Voila! Some photos from an amazing sushi night this past July, as Dan and I were traveling through British Columbia. Kelowna, B.C. was our first stop, where we stayed for five days lakeside at our friend's wonderful apartment. Although we wined and dined downtown at Kelowna's finest (The Rotten Grape had a fabulous gluten-free pizza crust), I asked if at some point during the visit we could make sushi and we did, as a celebration of sorts, on our final night.

Gluten-free tempura - sea scallops,
sweet potato and asperagus

Balsamic Shitake Mushrooms

Sashimi from The Codfather 

The fresh pacific salmon found out in BC is a darker colour, richer and tastier. We bought our salmon and tuna sushi grade at The Codfather, the best fresh fish store in the city according to our hosts. During my last trip out west, a road trip up the coast of California, I toured, wined and dined at Francis Ford Coppola's vineyards. A pattern seems to be emerging here.

Although I'm primarily a red wine drinker, usually ignoring proper pairings, we had a couple of bottles of The Summerhill Vineyard's Ehrenfelser, with notes of honeysuckle, orange blossom, cantelope and peach.

We bought rice flour from the local grocery story and were able to whip up gluten-free tempura. Tempura is one of the main reasons why I now enjoy making sushi at home with friends instead of eating out. When those crunchy shrimp arrive at a restaurant, sizzling straight from the deep fryer and enveloped in glutenous batter, well, it's a little hard to handle. So we do it - fait maison.

Here's the recipe for gluten-free tempura. Don't be fooled - a deep fryer is unnecessary!

1/2 cup rice flour
1/2 cup corn starch
1 teaspoon of baking soda and baking powder

The final product, with Okanagan wine

pinch of salt
1 egg
2/3 cup of ice water (the water must be ice cold - it functions as the binding agent in both gluten-free and glutenous tempura recipes)
Vegetable oil - enough for two inches at the bottom of the pan

You also need patience. Deep frying without a deep fryer can yield delicious treats, but be careful.

Mix all dry ingredients together in a bowl suitable for dipping your vegetables or seafood in. Add the egg and ice water. Heat your oil in a wok or deep frying pan until the oil is hot but not spurting all over the place! Using tongs, dip each piece of veg or seafood in the batter, coating generously, and fry on each side for about 1 minute.

I like to keep all my tempura hot on a low temperature in the oven until all the sushi has been made. This works well when you have guests over for dinner so you don't have to be standing at the stove all night long.

*The shitake mushrooms featured in this blog entry are also fantastic, but I have to make them again (this weekend) before I post the recipe! They were AMAZING in sushi rolls.... TBA....











A friend from university once told me that the ability to humour one's self is priceless. I think she put it as simply as this: "you know so-and-so? They're hilarious! They can really crack themselves up". That was the expression she used, to crack yourself up.

At this time, I didn't really understand what she meant. I suppose that the concept of humour for me came always as an interpretation of outside forces, exterior situations to be reckoned with. But over time I began to understand what she really meant. People who can find amusement in the comicality of their present moment whilst recognizing that their contribution is clever or absurd or just entertaining to them even if it entertains no other party... well, these people have a pretty special gift.

Side note - I have a grade 8 student who cracks herself up all the time. It's fantastic, even when the rest of us just don't understand.

Leading a gluten free lifestyle has allowed me to somehow develop my own capacity to find lightness in the most frustrating of situations. This took awhile though, because for the first year, at restaurants and grocery stores and friend's houses, I was much more focused on getting myself through a menu, the weekly list or a meal without getting fed up or being rude. But now that most of the cravings are gone, and my friends and family understand the basics, I can wander out and find myself in the most unlikely places - I'm becoming braver.

For example, I recently ate at McDonald's. This wasn't my intention, trust me, but I found myself ravenous at the Alexis Nihon Plaza about a month ago. I know the McDonald's Angus Burger is 100% beef, and the fries are gluten free, so instead of dropping 15 or 20 bucks on sushi, I paid a visit to the golden arches. I asked for my burger to be served sans pain, and found myself face to face with a stupefied sixteen-year-old. I quickly offered my explanation - I just have an allergy. I only want the burger, all the toppings please, no bun. It took four McDonald's employees (including the manager) and ten minutes for them to figure out they could serve it to me in an empty salad container.

