Today we drove to Markham to have lunch at the Pacific Mall. If you go to the top floor, there’s a little sort-of fast-food-like place that offers up three different cuisines on the menu - and these literally are three different cuisines, with three different kitchens, all sharing the same wait staff. Plus there’s a fresh juice and bubble tea bar.

We all like going there because there’s something for everyone - and you can bet, with two adults, two teens and a preschooler, that’s as important as what the food tastes like. Here, we could order Thai, Korean or Japanese, or dishes from each menu. (I can never remember the name of the place, but next time we go, I’ll grab one of their cards and update this post.)

I had a lovely Korean ramen noodle soup dish that made me appreciate once again the simple elegance of breaking a raw egg into your hot soup bowl. The egg was beautifully softly done, and when I broke it up, it lent the soup an incredibly buttery taste that made the whole meal more than just ramen noodles and vegetables in broth.

But it wasn’t the food that made the day (unusual, I know). Afterwards, we took a stroll through some of the shops, and came across a store that sold Japanese tableware matching one of our favorite plates, a small rectangular light blue plate that we like to use for sushi and sashimi. Neither of us can remember how we ended up with this plate, so it was nice to discover that we could purchase various other pieces.

It’s not that we’re big on having matching plates - in fact, we like having all sorts of odds and ends and using a variety of designs on the table - but it’s always nice to find more pieces in a design that you like.

And so of course, that brings me to the tuna sashimi. I love how the mind works. Because the only thing I could think of, after seeing our dish in the store, was the last time we had used it. Last week, Ward decided to play around with some extra tuna that was left over from the wasabi tuna meal he had made the weekend before that.

This small piece was in the freezer, just waiting to be used as an appetizer. So Ward decided to just throw together some of his favorite Japanese flavours. He cut up the tuna into cubes, then marinated the cubes in a marinade made with wasabi, Japanese soy sauce, mirin and sliced green onions. The result was just gorgeous. The tuna was tender, and melted in your mouth. Our daughter doesn’t like sashimi, so he fried up a few pieces for her, and that tasted so good, we knew we had a winning marinade on our hands.

And yes, that’s the plate.

I’ve mentioned before how much fun it’s been around here lately. I read something that sounds utterly delicious, either in a book or a magazine, and next thing you know, I’m actually eating it! Ward has been absolutely fabulous about trying out recipes for me; needless to say, I’ve been eating extremely well lately.

Which brings me to these gougères:

Don’t they look absolutely delicious? Our journey to these luscious, cheesy baked delights began last month when I was reading Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires. The book is a wonderful read, detailing Reichl’s stint as the New York Times restaurant critic, before she became the editor of Gourmet. Reichl is smart and funny and insightful - I loved every moment of that book.

The book is mostly about her life as a restaurant critic, but there are a handful of recipes sprinkled through it. As soon as I set eyes on her recipe for gougères, I wanted to try them. Just the ingredients themselves screamed out, “Make us, make us - we taste divine, we promise!”

In the past, I would have sighed, closed the book, and then gone to bed and dreamed of what gougères might possibly taste like. Would they be as cheesy as they sounded like they would be? Would they actually taste as good as I imagined?

Not any more. I casually mentioned to Ward that this recipe looked good (well, okay, maybe not quite that casually. I might have said something like, “I really really want to try these! Can you make them, please, please, please?” Maybe.). He said, “Photocopy it for me, and I’ll give them a try.”

I’m a huge procrastinator, but I photocopied the recipe about two seconds later and gave it to him.

About ten days later, Ward tried out the recipe. (No, I didn’t ask him every day if he was planning to make gougères that day. Not every day. More like every other day. Except maybe once or twice I might have asked him a few times a day, a few days in a row. I don’t know. I can’t remember.)

