I'm really not a boorish ingrate

Really...I'm not...I'm just as slow as molasses in on the Winter Solstace.

So imagine my surprise and glee to find out that I was nominated for a blogger-nominated award. Seriously: I was rendered speechless. Now treble that within a matter of a handful of weeks.

Seriously.

Within a rather short period of time three of my lovely readers decided to bestow awards or awards nominations on me and this little blog.

I'm not sure what to say but the only thing I can think of is thank you very much.

I'm never really quite sure who's reading me and why they do. Yes, I have my Statscounter thingie telling me that (surprise!) people stumble across this site and some actually come back (actually, I think it's 12 people who just happen to have their own Concord jets flying all over the place and checking in on my site), and I get comments and emails from you. It's quite a cheery thing and I really do appreciate the fact that people find some sort of joy in what I do--whether I've written something useful or you find the site amusing or whatever other reason, thank you for spending your time here.

This mini deluge of recognition also comes with the responsibility to pay it forward. I will break the rules and nominate one person per award, instead of multiple people--in total it would have been 17 nominations (and yes, I do the same thing when it comes to voting in my schoolboard trustees--I've never voted in the maximum number of people, just one or two at most).

Without further adieu, here they are:

Arte y pico
awarded by Joy of Almanzo's Belly

The Arte y Pico award is awarded for creativity, design, interesting material and contribution to the food blogging community.

"A witty and beautiful blog."

The rules:
- Pick five blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also contribute to the blogging community, no matter what language.
- Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.
- Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and the link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.
- Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of Arte y Pico blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

I'm awarding this to: Dagmar of A Cat in the Kitchen
Reading A Cat in the Kitchen is, to me, the equivalent of a breath of crisp, fresh air. Nothing on her blog seems forced: lovely photographs complement Dagmar's purely honest accounts of food and life.

Yum-yum Blog Award
awarded by Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies

"Jasmine from Confessions of a Cardamom Addict - omnivorous ramblings by a habitual eater. Jasmine, another fellow Canadian, writes with poetic beauty, wicked irreverence and journalistic integrity, all at once. She presents wonderfully delicious dishes with simply stated recipes, beautiful photography and a laugh out loud tale of how it all came to be."

The rules: award to five food blogs.

I'm awarding this to: Shaun of Winter Skies, Kitchen Aglow
Every time I visit Winter Skies I feel as if I'm welcomed by a with a big, warm hug. His references are fabulous--Tamasin Day Lewis, Elizabeth David, Nigel Slater--and, I think, testament to someone who has a true love and respect of the kitchen.

2008 Brilliante Blog Award
nominated by Jenny of All Things Edible

"I always have a hard time nominating people for these things, but this award seems to be fairly new, so I have some long time friends I can nominate for this."

The rules:
- Put the logo on your blog.
- Add a link to the person who awarded you.
- Nominate at least seven other blogs.
- Add links to those blogs on your blog.
- Leave a message for your nominee on their blogs.

I'm nominating: Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar
Annemarie is as charming and lovely in pixellated conversation as she is in her blogposts. A strong and image-conjuring writer she narrates her kitchen and life's adventures with warmth and the lightest of humourous flourishes.

Please take the time to visit the blogs who've nominated me and whom I've nominated. They are all on my personal blogroll and I enjoy every minute I spend there.

cheers!
jasmine

Is that a zucchini in your pocket...

...or are you just happy to eat with me?

The other week I mentioned a home-grown, pesticide-free courgette, courtesy of a colleague. Notice the singular? It wasn't a couple of squash it was one. See the spoon in the photo? That's a teaspoon. The veg in question was a 1.13kg (roughly 2.5 lb) beauty. Yup, it was a biggie.

A couple of chocolate loaves later and I was still up to my knees in zucchini (remember I am almost 5'1"). If the weather were cooler, they'be be roasted in some ratatouille and if I had a barbecue, I'd have grilled off some slices for a warm salad. But it was too warm for the oven and I don't have a barbecue. So I did the next best thing...I fritterised them.

