Blog Post List

This blog post list contains the most recent blog posts from The Messy Baker in reverse chronological order. You can also browse by recipe category or use the search function.

See those pretty crystals? They're salt. Yes, we need this essential element to live, but the average Canadian consumes three times the daily recommended dose. Spend a few minutes Googling "high-sodium diet" and you'll likely consider tossing your fleur de sel out the window. Fortunately, this isn't necessary. I was talking with Dawn Thomas, the voice of Rouxbe Online Cooking School.  She says their site doesn't label recipes low-sodium (or low-fat for that matter) and doesn't plan to. Why not? It's unnecessary. Once you learn proper cooking techniques you control these factors. So over the next few weeks I'll be devoting the occasional post to simple ways to reduce the salt in your diet. And as a special bonus, you'll find you're saving money. We'll start with deboning chicken. An easy place to start shaving that salt lick from your diet is at the butcher counter with plain old fresh chicken. If you learn to debone chicken yourself, you'll avoid sodium-laced seasoned meats and have plenty of bones for homemade stock -- low-sodium, tasty, rich stock. Deboning chicken stars with a sharp knife. I buy bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts. As soon as I get home, I debone them and freeze the bones for stock. Now, I know a lot of you are thinking this is time consuming. Initially, I thought so too, but I got out my timer. Deboning a whole chicken breast (that's left and right side, so two pieces) took me exactly 4 minutes 8 seconds. And I don't even have a proper boning knife. Cubing the chicken breast took and additional 1 minute 15 seconds each breast. In just over 6 minutes I had enough boneless, skinless chicken cubes for two mains. Money saved? At least 10% of the cost of the boneless version. I went to my butcher (Valeriote's Market on Yorkshire for those who wonder where I get gigantic, local chicken), and he kindly indulged me in a true comparison. He weighed a 3.3 pound whole skin-on, bone-in chicken breast and calculated the price. It cost $11.55. He then skinned, deboned and weighed the same chicken breast again. This time the cost was $12.82.  By buying bone-in chicken, I saved 10% on my meat bill AND had bones for stock. Plus, I had the option of keeping the skin on, which is essential for some recipes like Roasted Lemon and Cilantro Chicken, which I often make it with chicken breasts alone. Want to save more? Buy a whole chicken and butcher it yourself. Seriously. It's not that hard. With a bit of practice "Easy as deboning a chicken" will become part of your lingo. To help you on your deboning journey, once again, I turn to the good people at Rouxbe Online Cooking School. They've kindly provided videos that will reduce the intimidation factor.
My recent CTV appearance proved my career as a mind reader would be short lived. I went on expecting some reader questions about roasted vegetables. Nope. Everyone seems to have them down pat. Instead, everyone was interested in frozen ginger and "that garlic thing." So, here goes:

Frozen Ginger

I started freezing ginger when I got tired of buying fresh, plump, juicy roots and mere days later tossing wrinkled, dried up knobs of wood into the garbage. I'd read that you could freeze ginger without sacrificing flavour and experimented a bit -- peeling or not peeling, chopping or not chopping. To my delight, I found the simplest approach is best.

So, I'm sitting in the green room of CTV studios in Kitchener waiting to go on. The person ushering me in tells me to take a seat and before leaving points to another guest and says, "And of course you know Alan." I nod knowingly...

