Sunday Night Dinner

Kitchen Windows is a side-project of the Sunday Night Dinner podcast. In this time of Covid-19 and social isolation, it’s a chance to have a brief look into the kitchens of writers, musicians, chefs, artists and health-care superstars. What can they see out their window? What are they cooking for comfort? Who are they with? How do they spend their days?

Julie Van Rosendaal spends most of her time in her Calgary kitchen, cooking, baking, and taking photographs. She’s a cookbook author, a cooking instructor, a food writer and a columnist on the Calgary Eyeopener on CBC Radio One. You can find her super popular blog where she documents recipes and life with her husband and son at www.dinnerwithjulie.com. And check out her podcast Crispy Bits wherever you listen!

Music in this episode was written by JJ Ipsen.

Here's the recipe for the No Knead Bread that Julie was talking about:

Ingredients:

3 cups (400 grams) bread flour

1¼ teaspoons (8 grams) table salt

¼ teaspoon (1 gram) instant or other active dry yeast

1¹⁄³ cups (300 grams) cool (55 to 65 °F) water

wheat bran, cornmeal, or additional flour for dusting

Method:

In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, salt, and yeast. Add the water and, using a wooden spoon or your hand, mix until you have a wet, sticky dough, about 30 seconds. Make sure it's really sticky to the touch; if it's not, mix in another tablespoon or two of water. Cover the bowl with a plate, tea towel, or plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature (about 72 degrees F), out of direct sunlight, until the surface is dotted with bubbles and the dough is more than doubled in size. This will take a minimum of 12 hours and (my preference) up to 18 hours. This slow rise--fermentation--is the key to flavor.

When the first fermentation is complete, generously dust a work surface (a wooden or plastic cutting board is fine) with flour. Use a bowl scraper or rubber spatula to scrape the dough onto the board in one piece. When you begin to pull the dough away from the bowl, it will cling in long, thin strands (this is the developed gluten), and it will be quite loose and sticky--do not add more flour. Use lightly floured hands or a bowl scraper or spatula to lift the edges of the dough in toward the center. Nudge and tuck in the edges of the dough to make it round.

3. Place a cotton or linen tea towel (not terry cloth, which tends to stick and may leave lint in the dough) or a large cloth napkin on your work surface and generously dust the cloth with wheat bran, cornmeal, or flour. Use your hands or a bowl scraper or wooden spatula to gently lift the dough onto the towel, so it is seam side down. If the dough is tacky, dust the top lightly with wheat bran, cornmeal, or flour. Fold the ends of the towel loosely over the dough to cover it and place it in a warm, draft-free spot to rise for 1 to 2 hours. The dough is ready when it is almost doubled. If you gently poke it with your finger, making an indentation about 1/4 inch deep, it should hold the impression. If it doesn't, let it rise for another 15 minutes.

Half an hour before the end of the second rise, preheat the oven to 475 degrees F, with a rack in the lower third position, and place a covered 41/2 - to 51/2 -quart heavy pot in the center of the rack.

Using pot holders, carefully remove the preheated pot from the oven and uncover it. Unfold the tea towel, lightly dust the dough with flour or bran, lift up the dough, either on the towel or in your hand, and quickly but gently invert it into the pot, seam side up. (Use caution, the pot will be very hot.) Cover the pot and bake for 30 minutes.

Kitchen Windows is a side-project of the Sunday Night Dinner podcast. In this time of Covid-19 and social isolation, it's a chance to have a brief look into the kitchens of writers, musicians, chefs, artists and health-care superstars. What can they see out their window? What are they cooking for comfort? Who are they with? How do they spend their days?

The first episode features the award-winning, best-selling writer, Miriam Toews. Her breakout novel, A COMPLICATED KINDNESS won the Governor General's Award, the CBA Libris Fiction Award and CBC's Canada Reads. Her latest novel, WOMEN TALKING, has been optioned by Brad Pitt's Plan B and is set to star Frances McDormand.

Music in this episode- Motel from US ALONE by Hayden (Arts & Crafts).

Bread making in the time of Covid-19. Join Lindsay Cameron Wilson (host and creator of The Food Podcast) and her 10-year-old son, Rex, as they make Molasses Brown Bread in their kitchen in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Listen to Chef Claire Tansey making one of her classic Sunday night dinners- meatloaf. Her cookbook: Uncomplicated: Taking the Stress out of Home Cooking, proves that great food doesn't have to be difficult to prepare.

