Johnny cake

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Bahamian johnny cake (reportedly a corruption of “journey cake” because early settlers and their slaves carried them as portable meals)  is more like a cross between pound cake and corn bread than the flat pancakes I was expecting. Ubiquitous with boil fish, this light, sweet, slightly dry cake/bread is great warm with butter or jam. I’m hooked.

There are more variations of johnny cake than I can count (at least with my limited math skills), some with cornmeal and flour, some with no cornmeal. All are simple to make. I adapted this one (I substituted butter for oil for more flavour) because it was most evocative of the johnny cake we had at Sip Sip on Harbour Island, my newest favourite place in the world.

Bahamian johnny cake

(adapted from a recipe on Carribeanchoice.com)

1 cup flour

3/4 cup cornmeal

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg, beaten

5 teaspoons baking powder

1/3 cup sugar

2 tablespoons butter, melted

1 cup milk


Preheat oven to 350F. Mix dry ingredients together.  Beat egg and milk and butter and add to dry mixture. Mix well. Pour into a greased eight-inch cake pan. Bake 30-35 minutes until just brown on top. Be careful not to over do it, it can dry out quickly.

Calas: New Orleans sweet fried rice cakes

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Whatever you do, don’t tell your kids what these delightful little fritters are made of.  If you let them know it’s leftover rice, chances are they’ll walk away. In fact, my copy of the Oxford Teenager-to-English Dictionary equates leftovers with something a little less pleasant than rat poison. Let them figure it out on their own and I can pretty much guarantee they’ll be through most of them before anyone catches on.

Instead, tell them the back story of these creamy, bite-sized cakes. Tell them how slaves in New Orleans used to sell them to parishioners after Sunday services calling, “Belle calas, tout chaud!” Tell them how the recipe came from West Africa with the slaves and how the money they earned was used to buy their freedom.

Not all foods come with such history and fewr taste this good on a sunny Sunday morning with a great cup of tea. You can read more about the legend of the calas and the emotions they still evoke in New Orleans  as well as  how they are being saved from extinction in this Salon article by Francis Lam.

Caught somewhere between a donut and a bowl of rice pudding (leaning towards the donut end of the spectrum), calas are light and airy, yet creamy and very moist with just a little crunch near the crust.  It really does take a while to figure out they are made of rice.

Calas are also dead simple to make. I’ll never throw out leftover rice again.

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‘Scotch’ quail eggs with merguez sausage

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A friend who now lives in Paris has a wonderful anecdote about the famed French habit of moderation in all things. While experiencing the French health care system from a hospital bed, a nurse came to take his lunch order. After he had made his choices she asked one more question:

“Rouge ou blanc, monsieur?”

In France, even the antiseptic sting of a  hospital stay is moderated with a glass of wine at lunch. Just one, mind you.

But determining what moderation looks like in everyday life isn’t always easy. I have been to France and even the French aren’t moderate in all things (smoking, honking horns and detesting everything English come to mind). Take wine, for example, which we are constantly told to take “in moderation.” But whose version? My friend’s French physician tells him not to listen to the conservative advice of North American doctors. “They are all puritans,” he says.

That’s probably not bad counsel since another friend, who is a North American doctor,  is always telling me things like “I just found a Greek study that says you can have up to 10 drinks a day.”

It’s hard to know what to believe. For me, however, moderation is mostly measured in terms of belt notches or how many waiters around town know exactly what kind of beer I am going to order before I order it. Life is full of subtle signals nudging you towards the moderate.

Take my deep fryer, for example. My guideline for frequency of use is simple; I can’t use the deep fryer unless it has accumulated a healthy layer of dust on top. Then, and only then, I can take it off the shelf and gorge – I mean dine – on fried chicken or worse.

Except for this once.

My deep fryer is dust free and it’s back in use. In fact, it’s barely dry from the last time I used it. But, ever since I made Scotch eggs for Super Bowl Sunday, I have been dying to try a more elegant version. And, food-loving friends coming over for Sunday dinner was just the excuse I needed.

To me there are no eggs more elegant than quail eggs. Tiny, fragile, exotic, mottled and deliciously sweet, they can lend sophistication to any meal. I planned an appetizer (see, a moderate portion) of  hard-boiled quail eggs encased in an excellent all-lamb merguez sausage then breaded in panko before being deep fried just until the sausage was cooked through and the crust was a dark golden brown. They would be served on a bed of tabbouleh salad with a little tzatziki on the side to temper the spiciness of the merguez.

They turned out beautifully. Which, is a good thing because our friends had to cancel and fly off to a funeral, leaving L and I to eat the whole lot ourselves.

So much for moderation.

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Crab cakes with mustard sauce

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I have to take off my shoes to count the number of years I have been making  these crab cakes. They are near the top of the list of  comfort food requests in our house, mostly when we’re nostalgic for warmer weather and Southern charm.

Adapted almost two decades ago from a recipe for ones we first tasted at Fulton’s Crab House, they are at once decadent and very easy to prepare They are also, however, delicate to handle. So fragile, in fact, that they are baked, not fried (they could never stand up to the rough and tumble of a hot pan). These are so heavy with crab meat that I find two small cakes (with a little coleslaw on the side for a bright, crunchy contrast to the richness of the crab) is plenty for one person.  It pays to buy the best crab meat you can find. Dungeness is great. Here’s how to prepare the meat if you’re using live crabs.

