The Hunger Struck - Confessions of a Food Fanatic.

Saturday lunch during the spring and summer months is my favorite meal of the week. It rivals even the prized boozy Sunday night dinners at my parents place. Though arguably lighter and without the wine parings these lunches are always pretty fantastic and inspired by the farmers market. They are also extremely simple, usually no more than just a few ingredients.

I had been meaning to write up one of these for some time now so I’m glad I’m finally getting to it. It might become a tradition, well see. This week, like most, I was drawn to the greens and decided to whip up a salad from a mix of pea shoots, pepper crest and another delicate green that I think was called something like Cresh. I’ll confirm that next week. Regardless though the result was pure perfection. The sweetness of the greens with the salt of the anchovies was amazing and surprisingly these greens though delicate were not overpowered by the anchovies. I was pretty happy with myself about that.

There are many things I love about quinoa but the best thing by far is that it fills you up for a long long time. I’m not sure exactly why that is, someone mentioned to me recently that they thought quinoa contained more protein than other grains, I’m going to run with that theory as it makes perfect sense to me.

So I’ve gradually started to make quinoa in the place of other grains and pastas. I never thought it would stick for more than maybe a few dinners as I was anticipating serious opposition from my husband. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s to never take rice away from an Indian! Not that I was actually trying to make him stop eating rice, I was just trying to find something that we could occasionally replace the all the basmati rice with.

Have you ever had basmati rice at an Indian restaurant? Or maybe you have a fabulous Indian cook in the family too? Ever wondered why the rice is so freaking never-want -to-eat-anything-else-EVER-again good? I’m talking about the kind of rice that makes you completely forget about that incredible piece of naan bread laying next to your plate AND the butter chicken you ordered.

Can you guess the answer?

Here’s a recipe that will make you feel a little fancy on a Tuesday night. I almost can’t believe I’m writing a post about artichokes as they were one of my most feared food items as a child. I’m not quite sure why anymore, I think it had something to do with a period in my life where my mother made them a lot, beyond that I can’t remember any details.

A few years ago after seeing baby artichokes make there way into Vancouver markets, I decided it might be worth giving them another shot. They are small and seemed like the perfect entry level artichoke to tackle as a former artichoke hater. Plus I had them once being served as part of an amazing antipasti platter and I completely fell in love with the way they  complimented everything both aesthetically and with their woodsy flavor.

These artichokes apart from the cleaning process are extremely simple to prepare. Really it’s just a few tablespoons of olive oil, lemon and any variety of strong hard cheese you have on hand. They are a perfect snack or accompaniment. I served these roasted as is but I suspect they would be fabulous if you had some kind of simple sauce like an aioli to dip them in. My behind is starting to look like an Easter ham so I decided to skip that part at least this time around.

There are some recipes that just take way longer than you think they will. This is one of them. Actually, I think I sort of knew it would take as long as it did, which is why I made it one evening when I was on my own. I was inspired by this eggplant dish that I love from a local Japanese restaurant here in Vancouver, but I was not trying to recreate it because lets be honest, that never works.

I’m generally of the persuasion that if there is a particular dish you love that a restaurant makes locally you should never try to recreate it yourself. There are some exceptions of course, I don’t know about you but doesn’t this sort of thing generally result disaster? I can’t tell you how many meals I’ve eaten with friends or family that have been disastrous attempts at recreating something.

Anyway, I’ll keep this short and sweet. If you have a few hours and are up for some slow roasted eggplant that it sweet and savory and might make you question that eggplant you had categorized as the best you’ve ever had, then this is your recipe. It’s not a fast recipe but it’s well worth the wait, consider yourself warned.

My hubby and I are making a concerted effort to learn and perfect his mothers recipes. As I’m sure many of you agree, it’s so important to continue on family food traditions. When a recipe has been passed down from generation to generation there is not necessarily an exact method to follow, as often times it has never in fact been recorded in writing. This of course both liberates and presents some unique challenges.

For those of us experienced with the feel of cooking Indian food, there’s an understanding that you probably wont get it right the first few times, it will take a while before you understand how the different spices are balanced in a particular dish to produce the result you know and enjoy.This is of course universal, but with Indian food I find there to be this temptation to toss in every dried herb associated with this countries cuisine and see what happens. There’s also a tendency to wonder what went wrong when the dish doesn’t turn out the way it was supposed to. I have to confess that years ago I was one of the worst offenders.