I'm not trying to make a point here that McDonald's employees are sub par in terms of intelligence - I have a friend who is currently pursuing his Ph.D. at McGill in pure mathematics. When he was in high school, he worked for McDonald's. After many hours of tedious flipping, he noticed that the beef patties were not efficiently placed on the grill. He took it upon himself to reorganize the patty placement to maximize space. His boss was so impressed that he wrote to Mickie D's national headquarters with the new formula, which was accepted and adapted all over America. Quite evidently, "one billion served" is directly contributed to my friend Mark.

On Friday night, the eve of my 25th birthday, I took the bus to Costco in Verdun to pick up a prime rib roast for my 2nd annual gluten free birthday potluck. There was nobody else on the bus, and the bus driver appeared surprised when I asked to be dropped at the door of the king of bulk foods. "Tu vas..... à Costco?". "Oui, comme là là". I motioned across the street. He shrugged and drove off.

Note - I'm the first person in the history of Costco to ever take the bus.

I walked up towards the entrance. As I was awaiting my brother to arrive by bike (he's the one with the golden ticket - the Costco membership), I watched SUV after SUV swankily pull into the enormous parking lot. I tried reading my book but my mind was too focused on three main things - the prime rib roast, the 750 grams of Balderson sharp Canadian cheddar and the last bus home from Costco that I had to be on in 45 minutes.

Mike finally arrived and we got down to business. We were both starving, him stuck without $1.00 for a jumbo hot dog at the cash-only restaurant inside and me, well, stuck with all the gluten options the restaurant had to offer.

Despite his mild embarrassment, I opened a jar of mixed nuts for us to dig into.

Upon paying, the kind lady at the cash asked me how many boxes I'd like. I replied none, thank you, and pointed towards the 60-litre traveling pack my brother had brought for me. And at this very moment, again came the blank stare that I saw a couple weeks at McDonalds. I can only imagine what was running through the cashier's mind - "the girl is leaving tonight to tour South America with a prime rib roast, chicken breasts, three pounds of cheese, one pound of nuts, and one box of Cliff Bars".

Side note - Cliff Bars, with all their substantial forms of protein and deliciousness (I remember) are not gluten free due to...... malt extract. That's ALL! Damn it.

I paid, took out cash-back so Mike could get a jumbo wiener, and was hurrying to pack my bag and catch that last bus. By this point, my brother (who looked like he'd been without food for a couple of days and was drifting towards the food line) remembered his lonely bag of limes, his sole Costco purchase of the evening.

"Kristen! You can't go! We have to go out together! They'll ask for my receipt, and I don't have one for the limes!"

I told him to shove those limes in this backpack. I had to hit the road.

"They'll check my bag! They'll go in it!"

He was acting the way my students do when I ask them for their locker combinations at the beginning of the school year. Luckily, he's 23 and not 13, and at the absurdity of the situation we both burst out laughing. Still hungry but in high spirits, I caught my bus, arrived home around 7:30 and made myself a quick fish and quinoa salad dinner.

The next evening, we all had a blast. Check out what my friends and brother now know about Celiac Disease a year and a half after my diagnosis.

xxoo

Kristen

Pain Doré on a Sunday.....

This past Sunday marked the end of my summer. I think it also marked the beginning of Dan's quest for freedom, hippiedom, and other literal and figurative forms of following a new path in life.

Last Sunday morning (upon arriving late into Montreal from le bapteme Floralie
in Quèbec City), at approximately 2:45a.m., Dan left for Burning Man. I arose five hours later to a quiet, empty apartment and the sinking realization that I had to return to work Monday morning after a glorious eight week vacation.

I was rather tired from a boyfriend keeping me awake into the wee hours of the night packing his allotted weight in preparation for 8 days in the Black Rock Desert, so I groggily ground myself enough Café Mariani beans for a triple shot latté and got to work. I'm one of those lucky people that can get up on a Sunday and clean the entire house (or 600 square foot apartment...) while working up an appetite for a Sunday brunch. After the new place (pictures on Facebook) was looking prim and proper, I looked in my fridge to see what could be whipped up.

