Archive for September, 2008
Although I’m still digesting last night’s “dinner”, I had the foresight to pull a pork tenderloin out of the freezer this morning. I buy them in packs of several because they’re cheaper, and when I get home from the grocery store divide them into plastic bags, sometimes with a glug of barbecue sauce or honey mustard or hoisin from a jar, and pop it in the freezer. They thaw quickly due to their shape, and cook in 15 minutes on the grill.
The corn salad came out of desperation to use up the 6 ears I bought on Friday – the novelty of chewing the corn off the cob has already lost its lustre for the season. (This tends to happen quickly around here, unless we’re at a cabin somewhere, in which case I could easily eat corn on the cob for breakfast lunch and dinner for weeks.) I still had some compound butter left in the fridge and so sliced the kernels off of 2 cobs and sauteed them in sizzling garlic-lime-chipotle butter until they were golden and slightly charred.
They were so good I ate them all with salt and pepper and had to start over.
Round 2 went into a bowl with a rinsed and drained can of black beans, a chopped tomato, and what was supposed to be cilantro but was instead curly parsley, due to Mike’s inability to differentiate between the two (throw Italian flat-leaf parsley into the mix and he’s really confused), but which worked out fine. In a jar, I shook up 1/2 cup of olive oil and 1/4 cup of lime juice with 1 tsp. cumin and a crushed clove of garlic, and the salad was fantastic. I’m always surprised at how sweet corn is in a dish like this, especially when it’s toasted.
There are a lot of things I’d like to do with this salad (besides marry it); add crumbled feta, rice, chopped iceburg lettuce, grilled chicken, shrimp quickly sauteed in the same butter or grilled, or all of the above. I already have plans to add thawed shrimp from the freezer to the leftovers for lunch. Although it will no doubt be eaten at my desk in the spare bedroom, it would make a great portable lunch if I had to eat elsewhere. Maybe I’ll take mine to the park tomorrow and eat it on the grass, just because I can.
September 15 2008 | beans and on the grill and pork and salads | 4 Comments »
This afternoon was the fantastic Feast of Fields event in the back yard garden at Rouge. It was like a race against food and time. (When A said she was starting to get full, I told her to eat faster.)
All told, I ate (and drank) too much to list, but here are the highlights, in no particular order:
Roasted tomato and double smoked bacon soup with a foamy pesto cream (unspeakably good) from Fuze in Banff
Pork confit and potato croquettes with Gull Valley tomato marmalade from Nicole Gourmet (if anyone in Calgary needs a caterer, she is the bomb)
Black currant orange torte, blueberry lemon tartlets and lavender scones with stewed cherries and creme fraiche from Brûlée Patisserie (I may cry myself to sleep tonight over these)
Poutine from St. Germain (again I can’t recall the fine details, but come on – Poutine. From St. Germain. How can it not be fabulous? I can’t believe I just said fabulous.)
Teeny goat cheese tarts with candied grape tomatoes from the Calgary Petroleum Club (these were brought to me by a friend, so I never even saw the descriptor, but they were triumphant little bites)
I was complaining at the end that no one had bothered to make ice cream for me, when S took me by the arm and dragged me over to the Route 40 Soup Company, who fed me little shooters of green tomato mincemeat and peach cobbler topped with chunky butter pecan ice cream. There are no words.
Really everything was fantastic, and I did miss a few tents, so if you’re a chef and reading this and I didn’t point your food out, please don’t feel badly.
Afterward, it was too much a sunny Sunday to go home, so A and I poked around in some shops and ended up on a patio with Strongbows and Coronas, and when D joined us we talked ourselves into ordering a Cappy’s Platter, a typical fried-food rip-off delivered on one of those wicker platters with plenty of plastic shooters of sour cream and ranch dressing. I have no idea who Cappy is, but he needs to get himself a new platter, one that isn’t so weighed down with deep fried onion chunks. I think they just threw everything, potstickers and all, into the deep fryer and put a few of the requisite vegetable sticks in the middle to break up the sea of beige. A stark contrast to the grazing we did at Feast of Fields.
My stomach is not happy with me. It isn’t hosting this eclectic food party very well… I’m hoping none of the guests get kicked out.
September 14 2008 | eating out | 4 Comments »
We went to a small party tonight to say goodbye to R, who is moving to the west coast. It was warm enough for a barbecue – Italian sausages in hoagie buns, nachos with guacamole, and a baked spinach and artichoke dip I brought along. (Unbaked for transport, then popped in the oven for 20 minutes when it came time to eat it.) Tortilla chips would have gone well – typically it’s served with tortillas in restaurants – but by the time the dip was baked we had eaten all but the broken ones with the guacamole. (And by “we” I mean “me”.)
Most spinach & artichoke dips have loads of mayo, sour cream and Parmesan cheese; I trimmed this down quite a bit, so it still works without weighing you down too much.
Baked Spinach & Artichoke Dip
If you don’t like your dip chunky, put everything in the food processor and pulse it until it’s as smooth as you like.
1 14 oz. can artichoke hearts, drained and finely chopped
1 package frozen chopped spinach, thawed
1/2 cup light sour cream or plain yogurt
1/2 an 8 oz. pkg. light cream cheese (not fat free)
1/4 cup light mayonnaise
1/4 cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
1 clove of garlic, finely crushed
salt & pepper
1/2 cup grated part-skim mozzarella and/or an extra 2-4 Tbsp. grated Parmesan
Preheat oven to 375F.
