Curried Squash and Apple Soup

You have to love the versatility of this smooth and delicious curried squash and apple soup. Sure: the character of the soup will be different if you use zucchini or pumpkin, but both results will be delicious. It’s forgiving, fast and so easy to make.

This soup is gorgeous in the bowl, served just as it is. For an elegant touch, add a swirl of balsamic reduction or a nice, heavy red pepper sauce. Or give it a delicious caloric boost with a dollop of crème fraiche or even sour cream or yoghurt. Sans the dairy products, though, this soup is vegan. But if you don’t tell anyone, they’re not going to notice: it’s rich on the palate and satisfying in every way.

3-5 lb. Squash – summer squash, butternut squash or pumpkin
1 large apple, chopped
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion – chopped
2 cloves garlic – chopped fine
1 tablespoon good quality curry powder
1 teaspoon good quality garam masala
8 cups vegetable stock
2 cups coconut milk

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Cut squash in half, lengthwise. Remove seeds. Place, cut side down, on baking sheet. Bake for 45 minutes or until the squash is soft.

Heat oil in large heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat. Saute onions for 3 minutes or until soft. Add garlic and sauté a further minute. A curry powder and garam masala and sauté another minute.

Scrape squash from skin and add to onion and spice mixture. Add chopped apple. Stir. Add vegetable stock and coconut milk. Cook covered on low heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Blend soup with immersion blender or potato masher. If the soup appears too thick, add water until, ¼ cup at a time, until desired consistency. Add sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

Serve and enjoy.

Photo by David Middleton

Discovering The Locavore Way

So many people are talking about green issues these days, alternative lifestyles have gotten to be mainstream. Long gone are the days when a hostess could plunk a steak down in front of dinner guests without first asking about food preferences and considering the social and moral implications of such an act. In the West, we are critically concerned with the consequences of our actions and while, in broad strokes, that’s a good thing, on a micro level, it can get a little cloying. And you’ve encountered those books. Self-righteous finger-pointers waggling correctively at us while we choke on the meat fiber that would otherwise have been enjoyed.

Amy Cotler’s The Locavore Way (Storey Publishing) isn’t that book. Quite the opposite, in fact. Cotler brings the uninitiated joyously into the fold, while taking those already moving towards a slower food lifestyle more deeply into a world she is comfortable with: both to travel in and to share. She explains herself and her mission succinctly, then shows us how to get to where she’d like us to go: to a place where fresh food is simply cooked and joyously shared. She makes this sound like an attainable place. She makes it sound like Nirvana:

Imagine a healthy landscape, dotted with small farms raising food without ravaging the land, water and air, promoting better-nourished communities and local economies, and creating less dependence of the fossil fuels needed to transport food from afar.

As idyllic as she makes it sound, in subsequent pages she demonstrates that this is more than a distant vision. For many people, it’s a growing reality. With stories, profiles, recipes and tips, Cotler engages us with possibilities and ideas.

Here, from a slender book filled with great real-world examples of how to bring local and organic into your life, a list that breaks things down to its most essential components (something this author does very well):

Why Bother?
10 Reasons to Eat Locally Produced Food:

1. For the sheer pleasure of it.
2. To connect.
3. For the health and safety of your family and yourself.
4. For the health of our planet.
5. To boost the local economy, community and region.
6. For an open, working landscape.
7. To maintain biodiversity.
8. To support our neighboring farms and farmers.
9. To prepare our culinary heritage.
10. To give us a just choice.

The End of Gourmet

Shock waves are ringing through the foodie world today on the news that Gourmet Magazine -- an American staple since 1941 -- would cease publication. The mainsrteam press has been zinging with food metaphors. From The Globe & Mail:

In media interviews, the chief executive of Condé Nast Publications Inc., said the reason was simple: Gourmet, the oldest culinary monthly in North America, was losing money. Ad pages had fallen like an overdone soufflé, down nearly 45 per cent between January and September. With a staff numbering around 100, circulation stubbornly below one million, and its corporate sister Bon Appétit proving both cheaper to produce and far more appetizing to advertisers, Gourmet was taken out back and slaughtered like a terrified Thanksgiving turkey. Readers reacted as if they had lost a loved one. "Gourmet is like a bible," the Toronto-based chef Susur Lee said yesterday. "I'm a little depressed. When I heard, I called my wife to tell her the news. Something like that, you want to share with your family."

On Twitter, Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl was necessarily -- and characteristically -- succinct. “Dishes done,” she tweeted. “All gone. Great gathering at the house tonight. I so love the people I've worked with at Gourmet. Hard to believe it's over.”

Indeed.

Meze for a Crowd

Middle Eastern meze, like Spain’s Tapas, are a fantastic way to eat. Small dishes, intended to encourage conversation and the shared consumption of a meal made out of many different flavors and textures. Foodisma’s meze could just as easily be called tapas... or even something else.

We’ve just uploaded Foodisma’s new tapas catering menu. One of the great things about this style of eating: it can easily suit a group a vegans, vegetarians or a mixed group that includes carnivores. And it’s so much fun.

We have yet to do mese for a wedding, but I think the possibilites in that context are interesting, as well.

Foodisima’s meze menu is here.

Welcome to... Foodisima?

Though it’s a work in progress, we’ve just uploaded the Foodisima Web site which supports Foodisima’s catering and chef services for Galiano Island, British Columbia and the Southern Gulf Islands. Come and visit and let us know what you think and what the site still needs. (Aside from more menus, of course. We’re working on those!)

Happy weekend!

Looking at Cookbooks: Sips & Apps by Kathy Casey

Author, chef and expert mixologist Kathy Casey had me at Zen Turkey Dumplings. With peanut sauce. They are, in a way, typical of the type of food she’s opted to include in Sips & Apps: Classic and Contemporary Recipes for Cocktails and Appetizers (Chronicle Books). They are easy to make -- can, in fact, be made by a group, preparing to party together. And they represent interesting flavor and texture combinations and will please a wide swath of your potential party going public.

Sips and Apps is more about the Sips than the Apps -- sips win 69 to 35 in the number of recipes included. (Though variations bring the numbers up on both sides.) But the number included might also speak to the type of recipes chosen for both sides. The apps here are solid, basic, crowd-pleasing favorites. For the most part, you won’t have seen these recipes before -- Casey’s flavor choices and presentations are interesting and original -- but they are the sort of backbone recipes frequent hosts may very well come to treasure.

The Sips, though, are a different matter. Very good bar basics sections get things going in the right direction and by the time you’re ready to make a drink, you’ll know just what everything is. (And if you’ve skipped ahead, you can go back and look for whatever it was you missed.) So if you decide to make, for instance, a Strawberry Shag or a Rouge Pulp, you’ll know how to do it. There’s even a section called Clear-Headed Cocktails: gorgeous drinks with fruit and finish, but no alcohol.

Sips and Apps is excellent. Those who enjoy entertaining at home will find this to be a useful and interesting book.