To begin, get three nice granny smith apples.  The final product is sweet as hell so don’t go for a sweet apple – the firmness and tartness of this type of apple is perfect.

Core those motherfuckers.  If you don’t have an apple corer, do anything you need to to get the cores out – I advise cutting into quarters along the vertical axis and slicing off the cores at an angle top down, but it doesn’t matter much what you do.

Now you want to slice them.  I like to cut the apples in half and make lots of thin (~3mm) half moon slices, but you can do whatever here.  The main idea is to make the pieces small enough that they will bake through.  No big chunks.

When you are finished, put all the slices into a baking dish that isn’t much bigger than the pile of apples.  I think mine is about 6 by 6 inches square.

Now set them aside.  We’re going to make the mix that goes in with the apples.  Start with 1/2 cup of sugar:

Add 1/2 tablespoon of regular flour:

And then 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon:

Mix the mix together well, then dump in the apple slices and stir gently to combine.  Don’t worry too much about coating each apple because that will happen when they bake.  Just give it a few turns.

And toss it all back into the baking dish, arranging the apples so they are sort of compact and sort of flat on top, but again, don’t go nuts with this.  Just try to make sure there are no huge gaps in the pile.  Pour any remaining sugar mixture over the top.

Now set the dish aside.  We’re going to make the topping.  In a separate bowl mix together 1/2 cup quick cooking oats, 1/2 cup all purpose flour, 1/2 cup packed brown sugar, 1/8 teaspoon baking powder, 1/8 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 cup of the solid fat of your choice.  I use Earth Balance Buttery Spread (the best tasting vegan “butter” IMO), but you could use regular butter or margarine.  I’d avoid lard or vegetable shortening because of the taste/lack of taste, respectively.

Mix the topping ingredients together.  I find the best way is to just get in there with your (clean) hands and squeeze and stir it together that way.  Very pleasing tactile experience!  Your hands will love it.  Fuck spoons.

Now before adding the topping, sprinkle 1/4 cup of water over the apples.

And now sprinkle the topping over it all:

Until it’s all covered and looks like this, more or less (I got a little compulsive and patted it all down smooth, but you don’t have to):

The original recipe called for a baking time of about 45 minutes, but that’s for double the recipe.  I let mine cook for about 38 minutes, by which time it was gently browned on top and fragrant and cooked through.  Keep an eye on it and don’t let it get too dark.

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1. Core and slice 3 granny smith apples

2. Mix:

.5 cup white sugar,

.5 tbsp flour, and

.5 teaspoon cinammon, and coat apples with this.

3. In a separate bowl, mix:

.5 cup quick cooking oats, .

5 cup flour,

.5 cup brown sugar,

1/8 tsp baking soda,

1/8 tsp baking powder, and

.25 cup butter or margarine.

4. Pour 1/4 cup water over the apples.

5. Cover top with oat mixture.

6. Bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes (until golden on top).

To begin, get three good sized garlic cloves or four smaller ones, unpeeled, and two jalapenos:

Now toss those little bastards into a dry pan on medium heat.  The goal is to soften the insides while blackening the skin.  Shake the pan every couple of minutes or so to get all sides of the peppers and garlic blackened.  It’s going to take around 10-15 minutes:

While that’s cooking, get a white onion and chop it in half.  Save one half for something else, and start slicing:

Make it into fine dice:

Then put the dice into a mesh strainer and rinse them under cold water.  Shake off the excess and put the onions into your bowl.  Then grab a nice bunch of fresh cilantro:

And chop it up.  You want to end up with a loose and generously heaped cup of cilantro.  I used the entire bunch and didn’t really bother measuring.  Add it to the bowl with the onion and combine.