There was no bacon, and I really wanted bacon - especially since "flexatarian" Dan was gone (the concept of flexatarianism requires its own post - TBA, I promise), there was nobody kickin' around St. Henri to chastise me for my porky desires. Meg and my brother would approve through and through, and I was expecting at least one of them to show up for brunch. But alas, there was no bacon, and I was still feeling tired and lazy - too lethargic to walk the ten minutes it takes to get to the Atwater Market and purchase a half pound.

I scrounged through the fridge to see what I could put together, and realized I had all the ingredients to make a killer peach-goat cheese french toast. De-lish. The best part about this breakfast delicacy is that you can dip the gluten-free bread in first, make your French toast, put it in the oven to keep it warm, and THEN.... are you ready for this? Then you can dip in regular bread (for gluten eating peoples) and use the same frying pan. Obviously it won't get contaminated. Isn't that just incredible?

Well now. I think it is.

My brother was the one that ended up coming, and he was astonished at how much pain doré I could consume. I ate four pieces right along with him. He surprised me by requesting goat's cheese on his as well. We drizzled honey, maple syrup and my homemade raspberry jam over all of it. Talk about lush.

Here's the recipe that makes about 8 slices.....

3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla - I made the vanilla you see in the picture by distilling three Madagascar vanilla beans in a 200 mL bottle of Absolute Vodka. This ensures it is gluten-free.
1/2 cup of 2% milk
pinch of cinnamon
pinch of nutmeg
8 slices of bread
butter - for the pan and the french toas
2 thinly sliced peaches
crumbled goat cheese
honey, maple syrup, jam varieties....

Mix your eggs and milk together in a bowl with a large surface area. Add your vanilla and spices to the mix. Soak your bread in this mix, ensuring each slice absorbs a generous amount of mixture. If you have leftover mixture, you can pour it directly into the pan whilst the french toast is cooking.

As soon as you remove your french toast from the pan, sprinkle your desired amount of goat's cheese on top of each slice. Serve with peaches and toppings.

PS - People keep asking me how I'm doing well Dan's away. Well, I cook meals like this, there's less dishes, and I have more leftovers. Boo-ya. :)

I often don't know what I'm getting myself into. I wouldn't say I'm overly naive, or careless when it comes to decision making. I just like to please others, and please myself, so I'll say "yes" to just about anything. This certitude doesn't always take me quite as far as the air of confidence appears - trust me, I got really good at saying "oui" in French before I understood French, choosing the le positif over le negatif and getting really quite convincing. Next time, don't let me fool you.

So when my friend Charles from Vancouver asked me if I wanted to bike the Sunshine Coast with him during my month stay out in British Columbia, I responded with a whole-hearted, unambiguous, I-bike-around-Montreal-everyday-so-clearly-I-can-handle-this "yes". Charles proceeded, in his excitable manner, to plan our trip, sending me contour maps and ferry schedules and camp grounds and whatever else. I looked at these documents, his routes and charts, and I really didn't understand any of it. Actually - I didn't even know where this coast of sunshine was. So I kept saying to him, "yes - any changes you want to make is fine", "yes - this detour will work out just great", "yes - if it rains, we'll just deal with it".

When I arrived in Vancouver, we spent our second day lounging out on Bowan Island, his childhood haven. As he excitedly went over all the points of discovery, his mom kindly interrupted him to note that I hadn't cycled Europe last summer. I was at a bit of a loss for words. "Well..... no. But I'm pretty fit. And - I went to the gym three times in Alaska for bike cardio.

In fact, I hadn't cycled more than 55km in one day..... ever. That was in flat Toronto, two years ago.

There are people who envision exactly what they're going to do with their vacation, with their weekends, with their food. They follow through with something - they take all the steps in a recipe, they shoot a picture from the designated area.... they conquer, then they leave satisfied.

I didn't even envision the panniers on the back of the bicycle. I never thought about how we'd carry food, how we would sleep, how we'd change clothes. I didn't think of the weight, the shape of the bike, the gear system, the fact that British Columbia=mountains=hilly bike riding.

I just said yes.

If you want to know how the first couple of days went, maybe Charles can leave a comment at the bottom of this post.

