Recipe: Five Spice Tofu Lettuce Wraps

Presenting yesterday's lunch.

Also today's lunch.

Probably tomorrow's lunch, too, because it's really frickin' tasty.

My recent quest to eat lots of plants and be healthy and shit has led to me playing around with a variety of tofu recipes. I've done cutlets (with General Tao sauce wilted spinach--yum!) and stir fries (with vindaloo and pees--yum the second!), but my favourite so far is these lettuce wraps.

I love them so much that I want to share them with you. They're plant-filled, gluten-free, and vegan (as long as you buy or make a sauce without any gluten or animal products in it). Yay!

My Year With Marvel: Tiny Deadpool's Taco Tour

Early this month, I headed on down to America for my birthday. The United States, unlike my part of Canada, is littered with Mexican restaurants. You can’t go very far without running into a quality purveyor of tacos, and I decided to take full advantage of this by going on as full-on a taco tour of Fargo, North Dakota as one can in two days.

I brought Tiny Deadpool, of course. Dude loves tacos. How could I even think of leaving him out?

Tiny Deadpool and I began our quest for tacos at an unlikely venue: Famous Dave’s, a barbeque joint that recently added “urban tacos” to their lunch menu. I’m a sucker for their catfish (which shows to best advantage on a po’boy, though catfish fingers are also delish), so of course I had to get the catfish tacos.

Each one contained a goodly amount of crispy baked catfish, plus greens, spicy remoulade, jalapenos, and lime. (The last time I had these, the chef put the lime wedges in the tacos, which was weird and uncalled for. Thankfully, this chef knew enough to stick ‘em on the side so I could just squeeze the juice on.) Tiny Deadpool and I both approved.

Recipe: Cream Gravy with Kale and Bacon

Friends, I've fallen into a kale rut.

Kale is a staple of my diet in the summer, when it's cheap and fresh and oh-so easy to turn into something delicious and nutritious, but I fear I almost always prepare it the same way: braised, with bacon. Braised kale with bacon is undeniably tasty, but it's also... well, the same thing over and over again.

Last weekend I decided to branch out. I decided to experiment.

Another of my favourite dishes is cream gravy, a sauce popular in the American South. Cream gravy combines bacon or sausage drippings with milk or cream to make a thick, delectable splodge that works well atop biscuits, fried potatoes, or any old thing you'd eat with regular gravy.

I started wondering how it'd taste with kale in the mix.

Pretty durned good, as it turns out.

I know, I know; the picture above, she does not inspire confidence. This dish ain't gonna win any beauty contests, but trust me: if you like kale and cream gravy all by themselves, you're gonna love them together.

Recipe: Beef and Bacon Pie

A slightly different version of this recipe originally appeared on my old blog, Stella Matutina.

A week or so ago, my grandmother issued one of those vague, sometime-in-the-near-future-maybe-possibly dinner invitations.

To give you some context, my grandmother is a disabled eighty-eight-year-old who can no longer cook. So while this was a nice gesture, I figured it maybe wasn't the best thing for her.

"Why don't I bring you Mother's Day supper instead?" I asked.

"That would be fine," she said, quick as you please.

My grandparents are both ever so fond of beef and bacon pie, my favourite recipe from A FEAST OF ICE AND FIRE by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer. They love the sweetness the fruit imparts, and we all agree the splash of vinegar adds just the right level of acidity to the gravy. Since it's our favouritest pie in all the land, I knew it was the perfect choice for Sunday supper and a good one to share with y'all to boot.

Alas, I'm afraid there's no way to make it suitable for vegetarians. It's meat or nothin' here.

Recipe: Zuppa Pavese

I love me some soup. It's a convenient, tasty meal that either comes together quickly or can be made well in advance, making for a quick supper somewhere down the line. It's good in winter; it's good in summer. Ain't nothin' bad about a bowl of soup.