And, even though I have made them dozens of times, I still hauled out the recipe when  L suggested crab cakes for her birthday dinner the other day – once a dish has garnered the comfort food label in our house, it must never be changed. The older some things get, the more you like them just the way they are.

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I am not a food snob and I can prove it

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Starting the day with a disagreement is never a good idea, but there are times when you (I say you, but I mean me) just can’t help it.

Like today, for example.

“What is this?” I demanded confronting L as she came down the stairs. “How did it get here?”

“Your son wanted it,” she said, dismissing the object I held out to her with a wave of her hand. “So, I made it for him.”

Listen to this, the hypertensive voice in my head said. Your son. She’s really saying it’s your fault. Don’t take that lying down. And, the voice continued, its cadence rising, made it, you can’t make this stuff, it’s manufactured somewhere. Probably in the same factories where they “enrich” uranium.

I hate that voice – all whiny and shrill – but sometimes it speaks some sense. Like it did this morning. I mean, I was only gone two nights. Two measly nights and my family backslides 15 years. And, to make matters worse, they can’t even hide the evidence. There it was, sitting on top of the recycling box like it had no problem being in my house.

“You’re just a food snob,” L said before I repeated anything the voice in my head was pressing me to shout. “Admit it.”

A moment of silence.

“I will not,” I finally dribbled much more weakly than I would have liked. “I mean, it’s not true. I am not a food snob.”

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Fish chowder

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Maybe it’s the little bit of dampness in the air as we come out of the deep freeze and enter a few days of false spring. Or, maybe it’s the fact that in 17 days, 20 hours and 15 minutes we will be stepping onto a little island in the Bahamas where, for 10 whole days, we will be in seafood paradise – boiled crab, grilled fish and, inevitably,  conch prepared a hundred different ways.

Or, and this is more likely now that I think of it, maybe I’ve given in to L’s insistence that a big hunk of gravy-soaked red meat with mashed potatoes and Yorkshire pudding  isn’t part of a healthy diet three times a week.

OK, just kidding – we only have that twice a week. Anyway, whatever the reason, I have been craving seafood lately. And, as usual, I have done what I always do with cravings. I gave in.

To me, there is no better way to get a fast fish fix than a classic bowl of chowder. The secret is in the stock. Once you have a good fish stock, you’re off to the races (you can go to the races, I’m going to the Bahamas – did I mention that?). Here’s my recipe for a basic fish stock .  All you need besides stock are some good Yukon gold potatoes, a couple of onions, some celery, carrots and a little cream. Cut up some fresh bread, close your eyes and inhale. I guarantee you’ll be on the beach in an instant. (I will be on the beach in 17 days, 20 hours and 14 minutes. Just saying.)

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Fish stock

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When I’m making fish stock my kitchen looks  a little bit like a mashup of The Little Mermaid and The Sopranos.

Having to deal with fish heads aside (they’re great to have on the counter if you want to be alone in the kitchen), this is one of the simplest stocks to make because it doesn’t take hours and, if you have some in the freezer, making a fish or seafood chowder is a cinch. It’s also a lot cheaper to make than to buy.

I get my fish heads and bones at my local fish monger for next to nothing. Toss in a onion. celery and carrots – a few herbs and some white wine. Half an hour later the stock is done. Continue reading →

Eggs Benedict with chipotle Hollandaise sauce and Montreal smoked meat, two potato hash

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This is Part Seven of my week-long celebration of eggs.

I think I can squeeze in one more egg recipe before my kids call the child welfare agency and L follows through with her threat to become a vegan for Lent. As the French say, un oeuf is enough.

So, let me push my luck and end where I began, with simply poached eggs, this time richly dressed in a chipotle Hollandaise sauce over a two potato hash with Montreal smoked meat. Trust me, this is the perfect brunch dish – just a little spicy, reminiscent of breakfast but filling enough to carry you through until dinner.  But, don’t expect rave reviews from your family if you serve it as Dinner Number Seven in  a week-long celebration of eggs.

This recipe was inspired by a breakfast I had at the Toronto Four Seasons Studio Café a few months ago and I have been dying to make it ever since. I do not usually eat breakfast and when the food arrived I thought I would never get through it. Before I was finished, I seriously considered licking the plate.

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Pisco sour

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This is Part Six of my week-long celebration of eggs. Today, finally, I mix eggs and alcohol.

My personal foreign policy requires me to stay out of other nations’ conflicts, particularly Latin American disputes. So, with that in mind, it is with some nervousness that I write this entry.

To make matters worse, I risk wading into one of the most contentious conflicts in South America: who makes the better pisco sour, Peruvians or Chileans?

It seems a little silly, but the enmity over this cocktail is so bitter that it has hampered peaceful relations between the two nations, which still haven’t got over the 19th Century War of the Pacific. In case you think I am making this up; here’s a direct quote from Wikipedia:

“Even to this day the efforts of finding a point of peaceful relations have been constantly thwarted by conflicts involving maritime disputes and the location of origin of foods such as the potato, pisco, and the chirimoya.”

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