rollin' with my homies

though it is no secret that i have an appetite for good food much like axl rose has for destruction, the acts of mastication (re-read that if you must and get your minds out of the gutter.  rude) and consumption are not the only reasons i cook.  sure, a hopefully delicious end result might sweeten the deal, but cooking, to me, is not just a freeway connecting fridge to mouth.  no, no.  for me, cooking is far more than that.  on those days when things seem overwhelming, when a 3:1 kid:adult ratio seems like cruel punishment, when insurmountable is the word of the day, well…  i hit my library of culinary tomes old and new, devise a cooking project, and now suddenly everything has changed.  now we have a game plan.  now we have a strategy.  now we have a way to get from A to B, my kids hopefully learn something, and at the end of it we (fingers crossed) have something delicioso on the table.  for me, cooking is salvation.

spring break arrived here in the pacific northwest with something of a soggy slap.  we traded boob-flashing bikinis for rain coats and wellies, and there's been a whole lot of all three menschkins and myself stuck inside, watching the rain on the skylights as we daydream of sunshine and sand.  

by day 3, “stir crazy” had come and gone, sanity was rapidly becoming a distant memory for all, and even the 1 yr old seemed to be fashioning a crude kind of shiv out of his elmo phone as he gave me the side-eye.  something told me not to mess with him, or to at least change his name to “Big Sally,” so i decided that it was time for A Project.  menschkin the elder, a self-confessed dim sum fanatic, decided that we should try our hand at making spring rolls.  i told him i wasn’t that well-versed with the technique, but that we could roll with it.  shortly after he scraped his eyes off the ceiling, we jumped in the car and headed off to our local asian supermarché, in search of spring roll wrappers and better puns.

deciding that a rapper would be a good sous chef for our wrapping, macklemore came along for the ride.  here he is helping menschkin the elder pick out some fancy mushrooms. 

back at home, we prepped our fillings, set out a rolling station, and i let eldest menschkin get to work, rollin' with his homies.  darling daughter declined to help, but instead happily lurked in the background under dramatic lighting, doing best impression of morticia adams.  

even Big Sally put the shiv aside for a short while, intrigued by the day's activities, and for a few blissful hours on a rainy spring break afternoon, there was peace in the menschkin household.

spring (break) rolls 

1 pack frozen spring roll wrappers (i suppose you could make your own, but that would seemingly go against the sanity-saving theme), defrosted

4 carrots, shredded

2 sticks celery, shredded

4 spring onions, thinly sliced

1/2 cup beansprouts

1 tbsp soy sauce

2 tsps rice vinegar

1/2 tsp sesame oil

either attend culinary school and learn how to perfectly julienne your vegetables, or just use a $15 mandoline to do the work for you.  either way, shred your veg.

(thinly sliced mushrooms would also make an excellent addition.  macklemore's carefully chosen funghi ended up becoming an alien moonscape for some brave lego explorers, however.  live and learn)

heat canola oil in sauté pan and stir-fry vegetables until tender, just a minute or two.  add soy sauce, vinegar and sesame oil.  combine and remove from heat.

take one wrapper at a time (dr. dre, kanye, warren g... somebody stop me), covering the stack with a damp paper towel so they don't dry out.  place a spoonful of the filling in the middle, as if you're about to wrap a really yummy xmas present.

fold the bottom triangle upwards, fold in the sides, then roll up like a fat cigar (or perhaps something else our rapper friends might be fond of).

once all your rolls are rolled, heat some canola oil in a sauté pan until hot, then shallow fry until golden on all sides.  

serve so immediately that you entirely forget to take a single picture of the finished product, with chile dipping sauce on the side, and preferably some 90's hip hop on in the background.  mount up!

an ode to spring (with apologies to john keats)

at the risk of incurring the wrath of all 3 people who are reading this, and who probably look forward with great anticipation to the long-awaited end of the drudgery of winter, spring is probably my least favourite season.  i’m not saying i DISlike it, just that, let’s be honest, it’s up against some pretty stiff competition.  summer is hard to top, with its long, light-filled evenings that beg for sunny decks filled with lazy music, good conversation, and the clinking of cocktail glasses.  summer gives us the smell of sunscreen on warm skin, of freezing dips in sparkling lakes, and cooking breakfast, lunch AND dinner outside on the grill, just because you can.  