By the fourth day, I was no longer (at least, for the duration of this voyage), a "yes, yes, yes" girl. So when Charles asked me if we could fillet a salmon for our last night's camp dinner, I responded with an unequivocal "no". Something I would normally be game for, something that would be my forte even with my crappy knives back in Montreal was an absolute and incontestable "no". I used the knife excuse - "we really just can't expect the knife to make steaks out of a full fish, Charles. That knife sucks". In my tired mind, I reasoned. The knife can't. My legs can't.

Charles rebutted. "We can totally cut up a fish." In his head, "the knife can. Her legs can..... or must, because there's really no alternative".

I went into the Food Basic's in Parksville, and return with a clean-cut Atlantic salmon, farm-raised, deboned, lovely and prudent (vocabulary and philosophy employed by Charles). Charles took the receipt out of the bag, walked back in the store with his vitamin water in tow (a scam, I'm sure), and returned with a fresh, Pacific salmon.

It was huge. At least it was gutted.... and.... beheaded. I was too tired to come up with any logical argument.

Amongst the wasps, whom we let feast on the bony carcass, Charles went to work for about 45 minutes and extracted a pan full of deliciousness. He was like a kid in a candy store - "we can save some for breakfast! Eggs and salmon! Butter and garlic!" Something happened that has never happened before - we switched places. I was waiting patiently for my meal, hungry and mildly curious about what flavours and aromas would appear, and Charles was hoppin' around. It was like looking at myself in the glory of my own St. Henri kitchen.

We devoured the salmon with a yogurt curry sauce, quinoa, lentils and artichokes. We had the best damn dinner in the Parksville provincial campsite. We cleaned up, watched the sunset, spent some unknown amount of time watching the stars from inside the tent, and went to sleep. "Yes" returned to my vocabulary, and I put forth my best effort on the two last legs of our journey.

Living Lush

In the past two weeks, I've wrapped up my contract at school, moved one bizarre Canadian-Brazilian from Québec to Montréal, and turned on my oven twice a day during the midst of a 5-day heatwave sweeping over southern Ontario and Montréal. As I write this entry, a spectacular sound-and-light show is eliminating temperatures that have reached 44 degrees with the humidex. Steaming and sautéing will no longer make me seem like a crazy person.

Monday was the first day we really settled into our new St. Henri nest. I'll post pictures of our spectacular, large yellow kitchen in a couple of weeks (and maybe some of the rest of the place as well). We're so delighted. The old tenants left us with a window A/C, which means we've been living as if we're a couple in a bachelor apartment - eating, sleeping and playing scrabble in le salon..... and irritating one another. But with an empty schedule, I can't completely separate myself from the kitchen with all this free time! So I've been oscillating between the public pool (2 blocks over, three times a day, packed with St. Henri kids and a lot of tattooed hipsters), reading (Rohinton Minstry's A Fine Balance) and......... COOKING! No baking though - I haven't completely lost my mind. Although maybe Meg did - she turned on her oven long enough to make me gluten free chocolate chip banana muffins that I've been eating for brekkies topped with the sensational Liberté whipped fromage à la crème. Wowza Fowza.

But back to Monday. After wining and dining at various restaurants and friends' houses during our week "living in limbo", it was quite appropriate to have Meg and her brother Kevin over for dinner for something proper. House salad, chicken quarters topped with homemade pesto, smashed tomato garlic rosé sauce over gluten free pasta and fresh Québec green beans from the Atwater Market.

The best part about this dinner is Meg's aptitude to take beautiful photos on her brother's swanky camera. I WANT ONE!!!! They are the most beautiful portraits of my creations I've ever seen, and I must admit that I'm chuffed with myself! I love how the focus is the food, but the detail in the background is just as important. For example, check out the little bottle of maple syrup beside one of the salad closeups. That smoky sweetness came from the father of our friend Fannie in Québec City. Fannie wed Dan's best friend Jean-François last summer in a gypsy-themed outdoor wedding at her father's small cabane à sucre (sugar shack). After managing to explain to him in French how much I loved to cook (especially with maple syrup), he gave Dan and I each a bottle. The bottle in the picture is clearly Dan's; mine only lasted about two months. The syrup found its way into the simple balsamic, olive oil and garlic dressing to give a bit of sweetness against the pickled goods I'd tossed on top.

