Because. Paris.

I read an excellent article this week about a woman who walked out of hate. She was born into it, grew up with it, excelled at spreading it, and then learned to hate the hate. She was the granddaughter of the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church. And her journey out of the church and away from her family was told in The New Yorker.

From the deepest most intransigent place she came to understand her opponents and then be convinced of their opinions - and it all started when she decided to confront her enemies on twitter. So it's possible to grow out of hate.

I have to believe it. In the wake of the Paris attacks on Friday the 13th, which amplified the muted effects of the horrific bombings in Beirut, the attack on the Russian plane, I have to believe that it's possible for some to travel through hate and out the other side - if it doesn't kill them.

I've been struck by a number of things - the racism that leaks out of normal looking people when they think they've got their chance to spread hate, and the reaction of people now who won't stand for it, who will marshall their energies to help fund the rebuilding of a burned down mosque in Peterborough, who will march in protest of a violent attack on a Muslim woman in a Toronto neighbourhood, who will start an online social media hashtag pledging to support any Muslim transit riders who feel threatened - and who keep their wits about them as we face the biggest refugee crisis since the second world war. Of course we'll take them in. Of course we must. If we don't, then I don't know who we are anymore.

Also, I heard historian Margaret McMillan make an important point on CBC Radio yesterday. When a political leader 'declares war' on these people, he or she is giving them the legitimacy of a state. "These are criminals," she said. By 'declaring war', it gives them power.

And, as usual, in my experience with the more horrible side of our humanity - there is the good. The people who offered their houses to strangers on Friday night in Paris, the taxi drivers who turned off the meters to offer free rides home, the people who jumped on others to protect them from the crazed bullets. As Trevor Noah put it so beautifully the other night on The Daily Show, "Our prayers will be with Paris. Our prayers will be with the people. But let's not forget before we fight, to love."

Two weeks ago I made French Onion Soup - and yes it was for the first time. Not only making it, but actually eating it. Do not ask me how I made it past the half century mark, with a chunk of that time spent in Quebec, avoiding this culinary version of a fleecy blanket. It was a bitter November day - raining like global warming was coming with vengeance in its heart. So it was perfect. Last week, I mentioned it to my friends on Facebook and promised the recipe...and so, now when food can comfort so many, I am posting about onion soup. The French kind. I am, after all, one sixteenth French. Okay the only thing thinner than that blood, would be beef stock. Of which there's plenty here.

C'était delicieuse. Oh, and...Je suis humain.

French Onion Soup - from the clever cusses at Epicurious

5 tbsp unsalted butter, divided
3 lbs medium sized vidalia onions, halved lengthwise, peeled and thinly sliced
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/2 tsp sugar
1 1/2 cups dry white wine
6 cups beef broth*
10 sprigs thyme
2 bay leaves
1 baguette
1 garlic clove, cut in half lengthwise
2 tsp sherry, which I did not have, so I used Madeira wine
4 oz Gruyère cheese, grated

*My dear vegetarians, you could use vegetable broth, just make sure you really cook those onions down to a deep caramelized colour - that's where you'll pull the most flavour.

Serves 4. Recipe calls for 4 - 16 oz oven-safe ramekins - I have 12 oz ones which were plenty big enough and gave us leftovers.

In your large Dutch oven, melt 3 tbsp of the butter over medium heat. Add the oil and the onions, and cook about 15 minutes, or until softened. Then add the salt, pepper and sugar and continue cooking until deep, deep golden brown. Stir occasionally. This should take about 40-45 minutes. Turn down the heat if you're getting scorched onions instead of caramelized onions. Be patient. (Biggest lesson I always have to remind myself of in cooking - patience.)

Once you've got good colour (this will be where the flavour is), add the wine and increase the heat cooking until all the liquid has evaporated.

Tie the thyme and bay leaves with string in a bundle and add to the pot along with the beef broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 20 to 30 minutes. Remove from heat and whisk in the remaining 2 tbsp of butter.

Turn on the broiler. Cut two slices of baguette per ramekin. Place on a rimmed baking sheet and place in oven until crispy, not brown - just over a minute. When they're done rub one side of the bread with the garlic and set aside.

Put the ramekins on the baking sheet. Add a 1/2 tsp of sherry, or Madeira, to the bottom of the bowls. Carefully ladle in the onion soup. Add two slices of baguette and top the bread with the grated cheese. Carefully put under the broiler until melted (which only took a couple of minutes for me, although the recipe says for 4-8 minutes).

The soup can be made up to 3 days ahead. Or it can freeze for six months. It was also delicious the next night.

