My son enters the house like a tornado, door banging open, then swinging wildly on the hinge, as he’s always traveling at too high a speed to close it. He places his remote controlled plane model on the entryway floor, quite gingerly for someone who nearly took a door off its hinges, then dashes into the kitchen to see what I’m working on.

Today his enthusiasm is rewarded by a warm strawberry galette waiting for him, and he could not have been more eager to dig in.

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When we left Europe a little over a week ago, we left with the strawberry season, but here at home, in Canada, the season has just begun and we have weeks of abundance ahead of us. The strawberries are plentiful, if a little tart for having had lots of rain but not a lot of hot weather; the blueberries and raspberries and currants will be coming up in a few weeks, and I get quietly excited for all the sweet things I’ll be making.

My pleasures are so mundane. And yet, few things in life, I think, are as good as a slice of warm pie, and I think my son might just agree with me, if he weren’t, just now, more interested in breaking off a large piece of galette crust with his fork, and stuffing it in his mouth.

Recipe notes

A galette is just a rustic, freeform tart or single-crust pie, and once you become adept at making and rolling out the crust, your baking repertoire has just increased considerably. That’s because you can fill this lovely crust with different fruits, creating iterations for any season: plums or peaches in the summer, apples and pears in the fall, nuts in winter, and rhubarb in the spring.

You already might know that I love spelt flour from my scone recipe post, where I wrote about it at some length. It feels like pastry flour in the hands, but is much less processed and better tasting, and coming from an ancient grain rather than modern wheat. Not that I don’t use regular wheat flour in my kitchen, too (this sourdough bread is a favourite). But I always think about how I can promote biodiversity, and advocating for ancient grains and flours milled from them is my way of supporting that.

With that, some helpful notes:

• I filmed a video of how I add the butter and work it into the flour (scroll down a bit to watch). It might look and sound like an unorthodox way to make pastry, but I learned it in culinary school from chef Klaus Mueller, and it is the easiest and fastest way to create a flaky crust. He made wicked good tarts, and so will you. TRUST.

• the butter needs to be fridge-cold, meaning you take it out of the fridge right before measuring and adding it to your flour.

• the recipe works with the same quantity of vegan butter, if you prefer, however, do not use the kind that comes in tubs, but the one(s) that come as sticks or blocks (I’ve tried this and this before, both with good results).

• the galette assembly goes like this: you roll out the pastry, spread it with an almond frangipane, and then dollop the fruit on top of that. The role of the frangipane is to absorb some of the moisture in the fruit, as strawberries are particularly juicy. But don’t worry if your galette springs a leak - I like to think all good galettes do, and this is not a problem. Just make sure you’ve lined your baking sheet with parchment, so you don’t have to scrape the sticky juice off your baking sheet.

• for my European readers: the normal, all purpose flour in Europe has less protein than my normal all purpose Canadian flour. As such, you can substitute an equal weight of normal all-purpose European flour for the spelt flour in this recipe, so 165 grams. But I had an easy time finding white spelt flour at well-stocked grocers, so I hope you give it a try as well.

• I use an organic golden sugar which is less refined than white sugar. You can use whichever, they work the same way.

Here is the video, a little over 4 minutes long with the crucial steps shown. Next time I’ll film in horizontal orientation, I promise.

Strawberry spelt galette

Ingredients:

For the crust:

165 g white spelt flour or pastry flour* (see Recipe notes for substitutions)

⅓ teaspoon fine sea salt or fleur de sel

90 g (scant ½ cup) unsalted butter, fridge-cold

3-4 tablespoons icy water

For the galette filling:

75 g (¾ cup) almond flour

1 egg, beaten, for the almond frangipane

45 g (3 tablespoons) soft unsalted butter

½ cup organic golden sugar, divided

4 cups fresh strawberries, rinsed, then hulled

1 tablespoon tapioca flour or cornstarch

1 teaspoon vanilla paste or extract

1 teaspoon lemon zest, optional but recommended

1 egg, beaten, for the eggwash

Method:

In a large bowl, sift the spelt flour, then add the salt and stir it in with a fork. Using the large holes of a box grater, grate the butter into the flour. As you grate, keep rolling the block of butter in the flour to make it easier to hold onto. When all the butter has been grated, lightly mix it into the flour, rubbing it in briefly with the heel of your hand.

Make a well in the centre of your flour and butter mixture, and add in the 3-4 tablespoons icy water. With the fork, start building the dough, bringing in more flour from the sides and mixing it into the middle, until you obtain a very shaggy ball of dough. If the mixture looks very dry, add another tablespoon of water.

Turn the shaggy dough onto a lightly floured counter or marble pastry board, and bring it together, pressing it together. Knead it very briefly - two or three times should do it. Flatten into a 1-inch thick disk, and return it to your bowl. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, up to overnight.

When you’re ready to bake the galette, preheat the oven to 400 F (200 C), and line a large (half-sheet) rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

For the almond frangipane, in a medium bowl, mix the almond flour with roughly half of the sugar (we’ll mix the rest with the strawberries), the beaten egg and the softened butter. Keep mixing to obtain a homogenous, spreadable paste. Set aside.

In a large bowl, cut the strawberries into halves if small, quarters if large. To the strawberries, add the remaining amount of sugar, the tapioca flour and flavourings: vanilla paste or extract, and lemon zest, if using. Stir gently to coat all the berries, then set aside.

On a floured counter of marble pastry board, roll out your pastry to a rough 12-inch circle. You needn’t be too precious, it’s meant to be rustic. When ready, the pastry should be about ¼ inch thick. Roll it up onto your rolling pin, then transfer it to your parchment-lined baking sheet.

With a small offset spatula, spread the almond frangipane onto the pastry, leaving a 2-inch border all around. Mound the strawberries onto the frangipane, then fold the pastry border over the filling in the centre, pleating it as you go.

This step is optional: brush the pastry with the beaten egg, then sprinkle with some extra golden sugar, for a bit of crunch.

Bake the galette at 400 F for 32-40 minutes, or until golden brown and the filling is bubbling up in places. Don’t be too concerned if it springs a leak, strawberries contain a lot of water and some of it inevitably collects in the pan. When baked, remove the baking sheet from the oven and place it on a cooling rack. Enjoy the galette when slightly warm, as is, or with a scoop of good quality vanilla ice cream.

Recipe notes:

*If you don’t have spelt flour and/or prefer to use regular wheat flour, you can substitute either the same amount of pastry flour, OR 150 g of all purpose flour.

If you have any questions for me, leave them in the comments. And if you’re looking for more baking inspiration on my page, I’ve linked below to two other recipes for you to try. The clafoutis works beautifully with strawberries, and if you make the oat crêpes, fill them with almond butter and chopped strawberries - they’re a treat!

Until next time!

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Music credits: Music by: https://www.bensound.com, License code: J5MW7BAT8GVFODC6, artist: Yunior Arronte

Within it, the ritual of baking sourdough is one of my anchors, but as someone who travels for long periods of time, I had to figure out ways to make sure that my sourdough “mother” remains viable and alive during my absences. Below, all the lessons and methods I’ve learned. And at the end of the post, for those who don’t mind a longer read, some other sourdough and s/d-adjacent things I’ve been playing with lately.

What to do with your starter while you travel?

When I’m home, I keep my starter at room temperature at all times. This creates the sweeter flavour I love in my breads, and in addition, my starter is always ready for me to bake with, at a moment’s notice. You might keep your starter refrigerated, however, and that’s alright too. The options are the same regardless.

When you’re deciding what to do with your starter while you’re away, there are a couple things to consider:

• the length of time you’ll be away. If you’re planning a short absence and you’ll be gone 7-10 days, your starter will survive just fine in the fridge, so look at Option 2 or 3. The yeasts and bacteria are resilient enough to weather this short period without constant feedings. If you’re away for 3+ weeks, Options 1 or 2 might be a better choice.

• whether or not you plan to bake bread at your destination. Now, I’ll be honest: no one I know is unhinged dedicated enough to want to bake sourdough bread on vacation. But I did; and if you’re tempted as well, there are two ways to do this, and I cover them under Options 1 and 2. In the end, during my time away, I only baked sourdough focaccia, but it was amazing, and we enjoyed it heartily with good butter, and my quintessential Boston lettuce salad.

Option 1: dry your starter

The benefit of a dried starter is that it can keep safely for a very long time. It requires no more than a ziplock bag for storage, and can be carried across borders and through airports without issues (this was my experience).

The drawback is that reviving it will take a bit of work. Yeasts remain alive even when your starter is dried (it’s the same method behind commercial active dry, or instant yeast you buy in a packet) - but you’ll need to create the right conditions (warmth and sugars/starches) for it to be fully re-activated, and it will take a few days to do so.

Option 2: make a stiff starter and keep it in the fridge or take it with

A somewhat simpler method is to make a stiff starter by feeding it extra flour.

The pros:

• it will return to peak yeast activity quicker than a dried starter

• yet it will last longer than your normal starter until the next feed. Eventually you’ll still have to feed it, but this method gives you a bit more time than simply keeping your starter at its normal, 100% hydration (aka you feed it the same amount of flour and water each time).

The cons:

• you’ll have to store it in a mason jar just like your normal starter, and if you want to take it through airport security, you’ll have to keep it in your cosmetics bag, aka the “liquids, gels and aerosols” bag. I did this in past years with no issue.

• you’ll need a few normal feedings (equal parts water and flour) to get the starter back to normal consistency; 2-3 feedings should do it.

If you wish to take the starter with you, make sure to place it in a small jar in your “liquids, gels, aerosols” baggie, or else they might take issue with it at the airport security.

Option 3: refrigerate your starter and cross your fingers

Sourdough starters have a reputation for being temperamental and demise-prone, which is why you’re worried about yours while you’re away from your kitchen. But here’s the reality: if you have a well-established, resilient starter, you don’t need to worry too much. Here’s why.

This past Tuesday, the morning after I arrived back home, I reached into my fridge for a jar of discard that had been sitting there for 6 (yes, that is SIX) weeks. There was a quarter-inch layer of hooch on top - the clear, gray-ish, acidic and pungent liquid that collects atop discarded sourdough starter. There was no mold, but the thing still looked foul, marshy, and not like something that would harbour life, a thriving symbiotic colony of yeasts and lactobacilli.

But, ever curious, I removed a small portion and fed it with water and flour as I normally do. It took a teeny bit longer than normal for things to get moving, but within a couple hours, I could see undeniable signs of activity, the tiny critters awakened to their job, and eager to perform it, the same as always. I won’t deny that this blew my mind a bit.

So if your absence will be a few days only, and if your starter is established and strong, you likely can simply put it in the fridge after the last feeding before you leave, and you’ll find it ready and eager when you return.

In other news

Remember the bit about sourdough baking being my anchor? I wasn’t joking. I couldn’t wait to be back at it, and now, on day 3 since we arrived, my first loaf post-return is fermenting away on the counter. I was out of the organic all-purpose flour I use for all my breads, so I’m making a 100% whole grain spelt loaf. Realistically, it has zero chance of going down well with my family, who prefer much whiter loaves, BUT! Making a bread with 100% of a single flour really teaches you what that flour is like to work with, so it’ll be a nice learning opportunity.

In the image above, notice the “reusable” plastic bowl cover - someone in my family gifted it to me for baking specifically, but it’s gar-bage. 0/10 recommend. I have now ordered some beeswax bowl covers and will be testing and reporting back. I cannot turn off my inner editor, and deemed it hilariously auspicious that I found the only spelling error in the ad. Genuinely excited for these - though I won’t be using them for my bowels lol.

If you have any questions or feedback about the post today, the Comments section is for you. Until next time!

