Archive for June, 2009
Really, we have to stop meeting like this.
I was a very bad omnivore today. Breakfast was a cheesecake brownie (on the upside, it was from Brûlée) eaten with great guilt on the sidewalk in front of the gym I used to actually go to while waiting to cross the street. Honestly, why can so many calories be ingested in so little time? Then Mike brought me an ice cap, and later, fueled by panic and adrenaline over a looming deadline, I ate three chocolate chip cookies all warm and gooey from the oven. (They were for an event. Quality control is very important.)
Dinner was a Moroccan meal, the theme chosen by the highest bidders on me at an event to raise money for Brown Bagging for Calgary Kids. (Yes, I was auctioned off – tonight we coined the term “charity whore”.) I couldn’t have been sold to nicer people – they had nice friends, even, and made nice pomegranate martinis. I made a lot of things. Baba ghanouj, muhammara and fresh naan, Moroccan spiced olives, Spanikopita triangles, a Moroccan Vegetable Stew with Harissa Yogurt Sauce, spiced carrot salad, lentil-barley salad, grilled lemon chicken satay and a couscous salad I’ll definitely make again (except that oops – I just realized I forgot the cilantro); the couscous itself was quickly stirred into a simmering mixture of chicken stock, ginger, garlic, cumin, turmeric and cinnamon, along with a handful of raisins, then lidded and left to absorb all that flavour, fluffed with a fork and tossed with peppers, pea pods, cucumber, olive oil and lemon. Yum.
And lamb popsicles – a couple racks of lamb cut into chops, then doused in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and bashed rosemary overnight and tossed on the grill for just a couple minutes per side. Dessert was my usual mini pavlova and spiced nut tartlets I made by using a butter tart recipe and adding chopped dates, walnuts, almonds and cashews and a pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg to the filling. And a pistachio honey cake that tasted a little too much like a sweet, gummy sponge, although everyone else seemed to like it.
No wonder I’m so bagged. And now it’s quarter to one AM, and I have to be up in around 6 hours to do some more whoring around.
I’m going to be lazy – one last bag of Pike Place Roast coffee and a $25 Starbucks card is up for grabs this week. (One of my very favourite things to get, come to think of it – fresh beans and free coffee!) Starbucks is very first on my agenda tomorrow morning. (Congrats to Aimee, who got a copy of Big Bad Bantam Rooster last week, and Carolyn who won some goodies for her no-knead bread idea, and Nancy who got a copy of the new Grazing.) Lets go back to posting what we had for dinner last night. (Unless you want to tackle one of W’s questions of the day: What do rhinos think?)
One Year Ago: Pizza and Chocolate Sorbet
June 12 2009 | lamb and on the grill | 54 Comments »
The very first thing I did this morning was drop $280 for an hour in the dentist’s chair getting my teeth scraped with a variety of picks. I would have preferred a new pair of John Fluevog boots, or a flight to Vegas, or something. The day got more expensive from there: a $5000+ estimate on near-future dental work, and the same from the roofer. I think somewhere along the way I forgot to marry rich. Who came up with the phrase love OR money, anyway? (One of the downfalls of being self-employed: no dental plan. I think I need a dentist boyfriend to see on the side. Mike would totally understand. So if anyone knows any available dentists, you know, I’m game. Too bad crowns aren’t exactly a fair trade for cookies.)
So dinner was on the cheap. Awhile ago I grilled far too many vegetables (or did it too late in the evening, after everyone had had too many mojitos and cared only about the prime rib), and so after a couple grilled veg sandwiches I pulsed the rest in the food processor and froze it, thinking I’d sneak it into some future pasta sauce. Instead I pulled it out and turned it into an easy pizza topping.