When the garlic and peppers are done they will look something like this:

Take them off the stove but leave the heat on.  When they are cool enough to handle, slip the garlic out of their skins and toss the cloves into your food processor (you could also do this in a mortal and pestle).  Chop off the stems of the jalapenos and discard.  I bisect the peppers and use a spoon to scoop out the seeds and webbing, which is where the heat is.  You can leave it in if you like.  Toss the jalapenos into the processor, add a generous pinch of salt (about half a teaspoon), and blend until you get a coarse puree.

Now put about a pound of ripe red tomatoes into the dry pan.  This will be two large or three medium, roughly.  Once again you want to blacken the skins.  Really this step should be done in a broiler for best effect but I don’t have one, so stovetop it is!  In this picture you can see me holding the tomatoes in a line on their sides to get blackening on areas other than the very tops and bottoms, which is the only place they will probably rest on their own:

When they are black all over (or as all over as they get before starting to fall apart), take them out, remove the stems, roughly chop, and put into the processor with their liquid.  Mine aren’t really black enough but I got impatient!

Now process everything for a brief time.  You don’t want a liquid but rather a still-chunky texture.  Mine got a little too processed while I was taking the picture, alas:

Pour the processed mixture into the bowl with the cilantro and onion. Stir.  Add another teaspoon of salt:

And voila!  Very simple and just stunningly delicious.

Sautee in olive oil:

Half an onion, diced

A fat garlic clove minced fine

A stalk of celery cut into little pieces (optional – I threw it in because I have some celery to get through and I like to add more veggies when I can but don’t sweat it if you don’t have any.)

Add:

Two big cans of diced tomatoes

One can of rinsed kidney or black beans (I prefer black)

One can of refried beans

A generous cup of frozen corn

A tablespoon of pickled jalapenos, minced up, plus a tablespoon or so of the vinegar pickling liquid

Add spices: (your mileage may vary – adjust to taste)

A dash of ground oregano (or a scant teaspoon of flakes)

1/2 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon chili powder

A few dashes of Tobasco

salt to taste

Optional for vegans:

One tablespoon nutritional yeast – adds that nice cheesy flavour and those essential B’s!

1/3 package of plain veggie crumbles (soy meat or “smeat” as I like to call it) – I did this to use up some crumbles I had leftover and I found it added body and texture, so I recommend it, but you don’t need it.

So you just simmer it all together.  The first three spices are the long cooking variety so you’ll get best results if it can cook for at least a half an hour before eating. If it’s not sharp enough, add more vinegar.  If it’s not spicy enough, add more tobasco or chili.  If it’s too astringent, add sugar, but do it in tiny pinches because nothing ruins a pot of food faster than too much sugar.

If you have it on hand, chopped cilantro would be a nice garnish.  If you eat cheese, crumbled feta would also be a great topper.  Consider also chopped raw green onions, a dollop of hot salsa, diced bell peppers or tomatoes, or crumbled tortilla chips as garnish.  I ate mine plain because I didn’t have any of that stuff in the fridge and it was still awesome.  It’s a bit loose in texture so you could eat it with tortillas as a dipper/scooper, or over rice, but I don’t like to dilute my flavour with plain things so I generally don’t.  But you could.

The thing I like about this is it’s fast to put together, tastes great, and doesn’t require pre-planning or a trip to the grocery store.  It’s made out of staples in my kitchen.  And it’s easy to customize.

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In other news, I am planning a new quilting project.  I am an incredibly slow quilter so I have to make sure I’m not going to get sick of the fabrics and methods before I embark on any new project.  I’ve been planning this one for a long time and think I’m finally ready.  The pattern comes from the book I learned to quilt from: Quiltmaking By Hand, by Jinny Beyer.  I bough this book when I lived in Halifax and didn’t have a sewing machine, and I think it’s great.  Here’s a picture of the pattern I’ll use, which was made entirely by hand by Ms. Beyer:

But I’ll be using a machine.  The colours are quite washed out in this picture, but I used it because it gives a better sense of the look of the quilt.  Here’s the image from Jinny’s webpage, which is more accurate colour-wise:

I’m going to select fabrics today.  I will probably go with different colours but still, isn’t it amazing?  She designed the tesselation herself.  My dream is to one day figure out how to make Escher’s interlocking lizards into a functional quilt pattern but I haven’t got there yet.  Anyway, wish me luck on the fabric purchasing!  And the months and months of effort to come…

I would serve this pasta with a crisp, light salad and a good whole wheat bun.  The recipe makes between three and four adult servings, depending on how big your appetite is.  If you have buns and greens to accompany four is entirely reasonable.  Even more so if you have planned on some dessert, which again, in deference to the heaviness and boldness of this pasta, I would make a tossed fruit salad or perhaps something like frozen grapes.  Keep the accompaniments light is what I’m saying.

Enough preamble.  Let’s begin, shall we?

First: get a pot of water boiling for your pasta.  When it boils, add salt.  For the noodles themselves, I used 200g of whole wheat bowties, but any chunky pasta would be fine.

Start with one zucchini.  A small one.  I bought the Italian type from Safeway.  Remove the ends.  Cut in half lengthwise, then each half in half lengthwise (so you end up with quarters), and then cut into little chunks.  Or devise your own method of making little pieces, I’m not picky.

Next, mince two cloves of garlic.  We love garlic around here!

Now toss the zucchini and garlic into a deep pan.  At this point you need to decide if you want to sautee in oil or not.  If you do, use olive oil and a medium heat to get the zucc and garlic nice and cooked.  If you’re like me and prefer to avoid added oil, just use a little bit of water to get things moving (same temperature).  I tried salting the zucchini to help them release their water for the purposes of “sauteeing” without oil, but that was a mistake.  DO NOT ADD SALT.  The olives and capers will bring plenty of salt to the sauce!  None needs to be added! See the big black X over the salt shaker?  That means no salt.  If at the end you decide the sauce needs salt, you can add it then.

Once these guys are soft and sauteed, toss in tomato base.  You could either chop up four or five large, ripe tomatoes, or use a big can of diced tomatoes (which often taste better than whole), or use a mix like I did.  I had half a can available and I added two diced tomatoes.

Next we’ll spice it with a tablespoon of dried marjoram.  If you don’t have marjoram you could use oregano.

Once the marjoram is in, turn up the heat to get the sauce at a boil.  Maintain the sauce at a gentle simmer with the lid on for about fifteen minutes.  During this time, get your pasta cooking.  Your goal is to have the pasta ready to eat at the same time as the sauce is finished simmering.  Based on a fifteen minute simmer, time as required.

While your zucc and garlic are cooking in the tomato sauce and the pasta is cooking, it’s time to prepare the olives.  I bought whole kalamatas.  Here they are, being depitted.  To easily remove the pit from an olive, smash them with the flat side of your knife (as you would a garlic clove before peeling) and then the pit is easy to pull out.

Once the pits are removed, roughly chop the olives.  You want about a cup altogether.  That took about twenty olives.  Next, measure out two tablespoons of capers, which you should give a quick rinse to (or not – I love the salty brine so I didn’t rinse mine, but I’m a rebel).

After the fifteen minute simmer, toss in the olive chunks and the capers.  If your timing is perfect, your pasta will be finished immediately after you add these guys.

Give it a stir and let the new additions get hot.  I have found that long cooking of olives tends to diffuse their flavour and make the sauce taste too homogenous.  Adding the olives at the end keeps their flavour sharp and distinct, so you have sauce which tastes of tomatoes and olives as a separate flavour.  The contrast is very pleasing, and this is why I add them at the end.  The capers are less prone to this flavour diffusion problem so you could probably add them any old time, but I like to keep things neat so they go with the olives.  The longer these ingredients cook in the sauce, the saltier it will taste too (or at least this is what I have noticed.  YMMV.)