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The peas are tender and sweet, and the stalls are piled high with greens, obscenely large heads of butter lettuce (also called Boston lettuce), which are much-loved here in Europe, and used for more than salad. My mom makes a delicious lettuce and garlic soup, light and vegetal, garlicky in a mellow way, and a perfect summer soup. Lettuce can also be sautéed just like baby spinach, in a generously garlicky pan, and while it’s not a common preparation, it’s scrumptious and also perfect for summer.

Today’s recipe is an exercise in restraint, which, incidentally, is how I treat vegetables in general: it’s just butter lettuce, dressed simply with a lemony vinaigrette. My son loves the handful of blueberries I toss into it, and he’ll sometimes request that pecorino cheese be grated on his - and I have to give it to him, it’s fantastic that way.

How to choose and use the best lettuce

There’s a reason butter lettuce is called that. It’s much less sturdy than Romaine, and the leaves have a lush, pillowy texture that’s delicious, while being more substantial than the frilly paperiness of greenleaf lettuce. You won’t have to chew as hard as any other raw greens, but you’ll still have nice crunch from the juicy, mild tasting stems.

If your lettuce is starting to look a little sad in the fridge, you can do one of two things:

• pick off each leaf and then submerge them all in a large bowl with icy water. Ice water will refresh you - and it does the same for lettuce. Keep the leaves in the water for about 20 minutes, they will crisp right up. Once crisp, put them through your salad spinner and use them shortly after, as you need in your recipe.

• if the ice water bath is a bridge too far, simply pick off the leaves, wash and spin them, then chop crosswise into 1-inch ribbons. Heat olive oil in a pan, sautée some chopped garlic in the oil till fragrant, then add the lettuce ribbons and sautée until soft. Salt to taste and serve, with a soft/hard boiled egg on the side.

Lush butter lettuce and blueberry salad

Ingredients:

For the salad:

1 head butter/Boston lettuce washed and thoroughly drained

¾ cup (170 g) blueberries

¾ cup (60 g) walnuts

For the dressing:

3 tbsp olive oil

1 lemon, zest, plus 1 tablespoon of the juice

1 clove garlic (if you’re not sure you can take the pungency, omit it, OR use 1/2 clove, OR use 1/3 tsp garlic powder)

½ tsp fine sea salt

3-4 grinds of black pepper

Method:

For the salad, gently tear the lettuce leaves into bite-sized pieces, into a large bowl. Add the blueberries. Chop the walnuts coarsely, then add to the bowl with the lettuce and blueberries. Set aside.

For the dressing, in a small bowl, add the olive oil, lemon zest and 1 tbsp of the lemon juice (or less, if you like your dressing less tart). Grate the garlic on a microplane grater and add to the dressing, along with the sea salt and the black pepper. Whisk the dressing with a small whisk or fork until fully combined.

Right before serving, give the dressing another whisk, then pour onto the greens. Toss the salad gently, dipping to the bottom of the large bowl to also toss the fruit and nuts that may have settled there. Serve immediately, adding another sprinkling of walnuts, if desired.

Notes:

If you like, take 40 g of pecorino Romano or Manchego cheese, and grate it onto the salad using the small holes of a box grater, or shave it on using a vegetable peeler.

Substitutions: you can sub other nuts for the walnuts, hazelnuts are particularly good. If pears are in season, use them instead of blueberries. Use romaine if butter lettuce is unavailable.

For more spring/summer goodness, try the recipes below: a pea salad perfect for the tender peas in the market right now, and an easy French-inspired clafoutis for dessert.

Until next time!

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As I’m typing this, I’m sitting by the open window of a rental apartment in Transylvania, in the city where I was born. The traffic below creates a persistent hum here, on the second floor, and my view is one of those communist apartment buildings that fragment the skyline of virtually every city in Eastern/Central Europe.

We’re only halfway through our trip, with two more weeks to go, and while the plan to spend four weeks here looked solid on paper in January, the reality is that we’re all missing the comforts of home something fierce. The extra time with our aging parents/ grandparents, and the local strawberries, in full season here in May, are lovely, but we’re hitting our edge - with two weeks still to go.

I read a funny meme this past week and it sums me up so well: “My toxic trait is that I hate to leave the house, but love to leave the country.” I’m learning that I need an addendum to this: “but only for a short while.”

In any case, things are still cooking here at The Kitchen Brief (albeit on a reduced schedule; let’s call it summer hours), and there are some things I’ve loosely planned for June:

• after packing away my sourdough starter in my carry-on luggage, I have revived it here and baked a focaccia with it. The wheat flour is so different from what I’m used to, and I am eager to share my notes on what I’ve learned in the process

• it’s lettuce season, and markets are bursting at the seams with gorgeous butter lettuces (or Boston lettuce, as we also call them). I like to do very little with great produce, and let beautiful ingredients shine without unnecessary artifice; my simplest and lush butter lettuce recipe is coming too

• for someone who joyfully eats a LOT of vegetables, I admit I think a lot about dessert and I am playing around with a couple ideas, but let these be a small surprise for now.

The May roundup

The most exciting thing for May has been publishing the index for all the recipes on the site, organized by category. You can click below if you want to take a look!

It’s true that I’m still fairly new on the Substack platform, and as such, there aren’t a ton of recipes in there for now. But I have a blueprint in my head, am building, and with the Index, the foundation is now in place. Huzzah!

The other thing to go live in May was my post on the memorable bread and pastry I tried during my trip to London. I’m very keen to recreate some of them, but the testing will have to wait till I’m home, where my oven has an accurate temperature read, at least. The mushroom and Taleggio bun feels perfect for fall and I can’t stop thinking about it.

I hope you have a beautiful end of May, and you get to bake something lovely on the weekend. This rhubarb clafoutis (made with spelt flour, and coconut milk to keep it dairy free) is particularly nice, even if I do say so myself. *wink*

Until next time!

Diana

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If you are ever looking for a specific recipe, or simply for inspiration on what to cook or bake next, browse the list below.

* v - vegetarian, vg - vegan, gf - gluten free, df - dairy free

Vegetable recipes: mains, salads, dips

Butter/Boston lettuce salad with blueberries (v, gf)

Pea salad with burrata and garlic chips (v, gf)

Roasted red pepper, walnut and feta dip (v, gf)

Roasted sweet potatoes with tahini yogurt sauce (v, gf)

Sugar snap pea and pearl couscous spring salad (vg)

Tomato and mozzarella salad for summer (v, gf)

Sourdough bread

Einkorn sourdough loaf (vg)

Sweet things and baked goods

Berry swirl peanut butter smoothie (vg)

Candied lemons (vg)

Oat crêpes (gf, df)

Rhubarb clafoutis (df, v)

Spelt lemon scones (v)

Strawberry spelt galette (v)

Whole grains recipes

Pumpkin and spice granola (vg, gf)

Soups

Vegetable and yogurt soup (v, gf)

Spelt flour recipes

Spelt lemon scones (v)

Strawberry spelt galette (v)

Fruity goodness

Berry swirl peanut butter smoothie (vg)

Candied lemons (vg)

Rhubarb clafoutis (df, v)

Strawberry spelt galette (v)

Hope you found this useful, and if you have suggestions for improvement, leave them for me in the comments to this article!

Days before a trip to Europe we’ve been planning since January, my husband was laid off from the large telecom company he’s worked at for 19 years. The rotten timing of it threw a number of logistical and administrative challenges our way, which left us frazzled and ambivalent: should we rejoice in the prospect of our trip - or grieve the loss of what we knew for 19 years?

I’ll admit also that I grappled a lot with the question of whether to share about it all here. I share the Japanese worldview that complaining about your problems means burdening the others with the knowledge of them, and my first impulse -especially as an introvert and quite private person - was to keep calm and carry on, as they say. I tend to keep my problems close to my chest, by default.

But then I realized that if I wanted to build a real community here (and I truly do), then I’d have to lower the armour a bit, and allow myself the vulnerability of sharing something that isn’t a win. As a perfectionist, I can confirm that this sucks badly. I still don’t know what’s the right answer: should I share the lows as well, or keep it lighthearted in this space, which I consider my online home base? Tell me in a comment, if you have a preference. But, onwards.

The bread I had in London

We were in London for 9 fantastic days (I’ll share two unexpected London highlights in the next post, once I’ve edited more of the images), and then we took a short flight to Romania, where my parents and in-laws live in a city called Oradea/ Nagyvárad, near the border with Hungary. Before I left, I dried my sourdough starter and now that I have access to an oven, I am reviving it, as I plan to make sourdough focaccia here.

I’m such a glutton for punishment: the flours are new to me, I am not familiar with the whims of my family’s ovens, haven’t got the right equipment I’m used to, and am constantly on the go between my mom’s and mother-in-law’s kitchens - which means, potentially, a lot of trial and error before nailing hydration, carting fermenting dough across the city in my arms, and God knows what else. I’ll report back on all these (mis)adventures, I promise.

But onto the bread we tried in London - I had some memorable bites, and I wanted to share these with you.

The potato and rosemary sourdough from Gail’s

The very first thing I had from Gail’s wasn’t bread (see below), but a dear friend I met for tea recommended their bread. I trust her completely, so the next time I found myself in one of their coffee shops, I picked up their potato and rosemary loaf. Gail’s is a bakery and coffee shop chain with many locations across the city, and even one at Gatwick Airport. We found their bread, pastries, and espresso delicious. Londoners must be of the same opinion, as all locations we popped into were, if not packed, quite full.

Something that struck me was how hearty and dense their bread was. I don’t mean “dense” in a bad way. These days on social media, people go gaga over a white crumb with big holes and “open structure” and I’m not immune to that pull myself, but we’ve got to stop for a second.

Don’t you find it ironic that we’re judging bread based on its holes, literally the empty air pockets in it? Why not on flavour, nutrition, colour, digestibility, crunchiness of the crust: there are so many other factors beyond the purely visual ones, holes and the “ear.” Gail’s potato loaf was quite delicious; it’s made with (of course) mashed potato and wholegrain wheat, barley (!), rye AND spelt flour, and it’s studded throughout with black onion seeds, which we also call nigella seeds or, if you’re familiar with Indian cuisines, kalonji or black cumin. It was a delicious loaf and at our rental apartment, we had it with Danish butter and English cheddar, and a large tomato salad on the side.

My preferred sourdough, from Fabrique

My favourite sourdough came from a place in Covent Garden called Fabrique. I cannot say WTF I was thinking to not take a picture inside, but here is a link to their website, if you want to check it out: https://fabrique.co.uk/craftsmanship/

We arrived towards the end of the day, and the only had a few loaves left, some of their characteristic loooong breads, which they cut in halves or thirds at your request. I bought some of the Rye, and man, it was fantastic. Hearty, not overly sour but with a good tang, well fermented, and quite delicious. My son adored the croissant from there. I would have loved to try their cardamom bun as well, because I heard great things - but alas, it wasn’t meant to be, this time around. Fabrique is at the very top of my list of places to go when I am in London again.

We had slices of this beautiful rye bread with hard sheep cheese, a large spring mix greens salad, and butternut squash soup that was store-bought. It was a great warm dinner after a cold day walking the city.

The handmade cheese roll from Marks & Spencer, aka M&S

It should come as no surprise that I am obsessed with farmers’ markets and grocery stores. Wherever I go, it is nearly the first stop and I adore walking through the isles, and browsing the shelves to find the interesting stuff. It’s one way of orienting myself in a place, by putting my finger on the pulse of the places where people gather for, and around, food. We prefer to stay in places with kitchens and that means shopping trips for ingredients. I was never one for shoes or makeup, but hand me a bouquet of Genovese basil -or better yet, something special like tiny leaves of chervil or red-veined sorrel - and I go weak in the knees.

