Lunch in the Time of Covid-19

Virtual crêpes!

Kaarina

With Covid-19 at large, Epitourists were all staying put: Safe in our homes — Laura on Wolfe Island, Caroline in the Durham Forest, Diane and I in Toronto. Yes, we were all social distancing, in self isolation, but we were not about to cancel our March Epitourist lunch.

There was no getting around it. If we wanted to eat and greet, we had to get over ourselves and our antipathy to seeing ourselves and being seen on video. It was time to dial up a video conference call. Of course, we couldn’t share the taste or smell of the dishes we each prepared in our own kitchens but we could see them and enjoy our own creations in virtual companionship.

This was more a social call than a culinary happening. The idea was to cook from ingredients that are pantry staples in most people’s kitchens. No special trips to the store required.

Caroline

 Opa!

An hour before our virtual lunch I decided on Greek Egg-Lemon Chicken Soup, or Avgolemono, to use up the chicken thighs from the freezer. This five ingredient soup is comforting and delicious. The eggs act as thickening agents. The lemon zest and juice bring a delightful zing of acidity to the savoury chicken broth. 

It was nice to have lunch with my epicurean friends. Life as we know it today has put a stop to the touristic aspect of our group. Trips are being cancelled and we give going out the door a second thought. 

Kaarina

Pasta, pesto with potatoes and green beans.

The great late Marcella Hazan who taught the world to cook Italian declared in her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking: “When all its components are right, there is no single dish more delicious in the entire Italian pasta repertory.” This was not the case with my Pasta and Pesto with Potatoes and Green Beans. Unfortunately, I forgot Marcella’s cardinal rule. Seasonal. Perhaps if my potatoes really had been new small potatoes and the green beans fresh from the garden or a local farm market ...  Instead the potatoes were pantry staples at the end of winter, and the green beans were not even green beans but frozen edamame, and the pesto was the last of the pesto I made from my garden basil and froze in September. Well, you can’t freeze pesto for six months and expect it to taste like summer.

Diane

Crêpes Suzette!

Personally I have found extra time to tinker in the kitchen and spend a bit more time experimenting. Ruth Reichel started my quest for perfect crêpes with her recipe for German Apple Pancakes, making them seem deceptively simple in her book, Save Me the Plums. On my first attempt they were certainly not thin enough to be stacked three high, layered with filling and rolled. Try again. The secret to thin crêpes seems to be to refrigerate the batter and let it rest. I turned to the more classic crêpes Suzette for the Epitourist lunch, having simple ingredients at hand. I have to say, I did like flaming the crêpes with Grand Marnier, with the liqueur adding a taste of torched caramel. Delicious! Paired with a glass of the same liqueur.

We've all seen the internet memes showing the ten pound gain "before" and "after" self isolation. All this time on our hands and the fridge so nearby... I will have to seek out more recipes with a bit less butter, but why deny the occasional extravagance?

Laura

Having a well-stocked pantry is a regular fact of life when you live 20 minutes away from a 20-minute ferry ride to the closest grocery store. There’s never any popping out to pick up an ingredient you don’t have on hand. We are fortunate to have neighbours on the island who provide us with eggs and beautiful grass-fed beef and pork. During he summer I have land to grow vegetables. But at the moment I have my son and his girlfriend, who is vegan, living with me. The fresh summer veggies are not around yet and I don’t always feel like preparing meat and non-meat lunches. So I had to get creative. 

Hhmm... cauliflower bolognese!

There was a cauliflower lurking in my produce drawer, and I had most of the other ingredients on hand to make a cauliflower bolognese. I used olive oil instead of butter, and I kept the parmesan out of Mira’s portion, replacing it with a bit of nutritional yeast, which is a good umami substitute for cheese. I didn’t have rigatoni, so I substituted gemelli pasta. I didn’t have fresh parsley, so I snipped a few of my kale sprouts that I have growing in my little indoor microgreen garden. 

My little microgreen garden!

Vegetarian

A salad worthy of an impressionist painting!

Diane

My turn to choose the theme! Since I’m always on the look out for healthy alternatives to meat-based meals, I picked Vegetarian.

