el gastronomo vagabundo - help free the mobile cart industry in Ontario!

Nuno and I are huge fans of a roving gourmet truck called El Gastronomo Vagabundo. Last we visited we enjoyed a foie gras torchon sushi roll, a breakfast ingredient taco called The Hangover which included bacon, eggs, salsa, honey, jalepenos and a Hulk taco which features a green curry.


El Gastro has been getting a lot of press recently in the Toronto Star and Ottawa Citizen not only because of their outstanding menu, but for a battle to roam and cook free! There is currently legislation limiting what is sold on mobile carts in Ontario. Mostly allowing all those pre-packaged horribly over-processed foods to be sold and nothing even remotely fresh and inspired the way El Gastro does it up. So they are on a mission to change that and if you are reading this I'd like to ask you to consider signing an online petition for municipal street food vendor permits for businesses offering healthy mobile food options. Please read the two newspaper articles linked at the beginning of this paragraph or visit them online for more information about this situation.

The food industry is changing rapidly and in many ways for the better. Ever want to feel like your helping this revolution, sign on and feel empowered!

steamed cod with ginger and scallions, shaved carrot salad with scallions and sesame seeds and heirloom tomato salad

Friday morning I picked up some heirloom tomatoes at Whitty Farms hoping to make a simple salad similar to this one I blogged about a couple weeks ago. Every time we visit El Gastronomo Vagabundo they offer beautiful heirloom tomato salads which really are my favourite part of their menus. What are the chances that only hours after buying my heirloom assortment I stumble upon some of El Gastro's recipes online? So I decided to make their Heirloom Tomato Salad found here.

Beautiful isn't it?! Tastes fantastic but nothing as great as the real thing at the El Gastronomo Vagabundo cart. I could live on these salads, I'm thinking my personal challenge next year should be to start an heirloom tomato garden. Too bad I absolutely no facility for outdoor gardening.

This salad filled out the rest of our Everyday Food dinner of Steamed Cod with Ginger and Scallions and Shaved Carrot Salad with Scallions and Sesame Seeds.

The Shaved Carrot Salad was quite good, but you really feel as though your eating 'healthy' while eating it. That can be a good or bad thing depending on your mood. I say Friday night isn't the night to enjoy light food.

Then there was the cod. I was willing to give this one a fair shot and expected something great like the Red Snapper recipe from last week. Boy, was I wrong. This was bacala-yuck!!! I think if I ever feel the need to interject cod fish into my life in the future I'll be making either Nuno's mom's or El Gastro's Codfish Croquettes (recipe for the later can also be found here).

israeli couscous with parsley and shallots

I wonder if my other mom friends think I'm Jewish? I somehow attend picnics with a different Israeli Couscous salad in tow. The reason is usually because I need to whip up something at a moments notice and open my cupboards and go from there. Or I'll randomly pull out an Everyday Food magazine from my collection and give a new recipe a whirl. That's how I made this Israeli Couscous with Parsley and Shallots.

Seemed to go over well and I'd like to point out that this salad is 'waist-line friendly' which new moms appreciate. I love Israeli Couscous and Orzo because they seem so 'different' but are really just pasta. And they work well for babies learning to chew, that's why I'm always using them. Just a baby friendly pasta salad.

Oh, and to clarify - I'm of no religious affiliation and have a family background of "31 flavours".

roasted vegetable soup

A chill in the air on Thursday left me wanting soup. Luckily there is a great Roasted Vegetable Soup in Everyday Food that bridges the gap of late summer tomato season and the cool days rolling into fall. Fresh field tomatoes, carrots, leeks and garlic.

No way around it, I had to use the oven for this soup. It took a couple hours for all these vegetables to soften, but once they were roasted the soup came together super quick. Simply adding stock and water to the veggies, bring to a boil then puree. I guess it is not recommended for babies to eat soup, so I just pureed a few roasted vegetables for Owen's dinner.