At this point you can sample for saltiness and add pepper if you wish (I didn’t).  Here’s the sauce all ready to go:

So your sauce is ready, the pasta just finished cooking, and all that remains is to toss it all together.  Then lovingly spoon it into bowls, like so:

Delicious!  And dead easy!  The whole works can be done in twenty minutes, no problem.  Once you are familiar with the recipe it’s easy to whip up a simple green salad (and pull a bun out of a bag) while the sauce is simmering too, so you really can prepare a full meal in this time limit.  Guaranteed to impress with big flavours!

First, may I introduce the fennel, of which one bulb is required:

He has a slightly licoricey taste.  Here’s how you deal with him.  First chop off his leafy stems.  And cut him into quarters, cutting top to bottom.  Here he is, just before the final quartering cut:

Notice the wedge shaped parts of his stem there at the bottom.  That part isn’t nice to eat so we’re going to chop it off, as well as taking a shallow slice directly off the bottom.  This destems him.  The picture shows me making a very tricky and technically demanding angled slice to get the core/stem out:

Now he needs to be diced.  Don’t fuss too much with this.  The goal is to make little pieces that are soup-sized.  I cut each quarter into thirds, vertically, and then cut across these for the dice:

Now you toss all those pieces into your pot.  Next we will finely dice one medium sized white onion:

And that goes in the pot too.  Next add a bouquet garni – basically just a bundle of herbs tied together with twine that will simmer in the pot and be removed before serving.  You can use any herbs you like, though traditionally thyme, parsley, and a bay leaf are involved.  Marjoram is the herb recommended by the author, and I used marjoram, bay, thyme, sage, rosemary, and parsley.  Bundle them all up and tie it with some butcher’s twine, then toss it in the pot too.

Next we need to add 18 whole, peeled cloves of garlic.  Seriously!  When boiled without first being sauteed, garlic becomes very soft and mild.  The soup will taste of garlic but it won’t be overwhelming.  Trust me.  Go for it.  I used two whole cloves.

So now here is what your pot looks like:

It has a certain elegance, no?

Put the pot on the stove and add two litres of chicken stock, or in my case, faux chicken stock which involves no actual chickens.

Bring it to a boil and let it simmer for fifteen minutes covered.  While that’s happening, chop up about four very red and ripe tomatoes, about two cups worth.  I ended up with closer to three cups because I had a rogue tomato that needed chopping before it got too soft for any other use.  The recipe says to peel and deseed them, but I gotta tell you, that just seems like a waste to me.  You end up throwing out about a third of the volume of the tomato and I personally like the feel of the little seeds.  So I left everything in.  Which might also explain why I ended up with too much tomato:

And once the soup has simmered for fifteen minutes, you toss in the tomatoes and let it go for another ten minutes covered.

While that is cooking, strip some of the fuzzy bits off the fennel stalks and chop them up.  Try for a tablespoon or so.

And while you’re at it, chop up about a quarter cup of parsley, very fine.  I used flat leaf parsley which I prefer to the curly – the curly stuff feels yucky to me.  And reminds me of bad diners.

It’s also time to prepare the beans.  The recipe calls for properly cooking white beans from dry, but I can’t be bothered so I just use a can of precooked white kidney beans.  The recipe calls for just one cup, but I also hate to waste half a can of beans since they come packaged in more than a cup, so I just use them all.  When using canned beans, make sure to rinse them first.  They come out of the can in a sort of sludgy broth that I have never tasted but looks gross. Here are the beans next to the tomatoes.  Don’t worry about the continuity error.

Okay, so while you chopped fennel and parsley and rinsed beans, the tomatoes had their ten minutes to simmer in the soup.  Now fish out the bouquet garni, which has outlived its usefulness and needs to go in the trash. Shake off any clinging onions or other bits.

Now add the beans:

And the parsley and fennel fuzz:

And some salt and pepper to taste.  Stir.  Behold!

Behold also the mess on my stove.  Heh.  Okay, now you just let the beans heat through for maybe five minutes, and serve with crusty bread and perhaps a nice salad.  Hearty and delicious.  Seriously delicious.