Julie Van Rosendaal is a miracle worker. In what must be the fastest turn-around in cookbook publishing history, she conceived, organized and helped deliver Blog Aid: Recipes for Haiti.  In less than three weeks she got 27 food bloggers to donate 72 recipes complete with photos, one very tired designer (Cathryn Ironwood) to give the book a cohesive look, and two corporate sponsors (West Canadian Graphics in Calgary and Blurb in San Fransisco) to match proceeds. The results? The book's been on sale all of 24 hours and we've raised more than $20,000. Proceeds of book sales will go toward Haitian relief via the Red Cross and Doctors without Borders. And the proceeds are potentially big. Here's how Julie explained it to me in a recent email [emphasis mine]:
[caption id="attachment_2470" align="alignnone" width="640"]A Trio of Roasted Vegetables - The Messy Baker Sweet Potatoes roasted with rosemary[/caption] I got a bit carried away. I was experimenting with roasted vegetables for today's CTV appearance and ended up making five variations. I just couldn't make up my mind which version I liked best, so I made them all. Well, almost all. Having recently posted about Herb-Roasted Potatoes I felt I could skip this one and try some less obvious options. While I know that steaming is the most healthy option, I think of it as more of a summer technique. Light, bright vegetables suit the sunny weather. But during the dull, grey days of winter? I require more depth of flavour, more variation. And roasted vegetables are the ultimate free-style side dish. Not only does roasting caramelize the natural sugars and make the dish delightfully sweet, the options are almost limitless. You can roast almost any vegetable, combine them in any way you like and season them as the mood fits. Just follow the basic steps and you can't really go wrong. To properly roast vegetables you need a:
Sneaking in under the wire. It's still Groundhog Day. And all I can think of is Bill Murray sitting in a Punxsatawney diner, stuffing his face full of donuts with impunity. According to the groundhog, we have six more weeks of winter coming, which makes me want to stuff my face with donuts, too. Only I know that if I do, I won't start the next day as if nothing happened. Impunity for gluttonous digressions is not part of my Groundhog Day reality. Wanting something decadent, but reasonably healthy, I decided to make some chocolate cookies. Looking in my cupboards I found what I needed. Cocoa is always low-fat, dried cherries are full of antioxidants and nuts are good for you. Add a glass of milk and it's practically a whole meal.

January nearly broke me. Lots of bills. Little sun. And weather that fluctuated between skin-shrivelling rain and nostril-frosting cold. But I think I'm going to make it after all. Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces by Gayla Trail (Clarskson/Potter, 2010) arrived the other day....

In the comment section recently, Leslie asked about eggplant. She's tired of it drowned in tomato sauce or swimming in oil.  Joe Girard of Rouxbe Online Cooking School provided some great answers, but even his professional advice didn't get me off the hook. I'd promised Leslie I'd look into other ways of cooking it, and a promise is a promise. During my research I came across a tomato-less, non-oily recipe that included eggplant. Best part? I didn't need to salt the eggplant and leave it for a half hour to draw out the bitter juices. Now Leslie, I know this doesn't exactly fit your request for eggplant "in a more natural state", but the weather's been so cloudy and miserable lately, I couldn't resist this warm, sweet Moroccan dish. You can almost taste the sunshine...
This desperate plea arrived a couple of weeks ago from a reader:
Help! I make the most horrid coffee. I have tried every brand available (even your fav. store in Kingston!), grind my own beans, tried different coffee makers, Bodums, etc and it is still bitter and tastes awful!
Oooh, coffee. Such a personal choice. Andrew loves French roast so dark it looks (and smells) like asphalt. I like an espresso roast for my latte and a medium roast for your average cup. Some people like theirs black while others can't take anything stronger than a double-double*. If you're still searching for the perfect coffee, here are some points to keep in mind:
I sat beside Ricardo, Canada's most popular culinary celebrity, at the Canadian Culinary Book Awards a few months ago. He's got his own Food Network show, Ricardo and Friends, three cookbooks and a self-titled magazine -- all in two languages. When he was seated beside me I was simultaneously thrilled and panicky. What would I say to him after hello? Turns out I needn't have worried. He sat down, rubbed his palms on his impeccably tailored suit, looked at me and said, "I'm so nervous." Throughout the  2 1/2 hour award show, Ricardo proved to be just as charming as his television persona. When Elizabeth Baird took the podium, he leaned over and said, "I love her. I just her. She was so good to me." When I didn't understand one of the nominated French cookbook titles, he translated. And when his book, Ricardo: parce qu’on a tous de la visite: cuisiner en toutes circonstance, won gold for best French language cookbook, he was genuinely thrilled. After all, this collection of recipes wasn't thrown together in a rush to appease adoring fans. It took 3 years to compile the seasonal photographs. Fortunately, they made an English version of the book, Ricardo: Meals for Every Occasion. I love that he addresses the fears of hosting without talking down to hear readers or offering Martha-esque presentation advice. Instead, his chapters revolve around soothing the "feeling of dread brought on by the sound of the door bell." This guy admits what every host politely denies -- "Having people over for dinner is tough. You dirty tons of dishes -- mostly the nice, fragile stuff that doesn't go in the dishwasher. You get stains on your best white tablecloth. You discover a pile of potato chip crumbs under the sofa cushions." Does he resent the imposition? Not at all. He embraces it.  As he says, "After all. We love 'em to pieces." You don't need to have company to enjoy his delicious, not-too-challenging recipes. Ricardo covers soups, salads, mains, desserts, drinks, snacks and breakfast., but delivers them in chapters entitled: