Whining & Dining

Fruit Fly Diversion Techniques

The fruit flies are taking over my kitchen. I think there is a co-ordinated campaign to make me crazy. Even when I touch a cupboard door, a little fly zings overhead. But it makes me so sad to put all my fruit is in the fridge—not just because my glorious peaches are wrinkling but because I don’t like biting into cold fruit (I know talk to my dentist, use Sensodyne).  So I am on a mission to use it all up quickly. As usual my kids are working against me.  One child keeps asking for mangoes – which I have to say are not looking too good this time of year and also go against my attempts at eating local. (If you can’t eat local in August when can you?). And the other actually ate an entire bag of crappy supermarket frozen blueberries yesterday, ignoring my 12 dollar basket of blueberries in the fridge, and staining everything in the process – including his toothbrush.

So I am inspired to bake. A little heat will be worth turning my peaches and berries into a cake that I can take up north. I make this cake all the time in summer because it’s easy and I can throw whatever I want on top. And I like it when people are really impressed that I bake. It’s from a brilliant book called Classic Home Desserts by Richard Sax. Every baked item you can think of is in there in many different forms. Sax calls it the “All-Time Best Summer Fruit Torte” and he got it from Marian Burros who makes it with halved purple plums. It works with raspberries, apples and cranberries too.

All-Time Best Summer Fruit Torte

Makes one 8-inch or a thin 9-inch single layer cake. Can be doubled.

½ cup (one stick) unsalted butter, softened

¾ cup sugar

1 tsp pure vanilla

2 large eggs

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 tbsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

2 peaches or nectarines, peeled, pitted and sliced

½ cup blueberries

Sugar and cinnamon for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 350 and butter cake pan.

Beat (in bowl with wooden spoon, or with an electric mixer) the butter until light. Add sugar and vanilla until fluffy. Beat in egg at one at a time.

In a small bowl, add flour, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture and stir until just combined.

Scrape the batter into pan, smooth the top. Scatter the fruit randomly and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.

Bake until golden brown and baked through about 45 minutes. Cool on a rack, serve at room temperature.

Addendum: Eshun has just told me that making a fruit fly trap actually works. Here’s what she does: she adds balsamic vinegar, and a piece of old fruit into a shallow bowl, covers it with saran wrap and makes lots of teeny, tiny holes into the top so the fruit flies fly in and then get trapped and drown in the vinegar. And yes, she does get some satisfaction from watching them die.

These Could Have Been Sidebars

It's the little tips that we pick up on the playground that really make our lives a little easier. I was having a conversation with my friend Debbie about my recent paranoia about e-coli in fruit and veg (relating to the e-coli spinach scare and a feeding a bunch of relatives from Glasgow) which led to a discussion of how we wash our fruit and relatives (which does not remove ecoli) and she said she uses her salad spinner. Genius! The same day I read in Cook's Magazine that a few drops of cider vinegar does as good a job as those pricey fruit washes in cleaning bacteria from raw fruit and veg (and if you have ever read Cook's you know that they are very obsessive about every detail). So now I have a new routine: plop whatever fruit into the salad spinner with a few drops of vinegar get a random child to give it a swirl and then rinse it off and swirl again. It's sort of against my lazy inclinations and anything really dangerous is very hard to clean off but I feel like I have a little bit of control. I even got a better salad spinner which has a much more fun mechanism and gave the old one to the kids which is now their favourite Hot Wheels car wash.

Chicken recipes. Chicken is our fail safe meal around here and I have two easy recipes. Well not even recipes but I'll call them that. I picked up the new organic boneless chicken thighs at Loblaws and they had a honey mustard recipe on the back. I don't usually follow supermarket recipes (you know use the Green Label wildflower honey and then add the Memories of Syracuse sauce and garlic powder and voila). But I thought hey why not. Their recipe is one tablespoon of honey and one tablespoon of prepared mustard. Ok, so I don't even have prepared mustard in the house, so I added Dijon and then some hoisin sause and then some chilli garlic sauce for hubby and I and yum everyone loved it.

