Maëlys McArdle

Category: Food

Food adventures!

  • Pea Soup

    Pea Soup

    This French-Canadian recipe is great on cold days. I used to buy Habitant canned pea soup for this, but then they moved production to the US in 2018 and replaced the ingredients with low quality filler, so I make my own now.

    Ingredients

    • 2¼ cup dry yellow split peas
    • 1 ham bone with some meat
    • 5 celery stalks, diced
    • 4 carrots, diced
    • ½ large spanish onion, diced
    • 2 tsp kosher salt
    • 2 tsp dried thyme
    • 1 bay leaf
    • 1 pinch black pepper
    • 8 cup water

    Preparation

    No soaking of peas required. Put all ingredients in a large pot. Boil, skimming foam. Simmer until peas tender and thick, about 3 hours. Remove bone from soup and chop its meat, putting the meat back in. Stir and serve.

    The recipe is originally from Dunya Harvest packaging but they had it at 2 tbsp salt.

  • Farmer’s Cheese

    Farmer’s Cheese

    Made cheese for the first time today using this recipe. It worked out! It’s a bit bland so if used on bread, top with a pinch of salt.

    Ingredients

    • 2L Whole Milk
    • 1/4 Cup Vinegar

    Directions

    Put milk on low-medium heat until it reaches 180ºF and bubbles, stirring occasionally. Do not boil. Slowly add vinegar and gently stir. Wait 60 seconds and stir again. Liquid should be yellowish, add more vinegar if not. Take off the heat and let cool to room temperature.

    Slowly pour the curdled milk into a strainer and gently press down to remove the whey. If you have a cheese cloth you can pour into that and squeeze. Refrigerate the resulting cheese.

  • Ice cream

    Ice cream

    This recipe makes approximately a liter of ice cream.

    • 1 Can (354ml) evaporated milk
    • 1½ Cup powdered sugar
    • 1 Tsp vanilla (optional)

    Chill the can of evaporated milk along with the mixing bowl in the fridge overnight.

    Pour ingredients in bowl and whip with a hand mixer until thick and foamy, then place the bowl and its contents in the freezer for an hour. Follow this by another round of whipping, then place the bowl again in the freezer until the mixture sets (3 hours).

    This recipe was taken from this video.

    Thoughts

    This recipe nails the texture. I found with vanilla it has more the consistency of soft serve; without like ice cream proper. Both taste great.

  • Baguettes

    Baguettes

    From 2012-2016 I picked up baking as a hobby. At first it was a screen-free way to relax during my second go at university, and I had fun improvising. I may have picked up the bug again: here’s a recipe for French baguettes, taken from this video.

    Baguettes

    Makes 3-4 baguettes.

    • 950g flour
    • 2 tsp salt
    • ¾ tsp yeast
    • 730 ml water

    Add salt and mix it, to prevent yeast from making contact. Add yeast. Add water. Mix with the handle of a wooden spoon. Mix until the dough forms into a ball and sticking to the spoon handle and make sure there’s no unmixed flour sticking to the bottom of the bowl. Cover and leave to rise for 8-10 hours at room temp. Longer in cold climates.

    Sprinkle flour on a surface. Use dough scraper to pull dough off of bowl onto the surface, making sure not to push it as it would lose some of the air inside. With the dough on the surface, sprinkle more flour on top of the ball. Make sure dough is not sticking to surface by scraping the dough scraper underneath, pushing flour under. Form into an elongated shape. Cut in 3 or 4 sections.

    Take each piece, dip in the flour of the surface, and put on a lined baking grill. Take care not to press the dough. Can scour with knife at 45º, cutting in long diagonals.

    Put in oven at 480ºF/250ºC for 25 min on bottom rack. Let rest a few minutes.

    Thoughts

    This recipe produces the crisp exterior, soft interior, and large air bubbles of a proper baguette. The taste is yeast-y; substituting fresh yeast improves the flavour a bit but it’s no sourdough. Still the best bread recipe I’ve tried to date.

  • Vegan Cookie Cats

    Vegan Cookie Cats

    Steven Universe, the wonderfully queer animated show, features a fictitious ice cream sandwich treat called Cookie Cat (shown below.) I attempted to make them. The result was pretty well received. This is how I went about it.

    Making a Cookie Cat Cookie Cutter

    First I needed a Cookie Cat shaped cookie cutter. I bought a large round cookie cutter for a dollar, then took pliers to them to shape them into the Cookie Cat shape.

    Making the Cookie Cats

    Then I needed a vegan ice cream sandwich recipe. I went with this one from So Delicious, doubling the amounts. This recipe makes 18 cookie cats.

    • 1L Vegan Ice Cream
    • 2 Cups Flour
    • 1 Cup Cocoa Powder
    • ½ Tsp Baking Soda
    • 1 Tsp Salt
    • 1 Cup Vegan Butter, Room Temperature
    • ⅔ Cup Sugar
    • 1 Tsp Vanilla
    • 4+ Tbsp Water
    1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.
    2. In a large bowl, cream the butter, sugar, and vanilla.
    3. Add ½ cup of the flour mixture to the creamed butter and mix to combine.
    4. Add the rest of the flour mixture to the creamed butter and mix until crumbly.
    5.  Add the water, a table spoon at a time, until the mixture comes together.
    6. Make two balls of dough from the mixture. Wrap them in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour.
    7. Preheat the oven to 325 °F.
    8. Take the balls of dough out of the fridge. Place a ball between two sheets of parchment paper. Press them down into a square, then roll them out with a rolling pin until the dough is ⅛ to ¼ inch thick.
    9. Cut out the cookies using the Cookie Cat cookie cutter. Place them on a cookie sheet that’s lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat (eg. silpat).
    10. Bake for 6 minutes.
    11. Roll out the second ball of dough, cut out the cat shaped cookies, and place them on a cooled cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Bake them for 6 minutes as well.
    12. Let the cookies cool completely before removing them from the cookie sheet.
    13. Once the cookies have cooled, place a dollop of ice cream between two cookies and sandwich them together to make the cat-shaped treat. I had the side of the cookie that was against the cookie sheet face outwards in the sandwich, as it was flatter and made them look more professional.
    14. Put the individual completed cookies in the freezer as soon as you make them, or otherwise do what I did and work in a garage in -20 °C weather while questioning my life choices. You just don’t want the cookies to melt away like you hopes and dreams. It’s good to line the container you put them in with parchment paper or something, as the cookies might otherwise stick to the bottom of the container.