dinner with Julie

Day 229: Paul’s Pizza and Black Currant Sorbet & Ginger Ale Floats

Too hot to cook. Too hot, almost, to type. I am sitting with my laptop on a pillow on my lap (it’s hotter than anything) in a lawn chair with my feet in W’s pool. Don’t do this at home. I am a professional.

So I had a brilliant, if I do say so myself, idea. I didn’t want to turn on the oven, even the stovetop, and didn’t feel much like assembling a salad or sandwich. So we picked up the phone and ordered a Paul’s Pizza (#11: pepperoni, back bacon & mushroom), got the boys packed up, picked up the pizza and headed to Stanley park (not the Vancouver one, unfortunately), where the plan was to sit in the cool of the trees and eat pizza while W played on the playground and threw rocks in the river. In reality, we pulled into the (jammed like a mall parking lot the weekend before Christmas) parking lot, me with a hot pizza on my lap and W asleep in the back seat, assessed the few hundred picnickers and half-corked rafters splayed out on every square inch of real estate, and we turned around and came home, and ate pizza in our back yard. Which was a happy ending, actually. W actually stayed asleep all evening (he typically does not shut down until 10pm, so we never really have evenings to ourselves) and so as it got dark we set up a movie on the laptop in the back yard and watched it on lawn chairs.

At that point I felt the need for something sweet and cool to sip on, and also wanted to leave you with something other than ordered pizza. (Inglewood Pizza has lost its lustre since I witnessed a particularly brutal freak-out by someone, presumably an owner, behind the counter; Paul’s in Ramsay, we determined, is a more than suitable replacement.) I still had some black currant puree in my fridge, so decided to make a quick sorbet. (If you don’t have an ice cream machine, put it on your birthday/Christmas list. Seriously. You’ll use it! It has far more worth than a rice cooker or salad spinner or something that takes up just as much space.) Honestly - sorbet is the easiest thing ever - it’s just frozen sweetened pureed fruit. You could make it out of any type or combination of berries, juicy stone fruit (plum is good), cherries, or ripe melon. Some recipes push the fruit puree through a seive; I’d prefer to keep the fiber in there, but it’s up to you. Aim for about 2 cups for most ice cream machines. Some instruct to sweeten it with sugar; others make a simple syrup out of equal parts sugar and water, simmered on the stove to melt the sugar, then cooled completely. When your mixture is as sweet as you like it (I could give amounts, but it will totally depend on the fruit you choose, how sour it is, and how sweet you like it) make sure it’s cool, and dump it into the ice cream machine. To make a granita, which has coarse chunks of ice, you don’t even need a machine - freeze it in a cake pan and then coarsely scrape it with a fork to make chunky ice. OR - freeze it in ice cube trays or a baking pan or whatever you have, break it up into a food processor and whiz it up, put it back in the freezer, and then whiz it up again before you serve it to make it smooth. Really all an ice cream machine does is break up the large ice crystals as it freezes, which you could do in the food processor if you don’t mind going back to the freezer a few times.

So a sorbet is just pure fruit, or chocolate, or sugar and lemon juice, or whatever - no dairy; if you want to turn it into a sherbet, add about 1/2 cup of whole milk or half & half per 2 cups of puree; or more, it’s really up to you. Sherbet has milk, and then ice cream is more heavy cream - if you go further with the cream content and use less puree, you’ll end up with ice milk or ice cream instead, and there’s nothing wrong with that either. Or, freeze a tub of yogurt, with or without fruit, to make fro-yo. I’ll save more on that for another night.

So this was black currant, and I poured some ginger ale overtop of a scoop to make a float, which instantly turned a brilliant purple. I’m dying now to try some boozy floats - berry, cherry or plum sorbet with bubbly Prosecco or Muscato - lime sorbet with gin and tonic…

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August 16 2008 | dessert and eating out and freezable | 3 Comments »

Day 228: New England Boiled Dinner

Today was not a good day for Spanx. It wasn’t the best day for a boiled dinner either, and I know, it could not sound less appetizing. Technically it wasn’t boiled, but slow-cooked. Either way an unusual choice - I’ve never eaten corned beef brisket before, let alone cooked one.

But. Every time I haul out my slow cooker (it’s not that big a deal, really) I get all giddy over it and go on a slow cooker kick for awhile before putting it away again. After the pulled pork fiasco I wanted to give it another go, so stopped at the grocery store on the way home and perused the meat section.

I’m not sure if you’ve seen those sealed plastic packages containing corned beef brisket in brine - they have them at Safeway, and every single time I see them I pause and ponder it, partly because they are foreign to me, and partly because Mike always said that corned beef brisket was the only thing his dad made for dinner growing up that was edible. His dad was famous for getting deals on cheap cuts of meat (shoes, really) and ancient chickens and boiling them in beer until they turned into some sort of unidentifiable jerky. Served with boiled-to-death potatoes and unpeeled carrots. And maybe some broccoli so mushy you could spread it on toast.

I figured a brisket, corned or not, was an ideal candidate for the slow cooker and so finally grabbed one, if only to shut up the little voice in my head that went hmm every time I saw them. For the past 20 years. (Mike and I started dating when I was 16. Or 17? Yes 17 - soon after the 1988 Winter Olympics. After having a crush on each other for a year and having teenage angst about it to everybody, our friends locked us in the basement at a party until we made out. Even then it took a good 4 hours to get the nerve up. So there you go - you know how old I am.) That adds up to a lot of time spent going hmm.

It turned out to be brilliant for the slow cooker - all I did was upend the package into the pot, cover it with water, and set it for 6 hours. (I wonder if Stephanie has tried this?) I was taking over traffic duties on CBC this afternoon and broadcasting live from Globalfest, so knew I wouldn’t arrive home until close to 7. After 6, Mike pulled the brisket out of its broth and set it aside, added some baby potatoes, chunked carrots and turnips (it seemed like a good fit) and wedges of cabbage to the broth - this is called New England Boiled Dinner - and it’s one of the recipes I pulled out of Cooking Light years ago and stuck in my to-make recipe binder. (Their photo looks far better than mine though.) So crank the slow cooker up to high and cook the veg until they are tender - or pour the broth into a pot and do the same thing - and you have these fantastically salty, seasoned veg to go with the meat.

The brisket did shred very satisfactorily with a fork - I love that. But overall I was less thrilled with it than Mike was. It was OK, but I wouldn’t likely make it again. Except the corned beef brisket part, which was damn tasty. It would make a fantastic Rueben, with saurkraut and Swiss cheese.

And I just realized that last night’s and tonight’s dinners rhyme - back bacon biscuit and corned beef brisket. Maybe Mike will write a song about it.

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August 16 2008 | beef and one dish and slow cooker | 4 Comments »