Listen to why Claire decided to make the book, what Sunday night dinners were like for her as a kid growing up in Montreal, and why creating a family tree through recipes fascinates her.

She's funny, relaxed, and smart, and I had a great time spending the afternoon in her kitchen. I highly recommend her book (and so does my mom- the woman whose least favourite room in the house is the kitchen!)

When it comes to French cuisine, roast chicken is a classic. Listen as Mardi Michels (author of In the French Kitchen with Kids) makes her favourite version of this classic. Key: lots of butter!

Mardi teaches French at a small school for boys in Toronto, and she also writes the blog eatlivetravelwrite.com. As part of her teaching job, Mardi runs cooking classes twice per week for the boys who are aged 7 to 14. Mardi loves France (where she lived for five years before moving to Toronto) and her book is the perfect way to introduce kids to French cooking. I also visited Mardi and her students at cooking club while they made meatballs and tomato sauce in under an hour. It was totally inspiring!

Nana Aba Duncan is the host of CBC Radio's weekend morning program, Fresh Air. She was born in Ghana, she grew up in Newmarket, Ontario, and she lives in Toronto. This soup is called Groundnut Soup in Ghana, where it is a well-loved dish. It can be made with any kind of meat (goat, chicken, beef), any combination of vegetables (okra, carrots, beans), and lots of peanut butter. Listen to Nana Aba talk about family roles, visiting Ghana, comfort foods, and the movie, Black Panther. And we also got to talk to her wonderful mom in Ghana. Thanks WhatsApp!

When Skye McAlpine was six years old, her family decided to move from London to Venice for a year. More than 25 years later, they're still there. They fell in love with the city, and, now, Skye, her husband and young son live in the same house where she grew up, overlooking a sleepy canal in a quiet corner of the city.

Her blog, From My Dining Table, is a love letter to her adoptive city and a beautiful meditation on food, family and la dolce vita. Her new cookbook, A TABLE IN VENICE, offers a varied collection of dishes that she and her family enjoy, alongside some absolutely gorgeous photos of the floating city.

Skye came to my kitchen to make a simple yet delicious dish called Tagliolini con Scampi, Zucchine, e Zafferano. We ended up with spaghettini instead of tagliolini, but Skye assured me that any long, thin pasta would do. She talks about her daily life in Venice, how she learned how to cook Italian food, some of her favourite Venetian dishes, and she offers some great tips on making great pasta. Beware, you might get hungry!

Listen to Sook-Yin Lee and Adam Litovitz as they make Beef Stew (with some seriously delicious Georgian spices called Kharcho) in their Instant Pot. They cook together and make music together and, years ago, Adam was the one who asked Sook-Yin the life-changing question: What makes you happy? This question comes up in a memorable scene in Sook-Yin’s brand new brilliant film Octavio Is Dead! and the scene stayed with me because of its simple profundity. We should do what makes us happy.

Find out what makes Sook-Yin happy now, listen to her talk about her Sunday night dinners growing up, her work, reciprocity, and what happened the first time she used the Instant Pot.

Some of the music in this episode is made by Sook-Yin, Adam and Alia O'Brien for Octavio Is Dead! and is put out by Last Gang Records. You can go to sundaynightdinnerpodcast.com to

find out more information.

Come into Chef Charlotte Langley's kitchen and listen to her making Cheese and Potato Pierogi. A classic dish, and one of her favourite Sunday night comfort foods. She also talks about rocking culinary school, her home province of PEI, and why she moved away from cooking in fine-dining restaurants. She's feisty, passionate and lives most of her life in the Land of Po. Press play to find out what that means!

Feist's latest album PLEASURE was recorded in Stinson Beach, California; Upstate New York; and Paris, and for that California session, Adrienne Amato came to cook for the musicians and crew. The recording studio and the kitchen were separated by a thin wall, which meant that Adrienne cooked very quietly.

The experience in Stinson Beach led to the creation of a cookbook, PLEASURES: THE MEALS OF AN ALBUM, and all profits from the sale of the book go to Community Foods Centres Canada, an umbrella network that funds food security and food justice programs all over the country.

Come hang out with us in Adrienne's kitchen as Feist and Ade make South African Seed Bread and Ariel Engle's Halloumi Soup, both recipes from the book. We ended up sitting there all afternoon, talking about family meals, Adrienne's vinyl-listening room in her childhood home in Zimbabwe, algorithms, butter tarts, Feist’s favourite restaurant on earth, if she has a listener in mind when she writes, and music they listen to when they cook. This is a wonderfully intimate conversation, and it's full of surprises and insights.