The Hungry Squid

I have a confession to make: I am an autumn junkie. Please don’t get me wrong – a squid likes nothing more than to lie by the poolside on a hot July afternoon, or to barbeque in the park, or to have a drink (or a few) with friends on a terasse late into the summer night. But to be honest, the lack of air-conditioning in my apartment and the subsequent restless sleeps were getting to be a bit more than I could handle, not to mention the fact that turning the stove on heated the apartment up faster than you can say “incoming jellyfish!”. No, for all its ice cream-filled virtues, summer will always be a close second to the austere beauty and serenity of early autumn. The crisp   air and the soft sun against a pale blue sky evoke images of leather boots, red leaves and... fall cooking. Because let’s face it, I am unabashedly and incurably food-crazed. Emboldended by the cool late-summer breeze, I decided to turn the oven on for the first time in months and celebr...

Post-thesis submission (5 days ahead of the deadline, thank you very much) and pre-employment (scheduled to begin next week), I have been in transit, first to M’s lair and then home, where I entered a household bursting to the brim with out-of-town guests. A wildly busy and often hilarious week ensued, and I am just now getting used to the quiet of my Montreal 3 ½ . On of my favorite things about going home is the availability of cupboard upon cupboard of spices, powders, extracts and flours, many of which are required in ¼ teaspoon amounts in the recipes I like to try my hand at. My mother, the avid cook that she is, loves to experiment with cuisines, and she has an enthusiastic tasting panel in my brother and my dad (and occasionally me). Unfortunately, I have no such luxury; every recipe essentially serves one, which limits my experimentation with cooking to healthy foods that can be consumed guilt-free for 5 days. And the occasionally chocolate pear cake… S...

The shoulder of pork was huge. Dark brown marrow, exposed in a thick shell of dense, mother-of pearl bone, was nestled in a sea of deep red meat and marbled with creamy ribbons of fat, which spread luxuriously across the top of the cut like a triumphant, artery-clogging crown. 6 lbs of pure, unadulterated pork, and it was our job to turn it into a sumptuous barbequed meal – sans barbeque. Challenge accepted. Earlier that weekend, I had been tempted by an invitation for pulled pork, but alas, travel plans already in place, I had to decline. However, the idea of tender pulled pork, drowning in a sea of smoky, tangy barbeque sauce, lingered in my brain, and, in the midst of my celebratory culinary binge, I had the idea to try my hand at the dish. M could not be more enthusiastic – being the carnivorous mammal he is, he jumped at the chance to prepare such a protein-heavy meal, and was more than willing to handle the raw meat (something that I am still a bit squeamish about). The...

Day 3 of my freedom from the Thesis, and I have entered a new level of food nirvana. M and I embraced the end of this academic era with a gastronomic adventure, starting with late night sushi, breakfast on the terasse of a quaint Kingston bakery, farmer’s market produce shopping and a exquisite dinner that celebrated the bounty of summer – sweet Picton corn, tender local yellow cherry tomatoes, crisp, deep green bunches of basil and mint, fragrant fresh thyme, pungent red and green onions…. Our mid-August supper was rather simple, starting with mojitos, brewed with 60 mint leaves, rum in a (large) plastic jug. Mojito mania! Refreshed, we then proceeded to make our mains: chili cumin chicken thighs, and grilled corn salad. Unfortunately, city living made it impossible to barbeque the cobs, but, pan fried, this salad was still excellent – I can only imagine how charring the corn on the grill would elevate its flavor to outstanding. A note: we unfortunat...

There is no good reason not to bake a cake. Or, for that matter, to eat one. Cakes are delicious. My favourite ones are moist, sweet (but not cloyingly, Aspartame-y sweet), dense and preferably with as much chocolate as I can get.  I love cakes with icing, with ganache, with cream cheese frosting; cakes with fruit fillings, custard fillings, and no fillings at all. I can eat them all the time, and have been known to pick at a piece of cake for hours, though I will only take a bit at a time – after all, I only want “half”. But after what feels like thousands hours of mind-numbing lab work, I wanted to make something that would make it all seem worth it. After all, how better to end your day than with a big, warm, chocolate-y piece of freshly caked cake? So this week, I decided to bake a cake. Perhaps as a tool for procrastination, or perhaps because I was craving something unhealthy after an oh-so-healthy week – who knows, and does it really matter? Ostensibly, this cake was for p...

Montreal in the fall is a lovely place to be. The weather is perfect - cool enough that the temperature is perfect for sleeping, but not cool enough for down comforters in the middle of September. The morning air is crisp and bracing without being chilly, and for a long time, the rain retains a hint of warmth, a wistful reminder of a fleeting but beautiful summer. This past weekend and week have been idyllic -  a light work load interspersed with conferences, and luxurious staycation have made it almost seem like an Indian summer. But Monday always comes, and this particular Monday was accompanied by a wicked sore throat, cough and general malaise. So, what's the remedy for tiredness, weekend withdrawal and grad school blues? Soup, of course! I have always put soup recipes on the back burner (pun intended). For me, they've been an accompaniment, and being a self-professed carb aficionado, I have to be in a particular mood to appreciate them. Of course, there are exceptions , b...

Hello, my name is Squid and I have the travelling bug. I caught it earlier this year, after I came back from the West Coast, a vacation that was, as all vacations, too short. It worsened steadily, with friends travelling to exotic places, and was particularly acute when I was preparing for my thesis advisory committee meeting. Now, in the swing of things post-meeting, my condition has improved but the symptoms nonetheless linger.  So what is the best way to beat the vacay blues? Distract yourself with cooking! Ever since resurrecting this half-dead monster of a blog, I have thrown myself into cooking again, with great satisfaction. I am, after all, a hungry squid. After a (very, very) late night on Friday and a Saturday that consisted of rushing around like a wild person during my new apartment redecoration quest , I came home with 2 hours to spare before a potluck dinner in honor of a departing lab member. I wanted to make something light for the dinner, something easy to eat but ...