Masala chai, squash chowder and delicious nuts
Good morning!
There are some words that are global vocabulary – no matter which language you’re speaking, they pop up as signposts to ground you. One of these is tea.
Apparently, whether your language uses a word akin to the English tea or the far more common cha/chai depends on whether your ancestors encountered the beverage (and, the language/dialect of the people drinking it) via land or sea. (And, word nerds, this is cool: there seems to be an antiquated use of cha/char in the UK to mean tea – though the word “tea” obviously conquered it.)
But to get to the point, this is why pedants get riled up about people using the redundant (and inaccurate) term “chai tea” to mean the spiced tea drink originating in India that is properly called masala chai.
And to get to the next point, I’m pleased to announce that I’ve finally cracked the problem of finding a delicious hot drink that I can enjoy in the afternoon without the buzz of caffeine or a whole lot of effort. (Though, tbh, leaving out the tea and making it herbal means it might not technically count as chai anymore…) Bonus: Prepping it makes your house smell like a whole bunch of hygge.
I can’t speak to the authenticity of this masala chai recipe from My New Roots, but I can speak to the convenience of her method. You cook up a big batch of spice concentrate and either refrigerate it or freeze it into cubes, and then you have it ready at a moment’s notice to heat up with your choice of milk, optional black tea leaves and some sweetener.
I left out the licorice root because I didn’t have any (and I’m not sure it’s necessary), and I crushed the cardamom pods before adding them and sliced the ginger. And now I’m going through my first (half) batch so fast I’ve had to order more spices for the next one.
Stock your pantry
The Roasted Nut is not far from my house, but I first tried their products via Greenhouse. The Six Mix is extremely delicious and moreish, and I just placed an order to try a couple of their other options, too.
And for those times when you’re feeling fancy, the nut mixes at Salted are excellent. My favourite is the Marcona almonds with rosemary and raisins.
I also just discovered Zing, via an Instagram post by Nani’s Gelato. They make sauces and seasoning salts that look like just the thing I need to break out of my cooking rut. I’ll let you know what they’re like.
Order takeout
We got dinner not long ago from Spice Girl Eats via The Depanneur. I’m still dreaming about the samosas.
The Depanneur does a couple of takeout dinners each week, and they usually have vegetarian or vegan options. (This Dhaba Dinner looks really good, but I have too many groceries right now to order it myself.) And side note, the Depanneur is also launching a Kickstarter (tomorrow!) to create a cookbook showcasing some of the amazing chefs they bring in.
I remember when Planta Queen opened and I was excited about a new option for vegan Chinese, and then some early meh reviews came in, and it turned out to be “pan-Asian” (cue skepticism), and then I went with a friend after a yoga class at one point and we really enjoyed our food. So the other night I was craving a drink and of course you have to order food with your alcohol delivery so I got a bottle of Far Yeast saison (ask me about my carbon footprint guilt for buying beer from Japan, but it is very good) and enough dishes to feed the two of us for two meals. The verdict is that this is probably white people Asian food, so if you’re a stickler for authenticity, maybe stay away, but I enjoyed my meal? And it’s so relaxing to not have to worry if the menu items contain pork but don’t say. The dumplings were bland, but I quite liked the broccoli, the dan dan noodles and the XO tofu.
Okay, but where are the recipes?
On it!
This Autumn Squash Chowder is from the Autumn 2012 Food & Drink, and I’ve made it most years since then.
We really enjoyed these Sesame Noodles with Smacked Courgette, and not just because you get to make all sorts of jokes about smacking courgettes. In fact, I would double or triple the number of courgettes you smack to make this – I thought it needed a higher ratio of vegetables. I didn’t have black vinegar, I used rice instead, and it wasn’t a problem.
Megan shared this “easy” lentil soup recipe a while ago, and I finally made it, and it’s delicious, but more time consuming than one is led to believe, mainly because there’s a lot of chopping up front before you get to actually cooking the lentils. If you do the first couple of steps ahead of time, it would come together faster.
I’m on a lifelong hunt for the perfect vegan mushroom soup, and I don’t think this is it, but it’s an interesting one to try nonetheless if you’re looking for ways to add creaminess without cream. In general, Bon Appétit recipes have a lot of useful comments, and I reject not reading them before trying this recipe – maybe I would have loved it more.
And last but not least, another recommendation from Megan (and another one from Bon Appétit) is this Rhubarb Custard Cake, which you can make with pretty much any fruit. I did one with cranberries and it disappeared so fast that I didn’t have a chance to take a photo in daylight.
Reading list
I envision a post-pandemic city where nutritious food is accessible to everyone, no matter where they live or what they earn.
I liked this piece in Toronto Life by FoodShare’s Paul Taylor. He discusses various ways we could create a public food system that makes nutritious, locally grown ingredients accessible to everyone. (Imagine if we actually managed to turn city-owned golf courses into farms?)
The people who built the Egyptian pyramids were themselves built by bread and beer. Workers were given a daily ration of about 10 loaves of bread and several pints’ worth of thick, soupy beer they slurped with straws.
For the bread bakers out there, this article on archeologists recreating ancient recipes (and using ancient yeasts) is fascinating.
We all agreed that recipe writers have a bit of a dirty secret: we almost always use more oil than what we write in the recipe.
An open secret I know from my work is that if you see a recipe with nutritional information, whoever published it almost certainly lowered the salt and fat content to make the numbers palatable. Australian magazine Good Food confirms this and more with these six tips to improve your home cooking.
Until next time!
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