Diggin' Through The Pantry

It was a daunting task... one I had been dreading for some time. But this weekend, I decided to fling the door open on my pantry to "re-discover" some of the treasures that lurked deep inside.

Among the unforgotten items, I found 3 bags of panko, 6 cans of tomato paste (um, have you seen the tv show, Hoarders?), 1/3 bag of split lentils, a jar of black rice, a package of falafel mix, and 1 carton of black strap molasses. Thankfully, none of my finds were in there too long, except for, maybe the molasses. But the lentils gave me an idea...

After spending time in Nepal eating nothing but lentil curry everyday at every meal, I lost my interest in the little legume. Now, I love them. In fact, I can't get enough of them. Especially as a part of a soup. With Spring upon us, I wasn't really in the mood for a heavy and hearty wintertime soup. I wanted a light lunch but, also something satisfying. One spoonful was all it took to make me smile. It's a kaleidoscope of bright colours with a very mild and fresh flavour. Just in time for Spring.

This week's recipe is very easy and fast to make. Lentils don't require pre-soaking so they cook rather quickly. But if you prefer, canned lentils substitute very nicely and speed up cooking time.

Just before serving, I add a healthy dollop of 2% yogurt and swirl it through the soup just before eating. It brightens up the soup, adding a tang & creaminess without the calories (if you aren't watching your weight, you could always use creme fraiche.)


Lentil Soup for Spring

1 finely chopped onion
1 tbsp olive oil
1 l low sodium vegetable broth (or chicken broth)
1 1/4c split lentils
1 large carrot roughly grated
salt & pepper

2% plain yogurt
approximately 1 tablespoon of herbs: eg. chives, dill, parsley

1. Lightly cook onion in a medium sized pot until onions are translucent. Add broth and turn up heat. Meanwhile, rinse lentils well. Add wash lentils and grated carrot to pot.
2. Simmer for at least 30 minutes. Check for seasoning and doneness.
3. Serve with a generous dollop of plain yogurt and a sprinkling of chopped fresh herbs.
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If You Can't Beat'em, Join'em...

While it may be hard to say goodbye to summer, I like autumn for a couple of reasons: the fiery, vibrant colours of the fall leaves, apple-picking, and now, NFL football.

My husband is a big fan of the sport but I always thought of football as something that delayed the start of Sunday evening television. It wasn't interesting to me - a two groups of really big men pushing toward each other while a guy in the back tried to throw a ball before being crushed. But, several years ago I stepped into the light and embraced football as my own. Now I love it. And yes, our Sundays are planned around the games we are going to watch....

For Sunday lunch then, we needed something delicious but relatively easy to put together for our 1pm Patriots v. Jets game. So how about a hearty fall soup accompanied with slices of crisp chewy baguette for dipping? With flecks of brown, green and orange, the soup reminded me of fall colours. The addition of bacon (leave out if you don't like it) adds a nice salty and smokey flavour that makes it such a great hearty soup.

The soup takes about 45 minutes to put together from start to finish but could be even faster if you used canned lentils. It reheats well so it is perfect for lunch the next day and for freezing if you wanted to make a large batch for later.


Lentil & Smokey Bacon Soup

2 c dried mixed split lentils, rinsed well
1 small onion diced
2 large carrot, peeled & sliced into rounds
2 bay leaves
1 liter chicken broth
1 liter water
6 slices of streaky bacon

1. Cook lentils with onions, and carrot with bay leaves, chicken broth, and water. Cook for approximately 20-25 minutes.
2. Meanwhile cook bacon until slightly crisp.
3. Drain bacon. Finely chop and add to soup. Cook another 5 minutes.
4. Using an immersion blender, blend soup until desired consistency.
5. Serve. If reheating, you may have to thin the soup out with a little broth or water.

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Pear & Celery Soup

It's been a tough week....

I had intended to post yesterday afternoon after basking in the simple pleasure of a luxurious, lazy long weekend sleep-in followed by a sweet, luscious breakfast to start the day. Unfortunately, the wildly delicious pear and ginger clafouti I had planned to share with my husband (and with you) was an utter flop. Disaster. Ugly, soggy, and barely edible (In the end, we did eat it. My husband managed a half-hearted, "It's good" as he choked down bites.)

