MEMORIES & GRATITUDE

WITH TALK OF RADICCHIO, PUMPKINS, PUNTARELLE, COOKBOOKS...

The two weeks since I flew back to Toronto from my month of travels have been a slow messy trudge out of the clutches of the heavy chest cold I brought home with me from London.

it doesn’t feel like November…

I’m enjoying the tastes and aromas that now greet me. They include the sweet dusty whiff as I scuff my feet through of piles of dried leaves and the damp smell of newly fallen leaves on grass.

One of my earliest memories is of being outside my grandfather’s house in Ottawa (which he sold when I was five years old) and feeling daring enough to toss a handful of leaves onto the heap of raked-up leaves that some adult had set on fire moments before. A thrill. But then my hand was grabbed and I was firmly told “don’t throw leaves on the fire.” Oh… Sometimes when I see a child corrected by an adult, in a “don’t do that!” kind of way, I’m reminded of that rebuff by the fire long ago.

Late October and early November are a time for memories sweet and deep and complicated. It’s a huge landscape that we share with others. Last week marked forty-nine years since my mother’s death, and next week is Tashi’s death anniversary. I ran into a good friend today whose brother died suddenly just over a year ago. We embraced, with no need for words of condolence or solace.

We carry them with us, the people we’ve lost, along with our love for them, our feeling of luck to have known them, and our grief, in a large complicated bundle. The change in the light, the colours of the leaves, the aromas of autumn decay: all of them connect for me with these feelings of love and loss.

gorgeous autumn colour: in fact a bunch of garden discards in a shredder outside a huge Rosedale house

COOKBOOKS EXPAND OUR HORIZONS; SO DOES COOKING WITH FRIENDS

On Halloween afternoon I carved a couple of pumpkins, two basic faces on each, and put them outside just before the first kids arrived. (We had a huge bowlful of candy to hand out but not many kids, so there’s lots of candy left.)

My friend Anne asked me to save some of the pumpkin for her, rather than putting it in the organic recycle bin. She roasts it, then scrapes off the flesh and stores it in small bags in the freezer for her large dog named Bingo. She tells me that pumpkin is an excellent remedy for canine digestive issues. Did you know that?

My cooking reflexes remain a bit rusty, even two weeks after getting home. Partly it’s my cold, which means lower energy and limited imagination.

The other day I was faced with a stem of brussels sprouts. I like to start with plenty of sliced onion in a skillet of olive oil spiced with cumin or fennel, and mustard seed, and then to add the sliced sprouts. (I’m going to be repeating versions of the sequence again in the coming week, because today at the market I bought two more stems of brussels sprouts.) What comes next varies. With local tomatoes still available in this warm mild NovemberA I have been adding chopped tomato to the mix for a hit of acidity. The combo is delicious over rice or as a sauce for pasta. I usually season it with fish sauce and include a chile or two.

stem and sprouts trimmed from it; the dish partway through cooking, with a dried chile, and sprouts and tomatoes not yet fully cooked

A good remedy for my limitations in the kitchen is to cook with friends and/or for friends. A few days ago, with Simon Thibault visiting from Halifax, and Dawn-the-baker available for supper, we pulled together an interesting meal. We had locally grown puntarelle and radicchio from Footsteps Farm to work with, and some fennel too. The newly published cookbook called Radicchio by Selan and Waterbury has a recipe for a radicchio pesto that Dawn wanted to try. And Simon remembered a recipe in Jennifer McLagan’s brilliant Bitter book that combines puntarelle and anchovies.

In the end of course we didn’t follow the recipes exactly but instead used their ideas as a guide. The pesto Dawn made used minced radicchio, and a little of my homegrown garlic pounded to a paste with salt and mixed with ground up almonds and toasted pumpkin seeds. She stirred the whole flavourful mass, plus some parmesan, into olive oil to make a thick slightly chewy crunchy paste. We decided it needed some acid, so Dawn zested a whole lemon and added that. It made a wonderful difference, as acid so often does. Before adding the pesto to a bowl of freshly cooked whole grain fusilli, we lengthened it with some of the boiling pasta-cooking water. There was extra grated parmesan on the table.

As long as there’s radicchio available I think this pesto, in various versions, will be a staple in my kitchen. A great find.

puntarelle, fennel, onion, anchovy, inspired by Jennifer McLagan’s Bitter book

Meantime I cooked thinly sliced white onion in olive oil in my large cast-iron skillet, after popping some mustard seed in the oil first. Once the onion softened, in went the chopped and well-washed puntarelle (the longer leaves and the stubby inner bits too) and some chopped fennel. I added a little hot water to hurry the cooking, then Simon added a handful of chopped anchovy. We covered the skillet and let everything simmer to a blended tenderness. Highly recommended.

and speaking of friends who expand my horizons, here is work by Meaghan Hyckie, who has a solo show at Olga Korper Gallery in Toronto

SHOPPING:

Last Sunday I went with Dawn-the-baker to Adonis, a huge store of primarily middle-Eastern foods. She was looking for Palestinian medjool dates, and we left with eight boxes of them. Along the way there were Egyltian guavas, assortments of condiments, loads of pomegranates, freshly made flatbreads on a conveyer belt, and lots more., Highy recommended.

at Adonis on Eglinton East: tamarind, the vast storescape, Italian chestnuts

READING:

There was a particularly interesting conversation at the Toronto International Festival of Authors between Philippe Sands (author of the remarkable book East-West Street) and two writers whose roots are in Rwanda but who now live in France: Gael Faye and Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse. Do look for their work.

the ivy plus a huge maple tree frame my backyard view…