Beef borscht (paleo)

Borscht is reputed to be one of the world’s great soups. However, to be honest, I initially wasn’t so sure. I’ve only had borscht a few times and it hasn’t always been a memorable experience. For a long time, I thought of it as an Eastern European peasant soup, probably good if you didn’t have much more to eat than beets but pretty dull otherwise.

For me, what changed things was having a borscht with dill. I’d had chilled beet soup with dill before but dill in hot borscht was a new thing for me. I understand it’s not really traditional but dill takes borscht from plain to interesting without overshooting the mark and getting into the realm of weird. Also, using plenty of beef turns this from a side to a filling one-pot meal.

Lazy beef rendang

Gung hay fat choy! It’s Chinese New Year… but it’s not just Chinese New Year. It’s also lunar New Year in many other countries including Singapore and Malaysia, which inspired tonight’s meal.

Beef rendang has always seemed a bit intimidating for me to make, because recipes usually call for a bunch of ingredients that are difficult for me to obtain, such as candlenuts and kaffir lime leaves, and call for the cook to grind their own spice paste and braise the beef for as long as four hours. However, I really wanted beef rendang, so after consulting a bunch of recipes, I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to make a rendang with the ingredients in my kitchen, in a lot less time. The result was truly delicious and tasted just like the rendang I’ve had in restaurants. I served it with steamed rice and yu sheng (Singapoean New Year salad) – and my husband declared it probably his favourite meal ever and half-jokingly asked me to make it once a week.

Haggis burgers with neep and tattie chips

It’s Robbie Burns Day, which marks very nearly a year since I started this blog. I hadn’t actually been planning to blog this meal, so please excuse the relative lack of pictures, but when I realized it was almost my blogiversary, I took a picture of my plate just before I dug in. Good thing too. Because my impromptu creation in honour of Rabbie Burns turned out truly delicious.

Last year, I made a modern haggis in the slow cooker, eschewing the traditional sheep’s stomach casing as well as the sheep’s heart, lungs, liver and whatever else goes into traditional haggis. This year, however, I decided to take modernizing haggis a step further. I decided to turn it into burgers.

Korean tacos with quick cucumber pickle

Inspiration for this nominally Korean dish comes not from Seoul but from the streets of Los Angeles, where apparently the popular Kogi BBQ truck has spawned a number of imitators around the U.S.

I’ve never been to Los Angeles and have never had Korean tacos made by anyone other than myself but I liked the sound of the idea and wanted to create my own version, gluten-free and low-FODMAP, of course. They came out delicious, a fusion of different flavours into a perfect marriage. (I don’t think the fact I’m in a mixed marriage myself is influencing me.)

Jap chae (Korean sweet potato noodles) with bulgogi

Jap chae is one of those dishes for which I like to keep the ingredients in the pantry/fridge/freezer at all times. Then, on those days when I’m lacking a plan but need something quick and tasty, I can just whip it up. The only problem is, I always underestimate how much everybody will gobble up. What looks like a generous amount of noodles in the wok always gets eaten up and I don’t end up with leftovers (I love leftovers). Oh well – I can’t complain too much about my kids eating healthy food without the usual whining.

Jap chae is made with Korean sweet potato noodles, which look like thick, brownish glass noodles. (This is the brand I used.) They have a slightly sticky, chewy consistency that I really like – though this is decidedly not a dish for which you want a gluey sauce. They’re naturally gluten-free. I can’t scientifically say whether they’re low-FODMAP but I can say I’ve never had a problem with them. Although sweet potatoes are moderate in FODMAPs I would suspect making them into starch, then noodles, would probably eliminate most of the FODMAPs. Again, this is speculation.

Tourtière

Happy Canada Day! Bonne fête du Canada! To celebrate the motherland from way over here in England, we ate leftover tourtière for lunch.

Does that sound somehow disappointing? It wasn’t. Tourtière is, after all, a beautiful and truly Canadian dish, not to mention delicious as leftovers. I made the tourtière on Sunday because it takes a little more time than I figured I’d have today. For our actual Canada Day dinner, we had a simple picnic. Were we shirking our duties as Canucks? No! Most Canadians picnic or barbecue for Canada Day. Tourtière is actually more of a Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve tradition, with some eating it on Christmas Day. But I couldn’t let a Canadian-themed week go by without making tourtière. It’s that good.

Japanese curry: Gluten-free, low-FODMAP version

Curry is one of Japan’s great comfort foods. Does that sound strange? I know curry is normally associated with South and Southeast Asia. Japanese cuisine, by contrast, doesn’t tend to use a lot of spices, especially not curry-like spices. Also, while I love Indian brinjal curry, red Thai curry, Malaysian penang curry, etc., they’re not foods I would want to curl up with on the couch on a cold winter’s day or eat by a campfire while camping.

Japanese curry is different. In fact, you might not want to consider it curry at all. It’s more of a hearty beef and potato stew that happens to be curry flavoured. Some Japanese curries contain ingredients that would make any self-respecting Indian or Thai chef want to cry. Ketchup, soy sauce, dashi, yogurt, honey, apples, raisins… Sound gross? You’re wrong. Virtually every Japanese person, from toddler to centenarian, loves karei. And so will you if you forget your ideas about what a proper curry should be and think of Japanese curry as another beast altogether.

Boeuf bourgignon

Boeuf bourgignon. Even saying it is satisfying. When I decided to make this past weekend France-themed, it was the first dish that popped to mind. There are few things better than hot stew on a cold, damp night, as all English nights are in February. Besides, it was the weekend of love, and what dish better to get you in the mood for love than a dish full of red wine and red meat?

I used to make boeuf bourgignon quite a lot in the slow cooker. But that was before I was diagnosed with IBS and discovered the low-FODMAP diet. Boeuf bourgignon normally involves mushrooms, which are high in mannitol and exacerbate my IBS symptoms. I didn’t make this dish for a long time because wasn’t sure if I could make a satisfying boeuf bourgignon without mushrooms. Fortunately, I’ve found I can.

Modern haggis with neeps and tatties

I had proper haggis once. Well, as proper as you can get in Canada, anyway. It was at a Robbie Burns Day celebration in the small town of Ayr, and if I remember correctly, the haggis was from a specialty shop in Hamilton, Ontario. There was an old guy in a kilt who recited “Address to a Haggis” and, at the appropriate moment, stabbed the haggis with a dagger to let the “gushing entrails” spill forth, “warm-reekin, rich!” What little I got was delicious but years later, I don’t remember the details of exactly how it tasted. I have every reason to believe it was stuffed in a sheep’s stomach and the “entrails” involved heart, lungs, kidneys and assorted other parts I prefer not to think too much about.

This is not that kind of haggis.

This haggis was inspired by my friends Dan and Meredith, who had/have a food blog called The Haggis and the Herring, a name that brings together their respective British and Jewish heritages in the sort of cultural mashup I love. Dan, sadly, died suddenly about a year and a half ago, and his brother Abisaac, who runs the blog Gluten Free Edmonton (it’s sheer coincidence that Abisaac’s wife is celiac and that Edmonton is my hometown – I didn’t meet Dan there), posted a slow cooker haggis recipe in memory of Dan on The Haggis and the Herring.

My haggis too is for you, Dan. I miss you.