works of wanderlust

Category: tucking in

  • while I worked…

    …and my daughter had the day off from school, she baked.

    Tomorrow is Pi Day. March 14th. 3-14, if you write it out the proper way to look like the first three digits of the mathematical constant pi, 3.14…

    She baked a pie.

    It is an apple pie, with ingredients she found stuffed away in various cupboards, pantries, and freezers.

    While I worked the smell of fresh apple pie wafted through the house.

    Tomorrow is Pi Day.

    Tomorrow.

    There is a fresh apple pie on my countertop filling the house with lovely apple pie smells, and it must wait until tomorrow.

  • Moka Express

    In my quest to find a great replacement for my afternoon cup of coffee, having ditched the pod machines and spent a solid year tuning and enjoying my pour over game, Santa was kind enough to bring me a moka pot for Christmas this year.

    And I’ve been having a great, well-caffeinated time learning to use it.

    As I understand it, the moka pot is a bit old fashioned. Originating in Italy, it was a popular home brewing gadget after the Second World War but prior to the proliferation of the drip machine.

    A three part contraption, the funnel-filter in the middle is filled with ground coffee and as the water boils in the bottom chamber it pressure-rises through and up, percolating and filling the upper chamber with espresso-like coffee.

    The result is not a true espresso, though it’s close. An yet it’s much stronger than drip coffee.

    I’ve been mixing hot-to-boiling water into mine at a ratio of roughly 1 part moka brew to 2 parts water, and the result is an almost-Americano-like drink that is full of flavour and body in a way that even my best drip coffee pour overs have trouble achieving.

    About a scoop and a half of ground coffee fills the filter and less than ten minutes on my simmer burner has a steaming cup of better-than-average-joe in my mug and ready to fuel the afternoon office push of video meetings and budget plotting and government paperwork.

    None of this is push button, but between my pour overs (which are cheap, fast, and simple) and my moka pot americanos (which are slower, use a bit more raw ingredients, but overall tastier) I think I’m narrowing in on some old fashioned solutions to a modern problem: single serve simple afternoon coffee for the work-from-home desk jockey.

    At the end of the day, my whole scheme here is one of reducing the number of plastic, disposable pods I formerly used to create mediocre (and relatively expensive) afternoon cups. Pour overs and moka pots are about exploring something quick and easy in the coffee brewing effort.

    And overall I’m rating this adventure quite high.

    Also… the Coffee Singularity Has Arrived

    I asked ChatGTP how to make coffee with a moka pot. Here’s it’s answer:

    A Moka pot, also known as a stovetop espresso maker, is a simple and traditional way of making coffee. Here’s the basic process for using a Moka pot to make coffee:

    1. Fill the bottom chamber of the Moka pot with cold water, up to the level of the pressure valve.
    2. Add ground coffee to the metal filter basket in the middle chamber, tamping it down lightly.
    3. Assemble the Moka pot by placing the middle chamber with the coffee and filter basket on top of the bottom chamber with the water. Make sure the gasket and filter plate are properly in place.
    4. Place the Moka pot on the stovetop over medium heat. Do not use high heat or let the water boil.
    5. As the water in the bottom chamber heats up, it will begin to create pressure, forcing the water through the coffee and into the top chamber. Once the coffee has started to fill the top chamber, you can hear a gurgling noise, at this point you can remove it from the heat to prevent the coffee from getting burned.
    6. Once all the water has passed through the coffee, the pot will make a distinctive “hissing” sound, indicating that the coffee is ready. Carefully pour the coffee into cups, being careful not to burn yourself on the steam or hot metal.

    Note that, Moka pot often extract a strong coffee with a bold, rich flavor and a thick crema on top. Also remember, to clean the pot after each use, to ensure that you’ll always get the best flavor out of your coffee.

  • Scratch Soup

    Regular readers may recall that following a hearty New Years Eve dinner with friends, I upcycled the leftover beef bones and made a big pot of new years stock.

    Beef stock.

    Yum.

    …which, of course, can be used for all sorts of amazing things, and in particular homemade soup.

    I make soup quite frequently, but claiming that I follow any sort of recipe is quite far from reality.

    I tend to make scratch soup.

    Soup. From scratch. From whatever.

    For example, the scratch soup I made recently from my (also recently) made beef stock looked a little something like the photo below:

    Scratch soup has a little of this. And a little of that. And a little of this other thing, cooked together into a lovely, luscious meal in a bowl.

    For example, this bowl of scratch soup looked a little something like this:

    a (kinda) recipe

    2 cups beef stock
    2 cups of water
    1 tablespoon of flour
    1 tablespoon of olive oil
    handful leftover roast beef chunks
    the leftover peas and carrots from dinner
    a bit of leftover chopped onion
    the remains of that bag of dried pasta
    salt, pepper, and a squirt of hot sauce

    Using up leftovers, scrounging bits of vegetables from the refrigerator, gauging spices, and adding bits that make texture and flavours and spicyness to what you and your culinary audience likes… this is what makes a good scratch soup.

    Tomorrow’s soup might look a lot different. For example, I know we’ve got a half can of black beans, a partial bag of gnocchi and a leftover sausage in the fridge. Sounds good to me, but the day after that those same ingredients will be gone and I’ll be working with a new collection.

    Scratch soup is whatever you make it.

    Maybe you use leftovers.

    Maybe you keep a few key ingredients handy or frozen nearby.

    Maybe you go simple.

    Maybe you love complexity.

    Ultimately it’s your scratch, to itch with whatever you think would make a great soup.