But it started out as a simple wish: A sweet & simple breakfast for my husband on our last long weekend of the summer. Pears are in abundance right now and boy, are they good this year. I had peeled and sliced beautiful Bartlett pears the night before as a time saving measure, hoping I could quickly run down stairs, throw the eggs, milk & flour together, add the pears and bake it while my husband slept. The goal was to gently wake him with the fragrant smells of summer-time pears baking in the oven to convince him to start the day. But alas, that would not be the case. The batter was far too runny and thin & when I pulled the pears out of the fridge, they had wept quite abit in the bowl overnight. The result was a runny, unset clafouti even after ninety minutes of baking.

Occasionally, accidents do happen. Next steps, what to do with all those gorgeous pears that are in-season now?

For dinner tonight, we decided we would start with a pear and celery soup. We needed to use up those lovely pears sitting on our kitchen counter and I needed to get back on the horse again. This recipe was decidedly more successful than yesterday's. It's creamy, flavourful with just a hint of sweetness without the calories. Delicious. Unfortunately, the photo was not meant to be. I hope you can use your imagination and still try out this soup! Bon Appetit.

Pear & Celery Soup
2 tbsp vegetable oil (or butter)
3 c peeled & diced Bartlett pears
1 small onion, peeled & diced
4 c peeled & diced celery*
1 liter vegetable stock
1 tsp ginger powder (or 1 finely chopped candied ginger)

optional garnish: Stilton blue cheese (non-vegan) or toasted walnuts (vegan)

In a medium saucepan, heat vegetable oil & sauté pears and onions until onions have become translucent. Add celery and continue to sauté until celery is softened. Add vegetable stock to pan, & simmer until celery is very tender. With an immersion blender, carefully puree soup until smooth. If using, stir in cream at the end. Do not boil again. Serve immediately with a garnish of crumbled Stilton or toasted walnuts, if you like.

*You must peel the celery, otherwise you have stringy bits in your soup - it's worth the extra effort.

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Thai Seafood Soup

I never liked Thai food until I went to Thailand. The Thai food I had eaten before my travels was a transgression against the cuisine: insipid oily noodles stirred with ketchup and finished with a dusting of crushed peanuts. Backpacking throughout Asia, however, changed the definition of Thai food for me. During my soujourn, I ate a lot of street food, the ground zero of authentic cuisine in Asia.

I remember my first night in Bangkok in the backpack mecca, Khao San. It’s a small steamy neighbourhood that attracts the budget traveler and the curious. The streets pulse into the night with hypnotic beats of trance music, and burst with locals and weary travellers who descend upon Khao San for a little excitement and if time permits, for a little down time. I was mesmerized by the sights, sounds, and smells of the neighbourhood including the street vendors who serve pad thai fresh from their carts.


Through my travels, I have found that the best authentic foods may be found amongst the locals. Food created on the streets, away from the tourist-friendly restaurants, that cater to local preferences and not adapted or muted for Western palates. Thailand is no exception. Imagine the street chef throwing lashings of oil that sizzle in the hot wok and crescendo into a fragrant smoky cloud. He tosses in a ladleful of wet rice noodles, then add a dash of nam pla (fish sauce), tamarind, and a spoonful each of chilli and sugar for good measure. He tosses it about until the flavours come together in harmony. Then the adept street chef reaches for an egg and with a quick flick of the wrist, the noodles have been pushed aside and the egg sizzles and sputters at the bottom of the wok. Chop, chop and he mixes bits of scrambled egg with the rice noodles. Now the dish is finished with a handful of bean sprouts and cilantro. The vendor scoops out the noodles into a small paper dish with a sprinkle of crushed peanuts and a little nub of lime on the side. That’s pad thai in Thailand. It is neither heavy nor red. Authentic pad thai is light, tangy, crunchy, and chewy.

Several years ago, I had an opportunity to go back to Thailand and this time visiting Chiang Mai was my number one priority. I had read about the abundance of artisans, the beautiful architecture of the inner city and the wide selection of cooking schools. Located in the northern part of the country, it is far from the conjested swollen streets of Bangkok. Chiang Mai is a temperate, lush and friendly city with a robust night market scene. On a nightly basis, families and friends gather in the city’s various markets for a little dinner, a little shopping and a lot of laughter. Most night markets have an area dedicated to food, like an open-air food court. Individually, they don’t have an extensive menu, and you often have to source your meal from several vendors. Some vendors only sell drinks, while others specialize in seafood, and others in dessert. This gives you an opportunity to walk around, see what’s fresh and try something new. With an open mind, eating in Chiang Mai or Thailand for that matter, is a very rewarding experience.