We are packing more into our Epitourist get-togethers. Our lunch was preceded by a day of foodie excursions to Aloette and Eataly. Sunday’s courses felt relaxed and restorative in contrast to the previous day’s pace.

When Diet for a Small Planet was published in 1971 it was a radical book that chronicled the harmful environmental impacts of meat production and its compounding effects on food distribution across the globe. Today the trend toward plant-based diets is also supported by people with concerns for the ethical treatment of animals and those who want to improve their own personal health. Change often takes time. When Canada revamped the Food Guide in 2019, the government still faced a strong lobby from meat and dairy interests threatened by the move away from animal proteins.

Today there are so many cookbooks and advocates for plant-based meals it’s hard to choose a definitive source: Michael Pollan, Jamie Oliver, Dr. Michael Greger, Angela Liddon… the list continues to grow.

Our own Epitourist menu was a wonderful mix of colour, comfort, simplicity and elegance. Didn’t miss the meat whatsoever!

Menu

Starter | Laura

Muhammara roasted red pepper dip with focaccia and goat chevre 

paired with Prosecco

Salad Course | Kaarina

Five-Spice Peach and Raspberry Salad

paired with Riesling

Main | Diane

Russian Carrot Pie  

paired with Golden Milk

Main | Caro

Steamed celeriac and mushroom pudding with Madeira sauce

paired with Madeira

Dessert | Laura

Lemon Pudding Cake

Digestif | Diane

Pousse-Café / selection of  liqueurs

Muhammara roasted red pepper dip ❦ Laura

Syrian Muhammara Dip

I was last to announce what I would make for our vegetarian feast. As often happens at these long lunches, we get so enthusiastic about what we want to make that we end up with way too much food. The others had already proposed hearty courses, so I thought an appetizer dip would be fitting. But I didn’t want to make a run-of-the mill hummus or cream-cheese based dip. Ottolenghi never fails to offer interesting flavour combinations. I chose his Muhammara/roasted red pepper dip. Muhammara dip comes from Syrian cuisine. I loved the idea of combining red peppers with pomegranate molasses, walnuts, and aleppo pepper. Diane has gas burners, so charring the peppers was easy on her stovetop. The resulting dip was spectacular. We served it with some foccacia and flatbread crackers purchased during our Eataly outing. 

Five-Spice Peach and Raspberry Salad ❦ Kaarina

A true chef d'œuvre!

Thinking outside the pot, I looked for fresh raw colour and bite to add to our menu. I didn’t need to look far. If anyone knows how to pull together a great vegetarian spread, it’s Ottolenghi and I had been reading and cooking from both Jerusalem and Simple this winter. I settled on Five-Spice Peach and Raspberry Salad from Simple:

In a large bowl, whisk together

1-1/2 tbsp. cider vinegar

1 tsp maple syrup

1/4 tsp Chinese 5-spice powder

1 tbsp olive oil

1 shallot, thinly sliced (1/4 cup)

1/4 tsp salt

Just before serving, add

3-1/2 oz raspberries

3 firm peaches, not too ripe, cut into 1/4 inch wedges

2 cups watercress

2 cups radicchio, cut into 3/4 inch slices.

Toss and serve.

What made this salad visually extra spectacular was the rosy radicchio we found in the produce section at Eataly, which was on our Epitourist winter tour of downtown Toronto the day before. The rosy leaves were so beautiful I couldn’t bring myself to tear them, so I tucked them in whole amongst the watercres and peaches. This loose leaf radicchio is less bitter than the tightly packed leaves of a standard radicchio but the watercress along with the shallot had enough bite to balance the sweetness of the fruit.

Wine can be a challenge with salads. What to pair? The peach? The bitter greens? Or the sherry vinegar dressing? Cave Springs off dry Riesling did the job brilliantly.. 

Russian Carrot Pie ❦ Diane

A very creative pairing!

Oh how I loved Molly Katzen’s Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbook! Hand written, with simple instructions and whimsical illustrations, it inspired me to make some of my first vegetarian meals. Published in 1974, it may be dated when compared with some of today’s titles, but it still brings a smile to my face. I thought the Epitourists would enjoy Russian Carrot Pie, and they did, although next time, I would cut back a bit on the dill.

