Rubbishy Cookery

  On a recent road trip to New Brunswick and la belle provence  Québec I had some knockout meals. Surprisingly, the most memorable meals were not in the main destination, Quebec City, but in Fredericton NB, and inspiring today’s recipe, in Rivière du Loup, Québec. A fantastic little restaurant called L’innocent had a terrific vegetarian curried fried rice and I have tried to recapture its essence here, with some intentional (and some not-so-intentional) twists to make it my own, et plus « rubbishy ». (Sample of menu with inspirational fried rice at the end of the list, reproduced sans  permission.) Ingredients: There are some definite differences already between my experimental inspired version and the restaurant’s original: I’m using brown basmati rice, not white; whatever vegetables were in the fridge missing celery and adding red cabbage and cauliflower; I have no seeds (pumpkin and sunflower) but using chopped walnuts and almonds (I can’t recall what noix  they ...

  This recipe could be subtitled: Or, how to use up refrigerator dregs and leftovers before going on a trip. Here we go! Ingredients: The photo above shows the ingredients I intended to use (chopped quarter green cabbage, big hunk of salted butter, one egg that turned into two eggs, and leftover Jasmine rice) when I started this meal, and it was simply going to be buttery stir fried cabbage with reheated (or waffled, see Recipe #11) rice and a fried egg. But then I got thinking about turning everything into a one pan meal and decided to go a different route, so out came these guys: That’s tamari sauce and toasted sesame oil in the photo above. Here we go! Directions: Melt big hunk of butter in the hot pan, add chopped cabbage and stir fry: Get the cabbage nicely cooked and wilted and a bit browned: Then add the cold leftover rice and incorporate: Get the rice nice and warm and browned a little, and stir in some tamari sauce and toasted sesame oil: Stir it all together then crack in...

  When I was a young idealistic vegetarian, I was obsessed with this book: I was obsessed with the personal 20th anniversary introduction, the part of the book called “Recipe for a Personal Revolution” (note: there was a chapter within, which almost inspired me to drop out of grad school and become Frances Moore Lappé’s groupie)(additional note: I met FML at a book reading and signing event in Toronto during this time, and she cautioned me to not make any rash decisions about grad school, which actually convinced me to continue my studies. Sigh.), the parts about food insecurity and the real reasons for hunger in the world (spoiler alert: it’s poverty, unequal distribution of wealth, and powerful corporations and governments keeping the status quo), and, of course, the recipes! Today’s blog entry is a distant relation to a recipe in this book. It’s so distant, I’m not sure which one it was based on. I think it may be this one, because it has a few of the same ingredients and there ...

  Warning: this post isn’t just rubbishy, but it’s also sad and pathetic in tone and spirit.  This is a great recipe for when you have a nasty viral respiratory infection. And possibly still recovering from a lower limb injury. Should you find yourself in that most unfortunate situation, but still able to cook. Kind of. Also, if this was a major part of your childhood: If this book in particular, and Maurice Sendak in general, weren’t a major part of your childhood, run don’t walk to your nearest library and check it and him out. I’m just assuming that this recipe is going to turn out well, because of my confidence and current health pickle. I’ve never made chicken soup with rice this way before, nor have I ever made chicken soup with rice in the dead of summer, but here we are. Ingredients, part I: Ingredients, part II: Very important ingredient close up: Yes, this is a quick and easy chicken soup, and fits in well with the blog’s rubbishy cookery theme. In an ideal world, it...