Luisa Rios' Kitchen Notebook

Hey Blackberry (Bam-Ba-Lam)!

It’s August, and that means just one thing for the Lower Main­land of B.C.: the wild black­ber­ries (the edi­ble kind, not the things you text on) are in full bloom!

It’s been a lit­tle while since the last time I wrote. Sum­mer turned out to be a very pro­duc­tive time full of ideas, plans and projects, all of which I’m look­ing for­ward to shar­ing with you – soon, I promise!

Nanaimo sun­rise — view at 6am

This past week­end, we had a won­der­ful time in Nanaimo set­ting David’s dad up with his own brand new com­puter – the first he’s touched in more than 18 years. It was exhaust­ing  and exhil­a­rat­ing at the same time. It just reminded me of the many won­ders we enjoy today that many times I take for granted. And also the impor­tance of keep­ing curi­ous, active and healthy for the approach­ing “golden years.”

First picks of the sun

The best part of the trip for me was the dawn hours. While the whole neigh­bour­hood was still asleep, I snuck out of the house and picked and munched my fill (and then some) from the gor­geous, big, plum-y black­berry bushes grow­ing in front of my in-laws home, as wild as they can get. I LOVE them – it reminds me of my dad’s won­der­ful pre­serves, when he would make his sim­ple desserts of “fruit in sim­ple syrup.” Mmmmm – per­fect for that quick change of taste after a nice lunch or dinner.

Black­berry flowers

If you live in Van­cou­ver, Van­cou­ver Island or just about any­where in the Lower Main­land, explore the hik­ing or bik­ing paths or parks near you. There are ripe black­ber­ries all over the place. If you bring a pail with you, there’s almost no end to the deli­cious things you can do with them – waf­fles, pan­cakes, muffins, apple-blackberry pie, souf­flés or my per­sonal favourite, all on their own.

Juicy ones, always far away from reach!

If you don’t hap­pen to live in B.C., find out what’s in sea­son where you live, then take your fam­ily out to explore and enjoy!

Happy munch­ing!

Fruits of my harvest!

Putting Together a Salad: In all Shades of Green

Farm­ers Mar­ket Day 1

I have a con­fes­sion to make. I am salad challenged.

In fact, if they ever pub­lish a cook­book called Sal­ads 101 – A Quick and Easy Guide to Salad Free­dom, I’ll be the first one in line to buy it. I don’t think it’s a Latin Amer­i­can thing, so maybe it’s a Colom­bian or regional chal­lenge? Or per­haps, ashamed as I am to admit it, maybe it’s just my family.

All I know for sure is, at home, sal­ads meant just four things: ice­berg let­tuce, sliced toma­toes, and pick­led onions or scal­lions. Oh, and a tomato vinai­grette! Period.

All of which means that I am prob­a­bly the last per­son who should have an opin­ion about sal­ads. But ever since I became a per­sonal chef, I’ve noticed that a lot of other peo­ple tend to be salad chal­lenged, too — that’s prob­a­bly why the infa­mous Cae­sar Salad is the #1 seller in all restau­rants in North Amer­ica. And since I can’t pre­pare sal­ads in advance for my clients (they don’t keep well for more than a few days), I’ve come up with a list of things every­one should always keep at hand that will help them put together a fresh, healthy and deli­cious salad in no time.

When toss­ing a salad, it all comes down to hav­ing lay­ers of tex­tures, colours and flavours. I pre­fer not to get too cre­ative, so three or four choices from these ingre­di­ents will usu­ally do wonders.

So if you’re salad chal­lenged like me, why not try throw­ing some of these together tonight, to add a lit­tle green to your family’s table? If you aren’t famil­iar with some of these ingre­di­ents, all the bet­ter. After all, try­ing some­thing new and find­ing out whether or not you like it is when the fun begins. Who knows — it might become your new fam­ily favourite.

Let’s start tossing!