I've never liked tomato soup, but this is probably the closest thing to a tomato soup I'll enjoy. It really is lovely and when I'm back to work I think I'll make this on the weekends and bring to work for lunch. We paired this with a simple arugula salad and a French bread with herbed goat cheese to complete the meal.

anna olson's red velvet cupcakes

At Inniskillin's Canada Day celebration I had a chance to speak briefly with Anna Olson. She mentioned that she's been putting some of her recipes she's working out online for people to test. They are posted here. I decided to give her Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting a go.

I've always wanted to make Red Velvet Cake. I don't have any history with this type of cake other than having tried a cupcake at Kickass Cupcakes in Boston, MA. I figured this was a perfect excuse to try out a recipe.

I think Red Velvet Cake is a great science experiment. Not that I know anything about chemistry but it seems as though this batter is example of a perfect execution and control of acid and base. You have baking soda, baking powder and then buttermilk and vinegar all working in harmony. The batter even changed its properties right before my eyes. It went from glossy, wet and pink as it came together, then by the time I spooned it into the cupcake wrappers it was light brown, airy and matte. My oven read VERY low at 250 so the baking time was drastically extended. But when I took these babies out of the oven they had baked up perfectly! 10 minutes out of the oven these cupcakes tasted so wonderful I only wish I could have shared them at this point! I'd say I've hardly ever had a cake so soft and moist. I was really thrilled with the result. The flavour is slightly cocoa-y but definitely its own thing that is a bit difficult to describe but you'd just have to try.

The cream cheese icing recipe was a perfect match and execution. However, I didn't have my icing tips ready in time and decided to chill the most perfect cream cheese icing until the next morning. I then took out the icing the next day and gave it a good beat to mix. It deflated and separated. Lesson learned there. Luckily the taste was still delicious, so I iced the once beautiful icing onto the cupcakes and brought to a picnic anyways. No one complained and most people loved them, so I'm thinking this recipe is a total winner. I'm really looking forward to making this again with the light icing the way Anna recommended. Kudos Anna!

blt salad with buttermilk dressing

Last night I made this BLT Salad with Buttermilk Dressing.

When I was expecting Owen nothing could satisfy my cravings for sandwiches. I had to be very careful with lunch meat, but BLT’s were full-tilt. And yes this salad does channel a good BLT sandwich. So this salad is a real flash-back to those wonderful cravings that made pregnancy fun.

The recipe calls for bacon and croutons to be prepped in the oven, I opted for the pan fry method again. Still a total success and maybe a little nicer only because it was quicker and didn’t heat the house (felt like 86 degrees on Tuesday!) The homemade croutons were quite nice because of a seasoned toasted bread flavour. A nice departure from the break-apart-into-a-million-pieces store bought croutons.

The buttermilk dressing is very creamy but I do enjoy ranch quite a bit more. I also found this salad needed lots of pepper, probably because of the tomatoes. Speaking of which, the recipe called for cherry tomatoes but we used fresh field tomatoes which were so great in this.

chicken milanese with arugula salad and creamy polenta with spicy chilie oil

Last night we had Chicken Milanese with Arugula Salad and Creamy Polenta with Spicy Chilie Oil.

This dinner was super delicious. It's been months since we've had the boring old chicken breast for dinner, so they are a bit of a novelty after this length of time. The recipe requires the oven, but it was easy enough to make these stove top. The breading on the chicken seemed really basic and as I was making this I wondered if it was even a recipe. But this is the best breaded chicken I've ever made! It reminds me a lot of schnitzel because it has a light coating that didn't seem to require heavy seasoning. Paired with the arugula salad - Wow! I'll be making this dinner again indefinitely. I love this salad and if there were any left over I'd be having it for lunch. It's the quickest and simplest salad I can think of and probably my favourite as a side.

We decided to have the creamy polenta on the side to help round out Owen's dinner portion. The recipe is not from the Everyday Food Book but from Everyday Food Magazine's April 2009 issue. For Owen's portion I gave him a breaded and fried piece of chicken and polenta (w/o spicy chilie oil) blitzed in the food processor. He kept saying, "num, num, num". Yep, babies somehow naturally make that sound when the eatin' is good.

raisin-bran muffins

Although back-to-school doesn't affect anyone in our home yet, the rest of my family refers to tomorrow as 'New Years Day'. My parents and sister are all in education so I decided to make Everyday Food's Raisin-Bran Muffins to help them on their way tomorrow.