If you like, pulse the artichoke hearts and spinach with the sour cream or yogurt in a food processor until roughly chopped. In a bowl, mash together the cream cheese, mayo, Parmesan cheese, garlic and salt and pepper until well blended. Stir in the artichoke-spinach mixture and spread in a shallow baking dish. Sprinkle with grated mozzarella or more Parmesan cheese. (The photo above is just Parmesan.)
Bake until heated through and bubbly, about 25 minutes. Serve warm with tortilla chips or sliced soft, crusty baguette.
(The leftovers would have made a tasty omelette filling, had there been any.)
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September 13 2008 | appetizers and cheese and vegetarian | 8 Comments »
Vichyssoise is the fancy-pants garden party name for leek and potato soup pureed and served cold. Being a cold and wet night, I left some chunks and served it hot. Between the shorter days and dark, stormy weather, by 6:15 it already seemed like time to have a bath and crawl into bed.
There are few foods as consoling as soup and potatoes, particularly when they are sippable from a mug (in a chair beside the tub as W has his bubble bath) as hot as I can stand it, so that it almost burns my throat as it goes down and doesn’t cool until it almost reaches my toes.
I also chose this soup because today is the day my parents gave up ownership of their lovely old house by the river, (to new owners with plans to mow it down), and then my mom hopped on a plane to Tofino, leaving my dad in their new (temporary) place surrounded by boxes. And my dad has always loved vichyssoise; he requests it for every birthday dinner.
Oh yes - I had a revelation while making this. I’ve made it for years (as I mentioned, it’s my dad’s favourite), and have always peeled the potatoes, because that’s what the recipe told me to do. Tonight, I was not in the mood for peeling potatoes. Nor was Mike. And it occurred to me that my small, thin-skinned potatoes didn’t need peeling. I wouldn’t try leaving thick-skinned russets intact, but the potatoes pureed just fine with their skins. Which is great, because much of the fiber and nutrients in a potato are in or just underneath the skin. Huzzah.
Leek and Potato Soup (Vichyssoise)
2 medium leeks
1 Tbsp. butter or canola oil
1 small onion, chopped
2-4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 lb. potatoes (russet, Yukon Gold and red potatoes all work well), peeled (or not) and chopped
3 cups chicken, onion or vegetable stock
Salt and pepper
1/2 cup milk, half and half, or cream
Cut the leeks in half lengthwise before you wash them – sand and grit tends to work their way in between the layers so you have to be very thorough. Thinly slice the white and pale green parts crosswise and throw out the green tops.
Set a large saucepan or Dutch oven over medium heat and add the butter or oil. Sauté the leeks, onion, and garlic for 8-10 minutes, until soft and translucent. Add the potatoes and stock and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes, until the potatoes are tender. Season with salt and pepper and remove from the heat.
Purée the soup in a blender or food processor, or use a hand-held immersion blender right in the pot. If you’ve used the blender, return the soup to the pot, set it over medium heat, and stir in the milk or cream. Heat it through without bringing it to a boil.
Serve hot, at room temperature, or put it in the fridge and serve it chilled.
Serves 4-6.
(I imagine this could easily be done in a slow cooker too – just throw it all in and walk away. Then puree with an immersion blender right in the pot.)
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September 12 2008 | soup and vegetarian | 9 Comments »
I am struggling with a way to write this post without the use of expletives. Unfortunately, there is no scotch in the house to help me out with this.
When the dogpile started before noon (you are familiar with the concept of a dogpile? Not the search engine or the clothing label that makes Joey Ramone stovepipe pants, the human pile-up. It’s also apparently football slang, but I wouldn’t know.) Mike took the boy and the dog out and I went downstairs and threw things in the slow cooker. When I get completely overloaded with stuff that all needs to be done like right now, my natural reaction is to go and make something for dinner, because that I can control. And when everything else falls apart and I don’t meet my deadlines, at least I have been a good mom/wife and put a proper dinner on the table. (But really I know it’s just that I’m a master procrastinator.)
I had pulled a bag of diced pork tenderloin from the freezer (weird, I know; I have no idea why it was diced) which triggered the memory of a Thai pork peanut stew I saw in Cooking Light eons ago, so I looked it up. It was easy; pork, some diced peppers (I had red and yellow in the freezer), teriyaki sauce (or a quick throw-together of soy sauce, sherry, sugar and ginger), rice vinegar, red pepper flakes, garlic and peanut butter. I set it to cook and we went to my parents’ to help finish up their move and take loads to the dump and clean in time to hand over the keys tomorrow morning. At around dinnertime we had run home to unload, feed the dog, check the email, send some files, and got some disastrous, infuriating and expensive news that distracted us entirely from the simmering pork in the slow cooker, which looked a little weird anyway. So dinner was peanut butter and bananas on (whole wheat) bread on the way back out the door.
Mike likes chunky all-natural peanut butter, but W and I are unfortunately partial to the Kraft or Skippy light varieties, which are less fatty but sweeter than the originals and not as good for you as the nuts-only stuff. Sometimes, though, I make my own nut butters. (I didn’t say I did today.) You can do this if you have a food processor; all you do is pulse (toasted) nuts for several minutes, until they spontaneously turn to butter. You will think it’s not working for several minutes, while you watch perfectly ground nuts go around and around in circles, and then suddenly the oil will leap out of the nuts and it will turn creamy. If you like, add a pinch of salt and any other seasonings you think would go. And don’t limit yourself to peanuts; pecans, almonds and cashews make great butters too.
When we got home at 10:30 the pork stew looked pretty good, despite the fact that it all but completely disintegrated. After 10 hours in the slow cooker it actually resembled peanut butter. Perhaps I’ll spread some on toast for lunch tomorrow.
September 11 2008 | leftovers | 6 Comments »
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