Adventures in New Recipes

I’ve been cook­ing din­ner more than usual, lately. This is partly to save money (eat­ing out a lot can add up), but also because I have a lighter sched­ule, so there’s a bit more time to shop for ingre­di­ents and make the dishes.

There have been 2 prin­ci­pally new sources for recipes: one is the H-Mart (the very nice Korean Super­mar­ket) on Rob­son, which has all sorts of ingre­di­ents and even a few con­ve­nience foods (mixes, frozen food) that let me attempt a few unfa­mil­iar Asian dishes. Yes­ter­day I tried a Korean mix, that is essen­tially a flour and water pan­cake that you add veg­eta­bles and meat or seafood to. It turned out extremely well, but I didn’t know what sauce I should serve with it (it needed a lit­tle driz­zle of some­thing), so after check­ing a few sources (includ­ing the always help­ful peo­ple at the Asian Foods stall at Granville Mar­ket), I couldn’t find any ‘tra­di­tional’ sauce for it. I ended up using ‘fruit sauce’, which is that tamarind-based sauce that you typ­i­cally have on Tonkatsu, the won­der­ful fried chicken or pork cut­let that is Japan’s answer to Wiener schnitzel. We had the pan­cakes (wth a ton of veg­eta­bles and some Korean-style beef — mar­i­nated in gin­ger, gar­lic, soy sauce, sesame oil and rice wine vine­gar) over rice and with stir-fried baby bok choy and shi­take mush­rooms on the side. I know that it was essen­tially a mish­mash of Korean, Chi­nese and Japan­ese cuisines, but it seemed to turn out pretty well.

The sec­ond source of recipes has been a superb cook­ing show that we’ve been TiVO-ing from the Food Chan­nel: French Food at Home, with Laura Calder. Laura’s recipes have been hit­ting it out of the park nearly every time. A month or so ago we tried some of her side dishes: a ter­rific baked grated potato cake (the rus­set potato shreds get tossed with cream, which seemed to have just enough fat to hold them together with­out stick­ing to the foil or get­ting greasy — the result is a light and crunchy potato pan­cake with­out fry­ing!), and a bacon and brus­sel sprout leaf side dish that could even get peo­ple who dis­like that veg­etable to love it for the first time. A cou­ple of days ago we tried her deli­cious cold swiss chard with toasted sesame seeds, sugar, soy sauce and sesame oil. Tonight, I made her Sautéed Chicken with fresh chopped rose­mary and thyme and white wine. Once again, a good dish. Rarely have I had such a good hit rate with anybody’s recipes, much less a TV cook; Rachel Ray is fun, but with a few excep­tions, her 30 Minute Meals are not always as tasty as they are fast. Jamie Oliver was the first Celebrity cook I ever watched reg­u­larly with a lot of gutsy Italian-style dishes, but the suc­cess rate with his recipes was kind of spotty.

With Granville Island’s pub­lic mar­ket within a short walk, access to lots of Asian foods, a good kitchen, and now a lit­tle extra time to pro­cure and pre­pare, din­ners have been a lot bet­ter than usual. Unfor­tu­nately, when I do find a new full-time job this extra time will go away, but it’s nice to enjoy it while I can, with a steadily grow­ing reper­toire of dishes.