These are super-hearty to help everyone hopefully stay full till the lunch bell rings. These muffins are quite dense and heavy. Not the type of muffins I tend to like which are light, rich, cakey and fresh fruit filled. But there is definitely a place for a good bran muffin. I love the idea of making these for the week of back to school because they freeze very well. If you remember to take one out in the evening, it will be defrosted by 7am for breakfast so you'll have one less thing to worry about when attempting to get into a new routine.

Another reason these are great is because they are so simple. I think this would be a great recipe for kids to help make. All the ingredients are familiar and it requires nothing more than measuring, mixing and baking.

pomegranate and mixed berry smoothie and walnut and dried-fruit granola

I was wrong when a week ago I said that the Peach-Strawberry Smoothie was the final of the four Everyday Food smoothies. I forgot about the Pomegranate and Mixed Berry Smoothie!

This one is unlike the previous three. It tastes like the sort of smoothie you'd buy at a high end coffee shop. The flavour is all its own without one single element overpowering the others. I loved it but may not make it again only because - well, has anyone bought Pom drink before? Five bucks for this tiny bottle? Geez. It was through this drink that I discovered Owen loves tofu! Silken tofu mixes great with peaches and adds a little extra protein to Owen's fruit servings.

The other recipe I knocked down this week was the Walnut and Dried-Fruit Granola. What can I say but this really is delicious. I'm not a big granola eater, I'm not sure why, but I think it's because I have a love affair with cereal. This granola took quite a bit of time to prepare because it's all done in steps in the oven. For the dried fruit selection I used what was in my baking stash which includes dates, raisins and my personal favourite, dried cherries!

creamy lemon squares

Have you ever had a feeling or emotion attached to food? I'll always remember this particular recipe as the Guilty Creamy Lemon Squares. Guilty not because of how decadent they are using an entire can of condensed milk and half a cup of butter. Nope. I have a story about the last time I made these that I probably shouldn't, but I feel as though I can't properly blog about without sharing.

For years I've been making these lemon squares since this recipe was first published in Everyday Food's June 2008 issue. Oh, it's a good one - a real crowd pleaser. I actually blogged about it a few years ago here. Then several years ago my sister-in-law was holding a Christmas Cookie Exchange and sent out a mass email inviting a whole bunch of girls over to participate. I already had alternate plans, but I didn't RSVP. The day before I got a call from my mother-in-law and she seemed pretty hyped up that I wasn't able to attend. I remember hanging up the phone and feeling SO insanely guilty that I obviously wasn't thinking straight and baked a quick batch of these (because I had all the ingredients in the house). I typed up the recipe and sent them in with my mother-in-law to try and make amends.

I learned some major lessons through this recipe. First, take the time to consider how appropriate your food contribution is to an event. These are not a cookie exchange type of bar. They are soft and sticky and I'm sure anyone who took one of these had lemon custard smudged on all the cookies that piled near it. Second, always RSVP even if it's an online invite. Thirdly, don't let someone make you feel a certain way - yeah, easier said than done. Lastly, when sharing a recipe always credit the source. Here's the card I sent through with the squares - I didn't credit Everyday Food *gasp* Check it out:

Maybe a more accurate title for these squares should be Social Faux Pax Squares.

But onto brighter days, I now have a wonderful association with these squares! I baked them for dessert on a farewell and good luck dinner for my sister last night who's moving to Toronto for a teaching job. These lemon squares were paired with Inniskillin Sparkling Ice Wine and it was an incredible combination. I've never had a dessert wine paired so nicely with a sweet, it really was wonderful.

We wish you the best of luck Katie. We'll miss you being close but look forward to having you with us for Sunday dinners.

eggplant caponata

Last night we had Everyday Food's Eggplant Caponata.