Let's face it, there are worse things that could happen to a veg...I mean, they could be boiled to within an inch of their lives: any and all vestiges of flavour and inherant goodness they once contained are dissipated in a cafeteria worker's cooking pot.

Or they could be dehydrated and pulverised, mixed with a load of salt, polysyllabic preservatives and colourants to justify the "made with real vegetables"-type monicker on certain foods.

Fritters are incredibly easy--mix veggies into a batter and drop by the spoonful into a pan with about two to five centimetres of hot fat. Let the underside burnish and then flip over and fry the other side. Lift out of the fat (salt if you wish) and drain onto kitchen towels. Then eat while warm.

Curried Courgette Fritters
75g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
salt
pepper
1 tsp curry powder (or more or less, depending upon taste)
1 egg, beaten
450g courgettes, grated and drained of excess liquid
1 medium onion, grated and drained of excess liquid
oil, for frying

Heat the oil until it shimmers.

In the meantime, sift together all the dry ingredients, stir in the egg and fold in the grated courgettes and onion.

Drop by teaspoonful into the fat-flatten each drop out a bit so the centres will cook through. Don't crowd the pan otherwise the oil's temp will drop and then soak into the fritters, making the greasy and leaden. When the underside is burnished, turn over the fritter and fry until it too is a lovely golden brown. Remove from the oil and blot on kitchen towelling.



Normally when I have fritters I eat them plain or with ketchup or barbeque sauce. With this batch I decided to pair them with a very garlicky home-made aïoli. It was good in theory...and eventually in practise. My first batch of fritters, while practically perfect, were paired with a very imperfect garlicky dipping sauce. It just didn't come together: it was lumpy and bumpy and separated far too quickly.

So I tried it again, about a week later, with a new batch of fritters (from yet another mutant zucchini). This time, I wasn't in the best moods when I made the fritters and well...you could tell. The fritters were thin and scraggley and seemed to take forever to cook regardless of how warm the oil got. I lost several because they absorbed so much oil, their edibility was in question.

The aïoli, on the other hand, turned out beautifully--thick and unctious and very, very garlickly. It's quite easy to make--it's quite similar to making mayonnaise. You can make it by hand with a whisk or with a blender (stick or jug versions).

Garlic aïoli
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 egg yolk
125 ml olive oil
125 ml canola oil (or other flavourless oil
salt
pepper
1 dspn mashed potatoes

Whisk together the yolk and the garlic. Drizzle in the oils while constantly whisking, to thicken the sauce. Whisk in the mashed potatoes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.


cheers!
jasmine

Blackout cupcakes

Well...they were supposed to be blackout cupcakes, but they do look more like brownout cupcakes.

The 14th was the fifth anniversary of the big blackout that hit most of Ontario along with parts of New York and six other US states, leaving 50 million of us without power. I know some areas were only affected for a few minutes while others (like where I am) were...erm...powerless...for MUCH longer.

You see, I had this idea: blackout cupcakes--unfrosted but with a sprinkly of icing sugar to mimic stars in a sky devoid of light pollution.

Googling found a number of recipes along with a brief history of the cake: it was a signature cake of the now defunct Brooklyn NY Ebinger's Bakery. Homages now exist--the Chocolate Decadence, Mud Cake, Chocolate Lover's Cake, along with some eponymous offerings--but I couldn't easily find the original recipe.

When in doubt, go see Uncle Phaedrus -- so far I've benefitted a few times from Phaed's culinary detectivism. Unfortunately, this time, the original recipe wasn't there, but Jill Van Cleave's recreation was posted.

Well, the chocolate wasn't as dark as I'd hoped, but the cakes were so incredibly moist. Straight out of the oven they domed, but fell and cratered as they cooled--fine by me, but if you were so inclined to hide the wrinkles and crinkles, a dollop of whipped cream with sprinklies would do the trick.


cheers!
jasmine