closely following in summer’s sandy footprints, for me, would be autumn.  the colours of the leaves changing, the snapping of bonfires, the joyous rediscovery of hot apple cider with a little rum in it.  (not to mention thanksgiving, a relatively new addition to the celebration docket for a foreigner such as myself, but how could i not fall in love with an entire day dedicated to cooking, eating and drinking?)  if summer is my one true love, then autumn is the boy next door i grew up thinking i’d marry.  

winter, though cold and grey and drizzly for the most part, winter gives us snuggling under blankets in front of open fires, gives us scarves and woolly jumpers, and... well... winter gives us those most wondrous december holidays, and for that it shall always be close to my heart.  winter is the first boy i kissed, behind the bike sheds by the big trees at school, when the teacher wasn't looking.  

and then we have spring.  frances hodgson burnett once described it as “the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine.”  spring is awfully pretty, it brings the odd welcome burst of hope as the days start to get longer and warmer again... i have nothing against spring, really.  it’s just that i’d rather we stay in the friend zone.  we don’t have that spark between us, spring.  (honestly, it’s not you, it’s me.)

saying that, this weekend in seattle was about as perfect of a spring weekend as you could hope for.  it featured blue skies, picnic blankets, and shorts showcasing legs of almost obscene ghostly whiteness. 

the weather was so perfect, in fact, it was ALMOST enough to make me consider jumping into bed with spring, just to see if there was anything there.  however, i decided instead to cook up a meal showcasing the best of what spring in the northwest had to offer.  i recently got my hands on a copy of the book “ethan stowell’s new italian kitchen.”  now, though most of these recipes are high in the faff factor, sporting ingredients that surely would be near-impossible to find at your local trader joe’s (or maybe they were just out of duck eggs, goat legs & sea urchin roe last time i was there), some of them thankfully trended to the more pedestrian cook such as myself.  big whew.  his “ode to the northwest” seemed simple enough, and the description tantalisingly began with the line “it’s spring in seattle.”  why, yes it is, ethan.  so i holla’d at my pink-haired sous chef, and nicki minaj and i headed to our local whole foods for supplies.  

the recipe is a pan-seared halibut dish and called for morel mushrooms, podded english peas, and cincinnati radishes.  whole foods, rather disappointingly, had none of these.  “fo shizzle, bada-bizzle!  whole fizzle…” lamented nicki.  truly, i thought to myself, how deeply perspicacious she is.  nicki then said something about justin beiber’s wiener, which i took to mean “let’s think outside the box,” so we grabbed some oyster mushrooms, a bag of frozen green peas, and some multi-coloured radishes instead.  (i’m sure ethan would forgive us and applaud us for thinking on our sneaker- and bedazzled-high-heel-clad feet.)  home we hightailed, faster than a hooptie hoop hoop, and nicki and i set about creating an ode to spring. 

ode to (spring in) the northwest (adapted from "ethan stowell's new italian kitchen" and aided by whole foods' lack of supplies)

2 tbsps unsalted butter

4 ounces morels (i substituted 4 large oyster mushrooms), cleaned and chopped into large pieces

1 cup shucked, blanched english peas (i substituted 1 cup thawed frozen peas)

kosher salt & freshly ground pepper

2 tbsps minced chives (whole foods had these!  huzzah)

4 (4-ounce) halibut fillets

2 tbsps olive oil, plus more for drizzling

4 cincinnati radishes, thinly sliced (i used easter egg radishes instead)

preheat oven to 400F.

heat butter in a sauté pan over medium heat and sauté mushrooms until soft, 2-3 minutes.  add peas and warm through.  season with salt and pepper, add chives, and keep warm on low heat.

pat fish dry and season with salt and pepper.  in an ovenproof sauté pan, heat olive oil over high heat until it begins to smoke.  add fish and sear on one side for 3-4 minutes until golden brown.  flip the fillets, then transfer pan to oven for 3-4 minutes more, until just cooked through.

plate fish on top, under, or adjacent to mushroom mixture, and top with radishes.  

i served mine with some roasted fingerling potatoes and baby artichokes (to which i almost lost a couple of digits whilst trimming), to complete the springfest.  

so though spring might not be my first love, sometimes that little burst of almost-summer can be enough to hint at the promise of warmer days to come, of sun-kissed shoulders, of long nights on sunny decks with cool drinks and good friends.  and for that, spring, i guess after all is said and done, i love you too.