This dish is found under the appetizer section of the book and is suggested to be served many ways including on crostini, on an antipasti plate or over pasta. I opted to go with pasta and make a meal of this. After doing so, it's definitely a better choice to go with the two former. The flavour works so much better, ideally, on bread. Not to say that it wasn't good on pasta, but I don't know if you can imagine eating relish on a pasta, but that is what it was like. It has a strong vinegar flavour with a contrast of sweet and spicy. It is a really nice flavour and if I make an antipasti plate in the future I'll be sure to make this again. It was very quick since it was just a matter of spooning several pantry ingredients and chopping an onion and eggplant. A quick sautee and it's done!

orange-dijon bbq shrimp, zucchini and red onion salad and sesame-lime rice

Here is last night's Orange-Dijon BBQ Shrimp, Zucchini and Red Onion Salad and Sesame-Lime Rice.

This is your average fresh and healthy mid-week dinner. The Orange-Dijon Shrimp is from Everyday Food magazine June issue and is hardly a 'recipe' just a simple glaze of orange marmalade and dijon. The Zucchini and Red Onion Salad was nice although every time I use the mandolin slicer I manage to nick my thumb. But it's worth the effort because this is my favourite way of eating raw zucchini. The Sesame-Lime Rice is a different and nice way to enjoy rice as a side, although the Cilantro-Lime Rice we had for Cinco De Mayo was a better flavoured rice. The recipe called for two tablespoons of sesame seeds, which in proportion to a cup of rice is a lot. So it seemed to overwhelm the rice quite a bit to the point that it made it very rich and almost peanut butter-y in flavour.



Speaking of peanut butter, I just tried Kraft's new Whipped Peanut Butter this week. Never said I'm above marketing gimmicks. I'm trying to decide if Kraft has found a way of selling less product with this, but I really like the lightness and consistency. It's quite a bit more spreadable which works well for snacks like eating on rice cakes.
I found these Suzie's brand puffed cakes at Bulk Barn and I think they are great! They are sweetened with agave nectar and I give them to Owen as snacks (without peanut butter, for now). So far I've tried Kamut and Spelt and they are both great for everyone, including babies. If you couldn't tell, I'm not much into buying 'baby' food for Owen. There is only one product I buy that is specifically made for babies, Heinz Nutrios cereal. I'll have to devote a blog entry to feeding Owen soon because I have so many people asking me about it.

red snapper veracruzano and roasted tomatillos and tomatoes

Looks like we're on a Mexican kick with Red Snapper Veracruzano and Roasted Tomatillos and Tomatoes.

I've never tasted red snapper before and I was a little unsure about this entire recipe. It just didn't seem too appealing. Believe it or not, red snapper is difficult to find because it's very popular right now. I kept having to call the seafood departments of all the grocery stores to make sure it was in. Luckily I grabbed our B.C. snapper fillets just as the shipment came in meaning that it was super fresh. It did smell a little fishy, but I'm thinking it may always be that way because it's not a mild tasting fish like tilapia. This Red Snapper Veracruzano recipe is amazing. It is the best fish dish I've ever made because the fish has a very rich and buttery flavour. It's almost a special occasion dinner because it really tastes like eating out. But from start to finish it's super quick and easy that it can be a weeknight dinner. I love being pleasantly surprised and am so glad I discovered this recipe. This rates as one of the best recipes in the book and we will definitely be making this regularly from now on. Especially because Owen really enjoyed the red snapper as well. He had an unseasoned portion of snapper with half an avocado, greek yogurt and a little Old Bay seasoning.

I doubt we will be making the Roasted Tomatillos and Tomatoes quite as much in the future. This was a long process of over an hour of roasting in the oven. Not the sort of dinner you'd be able to pull off after work. I also have to bring up the tomatillo situation. Like yesterday's post about hard to find ingredients, tomatillos aren't easy to find at all. I picked up a pound at El Milagro where the owner husks, cleans and freezes them. They seemed to work out OK, although they were quite soft once defrosted. Didn't matter so much for this dish because you want the tomatoes to render juices as they roast. I really enjoyed the roasted plum tomato flavour. This is now my favourite way to eat a roma tomato. Between Monday & Tuesdays dinners we've managed to polish off an entire basket of roma tomatoes.

pico de gallo, yellow-tomato salsa verde and 8-layer dip

Alright, we are now at the point in Everyday Food that we are coming upon recipes that I might have been putting off. There are three main reasons I'd put off a recipe. One is because this dish is not in season yet. The second is because it requires the oven to reach a temperature over 350, in which case I have to go elsewhere (my parent's house). And lastly, I can't locate the ingredients in any of my regular market & store visits.