Delightful!

For this course, instead of pairing with wine I chose a concoction of coconut milk, oat milk, turmeric, ginger and cinnamon. The decision to serve Golden Milk was made on colour alone, but happily the taste nicely complemented the flavours in the pie.

Steamed celeriac and mushroom pudding with Madeira sauce  

❦ Caroline

Savoury Pudding!

  
I turned to Dani Valent’s In the Mix — Great Thermomix Recipes for Diane’s vegetarian theme. Australian based cook, Valent sourced recipes from chefs and bloggers far and wide to put together this beautiful cookbook. Steamed Celeriac and Mushroom Puddings, is British chef Madalene Bonvini-Hamel’s creation. Completely vegetarian, it is elegant, comforting and deliciously savoury.
 
Filling

50 g butter
70 g mushrooms
salt and pepper to taste
20 g flour
1/2 onion, peeled and diced
1 clove of garlic
1/2 stalk of celery, cut into 1 cm dice
1 small carrot, peeled and coarsely grated
250 g celeriac cut into 1 cm dice
30 g Madeira
150 g vegetable stock
1 tbs chopped parsley
1 tbs chopped chives

Melt 25 g butter in a frying pan. Cook mushrooms with a little salt and pepper for 8 minutes at medium-high temperature. Set aside. Melt remaining butter, add onion, garlic, celery, carrot, celeriac and flour. Cook 10 minutes on medium-high until nicely caramelized. Add the Madeira. Cook for 4 minutes. Add the stock and cook on medium heat to reduce for 5 minutes. Return the mushrooms. Stir in parsley and chives. Adjust seasoning. Allow to cool on a cookie sheet.

Pastry

300 g flour
15 g baking powder
150 g frozen butter
salt and pepper to taste
100 g chilled water

Mix flour, baking powder, butter, salt and pepper. Add the chilled water. Gently knead. Lightly oil 6 ramekins. On a slightly floured surface, roll the pastry to about 4 mm thick. Line the ramekins with the pastry. Spoon the cooled celeriac filling into each ramekin, filling it to the top, dampen pastry rim with cold water and seal each pudding with a pastry lid. Make a team hole in the centre of the lid. Pour 1 litre of water into a pot. Set steaming basket in. Place the pudding ramekins on basket. Cook for 60 minutes on medium-high. Make sure that there’s sufficient water at all times. Keep a kettle of boiling water handy to top up.

Madeira Sauce

50 g dried mushrooms
30 g olive oil
1 sprig of thyme, leaves only
1 bay leaf
1 clove garlic
1 shallot
100 g madeira
500 g vegetable stock
100 g 35% cream
50 g butter

Pulverize the dried mushroom in a food processor. Add the olive oil, thyme, garlic and onion and chop. Transfer the mixture to a frying pan. Add bay leaf and cook on medium-high for 5 minutes. Add the Madeira and cook for 3 minutes. Add vegetable stock and continue to cook until stock has reduced by half. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve. Discard solids. Pour sauce into saucepan along with cream. Heat for 3 minute until it just begins to boil. Taste and adjust seasoning. Before serving, add the butter and whisk.


Lemon Souffle Pudding ❦ Laura

Because I can never resist making something as a sweet end to the meal, I chose to make a simple lemon souffle pudding. This is an old family recipe from the mother of Jason, my neighbour on Wolfe Island. He always makes it for impromptu neighbourhood potluck get togethers.

Digestif ❦ Diane

Lovely colours of a pousse-café

I came across Pousse-café when I was searching for a digestif to finish our meal. Literally "coffee-pusher" in French, it is an alcoholic beverage consumed after the coffee course. Pousse-café has now evolved to mean a layered drink composed of different  liqueurs.

I thought this would be a fun twist and an appropriate reminder that although people sometimes equate vegetarian with healthy and virtuous, it’s not always the case.

Besides, I have a cupboard full of different liqueurs to experiment. The heaviest liqueur is poured first on the bottom, and so on. We had the most success with a trio of grenadine, chartreuse and then Cointreau. Use a bar spoon and steady hand to pour the liqueur. Choose liqueurs that are actually palatable if you intend to drink your creation.