Botanicals of the American Indians by Barrie Kavasch provides an interesting technique on baking pumpkin. The washed pumpkin is baked whole, then pulp and seeds are removed and the pumpkin returned to oven to bake some more. When done "serve the whole pumpkin, scooping out individual portions at the table."

compote@dried.fruit.ca

From the Editors of East West Journal comes a collection of recipes for sugarless and dairy-free treats. Sweet & Natural Desserts prefaces a recipe for Dried Fruit Compote with the following remarks:

Serve old-fashioned compote any time of day. It is satisfying in itself and also makes a superb topping for cakes and puddings.

rice.cakes@hot.cold.ca

Monica Bayley in Black Africa Cook Book provides a simple recipe for rice cakes. Cooked rice is mixed with fried onions and curry powder with egg and flour to bind. The cook is instructed to "Drop by tablespoonsful into hot oil and fry was you would pancakes until brown on both sides. Can be eaten warm or cold."

strain.puree@chestnut.soup.ca

Michael Cox and Desda Crockett have a recipe for chestnut soup in The Subversive Vegetarian. The chestnuts are shelled, sauteed, and cooked in stock. The stock is strained, the chestnuts pureed. The stock is then poured over the puree for a slow simmer. Just before serving "creamy milk" is added to create an "evocative, warming, winter soup."

gnocchi@dumpling.delights.ca

Norman Kolpas in The Gourmet's Lexicon supplies a nice description of gnocchi and a titbit about slang usage.

Dumplings that serve as a popular alternative to pasta. They have a reassuring wholesomeness and simplicity: the name is slang for "dullard." A cooked paste of semolina, farina or mashed potato and flour is cooled and shaped into small rounds, balls or cylinders. The mixture may also include cheese or, for gnocchi verdi, spinach.

sava@mock.cheese.ca

The Cranks Recipe Book 1982 rpt. 1993 in the section on "Starters" has a recipe that involves equal parts margarine and soy flour seasoned with one crushed garlic clove and yeast extract. It is billed as a soy-alternative to dairy cheese. The margarine is melted over gentle heat and the flour is cooked in this melted margarine until the mixture thickens. Off heat the garlic and yeast extract are added. Variations include curry, tomato and herb.

rice.beans@meze.ca

Rosamond Man introduces a recipe for a dish of rice and broad beans ("Riz bil Ful") with an evocation of the aroma of coriander seed and garlic being gently heated.

Staying for the first time with my grandfather in Cairo, the smell of garlic frying drew me to the kitchen. It was in fact garlic and coriander, the much loved Egyptian combination, that was on the stove. Added to the fresh broad beans, and then stirred into rice, the cook was preparing his family's lunch. Thereafter, I celebrated trips to Cairo with a bowl of this delicious mix.

from The Complete Meze Table: Delicious food from Greece and the Middle East.

restaurant@functions.ca

Adam Gopnick reports on Alice Walters on a planned restaurant.

In a kind of mission statement, she has described the restaurant as she imagines it: "A platform, an exhibit, a classroom, a conservatory, a laboratory, and a garden. It must be, in a phrase, an art installation in the form of a restaurant, expressing the sensuousness of food and putting people in touch with the pleasures of eating and with the connection between those pleasures and sustainable agriculture. ... All the element of the collaboration, from the menu to the decor, will clearly demonstrate where the food comes from and how it was grown. The emphasis is going to be on the food, the kind that makes eating a soul-nourishing experience.

from "Alice in Paris" in Paris to the Moon

variations@lo.mein.ca

Linda Burum writes of Lo Mein in Asian Pasta: A cook's guide to the noodles, wrappers and pasta creations of the East

Toss-fried noodles (lo mein) are probably one of the most well-known Chinese noodle specialties. Unfortunately, in the United States they have been associated with canned fried noodles and other misinterpretations of the genre. In the hands of a good chef (or even a home cook with good ingredients), lo mein dishes can rise to the sublime. So varied are the possibilities, hundreds of different dished could be created from the master recipe [...] Once you get the knack of cooking the dish, you'll probably want to create your own lo mein specialty.

coconut@corn.bread.ca

3 Bowls: Vegetarian Recipes from an American Zen Buddhist Monastery by Seppo Ed Farrey with Myochi Nancy O'Hara has a section on baked goods where one can find a recipe for Coconut Corn Bread. It is made mouth watering by this side bar description:

This moist corn bread is an all-time favorite. For a hearty meal, serve with Pinto Bean Soup or Butternut-Black Bean Soup. Toast the corn bread and serve with maple syrup for breakfast, or enjoy it as a snack. If there is any left over, it won't last long.

presentation@mapo.tofu.ca

New Recipes From Moosewood Restaurant has a meatless version of the spicy Szechuan dish Mapo Tofu. It concludes with the following suggestion: "Serve on rice, garnished with walnuts and scallions."

mushrooms@stuffed.ca

Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Cookbook [with drawings by one Andrew Warhol] offers a recipe that sees onion, celery and the chopped stems of mushrooms fried in butter or margarine and seasoned with salt, pepper and Worcestershire sauce to create a mixture that is stuffed into mushroom caps that have been brushed with melted butter. The stuffed mushroom caps are then topped with shredded cheese and then baked in a moderate oven for fifteen minutes or until the cheese melts.

vegan@creme.brulee.ca

Simply MAGnificent is a cookbook produced by the Ministry of the Attorney General (Ontario) for the 2003 United Way campaign. Eya Greenland, Manager of Hearings at the Ontario Municipal Board supplied a recipe for Vegan Crème Brulée. It consists of coconut milk thickened with cornstarch and flavoured with brandy and maple syrup. Then of course the individual servings are finished by a generous sprinkling of granulated sugar that is caramelized by blow torch.

dumplings@lions.head.ca

Nina Simonds Classic Chinese Cuisine has a vegetarian section in which one finds a version of Lion's Head where the meatballs are made of bean curd mashed with minced black mushrooms, finely shredded carrots and minced water chestnuts. The dumplings are shaped then fried before being added to the soup and cabbage which is then baked in the oven.

spinach@spinach.ca

Nava Atlas in Vegetariana offers a recipe of spinach noodles served in sauce of mushrooms and sauted spinach. After the mushrooms have been sauted with garlic and the spinach has wilted, the cooked noodles are added to the pan along with cream and parmesan cheese, basil, oregano and a pinch of nutmeg.

marinated@eggplant.ca

Jamie Kennedy's Seasons in the section devoted to Fall has a number of recipes for preserves. Among them are instructions for putting by a bushel of eggplant. The operation has two stages. The first is to salt the rounds of eggplant in such a manner to allow them to drain. The second is to pack the eggplant rounds into jars with a mixture of olive oil, white wine vinegar and garlic and to process.

raisinless@rice.pudding.ca

Linda McCartney's Home Cooking has a recipe for rice pudding that is baked. The rice (1/2 cup) is mixed with sugar and milk (4 cups) and baked for 30 minutes then stirred, baked for 30 more minutes and stirred again and baked again for a final 30 minutes. The final result is said to have "a light golden crust."

oil.seasoning@aroma.ca

The Fragrant Vegetable by Martin Stidhma is subtitled "Simple Vegetarian Delicacies from the Chinese". It certainly is attuned to delicate flavours. Take for example the Hot Pepper Tofu with "Pork" recipe which describes the use of some classic stir fry seasonings thus

When oil is hot, reduce heat to medium-high, add garlic, gingerroot and green onion; stir-fry till the aroma rises.

So nice to cook with your nose too.

natto@tempura.ca

There are three parts to Lesley Downer's Japanese Vegetarian Cookery. The first is devoted to vegetables, the second to beans, soya products and eggs, and the last to grains. I discovered that natto as well as a filling with perilla for nori rolls could be made into tempura.

When cooked natto is quite transformed. It loses its stickiness and becomes crisp and nutty, and makes a most delicious tempura.

baked@potatoes.ca

The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker is an excellent source of know-how. I like the instructions on baked potatoes where I learnt not to prick them until the are half way done.

The best baked potatoes are flaky when served [...] The present rage for wrapping potatoes in foil will not allow them to become flaky as too much moisture is retained. [...] Bake the potatoes for 40 minutes to 1 hour, depending upon their size. When potatoes are 1/2 done, pull out rack, quickly puncture skin once with fork, permitting steam to escape. Return to oven and finish baking.