I'm trying to develop my own house salad masterpiece. The Naked Chef says everyone should have their own special creation. This one was good, but not...... ambrosial. I'll keep working on it.

The pasta, I must say, was lovely. Here's the sauce recipe:

Smashed Tomato and Roasted Garlic Rosé Sauce:

• One pint of cherry tomatoes from your local farmer's market

• Half a clove of garlic, with each bulb halved

• One bunch of thick-stemmed asparagus

• One half of a Spanish onion, cut into thicker pieces

• One cup of cooking cream (15%)

• One cup of white wine

• Juice from one quarter of a lemon (I also zested the lemon beforehand to sprinkle fresh zest lightly on the pesto chicken)

• Olive Oil, Butter, Salt 'n Peppa

• Place your tomatoes and garlic on a tray and toss them in olive oil, salt and pepper. Put them in a preheated oven to 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. Take them out, toss them around, and put them back in the oven for another 20.

• All the while..... sauté a tablespoon of both olive oil and butter together with a clove of crushed garlic and the lemon juice. Add your onion to the mix, keeping the temperature on medium. Once you see the onion beginning to caramelize (about 5 or 6 minutes), toss in generous chunks of asparagus and sauté for another 5-7 minutes.

• Add your cup of cream, and then little by little, the white wine. You can taste your sauce for flavour once you've brought it to a boil to see if you fancy some more wine or cream. Bring the sauce to a low temperature and let all the flavours "do their thang" until your tomatoes have popped and your garlic is roasted. Add these goods, and let the sauce simmer for at least another ten minutes.

Mom's reading this and thinking, "damn! This requires time!" Yes, yes it does. But time is of the essence.........

KOS

Make Room for Mushrooms

Mushrooms. Mush....roooooms. In a food lover's world, the mentioning of such a word can leave much to be desired. For starters - what a funny little word indeed. For ESL learners, the mushroom must be one of those laugh-out-loud kind of words, like the way we as young school children giggled uncontrollably at the mentioning of pamplemousse.

The reason for this post is to confess that I've been eating the same thing three nights in a row for dinner. To all my friends and family who love and value food, and especially the differentiation of meals, yes, I have sinned. A block of goat's cheese, a good hunk of feta, a generous handful of romano, one beautiful orange bell pepper, a few stocks of green onion, and a dash of paprika, salt, and pepper have disappeared from my fridge and pantry. Oh - and yes, two packages of simple button mushrooms.

Don't worry - I'm not turning into a mushroom top (although I might start to resemble the urban dictionary's definition of the word if I keep eating the creamy, cheesy center of these succulent delights for another three nights). Nothing will happen to me if I overdose on this type of shroom, I just might turn down dinner plans out on the town Saturday night, because I know I can cook better chez nous.

It started off with Janet's recipe of stuffed mushroom caps being a great side dish to my soya-ginger tuna steak and spinach leaf salad for dinner two nights ago. I had filling left over Wednesday evening, so in-the-oven went the remainder of the mushrooms to compliment a tandoori chicken breast I bought down the street at La Maison Du Roti. But tonight, I won't lie to you - I just plum ate them for dinner. With a glass of red.

Although there is some prep work involved, these mini delights will truly leave you smacking your lips together for more. I used goat cheese as one of my main cheeses, which was a little tart, but I'll give you the original Jan recipe(credit given where credit is due) for your next dinner party.

1 package of creme cheese (you might get away with low-fat, but the very idea of low-fat cheese in my mind is an oxymoron)
1 cup of sharp cheddar cheese (the age doesn't matter, but it becomes increasingly harder to grate the older it gets, and increasingly tastier as the years go on. Be it as you will)
1/2 cup of fresh parmesan
1/2 cup of green onion
1 brightly coloured bell pepper, chopped finely
paprika, fresh ground pepper and salt, to taste.

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare mushrooms by washing them thoroughly and gently twisting out each stem. You can keep the leftover stems for the next time you make a vegetarian stock. Mix cheeses together in a bowl, then add all other ingredients. Arrange mushrooms on a cookie sheet or suitable pan. Stuff each mushroom until it is overflowing with mixture. Place in oven for approximately 20 minutes, or until liquid from mushrooms has oozed out into the bottom of the pan. Cool for 5 minutes and serve.