Honey Mustard Chicken

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

One pack boneless thighs, or two boneless breasts

1 ½ tbsp honey

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 tbsp hoisin sauce

2 tsp chilli garlic sauce

Mix together honey, mustard and hoisin. Put aside one third of sauce and add chilli garlic sauce. Spread first sauce on as much of the chicken that your kids will eat, spread the spicier sauce on how much you will eat. Put chicken in oven and bake for approximately 25 – 30 minutes or until done.

It's sweet and every single person ate it! Even the one who only wants plain, white chicken.

Roast Legs and Thighs

This isn't really a recipe but it is a very good method for roasting chicken pieces and even bigger chunks of meat. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Heat a small amount of oil in a cast iron or oven proof pan, salt chicken pieces and add to hot pan. Place chicken pieces skin side down in hot pan, flip over after three or four minutes. Cook the other side for three minutes and then place in oven for 30 minutes. When it comes out it will crispy and delicious for those who love the skin (me) or easily removable for those who don't (crazy people like my husband). If you are so inclined you could drain some of the fat off and fry up some onions and tomatoes in the pan and make a sauce. But that's for a more ambitious day.

Banana Chocolate Oatmeal Muffins

Everyone in my family loves this banana chocolate oatmeal bread. My husband may be the biggest fan (although he says he is allergic to bananas, but he’s not picky ... really).  Even in summer I bake up a batch every week. It’s a great snack for the park, and maybe the only part of a packed lunch that Z. eats at camp. It’s also the snack that I made for the ball hockey teams and both the boys were so proud that their friends loved it so much they made me promise to make the same exact snack next year. Sometimes the simplest things make your kids the happiest. In fact, I think I sold more copies of Whining and Dining at ball hockey then at some of our public appearances.

I always make mini muffins (sometimes with mini chips) because I find there is less waste, but it is equally good as a loaf (which is what Eshun prefers) or regular muffins. The muffins are very moist which is a bit of a problem in summer because the two squished muffins that are always left at the bottom of the muffin tin get a bit mouldy.  In fact, my four-year old came crying to me the other day because his big brother ate the last good muffin, the other ones were white.  “NO,” said Z.,” I ate a white muffin too.”

“ Oh,” said N., as he looked at him, “Daddy told me the white part would make me sick.”

At which point we spent the next hour reassuring Z. That, no the mould would not make him sick (though I think we weren’t positive). But he’s fine. And to think he used to be a picky eater!

We also brought some in when we were on Fresh Air on CBC Radio on Saturday, July 14.  They loved it and we loved being on the show.  I think they need us as monthly guests talking about kids’ food, but I’m not sure they know that yet. And in other media news, we got a mention in Sunday’s Toronto Sun.  Marilyn Linton had some nice things to say about the book and our approach. And we thought our 15 minutes were up...

Banana Chocolate Oatmeal Bread

Baking is often a last-minute “What am I going to do with the kids on this rainy day?” or “I’d like to avoid doing laundry” kind of thing, which means we don’t usually plan well enough to have taken the butter out of the fridge or freezer in time to get it to room temperature. So any recipe that calls for melted butter means you don’t have to walk around with two sticks of butter softening in your back pocket. This is the banana bread recipe you have been looking for: soft, moist, loaded with bananas, a bit of oatmeal for good health and chocolate for added kid appeal.

3⁄4 cup sugar

1⁄2 cup unsalted butter, melted

2 large eggs

1⁄2 cup quick-cooking rolled oats

1 1⁄2 cups mashed banana (3–4 very ripe bananas)

1⁄4 cup buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla

1 1⁄2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1⁄2 tsp salt

1⁄3 cup chocolate chips

Preheat Oven to 350F

Grease and flour a loaf pan.

Combine sugar and butter in a large bowl and stir until uniform. Add eggs, one at a time, and stir to incorporate. Add oats, banana, buttermilk and vanilla; stir until uniform. Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl; stir with a fork to blend.

Add flour mixture to banana mixture one third at a time; stir until just combined. Stir in chocolate chips.

Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes or until loaf is dark brown and a cake tester comes out clean. Cool bread in pan for 10 minutes, then run a knife along the edges to loosen, turn out of baking pan and cool on a rack.

Makes 1 loaf.

Tip: These also make delicious muffins and mini-muffins (try it with mini chocolate chips!). Muffins take about 20 mins and minis bake for 13 mins.

Partying with the Silver Palate

Eshun and I went to a reception for the Silver Palate Cookbook, 25th Anniversary Edition where authors Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso were actually there (yes, to cooks these people are celebrities in the same way that Olivia Newton John is a celebrity).  We mused about the cookbook's iconic status, celebrated recipes and how it still sits on the shelves of almost everyone we know.

They served dishes from the book which were comfortably tasty. Although some were a little bit of a tastebud timwarp like the asparagus wrapped in brie and bacon which only needed a litlle sun dried tomato pesto and some John COUGAR Mellancamp and we could all be back in the 80s discussing how shoulder pads really flatter our figure...

I was happy to re-taste the famous Chicken Marbella which my roomate Catherine and I once made for a dinner party while we were undergraduates.  We thought we were very sophisticated in our ability to pull of a dinner party. We just ignored the fact that our friends would have been happy with a 2-4 and some beer.

Many teenagers found their love of cooking in the Silver Palate cookbook. It was one of Eshun's first books and she still bakes the Lemon Pound Cake.  Another foodie friend, Clare swears by the Orange Poppyseed Cake and Joanne Yolles, pastry chef at Pangea and the inventor of Scaramouche's famous Coconut Cream Pie bakes the Chunky Apple and Walnut Cake (but skips the glaze). There were even some famous media and foodie types who brought their own books to be signed.

The authors, who supposedly do not speak to each other, said their favourites were the tarragon chicken salad, salmon mousse and baked ham. Not suprisingly, they had made all those dishes on the Today Show earlier this month.

The Silver Palate was also one of the first cookbooks to have sidebars, tips and anecdotes down the side. So I guess that we are indebted to them for breaking the mould when it came to cookbooks because Whining and Dining also has sidebars, tips and anecdotes but we try to be funny. Hopefully, we will also be celbrating the re-issue of our phenomonally successful book in 25 years, but I'm pretty sure we will still be speaking.  Check back in 2032.

I was going to post the recipe for Chicken Marbella for old-time's sake but I very much doubt your picky eaters, or most kids would eat something that is made with capers and prunes. Eshun swears it's a great party dish and she made it for 100 people, so if you are having a summer party check it out!

The Silver Palate Carrot Cake is what all carrot cakes after 1982 tried to be.

Carrot Cake

Silver Palate Cookbook

10 to 12 portions

INGREDIENTS

Carrot Cake

• Butter, for greasing the pan

• 3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

• 3 cups sugar

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1 tablespoon baking soda

• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

• 1 1/2 cups corn oil

• 4 large eggs, lightly beaten

• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

• 1 1⁄2 cups shelled walnuts, chopped

• 1 1⁄2 cups shredded coconut

• 1 1⁄3 cups puréed cooked carrots

• 3⁄4 cup drained crushed pineapple

• Cream Cheese Frosting (recipe follows)

Cream Cheese Frosting

• 8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

• 6 tablespoons (3⁄4 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

• 3 cups confectioners’ sugar

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• Juice of 1⁄2 lemon (optional)

DIRECTIONS

Carrot Cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease two 9-inch springform pans.
2. Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl.Add the oil, eggs, and vanilla. Beat well. Fold in the walnuts, coconut, carrots, and pineapple.
3. Pour the batter into the prepared pans. Set on the center rack of the oven and bake until the edges have pulled away from the sides and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, 50 minutes.
4. Cool on a cake rack for 3 hours. Fill and frost the cake with the cream cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

1. Cream together the cream cheese and butter in a mixing bowl.
2. Slowly sift in the confectioners’ sugar and continue beating until fully incorporated. The mixture should be free of lumps. 3. Stir in the vanilla, and lemon juice if desired. Frosting for a 2-layer cake