It was also a great opportunity to make pizza on the grill again. A lot of people talk about this, but it seems to me even more are freaked out by it, thinking (and rightly so) that the raw dough is going to fuse to the grill, or sink down between the slats, or do something weird. It doesn’t. If you fire up the grill, crank it up and leave it until it’s nice and hot, then slap a big rolled out piece of dough directly onto it (brush the dough with some oil first if it makes you feel better, but you totally don’t have to), it will cook up all nice and crusty and grill-marked. Pizza dough makes great flatbread to serve with dips – simply flip it over, brush with garlicky oil and when it’s toasty on both sides, take it off and cut into pieces or break into shards. Otherwise, flip it over and spread the browned side with pizza sauce, toppings and grated cheese; turn the heat down a bit and close the lid, creating an oven environment that will melt the cheese and heat the toppings through just like your inside oven would. The grill is the best way to cook frozen pizzas, even – the bottom gets nice and crisp, never soggy with that high, direct heat – and you don’t have to heat up the house.
Basic Pizza Dough
Plain or flavoured pizza dough also makes great breadsticks – roll the risen dough into sticks as thin or fat as you like, sprinkle with coarse salt or grated Parmesan cheese and bake until golden.
1 cup lukewarm water
1 pkg. (or 2 tsp.) active dry yeast
1 tsp. sugar or honey
2 1/2 – 3 cups flour – all purpose, whole wheat, or any combination of the two (I usually use about 2 3/4 cups)
1 tsp. salt
a drizzle (1 tsp. – 1 Tbsp.) olive or canola oil
In a large bowl, stir together the water, yeast and sugar; set aside for 5 minutes, until it’s foamy. (If it doesn’t get foamy, either your water was too hot and killed the yeast or it was inactive to begin with – toss it and buy fresh yeast or try again!)
Add 2 1/2 cups of the flour, salt and oil and stir until the dough comes together. On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough for about 8 minutes, until it’s smooth and elastic, adding a little more flour if the dough is too sticky.
Place the dough in an oiled bowl and turn to coat all over. Cover with a tea towel or plastic wrap and set aside in a warm place for half an hour to an hour, until doubled in bulk. If you want you can let it rise more slowly in the refrigerator for up to 8 hours.
Roll the dough out into one or two pizzas. Spread the pizza dough with tomato sauce or paste, sprinkle with desired toppings and bake on a preheated pizza stone or cookie sheet at 450F for 15-20 minutes, until bubbly and golden, or cook on the grill (see above).
Makes enough dough for 2 – 9” pizzas, or one big rectangular one.
Per slice (based on 12 slices): 111 calories, 0.7 g total fat (0.1 g saturated fat, 0.3 g monounsaturated fat, 0.2 g polyunsaturated fat), 3.2 g protein, 22.5 g carbohydrate, 0 mg cholesterol, 1.1 g fiber. 6% calories from fat
To make flavored pizza dough: add a generous pinch of chopped fresh or dried basil, rosemary or oregano, a clove of minced garlic, a few finely chopped olives or sun dried tomatoes (if they come packed in oil, use it in place of the olive oil) or 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper along with the flour.
At 6:20 I realized I had to be at a meeting on the opposite end of the city at 7, and had promised to bring something edible. Oops. The last few spoonfuls of grilled veg went into the food processor with about half a dozen slow-roasted tomatoes from the fridge, a few pieces or leftover roasted broccoli and cauliflower, some grated Parmesan, a spoonful of pesto, glug of olive oil and drizzle of balsamic. It was kind of a weird vegetable tapenade of sorts – people said they liked it, but were very possibly just trying to be nice. I think it would have been fine on pasta though, with a little crumbled feta or soft goat cheese swirled in.
(It is unfortunately one of those foods that is almost impossible to photograph without looking regurgitated.)
One Year Ago: Bagels
June 10 2009 | on the grill and vegetarian | 26 Comments »
A busy day. At the end of the afternoon (and overlapping dinner) I found myself judging a chili cook-off at the ATCO Kitchen for the Boys’ and Girls’ Club of Calgary (not the best reintroduction to regular food after two days with an unhappy gut), and soon after was at an organizational meeting for Ramsay Rocks, our community event which is now -gasp- only a week and a half away. I was relieved at close to 11 pm to come home, take out my contacts and sit down at the computer with a mug of tea and wedge of plain cake – aptly named busy day.
