Rubbishy Cookery

  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...

  Another dessert! Another mousse! What the heck! If you tried and enjoyed Recipe #18, and if you like chocolate, you’ll love this rubbishy spin on chocolate mousse. Ingredients: There’s that vintage Consumers Distributing mini mixer again! I sure hope you have something like it. Directions: Add a few spoonfuls of ricotta cheese, a couple of generous spoonfuls of icing sugar, 1-2 modest spoonfuls of cocoa powder, and a dash of vanilla extract to the bowl of your mini mixer: Then mix on “high” speed for about a minute. Here’s an action shot showing the mini mixer in its full glory: Taste your mixture. Mine needed more icing sugar: Mix another minute or so, scraping down the sides as necessary, and taste every so often, adding more of whatever is needed as you go. When it’s as tasty as you want it, refrigerate it for a while. An hour or two is fine. Wasn’t that easy? It may not look like much, but it tastes terrific!

  Hey everyone, it’s a dessert!  Or, a sweet, sweet breakfast.  Or whatever!  This delightful treat was just invented on a whim and is tasty and healthy-ish for any time of day! Ingredients: Directions: I hope you have a little mini mixer like the one in the photo above. Do they even still exist? Mine was purchased sometime in the early 1990s at a long-gone store called Consumers Distributing. If it ever dies, I don’t know what I’ll do. Anyway, I digress. Throw some frozen blueberries, a few spoonfuls of ricotta cheese, and a couple of spoonfuls of lemon curd into the mini mixer: Run the mixer on high speed for about a minute: Scrape down the sides if necessary. That looks great! Spoon into little bowls or mini ramekins. Choose something that doesn’t clash with the mousse if possible. Unfortunately I didn’t follow this advice and the colour clashing of the little bowls and mousse did affect my enjoyment of the finished product. Learn from my mistake! Cover with plast...

  Back in my vegetarian student days, long before I had a good handle on rubbishy cooking from scratch, I relied on a lot of prepackaged meals and mixes. One such favourite was a boxed mix to add to tofu as a seasoning and binder to make “homemade” tofu burgers. It wasn’t just easy to use, but it was extremely tasty. I believe the brand was “Casbah” but who knows, because it’s long gone… Even though I’m no longer a vegetarian, I still love many of the vegetarian standbys from that phase of my life. I really loved those tofu burgers and have been determined to recreate the flavours I remember from the boxed mix. Many failed attempts, experiments, and 25 years later, I think I’ve done it! Behold! Ingredients: Missing from the above photo: neutral cooking oil, I use canola. Directions: Drain, then pat and squeeze dry your block of firm or extra firm tofu, using a clean tea towel. Then put the dried tofu into a shallow bowl and smash it up real good with a potato mashing device: Add a ...

  Here is another homage recipe to the gone-but-not-forgotten favourite restaurant of my youth, Latinos of Guelph, Ontario (see Recipe #6 for more back story on this beloved El Salvadoran restaurant). One of their appetizers was a dish called Nachos Deliciosos , but it was nothing like any nacho dish I’d had before or have had since. Rather than the common nacho dish of chips slathered in various toppings and melted cheese (not that there’s anything wrong with that! See a future post for my version), Latinos served their version in a shallow oval ramekin. The ramekin contained their beautiful black beans covered in homemade red salsa and a layer of melted cheese, served with a few homemade tortilla chips poking out of the hot beans-salsa-cheese ramekin like shark fins, and many more crispy chips around the ramekin for dipping. Sour cream was optional. And that was it. So simple, and yet so… deliciosos!  Ingredients: Note the leftover basic black beans from Recipe #4.  Not...

 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...