Inner city grocery stores can be lacklustre, however, but so far we’ve always managed to sort some proper meals for us, even from their parsimonious offerings. We shopped at Sainsbury’s (and found a fantastically smooth hummus), Tesco and Lidl, but my favourite -not surprisingly - was M&S. There was a lot there I wanted to buy (though not a lot of produce, surprisingly), but I exercised near-superhuman powers of restraint and managed to only leave with a few delightful items, most notably: a wedge of Ossau Iraty which is one of my favourite sheep cheeses, a small jar of Anglesey salt flavoured with rosemary (this’ll go in a focaccia, when I get my starter going, fingers crossed), and a very light and airy cheese bun from their bakery section.

I never knew what kind of treasure I’d happened upon until later, in our apartment, when I tore into the bun: Mother help me, it was a fantastic one! It was white as snow (no whole grains in it, alas!), and had cheddar added into the dough, but also more cheddar piled into the place where the bun had been scored before baking. But the surprising highlight for me about this bun was the large-ish pieces of cracked black pepper, generously added to the dough - they had a spicy-warm kick that played with the sharpness of the cheddar SO deliciously, that I could not have enough.

I shared only small bites of it with the family, and only extremely begrudgingly. I am a terrible influencer because I have little patience for pictures when I have a cheese bun in my hand, but if you want to see it in all its rugged glory, it’s the golden-melted-cheese-topped one in the upper left quadrant of the lead image of this article.

There was lentil soup (we buy ready made vegetarian soups in tubs in the refrigerated section), a romaine salad with cherry tomatoes and some Kind bars for dessert, just in case you’re asking me, “Hey, Diana, I thought you love whole foods?!” We did eat a lot of bread/pastry and cheese during the London days, but I did my best to buy us lots of greens (there are pre-washed ones which were great), veg (cucumbers and tomatoes galore, potatoes), fruit (Spanish and Dutch strawberries every day, bananas and easy-peel mandarins for our granola breakfasts and snacks), and of course, my beloved nuts (can recommend the macadamias from Lidl).

Assorted pastries

Pastries aren’t, technically, bread - but close enough, eh? *wink*

Worthy of mention were a few we tried from Gail’s: the mushroom, Taleggio and marjoram bun was the first thing I ate in London, and it’s to die for (I’ll reverse-engineer and share this one, I promise! Too good not to!), a spinach and feta puff pastry roll, the cinnamon roll made with croissant dough, and the pain au chocolat. All very great. The croissant from M&S was nothing to sneeze at either - you could walk a lot in Toronto before you happen upon croissants as good.

I ate twice at Honey & Co. and while the pastries were nice each time (a plum and pistachio cake slice once, and a Fitzrovia bun another time), I found them much too sweet to go back to, even to finish in one sitting.

The one other place that I wish we’d gone to was Bubala, a vegetarian restaurant that I heard wonderful things about from the lovely Anna Jones, but simply ran out of time to check out. But also, London is the kind of city that you simply cannot discover and taste in one go, even if that go was a pretty time-generous 9 days. There are plenty of places on my list for next time, because there’ll be a next time for sure.

If you’re looking for more sourdough inspo for a London trip for yourself, do check out this top-10 list for best sourdough, or if you are a local, tell me in the comments which crazy good spot did I miss.

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Last week, I fell into a word research rabbit hole. I was trying to find a good enough word to describe the shockingly bold colour of the rhubarb I found at the store last week. First, I searched alternatives for the word “pink” and that sent me next into looking at the word “rouge”, and the hues it describes. There’s Smooch Rouge (I kid you not), Rustic Rouge and Diva Rouge, to name just a few, and my inner colour nerd was delighted to suddenly have language for hues I’d been seeing with my eyes for years.

For this version, I am pre-roasting the rhubarb, instead of simply adding it to the batter, as one would do with cherries, for example. There is a lot of water trapped in the cellulose network of the stalks, and the reason for this extra step is to evaporate some of that water, and in doing so, concentrate the rhubarb flavour as it bakes.

The “scaffolding” of this dessert is given by the eggs, and the batter contains only a little flour. Although I’ve made it with spelt flour, it can be made gluten-free by substituting Thai rice flour in equal weight (not volume), plus adding some additional almond flour, around 2-3 tablespoons. Oat flour and cornstarch are two other good contenders for a gluten free option, though I haven’t tested these yet.

As written, this dessert is dairy-free (I am always loving playing with plant based, non-dairy options) - and, I argue, much better for being so. The coconut milk I’m using gives it such a lovely richness and a subtle warmth of flavour, to round out the sharp tartness of the rhubarb.

And if you want some more flavour and texture cues to determine whether you’d like this recipe, here they are: image a firmer vanilla pudding flavoured with bright specks of lemon zest, studded with squidgy pockets of tart rhubarb. I think that’s the most accurate description of this dessert, actually. Be generous with the powdered sugar, I make my desserts on the less-sweet side, so the extra dusting of sweetness is very welcome here.

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The recipe

Rhubarb clafoutis

Ingredients:

1 teaspoons (5 g) coconut oil or unsalted butter, for the baking dish

2 cups (10.5 oz or 275 g) rhubarb, cut into ½ inch (1 cm) pieces

generous ½ cup (115 g) golden/unrefined sugar, divided

3 large eggs

⅓ teaspoon fine sea salt

1 cup (230 g) full fat coconut milk, canned

½ cup (65 g) white spelt flour, or a mixture of white spelt and wholegrain spelt

zest of 1 lemon, finely grated with a microplane

1 teaspoon vanilla paste or extract

Method:

Preheat the oven to 375 F (190 C). Butter a ceramic or glass baking dish (mine’s an oval ceramic baking dish with a 1.5 quart volume).

Add the chopped rhubarb to the dish and scatter over it 3 tablespoons of the sugar. Bake for 15 minutes, until the rhubarb has released some juice and is soft when pierced with a knife or the tines of a fork.

While the rhubarb bakes, make the clafoutis batter. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, the remaining golden sugar, coconut milk, and sea salt. Whisk well until completely homogenous. In a separate medium bowl, add the spelt flour, then gradually pour in the egg mixture a little at a time, whisking well after each addition to prevent lumps. Finally, add the vanilla paste and lemon zest, and whisk to fully combine.

Remove the rhubarb from the oven, then carefully pour the batter over it. The batter should not fill the baking dish completely, leave at least ¾ inches (2 cm) of space up the sides, as the clafoutis will puff up significantly as it bakes. Return to the oven, and bake for an additional 30-35 minutes, until the clafoutis is puffed and golden.

Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. To serve, generously dust with powdered sugar, the spoon into bowls.

Rhubarb Clafoutis

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And finally, here’s what you could try next:

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So this week, I decided to show you a little peek behind the scenes of how I create the images for this little online home of mine. If you’re curious, keep reading - but either way, know that the regular recipe post for this week will be popping into your inbox later this week, as per our normal schedule.

A bit of context

I started photographing food professionally roughly eight years ago, and since then, I’ve photographed two cookbooks, taught several photography workshops, and worked with countless food brands large and small, to create images for their websites, product labels, ad campaigns and social media.

Some projects require multiple people, but I get hired most because I am someone who can also do recipe development (in fact, I love this part too!), creative direction, art direction, and prop and food styling, in addition to the actual photography and post production. I follow the same exact process for every recipe I create for The Kitchen Brief. I see my work almost as a food magazine, and I want to create the same editorial feel with my photography.

I’ll be using, as an example, one of my recent photoshoots for the pea salad with burrata and garlic chips recipe.

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Step one: coming up with the idea for the images and the shot list

Since the early days working as a photographer, I have probably looked at hundreds of food images, both in physical/ analog form in cookbooks or printed ads, and online. I’ve not had formal art education, so I worked hard, since the beginning, to build a mental visual library, which I could later draw on for inspiration for my own work.

It’s this visual experience that allowed me to develop the vision for these images, even when I was just testing the recipe. I wanted an oval platter, with the peas creating a green canvas, onto which I’d nestle the burrata.

As I was writing and proofreading the recipe, I also realized that it would be helpful to create an image of the garlic chips, in addition to the images of the salad itself. And finally, I love creating lived-in, a bit “messy” scenes because they feel most relatable and are often mine and people’s favourite.

So now I had my shot list:

• an image of the garlic chips

• the hero dish, in both vertical and horizontal orientation

• a messier plate that feels more relatable.

Here they are, as a fun collage. Gosh, I love canva.

Step two: refine the concept and bring it into the real world

From here, I needed to refine the concept a bit, so I thought about the “look and feel” I wanted for the images: bright, organic, a bit aspirational but still with an “I can do that,” attainable vibe.

The look and feel determines always what props I pull from my studio collection: here I went for neutral, cream and tan plates and bowls, playing also with some green glasses and a blue napkin, for a more interesting colour story. Besides the food, these “supporting actors” help create more elevated visuals. This styling process is something I deeply cherish: I get into flow and the little vignette I am creating comes together, almost like magic. It’s like setting a beautiful table for a meal with your friends, only in this case, it’s for you, my lovely readers, and the feasting is done with the eyes only.

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Step three: bringing together the light, the props and the food

When I shoot with daylight (aka natural light in photo speech), I choose days with particular lighting conditions: a thin cloud cover that makes for an overcast-but-still-bright day. I’ve been shooting so long now that I can immediately tell what the images will look like based simply on observing the sky and how the light falls on my hand, for example - this is a function of experience accumulated over years of working with a camera.

In the behind-the-scenes image below, you can see a sliver of the sky and how neutral gray it was that day.

I positioned the table surface and tripod so the light comes from the top of the image, and I chose the flatlay angle, aka a bird’s eye view, to really showcase the beautiful textures in the salad.

When I’m in the studio, I shoot tethered, meaning that my camera is connected with a wire to my laptop, and shoot directly into my editing program. This way, I can immediately see and adjust everything: are all elements arranged in a pleasing composition? Is the image in focus? This last part is crucial, as out-of-focus images are pretty useless and cannot be fixed in post processing.

And once the lighting and the props have been placed, it’s time to bring the food. I do this last, so everything looks super fresh and vibrant for the camera. My studio is in an upstairs room in my house, so I schlep everything from the kitchen (where I cook) into the studio (where I shoot). And this is why, outside the margins of the frame, things look a bit… chaotic, as you can see below.

People always ask me: is the food you work with real? Yes! It’s all real, fresh food, and my family and I eat it all, of course! While I make an effort to make the food look beautiful, in the end it’s meant to be enjoyed, both by my family (they’re the toughest critics!) and by you, my readers.

Final step: polishing the work through post-processing

Once I captured the images, the final step is editing them in the same program I used during capture. If I’ve done my job well during the photoshoot, there won’t be much to do at this stage, except correct any colour casts, or darken/brighten specific areas in the image, or add a bit of contrast.

And that’s it for the photography part! I save the images onto multiple drives, so I have backups and then I add them to the post or recipe I’m writing, as the last step before publishing.

Never will I presume to call myself an artist, but I see myself as a craftsperson, and someone who searches for and creates beauty as a creative practice. I feel gratitude and respect for the beautiful food I get to create, and I see the photographic process as a gesture of devotion to that food and to the craft of creating images.

I hope you enjoyed this detour from recipes, and if you have any questions about this process, about lighting, the studio, prop collection or my equipment, leave a comment below, I’m happy to share!

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And if you’ve made it this far, and now you need a snack, check out the posts below:

One of my core principles when it comes to cooking is EASE. Don’t get me wrong, I love a weekend project-type recipe as much as the next person: it’s such a luxurious feeling to make time for an intriguing recipe, assemble the ingredients, then go mindfully through the cooking/baking process without the high-octane pressure of having to put a meal on the table in under 30 minutes.

But this type of cooking belongs, largely, to fantasy-land, as a former coach used to call it, an idealized version of reality in which you have unlimited time, cognitive capacity, and motivation to devote to This One Recipe. And I haven’t even touched on the question of access to a plethora of ingredients from around the world. You might do it for a milestone meal, family birthday, or Christmas Eve dinner. But daily? Weekly, even? Likely, no.

