Gougère au Za'atar

These cheese puffs are very dear to me and this version is probably my best attempt at fusion. I often made a batch of these when I was in university, packaging them in a tin box and traveling them halfway across Montreal to a dinner party, where they were always popular and the first thing to disappear from the food table. They quickly became a common appearance at many potlucks I attended. Sometimes, I took a few minutes to write: Cheese Puffs on a small index card in case someone asked me what they were, I minimized the risk of embarrassing my already laughable French. 



I love making these with Gruyère cheese, its strong, nutty flavor lends well in these puffy treats. As recommended by the recipe author, Clotilde of Chocolate and Zucchini (who I've met!), I’ve used cumin to season them with consistently good results. This time however, I used a za’taar to change it up a little. A combination of sumac, salt, dried thyme, and sesame seeds, za’taar is typically used in Middle Eastern food. I've frequently seen it sprinkled on pita bread brushed with olive oil and then warmed in the oven, releasing a mesmerizing  heady and sweet flavours. Added in these gougeres, the spice makes them even more exotic.  

The preparation is easy if you have all your ingredients prepped and ready to go. Basically you simmer the butter and salt together, add the flour, mix vigorously to form the basic dough, then add the eggs one by one, and fold in the grated cheese along with the za’taar. The only challenging part of the recipe is waiting for the dough to chill, to prevent the puffs from spreading too much in the oven. The best part though, is the smell these sneaky devils give off as they turn crispy and golden, kind of like a big ball of Swiss cheese exploded, if you liken explosions to good and tasty things.



Clotilde suggests enjoying these with a glass of wine, though I’m partial to a cold glass of beer. I could eat a plateful of these with a citrusy light ale, something along the lines of a Rickard’s White. I’d also prefer to eat these with my legs propped up on a picnic bench and a mild spring breeze whipping through my hair, though I don’t really see that happening at the moment, since it still feels like winter out there. But I suppose a girl can dream, and soon enough, I will be eating a plateful of these gougères with a cold pint of beer in hopefully a few weeks time (toes and fingers crossed).

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Chewy Date and Seed Bars

I’m a snacker. Even an hour after lunch, my mouth already itches for food. It's not that I don't eat much, but I usually stop eating once my belly feels comfortably full. Before, I could eat till I felt the desperate urge to unbutton my jeans while seething for eating the last few dumplings on my plate, but I’ve practiced keeping my gluttony under control and just eat until I’ve had enough. At work, I always had a steady stash of things to nibble on, you will find my drawer spilling out fruit, polka-dotted bananas, rice crackers, raisin cookies, a Ziploc bag full of Cherrios, dark chocolate with sea salt, and when I get sick of my cereal, shiny packets of granola bars. 

I’m partial to Nature Valley crunchy granola bars, they got the right amount of crunch, there’s no metallic taste lingering on my tongue afterwards, it’s somewhat filling (depending on how hungry I am), and most importantly, they aren’t too sweet. Snacks to me, should hinge somewhere between substantial and a treat. These chewy date bars do the job, they make a good pick-me up in the afternoons when I’m ready to zonk out after lunch. 

Tweaked from the LCBO Food and Drink magazine, these chewy date and seed bars can be made in less than 20 minutes and ready to be eat in less than an hour. Basically, dates are simmered with water and added to the dry mixture to give a stickiness sweetness, oats and oat flour give the bars bulk and provide the ultimate nutritional benefits like fibre, nuts and seeds are mixed in for plenty of crunch, protein and healthy fats. Finally, toasted coconut and brown sugar are tossed in to add more flavour to the bars.

Although there are over seven ingredients, the beauty of this recipe is its flexible formula, you can use whatever you have lying in your pantry or head to your local bulk foods store to pick up what you need, as long as you keep the general ratio of oats, dried fruit, and nuts and seeds the same.

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Peter Reinhart's Bagels

Back in January this year, when fireworks lit up the midnight sky with sparks of color to ring in the New Year, I was staying at the Hilton by Niagara Falls with my parents and a girlfriend. We had a huge dinner at the hotel, stuffing our faces with pastas and pizzas and garlic bread. Then we spent the rest of the night in our suite playing poker and drinking ice wine, and when sleepiness set in, we bid each other good night and crawled into our plush king sized beds. 

I was just slipping into REM sleep when I was startled by eardrum-blasting fire alarms. My eyes flew open in panic, I jumped out of bed, pulled on my jeans and wool coat, zipped up my boots with my friend just one shoe behind me. My parents awoke, still in their pajamas, blearily eyed and irritated. Finally, a voice boomed over the PA system advising guests to stay put while the fire department investigated the situation. We paced the room, poked our heads into the hallway, to see what other guests were up to, but they seemed just as oblivious as we were. At this point, the alarms were still ringing at full blast and continued to do so for twenty painful minutes.

Before long, the same voice announced it was just a false alarm. What a lovely way to spend the New Year’s, sitting at the foot my bed, arms crossed over my chest, fuming at my disturbed sleep because some retard drunk moron asswipe decided it would be fun to wake up the entire hotel.

So you can imagine my utter dislike for smoke alarms. In fact, when I made these bagels, they set off the smoke alarm leading me to call them a whole slew of nasty names. The moment I opened the oven to rotate the baking sheet, the alarm burst at full force, I dashed to unlock the balcony door which thankfully, helped dissipate the smoke (my gut told me not to set the oven at 500°F, but I was adamant about following this recipe) and the alarm shut off. 

Minor cardiac arrest aside, these are ridiculously good bagels. They are crispy and golden on the outside, dense and sesamey on the inside. They are what perfection tastes like. It was an epiphany for me, the simplicity of only five ingredients and the magical thing that time does to create crusty, chewy bagels. They sit comfortably in the fridge overnight to stretch out the fermentation process and help bring out the subtle flavours in wheat, so I was excited, exhilarated even, to start my day baking. The smells of warm flour and yeast comingled, filling my home with an aroma not unlike a boulangerie. 

They are not as good as Fairmount Bagels (which are seriously life changing bagels, hello? It’s open 24 hours! And nothing can compare to a 2am post-party bagel feast spent with friends to help soak up the liquor running through my veins). These bagels are not even close, but they bring back such dear memories of me hugging a paper bag filled with a dozen fresh sesame bagels so warm, they are not only smelled amazing, but doubled as a furnace which is quite handy, since the Montreal winters can be brutal. 

I ate two bagels in one sitting and fought the urge to inhale another. They need nothing else but salted butter smeared on top, they might even be worth setting off the smoke alarm (but try not to call them names, this one bagel gave me the finger).

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Recipe here!