One of my favourite selections from the night market is Tom Yum soup. Just one taste reminds me of those long breezy nights in Chiang Mai. Tom Yum is not shy or delicate. It’s bold and complex: fiery heat from the chilis, tangy sweetness from the tamarind, and a broth that is deeply infused with the exotic fragrances of lime leaves and lemongrass. In my version of this Thai soup, I toned down the heat a smidge and added slippery vermicelli noodles to make this into a belly warming supper that is highly slurpable and suitable for all.


Thai Seafood Soup
Serves 4


To slice the chicken thinly, I use a frozen chicken breast. Let it partially defrost so that it is firm but easy to slice through with a sharp knife

1 l of chicken stock + 2 c of water
1 lemongrass stalk, cut into 3” segments, bruised
2 lime leaves
1 inch slice of ginger, bruised
2 tbsp nam pla (fish sauce)
8 mushrooms (straw mushrooms, white button, shitake, enoki)
handful of cilantro (cut away stems from the leaves, reserve stems)

1 chicken breast, partially frozen
16 large shrimp (peeled, shells reserved)
½ package of rice noodles, softened in warm water

to garnish:
8 cherry tomatoes, quartered
lime slice
fried shallots*

1. To make the soup, simmer chicken broth, water, lemongrass, lime leaves, ginger, fish sauce, shrimp shells, and cilantro stems for approximately 20 minutes. Strain away solids.
2. Bring stock to a boil again.
3. Meanwhile, heat noodles in a separate pot. Heat the noodles until they are soft and slippery.
4. Add chicken pieces. Stir around to ensure it doesn’t stick to the bottom and pieces stay separate. Once the chicken changes from pink to white, add shrimp. Allow it to come up to a simmer again, and the shrimp tails curl. Turn off heat.
5. Strain the noodles and add to a soup bowl.
6. Pour broth, chicken pieces and shrimp over the noodles.
7. Garnish with cherry tomatoes, lime and fried shallots*

*Fried shallots or onions can be found at any Asian grocery store. Absolutely optional but creates an interesting contrast in texture from the soup.

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Roasted Pumpkin and Acorn Squash Bisque

When I invite friends over for dinner, I want them to leave feeling full, delighted and cared for. So when I invited my good friend, Manish, over for dinner, I had to find something that was not only delicious and savoury but also vegetarian. I always find this a bit of a challenge because as a meat eater, vegetarian meals don’t come naturally to me.

In the summer, I think this task would be fairly easy – you could put together a delicious salad with baby greens and sprouts followed by a light spaghettini in a light tomato broth including fresh heirlooms and sundried tomatoes with a dollop of chevre. But it’s cold outside and we are looking for something a little more, something warm and sustaining. In the end, I settled on a pumpkin and acorn squash soup and a vegetarian Japanese curry.

The pumpkin and squash soup is very easy to make. It takes a bit of time but it sits in the oven for most of the cook time. If you can’t find a sugar pumpkin, you can substitute whatever squash you find available.



Roasted Pumpkin and Acorn Squash Bisque

1 sugar pumpkin
1 acorn squash
1c milk
1l vegetable broth
4 tbsp brown sugar
salt & pepper

Optional: coriander chutney

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Split the acorn squash and pumpkin in half (vertical wise). Scoop out seeds.
3. Place the acorn squash & pumpkin halves on a baking sheet. Sprinkle the cavity with a tablespoon of brown sugar. Bake in oven for about an hour until the vegetables are soft.
4. Remove from the oven. If you can handle it, quickly scoop out the flesh from the squash and pumpkin. Put the roasted vegetables into a large pot. Discard the skins.
5. Add milk, broth to the pot and bring to boil. Turn down. And carefully, blend with a handheld immersion blender. (I think this is far safer than sending it into a food processor or a blender. Just proceed carefully.) Blend until its smooth and silky. Add a little bit of water if the soup is too thick. Taste and adjust the seasonings.

Finish with a spoonful of coriander chutney (if you don’t have this, you can always substitute pesto.) Let your guests swirl the chutney into the soup. Enjoy!

Broccoli Potato Soup

It has been unseasonably cold in Toronto this past week so much so that I took my winter coat out of storage, grudgingly removed the dry cleaner's cover and wore it to work today. But it's not even Thanksgiving yet, I pleaded. Sigh.