Bad Thai or Meal from a Lazy Cook

The other night, I decided to make Pad Thai (page 127 of Whining and Dining) for the family. This was necessitated by the fact that I had not been shopping and all I had was some Thai sticks (rice noodles) and frozen shrimp. I was also motivated by Doppleganger at 50 Books who said our recipe was the best Pad Thai she ever made. So I mix up the sauce (but I was too lazy to find the paprika which is hiding out on some high shelf -- knowing that if I got the chair out to stand on, my one and half year old would be perched right beside me trying to get into the cupboards and that just didn't seem worth it) and it tastes fine, but to be honest is really lacking a little zing due to the hiding paprika). I then decide to use broccoli, and some red pepper because I already had some sliced that had been rejected the night before. I don't have tofu or chicken but what the hell the kids like shrimp the best anyways.

I boiled up some water to soak the rice noddles and I let them sit. I saute the shrimp. I saute the broccoli, and the peppers.  I pull out some broccoli for son number two without sauce, I pull out some shrimp for both sons who are allergic to sauce and then i throw few that i have left with the veggies, so far so good except there are hardly any shrimp waiting for sauce because I have to assume that the boys will eat more than they really will, but if they want more and they are all saucy -- then we get some attitude....

I turn to the noodles -- which are a bit thicker than normal pad thai noodles and they seem, a little bit hard but I toss them into the wok anyway. Throw on the sauce and wait....and wait...and wait, nope noodles still to hard to eat. Now I have to react as a professional -- Eshun and I often say that it is the ability to fix problems in the kitchen that makes us good cooks.  So I add a little stock (yes, from the box) and put a lid on the noodles, veggies, shrimp and sauce. And let it steam, I also add the plain noodles to boiling water. And then ... everything turns to mush. My broccoli is brown, my peppers are just flacid strips with the inedible skin. The noodles are a morass of white -- blah.

But I didn't say anything negative (maybe they won't notice!) I just put it down on the table. The boys had their plain noodles and plain shrimp and plain broccoli. And the rest of us had mushy noodles, mushy broccoli and rubbery shrimp. YUM! And it tastes all the much better knowing that I am a cookbook author!

But it is a delicious recipe...which I unfortunately can't post because we are over our quota of postable recipes. But I will post something else that is out there in the stratosphere soon.

Blueberry Cornmeal Muffins

Eshun really, really loves these muffins, and yes, the kids like them too. They have a pleasant crunch from the cornmeal and are a pretty yellowish colour dotted with blueberries.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup cornmeal
• ¾ sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 ½ cups fresh or frozen blueberries
• 1 ½ cups buttermilk
• 3 large eggs, beaten
• ¾ vegetable oil
• ½ tsp vanilla
• ½ tsp grated lemon rind

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. Grease a muffin pan or line with muffin papers.
3. Combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl; stir with a fork to blend. Add blueberries and toss to coat with flour mixture.
4. Combine buttermilk, egg, vegetable oil, vanilla, and lemon rind in a separate bowl. Add flour mixture to buttermilk mixture and stir until just combined.
5. Spoon batter into a muffin pan (filling cups ¾ full).
6. Bake for 20 minutes or until muffins are lightly golden at edges and baked through.

Makes 18 muffins or 30 mini muffins.

Banana French Toast

The banana adds a little sweetness that even fruit-a-phobes may not notice. You can use any absorbent bread (we've even used stale whole wheat when desperate).

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• Pinch salt
• 2 ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 baguette (preferably day old), cut into ¾ inch slices
• 3 tbsp butter
• Icing sugar & maple syrup (optional)

Directions:

1. Combine eggs, milk cinnamon and salt in large bowl; whisk to combine.
2. Stir in mashed banana.
3. Add baguette slices to egg mixture in batches. 
4. Use a fork to squish the bread and soften the crust so the bread soaks up the mixture.
5. Melt butter in a nonstick frying pan over medium heat. Add as many baguette slices as will fit; fry for about 2 minutes per side or until slices are golden.
6. Serve immediately, either plain, dusted with icing sugar or drizzled with maple syrup.

Makes 4 servings.