Mix ‘n Match:

Leafy veg­eta­bles: arugula, dan­de­lion greens, endive, radic­chio or water­cress, cab­bage (red or green), col­lard greens or kale, let­tuce (such as but­ter­head, leaf or romaine), napa cab­bage, purslane, spinach, spring mix (note: buy them, wash and dry very well; store in a Ziploc bag with a paper towel — if you have to buy pre-washed greens, don’t for­get to check the best before date)

Herbs: pars­ley, rose­mary, basil, chervil, thyme, mar­jo­ram, oregano

“Fruit” veg­eta­bles: avo­ca­dos, olives, sweet pep­pers (red, orange or yel­low), toma­toes, win­ter squash, zuc­chini and other sum­mer squash (note: if you cut an avo­cado, don’t for­get to imme­di­ately brush it all over with a lit­tle lemon juice to stop it from browning)

Fruit fruits: wild berries and apples

Flow­er­ing veg­eta­bles: broc­coli, broc­coflower, broc­col­ini, cauliflower

Edi­ble pods and peas: green peas, snow peas, sugar snap peas

Herbs and veg­etable flow­ers: capers, arti­chokes, squash blos­soms, chives, chervil, chamomile

Onions: green onions, red or sweet white onion

Root veg­eta­bles, shred­ded: car­rots, beets, cele­riac, daikon, radishes, rutabaga, turnips, kohlrabi

Sprouts: alfalfa, broc­coli, radish or sun­flower, mung bean or lentil, quinoa

Stalk veg­eta­bles: aspara­gus tips, cel­ery, fennel

Tubers: Jerusalem arti­chokes, jicama, fin­ger­ling potatoes

Beans and legumes: any kind of bean, cooked at home if pos­si­ble or, if pressed by time, Eden Organ­ics BPA-Free Cans will do, soy beans, split peas, lentils, chickpeas

Rice and Grains: rice, wild rice, quinoa, bar­ley, mil­let, cous­cous, orzo (these last two, not tech­ni­cally grains, but hav­ing a per­son­al­ity dys­func­tion, act like one)

Crunchy Addi­tions: tofu or bread crou­tons, nuts and seeds: sun­flower, pump­kin or sesame, pine nuts, plain, soaked and dried – or roasted, sea greens, pan-fried or toasted

Dress­ings: Add your favourite dress­ings. If made with flaxseed or hempseed or their oils, the dress­ing is a rich source of omega 3 fatty acids. If made with avo­cado, olives, seeds or their oils, the dress­ing is a rich source of the pro­tec­tive antiox­i­dant vit­a­min E.

Share your tips — what’s your favourite salad?

Chilled Cucumber and Dill Soup Recipe

Okay, I know I said I wasn’t going to post many recipes. But a good friend of mine, Kathy, is bat­tling the heat wave in Ontario, so here I am already break­ing my own rules!

As any­one on the East Coast prob­a­bly knows all too well at the moment, heat waves and hot cook­ing don’t go together. So here is the recipe for a deli­cious (and deli­ciously cool!) Chilled Cucum­ber and Dill Soup I wrote down in my kitchen note­book from one of my first classes at Le Cor­don Bleu:

1 1/2 large cucum­bers (I like Eng­lish cucum­ber best)
1 small hand­ful of fresh mint
1 small hand­ful of fresh dill
2 cups of veg­etable stock
2/3 cup plain yogurt (for a vegan ver­sion use silken soft tofu)
salt and freshly ground black pep­per to taste

1. Trim the ends of the cucum­ber and dis­card the seeds. Chop the cucum­ber into chunks and place in the food proces­sor (fit with the metal blade). Add the mint and dill. Process until finely chopped, then add the stock (through the feeder tube) and process until well mixed.

2. Press the soup through a fine strainer (optional) then grad­u­ally whisk the yogurt into the soup until well blended. Sea­son to taste with salt and pepper.

3. Cover and refrig­er­ate overnight or for at least 4 hours.

Whisk the soup well before serv­ing, and taste for seasoning.

Serves 4.

Chef’s tips
1. Pre­pare the soup the day before, cover with a plas­tic wrap and let the flavours blend with time. Keep refrig­er­ated.
2. Chill the bowls in the refrig­er­a­tor before serv­ing — they will be nice and cold too.
3. Serve with a nice, thin, crisp bread.