  • taking stock, making stock

    New Years Day and it’s officially 2023.

    We host a party every new years with our camping friends. We don’t camp on new years eve, but instead we cook a big meal in our warm house and then wander over to the park to skate or sled or (if they’re not cancelled like last night) watch the fireworks.

    We play games. We talk. We drink and we cook a big meal.

    We splurged last night and spent inflation-grade prices for a huge piece of beef prime rib that we cooked and carved and served.

    Left over was a small stack of beef bones that I carefully shaved the best bits of meat off of and then promptly hid in a baggie at the back of the fridge. Gnawing on a big old bone would not be unheard of with our crowd, but I was saving these for my New Years Stock.

    Recipe

    beef bones and leftover trimmings
    onion
    garlic
    carrots
    parsley
    celery
    bay leaves
    spices
    water

    In a big ol’stock pot, bring it all to a boil then let it simmer for as long as you can. Four hours, for hours, for ever. Ideally about five to ten hours of cooking renders all the beef tissues and pulls all the aromatics from the vegetables and turns leftovers into a golden-hued liquid that is amazing for all your upcoming cooking needs.

    New Years is a time for taking stock.

    We make resolutions to be better or do better or feel better.

    I made stock, which was a kind of literal taking stock of some things about using up leftovers and cooking even more at home and thinking about flavours and ingredients and other foodie-type thoughts.

    Not a bad way to end the old year, and an even better way to start the new one.

    Happy New Year.

  • What a fruitcake?

    December 17 of 31 December-ish posts

    First, before you read any further and must feel that crushing disappointment of yet another recipe blog that doesn’t seem to put the recipes at the top of the page, while you scroll to the bottom and try to find something resembling an ingredient list, let me be honest and up front: if you’re here looking for a fruitcake recipe, there isn’t one.

    I often post recipes. This is not a recipe, this is:

    … something I should have cooked in 2022, but didn’t.

    Fruitcake.

    You know fruitcake.

    Cake. Fruit. But somehow both and neither at the same time.

    The cake that is more of a dense loaf full of what should be healthy ingredients but is masked in sugar and spices and alcohol to the point that no is even sure if they should hate it or love it or mock it for the curious monstrosity that it is. Booze-soaked gluten gluing together colourful lumps of sweet, sticky globules that may be candied nuts or sugary, dried fruits, or mystery orbs summoned from the Christmas dimension to haunt our dreams.

    I love weird things, though, and I especially love weird foods. A well-made fruitcake is weird and wonderful and a baking curiosity that often defies logic, reason, and sensible palates.

    I have never made a fruitcake.

    And it seems like it is one of those deserts where there is really only a short window, sometime around Halloween or early November, when bakers should be thinking about fruitcakes that might be needed for the holiday season, when fruitcakes will be tolerated in small doses for the holiday season, and outside of that short window fruitcakes are just not done.

    I thought about making a fruitcake in mid-November. We had just come back from New York and I was pondering my next bit of time off around the holidays and thinking I would like to break out the cookie recipe book and get some serious baking done. Fruitcake popped into my head, because while I do admit fruitcake is not everyone’s jam, if you’ve tried good fruitcake you understand how this concoction has survived the eons of time since that first batch of fruitcake was made… some of which may still survive in your grandparent’s holiday stash.

    I thought about making a fruitcake in mid-November, and then I went to the grocery store with a list. Yes, I made it as far as the market with an actual recipe that I’d researched online, suffering through hours of endless recipe scrolling, reading heartfelt, keyword-stuffed stories of precious family Christmas memories vaguely connected to the recipe hidden at the bottom of the page. I found a recipe that had ingredients I thought looked like something I could both find at my local grocery market and which collected together resembled a fruitcake I would enjoy.

    I thought about making a fruitcake in mid-November, but then pricing out the ingredients in the store gave me some serious pause. Pause. As in pause, put down the bag of dried apricots and step back slowly and carefully from the merchandise. I mean, we keep a well-stocked kitchen, but the collection of fruits, spices, nuts and booze that I needed for this recipe was creeping up well into the triple digits at the cash register.

    For my international readers, some comparisons: locally a 10kg bag of flour is worth about $15 right now, a liter of rum is worth about $30, and a week’s worth of groceries for a modest family of three averages at about $200. My fruitcake was going to set me back over $150 in ingredients. Y’know, like almost a week’s worth of groceries for cake ingredients … and all this for a cake that most everyone was likely going to turn up their noses because of it’s reputation. (You know what I’m talking about.)

    I thought about making a fruitcake in mid-November, but I didn’t.

    To that end, if you have read through this sad-sack story of fruitcake or merely speed-scrolled to the bottom looking for a recipe here’s the rub: I neither made a cake, nor saved the recipe, nor do I have a happy ending to this tale. I just didn’t do fruitcake in 2022.

    Maybe that’s a good thing.

    Maybe that one time I had great fruitcake will forever be a magical, weirdo memory untarnished in my mind.

    Maybe I would have crushed fruitcake, or maybe fruitcake would have crushed me.

    This will not be the year I figure that out.

    All that said, next year in 2023 when mid-November rolls around again there is one post I would like to scroll to the bottom of and find a great fruitcake recipe. This one? Maybe? Maybe you have a recipe you can post or link to in the comments. Maybe this could be an amazing fruitcake recipe page afterall? And like all those terrible recipe blogs, we can keep it hidden at the bottom of the page, tucked into the comments for someone to find after scrolling right to the end of the heartfelt story. Maybe.