A recent trip to the library turned up THE SOUPMAKER'S KITCHEN by Aliza Green. Soup cookbooks hold a special fascination for me, so I picked it up, flipped through it, and paused at recipe for zuppa pavese. This Spanish peasant soup incorporates a poached egg and toasted bread--too tempting for anyone with a penchant for runny yolks to resist. One look at the picture and I knew I had to make it for myself.

Zuppa pavese is supposedly the result of a quick scramble to make a king's supper, so it uses only a handful of ingredients most people probably have on hand. Its simplicity in no way detracts from its flavour. This is amazing soup, y'all, even if you use cheap ingredients. The egg yolk and the cheese enrich the broth, the parsley makes it pop, and the bread absorbs all the best qualities of everything else in the bowl.

Burgers I Have Known

Last June, I hobnobbed with a group of people I know mostly, if not solely, via the Internet. When you hang out with people you’ve befriended in this fashion, you discover you know all sorts of little things about them--preoccupations that crop up over and over in their online life. And they know similar things about you.

Turns out, just about everyone knows I love burgers.

This surprised me. Yeah, I do love burgers, but I didn’t think I was terribly open about it. I won’t eat any old burger; it’s gotta be quality, baby, or I’ll have none of it. I so seldom come across a specimen that meets my exacting standards that my burger-love tends to fade into the background most of the time.

When I do find a perfect burger, though--a rich mouthful of juicy goodness topped with the most delectable add-ons in all the land--I tell everyone. I go on and on and on about it, both in real life and on social media. I keep on talkin’ it up years after the fact, because there is no statute of limitations of beefy awesomeness.

And my friends cottoned on to my enthusiasm. Imagine that.

Recipe: Enchilada Peppers

Earlier this week, I found myself with a lone green pepper, some leftover chicken breast, and a craving for green enchilada sauce.

There was only one solution. I brainstormed a few ideas based on enchiladas I have known, looked at a couple of stuffed pepper recipes to make sure I understood the technique, then got down to the thrilling business of culinary invention.

The results, if I may say, were excellent. The brown rice and the chicken give the filling a satisfying weight and texture, while the cream cheese adds a wee bit of tang and the enchilada sauce brings the whole thing together.

As an added bonus, the peppers are gluten free and a great way to use leftovers rice and chicken. You can easily increase the amount to accommodate any number of diners, and I'm sure tofu or TVP would work well in place of the chicken if you fancy a vegetarian option.

Recipe: Sausage Latkes

Latkes in progress. Those nearest to the camera are sausage-free.

Now, I'd never tell you Hanukkah is the only time you can eat latkes, but it's certainly an excellent excuse to devour a large pile of the things. And since Hanukkah is well underway, the time for latkes is at hand.

Whee!

Since I can never leave well enough alone with any recipe that crosses my path, I've made a few changes to the standard latkes I discovered in Joan Zoloth's JEWISH HOLIDAY TRADITIONS. To begin with, I replaced the white onions with green; a simple enough change, and a logical one given my eternal hatred for white onions. The green onion latkes were a success, praised by all comers.

I made them several times before that fateful night when I asked myself whether I could combine my constant craving for latkes with my deep love of sausages.

I cooked up some chicken sausages, gave 'em a chop, and mixed them into my latke batter.

Best. Idea. EVER.

The Sunday Salon: Crepes

When I was a little kid, my father often made crepes late in the evening, sometimes even after I'd gone to bed. This lent them an air of mystery. I grew up thinking crepes were a nocturnal food, reserved for sundown and beyond.

In reality, my father timed his crepe-making to accommodate the batter's need for a two-hour rest. He mixed the ingredients when he got home from work, then waited the appropriate stretch before he warmed up his crepe pan and got down to it.

While I was somewhat dismayed to lose my romantic view of crepes, knowing the secret did make them more accessible to me. I realized that hey, I didn't have to wait for my father to get the late-night crepe-making urge. I could whip up a batch for myself.

Crepes have since become one of my staples, albeit a less frequent one due to the planning involved. They're great with both savory and sweet fillings, and while they can be fiddly at first, they're a lot easier than one might suspect.