Reusable Grocery Bags – To Tote or Not To Tote!

It took me many, many shop­ping trips until the habit of bring­ing my reusable gro­cery bags with me became sec­ond nature. Many, many times they stayed behind, hang­ing from the door­knob or even right in front of my nose.

Now, I might for­get my keys, my shoes or, some days, even my name – but I never leave home with­out my reusable gro­cery bags! In the unlikely event that I do for­get them, there’s always a cou­ple of “just in case” extra bags that live in the trunk of the car. Or, if I hap­pen to be walk­ing, there’s my tried and trusty “Mickey Mouse” fold­able back that lives in my purse.

(Won­der­ing about the name? Yes, it’s a bag with ears that folds into a minia­ture Mickey Mouse shape about the size of a small coin purse. A good friend of mine brought it for me from Dis­ney World, and it has become a full-time exten­sion of my purse).

In other words, when it comes to “green” shop­ping, all my bases are def­i­nitely cov­ered. But try as hard as we might, there are still some things for which reusable gro­cery bags just don’t work. Take pro­duce bags, for exam­ple. Since the farm­ers’ mar­kets aren’t avail­able all week, I often have to stop at the super­mar­ket on my way to the kitchen. Most of their pro­duce is drenched in water to pre­serve fresh­ness, mak­ing it tough to pack it in with the dried goods and other items. The same is even truer for the meat and poul­try department.

Which brings me to my dilemma – to use or not use plas­tic shop­ping bags. Lately, I’ve been hear­ing a num­ber of news sto­ries about the impor­tance of wash­ing your reusable bags to pre­vent the risk of food-born ill­ness. This seems like com­mon sense, right? You carry can­vas bags, bags get dirty. What to do with dirty cloths? You wash them. If it isn’t a cloth bag, then you san­i­tize them with Lysol wipes. Use a bas­ket instead of a bag? Water and soap will do.

So what’s a health– and environmentally-conscious shop­per to do? Here are a few things I’ve found use­ful about gro­cery bags and how we use them:

1. Reusable gro­cery bags come in many dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als; most of them are hand– or del­i­cate cycle– machine wash­able. All should be washed after each use. Hang to dry – don’t use the dryer even if they say you can. Some peo­ple also rec­om­mend bleach­ing your bags once a week to reduce or elim­i­nate bac­te­ria (1 Tbsp of chlorine-free bleach per gal­lon or 16 cups of water, or ¾ cup for your stan­dard washer cycle).

2. Sep­a­rate your bags into dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories, then use them only for those things that fit into their respec­tive groups. For exam­ple, I use some bags only for pro­duce, oth­ers for meat, and still oth­ers for car­ry­ing books, gym items and so on.

3. I still wrap meat, poul­try and seafood in dou­ble plas­tic bags before putting them into the reusable shop­ping bags. Don’t for­get to keep your meat and pro­duce in sep­a­rate bags. For things that have to be refrig­er­ated, if I know they’ll be out of the fridge for more than a few min­utes (even in Vancouver’s less-than-blistering-hot sum­mers), I also put a cooler in the car with some ice packs.

4. To reduce pro­duce bags, I always put a hand bas­ket in the front of my gro­cery cart. I put all my pro­duce that isn’t wet into the bas­ket instead of putting it into plas­tic bags, then I hand the bas­ket to the cashier and we pack all my lovely fruits and veg­gies loose in a reusable bag. If you’re a good seam­stress or have a good farm­ers’ mar­ket or nat­ural food store near you, you can also make or buy reusable pro­duce bags – www.credobags.com/catalog has some good ones for bulk grains, legumes, nuts, seeds and fruits.

5. One last tip? Go one step fur­ther, and con­sider bins over bags. Bins are sturdy, reusable, and easy to clean and keep dry.

Happy shop­ping!

What are your tips for a healthy, green and trouble-free shop­ping spree?

Confessions of a Personal Chef!