Before cooking through Everyday Food we ate a lot of homemade Mexican dinners. We've gotten pretty good at making all sorts of enchiladas and tacos. Nothing too different or exotic. Now, with Everyday Food's Mexican entrees and sides, they seem to be calling for a lot of ingredients that are very hard to come by here in Canada (or at least Niagara).

This dinner is Pico de Gallo, Yellow-Tomato Salsa Verde and 8-Layer Dip. In amongst the lengthy grocery list to complete this meal were Serrano chillies, can of chopped green chillies and fresh yellow tomatoes. All three seemed to be difficult to find but I managed to purchase the first two ingredients at El Milagro (a Latin market beside R&J Meats). I had to substitute a can of pickled Serrano chillies and it worked out great. The yellow tomatoes are very hard to come by even though it's tomato season. I picked up a pound at Quiet Acres Farm Stand (Lakeshore Rd. & East West Line). The yellow tomatoes went into the Salsa Verde, which was a total pain-in-the-ass to make! I smoked up the house right off the bat by heating the tomatoes, jalapeno and onion on high in a skillet. It's all part of the process, but wasn't pleasant. However, once complete, this Salsa Verde is outstanding and it made a ton!

Luckily the Pico de Gallo was quite a bit easier and with the field tomatoes the way they are now I don't think there could be a better time than now to enjoy this recipe.

The eight layers in the 8-Layer Dip (not from Everyday Food, Fresh Flavour Fast - but from Everyday Food June 2010 issue) consisted of a layer of seasoned refried beans, layer of sour cream, layer of grated cheddar, layer of chopped green chilies, layer of plum tomatoes (which are currently in season), layer of avocado, layer of lettuce and a final layer of scallions. I gave Owen a 3-Layer Dip of unseasoned refried beans, layer of sour cream and layer of grated cheddar. He didn't really seem to be on board with this one.

I'd say this entire meal was very time consuming because of all the fresh produce that went into the 3 dishes. There was a lot of washing, peeling and chopping. Time consuming intricate cilantro plucking and jalapeno chopping. But having said all that, this was a super delicious dinner! We loved it. If we ever decided to make this dinner again it would have to be a two person meal prep on a Saturday or Sunday night.

couscous with carrot and cilantro and green beans and tomato

I think we've completed every possible barbecue recipe in Everyday Food. There is still a whole container left over of the wonderful barbecue sauce from the pork back ribs. So I pulled a flank steak out of the freezer and made a quick marinade using some of the same ingredients found the the bbq sauce. I eyeballed apple cider vinegar, 2 smashed garlic cloves, dry mustard, chili flakes, salt & pepper and let it defrost in the marinade. The flank steak was then barbecued with the bbq sauce. Super good.

I was really after knocking off a couple Everyday Food side dishes. I thought I'd give that failed Couscous with Carrot and Cilantro side another try. I had no idea that it would take 10 minutes from start to finish. This is one of the most rewarding sides because of how speedy, inexpensive and totally addicting it is.

The Green Beans and Tomato are also just as great. The onion, tomatoes and green beans are from Tina's farm stand. Beyond that there is just the addition of oregano. It's so simple but so delicious. It has a ratatouille sort of flavour. Green beans are the best side for a nice piece of red meat. I would pass on a potato any day for this side with a steak!

Owen had a steamed portion of the flank steak which had not been marinated. Because this is a cheaper cut of beef I feel as though it must always be marinated to be tender so it's not the meat best suited for babies because it doesn't seem to break down very well. He had his steak processed with green beans but it took a while to find the right consistency for him. Owen really enjoyed the couscous with carrot and cilantro which he could eat as-is.

I can't believe that we ended up with two sides that were equally impressive in the same meal. We enjoyed them so much they are sure to be a staple for us from here on out.