Of course the busy days of Edna Lewis’ childhood were filled with altogether different tasks: “Our busiest days were, of course, when we were canning, putting up watermelon-rind pickles and Seckel pears, making blackberry jelly, and preparing the brine for cucumber pickles.”
Edna Lewis is perhaps the most well-known Southern cook of our time; a Southern Julia Child, they called her. Her book, The Taste of Country Cooking, is calming and happiness-inducing as she recalls her childhood in Freetown, Virginia. Worth a watch: Fried Chicken and Sweet Potato Pie: a short documentary on her life. The very first thing I learned from Miss Lewis – eons ago – was regarding baking powder. First, she measured it by piling it on a dime – not having measuring spoons. Second, she always made her own – she thought the commercially made double acting stuff left a metallic aftertaste. To make your own, sift together 1/4 cup cream of tartar and 2 tablespoons baking soda and store it in a tightly sealed container – use it as you would regular baking powder.
“A busy-day cake, or sweet bread, as it was really called, was regular cake batter, measured out and stirred in a hurry while the vegetables cooked on one end of the old wood stove and canning was carried out on the firebox end. The batter would be poured into a large biscuit pan and set into the oven to bake.”
This is the plain butter cake everyone should have in their repertoire; nothing is better to serve with fresh or stewed fruit in summer. Who needs shortcakes – or those little yellow sponges sold in the produce section – when you can so easily have a warm slice of buttery, sugary, sandy-crumbed cake? Instead of the usual strawberry shortcake, try simmering fresh blueberries in a small drizzle of maple syrup or honey until their skins burst, and spooning it warm over a wedge. The cake sinks appealingly in the middle as it bakes – if you don’t like this, bake it in a tube or Bundt pan.
Miss Lewis’ Busy-Day Cake
Adapted from The Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis
Busy-day cake was never iced, it was always cut into squares and served warm, often with fresh fruit or berries left over from canning. The delicious flavor of fresh-cooked fruit with the plain cake was just to our taste and it was also refreshing with newly churned, chilled buttermilk or cold morning’s milk.
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1 1/3 cups sugar
3 large eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
a good grating of nutmeg
½ cup milk, at room temperature
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Spray a 9” springform pan with nonstick spray.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Beat in the vanilla.
In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg.
Add about a quarter of the flour mixture to the butter mixture, and stir by hand or beat on low speed just until blended. Add a third of the milk, mixing just until combined. Continue adding flour and milk, finishing with flour and stirring each time just until blended, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.
Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until golden (if it’s browning too quickly, cover loosely with a piece of foil) and springy to the touch. Serve warm, absolutely plain or with fruit. Serves 10.
One Year Ago: Roast Leg of Lamb with New Potatoes
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June 09 2009 | cake | 14 Comments »
We ate a progressive dinner of sorts this afternoon/evening – you know where you start with an appetizer at one location, move on to dinner at the next, and dessert at a third? This afternoon was a refresher course for barbecue judges who are doing Barbecue on the Bow this year (that’s us) so we headed over to the Queen of Smoke (Sharma Christie)’s house for a bit of a brush up, and two briskets were smoked for the occasion – you know, so we had some smoke rings to ogle over and meat to make an example of. First course: brisket, saltines and bottled water.
Mike’s mom and sister teamed up to watch W while we were there, so the switch off was staying for dinner when we arrived back at the end of the afternoon. Chopped salad (iceberg lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, green onions, Catalina dressing – do you remember that stuff? – very 1980s steak house, right down to the shallow plastic bowls) and frozen pizza. Dinner #3 was at my Mom’s. We didn’t plan to eat, but she ordered in east Indian food for the occasion of my cousin being in town from Windsor – my childhood Bobbsey twin, and I haven’t seen him in eons – and so we arrived just as the food was being set out. Once everyone had filled their plates there were takeout containers left with enough butter chicken sauce to swim in, and half a basket of naan. I’m just not that strong a person. I cleaned it all up, plus most of the bowl of chocolate covered almonds.
