There are a variety of ways I could introduce the topic of “food we ate in January” here. There were Christmas leftovers, like lingonberry sauce from IKEA that pairs so well with breaded chicken cutlets, my mouth waters thinking about it. The kids like breaded meat… panko crumbs or bread-crumbs, simply flavoured with salt and pepper, maybe parmesan too. Thus, chicken cutlets and schnitzel made with pork are reliably liked.
But there was also comfort food (chicken noodle soup and salmon en papillote), the meals you can transport to someone else’s house, to warm and serve and bring a feeling of home.
But also, there floats about the month of January that siren song of New Year’s Resolutions. Some people favour vague ideas (more of this, less of that). Others argue specificity is the key to success. I waver between the two… This year, I’ll draw every day-ish. This year, we’ll expand our vegetarian repertoire. Both come from a feeling of dissatisfaction: I want to draw better, I’m tired of a routine formula for a meal.
Thus, I made tofu wonton soup, from Hetty McKinnon’s cookbook To Asia, With Love. I mixed the wonton-filling with a mortar-and-pestle and Christian said it was his favourite tofu-based recipe to date. Even the kids ate all their wontons. While tofu-filling tends to make for a crumbly texture, chicken suddenly seemed rubbery in comparison, with a back-to-back serving of both wonton-filling variations. I learned a new way to fold wontons, thanks to Youtube. Hetty writes that her mom keeps pre-assembled wontons in the freezer and adds them to a meal as she sees fit, which sounds delightful.
I also made cabbage-mushroom hand-pies from Six Seasons, which was a meal with a chicken and apple-filled version for the kids. Chicken and apple is fine and all, the kids opined, but really, the effort would be better spent on a dessert version. And so, last weekend for a family visit, I made apple turnovers from a simple recipe in Dorie Greenspan’s cookbook Around my French Table. It exceeded our expectations… Six or seven McKintosh apples cooked slowly with a bit of water, a bit of sugar, a pat or two of butter, a generous sprinkling of cinnamon, cooled and spooned onto puff pastry cut in a circle and “painted” with an egg-wash, as Dorie puts it… Mwah! Chef’s kiss! And in spite of the fact that assembly takes time, the supermarkets are determined to help home cooks because they offer puff pastry that is pre-rolled! Pre-rolled! All I had to do was defrost the package, unfold the sheets and cut the circles! Amazing!
So there… those were the new things we tried in January.