Chicken Marsala rightfully claims the title as a classic dish. It is made with a few basic ingredients and is ridiculously easy to prepare and yet, so full of rich flavour. It’s amazing what a little Marsala wine can do to chicken and mushrooms.
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While half of the world lives autumn, the other half lives spring. Have you noticed how balanced our life always is? -Roxana Jones
Happy Equinox! Today the sun is perfectly poised to shine directly on the equator. Of course, it is the Earth’s tilt that changes our position relative to the Sun. A tilt of merely 20-some-odd degrees and seasons happen!
Radishes are often thought of as a spring vegetable. Here in Montréal, they are one of the first of our local crop to debut at the market in early spring. But radishes are more correctly a cool weather vegetable and can be cultivated here all the way into late fall. They also have a short time to maturity ensuring that they can be harvested many times during their growing season. Here are two quick and easy ways to enjoy this cool weather friend.
I’ll give you everything I am, all my broken heartbeats, until I know you’ll understand.And I will make sure to keep my distance, say I love you when you’re not listening. -Christina Perri
I was recently reminded of a beautiful friend. It’s strange that I would need to be reminded of him because there was once a time when it was only him.
Continue reading “recipe from a friend: cherry tomato tart with pesto and ricotta”
Great food knows no borders.
I was three years old when, on an otherwise ordinary November day, we made our journey from our tiny ancestral village in Gujarat, India to Canada. Although, we wore our best clothing, I am sure, by Western standards, we did not purport to anyone of great status, nor were we. But unknown to even ourselves, we carried great treasures with us that day.
Continue reading “treasures from our homeland & gujarati dhokla”
As the name implies, this sauce goes with everything. I make it with a combination of coriander, mint and parsley and each time, the amount of each herb varies depending on what I have available. Sometimes it is only two of the three; it still turns out delicious. I thin it out with a good amount of olive oil if I want to use it as a salad dressing. Otherwise, I only add just enough to have a sauce like composition.
I could go crazy on a night like tonight when summer’s beginning to give up her fight and every thought’s a possibility and voices are heard but nothing is seen. -Indigo Girls
When the days get cooler and shorter and summer begins to give up her fight, we all do the same. We put on sweaters, gather our harvest, and nourish ourselves with luxurious soups. Soups such as this cream of carrot soup, rich in colour, flavour and texture.
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The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food -it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite and find it possible to go on. -George Eliot
Bitter melon, otherwise known as bitter gourd or bitter squash is a vegetable that is amazingly good for you. However, it comes with a small caveat. It’s also an acquired taste. As you can imagine, there is good reason for the word ‘bitter’ in its name. But there are also plenty of good reasons to make this vegetable a part of your diet. It’s a source of many beneficial antioxidants and vitamins and helps combat a number of illnesses.
Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World. -Christopher Columbus
Pesto is a sauce of the Old World. It’s also simplicity at its best. Its name comes from the method used to prepare it: by pounding using a mortar and pestle. Okay, so perhaps the use of a mortar and pestle does not exactly conjure up the notion of simplicity when we can use a blender instead. Which ever method you use, 4 ingredients later, you end up with Italy’s most prized sauce.
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After about 3 weeks of no rain, the skies turned grey this weekend and the rain came down much to the delight of parched lawns here in Montréal. Unfortunately, this meant not going on a picnic, or a good hike, or bicycling. Fortunatley, weather such as this calls for staying indoors and making soup. Not a brightly coloured autumn soup or hearty winter soup, but a soup that makes good use of summer’s bounty. A broccoli soup! Whereas my husband and our eldest son can’t get enough of it, my two daughters will gladly exchange their soup for a roasted version of broccoli! I won’t argue with that. In the end, broccoli is good food.
Continue reading “the pleasures of summer’s bounty: broccoli soup and roasted broccoli”
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