So that was dinner. And now I shudder to open this door again, but it must be opened, because I shudder even harder every time I see my header in a state of purgatory – with some of you loving and some hating it, but none really loving the catchphrase, which I’m not even really sure I need but I do see as an opportunity to inject a little humour. On the other hand, I don’t want to have one just for the sake of having one – I may lose it altogether. Or, how about: eat my words? I know, I know. Everything is so cliché in the food world.
In other news, I’ll be on Martha Stewart Living Radio tomorrow morning – 12:15 EST. Care to wager how much I’ll sleep tonight? I feel like I might just lose my brisket.
One Year Ago: Fig & Olive Tapenade
June 07 2009 | leftovers | 14 Comments »
Sorry, I totally dropped the ball last night. Our good friends came from BC for dinner and a sleepover, which obviously went late. After midnight when everyone else retired to their bedrooms, I diligently logged on to post dinner here. But when at quarter to one I plugged my camera in to upload photos and the battery died, I let a few expletives fly and went to bed.
Of course I didn’t remember that it was Free Stuff Friday until this morning, when I needed to get a couple hours of visiting in while popping corn and making pakoras for Tasha’s big CD release party this afternoon. (Which was a blast – great to see some of you there and finally meet you in person!)
But let’s backtrack to yesterday: by mid afternoon it had already dropped to 4 degrees and was threatening snow. So instead of sitting out on the patio, flipping something meaty on the barbecue while balancing cold gin & tonics, I put a pot roast in the oven. It was a good thing, actually – awhile ago one of you dear readers surprised me with a bag of frozen bison, straight from the farm, and I was waiting for an opportunity (and dinner guests) to cook the blade roast. It was a beautiful, small (perfectly sized) one, and I started by patting it dry and seasoning it with salt and pepper, then browned it on all sides in some canola oil in a hot cast iron skillet. Some recipes instruct flouring the meat first – if you do this, do it sparingly, or you end up browning the flour and not the meat. I prefer to brown the meat straight-up, and if I want a bit of flour to help thicken the sauce, dust it lightly as it goes into the pot. (I find it doesn’t do much anyway – I’d rather cook it down and intensify it than thicken it with flour.)
You can cook a pot roast one of two ways – in a pot on the stovetop, or in a pot in the oven. I opted for door #2 only because my only stovetop pot of the right size was otherwise occupied storing ginger-carrot soup for the CD release party (an odd choice for a kids’ party, you may think? One of her songs, the Recipe Hoe Down, has lyrics that instruct making soup, apple crisp and veggie pakoras with chutney, which determined part of the menu) – so I used my enamel-coated cast iron pot. Not a Le Creuset, which are beautiful but a little too rich for my blood – I have one small orange one I picked up at a garage sale for the low low price of $7, but my big oval enamel-cast iron pot was made by a company called Authentic Kitchen, and I picked it up at Winners for $20. I have managed to get a lot of mileage out of it over the years – I can’t imagine it’s any lesser than a real Le Creuset. It is, by the way, what I make my no-knead bread in. You can see it’s well used.
So the other great thing about browning your meat in a skillet first (or a pot, if you’re doing it on the stovetop) is all those brown bits, which is what is going to give your gravy so much flavour. (That’s why you’re browning the meat in the first place – to create that flavour – rather than throwing it in the pot raw.) I transferred the meat to the pot and then added an onion, cut into thin wedges, to the pan, just to get up some of those meaty bits. Then added those to the pot with the meat, chunked up a couple carrots, and poured about a cup of beef broth into the pan to quickly get up any of that remaining tastiness, and poured it around the meat with the end of a bottle of sherry. You want enough liquid to come about a third of the way up the meat – any kind of broth, wine, tomato juice, and water all work well, and I have even heard of people using coffee. Cover it tightly with a lid or foil, and simmer on low heat or bake it at no higher than 300°F for about 3 hours, until the meat is fork-tender. If you like, add about a pound of baby new potatoes to the pot during the last hour of cooking. I did.
