Thai twist on gazpacho

Quick, before summer blazes out tomorrow - this heat wave is unbelievable and I kind of love it - we need to cover another hot weather recipe.

During one of the best long cottage weekends of this summer, my friend Carol made this gazpacho as a starter for a hot Sunday evening (which ended up a pouring-rain evening). We stayed indoors, had drinks, did crosswords, read the paper, pulled out magazines, and had a lovely, peaceful, contented evening with each other - all five of us, plus our dog.

Carol is our go-to person for gazpacho. She make the beautiful, classic tomato-based Spanish soup (or liquid salad as I saw it called on one website - ugh) which turns out exactly as it should every time - fresh, spicy, cold, delicious.

Its origins are from Andalusia, southern Spain and various opinions say the Romans or Greeks had a similar bread and garlic based soup. But I like to agree with those who say it was the Moors. It is a great thirst quencher - and women in the fields used to make it in big wooden bowls called 'dornillos' and feed it to the farm workers.

This time Carol tried a new recipe that we loved and can now be firmly in her repertoire: Thai Gazpacho Verde. It blends the Andalusian classic with Thai flavours. Carol found the recipe in the summer issue of the always excellent Food & Drink from the LCBO (liquor stores in Ontario are run by the government). The recipe is by Toronto food writer and recipe developer Eric Vellend and he brings a great twist to gazpacho, no tomato. It's all about the cucumber and avocado and the great Thai flavours that slip in there. And cucumbers are bursting out all over the grocery stores...so this is definitely the time. There is apparently a saying in Spanish, 'de gazpacho no hay empacho' which means 'you can never get too much of a good thing or too much gazpacho.'

Thai Gazpacho Verde - serves 4

2 large English cucumbers, peeled
1 small avocado, halved, pitted, peeled
1 clove garlic, minced
2/3 cup water
3 tbsp fresh lime juice
1 tbsp fish sauce
1/4 tsp salt

2 tbsp thinly sliced shallots
1 thinly sliced hot red chili pepper
1 cup loosely packed mint leaves (you have me at mint)
1/4 cup finely chopped dry-roasted peanuts

Cut cucumbers into medium chunks. Dice the avocado. Put them into a blender and add garlic, water, lime juice, fish sauce and salt. Blend til smooth. Cover and put in the fridge for at least two hours. (Recipe says it will keep in the fridge for up to 2 days.)

Place the shallots in a small bowl and cover with cold water. Cover and refrigerate for 10 minutes. Drain and pat with paper towel. Place in bowl with chili and mint. Toss.

Pour the soup into serving bowls. Put a mound of the shallot/mint/chili mixture on top and then sprinkle with the peanuts.

Summer Slice

Seen on our tree-lined street one hot, humid evening last week - Dad riding the bike. Daughter, about five, in the seat behind. He riding them home from the park. She singing her lungs out: "You're just too good to be true, can't take my eyes off of you, you're just like heaven to touch"...head bobbing from side to side as she let out her song. As he went by Dad said, shrugging his shoulders, "she loves to sing." And on the chorus, Dad joined in and they belted it out as they floated around the corner of our block: "I love you baby and if it's quite alright I need you baby........."

Summer and the Spit

Labour Day weekend is always tinged with sadness. When you’re saying goodbye to summer it takes some work not to feel a grief creeping toward you. The sun has swept southward in the sky and now comes fully in the window, bathing our sofa in rays during the morning – much to our old cat’s delight. Three trees in the Don Valley have decided to try on red. It’s still hot in the sun, but you need sleeves in the shade. We turn the lights on so much earlier.

Toronto got the Labour Day weekend of all Labour Day weekends weather wise. It was gorgeous. And we earned it.

We headed down to what’s called the Leslie St. spit this morning – as we’ve done many times over the summer. In its weekday life, dump trucks trundle down the paved road that heads off shore, to add to the re-bar and bricks and concrete and old granite that had a life and now are the foundation of new land.

Nature is working as partner in this. The trees have taken over, the marshes, the grasses all filling in what we don’t want to use anymore.

The spit, in its weekend and holiday life, becomes a park. Five kilometers from the entrance to the lighthouse at the end – five kilometers of growth…and cyclists and rollerbladers, runners and walkers.

The wind was coming off the lake today in powerful, cool gusts. The boats were conservative in their sails. The monarch butterflies hunkered down on all the purple flowers they could find, the thistles, the cornflowers. The golden rod was at its beautiful height and everywhere. The cormorants are so happy on the spit it’s one of the biggest nesting colonies in North America.

We’ve seen snakes and rodents and great blue herons hunting, and even a beaver in the inlet pond. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a beaver in the wild before…if he climbs out of his stick house and looks to the north he’d see the skyline of Canada’s largest city right there. But I don’t think he cares.

