Rubbishy Cookery

  This is a homemade easy version of a classic tasty Lebanese dish, based on verbal instructions from my favourite Lebanese grocer, Shaddy of Brighton Clover Farm. He gave me the broad brushstrokes version of how to make this at home while I was shopping in his store and buying the star ingredient, the canned fava beans, many years ago.  Actually, the way I remember it is that I was shopping at the store and chatting with Shaddy, as one does, and told him how much I loved this dish at a local Lebanese restaurant. Shaddy, who never minces his words, asked me why the heck (he did not say heck) I was paying good money at a restaurant for something I could make at home for a fraction of the price and much tastier? I told him to go on, I was interested. He went forth to show me the cans of fava beans and told me how to prepare them. This is what I remember from those long-ago verbal instructions, and how I’ve been enjoying them at home for years since. Ingredients: Directions: Empt...

  Disclaimer #1: this is not a Spanish tortilla, which I also adore, and is also a type of potato omelette. This potato omelette isn’t even close to the Spanish version, except for the eggs and potatoes. Disclaimer #2: I didn’t invent this dish. This particular recipe was introduced to me by my grade 8 bestie, Karen Crawford, who said that her father invented it by accident while trying to make a potato soufflé. This story doesn’t make any sense to me now, and I question my memory of these origins. Which means that I may also have altered the recipe over the past forty (40!) years. Which means I maybe can take some credit for its current incarnation.  However! This omelette made a huge impression on my little 13-year old self. It may be the first recipe I made an effort to learn to make by myself that came to me from outside of my family, and I spent a lot of time working on perfecting my techniques to make it taste as good as the Crawford family version. I remember making fai...

  Of course I did not invent pesto. I started my independent culinary life buying pre-made pesto to use as a sauce, a dip, a topping. I graduated to using official pesto recipes, buying and measuring and mixing ingredients to make pesto. And I evolved to finally making large batches of improv pesto.  Improv pesto sometimes means pesto with surprises. Some surprises are better than others, as we shall see. Ingredients: Note: the pine nuts can be replaced with walnuts, and the fresh basil with other herbs. Cilantro or arugula make surprisingly good substitutes for some or all of the basil. Note #2: improv pesto means not measuring anything but adding amounts as the spirit moves you. This almost always works out fine. Note #3: I literally, as I am typing up this blog post, just noticed I forgot garlic. Garlic is a very important ingredient in pesto. This is a big omission. Directions: Wash and spin dry the basil (or alternate) and stuff it into the food processor (hopefully you h...

  This is another homage to a long-gone beloved restaurant.  There was a Mediterranean restaurant in Toronto (was it on Harbord Street or College Ave? I’m thinking Harbord…) in the 1990s called Kensington Kitchen. It wasn’t in Kensington Market (Harbord? College is closer to Kensington Mkt…) but that’s what they called it. I was a vegetarian for only the first half of the 90s, but continued to order my favourite vegetarian dish even when I became an omnivore. That dish was this recipe. Sort of. I seem to recall there was the option to get the grilled Mediterranean vegetables with a choice of brown rice with a tahini sauce or with hummus and pita. I liked both options but today we’re just going to have some high quality store bought hummus with the vegetables, m-Kay? Ingredients: I actually added an extra onion. More is better here! Directions: Preheat your BBQ (I hope you have one. If not, you can broil these skewers) to medium high. Wash and slice your vegetables into big chu...

  As mentioned in a previous rubbishy post (see Recipe #15), I love a good authentic  salade niçoise… but this is not that. Like Recipe #15, this recipe is a salad that has been inspired by salade niçoise, but like all salads I create containing vegetables, canned tuna, and a passable vinaigrette dressing, that maketh not une vrai salade niçoise. But this one is, dare I say, closer to the mark? Ingredients: Note the two main additions to this version: a hard boiled egg and some leftover cold boiled new potatoes. There is also the addition of grainy mustard for the vinaigrette. We are still using iceberg lettuce so just be cool with it, okay? Directions: Wash and dry and cut up all the vegetables and add them to the salad bowl.  Cut up the hard boiled egg and cold boiled new potatoes and add them to the bowl. Add the tin of tuna with its olive oil: I mix the vinaigrette directly into the salad by adding a squeeze of grainy mustard, a sprinkling of red wine vinegar, more ol...

 This recipe is such a distant cousin to salade niçoise that if the two dishes wanted to get together and have offspring, they wouldn’t have to worry about recessive genes causing any congenital anomalies.  I’ve just gotten into the habit of referring go any salad with lettuce, canned tuna, and vinaigrette as a fake salade niçoise . I have some more elaborate and slightly less lazy homages to the French salad coming in future posts when I have more ingredients, energy, and mobility. But don’t worry. I am not so ignorant in the world of international cuisine to think this, and my future renditions, are in any way real salade niçoise . But it’s vraiment bon et très facile!  So allons-y! Ingredients: You can use any salad ingredients you have around. This is very basic because it’s all I’ve got today. And yes, that’s grocery store iceberg lettuce. Don’t be a lettuce snob.  Directions: Wash and dry your vegetables and chop into salad-appropriate sizes and toss into a big...

  I honestly thought I had invented this recipe because it fell into the category, to my mind, of “who else but me would eat this?” (See recipe #1 as well) A quick internet search proves me wrong. The World Wide Web of food blogs is positively silly with versions and variations of this exact dish. I’m going to allow it here because (a) I thought I had invented it, which is philosophically equivalent, if not actually equivalent, to my having invented it and (b) it’s my recipe blog and I can break my own rules. Also, my blog has no ads, no affiliate links, no professional photography of myself looking fabulous to distract the reader, and no readers. So let’s get on with it. Ingredients: Note that I am using gluten free bread, which is optional but not necessary unless you, too, have a medical reason to do so. You can obviously also use prepackaged pre-made croutons, making this dish even quicker and easier. Note also that I am using canned tuna in olive oil. This is also completely o...