The reality of our humanness is very different from fantasy-land cooking. We have lives with tight schedules, long to-do lists, and perhaps most importantly of all, limited bandwidth. Throw in the metaphorical wrench of an aging parent’s health crisis, or even something as banal as your wi-fi calling it quits in the middle of a zoom meeting, and you can see how the prospect of a drawn-out cooking session can become painfully, stubbornly out of reach.

The uncomfortable truth, however, is that even on the days when time, or motivation for cooking is limited, we still want to eat well. I stand very firmly in the “too tired to cook, but too fussy to eat crappy food” camp. This is why knowing how to make something simple and great, from a few ingredients only, feels akin to a superpower. This is what easeful cooking is all about, at its core: a desire to eat a good, considered meal made with few ingredients and, ideally, without a large time investment.

That is what I think about when I write recipes like today’s pea salad: an easily accessible veg that you may already have in your freezer, a piece of cheese because peas work so well with anything dairy and creamy, and a niiiiice garnish that makes this dish guest worthy. So let’s dive in.

Ingredient highlight: burrata

The honest truth is that as a plant-forward eater, cheese isn’t the ingredient I reach for first when creating a recipe, or even composing my dinner plate. But with its infinite incarnations and flavour profiles, cheese makes a fantastic food to play with, something that can complement vegetables in a beautiful way.

In an upcoming, personal-story post, I’ll expand on my sometimes-complicated relationship with cheese, but for now, here’s the punchline: I treat cheese more like a condiment than a full-rights ingredient. That means you’ll never see me write “2 cups grated cheese” in an ingredient list - but conversely, I gratefully include small(ish) quantities of high-quality cheeses because the unique flavour of pecorino, cheddar or, in today’s recipe, burrata works beautifully in a supporting role with so many plant foods.

If you’re not familiar, burrata is an Italian cheese traditionally made with water buffalo milk, but now also commonly made with cow’s milk. Its origins are in Puglia: if you remember the boot-shaped map of Italy, Puglia would be the heel. (More information on how burrata is made at this wikipedia entry.)

The flavour profile is delicate, with a subtle milky sweetness that softens other flavours; in this pea salad, it plays very nicely with the grassy flavour of the fresh peas, and the sharp spiciness of the garlic and shallot.

Burrata comes ball-shaped, much like mozzarella, in a tub of brine in the refrigerated/cheese shelf of larger grocery stores or Italian grocers. You must check the best before date - it has a pretty short shelf life compared to other cheeses and freshness is really key to its creamy sweet flavour. When you taste it, it should be like… whipping cream (flavour) and mozzarella (texture) had a round, soft and squishy baby. And all it needs is a hug from a couple other ingredients.

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Recipe notes

In the spirit of ease, this salad is straightforward: I can make it on a weeknight, after a day’s work, while trying to coach my son through his French homework meltdown. It’s truly versatile, I’ll explain below how you can create a number of other dishes by simply riffing off this one very basic recipe.

I already professed my love for peas with this recipe, using the whole green pea pod for a salad full of zesty crunch. But the pea pods are not commonly eaten raw everywhere in the world, so I figured I needed to double down on the peas with a second, more attainable offering. Bonus points because green peas are available year round in the freezer section of grocery stores at very reasonable prices, and I’m offering you options if burrata is hard to find for you.

Variations

• instead of burrata, use about 75 g of creamy sheep feta cheese. Cook the peas, dress them, and lay them on your serving dish, then crumble the feta all over. You can give them a stir-through if you want, or just leave it, it’s gorgeous either way.

• if you have green edamame beans you’d like to use up, you can substitute up to half of the peas with edamame. They’ll require longer cooking though, so start by adding the edamame to your boiling water. When the water has come back up to boil, set a timer for 4 minutes and let the edamame cook, before subsequently adding the peas as well to the cooking water. Prepare the dressing and proceed as directed.

• if you don’t feel like messing with the garlic chips (but, why??), then just use 1 clove of garlic finely chopped. Fry it very briefly in the olive oil, and leave it in as you add the other dressing ingredients, before pouring it over the peas.

• instead of serving with a hunk of bread, cook a packet of linguine (this will serve 4 people). Drain, stir the peas through, including the dressing. Check for salt, season with more if needed, then divide onto serving plates. Break the burrata with a spoon, and dollop it on top of each pasta mound, then serve.

The simplest option

At its simplest, you can make this dish by just cooking the frozen peas, then dressing them with olive oil, some garlic powder, lemon juice and salt, and finally scattering some cheese on top: pecorino Romano, parmesan, feta, mozzarella, bocconcini, whatever you have to hand. It obviously won’t be the same dish - but you’ll have a veg for/as part of dinner, and that’s a good thing.

The recipe

Pea salad with burrata and garlic chips

Ingredients:

13.2 oz (375 g) frozen peas, ideally tender young ones (or use fresh and shorten the cooking time)

3 tablespoons olive oil

4-5 cloves of garlic

½ teaspoon lemon zest, from roughly half a medium lemon

1 tablespoon lemon juice

½ teaspoon fine sea salt

1 small shallot, or half a small red onion, finely chopped

2-3 grinds of black pepper

handful of fresh basil leaves, about ¼ cup loosely packed

1 ball of burrata cheese or 75 g sheep feta cheese

Method:

Bring a medium pot of water to the boil. When boiling, add a small pinch of sea salt, then tip in the frozen peas, and cover with a lid. Return to a full boil, then set a timer for 2 minutes. Small, tender peas will be ready right around now: vibrantly green and sweet with no starchy rawness when you taste one. Larger peas, or if you prefer yours well cooked, may need another minute or two; keep tasting until they’re just right. Drain in a colander and set aside.

Next, make the dressing. Using a sharp paring/small knife, slice the garlic cloves crosswise, into slices about the same thickness as your knife’s blade - you want them slim and even, but not paper-thin.

Add 3 tablespoons of olive oil and the garlic slices to a small pot and set over medium heat. Once the garlic begins to sizzle, stir and fry for about 2 minutes, until the slices are just beginning to turn a light golden colour. Pull the pot off the heat and lift the garlic chips out with a fork or slotted spoon, setting them to drain on a paper towel.

Let the oil cool for a couple minutes, then add 1 tablespoon lemon juice, ½ teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon grated lemon zest, and the finely chopped shallot. Stir with a spoon to combine.

Add the drained peas to a medium bowl, pour over the dressing, and toss well. Taste for seasoning and adjust the salt if needed, then transfer to your serving platter. Scatter over the torn basil leaves, season with black pepper, and nestle the burrata in the centre. Finish with a last drizzle of olive oil, and some flaky salt on the burrata.

To serve, spoon the pea salad onto each plate and top with a generous spoonful of burrata.

Pea And Burrata Salad With Garlic Chips

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I hope you will try this, and if you do, leave a comment or question below. And if this recipe has opened your appetite for more, here are some other plant-forward dishes you may want to bite into:

Until next time!

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I walked ahead, my son and husband behind me, like a very oddly matched pair of bodyguards. We were in Lisbon, walking around like gormless tourists do, iPhone in hand, Google maps at the ready. In truth, we weren’t quite clueless. We’d been in Lisbon for three weeks, crisscrossing the city centre in every direction in our wanderings, mapping out the city with our feet, one cobblestoned street at the time.

By then, we knew our favourite places, we’d seen the museums, we’d become semi-regulars at the neighbourhood hole-in-the-wall little café where Husband had his morning espresso, and my son and I, our slice of salami cake. We’d learned to say por favor in that particular way the Portuguese do, we knew the subway stops and what was the best time to go to Lupita for pizza, without having to wait 45 minutes in line.

That day, we were walking towards Basílica da Estrela. We’d seen it passing by from a streetcar a week earlier, majestic and stately, and decided to go see it up close. And it was worth it: the rooftop is open to the public and we went up, admiring the sun setting over the city from our unusual vantage point.

Perhaps it was the steep climb on the narrow spiral staircase that opened our appetites, but we left the Basilica hungry as wolves, and when we passed by a Greek taverna, my son suggested we go in. I agreed, with zero expectations - but that turned out to be one of our best meals in Lisbon. An unexpected gem, discovered by chance.

The melitzanosalata was smoky and creamy, and the loukoumades were honeyed, but the dish that I loved the most was their htipiti, a dip made with roasted red peppers and feta cheese. We gathered generous swooshes of it on our warm pitas and there were eye rolls of pleasure and copious nodding as we tasted our meze.

So the dish I am bringing you today is, at origin, Greek. However, I veered so far from the original, that it would be misleading to call my recipe htipiti, because it isn’t that. I do honestly love my veggies, so I doubled the roasted red peppers, added walnuts for extra protein, good fats and fiber, and well, what I ended up with is delicious, even if inauthentic. But in my case, the purpose isn’t to document, but to create something new on the good bones of something old.

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Ingredient highlight: roasted red peppers

The scent of roasting red peppers, as they blister and char under heat, is seductive. They take me back to my childhood in the countryside, where my family would make, in the summer, giant vats of zacusca, an incredibly flavourful spread made with roasted eggplants, roasted peppers and tomatoes.

Red peppers are a big deal in the Balkans and Central Europe, and they form the basis of many dishes, from Greece, Turkey and Serbia, to Romania, Hungary and Ukraine. Paprika, the spice made from them, is a staple in most households there. Here in Canada, Bell peppers are the easiest to find, but this week I got lucky and found gorgeous Shepherd peppers, which are long and pointy, with a thinner flesh, and are sweeter and more flavourful than their chubby cousins.

And do you know how to choose the nicest ones? They should be deep red (none of those pale orange ones, please), very firm to the touch to suggest crispness, not be at all wrinkled or squishy. I normally encourage you to smell your veg, but peppers only reveal their scent when you cut them open, and in so doing, you burst the little pockets of juice where their aroma lives.

For this recipe, you’ll have to use fresh peppers, which you roast. Please don’t buy the ones that come in jars, they look beautiful on a shelf but they are PICKLED, sometimes in a very acidic brine, and not suitable for this recipe, which demands the roastiest and sweetest specimens.

I’ve included suggestions on how to stretch this dip into a meal with almost no extra effort (except a bit of good shopping) at the end of the recipe.

The simplest option

Before you jump into the recipe, a final note: roasting peppers isn’t hard, and it concentrates their sweetness in the most incredible way. Even if you don’t make the full recipe, can I influence you to at least try the roasted peppers? Roast as directed (maybe cut them into smaller slices if you go this route), then serve them on a bed of Greek yogurt with warm pitas on the side.

The recipe

Roasted red pepper dip

Ingredients:

5 large red bell peppers or Shepherd peppers, or a mix of the two

3 tablespoons (45 g) olive oil, divided

¼ teaspoon fine sea salt (use less or more depending on the saltiness of your feta cheese)

½ cup (60 g) raw walnuts

5.3 oz (150 g) sheep feta cheese, or a vegan feta alternative like this one

1 clove garlic, finely minced or grated on a Microplane zester

½ teaspoon smoked paprika

¼ teaspoon Greek oregano, optional but nice

¼ teaspoon aleppo chile flakes, optional, add if you like a bit of chile heat in your food

Equipment:

Food processor

Method:

Preheat the oven to 425 F, and line a large (half-sheet) baking sheet with parchment paper.

Cut the peppers into quarters, then scoop out and discard the seeds and carefully cut away the squishy veins. Add the peppers to a medium bowl, then toss them with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and ¼ teaspoon of fine sea salt. Arrange them on the lined baking sheet skin down, then roast for about 35-45 minutes, until the edges are burnished and the flesh is soft.

