VIVRE POUR MANGER

Dirty secret: I keep imported Betty Crocker cake mix stashed in my cupboard for emergency cakes and cupcakes. I spend the time saved by the mix making fancy icings.

In Spring, this young man’s fancy turns to rhubarb. Follow me through this.

I make rhubarb syrup during rhubarb season. It’s simple, and it’s amazing in cocktails. Any cocktail that calls for grenadine can be rhubarbified. The trick to making a good rhubarb syrup is to maximize the rhubarb flavour in as small a volume of liquid as possible.

One of the things I missed upon returning to the US was being able to eat from a big “Netz” of clementines around Christmastime. We never had clementines growing up and I never remembered seeing them anywhere either. Mandarins were something that came in a can (it seems a clementine is a type of mandarin; I had to look it up since I was never sure if the reverse was true of if they were just synonyms). By the time I returned in 2008, there were clementines to be had, but they were expensive and not consistently good (though they’re not always consistent in Europe either).

I should have known better.

I normally despise syrupy-sweet desserts but for some reason I decided earlier this week that I absolutely had to buy some “pumpkin jam” that was sitting at the checkout at my usual falafel spot/Middle Eastern grocery. I love every other pumpkin dessert I’ve tried, so why not? I asked the owner what it was and how you eat it. She said you just eat it as is and that it comes from her hometown. They’re having trouble getting it because of what’s going on in Syria right now, so she asked me to be sure to report back and tell her whether I liked it.

Step one: Buy a half of a rotisserie chicken from the local döner hut, also known as a “half chicken”. For only 40 cents extra, it comes with an actually tasty salad, so get that too.

Halbes Hänchen und Salat

Step two: Reach for your jar of imported St Lawrence Market Churrasco Chicken Sauce. This might be hard to source. Your best options is to hire a sauce mule.

Beribboned jar of churrasco chicken sauce

Step three: Cover half of the half chicken with sauce (because a whole half a chicken is too much for one person)

That looks like a lot of sauce, but there's tons left in the jar

Step four: Enjoy your chicken by candlelight.

Romantic chicken dinner, direct from the styrofoam clam

Left with a pot of cooked chicken wings after making stock and too lazy to pick off the meat for salad, I decided the best and easiest way to use them would be to fry them up. And since I had been craving Mark Bittman’s Sweet Garlic Soy Sauce, I decided that would make the perfect glaze. I was right.

You must try these. Just fry up the wings as you would for Buffalo wings and toss them in the sauce. A little goes a long way since the sauce is basically a sticky sweet and salty caramel. Next time I think I’ll add a bit of orange juice or rice wine vinegar. Or I’ll use the sauce from David Chang’s wing recipe. Here’s a simplified version. The original calls for brining, cold-smoking and confiting the wings, then browing and pressing them in a cast-iron pan, and then glazing them.

Looking for a laugh, I picked up an old cookbook from my South Dakota grandmother this weekend, “The German-Russian Pioneer Cook Book.” I have three editions of this cookbook, all originally typed on a typewriter, two plastic spiral-bound with laminated cardstock front and back covers and one bound with binder rings. In addition to some “real” German and Russian recipes like Schupfnudeln, Einlaufsuppe and “Borsch,” it also contains some recipes I can only describe as very regional.

This video speaks for itself, I think.

Who doesn't love fried cheese?

Stuck with a bunch of mustard greens (which are far from my favorite) from my latest CSA share and looking for recipes other than greens with garlic and olive oil, I asked for ideas from Facebook friends. Colin came to the rescue, suggesting saag paneer.

Roasting a whole fish is so easy and so tasty, I have no idea why I do it so rarely. Actually I do. Fish is a buy-same-day-you-cook-it food, and I only ever have such a chance on a Saturday, and lots of Saturdays I have evening plans that involve not being home.