Fathers Day is coming up and Plenty is stocked with many things a Dad might like: mortar & pestles, salt & pepper grinders, a rocket ship pepper mill, cardboard moose heads, spices, hot sauces, hamburger and hot dog spreads, origami mechanical robots, jars of Italian tomatoes and fantastic pastas, cookbooks, locally made Venturi-Schulze balsamic vinegar, chocolate frogs, chocolate turtles, and chocolate snails, fantastic coffee beans, exotic teas, masa harina flour & corn husks for tamales … A note to Anton (although not old enough to read this yet), for Fathers Day I’ll always be thrilled to receive a hug and perhaps a jar of Old Fashioned Pickles from Mountain Ash Farm.
I also like to receive books that combine great recipes with insight into people’s experience with food. One of my favourite books at Plenty is Apples Under the Bed: Recollections and Recipes from B.C. Writers and Artists. It’s edited and published locally by Joan Coldwell who has Hedgerow Press in Sidney.
Dads will find many recipes of interest in this collection including Phyllis Serota’s Pepper Steak, Shirley Madill’s Cabbage Rolls, Richard Hunter’s To-the-Moon Flan, Christine Smart’s Honey Garlic Shrimp, M.A.C. Farrant’s Baked Salmon, Linda Rogers’ Mud Pies / Bread, Mike Matthews’ Steak and Kidney Pudding, and Bill Gaston’s Hippie Popcorn.
My favourite recipe from the book, so far, is Manish Om Prakash’s Shahi Paneer, which he has generously let me post for you to enjoy too. I’ll start though with an evocative quote that describes the kitchen of his youth:
The kitchen occupied one whole side of the courtyard. There was a long steel counter with the stove. The shelves on the adjacent walls were lined with neat rows of gleaming steel and brass pots of various sizes and shapes. With windows overlooking the courtyard, there was almost always a draught of cool air. And then there was my favourite portion of the ceiling where lentils shot out from the top of the pressure cooker had left a dotted multicoloured patch.
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