Take the peppers out of the oven, and immediately add them to a bowl. Cover the bowl with a plate, and let the peppers steam, this will make it easier to remove their skin, which makes for a smoother dip. Once they are cool to the touch, gently peel away the skin, saving any juices that are left in the bowl.

To a food processor, add the walnuts, remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil, minced garlic, paprika, and optional oregano and aleppo chile flakes, and process until the walnuts are broken down to crumbs. Add the red peppers with any juices they’ve released, and sheep feta, then process until you obtain a dip that’s mostly smooth, but with some texture. You can thin out the dip to your desired consistency with a bit more olive oil or water, just be sure to taste for salt and adjust as needed.

To serve, dollop the dip onto a plate, then drizzle with olive oil and scatter over it some more crumbled feta. Serve with warm pitas.

How to create a meal from this recipe

I often serve meals made up of several small plates, which allows each eater to customize their plate. With a bit of clever shopping, you’re able to put a full meal on the table in this way.

Here are some options : warm pitas, a small dish of yogurt drizzled with a “sauce” of harissa and olive oil, Lebanese cucumbers chopped into sticks, a dish of hummus or garlicky bean mash or just simply marinated beans, and a dish of olives.

Roasted Red Pepper Dip

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I hope you will try this, and if you do, leave a comment or question below. And if this recipe has opened your appetite for more, here are some other plant-heavy dishes you may want to bite into:

I was unconvinced about smoothies for a long time, because they were most frequently praised as a quick breakfast. However, I am not a fan of drinking a smoothie blended with ice first thing in the morning. When I climb out of bed bleary-eyed, my first drink is room temperature water or, maybe a herbal tea like chamomile, sipped, ideally, in silence.

I need gentle re-entry into the world of the conscious; my definition of a perfect morning is a slow morning and somehow, the roar of a high-powered blender never quite fits in with that vision.

But move the timeline a bit to the 3-o'clock afternoon energy dip, and the smoothie becomes a great snack idea: fruit plus home made almond milk, blended with a protein source so it has lasting power into the early evening dinnertime.

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The recipe

Smoothies are generally pretty simple, and this one’s particularly so: only five ingredients. The only fussy-ish part about it is the layering: the berry mash goes on the bottom in the glass and the blended smoothie goes on top. If you don’t need to obsess over the food styling bit like yours truly (though the styling part is my absolute favourite), then by all means just pour and enjoy.

If you do want the layered effect and marbling, there is a bit of a technique to this, but it’s not complicated: my 12 year old can do it, and I am confident that so can you. The idea is to avoid pouring the smoothie in from a height, as that will disturb the layer of fruit already in the glass.

Here’s how to achieve that layered effect, and there’s a short video of the technique below, if you prefer.

• First, add to the glass the berry mash with a spoon. Aim for the bottom, without touching the sides of the glass, if you can

• Blend the smoothie per the instructions, then grab a normal eating spoon and lower it into the glass without touching the bottom. Pour the smoothie slowly into the glass, aiming to hit the spoon first. It’ll pour from the spoon onto the berries, but from a much lower height, remaining in a separate layer from the berries.

• Finally, with a long-handled spoon, gently swirl the berry layer into the smoothie against the sides of your glasses. It’s a thing of beauty, and I get a kick out of it every. Single. Time.

We eat these with spoons (which is better from a digestion perspective as well), or if you have handy a large boba straw, that can work as well, depending on how puréed your berries are.

And a last note: I’m using a mixture of fresh raspberries and a couple strawberries here. You can, however, use frozen and thawed berries if the price of berries has made your eyes water - it has, mine. The honey on the berries is optional, but I find it helpful, especially when the berries are particularly tart, or under-ripe (looking at you, pale strawberries in the bottom of the box).

Berry swirl peanut butter smoothie

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups raspberries or strawberries, or a mix of the two

1 tablespoon honey

1 ½ cups oat milk or almond milk

1 large ripe banana, broken in chunks, fresh or frozen

3 tablespoons peanut butter

1 teaspoon vanilla paste, optional

1 teaspoon bee pollen for garnish, optional

Method:

Place the washed (and hulled, if needed) berries in the jar of your blender, and add the honey. Pulse briefly a few times, until the berries are mostly smashed, but not completely puréed. They should still have some chunks, some texture.

Add the berry mixture to the bottom of two serving glasses, taking care not to drip on the sides of the glasses.

Give the blender jar a quick rinse, then add to it the plant milk, banana chunks, peanut butter, and vanilla paste if using. Blend on high speed until completely smooth.

Pour the peanut butter smoothie into your glasses slowly, from a low height, using a spoon to ensure the liquid does not hit the berry purée directly (find the technique video in the post). When the glasses are filled, use a long spoon to swirl the berry purée gently into the top, smoothie layer, aiming to bring it up around the sides of the glass for that beautiful marbled effect.

If desired, garnish the smoothies with a few grains of bee pollen and serve immediately.

The printable recipe PDF is below (paid subscribers).

If this smoothie has energized you enough to want to cook some more, check out a couple recent recipes:

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To me, this is a generous umbrella term, under which fit many things. The sourdough loaf I bake weekly (this week’s was built with einkorn flour, and the addition of Gruyère, confit garlic and rosemary). The cardamom bun from Andersen Bakery in Copenhagen, which I ate bleary-eyed in the early morning sunshine, fresh off a red-eye flight. The plãcintã my grandmother made, a pan fried yeasted flatbread filled with potatoes or sauerkraut.

Growing up, scones weren’t part of this glorious carb-y lineup, but after I moved to Canada, and saw them in every corner coffee shop, I became curious. I went through my cookbook collection and found a few recipes, then free-styled from there.

I took a break from making scones in my perfectionistic whole-foods-only phase, but as my view of what was healthful deepened, and as I understood that the soul needed nourishing too, I became much less dogmatic and gently, occasionally, reintroduced foods I’d once rejected. I focused on savouring them with joy and delight, with zero guilt, before I return to my baseline of supportive foods, my kitchen MVP’s.

You can make these in less time than it takes to go to the shop, and if you have (spelt) flour, butter, yogurt and lemons, you have everything you need to make these. Don’t be discouraged by my calling for spelt flour: you can use all purpose/ plain flour here, maybe use a bit less since wheat is a more “thirsty” flour than spelt and absorbs more liquid. The thing to remember is to not overwork the dough. The best scones have a lightly toothsome crust, and a tender, pillowy crumb. This is achieved by working your dough very gently, like touching petals.

Ingredient spotlight: white spelt flour

Can I entice you to try spelt? You can find it in well-stocked grocery stores right beside the whole wheat flour, or the gluten free flours such as oat or almond. You might see wholegrain spelt, sprouted spelt, and white spelt flour.

Spelt is an ancient grain, higher in protein than wheat and more easily digestible. It has not been hybridized, which means that genetically, it is still very close to its grass ancestor. And this is a very good thing: the hull of the grains is tougher than its wheat cousin, so farming it requires fewer chemicals to get rid of little critters that might nibble the grains. When you choose it, you’re also supporting plant diversity, and to me personally, this is an important consideration.

These impressive credentials notwithstanding, the main reasons I use spelt are flavour and workability, how it behaves in baked goods. Handle your wheat pastry too vigorously, and you get something akin to your pup’s chew-toy. Spelt, by contrast, creates a plush, tender crumb in scones and muffins, a more malleable and flavourful pie pastry, and I use it in my sourdough bread as well.

The flavour is better than wheat too: where whole wheat gives cardboard vibes (sorry!), spelt flour brings nutty flavour notes, and there is never a time in my baking when that’s not a good thing.

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Recipe notes

It would be amazing if you took my invitation to heart, and gave spelt flour a chance, then try it also in any recipe that calls for pastry flour. But if you don’t have the bandwidth to track it down, or you don’t have the space to store multiple flours in your pantry, then use all purpose/ plain flour.

Variations

I adore lemons, and there is always yogurt in my fridge, but here are some variations for you, if you want to freestyle a bit:

• I use and call for sheep or goat yogurt; it’s more easily digestible, lovely and rich. Use whole milk (cow’s milk) yogurt if that’s what you have to hand. Full fat, please.

• to make this more wholesome, replace up to half of the white spelt flour with sprouted spelt flour. Your scones will be darker in colour and have a more pronounced nutty flavour, but also more fibre.

• if you want to make this dairy-free, use plant butter (sticks work better than the varieties that come in tubs), and plant-based yogurt. Here in Canada I use this brand, and when in Europe I use this one. (no affiliation with either one)

• these scones are pillowy and delicate. I’d suggest not replacing the egg, as it adds structure and a lovely golden colour to the crumb. But traditional scones are made with only flour, butter, milk and baking powder, so I encourage you to experiment, if you’re keen to make these without the egg.

The recipe

Spelt lemon and yogurt scones

Ingredients:

2 cups (245 g) white spelt flour, plus more for dusting your work surface

1 tablespoon (11 g) baking powder

½ teaspoon fine sea salt

2 tablespoons (30 g) golden (unrefined) sugar

5 tablespoons (75 g) butter, fridge-cold

1 large egg (Canadian large eggs weigh around 52 grams out of shell)

½ cup (105 g) full fat sheep yogurt (or goat, or a plant based unsweetened/ plain yogurt)

zest of 1 lemon

Method:

Preheat the oven to 425 F, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, sift the flour and baking powder together. This step is optional, but sifting aerates the dry ingredients, and your scones will be lighter. You ought to at least sift the baking powder, to eliminate any small clumps. Add the sugar and salt, and whisk to thoroughly combine.

Next, take the fridge-cold butter, and grate it (yes, I mean that) on the large holes of a box grater. With a light touch, mix and rub the butter into the flour, until the flour resembles fine breadcrumbs. The mixture will clump a bit like wet sand, if you press it together.

In a medium bowl, whisk the egg, yogurt and lemon zest, to homogenize. Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and pour in the wet ingredients. With a fork, start bringing the dough together, rotating the bowl as you go to incorporate all the flour. At this point, I don’t handle the dough with my hands: warm hands can melt the butter and make the dough too sticky and hard to handle.

Continue mixing with the fork until all the flour has been incorporated. When you’ve obtained a shaggy dough, flour your hands and gently and briefly gather together the dough into a ball. You’re not at all kneading, you are just gently pressing the dough together. If it’s very soft, place in the refrigerator for 15 minutes, until it firms up a bit.

Place the ball of dough onto a lightly floured work surface, then gently pat it to a 1 inch (2.5 cm) thickness. With a floured round cutter (or a glass with thin walls) cut out about 6-7 scones. Mine has a radius of 2 inches/ 5 cm. Press together any leftover dough and repeat until all the dough has been used up.

Place scones on the parchment lined baking sheet, then bake in the preheated oven, on the top rack, for 11-13 minutes, until golden brown and nicely risen. To check whether the scones have baked through, break one open: the crumb should be pillowy, and they should not be at all doughy in the centre. In my oven, they take exactly 13 minutes. Bake with your sense of smell, too: when your kitchen smells heavenly of butter and bread, chances are the scones are ready.

Remove the scones to a wire rack to cool. They are best when fresh, and still very slightly warm. They freeze well, but are never quite as pillowy as when freshly baked. This is why the recipe makes only a few scones.

Serve right away with lemon curd, or raspberry chia jam, or butter, and with your best tea.

Lemon Yogurt Spelt Scones

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One of the things that most fascinate me about cooking is texture. Home cooks don’t always think about textures in a meal, but it is one of the reasons why restaurant meals are so delightful. A good chef pays very close attention to texture, and how different ingredients will feel in the mouth once you go beyond the first burst of flavour as it hits your taste buds.