Because. Parce que...Paris.

photo credit: http://greatermalaysia.com/2015/11/14/she-made-a-distasteful-comment-on-the-paris-attacks-his-response-deserves-a-standing-ovation/

Lessons, Tips and Facts from Our Chef

It's great to be with a chef as he cooks something you're about to try cooking too. You can watch and listen and ask questions - here are some of the surprises I picked up from Chef Ian in my first 7 weeks of cooking school...you might already know these...but I was surprised by some of them.

Never stir stock.

Add bones to the pot, add cold water just to cover.

Bring it just to the boil, then to a slow simmer, skimming off the scum as it rises to the surface. (sounds like life doesn't it?)

Then add the vegetables and herbs.

For dark stock – use veal and beef bones...and knuckle bones give off a lot of gelatin…you’re looking for a gelatinous stock.

Remove the vegetables and bones when done and continue boiling down until you have a condensed stock – much easier to store in the freezer and then add water when you need to reconstitute. So don't add salt until you're making something with it.

The difference between broth and stock? Broth is made of stock and other things you add…stock is just stock…it’s the foundation of sauces, soups, and ahem, broth.

Cooking times are longer than you think – about 4-6 hours for chicken stock, 12-24 for dark stock – a slow cooker is good for making stock overnight.

Always cool down the stock by putting the pot in the sink and running cold water under it – needs to cool down fast. Then get it in the fridge or freezer.

To create a sachet for some stocks you can split a leek lengthwise, lay the bay leaf and thyme sprigs in the middle and then put the leek together again and tie with string. 

Tie sachets to the handle on the pot to make them simple to remove later.

Chef only cooks with black pepper. First night he passed around black and white pepper for us to smell - white pepper reminded me of horses or farms or something. Then he said he only uses black pepper because white pepper smells like a barnyard to him. But smell both and see which you prefer.

Use a steel on your knife every time you use it – sharpen it, professionally, once a year. (Unless it's Japanese, then you should check whether you need a special diamond or ceramic steel.)

Hold a chef’s knife with the thumb and forefinger at the front edge of handle…curl the other fingers under the handle.

Your other hand holds the food - like a lemon. Imagine you're holding a lemon with your palm down..see the shape of your fingers? That's how they should rest on top of the food you're cutting. The flat part of your middle finger the most prominent, nails tucked back, your thumb and pinky slightly behind.

Slice away with your food and your knife at opposing 45 degree angles - so you form a triangle - you, your knife arm, and the food held by your other hand…

How to slice vegetables – it's a rocking motion, the knife sliding forward through the food…blade shouldn't have to leave the board.

The food doesn’t move, the knife and your hand do.

Buy a rubber shelf liner at the dollar store to put under your cutting board to prevent it from slipping. Or in a pinch, lay wet paper towel under the board.

Use flat leaf parsley for cooking, use curly parsley for garnish. Curly leaf parsley releases too much chlorophyll turning food green.

Add salt, pepper and any citrus at the end.

Making sauce - either your roux is hot and your liquid is cold...or your liquid is hot and your roux is cold.

Roux: equal parts fat (butter/oil etc) to flour mixed together.

I'll pull together another list as we move along...If you have any to add, please do...let's build up our tipsheet together.

freezer loading

I have a weekend at hand that some would find tiresome - but not a foodblogger - and not at this time of the year.

I'm cooking.

And piling up stuff in the freezer. Simple, flavorful, single portion meals.

It all started with two basics: a pot of chicken stock that has slowly perfumed the house with comfort and security - then with tomato sauce that added spark and garlic to the room.

And these recipes both start the right way.

I had to chop an onion. I love the ritual of chopping onions. It anchors me - to that moment - to something good - to health - to providing - to pleasure.

I love how onions look at the bottom of the pot as they sweat out their essence, right before they start browning. And the sound of a wooden spoon thudding against a metal pot. Heaven.

Then the celery. One of the most underrated vegetables - essential to stock, and well, to just crunching on. My Mum will cook celery and make a white pepper sauce for it. No, really, it's good.

And carrots. If you've got that, onions, celery, carrots...you've got the essence of stock.

I've discovered one secret for me about stock - not to let it boil. Mark Bittman writes about that in How to Cook Everything - to bring it just to the boil, and then let it simmer with a bubble or three breaking the surface.

So far...so good.

Today I bring together the soup, now that the chicken stock is sitting in the fridge, layered in a blanket of fat, ready to be skimmed. With fingers crossed, I'll dig in to see if we've achieved that jelly-type stock. I feel accomplished when it glops into a pot.

Today will send my nose into ecstasy. Soup 1: Butternut squash, carrot and ginger....Soup 2: Onions, garlic, sweet potato, zucchini, red pepper, and whatever else I find in the fridge, magically pureed with a hand blender and then finished off with sprinklings of mile-long leeks I found at the grocer's yesterday.

How can life not be wonderful?

I upped the ante yesterday and spiked the nose after the stock was bubbling on its own, by cooking up some smoked sausage created by the good Mennonites of southwestern Ontario. And I teamed it with a homemade tomato sauce, that's slightly sweet and rich. They meet, compete, then settle into something more than their separate parts.

I'll try some other stuff too - I've found some recipes for single-serving frittatas (isn't that a great idea?), banana bread, vanilla cupcakes, lemon loaf - all of this meant to be freezable in single servings. Easy to grab and heat and eat.

I will not succumb to microwaveable, boxed food...nope.

If you have any suggestions for easy, freezer stuff, please let me know.

Here is the recipe for the chicken stock - the basics. Followed by the tomato sauce. If you have these in your repertoire, and your freezer - you can't be surprised by anyone for dins...you're ready.


- Chicken Stock -
adapted from Mark Bittman, How to Cook Everything

"Is stock essential for every soup? No. Will it improve almost any soup? Yes," - the Bittman.

3-4 pounds chicken parts, rinsed and patted dry - I bought a bag of chicken legs and wings from my favourite organic meat seller
1 cup roughly chopped onion - I don't peel it, the skin adds colour to the stock
1 cup roughly chopped carrot
1/2 cup roughly chopped celery - um...I mean this...celery:essential...seriously
1 sprig of fresh thyme - or pinch of dried thyme
1/2 bay leaf
several sprigs of fresh parsley
1tsp salt - he says more if necessary, I added a little more - and bear in mind you're still better off than with those boxed or canned stocks, salt wise. Check out a soup can next time you're in the grocery store - look at the sodium content...it will knock you over.
About 4 quarts water - I used a little less, I top the water to just cover everything.

So here are the instructions -
Put all that in a pot.

Easy huh?

Okay here are the rules:

Bring just about to a boil, then partially cover and adjust the heat so the mixture sends up a few bubbles at a time. Cook until the meat falls from the bones. Start this early enough that you can leave it on the stove to do its thing at least 3-4 hours.

The recipe says 2 hours minimum, but I think the crucial part is the meat falling off the bones, and if you can, break the bones, because by then they will have softened enough to surrender their gelatinous features to the stock.

Strain the whole mess into a big bowl. Press on the vegetables and chicken to get as much of the juice as you can. Then refrigerate it (so make sure you have room for the bowl in the fridge - and make room before you pick up the bowl - learn from my mistakes...). When the fat has solidified on the top, spoon it off. You can strain it at this point through cheesecloth, or paper towel. Then put it into individual containers and freeze if you like. It freezes very well.


Tomato Sauce - by me, honed over the years

Olive oil - enough for the bottom of the pan to get the onions started
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped (I could use more, you can use one if you're garlic shy)
1 carrot, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1/2 can tomato paste
1 28 oz can of tomatoes (I've found one company that doesn't add salt to their toms)
1 tsp or more dried basil (in this case dried is better than fresh, but you could add chopped fresh basil at the end before you serve it - it really kicks it up)
salt and pepper to taste
1 tbsp sugar

In a pot, with some olive oil, add the chopped onion over medium heat. Stir and cover with a lid. Check on them, don't let the onions brown. Using the lid and building up steam in there will slow down any browning process, as long as you don't have the burner on meltdown. Let them cook until they get translucent and creamy looking.

Add the garlic.

As soon as the garlic looks like it's starting to cook, add the other vegetables. Let them cook for a few minutes.

Add the tomato paste. Stir it into the vegetables. (You can freeze the remaining paste, don't let it get furry in the can, in the fridge, like I've done countless times)

Add the tomatoes. Break them up with a knife or wooden spoon (but step back before the tomatoes get the ultimate revenge and blow seeds all over your nice, white shirt - again learn from my mistakes).

Add the basil, salt, pepper, and sugar.

Bring to a boil and then lower the heat and let it reduce for at least 20 minutes. Taste at this point and see if you need any more salt or sugar. Then you can simmer it for a while. This is one of those sauces that definitely works the next day.

I cooked some sausage while the sauce simmered and added it in small slices at the end just before I served it. Because it was smoked, the sausage just boosted a new flavour into the whole thing - but if you don't like the taste of smoked stuff, just use whatever sausage you like.

I've put the remainder into small containers to freeze.


If you try these recipes, let me know if these work for you. Suggestions are welcome for sure...

Off to make the soup now - and fill the house with love.

Best of the day. Peace.

Nic