Basic Pot Roast
3-4 lb. chuck roast, rump roast, boneless bottom or eye of round or brisket (beef or bison)
salt and pepper
a drizzle of canola or olive oil
1 onion, peeled and cut into thin wedges
2 carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
2 garlic cloves, crushed or chopped
1-2 cups liquid (beef or vegetable broth, wine, crushed tomatoes or juice, or a combination of these)
1-2 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, sherry or chili sauce (optional – just to add flavour)
Pat your roast dry with paper towels and season it generously with salt and pepper. In a large pot or skillet set over medium-high heat, heat a drizzle of oil until hot but not smoking. Brown the roast on all sides, turning it with tongs or a fork.
Remove the roast from the pot and set it aside on a plate. Add the onion, carrot, and garlic to the pot and cook for a few minutes, until they start to brown. (If you want to skip this step, just throw the veggies in with the roast. Cooking them first caramelizes them a bit, adding more flavor.) Return the roast to the pot and add the liquid and any seasonings you like.
Cover the pot tightly and simmer the roast on low heat on the stovetop or inside a 275°F oven for 3-4 hours, turning the meat once or twice if you think of it.
Remove the roast from the juices and set it aside. Wrap it loosely with foil to keep it warm. Let the juices settle for a few minutes, then scoop any excess fat off the surface with a wide spoon. Strain the solids out by pouring the juices through a sieve or using a slotted spoon, or purée them with a hand-held immersion blender or in a regular blender or food processor. Return the strained or puréed liquid to the pot, set it over medium heat and bring it to a boil. Simmer for about 10 minutes to reduce and concentrate the juices, adding salt and pepper to taste.
Slice or shred the beef and serve it with the sauce poured overtop. Serves 6, with leftovers.
Dessert was an easy choice – I had leftover black currant curd and fruit from Thursday’s barbecue. (Mike is getting pretty handy at finely chopping a mango, kiwi and handful of strawberries to make salsa.) I made a half batch of pavlova – 3 egg whites still turned out 10 individual nests twice the size of the ones I usually do. Honestly, pavlova is the easiest make-ahead dessert around. And if you do a full batch – which calls for 6 egg whites – you’ll have 6 yolks left over with which to make lemon curd. Or black currant, if you have access to some concentrated juice (like Ribena – but I use local stuff from Kayben farms – and they do mail order!). Spoon a bit of curd into the meringue, then top with whipped cream and fruit. If not the salsa – fresh berries, mango, peaches, passionfruit, whatever is in season wherever you are.
Lemon or Black Currant Curd
6 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice or black currant concentrate (like Ribena, or black currant concentrate from Kayben farms)
zest of one or two lemons (if you’re making lemon curd)
1/3 cup butter, cut into pieces
In a medium saucepan, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice and zest. Set over medium heat and cook, stirring often (if not constantly) with a whisk, until the mixture comes to a boil and thickens. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter. Set aside to cool. Makes about 2 cups.
So for Free Stuff Fridays, in honour of Tasha’s spanking new CD, I have a copy of Big Bad Bantam Rooster to give away. If you have kids, or know any parents of kids, they will love it. I find myself playing it even when W isn’t in the car, when there is no one to tell me to PLEASE stop singing, even after having listened to it (and specifically tracks 3, 5, 6, 9 and 17) eight thousand times. As always, I’m curious what you had for dinner last night. But I have another burning question.
What the hell is this?
(Mike’s mom sends W letters regularly, with dollar store stickers plastered all over the envelope. They all look like variations on this mutant theme. Now, art is universal, is it not? Seriously. I will be shocked if W doesn’t develop an aversion to clowns. I’m not sure which is more confusing, the actual artwork or the trim job.)
One Year Ago: Sausage, Black Bean and Sweet Potato Soup
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June 06 2009 | bison and dessert | 35 Comments »
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