Moms are adept with food textures too. We routinely encounter snappy resistance from children who often can’t articulate why they hate this food or that, yet I think it often comes down to how things feel as they taste and chew. When my son would refuse to eat something, I usually went into problem solving mode, asking questions: “Is it the flavour?” “Is this lettuce leaf hard to chew for you?” “Do you not like the way it feels in your mouth?” And for my son at least, texture is often the problem. For example, he eats oats in a granola, but give him porrige and he complains that it’s -reader, brace yourself - like bogies.

One thing that it seems we universally love, however, are crunchy things. In fact -and tell me if that’s not true for you, too - as soon as I say “Imagine you’re eating a potato chip/crisp,” your mouth will probably start watering. Well, mine too. But let’s face it, they aren’t exactly health food, amirite? And this is where sugar snap peas come in.

Now, maybe you did not expect this sudden pivot into wholesome food territory, but that’s what I’m here for: to make your next vegetable-forward meal more frictionless and delicious. We all know that it’s great for our gut to eat a diverse diet of mostly plants, so I’m here to tempt you to add another veg to your weekly grocery list and meal rotation.

Today’s salad is a firecracker. Sugar snap peas deliver that addictive crunch, garlic and basil join the party, all of it against the mild, soft chew of the couscous. It’s a real expression of spring: butter yellow and green colours, in a burst of freshness and herbaceous zing.

Ingredient highlight: sugar snap peas

Growing up, I spent every weekend and school vacation on my grandparents homestead in the Transylvanian countryside, and their garden, full to bursting with produce was as familiar to me as the back of my hand. My grandmother grew peas, for sure; but we just ate the peas, and never did I taste a whole pod until much later in life, as a curious cook prowling the grocery store aisles for fresh inspiration.

If you’ve never had them before, you’re in for a treat. Eating them is not unlike eating a stick of cucumber, and their juicy, fresh crunch tastes like bottled spring. That’s why I prefer them raw, either chopped in a salad, as I do here, or as part of a crudité platter with a creamy dip. They marry really well with garlic, so I recommend as dips a garlicy white bean mash, smashed avocado with garlic and lime, or whipped feta if you’re cheesily inclined.

A note on sugar snap peas is to pay attention, when you buy them, to whether they’re normal peas, or stringless. Normal peas will require that you remove the fibrous “string” that runs along one, or both seams of the pod, and here’s how to do that:

Hold the pod and gently snap off the stem end. Now, find the thin, fibrous string that runs along the seam of the pod (sometimes it will be pulled off with the stem). Use your fingers or the blade of a paring knife to grasp it and pull it down towards the other end. Ta-da!

Sometimes, there’s a string at the other end as well, so simply repeat the process going the other way, if necessary.

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Recipe notes

While we’re on the topic of peas, I’ll admit that this salad requires a bit of chopping, but sit down to the job on a quiet evening, or the weekend. Consider it an opportunity to finesse your knife skills, mindfully. It’s relaxing, meditative even. And most importantly, worth it.

Variations

• to make this gluten free, substitute cooked quinoa or brown rice for the couscous. Quinoa would be my first choice, it has the same kind of shape and chew as the couscous only tinier

• use the same weight of snow peas, if you prefer them to sugar snap peas or you’re having trouble finding the latter. I find they don’t absorb the dressing quite as obediently as sugar snaps and are not quite as crunchy - but the spring vibe and freshness will still be there

• the recipe is vegan as written, but if that’s not necessary for you, you can always add a generous sprinkle of crumbled feta on top, or else some grated pecorino. When testing, I found I loved this salad better without the cheese, but see what you enjoy best.

What to have this salad with

One of my biggest challenges when I went plant based (or plant-forward, which is more accurate) was that I had no idea how to compose a full meal. Yes, having salad for dinner is fantastic, except when that’s all you have on the table, in which case be prepared for disgruntled muttering or, worse, open rebellion from your family (ask me how I know).

So here’s how I serve a dish like this to my family: when I want to keep things vegan, I turn to beans. I might serve a small dish of dressed cannellini beans, or a bean mash topped with za’atar and olive oil, or crispy chickpeas. Added fats are always filling too, so a bowl of smashed avocado with warmed flatbreads on the side, or some extra olives are great as well.

If I feel a bit of cheese is welcome that day, I might bring to the table marinated feta (thyme and lemon features there as well), or fry some halloumi, whose intense salinity marries really well with the sweetness of the peas.

The recipe

Sugar snap pea spring salad

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided

2 cloves garlic, finely minced

½ cup (75 g) pearl couscous, or fregola sarda

¾ cup hot water from a freshly boiled kettle

½ teaspoon fine sea salt, divided

2 cups (200 g) sugar snap peas, ideally ones labeled as stringless*

½ teaspoon lemon zest, from roughly half a medium lemon

½ tablespoon lemon juice

5-6 larger basil leaves, finely chopped into slim ribbons (called chiffonade in chef speak)

½ cup (56 g) pitted Castelvetrano olives, chopped (optional, but recommended)

Method:

To a small pot set over medium heat, add the olive oil and chopped garlic. Watch it closely. Let the garlic come to a sizzle, but as soon as it has, remove from the heat and pour the oil and garlic into a medium bowl. A little bit of oil will be left behind in the pot and that’s okay, but make sure you get all the garlic.

To the same small pot (no need to wash it) add the couscous and ¼ teaspoon of the sea salt. Return the pot to medium heat, and toast the couscous for 2-3 minutes, stirring, until fragrant, and meanwhile the water in the kettle comes to a boil.

Measure ¾ cup freshly boiled water into a measuring cup, then add it to the couscous - be careful, as it sputters and steams a lot as the water hits the pan. Reduce heat to low, and simmer covered for 12-14 minutes, or until the couscous is cooked through but still pleasantly chewy, yet with no raw bit on the inside. When done, remove from the heat and fluff with a fork to separate the grains.

While the couscous is cooking, chop the peas. If you have normal sugar snap peas, you will need to de-string them, see note. Otherwise, trim the ends of the pods, and chop them on the bias in ¼ inch (4 mm) thick pieces. Set aside.

Take the medium bowl with the olive oil and garlic mixture, and add to it the lemon zest, lemon juice, and remaining ¼ teaspoon salt. Stir well to emulsify the dressing, then add the cooked couscous and toss to coat all the grains. Add the peas, olives if using, and basil leaves, then toss the salad gently but thoroughly. Taste and adjust for salt, if needed, then serve immediately.

Make ahead: the couscous can be cooked ahead of time and tossed with the dressing, but I recommend adding the sugar snap peas only at the last minute, as the salt and acid will start breaking down the pods otherwise.

Yield: 2 very generous servings, but up to 4 as a side dish.

Sugar Snap Pea Spring Salad

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If you’d go back through my last few posts, you could be forgiven for thinking that I was a meteorologist, and not a food creator. I’ve reported so frequently and thoroughly on the weather, that I can see why you’d be possibly confused. In part, I do it because I love paying attention to nature, especially as the seasons shift: a tiny bud starting to swell, a green shoot daring to peak out from under fallen leaves.

I’m starting to see eeeever so feeble signs that change is afoot; the wild geese are flying in gracefully coordinated V’s and when the sun comes out, there’s a… sparkliness to the light that wasn’t there even a couple weeks ago. Sure, there’s still snow on the ground, but the sunset is later and even that, in itself, is enough of a mood booster.

Recipe notes

But cold weather calls for soup, definitely. After a chilly walk, there is nothing quite as nice as wrapping numb fingers around a big bowl of soup, and this one I am sharing today becomes its own kind of comfort: soothing and belly warming, yet light enough to leave room for a slice of snacking cake for dessert.

I’m using carrots and cabbage, the humblest of winter veg, and zucchini, however you can substitute freely with other things hanging around in your crisper drawer. I love parsnip in addition to, or instead of the carrots, and cauliflower instead of the Savoy cabbage, for example.

*Note that the chopped Savoy cabbage quantity that goes in the soup is much more than what’s pictured here - I just didn’t have any more room on the cutting board, so I shot the uncut veg instead :)

If you’ve never picked up a crinkle-leafed Savoy cabbage until now, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. It tastes sweeter than normal (a.k.a. green) cabbage, and in my experience, it cooks much faster too. If you have some left over after making the soup, sauté it simply in olive oil, with a bit of salt; it is one of my family’s favourite things to eat. You can also shred it and use it in coleslaw, because it is delicious raw as well.

I use yogurt for a bit of creaminess. You should always add yogurt to soup at the end, and I temper it in by mixing it with a bit of broth first, before adding it to the whole soup. Every soup benefits from a bit of acid, added at the end, because acid rounds out the other flavours and adds a zing, a counterbalance to any savoury and sweet ingredients.

When I serve the soup, I also bring a bowl of yogurt to the table, my family loves adding additional dollops to the hot soup to make it even more creamy. This extra bit of yogurt also contributes probiotics, since it hasn’t been boiled, hence the word “soothing” in the name of this soup. Between the yogurt and the warmth of it, and the veg, this soup is like a health-giving hug in a bowl.

The garnish, if you choose to use it, is simply a bit of olive oil and chopped parsley, and a twist of black pepper. Garnishes are my love language, they always make a dish feel more considered, even when it’s made with the simplest, humblest ingredients.

One final point before the recipe: if you want to make this soup more filling or hearty, add a can of white beans to it at the same time as the zucchini half-moons. Be sure to increase the salt as well, as the beans are likely to be unsalted and will require that extra pinch, for optimal flavour. Below is the recipe, and scroll to the end for a downloadable and printable version.

The recipe

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 medium to large onion, finely diced

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 2 mm/ ⅛ inch coins either with a knife, or a mandoline

2 zucchinis, ends trimmed, cut lengthwise and then sliced into half-moons

½ of a medium Savoy cabbage, cut into 4 mm/ ¼ inch ribbons

1 teaspoon fine sea salt, or to taste

3 twists of freshly ground black pepper

⅓ cup (75 g) full fat sheep yogurt (use soy yogurt for vegan, or another dairy yogurt if you prefer)

Garnish (optional):

full fat sheep yogurt (or soy, goat, etc.), to taste

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves

2 tablespoons olive oil

Method:

In a large soup pot, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the finely chopped onion and cook until the onion turns golden. Add the chopped garlic and cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute more. Do not brown the garlic, as it turns bitter.

Add the carrot coins, mix thoroughly and let cook for another minute or so. Add 3 cups of water (if you use water from a freshly boiled kettle, you can speed things up considerably). Season with the salt and the black pepper, and bring the soup to a boil. When boiling, turn down the heat, cover, and simmer for about 7-10 minutes, until the carrots are al dente.

Add the ribbons of Savoy cabbage, stir well, and cook for 5 minutes, then add the chopped zucchinis as well. We’re staggering the veg additions because they all take different times to cook - if you’re not fussed about maintaining the structural integrity of the veg, you can also add them all at the same time with the carrots in step 2. You might need more water, if so, add another 1 to 1 ½ cups.

Cover again and continue simmering. When all the veg has softened, taste and season the soup again. You’ll likely need more salt, as we have a lot of sweet veg here (the onion and carrots).

Add the yogurt to a small bowl. Take a couple ladlefuls of broth from your pot, and add them carefully to your yogurt, whisking all the while. Then, pour the yogurt and broth mixture back into the soup, and stir well. Let the soup come to the boil again, just a couple blips, and it’s done.

If using the garnish, simply mix the chopped parsley with the 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Serve the soup in roomy bowls, with good crusty bread on the side. I bring more yogurt and the pepper mill to the table and let everyone garnish their bowls as they like.

Yield: 4 servings

Storage: the soup will keep, refrigerated, for up to 3 days.

Soothing Vegetable And Yogurt Soup

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I sleep by a curtain-less window and I can see the sky from my bed - and every morning, it gets bright a bit earlier. A few days ago, when the temperature warmed up briefly, I spotted robins and a pair of cardinals in the neighbour’s tree - I can’t explain how… joyous it was to hear them, after such a long birdsong silence. Meanwhile, in the online world, the ever-perceptive instagram algorithm has started serving me flower and seed farm content, so yes it must be, spring is coming.

