Summer lovin’

Every year, I always see a few hopefuls that rock shorts and sandals the first day the mercury climbs above 14 degrees C. Those people drive me crazy. I have to admit though that this year, I’m totally guilty of the culinary equivalent of that fashion crime. The spring weather finally has a hint of summer and I dropped everything to make tacos. Not just the add-powder-to-ground-chuck kinda tacos that were considered fine dining in my university days (those puppies were our go to “fancy company” meal), but real slow-cooked carnitas that are rich with smokey peppers and braised onions.

I might not be wearing cut-offs but I’m celebrating summer with a chilled beer, a spicy soft shelled taco bursting with fresh guacamole, juicy tomatoes and crisp lettuce, and a phone book sized stack of napkins.

I’ll share the recipe as soon as I wipe the sauce off my hands!

My heart belongs to Japan

Am I the only one who sometimes misses watching the original Iron Chef? Sure Bobby Flay can make 1,000 sumptuous chipotle dishes in 60 minutes or less. But does he know how to tackle secret ingredients like Swallow’s Nest? The hilariously awkward voice overs were reason enough to tune in!

Sick in the head

I’m sick. Not the kind of sick that means you’re sweating off a major fever and completely delirious, but suffering from a head cold — meaning I’m not legitimately sick to hole up under a comforter and watch trashy movies the way the good lord intended. I have to solider on, just with a nose that’s running like a healthy puppy’s and a brain that’s about as useful as a butter knife on a rib eye.
There is only one prescription: a steaming bowl of fragrant broth, rich with spices and teaming with fresh rice noodles and paper-thin slices of rare beef. Pho 88 on Dundas and Spadina makes a Saté soup that is powerful enough to cut through measly congestion — like Vick’s Vapo Rub, but way more filling and delicious. Flecked with sesame seeds, chilies, five spice power and magic, it keeps me coming back.

Best of all? Even when you’ve blown through your 4,000th Kleenex, you can still actually taste the fresh Thai basil.

Insider tip: don’t wear a white shirt. I seem to end up with chili oil splashes all over myself after wrangling coils of rice noodles into my mouth. I guess you could just eat more carefully, but that seems like too much to ask.

This little piggy…

I just closed the book on Cleaving: A story of marriage, meat and obsession (Little Brown and Company) by Julie Powell, blogger turned blockbuster-selling author of Julie and Julia.

An uncomfortably honest memoir of an admittedly-self centered woman trying to get a handle on her desires, this book wastes no time getting right to the meaty stuff: sex, adultery, love and well, meat. Powell takes us along for the ride as she learns the dying trade of mastery butchery in a funky New Jersey shop. True, her writing has really grown since her last novel, but what takes center stage in this book is the minutia of the meat. Worth reading just to learn how to made headcheese or why she thinks liver is the sexiest cut of meat.

Flower power

Cooking is fun. Cooking in a great kitchen is better. I’ve been consumed with a recent reno that promises to transform the dumpy kitchen in my downtown condo into a smart, functional and hopefully stylish space. When I say I’ve been “consumed,” I mean that in a my-dreams-are-filled-with-backsplash-tiles-and-cooktops kinda way. Can you be a raving bridezilla about a reno? If so, I’m kitchenzilla.

All this to say, kitchen lovelies have caught my eye more than usual. I need these Marimekko oven mitts. Cheeky and cheerful, these Scandinavian-designed hotties will be the perfect finishing touch to my kitchen.

I'll take one in every colour!

Curiosity and a driveway

So it turns out that some things, sadly, are none too tasty. I found this out shortly after returning to our snow-covered city from my Jamaican eat fest. We had been chatting with locals about traditional breakfast foods and kept hearing about the delight that is ackee fruit with salt cod. When our friend Evadne agreed to whip up a batch, it was unlike anything I’d ever had. The fleshy pulp gets boiled and then sautéed with onions, peppers and salt cod. It’s rich and almost buttery.

Here’s the dirty secret: this was the second time I’d tried ackee that day. We’d discovered an ackee tree at the edge of our little beach house and picked a fruit up off the driveway to investigate. A journalist at heart, I cracked it open and started poking around. Did you eat the brown nut-like center or the pulpy sections? I didn’t know but was willing to find out. I took a little bite of the pit while my friend nosed around the yellow flesh. The pit tasted like dirt. That couldn’t be right. The flesh tasted like what I imagine fiberglass insulation tastes like. Wrong. Just then, we were interrupted by visitors. Embarrased, I spit the roadkill fruit into the bushes — dodging a toilet-shaped bullet as it turns out! I just discovered that eating raw ackee fruit causes Jamaican Vomiting Sickness, which sounds about as pleasant as the descriptive name infers. These little suckers are even illegal in the US when raw.

Sometimes life’s lessons are simple: don’t eat stuff you find on a driveway. Even if really want to.

Caribbean crustaceans

I’m always game to try something delicious – or even potentially delicious. This is never more true then when I’m traveling.

My winter-doldrums-banishing vacation to sun soaked Jamaica turned out to be an amazing whirlwind of Caribbean flavours. With Evadne, a hilarious towering woman who was born and raised just down the road, as our guide, we prowled around small fishing towns looking for good eats. Fresh snapper bought right out of the fishing boat then roasted whole was good enough to convert my fish-hating boyfriend – but the real hero? The laughably small fish I caught myself on a length of line and simple hook (look ma, no pole!) after a jaunt out to sea in little more than a rowboat with a local fisherman who clearly thought I was crazy for getting such a kick of the little swimmers. Those tiny fish, my friends, tasted like success.

Aside from classic must-trys like jerk chicken, grilled until crusty and charred on a oil-drum BBQ by the roadside, there was one simple dish that I’m dying to recreate next winter when I’m dying for a reminder of the surf and sand.

Evadne’s Jamaican Steamed Lobster
- One small lobster per person
- One habanero pepper, finely diced (wear gloves while chopping if possible!)
- One small yellow onion, thinly sliced
- Two cloves of garlic, chopped
- Butter, lots of butter

Place the live lobsters into a large pot with an inch or two of boiling salted water. Place the lid on firmly and try not to think about what you’ve just done. To distract yourself, think about how strange it is that Jamaican lobster don’t have claws. Really! They have long antenna instead. After roughly 15 minutes of distracting yourself, the shells should be vibrant red. Pull them out of the pot and place on a serving platter.

Meanwhile, melt a tablespoon of butter in a saucepan on medium heat. Add the onion and sweat until translucent with slight brown. Add the garlic and as much habanero as you can handle (this is the hottest pepper out there so be judicious). Stir until fragrant. Add about a stick of butter into the pan and stir until melted.

Now you can just dump this over the lobsters and get cracking or get fancy and pre-cut the shells before serving.