This year with the moderate temperatures and loads and loads of rain, everything looks lush and beautiful and at its prime of life. In a place that is a hopeful place.

And this weekend was definitely a summer looking for the weather Oscar.

It was a perfect end to summer - a 10-kilometre walk, on a perfect day, through a construction site that nature is cleaning up…So when it came to dinner I went up to the corner vegetable market to see what they had. I picked up local radishes, green beans, some lemons, some tomatoes, green onions and headed home. Oh, and salted cashews…to go with the bottle of wine I intended to open while preparing the summer daze dinner.

Steve marinated a piece of flank steak I had bought at Fresh from the Farm on Saturday. He consulted the Cook’s Illustrated marinating article, which had been marinating under the coffee table for a while. He poured molasses, soy sauce, garlic, water, olive oil, a dash of sesame oil and chives from the garden into a plastic bag, stabbed the meat liberally with a knife, then put the steak in the bag for a lovely bath. For an hour …90 mins max. Then he barbequed it on the grill.

Meanwhile, glass of wine in hand, and bowl of cashews on the table (I love cashews), I made a salad of the tomatoes. I chopped them into small chunks, added some chopped scallions, red pepper and lots of fresh basil from my pot outside – I doused it all in good olive oil (brought directly from Italy by my dear grace Naomi).

I roasted the red potatoes I had in fresh rosemary, crunchy salt, and black pepper. I sliced an onion and caramelized it in a skillet. Then I trimmed and steamed the green beans for only a minute or two and plunged them in ice water to hold their gorgeous green (and I stared into them - because the colour makes me think of what Ireland must look like). Once the potatoes were nicely roasted I pulled them out, threw them into the pan with the onions and added the beans, which I’d cut in half. Once it was all cooled down, I threw over a little balsamic vinegar and finished it off with a little more olive oil.

The radishes were large. And that has meant only one thing to me lately – crunch and no taste. No peppery shake of the head, no holding my forehead as the radish does its thing. Just crunch. So I decided to make a Vietnamese dressing for them. I sliced the radishes thinly, and poured over them a dressing I made with fish sauce, cider vinegar, lemon (should be lime, but the lemons were cheap), garlic, sugar, and shredded carrot. And I let them bathe together while everything else was cooking…They were fantastic.

It was our Summer Daze dinner. And while September moves us on toward autumn, and I love September more than any other month, this Labour Day weekend will be in the books as a great beauty, bringing summer to its full height. The summer of 09 went out leaving them wanting more…

*Pic is from here and here's more on the Leslie Street spit - if you need it!

What summer feels like in this house

I put the duvet away. We’ve turned the ceiling fan on in the bedroom. The bay windows in the kitchen stay open all the time to catch the breeze in the alley. The bay window overlooks a brick wall, but lets in light. The old doors all stick a little. Dampness rises from the old floor boards. There is thermal lag here – the bricks hold on to their winter cold for a long time and this year into July, but slowly it’s warming up in here. The house plants have escaped to the deck full time. The earth has tilted enough to take the sun’s rays out of our living room. They’ll fill the room come December when the earth tilts back. The basement bathroom is now earning its nickname: the swamp. I washed the tile floor about an hour ago, it might be dry by the end of the week. And I fight an ongoing battle with moldy grout.

Many years ago my friend’s little daughter was in the bathroom, on the toilet, deep in thought. This was her first visit to this house.

It was built in her great grandmother’s era, when flappers were the rage, when the world was living the heady champagne daze before economic collapse, actually in the same years my mother was born. It has triple brick walls, made in the valley just to the west of us. It has old casement windows that complain with the age of many winters, and old oak floors – narrow bands of wood so worn you can see the basement light in some sections. But it feels safe and solid and like home – even though we rent. We love this place.

As she did her business, Kayla considered everything around her. She made her pronouncement: “Mummy? I ike (no l’s yet) Auntie Nicky’s cottage.”

Kayla went outside to play. Her Mum told me what she’d said. A cottage? How cool is that? Little ones like that don’t lie (she soon told me my teeth were yellow). But while she was in my good books, I glowed, because this is like a cottage - it has the spirit of peace that a cottage has.

And in the cool, slow rise from spring, the poppies and peonies have exploded in their beauty and wildness, the roses quickly coming in to take their place, the astounding clematis has crawled up the deck again covering it in purple, and the marshmallows have flowered like a bright laugh. And when I hear the trees rustle with wind and I sit here sipping my morning coffee at the desk by the door looking out over the deck, and I see so many colours of green rising in their lushness, cushioning our presence in a big city, I feel pretty lucky. Grout be damned.

Peony picture from wikipedia.