As someone who’s grown up in Eastern Europe, February and March are maybe the hardest months here, in my Canadian home. Last week, my mom sent me pictures from her and my dad’s garden in suburban Romania, and when I saw the snowdrops I almost wanted to weep. For here, there’s still a layer of frozen snow on the ground, and we won’t see snowdrops until probably late March. My boys and I have started plotting how we could spend February in Europe next year, and this feverish planning is the one thing that has kept me in good spirits these couple of weeks.

And food, of course - the universal mood-enhancer. There is much to love on this front in February. Citrus is still going strong, and there is all the chocolate for V-day, and what’s even more exciting - pancakes! Or crêpes, as we call them, to distinguish them from the fluffy, American style pancakes that are also popular

Oat pancakes, or crêpes

I grew up eating and loving these thin pancakes, which my mom would make fairly regularly as a light second course, after a very filling soup. We’d have something like smoked ham hock and bean soup, then the pancakes would complete the meal. Hers were made with cow’s milk and wheat flour, the only flour she ever cooked or baked with. The frying part was exclusively her domain, but I sometimes helped her mix the batter, and fill the finished ones with either sweet farmer’s cheese (my favourite, and if you grew up in Eastern Europe, a staple) or jam.

When we discovered my son’s gluten and dairy intolerance, pancakes were something I eagerly adapted, and he seems to have inherited my love of them. Even though he has since mostly grown out of the intolerance phase, I still make them my way, with rice and oat flours, and oat milk. I love rotating all ingredients in my kitchen and flours are no exception; you’ll see me cycling through a variety of grains in future posts as well, though my favourite sourdough bread recipe ought to have given you the general idea. And if you’re wondering where to find flours to experiment with, then I encourage you to check out your local bulk store (I go to Bulk Barn).

The mixing of the batter is very simple, you just need a kitchen scale, a whisk and a bowl. You can make it the day/evening before, if you prefer. Or do as the French moms do, and keep a batch in the fridge, so an easy post-school snack of crêpes with Nutella or jam is never more than a few minutes away. Below is a video showing the whole process.

Honestly, the trickiest bit is to shape the crêpes, by vigorously swirling and shaking the frying pan to distribute the batter evenly across its surface. But I treat it like a game of tetris - fill in the gaps, but with pancake batter. It ends up being both fun, and an effective upper body workout. The best pan for the job is a nonstick, fairly light one: you’ve no hope at all of swirling and shaking a cast iron pan, for example.

Some more helpful bits of advice? Number one: let the pan preheat until a drop of water immediately starts hissing madly when you drop it from your fingers to the pan’s surface; number two: brush the pan generously with oil before the first couple pancakes, this will make the release of the cooked ones much easier. And lastly: the first pancake is always a dud, maybe the second one too, but don’t get discouraged and keep going.

Once I have cooked all pancakes, I bring them to the table along with a jar of nut butter, and a selection of fruit cut into small chunks or slices: bananas year round, orange segments in winter, pears in the fall, or berries in the spring and summer, mangoes or papayas when available. Everyone fills and rolls their own pancakes, and the chatter stops temporarily as we savour and relish.

So here’s the recipe, below. Today is Shrove Tuesday (aka Pancake Tuesday), so you now have good reason to give it a go. But if not, really any day of the year can be pancake day.

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Last Thursday, a massive snow storm swept through the Golden Horseshoe, dumping 40-ish centimetres of powder-soft snow onto driveways, cars, and roofs, blanketing everything in white fluff. We’d been warned it would be a big one, so the day before, seemingly everyone in my town had crowded the grocery store isles, to stock up on food. As the snow piled high, blown horizontally by fierce wind, we looked on and smiled, smugly, as we enjoyed mugfuls of hot chocolate inside.

There is an Icelandic word for this circumstance exactly: gluggaveður. It literally means “window weather,” meaning weather that is best appreciated from behind a window. But, ever eager for beautiful pictures, I did brave the storm and went outside with my camera. It is a rare occasion to capture images such as these: a sea of white, ethereal, punctuated here and there by glimpses of objects hidden underneath. All was quiet, hushed, a silent world for once.

Naturally, it was the perfect time to play in the kitchen, the coziest space of the house. That day and the next, I made a batch of candied orange peel, the proper, thrice-boiled kind, and not the shortcut version I had used for lemons. Sponge cake, granola, and my favourite einkorn sourdough bread were all on the menu, as were trays of roasted vegetables - I was determined to keep the oven on for as long as humanly possible.

During those frigid days, the roasted sweet potatoes I’m sharing today were a wholesome highlight. I roasted them with ras el hanout, a North African blend of spices that brought a note of warmth to their mellow sweetness. My family fought over the ones with the nicest burnished edges right as they came out of the oven. Meanwhile, I spread a swoosh of tahini and yogurt sauce on each plate, to be topped with a pile of sweet potato batons and a sprinkle of chopped pistachios and dill. I got repeated requests for this dish during that week, and since.

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Roasted sweet potatoes with tahini-yogurt sauce recipe

The way I go about making this is to get started on the potatoes first as they take longest to get ready. And while they roast, I get on with the sauce and then the nut-and-herb garnish. When the potatoes come out of the oven it’s a simple job of assembly before serving. I normally have mine with a swoosh of sauce underneath the potatoes, as described above. My son, an enthusiastic dipper, prefers his plate to come with an extra helping of sauce on the side, so that

he can dunk every single potato bâton into it. The quantities here serve the 3 of us generously, but you can stretch it to 4 side dish servings, if need be. You can find this recipe in the post below.

I hope you make it, and that you stay cozy while winter does her thing outside. May spring come to us early in this season! Until next time!

To me, it’s not a coincidence that nature gives us citrus at this time of year. It knows, perhaps, that we need a juicy jolt to the system to enliven us, and to serve as promise of the sweetness that is to come later in the year. Citrus says, “I want you to remember what sunshine and sweetness taste together.” That is the point of citrus in winter.

I’ve been picking up bagfuls of clementines and mandarins, to snack on throughout the day. The oranges are for breakfast, juicy segments freed from their skins, to top bowls of oats fortified with dollops of pecan-date butter. And the lemons and limes are zested and juiced constantly, for a soup here, for a warm salad dressing there - anywhere I can squeeze it in, pun intended.

We were hit by a snow storm a few days ago, and 30cm of snow fell in one day. When I made the guys hot chocolate for their snow shovelling efforts, I had the genius idea to add some orange zest into that too. It was… incredible. It always blows my mind how so little zest (by weight, it is a near-insignificant quantity compared to the rest of ingredients) can have such a big impact on a recipe, and that is the undeniable magic of citrus fruits.

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Candied lemons

The recipe I wanted to share today is a simple one. Yet, if a taste of this candied citrus garnish does not enliven your taste buds, I don’t know what will. The first time I made them, I wasn’t sure whether I liked them or not - they are intense! Bitter, sweet and tart, potent in a good way - and they’re beautiful as a garnish for any lemon-featuring dessert you’re making in this season. And if gin and tonic is your vibe, they work great there too.

I’ll note that this recipe isn’t true candying; normally, citrus is boiled in water 3 times, and the water discarded each time, to eliminate the bitterness in the skin of the fruit. Only after this repeated boiling in water are the peels/slices of lemon, orange or grapefruit added to the sugar syrup. I make the triple-boiled candied orange peels too, and I’ll share that recipe too one day, but for today, this much quicker recipe is just perfect. Just take care not to overcook the lemons, or cook at a high temp - they’re best when gently, slowly simmered for about 25 minutes.

If you make it, and are wondering where else to use these beauties:

• the syrup is fantastic in tea. I drink chamomile or linden tea in the evenings while I read, and this is perfect to sweeten it, instead of sugar or honey

• any cake where you’ve used the zest will benefit from a few slices of candied lemons, used as garnish to top it before serving. I even love it on chocolate cake with a scoop of whipped mascarpone frosting - it’s one of the few flavours potent enough to stand up to chocolate

• in cocktails, gin and tonic is the first to come to mind, but try an elderflower spritz, on ice, and drop a slice or two in there, it’s so good. (handful of ice in a tall glass, 30ml St Germain liqueur, about 150-170ml SanPellegrino sparkling water, and add a couple lemon slices. Unlike plain lemon, this is one garnish that’s actually fully edible).

Candied Lemons

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Our plane descended through scattered, fluffy clouds bathed in golden, mid-autumn sunshine. Bleary-eyed and stiff from too-long sitting, we wended through the airport to retrieve our luggage, then drove to the home we’d left more than a month before. We had traveled to beautiful Vienna, and to see family in Romania, but I was now ready to be back in my own kitchen and bake my little heart out, something I hadn’t been able to do during our extended, month-long trip.

Jet-lag had me up at dawn the next morning, so I went into the kitchen, still bleary-eyed but eager, and I was greeted with the sight of a lone squash I’d bought before leaving. It had waited patiently for me to return, like a loyal and steadfast kitchen friend. I love squashes for this quality. Besides being sweet tempered and mellow, they are also very patient with me when I neglect them for a while on a pantry shelf.

It felt so good to be back. Kitchens in Europe are notoriously small, and every one I’d been in in the past few weeks had felt cramped and alien to me. The smells weren’t familiar, utensils and ingredients weren’t where my hand reached for them. At home, the kitchen is the spacial axis my life, and our family life, flows around, and being away from it made me feel strangely unmoored, taking pleasure in the world I was seeing but not feeling grounded in it.

As I started pulling out the ingredients, it felt like remembering the steps to a dance you haven’t practiced in a while. Maybe you’re a bit wobbly on your feet at first, but you find the rhythm, you get the pacing right, you have found the groove.

The squash, baked and ready to scoop out the sweet flesh. The oats and seeds, the maple syrup, the warming spices. The scent, warm and inviting, the kitchen alive again after a long pause. As the first rays of sunlight broke through the kitchen window, I pulled the baking sheet with the sweet scented granola from the oven.

Home is where your kitchen is, and I had found again my place in mine.

Pumpkin and spice granola

Pumpkin and spice granola rolls off the tongue more easily, I admit, but the thing is, this is actually a squash-and-spice granola. I prefer squashes for nearly all my cooking and baking. Buttery-fleshed kabocha squash, red kuri (also know as Hokkaido squash), butternut, delicatas and honeynuts, and even the spaghetti squash - they are all far more loveable and interesting to me than the plain-tasting orange ones we might carve out for Halloween. The only exception is the small pie pumpkins, which still pack proper flavour in their small package.

I made this recipe with both kabocha and red kuri puree, the home made good stuff. It’s so easy to bake a squash, and it’s a largely hands-off activity that can be done days in advance of the actual granola-making.

To bake a squash, you split it in two halves, scoop out the seeds and stringy bits, then you place it cut side down on a parchment-lined baking sheet. You bake it in a preheated oven at 400 degrees F, until burnished and yielding to the touch, and a fork pierces both skin and flesh easily. Once it has cooled to lukewarm, the flesh can be scooped out, and I keep mine for up to 5 days in the fridge in a tightly closed glass container.

The rest is also simple, and makes your kitchen smell even better: the oats, nuts and seeds are well stirred-through with the mixed wet ingredients and spices, and the granola is then baked, slowly so as not to burn the nuts, until golden. And if you’re like me, and like a low-effort breakfast on weekdays, then you’ve just created the answer to a couple week’s worth of “what’s for breakfast?” questions.

May your kitchen always smell as though you’ve baked a fresh batch of this golden and spice-scented granola.