When I was a child in Colom­bia, I hated going to the super­mar­ket with my grand­mother, mom and aunts. I just could never fig­ure out why. It was a per­fect trip for a bunch of kids. We always got to pick out our favourite “Jet” Choco­latas, which we waited all week for not for the choco­late (believe it or not!) but because every bar came with a new sticker add to our album of Amaz­ing Ani­mals. But back to the super­mar­ket. I think what I dis­liked so much was that it all just seemed so arti­fi­cial — every­thing in cans or care­fully arranged in bins, and while it all looked good, so lit­tle of it had any smell.

Now, being invited to go to “el mer­cado libre” (the year-around open farm­ers’ mar­ket) was a com­pletely dif­fer­ent story. I loved the colours, the aro­mas, talk­ing to the peo­ple, and the free­dom to wan­der­ around stand after stand of fresh pro­duce, all ready to be taken home. Not that I ever cooked any of it, of course; with one mom and four aunts, we already had too many cooks in the kitchen.

I don’t know what hap­pened when I grew up, but all that love for food — real food — fell asleep for many, many years. Not a hun­dred years like Sleep­ing Beauty, but at least until I was in my 30s, work­ing in a Web design company

I was liv­ing in Canada, very, very far away from my home, my fam­ily and any famil­iar tastes. But in my adopted home­land, I was rein­tro­duced to a whole new world of foods and flavours, and a whole new group of peo­ple who were ded­i­cated to a love of food, the sea­sons and the land that pro­duces such a rich bounty of won­der­ful things to eat.

Now, after years of study and sev­eral life­times of expe­ri­ences, I am a Per­sonal Chef! I spend pretty much all my wak­ing hours think­ing, read­ing, plan­ning, cook­ing, shop­ping, chop­ping – or eat­ing – food! I am also a cook­book junkie, and any mag­a­zine arti­cle, news­pa­per, book, any­thing — if it’s about food or cook­ing, I have to read it.

My beloved David (Unof­fi­cial Editor-in-Chief) believes I have a lot of infor­ma­tion in my head. I still believe I don’t know any­thing yet. But any ideas I do get, I write every one in my Kitchen Note­book.

This old/new never-ending pas­sion has shown me both sides of the nour­ish­ing coin: the peo­ple who eat any­thing and every­thing (both in good ways and bad), and the peo­ple who, for either health or eth­i­cal rea­sons, don’t. This last group has led me see the culi­nary word with dif­fer­ent eyes. I guess it’s not so strange con­sid­er­ing that I am a French-trained, Latin American-born chef liv­ing in Canada, but cook­ing for my clients has led me to love think­ing glob­ally and cook­ing locally.

Veg­ans and raw food-ists have shown me food, cook­ing tech­niques and ingre­di­ents in a way that is very far from the clas­sic French Tech­niques I learned when I went to school at the Cor­don Bleu. All of them have made me a bet­ter cook and, more impor­tantly, a more curi­ous one.

All of these pas­sions and dis­cov­er­ies — the things I find, the recipes I learn (the easy way or the hard way), the mis­takes I make and the ways I find to cor­rect them — all of this is what I have col­lected in all the note­books that are col­lect­ing dust on my kitchen book­shelf. So I decided to make peace with the trees and start writ­ing on-line instead.

This blog – Cook­ing Jour­neys Kitchen Note­book – is the result. It is my note­book, my jour­nal, a col­lec­tion of all the expe­ri­ences I have as I travel (in per­son or from my kitchen) around the world, seek­ing out the best cuisines, cooks, chefs, prod­ucts, tips, books and resources to improve my life in the kitchen and at the table. It isn’t specif­i­cally a col­lec­tion of recipes, but some of those might find their way here, too.

Maybe, some­body will find and read what I write. Maybe he or she will find it help­ful. Maybe he or she has a bet­ter idea and might want to share it or com­ment about it. (Please do!) Or maybe some­body else will get inspired by it, and use it to reignite their own pas­sion for won­der­ful food, extra­or­di­nary culi­nary expe­ri­ences, and the joy, love and laugh­ter that can only be found at the table.

This is my Cook­ing Jour­ney. I hope it can be yours, too. I look for­ward to chat­ting with you along the way!