So as my winter weather clothes come upstairs from our basement storage, it is time for me to pack away my the warm weather recipes of salads, light summer suppers and usher in thick woolly sweaters, slow cookers and comfort foods. So it begins...

Hmm. Did that sound overly negative about winter... Let me clarify... it's not a bad thing altogether. I do love comfort food. I love the warm, rich dishes we allow ourselves to indulge in when it's cold outside because we feel it fortifies our bodies and nourishes our souls... But I guess I was having a hard time, just because there are little green orbs on my tomato plant that sits on my backporch garden and there wasn't enough of the sun's rays to warm those little darlings to red. I just wasn't ready to say good bye.



Well, not all of summer is lost, yet... While the air feels chilled, there is still one remnant of summer with us. Our CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture) half summer share continues for the rest of this month. In the early days of summer, we received tastes like garlic scapes, rhubarb, and strawberries. As the summer progressed, we were treated to tastes like exotic lettuce mixes, garlic, onions, herbs, peppers, potatoes, jalapenos, cantalopes, and watermelon. The half share brought a connection to the earth we never had before with our food. While we do our best to eat local, support the farmer's markets and eat foods in season, our weekly bounty from our organic CSA really made an impact to the way we think about our environment and the challenges farmers face.

This June, it rained hard and our first half pint of strawberries were on the small side and pock marked. The following week, the weather had improved and our strawberries were bright, fragrant and juicy. As an "owner" of a half share of a CSA farm, we are receive a "share" of the weekly harvest. What the weekly share is is highly dependent on what is ready to be harvested by the farm's owners. In the earlier weeks of the summer when the weather was unseasonably cold, our weekly box reflected this. At the height of summer, we would gasp at how many vegetables were in our box. There were weeks where we struggled to eat the contents of our "half share" and this week was no exception.



Now as summer fades into fall, our summer deliveries are winding down but our weekly take is still bountiful. With a small bunch of broccoli threatening to whither, about a pound of potatoes, and a bright grapefruit size white onion, I decided that a warming, hearty soup would be a good use of some of the gorgeous produce we received this week. It was also a good excuse to use my new Le Creseut dutch oven.



Broccoli Potato Soup
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 bunch of broccoli - washed well - no stalks
5-6 medium sized white potatoes - peeled
1 medium sized onion (or a half of one large one)- chopped roughly
1 liter of vegetable stock

1. In a large Dutch oven, heat the vegetable oil over medium heat. Add onions and saute gently. Sweat the onions, until they are soft and glossy.
2. Chop the potatoes into a large chunks and add to the pot.
3. Add broccoli and vegetable broth. Lower heat to a simmer and cover.
4. Cook until the potatoes are soft and crumble underneath your spoon.
5. Carefully, insert an immersion blender and whiz the soup until smooth and creamy. Do this slowly and carefully. If the soup is too thick, you can thin it out with additional vegetable broth. Taste the soup and adjust the seasoning.

15 minute soup: Creamy Corn & Potato Chowder

It was a busy week... but I managed to squeeze out a quick recipe. I looked into my fridge and cobbled together some vegetables for a delicious corn chowder. Sometimes if we are making potatoes for dinner, I make extra and store them in the fridge for quick meals during the week.


Cream Corn & Potato Chowder
1 c of corn kernels
3 stalks of celery - diced
1 large carrot - diced
1 small yellow onion - diced
1 small orange pepper - diced
6 new potatoes - boiled & cooled & diced
1 tbsp of minced garlic
1/2 tsp of dried dill
3 tsp of chicken / vegetable bouillon in 1 c of water
(if you have chicken stock use that instead)
1 l of skim milk
1 tbsp of olive oil

1. Heat oil in pan, saute garlic and onion until onion starts to sweat.
2. Add diced celery, carrot, potato, pepper and dill. Saute until soft.
3. Once the vegetables are heated through, add the chicken stock or the bouillon powder mixed with water. Heat until bubbling and turn down heat to low-medium.
4. Add the milk and cover with lid. Stir often to ensure that the soup does not stick to the bottom of the pot.
5. When the soup is heated through, plunge an immersion hand blender into the soup pot. Ensure the blender is fully immersed as the soup is very hot and could cause serious burns. Don't blend it until you have a puree but leave it rather thick and chunky. You still want to see the vegetables but blending the vegetables creates nice creaminess and beautiful texture.

It is literally a 15 minute soup if you buy the pre-packaged diced vegetables.