That first batch was incredibly good. He made it as an after-dinner snack, and the kids and I devoured them before they had a chance to cool off. He’s since made them a few more times, and each time they are just as good as I remembered. They look a bit like biscuits, but they don’t have the crumbly, dry consistency of biscuits. Instead, they’re more like savory pastries, beautifully cheesy and tender. Very good warm. (Although I’m not sure what they taste like when they’ve cooled down a bit. We haven’t had any survive for long enough to cool down.)

Gougères

From Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires (page 171). Ward’s comments are in italics.

1 cup water
1/4 pound (8 tbsps) unsalted butter
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
5 eggs
1 cup diced Gruyère cheese
Pepper to taste
1/2 cup grated Gruyère cheese

1. Preheat oven to 375 F. (Wait until oven is really hot - don’t rush.)

2. Combine the water, butter and a teapoon of the salt in a saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring until butter melts. Remove the pan from the heat, let cool slightly, stir in the flour, and mix well. Return the pan to the heat and stir with a wooden spoon over high heat until the mixture comes away from the sides of the pan. Remove from the heat.

3. Stir in the eggs, one at a time until well combined. Add the diced cheese, the remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, and pepper, stirring well.

4. Drop the dough by rounded tablespoons onto a well-buttered baking pan. Smooth the top and sides of each gougère with a knife (As you can see from our pictures, we didn’t do that. Ward just plopped them onto the pan with a spoon, and they turned out quite well.). Sprinkle with grated cheese.

5. Bake in batches for 25 minutes, or until puffed and golden. Serve immediately.

You will definitely not have any problems with leftovers - we never have any left over, which is good, because they are superb right out of the oven. The best thing is, they’re very easy to whip up.

Ward and I have been talking lately about planting a kitchen garden this spring. We’ve been finding that fresh herbs make an incredible difference when it comes to cooking, so a kitchen garden this summer makes sense.

Luckily, we have a fair bit of land, and about a quarter of it is in full sun, so we have a lot of options.

We’re envisioning a raised garden just outside our kitchen:

Unfortunately, while this spot gets a lot of afternoon sun, it’s mostly shaded in the morning. Still, I’ve grown various herbs in containers on this deck in previous summers, and it’s nice to have herbs within easy clipping reach.

In our front garden, which has been in “landscape-stage” for a few years now, we’ll be able to grow quite a lot of herbs.

It’s been great fun sitting down with the gardening catalogues, dreaming about our new garden and picking out plants. We’ll be ordering most of our plants from Richters Herbs; they offer a wide variety, and many of their herbs are available as small plants or plugs.

So far, we’ve picked out the following herbs:

Basil: Genovese basil, Greek bush basil, and Thai basil
Chives
Garlic Chives
Mint: English Mint, Peppermint mint, and Spearmint mint
Rosemary

We already grow thyme, lemon thyme, oregano and sage in our front garden. They’re perennials, and make for a divine-smelling walkway in the summer. We’ll be uprooting our existing front garden this summer, though - but of course we’ll find a place for these herbs!

Richters also has a, smaller, vegetable selection, and we’ve been putting together a list from these, too. Our main criteria? It must be available as a plant or a plug! Given our short growing season, it doesn’t make sense to plant outdoors from seed, and we just don’t have the space to propagate seeds indoors (I wish we did!)

Our list of vegetables for our kitchen garden, so far:

Calabrese broccoli
Japanese eggplant
Gai Lohn
Kale
Leek
Walla Walla onion
Pak-Choi
Sweet Chocolate Pepper
Golden Cal Wonder Pepper
Cayenne Chile pepper
Jalapeno chile pepper
Thai Chile pepper

We haven’t decided on a tomato yet; there are a couple of heirloom varieties that look interesting.

And the exceptions we’ll make to planting seeds are carrots, lettuces, and of course, cilantro. There are many varieties of each that have a shorter growing season. And I’ve never been able to resist growing my own cilantro!

In the middle of a cold winter day, planning out a kitchen garden is a wonderful dream activity. Whether we’ll actually get all those plants planted out by spring, I don’t know; truth is, we’ve had as much fun out of all of this as if they were already planted and ready to be harvested!