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The recipe

Ingredients:

2 (200 g) cups large flake oats

½ cup (60 g) almond flakes

½ cup (65 g) pecans or walnuts, either very coarsely chopped, or left whole

½ cup (70 g) pumpkin seeds

⅓ cup (50 g) sunflower seeds

½ cup (130 g) squash puree*

⅓ cup (98 g) maple syrup

3 tablespoons (50 g) melted coconut oil or a mild-tasting olive oil

½ teaspoon pumpkin spice blend (my preferred one is Club House from McCormick)

Preheat the oven to 325 F, and line a large (half-sheet) baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl , mix together the oats, nuts, and seeds. Separately, in a small bowl, whisk together squash, maple syrup, oil, and spice blend. Add the wet ingredient mixture to the dry, and stir thoroughly with a spatula, until all the dry ingredients are coated with the squash mixture.

Spread the mixture evenly onto the prepared baking sheet, and bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove from the oven and using a large spatula, flip the granola in sections, so that the bottom side is up. Take care that you don’t break it up too much, so that it still has large chunks.

Return to the oven and continue to bake for another 15-20 minutes. Bake with your sense of smell, too: when your kitchen smells heavenly of toasted nuts and warming spices, chances are the granola is ready. Take a look at it in the pan. The granola is ready when it looks golden, light brown all over and has a toasted scent. It won’t be fully “dry” feeling, it continues to dry as it cools.

Cool the granola in the pan set on a wire rack, and when fully cold, transfer it to large airtight jars. It is best for about 2 weeks at room temperature. If I happen to make an extra-large batch, which yields 2 large jars, I keep one at room temperature and freeze the other until we’ve eaten the first. If I want to have fruit with it, I find it pairs best with its seasonal brethren, specifically pears or apples.

*How to make squash puree

My favourites for puree are either the small pie pumpkins, or else any of the squashes, such as butternut, hokkaido (Hubbard), the extra cute honeynuts or the kabochas. You can take one of two routes:

-option one: cut in half, scoop the seeds out, peel, then chop into 1-inch chunks. Steam in a steamer basket until quite tender and easily pierced with a fork, anywhere from 17-25 minutes. Puree in a food processor until smooth, then transfer to a glass container with an air-tight lid, and store in the fridge for up to 5 days.

-option two: cut in half, scoop the seeds out. Preheat the oven to 400 F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Place the veg, cut side down, onto the baking sheet and slide into the oven. Bake for at least 25-30 minutes, then start checking, depending on the size of your squash or pumpkin. Smaller, thinner-fleshed pumpkins or squashes will be ready in about 35-40 minutes, whereas a fleshy kabocha might take 50 minutes or more. The squash is ready when the skin looks burnished, it feels soft when pressed with a finger, and a fork pierces both skin and flesh very easily. Let cool, then use a spoon to scoop out all the flesh, all the way to the skin. Puree the flesh in a food processor until smooth, transfer to a glass container with an air-tight lid, and store in the fridge for up to 5 days.

Pumpkin And Spice Granola

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There were good tomatoes at the grocery store. I know I should tell you to check out the farmers’ markets but the truth is that in August, even grocery store tomatoes are good because they tend to come from the same place as the market ones: an actual field with soil on it. They glow under the “Local Produce” sign like a traffic light, and you must stop and pick up a basket.

They’ll come in bushels too, soon, for the daredevils who have the capacity to undertake a make-your-own-tomato-sauce adventure. That person is not me in this season, with a 12-year old to lock horns with in my household. I must have been a more placable 12-year old myself though, because my mom and grandma did make tomato sauce from scratch every summer. It was a messy affair but so satisfying to see the bottles lined up in the cupboard.

Tomatoes of course scream “summer,” but my devotion to them is such that I’ll buy them year round, whether they were grown here in Canada in a greenhouse, or further south. I just choose them more carefully in winter, going for Campari tomatoes or Baby Beefsteak. And since burrata or buffalo mozzarella are also available year round, this is a salad that one could make anytime, regardless of the season.

the salad

Isn’t she a beaut? I get such a kick from a gorgeous plate of food, and this salad massively delivers in this regard. For colour, I used both field tomatoes, and heirloom Green Zebras that I bought from a local farm. For heirloom tomatoes, you might have to go to a local grower as I did, or grow them yourself in a raised box as I have in the past. I only ever got 3 tomatoes max off a Green Zebra plant, but it was #worthit.

Colour is the same reason I also grow borage flowers, though they are a very optional addition to the salad. It’s very, very good without the flowers too. Borage flowers taste a bit like… watery cucumber? Did I mention they were pretty, though?

So that’s pretty much it. Tomatoes, sliced not too thickly. Buffalo mozzarella, or burrata, roughly torn, yes with your hands. A punchy dressing that also has garlic because its sharpness contrasts so beautifully with the sweet milkiness of the cheese. And garlic + tomatoes is bliss too. Salt, pepper, and done.

I’m serving this with chunks of sourdough. A deeply flavourful juice collects at the bottom of the plate and bread can mop that up. It’s so good. And not just in August, but in any season when you have 10ish minutes to make food, and a few sweet-ripe tomatoes to use up.

Tomato and mozzarella salad with garlic vinaigrette

Serves: 2-3

Ingredients

For the salad:

2-3 large field tomatoes, or 6-7 Campari tomatoes

1 ball of mozzarella, the kind that comes in a packet in brine

7-10 small basil leaves, for garnish

7-10 borage flowers plucked off their stem, for garnish, optional

For the dressing:

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 teaspoons lemon juice, freshly squeezed

1 clove of garlic, grated finely on a Microplane grater

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt OR 1/3 teaspoon Maldon salt

3 twists of the grinder of black pepper

Method

Cut the tomatoes into slices or pieces that are approximately bite-size. I like to lay them on a platter, and just arrange the rest of the ingredients on top.

Drain the mozzarella or burrata from its brine, tear it in large-ish, soft chunks atop the tomatoes. Then, scatter over the tomatoes and cheese the basil leaves, larger ones torn in half, followed by the borage flowers. If you want to eat the flowers, make sure you only use the violet petals, gently separated from the stem - the stem is too tough and hairy to eat pleasantly.

For the dressing, whisk together the ingredients in a small bowl, then with a spoon, drizzle over the salad, making sure you’re thorough as the salad won’t be tossed in the usual way (everything gets kind of messy if you do - not a bad thing, just not what we’re after here).

Serve the salad immediately, preferably with a nice bread (focaccia or a sourdough bread) to mop up all the good juices.

Bakers say the bread is singing, this cracking and popping sound that immediately makes your mouth water (listen to it below). It’s like a promise. Because you know, you can already imagine what that hard crust feels like, how crunchy it is when you tear into it greedily with your teeth.

The bread’s song is the loaf shrinking slightly back, after expanding in the oven under the twin pressures of steam from within and heat from without. The water in the dough creates steam in every little air pocket of the baking loaf. And the steam starts to push the walls upwards and outwards, the bread billows out, until the crust is dried out so much by the heat of the oven that no further expansion is possible.

When out of the heat, the pressure within the bread diminishes as it cools, pulling inward this time, just like we ourselves curl inward, bodily, when we step out of a warm house on a frigid morning. As it pulls, the crust crackles, it sings for the baker. Not every loaf sings, so when a baker hears it, it’s so gratifying. Almost as much as the first, still slightly warm bite from a thick, generously buttered slice.

The einkorn bread

I’ll say right away that this is a hybrid sourdough bread, made with einkorn and organic all purpose wheat flour. I haven’t yet tried making a bread with einkorn only, but my approach is usually gradual with sourdough. I’ll start with 20% whole grain flour, and keep increasing that percentage until I find a loaf that’s wholesome, but also it’s a joy to eat, not too stodgy. This, below, is my favourite loaf right now.

Einkorn is an ancient grain, and the only one never hybridized, which means today’s grains are exactly like the ones our Neolithic ancestors cultivated and consumed. (more information on einkorn here, if you’re curious.) It’s quite humbling to have this flour in my kitchen, a connection to an ancient time.

The recipe

260 g lukewarm water

45 g starter (mine is a 100% hydration starter made with organic all purpose wheat flour), bubbly and ripe at its maximum rise

140 g einkorn flour (I prefer this brand)

225 g organic all purpose flour

6.3 g sea salt

The method

In a large bowl, mix the room temperature starter into the lukewarm water (my kitchen is 21 degrees C, so if yours is warmer, or baking in the summer months, use cold water). I stir it in well with a spoon, so it’s fully dissolved. Add the two flours and mix till a shaggy dough is achieved. Cover, and let it autolyse for 35 minutes. During this time, the flour fully hydrates, the starches in the flour become available for the yeasts in the sourdough culture to use, and the gluten starts developing - don’t skip this step.

Once the 35 minutes are up, add the sea salt and mix it into the dough by squishing it between your fingers repeatedly. Then gently mix by hand until the dough starts to smooth out [create video footage of this]. At this point, I remove it to the counter and do a few slap-and-folds - this isn’t kneading as the dough is too wet and sticky for that. But it’s a way to get to a smoother dough. I wash the bowl meanwhile so I have a clean vessel to return the dough to.

Once the dough looks smooth, I lightly oil the (same large) bowl and put the dough in it to begin the bulk rise. After 40 minutes, I do a stretch-and-fold in the bowl to strengthen the dough structure. I’ll do this twice more, at further 40 minute intervals, for a total of 3 stretch-and-folds. Then I let the dough bulk rise for something like 1-2 hours, until it has risen well, though not quite doubled in volume. It will be jiggly, and if you knock on the bottom of the bowl, you can hear it sounds hollow from all the bubbles already in the dough.

Dust the counter with flour, and dust also the top of the dough. Gently ease the dough onto the counter, you can use a bench scraper for this to help the dough out. Be gentle. Pre-shape the dough into a very loose ball, [video of this below] making sure to invert seam side down, onto an unfloured bit of counter - you want to avoid adding flour to areas of the dough that will need to stick together later, as excessive flour prevents that. Give it 10-15 bench rest.

Once the 15 minutes are up, use a bench scraper to invert the dough, so it’s now seam side up. Stretch it out slightly, very gently, trying not to dig your fingers in. Again, be gentle but firm. I do a cross stitch-shaping (I invented this term, I’ve no idea what this is called or if it even has a name) - but see below. Then I place the final shaped loaf in a proofing basket (well floured!). I let it proof for its second rise, until doubled in volume and quite puffy.

When the dough is ready, place a cast iron Dutch oven and its lid inside the oven, then pre-heat it to 450 degrees F (220 degrees C). When at temperature, prepare a sheet of parchment large enough to accommodate the bread. Invert the proofing basket onto the parchment and ease out the loaf very gently. Any air bubbles you pop if you’re not careful here will be lost. Score the bread with a lame or sharp scissors.

Pull the Dutch oven out of the oven and carefully, protecting your hands with mitts, lift off the lid. Using the parchment sheet as a sling, lower the bread, parchment and all into the Dutch oven. Cover tightly with the lid and place back in the oven.

I bake my loaves at 450 degrees F with lid on for 20 minutes, to trap in the steam. This allows the crust to expand for longer, as it’s not dried out quickly by the dry heat of the oven.

After 20 minutes, I remove the lid, give it another 17 minutes (still at 450F). After that, if the sides are a little less golden, I remove the bread from the Dutch oven and place it straight on the oven shelf, for just 3-5 more minutes. Careful to not leave it too long in this last bit of time, as it can scorch quickly.

Remove the bread from the oven to a cooling rack, and listen to it sing. And be patient. Bread isn’t fully done until it has cooled to lukewarm - when you’re cutting into a hot loaf you are interrupting the loaf from a precious rest that allows the starches to set, gelatinized, as they cool.

So be patient. But do take the butter from the refrigerator to soften, and prepare a good spreading knife, as well a nice salt with large crunchy crystals. All in all, a rather glorious pairing.

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Einkorn Sourdough Bread

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