Marcella Hazan's Bolognese Sauce

What a strange and scary time we live in.

Thoughts running through my head:

• If I'm practicing social distancing but not everyone else is doing their part, can we stop the spread?
• How can people be so selfish, re: those who continue to head to the park or beach or throw coronavirus parties?
• Will things ever get back to "normal"?

When I can't read the news anymore, I turn to cooking for comfort. The plus side of being stuck at home is the leisure of trying out recipes, things I've been meaning to make but never got around to.

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Discoveries of Summer 2019

Bike rides where you don't feel like you're in the city.

I've done this route multiple times and have yet to get sick of it.

Toasted homemade sourdough bread tossed in a caprese salad made with tomatoes from my dad's garden, olive oil I lugged back from Portugal, and Maldon salt a friend kindly brought back from England.

I was doubtful anything could improve a caprese salad, but I was wrong.

Pasta with Eggplant Puree

I've spent the last month or two doing very little cooking and have mostly been gorging myself on grilled corn and caprese salad. Is there anything better then tomatoes and corn at the height of summer?

However, this means that other in-season vegetables are woefully being ignored. In attempt to add more variety to my diet, I picked up an eggplant at the market.

I'm still a novice when it comes to cooking eggplant but it always turns out lovely when roasted. This particular eggplant was roasted with cherry tomatoes, then blended together to make a sauce. Because there's a high ratio of eggplant to tomato, the eggplant is the star of the dish.

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Ratatouille

The end of summer means an abundance of ripe tomatoes, sweet peppers, eggplant and zucchini. These vibrant, multicoloured vegetables go beautifully together, both visually and gastronomically.

Ratatouille is an easy dish to throw together - a one pot meal, which is my favourite kind of meal. I've seen recipes where you roast each vegetable separately (!) before they are combined, which seems like an unnecessary amount of dishes and time. Perhaps the flavours are more concentrated when you roast the vegetables separately, though I find this recipe makes a scrumptious stew using seasonal, ripe vegetables.

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Quinoa Tabbouleh

As spring slowly makes its appearance (we're so close to actual spring weather!), I start to crave for lighter meals.

I had a bunch of parsley in the fridge that needed to be used up and tabbouleh sprang into my mind. Instead of the traditional bulgur, I used quinoa as the grain, though I have also used couscous in the past.

I've never been a fan of raw onion because I found it to be too peppery. Recently, I learned the trick where if you soak your cut onion in cold water for 10 minutes, it tames the flavour and makes the onion crispier.

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Vegetarian Chili

We're in the depths of winter and I'm constantly craving for soups and stews. Chili falls into that latter category - warm, hearty and tasty.

There is a lot of debate about what makes a chili. Some frown upon beans in their chili, though I can't imagine the dish without it. In fact, I fall into the opposite group and say chili is delicious even without the beef.

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Rice-Stuffed Tomatoes

It's been a quintessential summer so far where we've been blessed with hot, humid weather. Unfortunately those days are soon coming to an end, as the sun is setting earlier and the cool evenings require a sweater.

However, summer isn't quite over yet. We've officially hit peak tomato season and all I want to do is consume tomatoes.

I've had them raw in salads, bursting with tomato flavour; cooked into ratatouille, where all the summer vegetables shine through; stuffed with rice and baked, concentrating that tomato-ness.

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Caprese Salad

Clinging on to the last vestige of summer:


Using the last tomatoes from my garden, I made a Caprese salad. No recipe needed (though Serious Eats has a guide on how not to screw it up): tomatoes, basil, mozzarella di bufala, olive oil, salt and pepper. Simple and delicious.

Crushed Tomatoes

Another item checked off my canning bucket list: tomatoes.


My friends and I got our hands on a bushel (53-ish pounds) of San Marzano-type tomatoes and spent six hours blanching, peeling, de-seeding, cooking and processing them.


By the end of the night, we admitted defeat. We only had several pounds to go but could not bare to look at another tomato. Canning is exhausting on such a large scale, and I am sure tomato remains coated every surface of the kitchen.



However, it was all worth it. After five batches, we ended up with nineteen 1L (quart) jars of crushed tomatoes / tomato sauce / tomato juice.

Pro tip: having company and drinking wine helps with the canning process.

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One-Pan Farro with Tomatoes

Since winter is refusing to rid us of its presence, I'm doing a throwback post to reminisce about summer.


One of my favourite things about summer is tomato season. In general, the variety of produce during the warmer months makes me happier than a kid in a candy store, but for me, tomatoes are the cream of the crop.


Picking a tomato straight off the vine, warm from the sun, and biting into it so that the juices and flavours burst in your mouth - I am salivating just thinking about it.


I rarely cook with in-season tomatoes because I think they are perfect as is. Usually I'll just toss them in a salad or eat them like a fruit, but I was intrigue by this one-pan recipe. A tasty meal with minimal effort? Count me in.

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Pasta with Tuna and Tomato Sauce

Sometimes, a meal made of canned goods is the way to go.


You know those days: when you're feeling lazy; the vegetables look sad and wilted at the grocery store because we're on our eleventy month of winter; you don't think you can do another dish of root vegetables.

(I will admit to eating mashed sweet potatoes and nothing else as a meal and do not regret it.)


This is one of my favourite pasta dishes because it contains:

• Anchovies, which gets a bad reputation but adds so much depth to a dish.
• Tuna, because who doesn't love tuna? (A list of sustainably sourced tuna is listed here.)
• Pasta. I love pasta, so much that I think it would be the last thing I would eat before dying (though I have the right to change my mind at any time). Note to self: stop buying gluten-free pasta because it lacks the al dente goodness and hence, is terrible and not worth eating. Life is too short to go gluten-free (unless necessary).

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